← Case StudiesCase Study 01

Bought a struggling chain. Rebuilt it.

A two-part operator's letter. Phase one is the growth of AlignWellness under Clairvoyant Holdings. Phase two is the stack that runs alongside it.

Acquired · April 2017MSP growth · 2023 — 2024Today · 80+ Active Partner Locations~3× Cash on Original Cheque
·
I

Phase One · The Ledger

A near-loss, a deliberate purge, and the climb back.

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

The Asset We Saw

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 early results 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

The Purge

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

Locations
18
80+
+344%
Core Churn (annualized)
>35%
<5%
Elite
Installed-Base NDR (Ramp-Aware)
—
>120% (136.5% mature)
Expansionary
Billings vs Sep '23 Trough
1.0×
>8×
Reversed

The killer insight: more than four times the locations, and churn collapsed from elevated to elite — all on the same footprint that had been sliding sideways for years.

Chapter III

What It Earns Now

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

  • · No automation
  • · No long-term contracts
  • · High churn, declining revenue
  • · No true recurring revenue
  • · Unplanned team turnover

Align · Now

  • · Five-year customer contracts
  • · Sub-5% core churn, 65%+ CAGR on locations
  • · True recurring revenue
  • · Automation, systems, AI receptionist
  • · Team tenure 2-3× industry average
  • · Decade-plus leadership stability

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.

AlignWellness

Physiotherapy where people already go.

Align brings on-site physiotherapy into a brick-and-mortar retail network of 80+ health and wellness businesses in Canada, adding a service their members value without the partner having to build it.

  • Partners

    a new service, no build

  • Practitioners

    steady work across locations

  • Members

    care where they already train

The Operating Bench

None of this happens without the people who show up on site at 7am.

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.

Christopher Percy, Chief Executive Officer of AlignWellness

Chief Executive Officer · AlignWellness

Christopher Percy

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

Alison Golanski

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

Kate Tailor

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

Jayden Grewal

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

Mark Rukavina

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 partner-location 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

AlignWellness · Tear-Sheet

Initial Position
Majority Stake · April 2017
Capital Source
BDC Debt · VTB · Cash
Low Point
40+ → 5 · Early 2023
MSP Growth
2023 — 2024
Account Count Today
80+ active partner locations
Location CAGR
69.3% · Since 2023 trough
Net Dollar Retention
>120% Ramp-Aware · 136.5% Mature 2-Yr Cohort
Core Churn
~0% Material Dollar Churn
Cash on Original Cheque
~3× Today · ~5× NTM Path

Grown by the same operator that bought it. No change of control.

II

Phase Two · The Stack

Each business does its own job.

Scale Health brings demand. Calm Joints fulfills. Align is a brick-and-mortar retail network of 80+ health and wellness businesses in Canada. Birch Reserve brokers the display inventory that traffic creates. Brands join for hands-off, turnkey income.

The flywheel

  1. 01

    Demand

    Scale Health

    Brands join here. Scale Health is the demand layer: a private network that brings brand audiences in. It is launching in the United States soon and will pull Calm Joints into that market.

  2. 02

    Fulfillment

    Calm Joints

    Calm Joints fulfills the physio flow from those brand hubs, online first and then in person. It is a 100% digital company under RDGDH (RDG Digital Holdings) in the core stack.

  3. 03

    Brick-and-mortar network

    Align

    A brick-and-mortar retail network of 80+ health and wellness businesses in Canada. Physiotherapy is available at many locations.

  4. 04

    Hands-off income

    Brands

    Brands come in for the reach. Their customers feed the flywheel, and the next brand gets even more.

Pre-scale status

Brand demand and businesses joining the Align network are being curated now; activation will happen in stages and audience traffic will ramp with a lag. Birch Reserve brokers display and CPC inventory inside Scale Health hubs. 100M+ customer eyeballs expected in 2027, via Scale Health; this is not current traffic, contracted volume, or a guarantee.

In the mix

Silver Birch Growth

Value creation

Birch Reserve

Automated Ad Brokerage

Scale Health

Demand

Calm Joints

Fulfillment

Align

80+ locations

Exclusive · Canada · Health & Wellness

A fully turnkey drop store every Align partner gets on day one.

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.

One-to-many store deployment. No build for the partner, and the store can earn from the customers already walking in.

Brand Demand · Curated

A curated mix of established and challenger recovery, supplement, wellness, and performance brands — practitioner-screened, not algorithm-listed.

Scale Health member portal — DR-HO'S insider marketplace with members-only pricing on featured productsJill Health × Scale Wellness Access co-branded hub — virtual physio assessment bookingIntegrity Fitness member portal — insider pricing across 42 partner-brand offers

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

Three roles. One flywheel.

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 brokers advertising across the recovery-economy media inventory created by brands and activated hubs. Display and CPC inventory inside Scale Health hubs.

3

Scale + Align → Fulfillment

Scale Health routes digital demand and is launching in the United States soon, pulling Calm Joints into that market. Calm Joints fulfills. Calm Joints is a 100% digital company under RDGDH (RDG Digital Holdings) in the core stack. AlignWellness is the brick-and-mortar retail network of 80+ health and wellness businesses in Canada. Physiotherapy is available at many locations.

100+

Practitioner Network

Pilot

Media Program · Scaling After

25

Founding Brand Slots

The Front Door · Partner Benefits

Aggregated employee benefits. A new reason partners stay.

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 location 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 one health and wellness business 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 income the stack 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

Brands and activated hubs create the inventory. Birch Reserve brokers it.

Partner-brand hubs and customer journeys create recurring, context-rich display inventory inside Scale Health's private, invite-only network. Birch Reserve brokers display and CPC inventory inside Scale Health hubs. Brand demand and businesses joining the Align network are being curated now; activation will happen in stages and audience traffic will ramp with a lag so the commercial audience and in-person fulfillment capacity grow together.

Operating Model · Current Build

Automated ad brokerageBirch Reserve · Ad brokerage
Digital networkScale Health · Invite-only
Brick-and-mortar retailAlign · Canada · physio at many locations
Audience target100M+ customer eyeballs expected in 2027, via Scale Health

100M+ customer eyeballs expected in 2027, via Scale Health. This is a forward operating plan, not current traffic, contracted inventory, or a guarantee.

Sub-Case · Network Pilot

The AI receptionist we ran on a partner location before rolling it out.

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

Weekly Calls
2 — 4
5 — 6
Time Saved / Week
0 hrs
20 hrs
Deals / Year
20
30 — 40
Partnership testing
Limited
In motion

Manager time moves toward partnerships. The same playbook now ships with the Scale drop-store roll-out.

Deal Tear-Sheet

Phase Two · State of Play

Demand Engine
Scale Health · Fall 2026 Launch
Brand Partners Activated
Dozens · Founding Cohort
Audience Plan
100M+ customer eyeballs expected in 2027, via Scale Health
Automated Ad Brokerage
Birch Reserve · In the mix
Commercial Status
Brand Demand Curating · Locations Joining
Practitioner Network
100+ Physio / Chiro
Storefront Distribution
Scale Drop Stores · Turnkey (H&W)
Private Digital Network
Scale Health · Invite-Only
Canadian Retail Network
AlignWellness · 80+ Locations
Physio Fulfillment
Calm Joints · DTC + Network
Planned Media Spend
Pilot Media Program · Scaling After

Every surface funds the next. Demand becomes privately sourced from the same brands we supply.

What's next in the series

Scale Health gets its own letter after launch.