Your business outgrew the way you run it.
Underpin finds the structural reason growth is costing you more than it returns, then builds the fix.
For founder-led service businesses of five to ten people.
Five founding clients at a reduced rate while the process is refined.
Everything runs through you.
- Every decision waits on your approval.
- Every project feels custom.
- You have not taken a real week off in two years.
That is not a workload problem. It is a structural one.
$60,000
a year.
6
weeks to find them.
3
months before they are useful.
1
year later, everything still runs through you.
Salary is the part you plan for. SHRM's 2025 benchmarking puts average time to fill at about forty-five days and average cost per hire at $5,475 on top of the salary, and ninety days is the standard benchmark for a new hire reaching full productivity.
Adding people to a broken system gives you a more expensive version of the same problem.
Most businesses at this stage are not out of capacity. They have outgrown their structure.
One thing is usually holding the rest back. It is rarely the loudest complaint, and almost never the one you would guess. Fix the wrong thing and you lose a year finding out.
I was the bottleneck.
I co-founded a video production company while working a full-time job. Every project ran through me. Nights, weekends, all of it.
So we hired a project manager. Before we hired anyone to do the actual work.
$876,000
Our best year. Two full-time employees. Eighty contractors. And I was still part-time.
Structure breeds freedom. I have had to learn it on myself.
Find it. Then fix it.
Find it.
FOUR TO SIX WEEKS. ONE INTAKE. TWO WORKING SESSIONS. ONE ANSWER.
This is not a discovery call.
I map how demand comes in, how it converts, how work gets delivered, how decisions get made, and how it all gets coordinated. You get a scorecard of where the business actually stands, the one constraint costing you the most, and a ninety day plan for removing it.
Fix it.
SOMETIMES WEEKS. SOMETIMES MONTHS. ALWAYS SCOPED BEFORE IT STARTS.
This is not a software pitch.
Sometimes the fix is the tools you already pay for, configured properly for the first time. Sometimes it is software that does not exist yet, which I build myself when it is the right size for one person. When it is bigger than that, I will tell you, scope it, and help you choose who builds it.
What actually happens in four to six weeks.
Intake
About an hour of writing, on your own time. Where the money comes from, how work moves through the business, what breaks when it gets busy.
Two sessions
Sixty to ninety minutes each, recorded. The first covers demand and sales. The second covers delivery, decisions, and the tools holding it together.
Analysis
I score five systems against twenty criteria, working from what you actually said rather than what I assumed. That keeps opinion and bias out of the answer, including mine.
Walkthrough
We go through all of it together, out loud. You push back where it does not match your experience. I would rather be corrected than agreed with.
What you walk away with.
- A scorecard showing where all five systems actually stand, not where you assume they stand.
- The constraint costing you the most right now, named, with the evidence behind it.
- Everything else worth fixing, and what can safely wait until it is done.
- A ninety day plan specific enough to hand to someone else.
- If a build makes sense, a fixed price for it before you commit to anything.
A prioritized list of the issues doing the most damage, in the order that fixing them will matter most.
Not a coach. Not an agency.
Three things I believe. They show up in everything I will recommend to you.
- Find it before you fix it. Most problems in a small business are symptoms. Treating them keeps everyone busy and changes nothing.
- Use what you already have before you buy more. Most businesses are running at a fraction of what their current tools and people could do. That is the cheapest capacity you will ever find.
- Build things that do not need me. If the system only works while I am involved, I have not fixed anything. I have made you dependent on one more person.
You will know it worked when your best weeks are the ones you were needed the least.
This works when the shape is right.
- A service business, five to ten people including contractors
- Roughly $750,000 to $2M in revenue
- You are still personally producing the work, approving it, or both
- Growing, and the growth is what broke things
- Solo operators with nobody to delegate to
- Businesses that need more leads rather than more capacity
- Anyone who wants a system installed without changing how the business operates
- Teams already running an operating system like EOS with a full leadership bench
If you are not sure, ask. A short conversation will tell us both.
Or answer four questions.
Your answers stay in your browser. Nothing is sent unless you choose to include them when you get in touch.
How many people work in the business, including contractors?
Roughly where is annual revenue?
Are you still producing the work yourself, or approving most of it?
What is actually the pressure right now?
Not ready to talk. Still want the findings.
One note a month. What I am actually finding inside businesses this size, what turned out to be the constraint, and what it cost to fix. No course, no funnel, no newsletter voice.
Unsubscribe in one click. I do not share the list.
Before you commit to a salary, find out whether you need one.
$3,000
That is the diagnostic fee. It is the founding rate for the first five clients, roughly half of what it will be.
The diagnostic
FIXED PRICE. FOUR TO SIX WEEKS.
$3,000, paid up front. You get the scorecard, the constraint, and the ninety day plan whether or not you ever hire me again.
The build
FIXED PRICE. QUOTED AFTER THE DIAGNOSTIC.
Most land between $4,000 and $15,000 depending on what the fix actually requires. You see the number before anything starts. Never hourly, and never open ended.
$1,500 of the diagnostic comes off the build if you decide to go ahead within thirty days. So a diagnostic plus a $6,000 build is $7,500 in total, not $9,000.
The cheapest hire you will ever make is the one you find out you do not need.
Underpinning is what you do when a foundation can no longer carry the weight above it. You reinforce it from underneath, in sections, while the building stays standing and in use.
Nobody gets to close the business while it gets fixed.
You built something that works. It should not cost you your life to run it.
Or just email me at geoff.schultz@hypekick.com.