Partnerships
Seven use cases. One method.
Seven problems I was handed, what I did, and what changed. Five happened inside a large enterprise. Two did not, and those two matter most: they show the method works without the resources behind it.
Use case 01 · Reshoring
Moving production out of China
- The problem
- A product line depended on one country, and the tariff math had stopped working.
- What I did
- Qualified a new plant in Thailand and moved the tooling across while the old site kept shipping.
- What changed
- Supply never stopped, and the supplier we left still takes my call.
Use case 02 · Tariffs
Knowing the cost before the invoice
- The problem
- Nobody could say what a tariff change would cost, part by part.
- What I did
- Priced the exposure across the whole portfolio, then changed classifications and sourcing where it paid to.
- What changed
- Tariffs became a number the business could plan around instead of a surprise.
The rules moved three times in 2026: the Supreme Court struck the IEEPA tariffs in February, the Section 122 bridge ran out in July, and a new Section 301 action started the same day.
Use case 03 · Cost models
Who buys the metal
- The problem
- The same argument every quarter: does the buyer supply the raw material, or does the supplier price it in?
- What I did
- Built the cost model both ways and wrote the rule down, with a threshold for when each one applies.
- What changed
- The argument stopped, and the exceptions get seen instead of hiding inside the price.
Use case 04 · Domestic suppliers
Big-company habits, small-company scale
- The problem
- Good shops that had never been asked for a real cost breakdown, because no customer had asked.
- What I did
- Built cost models from how the part is actually made, tracked the tooling as an asset, and scored suppliers with something at stake.
- What changed
- Price stopped being a haggle and became a conversation about the process, which both sides can win.
Use case 05 · How the work runs
Getting decisions out of people's heads
- The problem
- Leaders chased status, and the same calls were re-argued because nobody had written the rule down.
- What I did
- Set the method, the cadence, and the thresholds, then built reporting that showed the exceptions instead of everything.
- What changed
- Leaders saw only what needed them, and engineering got cost while the design could still move.
Use case 06 · Advisory partnership
The problem underneath the problem
- The problem
- A partner brought me what everyone agreed was a logistics problem. Late deliveries, a routing question.
- What I did
- Read the transaction history instead of the complaint.
- What changed
- The delays were real and they were not the constraint. Cash was, and resequencing the work made it predictable.
Use case 07 · Owner-led business
Enterprise method, owner-sized
- The problem
- A profitable owner-run business with nothing broken, and a fair question about what a method would add.
- What I did
- Brought the same framing a large program gets, sized to the business rather than sold to it.
- What changed
- Work that used to need a team of analysts and a retainer now sits with the owner.
The pattern
Seven use cases, one shape.
In all seven, the money was not in the negotiation. It was in a step nobody had been asked to describe out loud.
What has changed is who can reach it. Work that once needed a team of analysts now fits a company that has none. The hard part is no longer getting the analysis. It is trusting it enough to decide.
That is not a coincidence and it is not a sales line. It is the reason the workshop exists, and the reason I open a cost model before I open a negotiation.
Working on something like one of these?
Fifteen minutes, no deck. Tell me which one it resembles and where it is stuck.