A two-part operator's letter. Phase one is the restructuring of AlignWellness. Phase two is the cross-moat that grew out of it.
Phase One · The Ledger
The first six years of AlignWellness were not a victory lap. What follows is the honest version — the part of the story that makes the second half believable.
Chapter I
April 2017. Majority stake in Clinio's Ontario location network. Five locations on day one.
We bought a Canadian paramedical chain in April 2017 with the conviction that disciplined operating ownership — not roll-up financial engineering — was the unlock for a fragmented category.
The investment thesis was straightforward. Multi-disciplinary paramedical care has durable insurance demand, recurring patient life-cycles, and almost no professional capital chasing it in Canada. The asset itself was rougher than the thesis. Service quality varied wildly between sites, partner clinicians ran their own playbooks, and the unit economics were positive in name only.
We worked it for years before we worked it well. We deleted all but five locations early and kept rebuilding the partner roster and the service standard, location by location. Account life-cycles still tapered. Churn stayed up. The business went sideways with lacklustre results — not dead, but not deserving of a case study either.
Chapter II
Early 2023. A major account overhaul — money-losing locations cut in a single month. The intentional cleanup that unlocked everything after it.
By early 2023, the network had grown to just over forty managed locations — and been cut back to five. Mystery shopping confirmed what the numbers already showed: partner performance was inconsistent, churn ran above 40%, the operating model wasn't working. We rebuilt to the mid-teens. Then we did it again.
The second overhaul was the one that mattered. We cut the largest remaining account — a four-location chain that still wasn't performing — in a single month. A step the spreadsheet couldn't tell from a collapse. It wasn't weakness. It was the cleanup that removed the last drag. At the same time we flattened the sales model — one small, focused team serving the entire account base directly, leveraging automation and AI instead of headcount. Churn didn't just fall; it all but disappeared. Everything since has been pure, high-quality acceleration.
Operating Health · Before the Overhaul → Now
Gross Billings · Annualized Pace From The Base
>8× off the trough · +76.6% in 2025 · H1 2026 running +52.8% YoY — with no material fixed-cost step-up.
The killer insight: more than four times the locations, churn collapsed from elevated to elite, and fixed cost coverage swung from negative to a credible 3× line by year-end 2026 — all on the same footprint that had been sliding sideways for years.
Chapter III
2025 onward. Five-year customer contracts. Recurring revenue. Tenure 2-3× the industry average.
Today's Align is structurally a different business than the one we bought. The change is in the contracts, the systems, and the people — not the brand on the door.
Align · Then
Align · Now
The business today produces approximately three times the cash flow of the original cheque, with a credible path to over five times in the next twelve months. The compounding from here looks different than the climb to here — and that is what Phase Two is about.
AlignWellness · How the Model Works
Asset-light. Contractor practitioners. Two demand engines — Align brings new customers, partners bring their own members — with a simple 30 / 70 gross-revenue split.
The Network Operator
Align (CHI)
Brings new-customer demand and runs the network — billing & processing, scheduling, compliance, clinical standard, and the revenue split.
The Venue
Partner
Wellness clinic, fitness facility, pilates / movement studio — markets physio to its own members inside a space it already operates.
The Practitioner
Physiotherapists
Independent contractors delivering assessment & treatment on-site, reinforcing the location's own programming.
30 / 70
Gross-revenue split — partners keep the lion’s share and net ~40%+ margin on a service they didn’t have to build, while Align earns its share across every location in the network.
Problems solved — for every side of the network
Partners
Venue owners & operators
Physios
Independent practitioners
Patients
Members of partner venues
Scope: Align Wellness (CHI) partner model only — excludes the Scale Health layer. Revenue split and value exchanges per management.
The Operating Bench
The Align team is, frankly, the best operating bench we've ever stood up. Five operators and clinicians who have shipped paramedical service inside hundreds of businesses — every partner gets all five, no account ever gets handed to a queue. Chris leads it.
Chief Executive Officer · AlignWellness
B.Sc. Mathematics & Statistics, University of Toronto
Twelve years inside health and wellness, with clinical service launches at over a hundred businesses. Chris turns operating data into clear, defensible growth plans — and has led Align back to its strongest pre-disruption performance.
The Purge in Chapter II was hard. Chris ran it without flinching, then rebuilt the playbook the network now ships on.
The Bench · Every Partner Gets All Five
Partner Success Lead
B.Sc. Neuroscience, Laurentian University
Multi-industry strategist — corporate distribution, finance, insurance, SMB. Runs proactive account management, reads the numbers, keeps every location on its growth path.
Location Operations Lead
B.Sc. Kinesiology, U of T · 13+ years
An operator's operator. Stands up the systems, schedules, and patient-experience standards that make a location run on rails — measurable results at every site she touches.
Partner Launch Specialist
Former pro athlete · Waterloo varsity basketball
Brings the discipline of a professional athlete to every launch. Takes new partners from signed agreement to a fully operational, client-ready location.
Clinical Partnership Specialist
Registered Physiotherapist · Half Ironman
A clinician who speaks operator. Translates clinical opportunity into business strategy — building trust with practitioners while protecting quality of care.
Hundreds of clinical service launches between them. No queues. No hand-offs. The reason a 69.3% location CAGR doesn't read as a number on a slide.
