/01 Who we are
What NorthBridge Business Advisory LLC actually does
NorthBridge Business Advisory LLC is a business consulting, management and advisory firm. In plain terms, companies bring us a result they are not getting, and we find out why, write the plan that fixes it, and then work beside their people until the fix is part of how the business runs.
Our work covers the whole management picture rather than a single slice of it. On the strategy side we help owners and boards decide where the business should compete, what to charge, which customers are worth keeping and which growth path the balance sheet can actually carry. On the operations side we map how work moves through the company, find the delays, rework and waste that quietly consume the margin, and rebuild the planning and management rhythm that holds the improvement in place.
On the financial side we build the forecasting, unit economics and reporting that let a leader see a month before it arrives, and we provide fractional chief financial officer support to companies that need that judgement without a full time salary. On the organisational side we deal with structure, roles, pay bands, hiring plans, succession and the coaching that turns capable senior staff into managers who can make decisions without escalating everything. And through the risk and governance practice we tighten contracts, internal controls, policies and board reporting so that a lender, an insurer, an auditor or a buyer sees a company that is properly run.
Alongside project consulting we also take on management engagements, where we hold an operating seat for a defined period. That might be running a finance function through a transition, standing in as an interim operations lead, or chairing the weekly management meeting of a group that has just acquired its third location. It is the part of our work that separates us from firms that deliver a report and leave.
Clients come to us at three moments in particular: when growth has outrun the systems that used to be enough, when profit has quietly disappeared without an obvious cause, and when ownership is changing hands and the business has to be able to run without the founder in it. The mandate differs each time. The method does not.
NorthBridge Business Advisory LLC
- Founded 2011 by an operations director and a turnaround accountant
- Registered limited liability company
- 27 advisors across strategy, finance, operations, people and governance
- Two offices: Jesup, Georgia and Broomfield, Colorado
- 230 engagements delivered across 18 industries
- Client revenue range from $600,000 to $90,000,000
- No commissions, referral fees or vendor rebates, ever
/02 Our stance
Consulting has an accountability problem. We priced ours differently because of it.
The industry standard is to sell insight and invoice for activity. We think an advisory firm should be measured on whether the client is measurably better run when it leaves, so we built the practice around three positions that are unusual enough to be worth stating.
The diagnostic is never free
A free assessment is a sales call with a report attached, and it is always shaped to sell the next thing. Ours is a paid, fixed fee piece of work with its own deliverable, and you are free to take the findings and act on them without us. Roughly one client in nine does exactly that.
We name the exit at the start
Every scope states what has to be true for the engagement to end: the metric, the documentation, the trained owner of the process. Advisory relationships that quietly renew forever usually mean the capability was never actually transferred.
Independence is contractual
We take no commission, rebate or referral fee from any software vendor, lender, broker or supplier we might recommend. It is written into the client agreement, and you are welcome to verify it with any party we introduce.
/03 How the firm grew
Fifteen years, told through the work that changed us
Two partners, one client, a borrowed office
Ellis Rowan, an operations director from a building products manufacturer, and Nadine Okafor, a turnaround accountant, start NorthBridge in Jesup, Georgia. The first engagement is a family sawmill losing money on its highest volume product line.
The diagnostic becomes a product
After three engagements that started with the wrong brief, we stop accepting work without a paid diagnostic first. Client outcomes improve immediately and the policy has not changed since.
Fractional finance practice opens
Demand from clients too small for a full time chief financial officer but too complex for a bookkeeper leads to a standing fractional finance team. It is now our second largest practice by revenue.
Colorado office opens in Broomfield
Western clients had been served by travel alone. A second office on Nickel Street gives the firm a Mountain time base and opens work in logistics, technology services and outdoor products.
A year of cash flow work
The practice pivots almost entirely to liquidity planning, lender negotiation and cost restructuring. Fees are deferred for eleven clients. Nine of those eleven are still with the firm.
Governance and transaction readiness
Owners approaching retirement start asking a different question: not how to grow, but how to become sellable. We build the governance practice around succession, controls and diligence preparation.
Multi entity mandates
The Causeway retainer launches for groups running several entities that need one operating standard. Writing standards that survive being handed to a manager we did not hire proves harder than any strategy problem.
Twenty seven advisors, two coasts of work
The firm now runs strategy, operations, finance, people and governance practices from two offices, with engagements in eighteen industries. The founding brief has not moved: leave the business better run than we found it.
/04 What we hold to
Five working principles
Each of these has cost us an engagement at least once. That is roughly how you tell a principle from a slogan.
Say it in week one
If the plan will not work, if the leadership team is the constraint, if the owner is the bottleneck, you hear it early and privately. Consultants who defer the hard sentence to the final presentation have made the client pay for the delay.
Follow the ledger
Opinions are cheap and plentiful inside a company. We work from invoices, payroll, contracts, system exports and interviews with the people doing the job, and we show our arithmetic so you can challenge it.
Write it so a manager can use it
No hundred slide deck nobody reopens. Deliverables are short, specific and built to be handed to the person who has to act, with an owner and a date attached to every line.
Coach, do not replace
Where we hold an operating seat, the objective is to make it unnecessary. Your managers sit in every meeting we run, and they run it themselves before we leave.
The client owns the work
Models, documentation, dashboards and process maps are handed over in editable form on payment. Nothing we build for you is locked inside a NorthBridge system you have to keep paying for.
Confidentiality without exception
Figures, contracts, plans and even the fact of an engagement stay private. We name a client publicly only with written permission, which is why the case detail on this site is anonymised by default.
/05 Leadership
The people who will actually be in your meetings
A partner scopes every engagement and stays on it. You will not be sold by one team and delivered by another.
Ellis Rowan
Managing Partner
Nineteen years in manufacturing operations before founding the firm, including six as operations director of a building products group. Leads operations, expansion and interim management work.
Nadine Okafor
Partner, Financial Advisory
Turnaround accountant and former restructuring manager. Runs the fractional chief financial officer practice, lender negotiations and all transaction readiness work.
Theo Castellanos
Director, Strategy and Growth
Background in commercial strategy and pricing for distribution and professional services firms. Leads market analysis, pricing architecture and growth planning.
Junia Weathers
Director, People and Organisation
Twelve years in human resources leadership across healthcare and logistics. Handles structure, compensation design, succession planning and management coaching.
/06 Where we are
Two offices, one standard of work
Jesup, Georgia
90 Garfield Dr, Lot 44Jesup, GA 31545
United States
Broomfield, Colorado
300 Nickel StBroomfield, CO 80020
United States
Bring us the problem you have not been able to name.
A short call is usually enough for us both to tell whether there is a real engagement here. If there is not, we will say so and point you at whoever is a better fit.