By the time the numbers tell you what’s wrong, you’ve already paid for it.
We find what your leadership team can’t see, and we fix it before the cost shows up. Operating partners for middle-market companies in growth, founder transition, pre-sale, or post-close.
Twenty-five years inside the P&L, not next to it.
Jamie Scarcelli
Managing Partner
I have operated as CEO and senior executive across four ownership models. Public, private equity, family-owned, and family office. That range matters. The same patterns show up in every middle-market business, but they wear different clothes depending on the cap table. Operators who have sat in each chair recognize the patterns faster, and know which lever actually moves the result.
Northline takes a small number of engagements at a time. The intent is depth, not volume.
25+ Years Operating
M&A Integration
PE-Backed Platforms
Public Company Executive
Family Business Transformation
CEO & Operating Partner
EBITDA Expansion
Operating Roles Held
The Vine Group
Aero Industries
USIC
Wabash
The strategy is usually fine.
Leadership teams are accountable for their own scoreboard. EBITDA leaks in the gaps between them. Between sales and operations. Between commercial and finance. Between what was decided in the room and what’s actually happening on the floor.
We’ve held the operator seat. We see the gaps fast, and we close them.
Common Situations We Enter
- Founder transition
- Growth plateau
- Leadership misalignment
- Pre-sale preparation
- Post-acquisition integration
- Margin compression
Lost EBITDA rarely has one cause.
It leaks across the operating model, in places leadership can’t see from inside their own seat. We’ve been in the seat. We see it fast, and we fix it.
01
Pricing decisions made without margin visibility
Sales wins the deal. Operations absorbs the cost. Finance reports the result a quarter later. The pattern repeats because no one is accountable for the full P&L of the customer.
Fix: rebuild the margin conversation before the next pricing cycle.
02
Sales targets disconnected from production reality
The commercial team books volume the operations team can’t deliver profitably. Backlog grows. Service quality drops. Working capital balloons.
Fix: align the demand plan to the constraint, not the ambition.
03
Capital spent against last year's playbook
Capex flows to the loudest function, not the highest return. Equipment, facilities, and headcount get approved by precedent. The market has moved. The allocation hasn’t.
Fix: re-rank the portfolio against where margin actually comes from now.
04
Hiring papering over a process problem
When the org chart grows but output doesn’t, the team is solving for absence of process by adding people. The cost compounds.
Fix: identify the broken handoff, then decide whether to hire.
Different companies. Same patterns.
After 25 years inside the P&L, the patterns become recognizable. The fixes become specific.
Three years flat. Record EBITDA in fourteen months.
Situation
Second-generation industrial business, $85M revenue. Revenue stable for three years, margins sliding, leadership pulling in different directions. A prior strategy engagement had produced a deck and a long list of initiatives. None of them had moved the number.
The pattern others missed
The prior work focused on growth strategy. The real leakage was pricing without margin visibility. Sales was incentivized on revenue and discounting freely on the highest-margin SKUs to hold volume. Operations absorbed the cost. Finance reported it a quarter later. No one owned the customer P&L.
What we did
Repriced the top SKUs against true contribution. Rebuilt the commercial cadence so margin showed up in the weekly review. Changed the sales comp plan to pay on margin contribution instead of revenue. The owner ran the room. We held the rhythm.
Result
$4.2M EBITDA improvement in fourteen months. 340 bps margin expansion. No leadership turnover. The owner held the same team and ran a better business with them.
The founder was the operating model.
Situation
Founder-led services company, $120M revenue, twelve years old. Growth had stalled. Two prior advisors had focused on sales strategy. The leadership team was strong on paper but every decision still ran through the founder.
The pattern others missed
Hiring papering over a process problem. The org chart had grown faster than the operating model. Each functional leader had built a team to compensate for the absence of a cross-functional cadence, and the founder was still the only integrator. Adding heads was the symptom, not the fix.
What we did
Stood up a weekly leadership operating cadence the founder did not run. Defined decision rights so each leader owned a P&L, not a function. Restructured pricing on the highest-margin service line, which the team had been undercharging for years.
Result
22% revenue growth. $3.8M in margin recovered on pricing alone. The founder stepped back from daily operations for the first time in twelve years, and the team held the result without him in the room.
Two failed sale processes. Then a clean exit at a 2.1x multiple expansion.
Situation
Family-owned distribution business, $65M revenue, two prior sale attempts. Both buyers had walked during diligence. Everyone assumed valuation. The real issue was credibility: the reported numbers told one story and the operating reality told another.
The pattern others missed
Sales targets disconnected from production reality, compounded by capex spent against last year’s playbook. The commercial team booked volume the operations side could not deliver profitably. Working capital was carrying the slack. Capex had been allocated to the legacy product line, not the segments where margin was actually growing.
What we did
Rebuilt the demand plan against the operating constraint. Re-ranked the capex portfolio against current margin sources. Installed a monthly operating review tight enough that what leadership reported and what showed up in diligence matched. Walked the next buyer through the same numbers the team ran on.
Result
$2.6M EBITDA improvement over eighteen months. Sale closed at a 2.1x multiple expansion versus the prior attempts. The diligence cycle ran short because there was nothing to find that the team had not already disclosed.
Cases are representative composites drawn from work across public, private equity, family-owned, and family office portfolios. Specifics are anonymized to respect prior engagements.
A clear definition, because the lane is crowded.
- We are not a strategy consultancy.
- We are not a turnaround firm.
- We are not a fractional CFO.
- We are not investment bankers.
We are the operating work that sits between all of those, and the work that determines whether any of them deliver.
Most firms tell you what to do. We help leadership teams execute the operating changes that move EBITDA.
Three ways to start.
Every company is different. Most engagements begin with the Diagnostic. Some move directly to the operating seat. We’ll tell you which fits, not the other way around.
01
Diagnostic
A focused look inside the operating model. Where EBITDA is leaking, where leadership is misaligned, and where the next 90 days should be spent. The deliverable is a written assessment, not a deck of frameworks.
02
Alignment & Execution
Hands-on work alongside the CEO and leadership team to close the specific gaps surfaced in the Diagnostic. Cadence, accountability, decision rights, and the one or two operating moves that change the trajectory.
03
Operating Partner
In the seat with the CEO and board through a defined value-creation window. Pre-sale preparation, post-close integration, founder transition, or a turn that needs an operator.
Engagements are limited and selective by design.
Northline works with a small number of companies at a time. The intent is depth, not volume. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll say so and point you to someone who is.
Tell us what's actually happening.
A first conversation costs nothing. We’ll listen to where the numbers are going sideways, share what we’d be looking for, and tell you honestly whether the Diagnostic is the right next step. No proposals. No frameworks. Thirty minutes, plain talk, and a clear sense of whether to keep going.