I find your leaks. We design your profit.
Statesmen. Publishers. Elite performers. Business operators. Every room in this record shaped a specific way I look at a small business today.
Host of The Profit on CNBC. Chairman of Beyond Inc. Marcus put the same thesis I run every day on national television.
Secretary of State. Nobel Peace laureate. Kissinger thought in twenty-year arcs while the room thought in headlines.
Chicago, 2001. The tax code, trade posture, and credit environment American businesses run inside today were largely written under his signature.
United States Senator. Secretary of State. Twice a candidate for the presidency. The kind of room you leave thinking differently about how power moves.
Editor-in-chief of Forbes. Chairman of Forbes Media. Two-time presidential candidate. When Forbes talks about money, the room listens.
Civil rights leader. Founder of Rainbow PUSH and the Wall Street Project. Nobody pushed harder on capital access for minority-owned businesses.
Three Super Bowl rings. Owns pieces of the Royals, Sporting KC, Alpine F1, KC Current, Whataburger, and 1Password. He picks cash-flowing businesses the way he picks receivers open on the boundary.
The only athlete to make all-star teams in two major American sports. Now runs Bo Jackson Enterprises and serves as advisory director at Burr Ridge Bank & Trust.
Author of 12 Rules for Life, over ten million copies sold. Founder of Peterson Academy. Turned a psychology professorship into one of the most consequential publishing businesses of the decade.
“Growth without design is not a strategy.”
Jay Aldebert
Over 26 years, Jay has recovered more than $2 billion in profit leaks for owner-operated businesses. Not from a classroom. From 86,000+ diagnostics across construction, the trades, manufacturing, transportation, distribution, and services. Businesses profitable on paper and bleeding cash in reality.
He created Return to Owner, the Business Biomarker Index, and The Aldebert Financial Ecosystem. The methodology behind the diagnostic team he built at International Services Inc., which generated over $1 billion in consulting fees along the way.
Today he is Chief Growth Officer of International Services Inc., hosts The Chief of Growth Show, and authored Return to Owner and the forthcoming The Seven Lies That Are Destroying Your Business. Father of three. Lives in Kildeer, Illinois.
Four stages, one continuous diagnostic. Each stage feeds the next. You do not repeat data entry. You do not wait for a monthly close. The system reads your business the way a cardiologist reads a heart.
Reads eleven proprietary Business Biomarkers on your business, continuously. Not once a year. Not once a quarter. Constant. Think blood panel and MRI, running while the patient is still alive.
Five layers, bottom to top. Minimum Mandatory Profit at the foundation. Then Fixed Cost Capacity. Then Required Gross Margin dollars. Then Intended Gross Margin percent. Breakeven Sales Volume at the top. This is the math that turns a profit floor into a revenue target.
The eleven biomarkers roll into one composite score. Every dimension carries meaning, cause, action, and pushback. This is what your analyst delivers to you, not a spreadsheet, but a diagnosis.
A fifteen-page written verdict. Not a dashboard. Not a slide deck. A written diagnosis in the order the doctrine demands, telling you where you are right now based on every decision you have made, and what has to happen next: today, tomorrow, and next week.
The Aldebert Financial Ecosystem does one thing. It measures where you are right now based on every decision you have made, and tells you exactly what the next move is: today, tomorrow, and next week.
Every tool available to business owners right now is a lagging indicator. It tells them what already happened. The Aldebert Financial Ecosystem tells them what to do next. Not generically. Specifically. In what order. And how fast.
The diagnostic instrument the whole ecosystem runs on. Return to Owner is the MRI and CAT scan on your business. It reads across 11 proprietary Business Biomarkers, calibrated against 86,000+ prior diagnostics, and produces the one number every owner must know.
Cash. Debt service. Margin. Working capital. Owner draw. Five more. The eleven signals a real diagnostic reads before it declares anything.
The verdict, and the visual output of RTO. Layer Cake stacks the 11 Biomarkers on a foundation of Minimum Mandatory Profit and resolves upward to the Breakeven Sales the business must produce.
Debt Service. Working Capital. Retirement Funding. Owner's Compensation. Exit Strategy. The five mandatory claims on profit funded before profit is optional.
The health score of the business. Once the Layer Cake resolves to Breakeven Sales, BBI scores whether the business can hit it, reads like a vital sign, and isolates the constraint point holding it back.
The one biomarker holding the business back. Named, not implied. The score every owner leaves with, and the one number the diagnostic team turns into a plan.
