Growth Consulting
We help you grow your company, and then sell it, raise capital against it or buy the next one.
We find the one constraint holding your company back, fix it, and measure the result the way a buyer would. The growth work and the transaction sit inside the same firm, so the systems built in your first year are the ones a buyer reads when you come to sell.
What we do
The growth work covers the first two stages of a company's path to a transaction.
Most companies buy these four stages from four different firms, and each one hands the next a problem it has to discover for itself. We run them as one relationship, starting wherever your company actually is.
- 01
Demand
Meetings with the people who award your work, booked into a calendar and a CRM you own.
You are here - 02
Operations
The constraint capping the company found and fixed, and the result written down the way a buyer reads it.
Growth Consulting
- 03
Capital
Senior debt, structured capital and equity priced against each other before you commit to one of them.
- 04
Exit
A sale run to a written market assessment, with competing options held open until signing.
M&A and Capital Advisory
Growth Consulting runs the first two stages and the firm's M&A and capital advisory practice runs the last two, with the same people in the room for both.
Process
How an engagement runs
We score four areas we call the Operating Core 4: your numbers, operations, people and AI. Each is scored against your own baseline before any work starts, the lowest score names the constraint, and we work on that one constraint until the result is measured. Every cycle is written into the Operating Record, which becomes a data-room document when you sell or raise.
01Diagnose
The Operating Core 4
- NumbersWhat the company earns, and on what
- OperationsHow the work gets done as volume rises
- PeopleLowest scoreWho does the work, and who cannot be replaced
- AIWhich hours a machine should be carrying
The lowest score names the constraint the work starts on.
02Improve
One constraint at a time
- 01BaselineThe four areas scored against your numbers before work starts
- 02DiagnosisThe binding constraint named in writing, with the reasoning shown
- 03BuildThe fix built inside the business and handed to your team
- 04ProofThe result measured against the baseline, and the next constraint named
Back to the baseline for the next constraint
03Record
The Operating Record
Constraint, fix, result, date
- Cycle 01
- Cycle 02
- Cycle 03
One dated entry per cycle, held by you while the engagement runs.
04Sale
The data room
- 1Financial statements
- 2Customer contracts
- 3Operating Record
- 4People and roles
When you sell or raise, the record is filed where a buyer's diligence team reads it.
Decision pointAfter the diagnosis you hold a written position naming the constraint, the fix and the effect we expect, and you decide whether to engage us to build the fix or act on it yourself.
Decision pointWith the result measured against the baseline, you decide whether the next constraint needs an engagement or is work your team can now run itself. Some engagements end here by design.
Never open a second constraint while one is live.
View a sampleWhy this sits inside an advisory firm
The operating work is built for the buyer who will read it.
We run sell-side mandates, so we know which constraints get priced into a multiple and which ones a buyer looks past, and the growth work is aimed at the first kind from the first week.
You can buy growth help for years and still not be able to point to what any of it changed, because nothing was measured before it started. When the company eventually transacts, that work is invisible in diligence, since no record of it exists in a form a buyer can check.
If you never sell, the work still leaves you with a company that runs without you in the room. When you do decide to sell or raise, the Strategic Capital Process starts from a company already prepared for a buyer to read.
We know what a buyer pays
The firm runs sale mandates and reads what comparable completed transactions pay for normalised earnings. That is the number the growth work is aimed at.
The record is written as it happens
Every engagement keeps an Operating Record: the constraint, the fix, the result and the date. It is the document diligence asks for, and it is built while the work runs, so nothing has to be reconstructed afterwards.
One side per situation
The firm is independent and acts for one side in each situation. Any conflict is disclosed before anything else happens.
Problems we solve
What owners describe on a first call.
- Work arrives through my own contacts, in fits and starts.We name the people who award the work, reach them from your own accounts, follow up for thirty days behind every one, and the meetings land in your calendar.
- We pay an agency every month and nothing comes back.The measure changes to meetings with named decision makers, and the CRM stays yours whether or not we keep running it.
- The business only runs when I am in the room.We find which of the four areas the dependency actually sits in, build the replacement, and prove it holds with you out of the room.
- I cannot tell which number is holding us back.The engagement opens with a baseline, so the constraint is taken from the company's own numbers.
- I have a loan maturing and one bank's answer.We map the lenders whose own books show they fund credits like yours, prepare the package the way a credit committee reads it, and hold competing term sheets through signing.
- I need capital and I do not know whether it should be debt or equity.Senior debt through structured minority capital to common equity, each priced in cost, dilution and control terms, before you commit to one of them.
- I will sell this company once, against buyers who transact every week.Preparation ends with a written market assessment that you hold before a single buyer is approached, and you decide from it whether to go to market at all.
- Someone has given me a number and no way to test it.What comparable completed transactions indicate the market pays for your normalised earnings, in writing, next to what holding the company is worth.
Track record
More than forty businesses over ten years, and what each one produced.
What clients produced
- 40+ businessesDemand and operating systems built over ten years across fitness, finance, property, trades, professional services and technology.
