Business strategy
Where the next dollar of growth comes from, which markets to enter, and which lines to close. We pressure-test your assumptions with real numbers and leave you with a 12-month plan and quarterly checkpoints.
Explore programs →plainake works with owners, directors and managers to fix the operations that leak money, build a growth plan the team can actually execute, and put a decision process behind every major move. Advisory sessions and structured management programs, delivered by practitioners who have run companies themselves.
Each engagement starts with a diagnostic and ends with a written plan your team owns — not a slide deck that sits in a folder.
Where the next dollar of growth comes from, which markets to enter, and which lines to close. We pressure-test your assumptions with real numbers and leave you with a 12-month plan and quarterly checkpoints.
Explore programs →Demand sizing, competitor pricing, customer interviews and a plain-English risk register. You get the evidence behind a decision before you commit capital, hires or a new location to it.
Explore programs →We map how work actually moves through your company, find the handoffs where time and margin disappear, and rebuild the workflow with clear owners, standards and reporting your managers can run without us.
Explore programs →Structured courses for first-line and senior managers: delegation, performance conversations, hiring scorecards and running a meeting that ends in decisions. Cohorts are small, and every module uses your own cases.
Explore programs →plainake started in 2014 as a two-person practice above a printing plant on the West Side. Our founders had spent years running distribution and services businesses, and kept meeting owners who were given expensive advice with no path to execution. We built the opposite: short diagnostics, written plans, and an advisor who stays in the room while the plan gets implemented.
Today eleven senior advisors work with companies from 3 to 500 employees across manufacturing, professional services, healthcare support, logistics and retail. Half of our work is one-to-one advisory; the other half is structured management training for the people who will run the company next.
Consulting fails when nobody owns the follow-through. Everything below exists to make sure that does not happen.
Every recommendation traces back to your P&L, your throughput data or a customer interview we ran. If we cannot show the evidence, we do not put it in the plan.
No junior team learning on your account. Each advisor has at least fifteen years of line responsibility, and the person you meet in the first call is the person in every session.
Expansion, a new hire tier, a second location — each one gets a written downside case with trigger points. You will know in advance what has to be true to keep going, and when to stop.
Process maps, hiring scorecards, pricing models and a reporting pack are yours to use after the engagement. Nothing is locked in a platform you have to keep paying for.
Sessions run inside business hours and take three to four hours a week in total. The programs are designed for people with a company to run, not for a full-time classroom.
Each month we compare the plan against actual results and adjust in writing. You always know which actions moved the numbers and which ones need to be replaced.
All plans include the two-week diagnostic, a written 90-day plan and a 7-day guarantee. Prices are per company, not per seat.
Cancel any month. No setup fee.
Most companies of 15–80 people choose this.
Includes work across up to five locations.
Reviews are published with the client's permission. Figures are the ones reported by the companies themselves.
We were quoting jobs from memory and losing money on the big ones. The pricing model plainake built with us moved gross margin from 22% to 31% in five months, and I finally understand which contracts to walk away from.
Order handoffs between sales and the warehouse took four days. After the process work and two rounds of manager training, we are at eleven hours, with 30% fewer corrections. The written standards are what made it stick.
I was three weeks from signing a lease for a second clinic. The risk review showed our staffing math did not hold. We waited two quarters, fixed utilization first, and opened with a payroll plan that works. That call alone paid for the year.
If something here is not covered, write to info@plainake.club and an advisor will answer the same business day.
Owners, directors and senior managers of companies with roughly 3 to 500 employees, plus founders preparing for their first hires. Most participants are 35 and older and already carry budget or team responsibility, so the material assumes real decisions rather than theory.
Plan on three to four hours a week: one working session with your advisor, and the rest applied to your own documents and numbers. Sessions are scheduled Monday to Friday between 9:00 and 17:00 Central Time, and can be moved with 24 hours notice.
Yes. About seventy percent of our clients work with us remotely across the United States, with video sessions and a shared document workspace. On-site workshop days are included with Professional and Premium plans, and travel outside Illinois is quoted separately.
We review your financials and operating data, interview four to six people across the company, and observe how work moves through one core process. You then receive a written 90-day plan with a named owner, a deadline and a target number for every action.
Every plan carries a 7-day guarantee. If the first week of work is not right for your company, email info@plainake.club within seven days of your start date and we refund the full amount, no questions asked. After that, monthly plans can be cancelled before the next billing date. Full terms are on our Terms of Service page.
No, and you should be careful with anyone who does. Results depend on your market, your team and how consistently the plan is executed. What we do guarantee is the work itself: the diagnostic, the written plan, the sessions and the monthly review against agreed targets.
We take on a limited number of new companies each month so that every client keeps a senior advisor. Book a 30-minute consultation and we will tell you honestly whether we can help — and what it would take.
Our office is in the Loop, two blocks from Union Station. Visits are by appointment so an advisor is free when you arrive.
200 S Wacker Drive, Suite 1400
Chicago, IL 60606, USA
(312) 555-0184
Mon–Fri · 9:00–17:00 CT
info@plainake.club
Answered same business day
Monday to Friday
9:00–17:00 · Closed weekends
200 S Wacker Drive, Suite 1400, Chicago, IL 60606. Paid parking on Adams Street; Quincy Brown/Orange Line stop is a three-minute walk.
Leave your details and an advisor calls you back within one business day to schedule a 30-minute call. No payment is taken on this form.
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