01
The profit gap
What the business earns against what a business like yours can earn.
The starting point
Core Clarity
Some months the business makes money and some months it doesn't, and nobody can tell you why. Or maybe it runs fine, but you know it runs on you, and you're starting to wonder what it would take for that to change. Either way, the first step is the same: find out where the business stands.
What it is
A fixed price, a defined finish, a roadmap you keep
A fixed price, a defined start, and a defined finish line. I sit down with you, your books, and the people who touch the money. Then I do the analysis your reports haven't been doing, and hand you a written roadmap you can run with or without me.
The full assessment, the Clarity Package, is three assessments read together: personal readiness, business readiness, and business attractiveness. The three run on one shared intake. You can also start smaller, with either assessment on its own, and build up at your own pace. The ways in are below, with every price printed.
A note on lineage: this is guided by what the Value Acceleration Methodology calls the Triggering Event, the framework behind my Certified Exit Planning Advisor credential. Exit planning is usually built for much larger companies, so my version adapts it for smaller businesses. The spine is the same; the fit is yours.
The three numbers
Read together, the assessments name three gaps
02
The value gap
What the business is worth today against what it could be worth.
03
The wealth gap
What your life after the business needs against what the business can currently provide.
You may only care about one of them today. You'll want all three eventually, and they're cheaper to learn now.
How it works
Two channels, because a business and its owner are two different clients
The rhythm is the same on both sides: a consultation, the analysis, and a walkthrough of what it found.
The personal side
The Personal Clarity Assessment
One-on-one, or in a small cohort of owners
Consultation. About you, not the books. What the business needs to provide for the life you want, what a transition would look like on your terms, and what staying looks like if you never plan to sell. In the private edition, we work one-on-one with your real numbers. In the cohort edition, you work the same questions alongside a small group of owners, with your own worksheets to keep.
Analysis. Your readiness scored, and your wealth gap named: what your life costs, what you have, and what the business must provide to cover the difference.
Walkthrough. Your readiness score and your wealth gap, in plain terms, and what they mean for what your business needs to do for you.
The business side
The Business Clarity Assessment
Readiness and attractiveness, on your real books
Consultation. With you, and where possible your bookkeeper or CPA and your key personnel. I want the concerns that never make it into a spreadsheet, and I'll ask for the last three years of books, in software format, not paper.
Analysis. Both scorecards run, and a top-level read of the money: where it comes in, where it leaves, and where it quietly sits. Your profit gap and value gap, computed from your numbers as stated.
Write-up and walkthrough. A one-page findings summary, your lowest scores flagged, and three moves ranked by dollar impact, each with a first step. We walk through it together, with your CPA in the room if you want them there.
Run together as the Clarity Package, the two channels share one intake, and the three gaps read as one picture.
What you keep
Everything
The findings, the roadmap, the product-level profitability view you can re-run each quarter. It's built to stand alone: run it yourself, or hire help for the pieces you want off your plate, from me or from anyone.
And no, you don't have to be selling. Most owners who run this are years from any transition, or never leaving. Readiness is worth the same either way, whether the plan is to run it, fix it, hand it to your kid, or sell it someday. Never selling is a plan too.
The one requirement
I don't analyze books I can't open
I don't quote an operation I haven't seen, and I don't analyze books I can't open. The assessment requires access to your accounting records up front. If your books aren't in shape to be read, that's not a disqualification, it's the first finding, and we'll talk about the smaller step that fixes it.
Ways in, with prices
Take it whole, or a piece at a time
Fixed prices, printed here. No retainer, nothing open-ended. What happens afterward is your choice, made with your own roadmap in hand.
Start free
Operations Health Check
The free self-serve check. No email address required, no follow-up unless you ask for it. A good way to see how I think before you spend anything.
Self-serveFree
The owner
Personal Clarity Assessment
Personal readiness and your wealth gap. The cohort edition is worksheet-based with group scoring (cohorts run with a minimum of four seats). The private edition is one-on-one, with the wealth gap run on your real numbers.
Cohort seat$500
Private$1,000
The business
Business Clarity Assessment
Both business scorecards plus a top-level read of your P&L: a high-level profit gap, value gap, and an informal range. Computed from your numbers as stated. The deeper work is where we dig past what stated numbers hide.
Complete$1,000
Everything, one intake
The Clarity Package
All three assessments with one shared intake. Three gaps named, your two or three lowest scores flagged, and the written roadmap. $2,000 bought separately; the bundle price reflects the shared intake, nothing else.
$1,750
$2,000 separately
After the assessments
Iterative engagements, quoted from the roadmap
The deeper work runs as iterative engagements: one or two focus areas at a time, scoped from what your assessment actually found, on a timeline that fits your business rather than a fixed calendar. We do the work, see what changed, and scope the next from there. Often the first digs into the money: costing, cash flow, staffing, pricing. I don't price work I haven't scoped, so each engagement is quoted from the roadmap, never assumed.
One rule holds across all of it: I don't start the deeper work until all three core assessments are complete. The assessments are personal readiness, business readiness, and business attractiveness, and they have to be read together to truly create value for a business and its owner. These three are the foundation of the Value Acceleration Methodology, the framework behind my Certified Exit Planning Advisor credential. What your business needs depends on what you need. The assessment is how we find out both, before either of us spends real time fixing the wrong thing.
Common questions
A few things owners ask
Do I have to be selling?
No. Most owners who run this are years from any transition, or never leaving. Readiness is worth the same either way.
What if my books are a mess?
Then you're in good company, and it changes the starting point, not the answer. Messy books aren't a disqualification, they're the first finding. We'd start with the smaller step that fixes them, and go from there.
What happens after?
Your choice. The roadmap is built to stand alone, and plenty of owners run it themselves. If you want help, the work continues in iterative engagements, quoted from what your assessment found. I don't start the deeper work on a partial picture, and I don't assume there's a next engagement.
Who you'd be working with
Marika Olson
I spent 15 years with USAID managing portfolios up to $250 million across three continents, which is a long way of saying I've read a lot of books that were supposed to answer questions and didn't. I earned my Certified Exit Planning Advisor credential from the Exit Planning Institute in June 2026.
The exit-planning field mostly works with multimillion-dollar companies, and most certified advisors sit in the Midwest and East. There's no EPI chapter in Seattle or Boise. I built this assessment for the businesses below that line, roughly one to fifty employees, because that's where the owners I keep meeting actually are. If a SCORE mentor or an Impact Washington advisor handed you this page, they've seen how I work.
Start with a conversation
Write to me and tell me what's going on in the business. I'll tell you which starting point fits, including if the answer is the free check and nothing else.