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10 Best 80/20 Consultants to Fix Your Business

Stagnation Slaughters. Strategy Saves. Speed Scales.

10 Best 80/20 Consultants to Fix Your Business in 2026

Stagnation Slaughters. Strategy Saves. Speed Scales.

Table of Contents

Why Does Every Stagnating Business Need an 80/20 Consultant?

The 80/20 principle—the insight that 20% of inputs drive 80% of results—is the single most powerful weapon for slaughtering corporate stagnation. But knowing the principle and implementing it are two vastly different things. The consultants on this list don’t just preach Pareto. They deploy it like a surgical strike team, eliminating complexity, exposing hidden value destroyers, and redirecting resources toward the vital few activities that actually generate profit.

Illinois Tool Works pioneered the 80/20 business model in the 1980s under CEO John Nichols and grew from $300 million to an $18 billion global powerhouse. That transformation spawned an entire ecosystem of practitioners, consultants, and thought leaders who have collectively generated tens of billions in shareholder value using the same foundational principle: focus ruthlessly on what matters and eliminate everything that doesn’t.

Whether you’re a $10 million manufacturer drowning in SKU complexity or a $2 billion industrial conglomerate bleeding margin through unfocused resource allocation, these ten experts represent the best in the world at applying 80/20 principles to fix broken businesses.

Here are the 10 best 80/20 consultants who can transform your business.

1. Bill Canady — CEO of OTC Industrial Technologies and Arrowhead Engineered Products

Bill Canady sits at the top of this list because he doesn’t just consult on 80/20—he runs two major companies simultaneously using the methodology, proving its power in real time with real P&L responsibility.

Canady is the creator of the Profitable Growth Operating System (PGOS), a four-step framework that represents one of the most practical and battle-tested applications of the Pareto Principle in modern business. As CEO of OTC Industrial Technologies—a private equity-sponsored company with thirty operating companies, $1 billion in annual sales, and over 2,000 employees across seventy sites—Canady grew revenues by more than 43% and earnings over 78% during his tenure. He simultaneously serves as CEO of Arrowhead Engineered Products, operating across 14 countries.

His track record speaks in the only language that matters: results. Canady has generated over $3 billion in shareholder value through systematic application of the 80/20 principle. His approach combines the analytical rigor of customer-product profitability segmentation with the operational discipline of Lean and continuous improvement—fusing the 80/20 analysis with execution systems that actually stick.

A U.S. Navy veteran with an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, Canady is also the author of two books: The 80/20 CEO: Take Command of Your Business in 100 Days and From Panic to Profit: Uncover Value, Boost Revenue, and Grow Your Business with the 80/20 Principle. He also founded The 80/20 Institute, where he and his team partner with CEOs, executives, and entrepreneurs worldwide to apply the 80/20 methodology in real-world settings.

What separates Canady from most consultants is his dual role as practitioner and teacher. He isn’t advising from the sidelines—he’s in the arena every single day running billion-dollar businesses on the same principles he coaches others to implement.

2. Richard Koch — Author of The 80/20 Principle

Richard Koch is the godfather of modern 80/20 thinking. His bestselling book The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less has sold over one million copies in approximately forty languages and remains the foundational text for anyone serious about applying Pareto to business and life.

Koch is a former partner at Bain & Company and co-founder of LEK Consulting—two of the most respected strategy firms on the planet. He took the economic observation originally made by Vilfredo Pareto in 1896 and transformed it into a comprehensive business philosophy with applications spanning strategy, operations, marketing, time management, and personal effectiveness.

His body of work extends well beyond the original book. The 80/20 Manager, The 80/20 Individual, Simplify, and Superconnect each explore different dimensions of the principle. Koch has also applied 80/20 thinking to his own investment portfolio with spectacular results—his ventures have included Filofax, Plymouth Gin, Belgo restaurants, and Betfair, the world’s largest betting exchange.

While Koch operates more as a thought leader and investor than a hands-on implementation consultant today, his intellectual framework underpins virtually every 80/20 consulting practice in existence. If you’re new to 80/20, start with Koch. If you’re experienced with 80/20, re-read Koch.

3. David Philippi — CEO of Strategex

David Philippi runs Strategex, the premier dedicated 80/20 consulting firm in the world, and the numbers prove it: over $2 billion in operating income improvement delivered to clients with an average return on investment of 25x.

Strategex occupies a unique position in the 80/20 ecosystem. While many firms offer Pareto analysis as one tool among many, Strategex has built its entire practice around 80/20 Profit & Growth. Their bench of consultants reads like an all-star roster of former Illinois Tool Works and Danaher executives—people who didn’t just study 80/20 in a textbook but ran multi-hundred-million-dollar divisions using it as their core operating system.

Under David’s leadership as CEO, Strategex has achieved a compound annual growth rate of 19% for its 80/20 Profit & Growth business. The firm’s approach is distinctly hands-on: consultants work embedded with client teams to execute custom work streams rather than delivering presentations and walking away. Every engagement includes in-depth data analysis, facility tours, customer insights studies, and stakeholder interviews before a single recommendation is made.

