Operations · Training · Systems

The money is
leaking somewhere.

It's rarely where owners think, and it's almost never a marketing problem. Fifteen years of operational turnarounds taught me where to look — and I have the engineering background to actually fix what I find, not just write it up.

Find my leak Run the numbers first

Built for Trades & contractors · Manufacturing & production · Auto · Salons & spas · Retail · Clinics · Field service · Hospitality · Any business where labor, throughput, and customer flow drive the P&L

The reason any of this matters

The arithmetic nobody runs

Three numbers most owners have never actually calculated on their own business. You don't need me to do the math — you need ten minutes and last month's reports.

  1. 01

    The calls you never heard about

    Take your average ticket. Multiply it by the calls that went to voicemail during last month's rush and after close. Nobody tracks that number — which is exactly why it stays large. A missed call doesn't feel like a loss, because you never knew the job existed.

    Your number avg ticket × missed calls × 12

  2. 02

    The hour your best manager spends on the schedule

    Multiply it by fifty-two. That is a real fraction of a salary, paid annually, for work that is mostly data entry — performed by the person you most want standing on the floor. The schedule still comes out wrong, because it's built around availability instead of demand.

    Your number manager hourly × hours on scheduling × 52

  3. 03

    The six months before a new manager is any good

    Multiply that ramp by your turnover. That's what it costs to keep your operating knowledge in two or three people's heads instead of in a system. And every time one of them leaves, you pay it again from zero.

    Your number ramp months × managers replaced per year

None of those three are technology problems. They're operating problems — and that is the order I fix them in. Technology comes last, and only where it pays for itself.

Straight answers

What owners actually ask me

Nobody wakes up wanting new software. These six things come up in almost every first conversation — here's what's really going on in each, and what I do about it.

§ 01 Sales & lead response

“The phone rings and nobody picks up.”

What's really happening: your busiest hour and your best lead hour are the same hour. Calls go to voicemail during a rush and after close, and most people who don't reach you don't call back — they call the next name on the list.

What I do: measure the leak first, so we're arguing with numbers instead of impressions. Then put something in place that answers every time, books what it can, and routes what it can't — so nothing lands in a voicemail box nobody checks.

Result You stop paying for leads you never got to answer.

§ 02 Staffing & payroll

“Payroll and scheduling eat my whole week.”

What's really happening: the schedule gets built around who's available instead of when money walks in the door. Overtime gets discovered on Monday instead of prevented on Thursday.

What I do: this is the center of my wheelhouse. Rebuild the schedule against real demand curves, put a guardrail on overtime before it happens, and take repetitive payroll prep off a human desk. Labor is the largest controllable line on your P&L and the one nobody has time to work on.

Result Hours back in your week and a labor line you can steer.

§ 03 Training & leadership

“Every new manager takes six months to get good.”

What's really happening: the knowledge that makes someone good at the job lives in two or three heads and transfers by osmosis. When one of them leaves, it leaves with them.

What I do: build training that's genuinely repeatable, and mentor your managers directly — I've developed a lot of them. The goal isn't a thicker binder. It's competent in weeks instead of quarters, independent of who did the training.

Result Shorter ramp, lower turnover, bench strength you didn't have.

§ 04 Back office & paperwork

“My back office still runs on paper.”

What's really happening: invoices get keyed by hand, counts live in a notebook, reconciliation happens at eleven at night because that's the only quiet hour. It works — until the person who does it is out.

What I do: find the few repetitive tasks eating real hours and automate those specifically, with a check that proves the output is right rather than just that it ran. I don't replace systems that work. I connect them so the same number stops getting typed in three places.

Result Nights back, and a back office that survives a vacation.

§ 05 Customers & reputation

“I'm losing customers and I can't tell you why.”

What's really happening: the feedback that would tell you is scattered across reviews, comment cards, and something a frontline employee heard once. Nobody reads it in one place, so a months-long pattern looks like a string of unrelated bad days.

