Ivars's story: 8 months, +33% measurable results
An anonymized client story: how the owner of a 22-person manufacturing company rebuilt his strategy in eight months, implemented AI and recovered 12 hours per week.
Listen to this article
Narrated with an AI voice built from the author's voice.
Ivars (name changed) came to me in spring 2024. A manufacturing company, 22 employees, revenue around €1.8M, profit stagnant for the second year in a row, and he himself was working 60+ hours a week.
Classic scenario: the business has grown to the point of operational overload, where the owner has become the narrowest bottleneck in the entire system.
Starting point — DeepDive
Three 45-minute sessions. We walked through the 7 areas of life. It became clear that the problem wasn't the strategy — it was that Ivars personally made 80% of decisions. The team waited for his approval even on small things.
After the DeepDive, for the first time in two years, I realized the problem wasn't in the business — it was in my head, about what I was unable to let go of.
First 3 months — the system
- Introduced a weekly strategic review with the team (45 min).
- Defined 5 KPIs tracked automatically.
- Delegation matrix — who is responsible for what.
- Ivars stopped answering operational questions on WhatsApp.
Months 4–8 — AI and marketing
In the second phase we implemented AI in customer support (handling typical questions 24/7) and rebuilt marketing around a single niche — premium product segment customers.
Results after 8 months
- +33% profit (not revenue — profit).
- -12 hours/week in Ivars's personal workload.
- 2 new hires in the middle management layer.
- Customer NPS grew from 42 to 68.
Ivars continues working with me into a second year. Not because he has to, but because he wants to keep growing inside the system rather than going back to chaos.
Where this work happens now
Stories like this came out of my consulting practice. The same work now runs through Arete AIOS.
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