N° 01
The Method
Diagnose · Condition · Perform

The method is the
moat.

A boutique advisory practice with one job — to read a business clearly, condition it deliberately, and hand it back compounding. What follows is how that work runs, and the principles it runs on.

—— THE PREMISE

Every business we work with arrives with the same quiet question — what's actually going on here, and what should I do about it?

Most advisory work answers half of that question. A tax advisor sees the tax exposure. An auditor sees the controls. A consultant sees the deck they've been hired to build. Each gives a true answer to a narrow question, and the owner leaves with three partial pictures that don't combine into one.

The method is built to combine them. We read across ten domains of business health in a single sequence, score them against a benchmark library built from real engagements, and write back what we see — in language that names the issue without dressing it up. The diagnostic isn't the product. The diagnostic is the entry to the relationship that produces the product.

What that relationship looks like — diagnose, condition, perform — is the rest of this page.

A complete picture,
not three partial ones.

Diagnosis is the unglamorous half of the work. Done properly, it makes the rest of the engagement easier; done poorly, it makes everything that follows a guess.

Our diagnostic runs across ten domains. Each is weighted to reflect its real diagnostic significance — cash and working capital carry more than tax position, because cash kills businesses faster than tax does. Owner wellbeing carries equal weight to banking, because the leading indicator of the next twelve months is rarely on the balance sheet.

The diagnostic produces a Business Health Score across the ten domains, a tier routing recommendation, and three highest-leverage moves for the next ninety days.

i.Financial Performance
ii.Cost Structure
iii.Cash & Working Capital
iv.Revenue & Sales
v.Operations
vi.Risk & Insurance
vii.IT & Governance
viii.Tax Position
ix.Banking & Capital
x.Owner Wellbeing

Most diagnoses tell owners what they already suspect. The good ones tell them why — and what to do next.

— The Method

What the diagnostic does not do is sell. If your score suggests no engagement is needed, the report will say so plainly. If it suggests immediate partner attention beyond the scope of a standard tier, the report routes you directly to one of us. Honest output is the only output we'll send.

Ninety days
of disciplined work.

Conditioning is what happens once the diagnosis is clear. It is structured, sequenced, and unromantic.

Every engagement runs in three phases — Diagnose, Stabilise, Rebuild — adapted to the tier. Recovery clients need the cash forecast on the banker’s desk within ten days. Reset clients need customer profitability before the pricing conversation. Velocity clients need the KPI framework instrumented before the quarterly board review is worth holding.

We don't drift. Scope is locked in writing at week one and re-confirmed each fortnight. New issues that emerge mid-engagement are captured for the next quarter, not bolted onto the current one. The discipline of finishing what's been started is the engineering quality most boutique advisory firms quietly lack — and the one our clients say they value most when they refer us.

Days 1–14

Diagnose

Full picture established. Cash forecast built. Banker briefed. Owner sleeps.

Days 15–60

Stabilise

Costs disciplined. AR accelerated. Reporting locked. Position improves week-on-week.

Days 61–90

Rebuild

Trajectory restored. Trust rebuilt with bank and team. Handover to retainer.

Recovery isn’t dramatic on any given day. It’s the cumulative effect of doing six things, well, in priority order, every week.

— The Recycling Case

What conditioning looks like in practice is documented in the Recycling case — a bank-introduced engagement priced at $30,000 that took monthly losses of $190,000 to monthly profit of $250,000 within ninety days. The owner's quote — "now I can sleep" — is the real outcome. The numbers are the evidence.

Holding the gains.
Then compounding them.

Performance is the work that earns the relationship its name. The first ninety days deliver the swing. The years that follow are what compound it.

We hold the gains through a retainer cadence. Monthly KPI scorecards, quarterly board reviews, on-call partner access when the moment demands it. The retainer is mandatory in Recovery and optional in Reset — the difference being that in Recovery, we've earned the right to insist; in Reset, we earn the continuation.

For Velocity clients, the cadence is the relationship itself. Twelve businesses per year, hand-selected, with a named partner across a full twelve-month engagement. The model is closer to a private-bank wealth manager than a consulting firm — and priced accordingly.

The Recovery fee was six per cent of three-year client value. Not a small undervaluation — a structural one.

— From the Recycling LTV analysis

What compounds inside the relationship is the ecosystem. Tax planning, audit, cyber posture, owner coaching, insurance, banking, legal, real estate — every specialist a single call away, vetted and warm-introduced, no cold pitches. The cost of curation is paid once, by us. The benefit accrues across the lifetime of the relationship.

The Partners

Three partners.
Named, accountable, present.

Every engagement is led by a partner. No associates substituted in mid-engagement. No drift between sales and delivery. Below is who you’re hiring.

KF

Kyan Frith

FCCA · IoD · Cyber Governance

Partner — Advisory, Turnaround, Cyber Governance

TThirty years across the U.K., offshore jurisdictions, and the U.S. Leads advisory, turnaround, and cyber governance work for owner-led businesses.

LinkedIn →
AG

Austin Galvez

CPA

Partner — Tax, Assurance, Boutique Advisory

San Antonio-rooted and trusted. Leads tax and assurance work, bringing technical discipline and local relationship depth to Business Conditioning clients.

LinkedIn →
DB

Diego Bravo

Master’s in Taxation

Partner — Tax Strategy, Planning, Mitigation

Ten years of complex domestic and cross-border tax work, with particular depth in family-owned business succession and proactive planning.

LinkedIn →
The Next Step

You’ve read the method.
The diagnostic begins it.

Ten minutes, complimentary, partner-reviewed within 48 hours. The report tells you which tier fits, where the leverage points are, and what to do in the next 90 days.