- 50+ meetingsBooked for Impress Solutions with contract owners and superintendents at the mines, over eighteen months, through the owner's own calendar.
- $420,000 to $120,000Home Loan Hack's annual marketing spend, with the telemarketing team from seven people to one, while revenue doubled.
- 14 in seven daysQualified leads for Light Force Solar from New Zealand manufacturers, after an audit of their ideal customer and a cold email campaign.
- 93% of leadsRespond to AI booking at Team Ellis Gym, two months after a partner stopped phoning every one of them by hand.
The clients, by industry
What each engagement produced, as the client reported it at the time.
- Warburton Investment Management, investor acquisition from $1m to $20m under management.
- Discovery Capital Partners, three sold-out investor roadshows.
- Ignite Equity, a pipeline of 40+ qualified investors.
- Home Loan Hack, marketing from $420,000 to $120,000 a year, seven telemarketers to one, revenue doubled.
- Insure With Andrew, 32 positive replies from UK business owners by cold email.
- UP Credit and American Leverage, a credit reporting tool saving 20 hours a week.
- Light Force Solar, 14 qualified leads in seven days from New Zealand manufacturers.
- Griffin Industrial, website and an AI voice agent for the BDM, five hours a week saved.
- West Coast Plunge Pools, a custom AI quote generator wired into the CRM, 10 to 15 hours a week saved for the owner.
- Shyft Realty, 200 new leads and 3,000 homeowner leads reactivated.
- The Body Consultants, our own: zero to $90,000 a month in 18 months, then seven locations at $250,000 a month.
- The Good Life Performance Centre, $20,000 to $60,000 a month, later sold.
- Physique Performance Centre, one location to five.
- Body By Brando helped scale to multiple locations.
- Team Ellis Gym, 93% of leads responding to AI booking.
- The Goolwa Gym, 36% of leads booking calls with no labour cost.
- Fitness Cartell, 100+ memberships from a database reactivation.
- Fitness Renegades, $50,000 of new sales from a database reactivation.
- Viva Fitness, built an AI sales rep that increased sales by 20%.
- The Polar Room, a cryotherapy clinic, $5,000 to $45,000 a month.
- iTutor Online, a call centre buying leads for up to twenty reps: paid ads, automations and funnels replaced five lead generators and lifted sales by more than 20%.
- NCA, a speed-to-lead agent built once and rolled out to more than ten of its own clients.
- Yovanka Loria, a migration to a custom platform with her Shopify store connected, then the course business automated with payment processing and workflows.
Who this is for
Engagement criteria
The work is embedded and measured. These are the parameters we work within.
- Client
- Owner-led operating companies preparing for growth, a raise, or an exit.
- Scope
- The Operating Core 4: numbers, operations, people and AI.
- Method
- A baseline is recorded before work starts, and every engagement is measured against it.
- Record
- The Operating Record: one dated entry per cycle naming the constraint, the fix and the result.
- Fee
- A fixed fee per engagement, agreed in the engagement letter before any work starts.
The team
Who you deal with, and what sits behind them.
Jack Zuvelek founded the firm and runs it as Managing Partner. He owned and ran companies before he advised them, sold one of them, and built both the origination engine and the execution systems the firm runs on today.
Ryan Herrington is Head of Growth Consulting at the firm, and takes the first call.
Behind whoever is on your engagement is a bench the firm deploys as the work requires, so a mandate is never limited to the people you met on day one.
$40M+
Capital raised by clients
Warburton Investment Management from $1M to $20M under management, and $21.2M for Discovery Capital Partners across three sold-out roadshows with more than 300 investors.
15 people
Platform deployed as needed
Investment bankers, fund managers, and sales and execution specialists, deployed on the engagement as the work requires. You get the full bench without carrying its fixed cost.
$4B+
Advisory Board
Two decades leading the deployment of more than $4B, across private equity and venture capital and across subordinated, special situations and recovery credit.
Individual experience; not all transactions were completed at Zuvelek Capital.
Questions owners ask
Before an engagement starts
Our numbers are messy. Can you still set a baseline?
Yes. The baseline is built from the records you already keep, and anything estimated is marked as an estimate. Where the reporting itself is the problem, fixing it becomes the first constraint, since nothing after it can be measured honestly until it works.
We have no plans to sell. Does the Operating Record still matter?
It earns its place as a working document first, because it tells you which fixes moved the numbers and which did not. If you sell or raise later, the record is already written and dated, in the place a data room will need it.
How are you paid?
Each engagement has a fixed fee, set in the engagement letter before any work starts.
What does AI mean here?
Finding the mechanical hours in your business and automating them, then training the team that works alongside the systems. We build these systems for ourselves first: the firm's origination engine reads every line of the loan schedules that lenders file with the SEC each quarter, and it does the work of a research team. That build standard is what an engagement installs.
The first call ends with our view of which area of the Operating Core 4 is capping your company.
There is nothing to prepare. Tell us the situation and the call ends with a position on it, held in confidence whether or not an engagement follows.