Services
You bought the business. Now make it yours.
You bought an established business. Now you need to actually run it — and what you inherited wasn’t built for you.
From Buyer to Owner builds an operating system for owners in their first two years post-acquisition in just 90 days.
From Buyer to Owner: The 90-day operating system for new owners
You bought an established business.
Now you need to actually run it.
From Buyer to Owner is a 90-day 1:1 engagement that compresses what usually takes 12-18 months of trial and error into 90 focused days.
This isn’t generic advice or a course. It’s structured work, one-on-one, to understand what you inherited, change what needs changing, and build an operating system you can actually run.
How we build your operating system:
The Owner’s Vision — We get clear on what you want this business to give you. Most owners never define this, and every operational decision downstream gets harder without it.
The Owner’s Financial Compass — Financials built for the person running the business now, not the person who sold it. You’ll know your numbers well enough to make decisions on Tuesday, not just at year-end.
The Owner’s Operating Map — You probably have a list of twenty things that need fixing, and no way to know which matters most. The map puts your whole business on one page, so you can clearly see the two or three fixes that actually solve half the list.
The Owner’s Operating Rhythm — The part that buys back your time. A weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadence means decisions stop routing through you, your team stops waiting on you, and the business keeps moving on the days you’re not in it.
You’ll leave with:
- The confidence that you can actually make payroll and cover the loan
- Clarity on what’s actually driving profit, so you stop spending time and money on things that aren’t
- Work that gets done without you in the middle of it
- A team that stops comparing you to the previous owner
- A rhythm that keeps the business moving whether you’re there or not
The results: Fewer fires. More profit. And a business that doesn’t need you in every decision. You can take a Friday off without wondering what’s falling apart.
Weeks 1-4: Get clear
We assess what you inherited and define what you want. You gain real financial visibility and document how the business actually works today.
By the end of month one, you know what’s working, what’s broken, and what to fix first.
Weeks 5-8: Build
We fix what’s costing you money and clarify who owns what. Bottlenecks ease. Decisions get easier. Your team can see where things are headed.
Weeks 9-12: Make it stick
We lock in operating rhythms, set clear priorities, and build accountability so progress continues after the program ends.
You stop firefighting and start running the business with confidence.
After the 90 days
The goal is ownership, not dependency. You’ll leave able to run the business day-to-day with confidence.
What comes next is different work. Once the foundation is in place, the questions change. Should I hire? Should I buy the building? Is this the year to add a second location?
Some owners want support making those decisions. Some want the accountability of a standing check-in so the rhythms hold through a hard quarter. Some hit a problem that’s genuinely complex and want help solving it properly the first time.
Ongoing support is there when you want it.
Who you’d be working with
Hi! I’m Nikki. I spent 20 years building operational systems — a decade inside Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple, plus a decade with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, nonprofit work, and living and working in Thailand. I’ve built operations at enormous scale and under real constraint, and I’ve simplified the best of those systems specifically for small businesses under new ownership.
I’m also a single mom and the sole provider for my family. I know what it means to build something where failure really isn’t an option.
Now I bring all of my experience to the businesses that actually hold communities together.
Other Ways We Can Work Together
Operational Health Audit
Not ready for 90 days? Start with a focused diagnosis of where your business stands and what to fix first. The price credits fully towards From Buyer to Owner if you decide to join the program within 60 days of completing your audit.
Speaking & Workshops
Practical sessions on modernizing operations for inherited businesses and leading through an ownership transition. For conferences, industry groups, or new owner communities.
Custom Engagements
Have a specific need that doesn’t fit the From Buyer to Owner model? Let’s talk about how I can help.
Frequently Asked Questions
Very. Buying a business and running one are two different jobs.
You inherited someone else’s processes, employees, financial habits, technology, customer expectations, and unwritten rules — often with very little explanation of how they all fit together. Most new owners spend their first year figuring this out through trial and error.
From Buyer to Owner gives you a structured way to understand what you inherited, decide what actually needs to change, and build a business that works for you.
You don’t need to overhaul the business on day one. In fact, you probably shouldn’t.
The first job is understanding what you bought: what works, what doesn’t, where money is being made or lost, and which parts of the business depend too heavily on the previous owner or on you.
Most owners I work with are somewhere in their first two years of ownership. If you’re still figuring out how to make the business truly yours, you’re not too early — or too late.
You probably don’t yet — and that’s part of the problem we solve.
New owners often inherit a list of twenty things that seem urgent: staffing problems, outdated software, inconsistent processes, cash flow concerns, customer issues, and work that constantly lands back on the owner.
We map how the business actually operates and identify the two or three changes that will have the biggest impact. The goal isn’t to fix everything. It’s to fix the right things in the right order.
Profitability doesn’t necessarily mean the business runs well.
A profitable business can still depend on the owner for every decision, rely on processes nobody has documented, run on outdated systems, or leave you wondering whether you can comfortably cover payroll and your acquisition debt.
If the business makes money but requires you to hold the entire operation together, there’s still work worth doing.
No. The goal isn’t to blow up a business that already works.
We figure out what’s worth keeping, what needs to change, and how to make those changes without creating unnecessary disruption. Often the biggest improvements come from clearer roles, better information, simpler processes, and fewer decisions routing through the owner.
Your employees also know things about the business that you don’t yet. They should be part of understanding what works — not treated as an obstacle to changing it.
Plan on a couple of focused hours each week.
But this isn’t homework for homework’s sake. We’re working on problems that are already consuming your time — decisions that keep coming back to you, numbers you don’t trust, processes that break, or issues you keep meaning to fix.
The goal is for the time you spend working on the business to steadily reduce the amount of time you have to spend holding it together.
It’s a hands-on consulting engagement built specifically for new owners of existing businesses.
I won’t run your business for you, but I also won’t hand you a framework and leave you to figure out how to apply it. We work together inside your actual business — your numbers, your team, your processes, and your constraints — and build an operating system you can continue running after our 90 days together.
The goal is not to make you dependent on a consultant. It’s to make you a more capable and confident owner.
We’ll spend 30 minutes talking about the business you bought, what has been harder than you expected, and where you’re getting stuck.
I’ll ask questions, tell you where I think I can help, and be straightforward if I don’t think From Buyer to Owner is the right fit.
You don’t need to prepare anything, and you don’t need to know exactly what’s wrong before we talk. That’s often the reason for the conversation in the first place.
From Buyer to Owner is $9,750 for the full 90-day engagement.
If you’re not ready for the full program, you can start with the Operational Health Audit for $2,500. We’ll take a focused look at what you inherited, identify the biggest operational issues, and give you a clear picture of what to address first.
If you decide to move into From Buyer to Owner within 60 days, the full $2,500 audit fee is credited toward the program.
