OPERATING ADVISORY FOR PRIVATE EQUITY
I work with sponsors and portfolio company leadership in logistics, distribution, and warehousing. I diagnose what’s constraining performance and rebuild the operating model to carry the hold period.
THE INTEGRATION GAP
Acquisitions close faster than organizations adapt. Decision rights stay undefined, priorities compete, and escalation becomes the default. Elxis closes that gap before it costs a hold period.
Services
Three ways sponsors bring me in.
Defined scope, fixed timelines, and deliverables your investment committee can read.
01
Operational Due Diligence
Pre-close assessment of the operating model, leadership bench, and execution risk. What you’re actually buying, where integration will strain, and what it will cost to fix.
02
100-Day Operating Plan
Post-close diagnostic and value creation plan. Decision rights, priority sequencing, and the operating cadence required to hit the plan — built with the management team, not handed to them.
03
Interim & Fractional Operating Leadership
Hands-on leadership during transition, a leadership gap, or an integration. Not advice from the sideline — accountability inside the business.
ABOUT
I’ve run the shift, carried the P&L, and made the payroll.
I’m William Gaines. I started as a package handler at FedEx Ground and spent seven years working up to area manager over hub operations. I then spent four years at Amazon across logistics, fulfillment, and robotics, moving from area manager into continuous improvement leadership. After that I ran my own logistics company for three years — 150 people, my own trucks, my own payroll.
Across all of it — a Fortune 100 hub, Amazon’s fulfillment and robotics networks, and my own company — the constraint was rarely the work. It was that nobody had defined who decides what. I started Elxis to close that gap inside logistics and distribution businesses where growth or acquisition has outpaced the operating model.
Most advisors in this sector arrive with a framework and no floor time. That’s the difference in the room.
14 yrs
FEDEX · AMAZON · FOUNDER
150
LARGEST TEAM LED
WHERE I WORK
Fourteen years inside the operations your portfolio is buying.
3PL & Warehousing
Multi-site operations where acquisition has outpaced standardization.
Last-Mile & Delivery
Labor-intensive networks where cost per unit lives or dies on execution discipline.
Freight & Transportation
Asset and brokerage operations under margin pressure and integration strain.
Industrial Distribution
Growth that has outrun the systems and leadership structure supporting it.
THE ENGAGEMENT
From thesis to an organization capable of delivering it.
A structured operating review and value creation plan, delivered inside the first 100 days.
Envision
Define what the business must become to deliver the investment thesis, and what currently makes that impossible.
Clarify
Identify the decisions, leadership gaps, and structural constraints limiting execution.
Align
Establish decision rights, shared priorities, and clear ownership across the leadership team.
Advance
Install the operating cadence and accountability that hold the gains after I’m gone.
BEFORE WE TALK
The questions I get on every first call.
How is this different from a consulting firm?
You get an operator, not a team of analysts. I do the work myself, which means smaller scope, faster answers, and no pass-through of your engagement to someone two years out of undergrad.
How fast can you start?
Operational due diligence typically runs two to three weeks. A 100-day plan begins within a week of close. I take a limited number of engagements at a time so timelines hold.
Will management see this as a threat?
Only if it’s done badly. The plan gets built with your leadership team, using their language and their data. Buy-in isn’t a phase at the end — it’s how the work gets done.
What do we actually receive?
A written diagnostic, a prioritized value creation plan with owners and dates, and an operating cadence your team runs without me. Everything sized to be read by an investment committee.
YOUR NEXT MOVE
The thesis was sound. The operating model has to catch up.
A focused conversation about the asset, where execution is straining, and what the first 100 days should address.