Advisory

Advice that'sdone the work.

Most consulting decks are written by people who've never had to actually execute the recommendation. Ours aren't. State and Ohio advises founders, owners, and operating teams on the decisions that move the number — and we've usually sat in the seat we're advising on.

We focus on four areas.

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M&A Advisory

Buy-side and sell-side

If you're buying a business, we help you find the right one, value it honestly, structure the deal, and avoid the things that quietly kill returns in year two.

If you're selling, we help you get ready, run a process that doesn't embarrass you, and stay sane through diligence. We work with owners who want a hands-on advisor — not a 30-slide pitch and a junior banker.

Typical engagements

Buy-side search, target evaluation, deal structuring, sell-side prep, process management, post-close integration.

Business Operations

Consulting

Operating businesses break in predictable places: pricing, hiring, ops cadence, financial controls, the org chart. We come in, find the bottleneck, and help you fix it. We are not McKinsey. We are the person who has actually unjammed the thing.

Typical engagements

Operating reviews, pricing diagnostics, KPI design, financial controls and reporting cadence, org design for sub-100-person teams, interim operating support.

Sales & Marketing

Consulting

Most small businesses don't have a sales and marketing problem. They have a clarity problem: they can't tell you who their best customer is, why that customer buys, and how to find five more of them. We help with that, and then we help you build the system to repeat it.

Typical engagements

Ideal-customer-profile work, positioning and messaging, pipeline diagnostics, sales process design, marketing audit, channel strategy.

Data Strategy

Data should answer questions, not generate dashboards. We help small companies figure out what to measure, where the data lives, what to actually build versus buy, and how to make sure the answers reach the people who need them. We are deeply skeptical of any project that starts with "we need a data warehouse."

Typical engagements

Data audits, metric and KPI definition, stack rationalization, reporting design, build-vs-buy decisions, AI and automation roadmaps for non-technical teams.

How we engage

Project work. Defined scope, defined deliverable, defined price. Most engagements run four to twelve weeks.

Ongoing advisory. A standing seat at your table. Monthly retainer, capped hours, real availability.

Fractional. Sometimes the right answer is to step in as a part-time operator — head of ops, head of revenue, head of data — for a quarter or two. We do that selectively.

Tell us what you're working on.

First call is free, and we'll be honest about whether we're the right help.

Book a call