What Align costs to run — and what it gives back

Setup & maintenance

• Foundations, Create Culture, Create Priorities, and Create Value time is modeled from the app's actual screens and fields — fixed overhead per section plus a per-person or per-priority component that scales with your inputs.
• Create Priorities maintenance = active priorities × review cadence × ~12.5 minutes per review, the largest ongoing line item since it's the only piece that runs weekly.
• Only one-time setup counts as an added time cost in the results above. Ongoing maintenance hours are shown in the section table for reference, but aren't subtracted from savings — that time is the same leadership work leaders are already doing today, often badly. Align doesn't add hours to a leader's week. It changes what those hours produce.

Efficiency savings

• Status-chasing time reclaimed = team size × minutes/week you set × 48 working weeks.
• Rework avoided = incidents/year you set × hours per incident you set.

Turnover model

• Departures avoided/year = team size × (current turnover % − expected turnover %).
• Hours saved = departures avoided × 100–150 leader/team hours per replacement (recruiting, interviewing, onboarding oversight — not the new hire's own ramp time).
• Dollars saved = departures avoided × 50%–200% of average compensation, per SHRM and Gallup.
• Baseline turnover context: US voluntary turnover averages ~13% (Mercer, via Pin); small, growth-stage teams commonly run higher.
• Time-to-full-productivity for a new hire runs 6–8 months, 12+ for complex or leadership roles, per SHRM/HBR/Gallup research — real cost, not counted in the totals above.

Time value of hours

• Hours are converted to dollars at (average compensation ÷ 2,080 hours/year) so the net dollar figure reflects both the direct turnover-cost savings and the value of time reclaimed elsewhere.

Capacity leverage (Lead + Thrive)

• Anchored on a single real case: the founder's own organization grew revenue 3× while headcount grew only 1.7× over the Lead + Thrive phases (months 13–36) — a ~76% rise in revenue per employee, not an industry benchmark. Before that ever reaches the model, it's discounted to a 46% ceiling (60% of the real 76%), since one founder's result in one market isn't a guaranteed benchmark for every client.
• Headcount growth needed without leverage = revenue growth goal multiple (linear, i.e. 1.5× revenue needs 1.5× headcount).
• Headcount growth needed with leverage = revenue growth goal ÷ (1 + modeled productivity ceiling × capture rate you set).
• Client's total company headcount defaults to 4 people for every leader enrolled, plus the leader (5× Team size), and updates automatically when Team size changes — still manually adjustable to fit a specific client.
• Hires avoided = client's total company headcount × (headcount multiplier without leverage − headcount multiplier with leverage). This uses total company headcount, not the Team size input above — the case study was a company-wide effect, and the leadership team enrolled in the program is often smaller than the whole org.
• Value of hires avoided = hires avoided × average compensation × 1.25 (same loaded-cost assumption as the turnover model).
• The capture-rate slider exists precisely because a client won't automatically replicate one founder's result — it lets you show a range instead of a false-precision promise.

Margin leverage (3-year arc)

• Anchored on the same real case, a distinct metric from capacity leverage above: the founder's own organization went from $7M revenue / $6M expenses in 2016 to $21M revenue / $10M expenses in 2022 — revenue up 3×, expenses up ~1.67×, EBITDA up from $1M to $11M over that six-year window (of which this model only claims the Lead + Thrive-scoped rates used elsewhere).
• Same 60% discount applied here: the real 3× revenue / 1.67× expense swing is dialed back to a 2.2× / 1.4× modeled ceiling before any capture rate is applied — so even 100% capture claims well less than the founder's real result.
• Current annual EBITDA = current annual revenue − current annual expenses, entered as two separate inputs above rather than one EBITDA number, so a client running at breakeven or a loss still has a valid starting point.
• Projected revenue = current revenue × (1 + (2.2× − 1) × capture rate). Projected expenses = current expenses × (1 + (1.4× − 1) × capture rate). Revenue and expenses are grown independently, each at its own modeled ceiling rate, rather than applying one multiple straight to EBITDA — multiplying a small or negative EBITDA number directly would distort or invert the result for a deficit-running company.
• Projected EBITDA = projected revenue − projected expenses. EBITDA gain over 3 years = projected EBITDA − current EBITDA, at the capture rate set above. This correctly shows a deficit narrowing or flipping to a surplus, rather than a negative number just growing more negative.

3-year outcomes

• Year 1 (Align) = year-1 net dollar value above (one-time setup vs. first-year savings), plus 5% of that year's Lead + Thrive gains, minus ALT Engine SaaS cost for that year. Ongoing maintenance hours aren't subtracted — see below.
• Year 2 (Lead) = ongoing net dollar value (steady-state savings, no time cost subtracted), plus 25% of Lead + Thrive gains, minus that year's SaaS cost.
• Year 3 (Thrive) = ongoing net dollar value, plus the remaining 70% of Lead + Thrive gains, minus that year's SaaS cost.
• "Lead + Thrive gains" = capacity leverage dollars + margin leverage dollars — both included by default, since the case-study gains are large enough to assume most clients would want them modeled. Both are cumulative outcomes reached by the end of the three-year arc, so rather than dropping the full amount into year 3 alone, this model phases them in at 5% / 25% / 70% across years 1, 2, and 3 — a more realistic ramp than an all-at-once jump.
• 3-year cumulative net value = year 1 + year 2 + year 3, each already net of SaaS cost.

ALT Engine SaaS cost (3-year arc)

• Priced per leader per year, on the Team size input above — the leaders actually enrolled and using the app, not the broader company headcount used for capacity leverage.
• Year 1 seats = Team size. Year 3 seats = Team size × the same leveraged headcount multiplier already computed in the capacity leverage section, so seat growth mirrors the growth story rather than a separate, unrelated assumption. Year 2 seats sit at the midpoint between year 1 and year 3, since growth accrues gradually across Lead + Thrive.
• SaaS cost each year = that year's seats × price per leader. This cost is subtracted directly from each year's value above and from the 3-year cumulative total — what you see in the arc panel is already a net figure, not a gross one.
• Chris Meroff Consulting support comes standard with every subscription, bundled into that price with no extra consulting cost of any kind — which is why the price is set above a pure-software rate. Every organization gets 24 hours up front for implementation plus 8 hours per month ongoing, both flat per organization rather than scaling with the number of leaders enrolled.
• Standalone value of those bundled hours is shown at an assumed $250/hr independent consulting rate — illustrative only, not billed anywhere in the model. The price stays below what those hours would cost booked on their own, on top of getting the software itself. See the hours and value breakdown in the cost table above.