How we work
Turn expenses into investments that deliver returns.
We don't sell decks that sit in a drawer, or expect you to stay unless we are making provable impact on your profit and revenue. Fourth Order Intel is an operating framework designed to execute. We remove structural waste, recover underperforming spend, and install proven systems that keep your margins intact as you scale.
The engagement
Three phases with clear outcomes
Prune
We trace spend to economic output, championing contribution margin. Anything that does not hold up, we cut to reduce operational drag.
Outcomes
- Every major cost tied to an owner, an output, and a return.
- Redundant vendors, tools, roles, and workflows removed.
- Recovered cash measured against the engagement fee.
Extract
From the gaps we identify, we work to reduce acquisition cost and cost of operations. Contracts, capacity, pricing, and working capital rebuilt around what the business actually costs and earns today.
Outcomes
- Vendor economics reset against usage and leverage.
- Idle capacity redirected toward measurable return.
- Recovered dollars assigned before they disappear into the budget.
Systemize
We build human-in-the-loop hybrid systems so your team can operate without us. The decisions, controls, and accountability that keep capital from getting trapped again are built into how the business runs.
Outcomes
- Decision rules installed at the point of spend.
- Financial signals surfaced before margin is lost.
- Ownership of the operating system transferred to your team.
The math behind the method
See all client results →
USCCA identified $12M+ in waste in six weeks.
Half the budget was funding lead gen that produced 11% of sales. Customer attrition risk surfaced 18 months early.
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Old School Labs lifted revenue 87% in 10 months and tripled EBITDA.
$100K in reporting tools cut, and the budget moved to the customers already buying.
See more results →
MrCool reached $100M in direct to consumer revenue in under three years.
Contractors had been the only way to buy. We built the direct operation to run alongside them, not replace them.
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Most Marketing Isn't Designed to Be Measured
GTM strategies tend to focus on channels and measure performance with proxies instead of what impacts the P&L. Learn how industry best practices for attribution and measurement strategies collide with perverse incentives and erode profits.
Start here, it’s free.
Find where you’re overspending in your business. Find out how much.
Answer twelve questions. Our team reviews your site, your ads, and your tech stack and returns a dollar-denominated estimate of recoverable waste across your business.
We evaluate these four common failure points:
- Advertising & Media Efficiency
- Go-to-Market Strategy
- Technology & Measurement
- People & Team Alignment
Confidential · Reviewed by our team
Frequently Asked Questions
You work directly with our senior partners and fellows from Deloitte, KPMG, and Incubeta, depending on the scope of work.
For analysis, we need read-only access to your data and the commitment of one to two hours per week from your stakeholders during each engagement. For larger deployments, we will need more access on a case-by-case basis, but work independently without bogging down your team with more meetings or overfitted reports. For engagements like Potbelly, we worked autonomously, only needing to sync with the CMO for 10 minutes per week, and at Equinix for 30-60 minutes per week.
We adhere to the highest standards of data security and prefer to work exclusively inside your own clouds or systems where possible. For deeper analysis, we strip out PII and deploy ML/AI on air-gapped systems before joining the insights as enrichments to your CRM or intended systems.
The first initiative of identifying opportunities to cut waste is designed to deliver ROI in 30 days. We help to identify underutilized tools, where you're overspending in marketing, and where to improve profitability from existing activities to help open your runway for future investments, with ROI scoped from the beginning.
We work as independently as possible, preferring one-on-one brief meetings with stakeholders as we gather information and understanding. After our analysis or planning, we invite only those needed to discuss plans for cost reduction or systems implementation. At each stage where we conduct analysis, implement systems, or develop and launch campaigns, we work fully autonomously, offering you flexibility to approve milestones.