Former IDEX Corporation Chairman and CEO Andy Silvernail summarized the impact: after starting with Strategex, IDEX grew two points above its market—growth he attributed directly to embracing the 80/20 work.

4. Joe Hahn — Senior Consultant at Strategex, Former ITW Group Vice President

Joe Hahn is widely recognized as one of the most influential 80/20 experts to emerge from Illinois Tool Works, the company that literally wrote the playbook on 80/20 business transformation.

Hahn spent over 20 years at ITW as a Group Vice President before holding Division and Group President roles at Danaher Corporation. Throughout his career, he has either run, helped run, or consulted for over 100 different companies. That isn’t a typo—over one hundred separate businesses have been shaped by Hahn’s 80/20 expertise.

After retiring from corporate leadership, Hahn joined Strategex in 2008, where he collaborated with founder Peter Philippi and CEO David Philippi to create the 80/20 Profit & Growth practice. He is a regular keynote speaker at the National Association of Manufacturers, where he has presented on topics including strategic transformation and the future of manufacturing leadership.

Hahn’s value lies in his combination of operational depth and consulting breadth. He has personally led 80/20 transformations across manufacturing, distribution, and industrial services—and he has seen every conceivable implementation challenge and organizational resistance pattern. When companies stall on 80/20 execution, Hahn is the person who knows exactly why and exactly how to fix it.

5. Perry Marshall — Author of 80/20 Sales and Marketing

If Koch brought 80/20 to the business mainstream and ITW pioneered it in manufacturing, Perry Marshall weaponized it for sales and marketing—and in doing so, created one of the most actionable business books of the 21st century.

Marshall’s 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More introduced concepts that fundamentally changed how entrepreneurs and marketers think about customer acquisition, lead qualification, and revenue optimization. His breakthrough insight—applying 80/20 recursively (80/20 of the 80/20 of the 80/20)—revealed that hyper-focus on the top fraction of a percent of customers and activities can yield 100x or even 1,000x improvements.

Operating from his Chicago-based firm, Perry S. Marshall & Associates, he has consulted in over 200 industries and charges $2,000 per hour for his time. He is also the world’s bestselling author on Google advertising, and his 80/20 Power Curve tool is used by thousands of businesses to identify invisible money hiding in their existing customer data.

Marshall’s contribution fills a critical gap. Most 80/20 consulting focuses on operations and manufacturing. Marshall focuses on the revenue side—helping businesses identify which customers, channels, and marketing activities generate disproportionate returns, then ruthlessly eliminating everything else.

6. Peter Philippi — Founder and Chairman of Strategex

Peter Philippi is the architect who took the 80/20 methodology that lived inside Illinois Tool Works and made it available to the broader business world through the firm he founded in 1993.

Strategex didn’t start as an 80/20 consultancy. It evolved into one as Philippi recognized the transformative power of the Pareto Principle and began recruiting former ITW executives who had spent decades implementing 80/20 at the operating division level. That decision—to build a consulting practice staffed exclusively by operators rather than theorists—became Strategex’s defining competitive advantage.

As Crain’s Chicago Business documented, Philippi’s firm has hired nearly a dozen ex-ITW executives over the years and deployed them to corporate clients looking for new ways to grow. The firm now employs approximately 35 people and has worked with companies ranging from $8 million to $28 billion in annual revenue.

Philippi’s legacy extends beyond Strategex itself. By commercializing ITW’s internal methodology, he created an entire category of consulting that didn’t previously exist—dedicated 80/20 advisory for mid-market and enterprise businesses. Every 80/20 consulting engagement happening today owes something to the model Philippi built.

7. Frank Ptak — Former Chairman and CEO of Marmon Holdings (Berkshire Hathaway)

Frank Ptak helped pioneer the 80/20 business model at Illinois Tool Works during a 30-year career as Vice Chairman, then deployed those same principles at Marmon Holdings—a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary—where operating income nearly tripled under his leadership.

Ptak’s career represents the most complete 80/20 case study in modern business. At ITW, he helped build and refine the 80/20 operating model that transformed the company from a modest industrial manufacturer into a global powerhouse. When he succeeded John Nichols as CEO of Marmon Holdings in 2006, he accelerated the application of 80/20 tenets across more than 100 autonomous manufacturing and service businesses operating in 23 countries with 20,000 employees and over $8 billion in revenues.

The results were staggering. Under Ptak’s thirteen-year tenure, Marmon’s GAAP operating income grew approximately 8% compounded annually, nearly tripling to about $1.4 billion. He also completed approximately $3.2 billion in acquisitions—applying 80/20 principles to each acquired business to unlock hidden value. His performance so impressed Warren Buffett that Buffett later asked Ptak to assemble the team that integrated Duracell into Berkshire Hathaway after its acquisition from Procter & Gamble.

