Fractional COO & Operations Consulting

You built a company. Right now, you own a job.

We turn what's stuck in your head into systems your team can run, so the business keeps moving whether you're in the room or not.

Built to launch. Built to scale. Built to last.
The Real Problem

The business grew. The systems didn't scale.

Revenue climbed. The way you run things stayed the same. Now everything important routes through you: the decisions, the knowledge, the fixes. That isn't a growth problem. It's a systems problem, and systems are fixable.

01

It all lives in your head

The how, the why, the workarounds, the exceptions. None of it is written down, so none of it can be handed off.

02

Everything runs through you

Every decision and every fix routes back to you. You're not running the business. You are the business.

03

You can't step away

A week off and things slow down or stall. The one thing you built for freedom became the thing you can't leave.

~50% higher valuation, same profit
More Than Your Time

The systems that free up your time make the business worth selling.

Owner-dependent businesses sell at a discount, if they sell at all. Build it to run without you, and you've built something you can actually hand off, or cash out of, on your terms.

Based on Value Builder research

How We Work Together

Three ways in.

Start with a diagnosis or build the whole thing. Every engagement begins the same way, by mapping what you actually do, then making it repeatable without you.

Tier 01

Audit

One-time process review

We map your operations end to end, surface the bottlenecks and the waste, and hand you a prioritized plan. You walk away knowing exactly what's breaking and what to fix first.

Best for: Owners who want clarity before they commit.
Tier 02

Fractional COO

Ongoing operations partner

We run the operations side alongside you, month over month. Documenting systems, tightening processes, and building the structure your team needs to operate without you. Senior operations leadership, without the full-time salary.

Best for: Businesses ready to build, not just diagnose.
Tier 03

Launch Partner

Ground-floor, equity-based

For the right venture, we come in at the foundation and build the operational backbone from day one. Real skin in the game, fully aligned on the outcome.

Best for: Founders who want an operator, not a consultant.
How We Think About It

Optimize before you automate.

A few principles that shape every engagement.

/01

Fix the process first. Automating a broken process only breaks things faster. Make it work, then make it repeatable, then make it run itself.

/02

Documentation is leverage. Written-down systems become training data for your team and your tools. What's documented can be delegated.

/03

Remove the obstacles. People do their best work when you hand them the tools and step out of the way, not when you hover over the outcome.

/04

Small wins, repeated. One percent better, over and over, compounds into a business that runs itself. It beats one heroic fix every time.

Tim Vickers, Founder and Principal of Operex Groundworks
Who's Behind It

Tim Vickers

Founder & Principal, Operex Groundworks

We figure out why businesses break, then build the systems that clear the bottleneck and let the team run it. I learned that over years across a variety of domains: consumer and commercial lending, operations management, IT, systems engineering, and software development.

I'm a Six Sigma practitioner, experienced in project management, and I work at the pioneering edge of AI, using it to solve and automate the everyday problems every business faces, and to make that accessible to businesses of all shapes and sizes. That range of experience is where the pattern recognition comes from: I catch what's breaking early and build the solutions that help a business thrive and scale.

Lending Operations Management IT Systems Engineering Software Development Project Management Six Sigma Change Management AI Integration

Let's lay the groundwork.

Tell us where the business is getting stuck. We'll figure out the first move together.

Rather skip the form? Email hello@operexgw.com, or call or text (971) 258-1261. Based in Salem, Oregon.