What I do: pull it into one view, find the pattern, and close the loop — reviews answered, repeat questions handled before they reach a person, recurring complaints routed to whoever can actually fix them. Most churn is an operational problem in a customer-service costume.

Result The recurring complaint identified and fixed at the source.

§ 06 Cost & where to start

“Is any of this worth what it costs?”

The fair version of that question: you've been sold software before. It came with a demo and a subscription, and six months later nobody used it. You're right to be skeptical — most of what gets sold to small businesses as technology is a solution shopping for a problem.

How I answer it: we start with what's costing you money, not with what I'd like to build. Every recommendation comes with what it costs, what it returns, and how long until it pays back. If the honest answer is that you have a staffing problem and not a systems problem, I'll tell you — it's a shorter engagement and a better outcome.

My rule If I can't show you the payback, I won't recommend it.

The engagement

How it works

  1. 01

    Walkthrough

    Half a day, on site or on a call. I look at how the work actually moves — not how the org chart says it does. You get my read either way.

    No charge
  2. 02

    The plan

    Written, specific, ordered by payback period — fastest return first. Cost, expected return, and timeline on every line. You own the document whether or not you hire me.

    Fixed fee
  3. 03

    Build & hand off

    I implement, train your people, and document it so it survives me leaving. The measure of a good engagement is that you don't need a second one.

    Scoped per project
  4. 04

    The door stays open

    You shouldn't need me on retainer — that's the standard, not a sales problem. But businesses move: a new location, a system change, a manager leaves. Come back when something shifts. I'll already know your operation, so the second conversation is shorter and cheaper.

    No retainer

Also available on their own

  • Leadership mentoring
  • Manager training programs
  • Process & systems audits
  • Production line & throughput efficiency
  • Loss prevention & asset protection
  • Growth strategy with defined ROI

The background

Who I am

Service
U.S. NavyAviation electronics
Manufacturing
10+ yearsCalibration & line efficiency
Growth delivered
$1M+Per location, year over year, across a territory
Operations
15+ yearsFull service → QSR
Protection
StrategicPersonal & asset protection

Who you'd be working with

I'm Mike Ludwikowski.
Most people call me Ski.

I started in Navy avionics, which is where I learned that complicated systems don't fail randomly — they fail in patterns, and the pattern is almost always visible before the failure is. That idea has paid for itself in every job I've had since.

I spent the next decade in manufacturing, doing calibration and efficiency work on production lines, where a few seconds a cycle is the difference between a line that makes money and one that doesn't. Calibration teaches you something most consultants never learn: you cannot improve what you haven't first measured correctly. Most businesses I walk into are managing to a number that was wrong before anyone acted on it.

Then came fifteen years in restaurants, full service through QSR. I took underperforming stores and made them profitable. In one territory that meant growing gross revenue by more than a million dollars per location, year over year — not with a new concept or a marketing budget, but with scheduling, training, process, and the unglamorous discipline of measuring the right things weekly.

I've also worked in personal protection and strategic asset protection, which is the same question I ask everywhere else asked a harder way: what's exposed, what is it worth, and what happens if it walks out the door. Shrinkage, liability, and the things an owner hasn't thought about losing are usually sitting in plain sight.

These days I build application software at the federal level. So when I tell you something is worth automating, I'm the one who can build it.

The industry was restaurants. The problems weren't. Scheduling against real demand, ramping a new manager, closing the gap between a phone call and a booked job, getting operating knowledge out of two people's heads — those look the same in a shop, a salon, a clinic, a retail floor, or a contractor's truck. Hospitality just runs them at higher speed and thinner margin, which is a useful place to learn them.

That combination is the whole point. I can sit with your GM on a Tuesday and fix next week's schedule — then go write the tool that keeps it fixed. Most consultants can do one of those two things.

Get in touch

How much will you take back?

A sentence or two is plenty. I read every one of these myself and I'll come back to you within a business day — and if I'm not the right person for it, I'll say so and point you at who is.

Prefer email? ludworkcontact@gmail.com