Services
Find the leak. Fix the process. Keep the gain.
Every engagement is built to end with a measured outcome: a dollar figure on the problem, a process that no longer produces it, and a scorecard that proves the gain is holding. The method is the Lean Six Sigma improvement cycle, applied to the way a founder-led business actually runs. You can work with us three ways.
01The method
Find. Fix. Refine.
PHASE 01Find.The operations audit
You know something is leaking. You do not know where, or what it costs.
The Find phase answers both. We map how work really moves through your business, from intake through delivery to cash, and measure where it stalls, who touches it twice, and what each gap costs in hours and dollars. You get a baseline, a ranked list of the leaks, and a scoped plan for the fix.
If automation is not the answer, we say so, and you keep the baseline.
Pricing. Fixed fee, quoted up front. DMAIC. Define · Measure
PHASE 02Fix.The redesign
The leak is priced and ranked. Now the process has to change without breaking the month.
The Fix phase changes how the work runs. We redesign the process first: the handoffs, the written procedures, who owns each decision, and the numbers that tell you it is working. Where automation earns its keep, it locks the improvement in, built across the systems you already own. Where it does not, the process fix is the whole job, because automating a broken process only produces bad output faster.
Pricing. Fixed fee, sized by the Find phase, never quoted blind. DMAIC. Analyze · Improve
PHASE 03Refine.Ongoing control
Most improvements decay, because most improvement efforts stop at go-live.
The Refine phase is why ours do not. You get a one-page monthly scorecard and a regular review of what it shows, so drift gets caught while it is small. Anything we automated is monitored and maintained, and new cases are folded in as they appear.
Pricing. Monthly, scope-driven. DMAIC. Control
02Operations consulting
What if the fix is process, not software?
Then we stop there. Not every problem needs software.
Operations consulting is the work Odin was founded on, and it stands on its own. We map how the work runs today, then redesign it: clearer handoffs, written procedures, a role that owns each decision, and a short list of numbers somebody actually reviews each week. It runs on the same Find, Fix, and Refine phases, and it ends without an automation build unless one would earn its keep.
Typical work:
- Process mapping and redesign, from intake through delivery to cash.
- Written procedures and playbooks your team will actually use.
- Roles, decision rights, and the structure that lets the founder step back.
- A weekly operating scorecard and the meeting that keeps it honest.
- Systems selection, so the tools fit the process instead of the other way around.
Pricing. Fixed fee for scoped projects, hourly for standalone advice.
03Fractional COO
What if you need an operator, not a project?
Then I join your business part-time as its fractional COO.
Neil Nesladek · Fractional COO
Some businesses need more than a project. They need someone running operations week to week, without the cost of a full-time executive. As your fractional COO, I work inside the business a set number of days each week. I run the operating rhythm, hold the team to the numbers, and build the processes and roles that let the business run without you in the middle of it.
What it covers:
- The weekly operating meeting and the scorecard behind it.
- Process, roles, and accountability across the team.
- Hiring plans and onboarding for key operations roles.
- Vendor and systems decisions, including where automation fits.
- The monthly numbers, read alongside your bookkeeper or CPA.
I spent a decade as a general manager and president of operating companies before founding Odin, so this is the seat I know best. The goal is to work myself out of it: once the rhythm holds, the role passes to someone you hire, and I help you hire them.
Pricing. Monthly retainer, scoped to days per week. Usually three to six months to start, with no long-term lock-in. Availability. A small number of clients at a time.
04AI automation
What if the fix has to hold without adding people?
Then we automate it.
When a redesigned process still depends on someone re-keying, chasing, or remembering, automation locks the improvement in. We build across the systems you already own, in phases, so something is working in the first month.
You do not take on a new system to run. The automations live on our platform, maintained by us, and they work inside the tools you already own, so the output shows up where your team already looks. Everything we build is documented rather than a black box, and your team is trained on anything that changes. Steps that touch money always keep a person’s eye on them.
Once it is live, Refine keeps it working. We monitor and maintain what we build, fold in new cases, and report the savings on the monthly scorecard. Three tiers, Protect, Optimize, and Accelerate, depending on how much you want us improving versus simply running. AI usage is included, never metered.
Pricing. Fixed fee for the build, sized by the Find phase. Refine is monthly and built into every build.
05Ownership
Your business stays yours.
When we automate, the line is simple: you own your business, we own our tools.