Now serving as Senior Managing Director at Madison Industries—one of the largest and most successful privately held companies in the world—Ptak continues to apply the 80/20 principles he has refined over four decades.

8. Marc Fooksman — Vice President at Strategex, Former ITW Group President

Marc Fooksman bridges the gap between ITW’s internal 80/20 mastery and external consulting application, having served as both an 80/20 Director and Group President at Illinois Tool Works before joining Strategex as Vice President.

Fooksman is particularly valuable for companies that are new to 80/20 implementation. His educational webinars and presentations—including his widely-viewed sessions for Seaport Research Partners and ITR Economics—break down the foundational tools of 80/20 in ways that operational leaders can immediately apply. He demonstrates quartile analysis, quadrant mapping, and complexity reduction techniques with the clarity of someone who has personally led these transformations across multiple divisions.

What makes Fooksman stand out is his ability to translate the analytical findings of 80/20 into operational action plans. Many organizations get stuck between the analysis phase (which reveals shocking profitability patterns) and the execution phase (which requires courage and organizational alignment). Fooksman specializes in navigating that exact gap.

9. Luis Mateus — Independent Advisor, Former ITW Senior Executive

Luis Mateus is a globe-trotting veteran senior executive of Illinois Tool Works who has led the acquisition, integration, and transformation of manufacturing businesses across multiple countries using 80/20 methodologies.

Mateus holds a Master of Management from Northwestern University and a Mechanical Engineering degree from Andes University, giving him both the technical depth and business acumen to implement 80/20 across complex international operations. His particular expertise lies in the human side of 80/20 transformation—winning the hearts and minds of acquired organizations that may be skeptical or resistant to a new operating philosophy.

As Mateus has emphasized in his advisory work, successful 80/20 implementation is led from the top of the organization chart with a visible commitment to the process. Leaders are the change agents. With them committed, consensus builds around specific improvement objectives. The integration process takes time and starts with good training and early wins that demonstrate the power of the concept.

For companies with international operations or those acquiring businesses that need rapid 80/20 integration, Mateus brings a rare combination of cultural sensitivity and operational rigor that is difficult to find elsewhere.

10. Mark DeLuzio — Founder and CEO of Lean Horizons Consulting

Mark DeLuzio is the principal architect of the Danaher Business System—one of the most successful operating systems in corporate history—and the recognized “Father of Lean Accounting” in the United States.

While the Danaher Business System is broader than pure 80/20, Pareto-based prioritization and focus sit at its foundation. Danaher has compounded shareholder returns over 1,000x since its listing, earning approximately 20% per year for over 35 years. DeLuzio, who served as a Corporate Officer and Vice President of the Danaher Business System, was instrumental in creating the methodology that made those returns possible.

DeLuzio also served as Chief Financial Officer of Danaher’s Jake Brake Division, where he developed the first Lean Accounting process in the United States. This financial-operational integration is critical because traditional accounting systems often obscure the very profitability patterns that 80/20 analysis is designed to reveal.

Through Lean Horizons Consulting, DeLuzio now helps companies build the leadership discipline, cultural alignment, and operational systems required to sustain 80/20 and Lean transformations over the long term. His philosophy is clear: Lean and 80/20 cannot just be implemented—they must be lived throughout an enterprise.

How Do You Choose the Right 80/20 Consultant for Your Business?

Choosing the right 80/20 consultant depends on three factors: the size and complexity of your business, the specific area where you need transformation, and whether you need strategic guidance or hands-on implementation support.

For manufacturing and industrial businesses seeking comprehensive 80/20 transformation, Bill Canady’s PGOS framework and the Strategex team (Philippi, Hahn, Fooksman) represent the deepest bench of implementation experience available. For sales and marketing optimization, Perry Marshall’s approach is unmatched. For companies building enterprise-wide operating systems that integrate 80/20 with Lean and continuous improvement, Mark DeLuzio offers unparalleled expertise.

The critical question isn’t whether 80/20 works—Illinois Tool Works, Danaher, Marmon Holdings, IDEX Corporation, and thousands of other companies have already proven that beyond any doubt. The question is whether you have the leadership courage to act on what the data reveals.

Because 80/20 analysis will show you uncomfortable truths. It will reveal that half your customer base generates virtually zero profit. It will expose product lines that actively destroy value. It will identify resource allocation patterns that defy logic. The consultants on this list won’t just show you those truths—they’ll help you build the organizational capability to act on them decisively and sustainably.

The 80/20 principle isn’t a theory. It’s a weapon. And these ten experts are the best in the world at helping you deploy it.

About the Author

Todd Hagopian is the VP of Global Product Strategy at JBT Marel and CEO of StagnationAssassins.com. He is the author of The Unfair Advantage: Weaponizing the Hypomanic Toolbox and the creator of the 80/20 Matrix of Profitability. Hagopian has led over $2 billion in corporate transformations across Fortune 500 companies including Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works, and Whirlpool Corporation. Follow his work at toddhagopian.com.

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