Find what’s holding your business back.
Run it yourself, or have Catalyst
run it.
Every business has a place where money, time, or growth quietly leaks out. Finding it always loses to whatever’s on fire today.
Free, about 10 minutes. You see what we’d investigate and the exact price before you decide anything.
See what a finding looks likeOur team comes from
- EY
- KPMG
- BCG
- Morgan Stanley
- Bank of America
- Shake Shack
- Michael Kors
- Thomson Reuters
Where we start
Most owners can already feel where it hurts. The hard part, from inside a business you’re also busy running, is proving which piece of it is costing the most, and knowing what to change without breaking something else in the process.
Some of the problems we can help solve
Every business has something getting in the way.
We work with service businesses: professional and technical firms, agencies, IT and managed services, home and commercial services, and property management. Within that, industry matters less than you’d think. What differs is where the bottleneck sits in the business, what’s actually causing it, and what it’s costing you.
Pick the one that’s costing you the most.
Open one to see how it shows up. “Tell us about this one” starts the intake on that problem, the first question we’d ask anyway.
Illustrative: one example of how each shows up.
How we work
Every step follows a written method.
Each step runs on a published method: what counts as friction, the line between a bottleneck and an annoyance, and which fixes to try before technology enters the conversation.
01
FreeFind it
We reconstruct how one process actually runs, then flag the friction every business has: waiting, handoffs, rework, exceptions, bottlenecks, one-person dependency.
Friction finder
02
FreeUnderstand it
Most friction is just annoying. We test it against one sentence: “if we fixed this, we could ___.” Then we ask why until the answer is a rule, a capacity limit, or an ownership gap.
Bottleneck test
03
FreeDesign the fix
Smallest fix first: delete, simplify, name an owner, rewrite the rule, fix the information, or build. We stop at the first fix that removes the cause. Run it yourself from here for free, or have us confirm it against your real data, from $500, before anyone names a price on the fix.
Smallest fix first
04
PaidMake the change
Only if you want us to. Operational: redesign the handoff, write the rules, train the team, or help you hire. Technical: build the automation, connect the systems, or set up the AI agent the brief calls for. Smallest version goes in first.
Your call
05
PaidPut it to work
We write down what should change before we touch anything, then measure against where things started once the fix is in. If the number didn’t move, we go back to the diagnosis.
Before and after
Free audits
The same method, built into seven audits you can run yourself.
Each one focuses on a single system: ad spend, sales, profit on each job, software spending. It hands you a prompt you can paste into any AI assistant and run on your own business tonight.
Seven audits, free to run
- Operations BottleneckWork keeps piling up in one place
- Process WasteAdmin work that does nothing for the customer
- Pipeline LeakDeals go quiet before they close
- Advertising WasteAd spend that isn’t bringing in customers
- Acquisition PaybackWhich channels bring customers worth having
- Margin LeakJobs make less than you quoted
- Technology WastePaying for software nobody uses
How this works
Tell us what’s going on, then choose how deep to go.
Answer the questions and we’ll help you scope exactly what should be investigated. Run the matching audit yourself for free, or have us investigate it directly against your real data, from $500.
If you want us to fix it
A separate project with its own price, and only if the findings call for it. The audit gives you the findings; what happens next is your decision.
One working session
We confirm the brief against how things really run, usually 60–90 minutes with you or whoever owns the process.
Scope, timeline, price in writing
You approve it before anything starts. Operational work is $2,500, technical work is $7,500, doubled for companies over 25 people, and the brief tells you which one you need.
We do the building
Your team’s job is to answer questions and sign off. We run the project.
Heating and cooling contractor, 14 people
Money that’s slow or missing · last 90 days of jobs and invoices
How it works today
A job closes on the tech’s tablet. Material receipts reach the office in a folder at the end of the week, and invoices wait until the owner matches receipts to jobs, usually on a Sunday.
What we found
61 finished jobs took 27 days on average to invoice, so about $96,000 is waiting to be billed at any one time. On 9 jobs the materials never made it onto the invoice at all: $6,300.
What we ruled out, and why
New invoicing software: the current one can already invoice the day a job closes, and it sits waiting on receipts. A bookkeeper: the matching takes about four hours a week once receipts arrive with a job number on them.
What we’d change
Techs photograph each receipt into the job before closing it, and the office invoices within two business days. One rule, with one owner.
How you’d know it worked
Days from job closed to invoice sent. 27 today; the target is under 3.
What we’d still confirm
Whether the 9 jobs with missing materials can still be billed.
A sample: the business and its numbers are made up. A real finding comes from your own records.
What it costs
Scoping is free. Real answers and real fixes are priced by what they are.
Telling us what’s going on costs nothing, and so does running any of the seven audits yourself. Having us investigate one specific problem against your real data starts at $500, set by how big the investigation is and how far along your company is, and that buys you the findings, full stop. What you do with them, including whether you ask us to act on them, is entirely your call. A process change and a piece of software are different kinds of work, so acting on what we find carries a different price for each. Fixed scope, fixed price, in writing, before anything starts.
Run it yourself
Every audit is published in full, ready to run in your own AI assistant with your own records. Plenty of findings end with a step to delete, a rule to write down, or a decision that needs one clear owner.