RTO reads the business like an MRI. Layer Cake delivers the verdict. BBI scores the health and isolates the constraint. What to fix. In what order. How fast.
A member of Jay's diagnostic team comes to your location for a two-day on-site analysis across operations, sales and marketing, finance, and measurement and management tools. We look at all the plays you're calling and how they're working out on the field. You get the written Verdict. No retainer required.
Ask the owner in the mirror: Is there a better way to make profit? Can I improve my quality of life? Do I know my numbers as well as I should? If the answer to any of those is honest, you already know the next step.
Click Find My Leak. Tell us where the business stands today and what feels off. We reply within one business day to scope the diagnostic.
A member of Jay's diagnostic team comes to your location for a two-day analysis across operations, sales and marketing, finance, and measurement and management tools. We look at every play you're calling and how it's working out on the field.
A 15-page written diagnostic delivered afterward. Yours. What you do with it is your decision. No retainer required.
The diagnostic runs whether you hire the team for the fix or not. Some owners walk away with the Verdict and solve it themselves. Some ask us to stay.
Find My LeakTV, press, and podcast appearances.
Television
Extended 7-minute Loop interview. August 25, 2026.
Watch segment →
With Lauren Scafidi. August 24, 2026.
Watch segment →
With Carel Lajara. August 23, 2026.
Watch segment →
With Lauren Scafidi. August 19, 2026.
Watch segment →
With Sam Vadas and Marley Kayden. August 17, 2026.
Watch segment →
With Lauren Scafidi. August 4, 2026.
Watch segment →
Live segment. July 21, 2026.
Watch segment →
Cost per plate, supplier transparency, and what it means for small restaurants. July 2026.
Watch segment →
Chicago Live segment. July 9, 2026.
Watch segment →
Premiered July 4, 2026.
Watch segment →
June 12, 2026.
Watch segment →As a Guest On
Selected appearances on other shows. Watch on the host's YouTube channel or listen on your preferred podcast platform.
Marcus Lemonis, host of The Profit on CNBC and Chairman of Beyond Inc., interviews Jay on the operator diagnostic thesis he runs every day.
Watch the interview →
On the operator pattern behind 86,000+ diagnostics, the two cancers that kill privately held businesses, and what accountants are not telling their clients.
Watch or Listen →
On patterns across 86,000+ businesses and the 11 biomarkers behind them.
Watch or Listen →
On the show with Kevin Harrington and Seth Greene.
Watch or Listen →
A conversation on the mechanics of profit.
Watch or Listen →
The truth behind the failure rate.
Watch or Listen →As Featured In
Conversations with operators, founders, and executives shaping the next wave of business growth.
New episodes drop Thursdays.
Justin Sloan on systems, duplication, and calculated risk across cell phones, real estate, and AI.
Watch episode →
A conversation on what separates elite business operators from everyone else.
Watch episode →
On the mission behind the diagnostic work.
Watch episode →
On tariffs, pricing, and the real math for small business owners.
Watch episode →
Barbara of Thesis Painting on building an $8M family business.
Watch episode →
Andrea Biwer, Schaumburg Business Association.
Watch episode →
Jay Aldebert on the seven lies quietly holding operators back.
Watch episode →
Dave Alwan on going from milk crates to Mark Cuban.
Watch episode →
Pete Hassen, former Chicago Blackhawks executive.
Watch episode →
David Hlatky of H&H Service Company.
Watch episode →
A crossover with The Business Game Podcast.
Watch episode →
Terry Mitchell's unfiltered truth.
Watch episode →
Why most small business owners get this wrong.
Watch episode →
Chad Peterson on building a brokerage empire.
Watch episode →
The premiere. How thousands of analyses became a framework.
Watch episode →Three libraries. Seventy-eight answers. Every one grounded in doctrine. Read what you need before you book, or skip straight to the diagnostic.
Long-form documentaries and short-form breakdowns of the businesses that shape the economy. Weekly. Free. Subscribe on YouTube.
The intake is not a form. It is the first minute of what happens when someone hires Jay. Doctrine-aware, four questions, three minutes. Jay reads every intake himself and replies within one business day.
Start the IntakePrefer to skip the intake? Email leak@jayaldebert.com. Urgent? Text 773-984-1183.
Diagnostic engagements are scoped to your revenue tier. Jay confirms scope on the first call.
Add jayaldebert.com as a Preferred Source. Your Top Stories, Discover, and AI Overviews will surface Aldebert diagnostics ahead of the accountants and coaches trying to sound like them.