Deal Tear-Sheet
Restructured by the same operator that bought it. No change of control.
Phase Two · The Cross-Moat Map
Once Align was structurally healthy, Silver Birch Growth built a private network around it: Scale Health routes digital and in-person demand, Align is the exclusive physiotherapy fulfillment nucleus, and the new SBG-owned Birch Reserve brokers the display inventory created by that traffic.
The Flywheel
More traffic. More volume. More brands.
01 / Audience Origination
As approved hubs activate, partner brands bring their existing audiences. Traffic accumulates hub by hub rather than arriving all at once.
02 / Automated Ad Brokerage
Owned by Silver Birch Growth. Brokers advertising across recovery-economy media inventory created by brands and activated hubs; advertising revenue flows to Scale Health.
03 / Demand Routing Engine
A private, invite-only digital network being prepared to route consumer demand across digital and physical fulfillment as each hub activates.
04 / In-Person Nucleus
The exclusive in-person physiotherapy fulfillment network and initial clinical nucleus. Results validate the model and attract new brands and clinics.
Volume pulls the next brand in
Pre-scale status
Brand demand and clinic supply are being curated now; activation will happen in stages and audience traffic will ramp with a lag. Targeting 100MM+ recurring page views/month by December 2026; this is not current traffic, contracted volume, or a guarantee.
Supporting Cast
Silver Birch Growth
Operator · Owns Birch Reserve
Birch Reserve
Automated Ad Brokerage
Scale Health
Private Digital Network
AlignWellness
Exclusive Physio Nucleus
Clinic Network
Curated Expansion
Exclusive · Canada · Health & Wellness
Through Scale, RDGDH has unlocked a fully turnkey drop store for the network — every partner location can spin up a branded storefront in minutes, with premium recovery, supplements, and wearables already loaded. Payments, fulfilment, and merchandising are done.
Operators collect the margin as customers buy. One-to-many store deployment. No build, no ops overhead, day-one revenue on existing patient flow.
Brand Demand · Curated
A curated mix of established and challenger recovery, supplement, wellness, and performance brands — practitioner-screened, not algorithm-listed.
DR-HO'S · Insider Marketplace — Live
Live member portals in production today — insider marketplaces and co-branded wellness hubs running on Scale Health across the partner network.
The Private Network
1
Brands → Audience
Partner brands stand up hubs on their own sites. Their existing customers become the first traffic entering the private network.
2
Birch Reserve → Scale
Birch Reserve, owned by Silver Birch Growth, brokers advertising across the recovery-economy media inventory created by brands and activated hubs. Advertising revenue flows to Scale Health.
3
Scale + Align → Fulfillment
Scale Health routes digital demand. AlignWellness is the exclusive in-person physiotherapy network and initial clinical nucleus.
1M+
Customers Serviced
100+
Practitioner Network
>$100k
Pilot Media · Scaling After
25
Founding Brand Slots
The Front Door · Partner Benefits
Rolling out now: we're aggregating benefits plans across the network, so every Align partner location can offer its team real employee benefits through one network-wide plan — the kind of coverage that's hard for a single clinic to stand up on its own.
One Plan · Whole Network
Pooled buying power
Aggregating benefits across 80+ partner locations is designed to unlock coverage terms an independent clinic would struggle to get alone — the network negotiates as one.
Staff Retention
Partners keep their people
Benefits are a common reason practitioners and staff choose big employers over small operators. Giving partners real coverage to offer is meant to help them attract and keep their teams.
Churn Reducer
The network keeps its partners
When a partner's team is covered through the network plan, leaving the network means walking away from the benefits too — a concrete, everyday reason to stay, on top of the revenue the flywheel already delivers.
Now
Rolling Out · 2026
80+
Partner Locations Eligible
1
Aggregated Network Plan
2
Retention Levers · Staff + Partners
Benefits are designed to make the network stickier in both directions — helping staff stay with partners, and partners stay with the network — a low-cost churn lever that gets stronger with every location that joins.
The Private Ad Surface
Partner-brand hubs and customer journeys create recurring, context-rich display inventory inside Scale Health's private, invite-only network. Birch Reserve, owned by Silver Birch Growth, brokers the advertising, and advertising revenue flows to Scale Health. Brand demand and clinic supply are being curated now; activation will happen in stages and audience traffic will ramp with a lag so the commercial audience and clinical fulfillment capacity grow together.
Operating Model · Current Build
Targeting 100MM+ recurring page views/month by December 2026. This is a forward operating plan, not current traffic, contracted inventory, or a guarantee.
Sub-Case · Network Pilot
Single-Site Network Pilot
Single-site paramedical partner location inside the network. SBG-built AI agent deployed three months ago — automates inbound and outbound calls, lead qualification, and scheduling.
Tested through one of our own locations before extending the same playbook to network partners.
Metric
Pre-AI
3 Months In
Extrapolated across the 80+-location Align network with reallocated manager time toward B2B and partnership testing: $3M – $6M annual gross margin lift. The same playbook now ships with the Scale drop-store roll-out.
Deal Tear-Sheet
Every surface funds the next. Demand becomes privately sourced from the same brands we supply.
What's next in the series