Find what others overlook. Fix what others avoid.
Independent diagnosis and hands-on execution for service businesses. We uncover missed revenue, underused capacity, and operating constraints, then work alongside leadership to convert what we find into measurable improvement.
Sales, customer, and operating data tested against what happens in the field. Leadership issues addressed directly. Improvements measured and handed over.
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Three situations. One way of working.
Each begins with a different decision and a different risk. The investigation that follows is the same.
- Buying the business is one decision. Running it is another.Operating exposures, continuity, and a post-close plan. Distinct from QoE, legal, and audit work.Acquisition & Integration
- When performance needs more than another plan.Branches behind plan, explanations in conflict, root cause uncertain.Private Equity & Portfolio Operations
- A business that can't run without you isn't ready for what's next.Growth plateaus, underused capacity, founder dependence, and processes that hold up to scrutiny.Exit & Scale Readiness
Diagnosis first. Then the work of fixing it.
Every engagement is scoped to the situation: authority, access, time, and travel agreed at the outset. The sequence below describes how the work moves, not a fixed package.
Diagnose
Investigate the constraint. Test each explanation against operating data and what happens in the field.
Design
Develop a practical solution, identify the people and systems it depends on, and establish clear measures of success.
Embed
Implement it inside the business, alongside the people who will run it.
Transfer
Equip management with the systems, accountability, and performance measures to sustain the improvement.
Measured throughout
What the work addresses
- Root-cause investigationUnexplained performance constraints, investigated before anything is prescribed.
- Data connected to the fieldSales results and customer economics checked against what happens on jobs and at branches.
- Leadership and personnelRole fit and leadership issues addressed directly and constructively.
- Embedded execution and transferCorrective practice implemented with your team, measured, then handed over.
Same playbook. Different margin. Why?
The first explanation is treated as a hypothesis to test, not a conclusion.
Two restoration branches run the same playbook. One consistently misses margin.
“It’s a weaker local market.”
Job files, schedules, and ride-alongs, read alongside the branch’s reporting.
The gap opens between mitigation and reconstruction: jobs waiting on estimates, crews returning to re-scope, a manager approving work he no longer has time to see.
Proposed: an estimating handoff standard, a weekly exception review, and a manager role reshaped around both, to be implemented with the team and measured against the original gap.
The problem is rarely as simple as the explanation.
Cold Light Advisory is led by Michael J. Moorhead Jr. His work spans service-business ownership, business development, operations, and multi-location advisory, with a center of gravity in restoration and related home and essential services.
- Structure
- Independent and founder-led
- Focus
- People-intensive, decentralized service businesses
- Engagements
- Scoped for authority, access, time, and travel
- Not
- QoE, legal, or audit work, or a default full-time interim COO
Let's get to the heart of it.
A short note on your situation is enough to begin. Please don't send confidential financial or employee information through the form.
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