The business runs on you. That is the problem worth solving.
Marty Park works as a consultant for Karpos Capital Partners. He has built and sold 13 companies of his own. For the last twenty years he has worked with owners in over 67 industries on the same question: how do you turn what you know into something that runs without you.
See how he works →
The pattern
Most owners get stuck in the same place
Somebody builds a company on their own skill. The work is good. Customers come back. And every decision still runs through one person. The quote, the schedule change, the hire who did not work out, the client who will only talk to the owner.
It is not a discipline problem. It is usually the opposite. The owner is the best one in the building at the thing the business does, so the work keeps finding them, and the better they are the worse it gets.
The companies that break out of it hand off what the owner knows in a way that lets capable people run it. The owner's judgment becomes the foundation instead of the ceiling.
That is the work.
How Marty works
Three things worth knowing before you call
He has done it, not studied it
First company at 21, a software business he and a friend left university to start. Twelve more after that, including restaurants he built from the drawings to opening night and an advertising agency he ran for five years. He has signed seven figure contracts and he has sat in the car wondering if there was enough gas to get to work.
He tests it by leaving
Once the pieces are in place he sends an owner on a longer vacation than they have ever taken. Things break while they are gone. That is the point. You find out where the people and the systems need work, you fix it, and you go again.
He tells you when you do not need him
Plenty of what owners describe turns out to be a financing question, or a hiring question, or nothing at all. He will say so on the first call.
The advisor
Marty Park
Entrepreneur, advisor, author
Marty started his first company at 21, a technology venture he and a friend left university to build. Since then he has founded and operated 13 companies, including the San Remo Ristorante group and Rare Communications, both built and sold.
In 2004 he founded Evolve Business Group, and he has spent the twenty years since working directly with owners on growth, capital and exits, including his work with Karpos Capital Partners.
His book, Tiger by the Tail: 99 Secrets to Tame and Master Your Business, is an Amazon bestseller and holds 99 of the lessons from doing all of the above.
Where he works
Industry experience
Over twenty years working inside two worlds in particular.
Medical and paramedical
If you are the practice
The work is getting the owner out of production. Adding providers, driving more business, filling the other practitioners' schedules, and moving the owner into running the practice instead of working in it.
If you already have a provider team
The work is lead generation and appointment setting, broader marketing, and capacity and utilization across every provider. In some cases opening a second and third location, which means business planning, projections, raising the money, staffing and organizational planning.
Niches served
- Chiropractic
- Traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture
- Massage therapy
- Executive health screening and full body scans
- Naturopathic medicine
- MRI clinics
- Aesthetics
- Plastic surgery
- Fertility
Construction and trades
Scaling contractors
Bidding, operations, and government contract strategy. The common starting point is a company where the owner is still the estimator, the salesperson and the final word on every job.
Multiple locations and growth capital
Business planning, projections, raising the money, and organizational planning as a firm goes from one operation to several.
Trades and sectors
- General contracting
- Plumbing and mechanical
- Electrical
- Commercial construction
- Residential builds
- Specialty trades
- Government and public sector bidding
- Renovation and restoration
Proof
What this looks like when it works
The electrical contractor
480K was the best offer he had seen
Harold ran an electrical contractor. Good at the work, everything through him, and the best offer on the table was 480K. Three years later he sold it for 2.3M. He works 30 hours a week now and collects 18K a month in rent from commercial buildings he bought along the way.
The company got built into something that could run without him. Then it was worth something.
The wellness center
One location, and the owner was in it every day
Every new patient, every problem, every decision came through the owner. They opened the second location together. Today that owner is barely in either building and both centers produce real cash.
Quoting, costing and scheduling
Three weeks away, and nothing broke
One client handed off all the quoting, costing and customer scheduling so he could go to a wedding in New Zealand for three weeks. Everything ran without him. He came home proud that he had taken it all back. Marty told him to give it all back and pretend he had not returned yet.
That owner now spends Wednesdays planning, Thursdays on growth, and Fridays fishing.
The team
Who else you might work with
Depending on what the business needs, Marty brings in people who have run the thing you are running.
Fractional COO, trades and public sector
Amy Graham
Amy grew up in her family's plumbing business, answering service calls as a kid. She went from there to a Sales and Marketing Executive seat at BellSouth and AT&T, then back to the trades with commercial general contractor licenses in South Carolina and North Carolina.
She has scaled hundreds of trades and public sector businesses, and built and exited three of her own. Her clients win 20 to 30 percent more government contracts once the bidding gets disciplined.
Fractional CMO, real estate and consumer products
Norbert Park
Fifty years in real estate development and consumer products, starting at General Foods and Johnson & Johnson. He scaled Melcor's housing division from 20 to more than 100 units a year, then founded SIX Real Estate Consulting and sold it to Sotheby's International Realty Canada.
He has built the marketing for more than 500 real estate projects, and he teaches real estate marketing at the University of Calgary.
Fractional advisor, capital and exit readiness
Peter Wood
Thirteen years of operating rather than consulting. Four restaurants, a skincare brand and a kids' apparel company, more than 17M in collective revenue across the three sectors.
He opened his largest hospitality venture into the 2020 shutdowns, which is where the cash discipline came from. He was an operator inside the Evolve system before he advised inside it.
The offer
Start with a conversation
Thirty minutes with Marty. No prep on your end and no obligation.
Worth covering
- Where the business currently depends on you personally, and which of those things could be handed off first
- What has to be true before you add people, add a location, or take on more work
- Whether what you are describing is a growth problem, a money problem, or neither
- What a lender or a buyer looks at in a company like yours, and what they ignore
Not every company is at the stage where this makes sense. Marty will tell you if yours is not.
Book 30 minutes →