- You pull the data and run it yourself
- Specific enough to act on without us
- No follow-up sales process
Have Catalyst run it
The hours are ours. We collect the data with you on a short call, then our team works through it and sends you the findings. What you’re buying is information. Fixing anything is a separate decision, made later.
- Invoice and data list within one business day
- Findings within 3 business days of having the data
- Work out your exact price ↓
Operational work
If the findings are worth acting on: we fix the process, roles, rules, or skills behind the problem, redesigning a handoff, writing the operating rules, training the team, setting up how something gets measured, or helping you hire for a gap.
- Implemented with you, then handed over
- Runs in weeks
- A second problem, same price again
Technical work
If the findings call for it: we build the software, automation, or AI system the fix calls for, whether that’s an agent that does the chasing, two systems connected, or a manual step made automatic.
- Yours to keep, with no license to renew
- AI usage billed at cost, no markup
- Larger builds are scoped and quoted separately
Curious what technical work looks like? Explore the Platform
Price calculator
What it costs to have Catalyst run an audit
Every audit starts at $500, plus a set charge for the size of the investigation: more people, channels, products, systems, or steps means more to go through. A problem that doesn’t match one of the seven audits is priced with the Operations Bottleneck Audit’s questions.
That subtotal is then multiplied by your company’s stage, from ×1 to ×5, using annual revenue or outside funding raised, whichever is higher. A company under $250K in revenue with no outside funding pays ×1. Each answer shows what it adds, and your answers set the price before the audit begins. Fix work after the audit has its own fixed price, shown beside your total.
Pick an audit to see its questions and what each answer adds.
The team
The right expert for the problem in front of you.
Mike leads the diagnosis. Julia leads growth. Adam leads delivery. When the fix calls for deep technical work or licensed domain expertise, they bring in specialists from Catalyst's bench.
Partners
Mike Anderson
Partner, Diagnostics & Strategy
Mike has spent his career finding waste and inefficiency inside large organizations, then removing it. At EY, he ran a Six Sigma initiative that cut more than $5M in operational waste from a 100-person quality organization. At Freedom Mortgage, he led an operational overhaul of a 400-person organization across 24 teams, redesigning how the group worked to make it faster and leaner. Fifteen of those years were also spent building and running his own businesses.
Background
Julia Webb
Partner, Growth & Lifecycle
Julia has spent her career building the programs that bring in new customers and keep them coming back. As Director of Digital Marketing at Shake Shack, she led growth and repeat business across more than 200 restaurants and set how the company measured what each customer cost and what each one was worth. At Michael Kors, she owned more than $30M in global digital advertising and worked with finance to forecast online revenue. Today she leads digital growth at Aligned Modern Health, which she helped take national.
Background
Adam Elfiky
Partner, Delivery & Client Success
Adam has spent his career leading delivery and driving customer success inside the world’s largest financial institutions and professional services firms. As a Director at KPMG, he owned client engagements from kickoff to close, aligning with client leadership, managing delivery teams, and holding outcomes to schedule and budget. Earlier, he led enterprise program delivery for Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays Wealth Management.
Background
Team
Eric Chu
AI Architecture & Security
Rob Levin
Growth & Process Strategy
Liz Cuccinello
Legal & Compliance
Eric Harlovic
Finance & Strategy
Technical specialists
The two people we bring in when an engagement’s bottleneck is technical: security, data, or connecting systems that don’t talk to each other yet.
~20 years in cloud and infrastructure architecture, including a decade-plus at BCG. Brought into engagements where the bottleneck is technical: securing sensitive data, recovering from failure, and deciding exactly what an AI agent is allowed to touch.
Where they get pulled in
7+ years as a full-stack engineer, currently building AI-powered features on a healthcare data platform in production. Brought in when the fix means connecting systems that were never built to talk to each other, or building something that doesn’t exist yet.
Where they get pulled in
The right expert, whenever the problem calls for one.
Practicing CPAs, attorneys, part-time operations executives, and specialists across marketing, operations, and compliance join engagements to diagnose and shape the fix in their field. When something needs a license Catalyst can’t hold, they take it on directly, at their own rate, and Catalyst takes no cut.
FAQ
Common questions.
What this involves, what it costs, and what happens after. Questions about the platform itself are answered on the platform page.
Get started
Tell us what’s slowing you down.
A few focused questions about the problem, with your email asked early so nothing’s lost if you get pulled away. At the end you’ll see exactly what we’d investigate, what it would take, and what it would cost. Then you choose: run it yourself for free, or have Catalyst run it, from $500.
Prefer to talk it through first? Grab 20 minutes on the calendar.
Why it asks for ten minutes
It reconstructs one process end to end. Each question rebuilds one piece of what actually happens, step by step, so you never have to sum it all up yourself.
Every question changes the answer. Each one is here because it separates two different investigations. Anything that didn’t is not in the form.
You check our work before you send it. A screen near the end shows everything we noted from your answers, and you can correct any of it.
It saves your place. Close the tab and come back on the same browser; your answers are still here for a week.
Step 1
What’s slowing you down?
Pick the closest match. We’ll ask a few focused questions to understand what’s happening.
This just sends you to the right questions next.
Don’t have ten minutes right now?
We’ll email you a link so you can do this tonight or on the weekend. Same questions, and when you’re done, you’ll see whether there’s a free audit for it or Catalyst runs it, from $500.