About
Why we do this work
Most companies we come across already have what they need. The information is there. The people are good. The problem is that none of it connects, so the work piles up and the answers stay out of reach.
That's the gap we work on.
Ed Gandia
Founder and President, Cormorant Advisory Group
I've spent 30+ years solving business problems. Most of it has been the same job in different forms. Figure out what's really going on in a business, then fix it.
I started in corporate sales, where my income depended entirely on results. Six years at Ferguson. Five years at Constructware and Autodesk selling construction software to specialty contractors, which is how I got to know this world from the inside.
Then I spent 14 years coaching business owners on growth and operations. Hundreds of them. Different industries, same pattern almost every time. The thing they came to me with was rarely the thing that was actually broken. My work was about pulling the situation apart, finding the real constraint, and building something practical around it.
That's the skill I use now. AI is a new tool. Diagnosing a business isn't.
How We Think About AI
What we believe
- 01
Most of what's wrong isn't a technology problem
Companies buy tools to fix things that better information and clearer decisions would fix. We look at the operation first and the technology second.
- 02
Nobody should build before they know what to build
Almost every failed AI project we hear about started with somebody picking the wrong thing. That's why we go in and look before anyone spends money on a build.
- 03
If your team won't use it, it doesn't count
We'd rather build one thing people rely on every day than five things that impress in a demo and get abandoned by spring.
- 04
We only show what we can actually do
No slideware. If we say AI can do something in your business, we can show you.
- 05
The work belongs to you
The playbooks, the logic, the systems. If you switch platforms in two years, all of it moves with you.
The Firm
How we're set up
Cormorant Advisory Group is a small senior team plus technical build partners. You'll work with me directly, and I'll bring in the right people for the build.
That's deliberate. Most agencies have a lot of overhead to feed, and that shows up in what they recommend. We don't carry that, which means we can be honest about what your business actually needs.
We take on a small number of engagements at a time and we say no when something isn't a fit.
Proof
30+
Years in B2B sales, marketing, and operations
300+
Professionals trained on practical AI
1.3M+
Podcast downloads
Co-author of The Wealthy Freelancer (Penguin Random House).
We brought Ed in to tackle a complex growth challenge that our partner team hadn't had the bandwidth to properly dig into. We had a large base of partner contacts and knew there was opportunity there, but the problem was messy. The data needed work, the targeting logic was not simple, and the outreach strategy required more than a generic campaign. Ed helped us break the problem down and turn it into a clear, workable plan.
What stood out was Ed's ability to bring structure to ambiguity. He asked sharp diagnostic questions, listened well, and helped us think about the problem from angles we hadn't considered. The result was a repeatable approach our team could actually run with, not just a set of recommendations.
Want to talk?
Let's chat for 25 minutes. Tell us what's going on, and we'll figure out together whether there's something here worth a deeper look.