A few things you might reasonably ask

Our work does not replace a QoE, and a QoE does not replace an operational review. You need to understand both the numbers and the operation you’re buying.

We find inventory issues, fleet problems, massively overstated backlogs, and key people whose actual importance is nowhere on the org chart. Some of those issues may surface in financial diligence, but understanding what causes them, what they mean, and what needs to happen next requires spending time with the people doing the work.

A QoE can be thorough and still leave significant operational questions unanswered. The spreadsheet is unlikely to mention that three people call the same technician whenever nobody knows what to do. You’ll want to meet that technician before closing.

We price around the scope of the study: the processes and locations involved, the time needed with your people, and the depth of the deliverables.

We don’t publish a standard rate because we want room to structure useful partnerships, without making a smaller study’s price the starting point for a much larger engagement.

We agree on the scope, fee, and travel arrangements before starting. The fee covers preparation, fieldwork, analysis, and reporting, not just the days you see us.

For partners bringing multiple engagements, we offer substantial volume discounts. If you expect to work with us regularly, let’s discuss that from the outset.

A focused review of one process is different from a study of an entire business. The schedule depends on the scope, access to the people involved, and the time needed to review and confirm what we find.

A review of a small division or single location normally takes about 1 week on site and 1 week of offsite work building deliverables.

We establish the timeline before starting, including fieldwork and the work that follows it. Leaving the building is not the same as finishing the study.

Yes. We can focus on a process such as order-to-invoice, a transition involving key people, or the operational requirements behind a proposed systems change.

We agree on the boundaries up front, while allowing enough room to follow the connections. A billing problem does not necessarily begin in billing.

We plan interviews and observation around the people and processes in scope, with follow-ups to check findings and resolve questions.

Your team will need to give us time and attention. We plan that with you so people know what to expect and the business can keep running.

We’ll provide a request list suited to the engagement. It may include an organization chart, system list, existing procedures, reports, and access to the people closest to the work.

Please include the working spreadsheets and unofficial notes. There is no need to tidy the business into something different before we arrive.

A blueprint of how the operation runs, supported by structured data and written findings. Depending on scope, the deliverables may include process blueprints, key-person dependencies, operational assessments, a risk register, and integration sequencing.

We specify the deliverables before starting. The samples show the level of detail; your engagement determines which documents are useful.

See the work →

We study how the work happens and how it connects to the systems and numbers. That includes handoffs, exceptions, information gaps, and dependencies on individual knowledge.

We do not provide Quality of Earnings, financial diligence, compliance audits, or IT security assessments. Our work complements those specialists by making the operational detail visible.

We use AI to help process interviews, notes, and documents. The information is organized in Hevel, our proprietary database structure, designed from the ground up to support our engagements.

Source references stay attached to individual records. Our operators review the material, apply their trades experience, and check findings with the team. Our internal roundtables also become part of the record, distinguishing our interpretation from what someone told us. Nothing goes into a deliverable without human review and editing.

We love AI as a tool. But trades businesses vary considerably, and much of the work happens outside their systems: in conversations, judgment calls, and working practices that have never been written down. Producing useful operational reporting requires understanding that reality, not just processing the available files.

Generating a plausible paragraph is the easy part. Knowing whether it reflects what actually happens in the business, and what that means, is our responsibility. We don’t outsource that to AI.

Yes. Source references are tagged directly on the process cards. A reference such as C18-021 (the source tag shown in our “See the Work” example) connects a card to the source material used to derive the information.

Those relationships are held in our database. We distinguish what was stated, what was observed, and what we inferred, so you can trace a conclusion back to its evidence and understand why we reached it.

We want to hear it. Findings go back to the people closest to the work so they can correct errors, add context, or explain a difference.

If a disagreement remains unresolved, it stays visible in the record. A tidy report is not a good reason to pretend everyone agreed.

Yes, where it fits our expertise. That may mean working through a process adjustment, clarifying reporting, developing integration requirements, or helping a specialist understand what the operation needs.

Our preference is to help you find trusted partners who can carry that work forward. We believe the study is more useful when our recommendations aren’t shaped by an interest in selling the implementation.

The study stands on its own. We’ll agree on follow-on work separately where it naturally makes sense, but generating more work for ourselves is not the goal of the engagement.

Yes. We can provide the operational detail that buyers, financial advisers, integration teams, and technology partners need for their own work.

We define responsibilities at the outset and keep our findings connected to the decisions the engagement is meant to support.

Based in Charlotte, NC - raised on Krispy Kreme and Cheerwine, well, at least Shannon can claim that distinction.

The official answer, most of our team sits in Charlotte, but we travel anywhere in the US. Milwaukee is our favorite city to visit, so we will provide a small discount if you are based there.

Our work often involves acquisitions, ownership transitions, and operational details that aren’t public. Naming a client can disclose something before we’ve said a word about the engagement.

We share anonymized examples so you can examine the work without exposing the business behind it. You can also follow our company and individual LinkedIn pages, where public posts and tags provide independently verifiable examples of our relationships and work.

But our clients lead that conversation. What they choose to make public is their decision, and we won’t make it for them.

Start with the samples. Look at the detail, examine the source references, and see how we distinguish evidence from interpretation.

You can also examine anonymized findings and the costs, discrepancies, and dependencies they exposed on What It’s Worth.

We can walk you through our relevant operating experience, the method, and what your engagement would produce. You should understand what you’re buying before buying it. We’re fairly consistent on that point.

We’re also very active on LinkedIn. Read our posts, comments, and work histories. We encourage you to dig into who we are, how we think, and what we’ve actually done.

Recordings, notes, and documents support the engagement and the evidence behind its findings.

Before work begins, we agree on confidentiality, recording permissions, data handling, and the use of AI tools. That conversation covers access, storage, retention, and what is included in the handover, alongside any requirements your business has.

Shannon is the ethical heart of Solhver. When she accepted the job as COO at Piedmont Door Solutions, she had one stipulation: “I will do whatever it takes, but I will not ruin people’s lives for profit.”

That rule still guides Solhver today. We are here to improve businesses and the lives of the employees who rely on them. We are not a tool for reducing headcount or eliminating livelihoods, and we will not take an engagement whose purpose is to identify people to remove.

We can help businesses integrate operations, consolidate processes, and eliminate unnecessary work. But we ask people to trust us with their knowledge and experience. We will not turn that trust into a case for their removal.

Yes, the H is silent. And yes, the name is weird to spell, but there is a story there.

Solhver draws on sulh, the Old English word for plow, and ṣulḥ, the Arabic word for reconciliation. The connection is the Biblical image of swords beaten into plowshares: turning something destructive into something productive.

The idea started during a run. Tarrell runs, and he runs a lot more when he is frustrated. Seeing the way large consultants and finance teams overlook the work of people in the trades has always fueled particularly hard workouts.

One afternoon, while on a “mad run,” he passed a plow-shaped mailbox and, because he has to make everything Biblical, was struck by the image of “beating swords into plowshares.” It was then that he decided to do something useful with the frustration.

An English major’s interest in old words and Shannon’s preference for names beginning with S took it from there. Solhver started as a thought partnership and podcast discussing ethics and business, and it has grown from there.

Our AI keeps suggesting the plow also represents “breaking new ground” and “getting beneath the surface.” We think the mailbox was doing enough already, but then again, maybe it’s true.

You asked about a simple letter. Unfortunately, you’ve reached an English major and got a much longer response.