About AGF.

Why this firm exists

Most consulting that owner-led businesses can afford is either junior, generic, or both. Most consulting that is senior and specific is priced for a Fortune 500 board, not a $20M trades business or a third-generation distributor. AGF was built to sit in the gap - senior consultants doing operating-discipline work for owner-led, family-run and small-to-mid-market US firms, at a fee and a pace those businesses can actually use.

What no-frills delivery means

We do not run kickoff theatre, off-site days, branded workbooks or status decks that read better than the work. We do not bring a junior team you have not met to "support" the engagement. We do not write reports designed to justify a bigger engagement. What we do:

• Diagnose first. A two-to-three week diagnostic across the operating functions, fixed-fee, with a plain-English report at the end.
• Install the cadence. Weekly 1:1, monthly review and quarterly plan running on a platform your managers can actually use - not a binder.
• Tighten what is loose. One or two functions where the diagnostic surfaced clear leverage - sales discipline, financial visibility, ops throughput, hiring quality.
• Step out. By day 90 the operating habit runs without us. We stay on call when senior advice actually helps.

What we will not do

Three things we will not do, even when asked:

• No junior army. The consultant who scopes your work delivers your work. We do not run a leverage model. If we are not the right people for what you need, we say so.
• No canned frameworks. We do not arrive with a fixed methodology that your business is expected to fit. We diagnose, then recommend - which sometimes means "you do not need a consultant right now, you need to do these three things and call us in six months."
• No publicity off your back. No case studies, no client logos, no public references without explicit written permission. Most of our engagements stay confidential by default, and that is how the family-business work in particular has to run.

Service-area, nationwide

AGF does not run a physical office. We are a service-area business covering the United States nationwide. Most of the work is remote - video calls, shared docs, the weekly cadence on our partner platform - and the on-site days are reserved for the diagnostic, key leadership conversations, and the specific moments where being in the room matters. That structure keeps the fee where it should be: paying for senior thinking, not for the rent on a downtown office you would never visit.

Who runs the engagement

Every engagement is run by a senior consultant with operating experience - not pure-strategy career consultants who have never sat in a P&L seat. The work calls for someone who has been the operator in a small or mid-market business: who has hired and fired, who has had the hard conversation with a partner, who has lived through a generational transition or a key-person exit. That is the chair we sit in next to you.

Confidentiality is the default

We sign NDAs by default. We do not publish case studies that name clients, we do not list logos, and we treat the family conversation - when there is one - as the most sensitive part of the engagement. If you want to speak to a previous client to gauge fit, we will arrange it directly and only with their explicit agreement.