Depth is the whole idea.
Ocean, for what lies beneath the surface of building a company: complexity, pressure, relentless force. 323, for treating a recurring signal as meaning, not noise. The name is a promise to go deeper than the obvious.
Practitioners who have built it, not consultants who have read about it.
323 Ocean was founded by Michael Crafton, an operator who built and sold companies before he ever advised one. The work is hands-on, principal led, and deliberately limited.
It started with $800 and a pickup truck.
Michael Crafton turned $800 of his own startup capital into Nelbud Services Group: 20+ offices, 40,000 customer locations, and a national footprint built over 17 years. Across his career he has led 11 acquisitions and 5 exits, on both sides of the table.
Through the 2008 downturn he automated operations and signed national contracts while competitors retreated. When the pandemic took 70% of revenue in a quarter, he rebuilt the business and posted record earnings nine months later. Employees First, Customers Second held through all of it, and earned 9 Top Workplace awards.
He created the 4CAP leadership methodology, chaired YPO Indiana, and serves on the boards of Polygon Composites, Freije Engineered Solutions, Lushin and Associates, Apexia Labs, and YPO Mid-America.
Ann Marie Moorman
Ann Marie Moorman runs the engagement floor. Every workstream, deadline, and deliverable routes through her, which is how a diagnosis becomes a result rather than a document. She leads client meetings, and the special projects that do not fit a category tend to land on her desk.
She is the firm's authority on applied AI. She builds the internal tools 323 Ocean runs on and decides where automation earns its place in a workflow and where it does not. Brand and design work run through her as well.
She came up running events and client operations, work where the deadline does not move and the result is visible to everyone in the room. A limited number of engagements means each one gets her full attention, from the first conversation until the work holds.
Two decades, logged.
Every depth on this page was reached the slow way. The entries below are the record of how.
Started with $800, a pickup truck, and handwritten invoices. No investors. No systems. Just the willingness to do the work.
When the downturn hit, most companies froze. Michael automated field operations, secured national contracts, and grew revenue while competitors retreated. Sometimes the best defense is strategic offense.
Implemented cloud infrastructure, automation and analytics, and progressive technologies.
Completed the first of three operating exits. The perspective from the sell side, added to the buy side, now shapes every transaction engagement.
The hardest part of buying or selling companies is the year after closing. Folded acquisitions into one operating model, one culture, one P&L.
A high-growth, capital-constrained year. Cash discipline, collections rigor, and hard priority calls carried the company through without outside rescue.
A different buyer and a different structure, same lesson: preparation set the price.
A platform of 11 acquisitions folded into one operating model. 20+ offices, 40,000 customer locations, and a national footprint.
The pandemic took 70% of the business overnight. Rather than accept decline, rebuilt the model from the ground up. Nine months later, record earnings.
The rebuilt company exited at a multiple the old model could never have carried. The turnaround was not survival. It was value creation. Two more exits came as a significant investor with an active seat, bringing the career total to five.
After 17 years of building, launched 323 Ocean to help other founders navigate what we had lived through. Practitioner experience, not consulting theory.
Six disciplines implementation, crisis management, and organizational restructure engagements that put the operator record to work for client companies.
Advisory engagements across the mid-market. Boards at Polygon Composites, Freije Engineered Solutions, Lushin and Associates, Apexia Labs, and YPO Mid-America. Still building.
A few things we hold to.
Employees First, Customers Second.
Take care of the people and they take care of the customer. It lowered acquisition cost and raised lifetime value, and it is not negotiable.
Discipline before technology.
Fundamentals first. Automation and AI amplify the operation you already have, for better or worse.
Execution over advice.
A deck that produces no result wastes your money. We stay in through the decisions and the outcomes.
Everything connects to value.
Culture, systems, brand, leadership: all of it compounds into what the company is worth. We treat every decision as a value decision, because it is one.
The leader is part of the system.
A company cannot outgrow the capacity of the person running it. We develop the leader alongside the business. 4CAP exists for exactly that.
Bold leadership, informed choices.
Confidence without information is recklessness. We help leaders make bold calls from a place of clarity.
Two decades, one line.
Every number here was earned in live water, through two downturns most advisors have only read about. That is the difference between guidance and theory.
Four dimensions. One whole leader.
4CAP emerged from a recognition: business success without personal alignment is hollow. Michael pursued deliberate development across the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions, through crucibles chosen on purpose and through the harder internal work of reconciling with the past. One of those crucibles he finished. One of them injured him and he did not. The framework synthesizes what both taught.
This is not coaching. Coaching implies someone who knows your path better than you do. It is guidance from someone who has walked it.
Twelve minutes. One private diagnostic.
Answer 40 items and receive a private read of your current leadership capacity, your placement on the Capable, Able, Prepared ladder, and the single leverage point where focused work moves the whole system.
Start the conversation.
We take a limited number of engagements. Start with the situation in your own words; the rest takes four minutes.
Request Consideration
We read every request personally. If there is a fit, you will hear from us directly.
We read every request personally. If there is a fit, you will hear from us directly.