Somerset Operators — About
Founder of Somerset Operators. Operator, not a consultant. Twenty years of owning and running small businesses — not advising on them.
Where It Started
Phil grew up in small-town Minnesota in a family where work was never abstract. His father built multiple blue-collar businesses, and Phil started working in them at age five — not as a lesson, just because that's how it worked.
He learned early what running a small business actually requires: the payroll runs that keep you up at night, the equipment that breaks at the worst time, the customers who mean everything, the employees who depend on you making good decisions.
That foundation has never left. It shapes everything about how Somerset approaches its work — with respect for what owners build, and with no patience for advice that sounds good but hasn't been tested on a real floor.
Credentials
Twenty Years of Operating
Not a career consultant. Not someone who studied businesses from the outside and built a methodology. Someone who has run three of them — hired the people, fixed the problems, made the payroll, and eventually navigated the exits.
Three
Across multiple industries over 20 years. Not theory — direct operating experience with the full weight of ownership.
Floor up
Trained to see waste, constraint, and process failure at the operational level — not from a spreadsheet, but from walking the floor with fresh eyes.
Seller's side
Has been through the due diligence process, sat across from buyers, read term sheets, and experienced the human and financial reality of an exit.
Why Somerset Exists
Somerset Operators is a multi-division holding company built around a single conviction: that small and mid-sized businesses are better served by people who have actually run them.
Every division — centrifuge services, outsourced AR, consulting, website builds — is built to deliver real operating value. Not advice. Not a deliverable. Not a managed service that creates dependency. The work that actually moves the needle.
That standard comes directly from Phil's background: blue-collar, specific, earned. Somerset will never be the firm that shows up with a deck and no scars.
What That Means for You