About us
An operator's practice, run out of Edinburgh, working only in consulting-firm economics.
We do the work, not a report
Rule Four Consulting is the commercial and financial engine room for owner-managed and scaling consulting firms. We install the machinery that stops profit leaking — pricing, utilisation, project margin, commercial operations and the financial model — and then, if it is useful, we run it.
Every engagement ends with something running: a rate card in use, a utilisation model your team updates, a monthly pack that changes a decision. That is the whole distinction. Most owners already know roughly what is wrong. The value is in the doing.
We've run these businesses
Finance and operations leadership through growth, from owner-managed to scaled — including due diligence and a sale. Not theory. The practice is led from Edinburgh and draws on a background spanning financial modelling, management consulting and finance leadership.
Rule Four Consulting sits alongside Rule Four Capital, a UK acquisition vehicle focused on owner-managed professional-services and asset-light businesses. The two share a thesis: that the commercial decisions which compound — how you price, what you count as billable, when you hire — are made earlier and matter more than most owners are told.
We show the arithmetic
This industry is full of confident numbers with nothing behind them — a target margin, a utilisation rate, a valuation multiple, none of them with a stated source or a range. We publish the working: where the figure came from, what it was calculated on, and how wide the spread actually is.
That applies to everything on this site. Every benchmark we quote carries its source and its denominator, every range carries its spread, and every transaction figure carries its deal count. You can check all of it. The articles and the tools are where we do it in public.
See where your margin is leaking
The Commercial Health Check shows you, in days, where profit is escaping — and exactly what it would take to fix it. Fixed fee, no obligation, and the fastest way to see how we work.
Book a Commercial Health Check Or try the free scorecard