Owned and built businesses
Co-founded and ran a digital agency to 350+ clients — carrying sales, marketing, service, and the financial reality personally until staff could be hired.
The case
One person who can read the business, lead the change, and shape the system
The value is not a single specialty. It is the combination of owner judgment, executive accountability, transaction perspective, and the ability to turn a decision into a working operation.
A connected read, not a narrow recommendation
Systems thinking
A problem that shows up in sales usually starts in operations, incentives, or structure. I trace it to where it actually lives instead of fixing the symptom.
Pattern recognition
The same constraints recur across companies and industries in different clothing. Having seen them in ownership, operations, and transactions, I recognize the shape of a problem before it becomes expensive.
Second-order consequences
Every decision affects incentives, customers, capacity, and the next constraint. I work through what happens after the decision, not just the decision itself.
Behavioral insight
Systems are executed by people, so adoption, incentives, and how work actually gets done are part of the design, not an afterthought.
AI as an analytical lens
I use AI to analyze a business, finding where value, risk, and opportunity actually sit, and to transform how it operates. The first is what keeps the second honest.
Advice from someone who has carried the number
Led company-wide operations
Six years as Chief Operating Officer of a regional M&A firm: restructured the organization, rebuilt operating processes, and coached the revenue team. Revenue increased 325% within four years of my joining (that firm and period; not a promise for another business).
Carried revenue responsibility
A decade of B2B and B2C sales, then business development that included leading a team credited with securing $1.2 billion in off-take agreements for a manufacturing technology group, part of $1.6 billion in total career sales as of 2026.
Works directly in transactions
I hold real estate salesperson licenses in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Florida, work as a business intermediary with eXp Commercial representing buyers and sellers, and am a member of the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA). That keeps me focused on what is durable, what is fragile, and how a business is valued.
Advises privately held businesses
Through MichaelGarsow LLC I help owners put practical AI and workflow automation to work, document processes, reduce owner dependency, and build exit readiness, whether or not a sale is planned.
How the work actually runs
Outcomes, not activity
The work is accountable to a result the business can see, such as margin, capacity, speed, or capability, not to hours billed or documents delivered.
Directness
You will hear what I actually think, including when the answer is that a project shouldn’t happen.
Strategy that reaches the floor
The work goes beyond a recommendation to a sequenced roadmap with owners, an operating change, or a working product, and I stay accountable to the original business need from decision to implementation.
Honest scope
If the problem is outside my strengths, I’ll say so and point you toward who can solve it.
A consultation, a written plan, then the work
You are never asked to commit before the plan is written, reviewed together, and worth standing behind.
- 1
Consultation
A working conversation with leadership about the business model, the operating reality, and what outcome matters most over the next twelve to twenty-four months.
- 2
Research and proposal
Independent work on the operation — economics, workflow, systems, data, legal constraints, and people — followed by a written plan with sequence, owners, dependencies, measures, and explicit exclusions.
- 3
Plan review
The plan is walked through with the leadership team, challenged, and revised until it reflects decisions the business is prepared to stand behind.
- 4
Execution
I lead delivery: coordinating internal teams and outside partners, holding the sequence, managing adoption, and evaluating honestly whether the result solved the problem it was meant to solve.
Situations this case is built for
Owner-led businesses improving operations and systems, owners preparing to sell, buyers evaluating a business, small businesses putting practical AI to work, and back-office capacity for business brokerage firms.
Examine the work and its current status
References and case details are available on request; client, buyer, and transaction information is kept confidential.