Yours. Your data, in full, at any time. The outcome the work produces and every dollar it saves. And a written record of how each process runs, at the altitude you need to manage it, brief a new hire, or hand it to an auditor.
Ours. The workflows, templates, and the platform they run on, built and refined across every engagement and operated by us. That is why a proven fix costs a fraction of a custom build. You are paying for a result, not paying us to invent the machinery from scratch.
In writing. It is the same arrangement you already have with every system you run, with one difference: your continuity terms are spelled out in your agreement. If anything ever happens to us, you keep running, and your data is never the hostage. You will never be locked out of your own operation.
06In practice
What does an engagement actually change?
Illustrative, not a client result · AI automation
Picture a mechanical contractor running hundreds of time-and-materials service calls a month, each starting as a paper ticket in a truck. Tickets sit, get re-keyed, get lost; completed work never becomes an invoice, and what does get invoiced collects slowly.
The fix: map how a ticket actually moves from the truck to the bank, put a number on the leak, then redesign and automate the path. A photo of the signed ticket becomes a draft invoice in minutes, a person approves it, and a follow-up agent chases it until it is paid. The first thing the owner feels is billings moving out of receivables and into the bank.
Illustrative, not a client result · Fractional COO
Picture a growing professional services firm of about forty people where the founder approves every proposal, sets every schedule, and is the only person who knows whether the month made money. Growth has stalled because every decision waits on one person.
The fix: a fractional COO two days a week. A weekly operating meeting run from a one-page scorecard, written procedures for scheduling and proposals, decision rights handed to two team leads, and a monthly close the founder can read in ten minutes. No new software. Six months in, the founder is out of the daily queue and the firm is ready to hire its first full-time operations manager.
07Fit
Is this the right fit for your business?
It is, if the operation still runs through you.
We are industry-agnostic. Since 2021 we have worked with founder-led companies in creative services, wealth management, sports technology, and the trades. The constraint is the same everywhere: the founder is still in the middle of the operation.
You are probably a fit if this sounds familiar:
- Revenue leaks through manual handoffs: work that never gets billed, extra scope nobody captured, delivered work that never became an invoice.
- Cash converts slowly. Invoices lag the work, and collections depend on somebody remembering.
- High-volume back-office work is still done by hand, on systems that do not talk to each other.
- Every decision still waits for you, and there is no operations leader to hand them to.
- There is no in-house IT or integration help, and you would rather not hire any.
You are probably not a fit if you want a tool rather than a process redesign, or if one person can still comfortably hold the whole operation in their head.
08The engagement
How does an engagement run?
A 30-minute call to hear what is dragging. If it sounds like a fit, a short scoping conversation prices the Find phase. Find produces the baseline and the plan, and you decide whether to continue and how: as a consulting project, with a fractional COO, or with an automation build. A build deploys in phases so something is working in the first month, and Refine starts the day the first automation goes live. A fractional COO engagement usually starts with Find, so we begin from the same baseline.
09Questions
Questions founders ask
What does this cost?
The fee shape is simple: scoped work is a fixed fee, quoted before work starts, standalone consulting is hourly, and a fractional COO is a monthly retainer. The Find phase is the low-risk way in, and its fee credits toward the build if you continue within the window set in your proposal. No metered AI usage anywhere.
Can you do the process work without the automation?
Yes. Process and operations work stands on its own, and plenty of engagements end there because that is where the value was. We will tell you which one you are looking at.
How is a fractional COO different from a consulting project?
A consulting project has a defined finish: a redesigned process, written down and handed over. A fractional COO stays in the seat week to week and runs the operation alongside you, then hands the role off once it runs on its own. Some clients start with one and move to the other.
Do I have to replace my software?
Almost never. We build across the systems you already own. The problem is usually the manual seams between systems rather than the systems themselves.
Our processes are a mess. Do we need to clean up first?
No. Messy is normal, and the mess is exactly what the Find phase maps. Imperfect processes are the reason to start rather than a reason to wait.
Who owns what you build?
Your data and the outcome are yours, along with a documented view of how each process runs. The build itself and the platform it runs on stay with us, and your continuity terms are in writing, so you are never locked out of your own operation. The full picture is in the Ownership section above, and it is spelled out in every proposal.
How fast do I see something?
The Find phase runs in weeks rather than months, and a build is phased so the first working automation lands within its first month.