⸻ THE OPERATOR’S PARTNER
For owner-led Ohio Valley companies 3–7 years from a transition.
I've been in the seat you're sitting in — ran companies, made payroll, made the calls without a team of advisors backing me up. Now I work alongside owners like you to build the company that runs without you in every room when the moment comes to step out.
$20–75M Revenue · 60–200 people · In person · Across the Ohio Valley
⸻ A QUESTION MOST OWNERS DON’T WANT TO ANSWER OUT LOUD
Can your company run 30 days without you?
Most owners I sit with know the honest answer, and it's the answer they wish was different. Decisions still route to them. The senior team is good — most of these people have been there 10, 20, 25 years — but they're not yet running things on their own. The numbers are fine for the bank, but they wouldn't hold up in a serious buyer's diligence.
The company is built around the owner, which is exactly what made it work, and exactly what will make it sell for less than it should when the time comes.
The gap between owner-dependent and buyer-ready is usually a turn or two of EBITDA at exit. On a $30M business doing $4M of EBITDA, that's $4M to $8M of equity value the owner walks away from. Most owners learn this from their banker, at the moment when the runway for fixing it has already run out.
“
The best companies are the ones the owner can leave when they choose to. The best lives are the ones the company doesn't take over.
— Matt Gillespie
⸻ WHO I AM
Matt Gillespie
Founder & Operator’s Partner, Rawhide Executive Solutions
I am a different kind of consultant — the Operator’s Partner
I've spent more of my career running real companies than advising on them — and what I learned in those seats is what I do alongside owners now.
I ran a manufacturing turnaround as COO. That's where I learned what this work is actually like at this size — making payroll, making the calls, doing the kind of operating that doesn't come with a deck. Including the 2 a.m. shifts on a forklift when a shipment had to go out and there wasn't anyone else. No team of advisors backing me up. No infrastructure. Just the calls that needed to be made.
After that, I spent nearly a decade as CEO of a single-family office overseeing more than a dozen operating companies — manufacturing, services, a national consumer brand, and commercial real estate. Most of that time was spent next to owner-operators, buying and improving companies the way patient capital builds value across decades, not quarters. That's the seat where I learned what makes a company buyable, what destroys value before a deal closes, and what an owner-led company needs in order to be worth what its work has been worth at transition.
Operator first. Buyer second. That combination is what most owners I work with say is rare. I do the work alongside the owner. I build capability. I leave when the company runs without me.
⸻ FOUR WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
Four ways we can work together.
All engagements are flat-fee and all-inclusive. Pricing is calibrated to the specific scope of your engagement and is shared directly in conversation.
90 MINUTES · COMPLIMENTARY
Working Visit
A focused, in-person working visit at your location. We walk the floor, sit with you and your senior team, and produce a one-page Transition Readiness Snapshot — your starting score across the six dimensions of the Rawhide Readiness Audit. The right place to start.
Rawhide Readiness Audit
THREE WEEKS · FLAT FEE
A full diagnostic across six dimensions: owner concentration, senior team independence, decision architecture and reporting maturity, customer and revenue durability, talent system, and strategic optionality. Stakeholder interviews, walkthroughs, and a written value-creation plan with a prioritized roadmap. Often the front door to deeper work.
Operator’s Partner Engagement
12 MONTH MINIMUM · FLAT MONTHLY FEE
The heart of the practice. Sustained, in-person partnership to close the multiple gap. Five to six days per month of structured presence. Quarterly milestone reviews against the Audit dimensions. Defined exit at a composite score of 80+.
Targeted Projects
3–6 MONTHS · FLAT FEE
Fixed-scope projects when an Audit reveals one acute gap: Senior Team Build, Reporting Maturity, Customer Concentration Reduction, Successor Onboarding, or Pre-LOI Readiness Sprint.
⸻ WHO THIS IS FOR
Built for a specific kind of owner.
Rawhide is built for owners of $20–75M, 60–200 person operating companies in the Ohio Valley — typically in defense and aerospace supply chains, public-safety equipment, aviation services, or specialty industrial manufacturing.
Owners who built something real, who care about getting paid like it, and who are 3–7 years from a transition — sale, gift, ESOP, or generational handoff.
$20-75M Revenue, 60-200 Employees
Real operations. Real payroll. Real responsibility for the families who depend on the company.
Three to Seven Years Before Transition
The window when the readiness work has the highest leverage and the lowest disruption.
A Non-Founder CFO or COO Already in Seat
The senior layer that lets the work compound.
⸻ READY WHEN YOU ARE ⸻
If any of this resonates, the right next step is a Working Visit.
Ninety minutes on-site. No fee. No pitch. You walk away with a one-page snapshot of where your company stands on the question that determines what it's worth at exit — can it run without you, and where are the gaps? If the fit is right, we keep going. If not, you have the most honest read on your company you'll get this year — and it's yours either way.