We Started With A Simple Question

Why do Australian mid-market companies struggle with financial analysis when they have mountains of data? Back in 2018, I was consulting for manufacturing firms around western Sydney and kept seeing the same pattern. Good businesses, solid revenues, but absolutely no clarity on where their money actually went or which product lines were bleeding them dry.

Most hired expensive consultants who showed up, asked for spreadsheets, disappeared for weeks, then delivered hundred-page reports nobody read. That felt backwards. So we built dravonelixir around a different idea – teach business owners and their teams how to read their own financial stories.

From Spreadsheets to Strategy

The first program we ran in early 2019 had eleven participants from retail and service businesses. We spent six weeks breaking down profit and loss statements, cash flow analysis, and margin calculations. Not in some abstract way, but using their actual numbers from their actual businesses.

What surprised me was how quickly people caught on once they stopped being intimidated by the terminology. One café owner realized she was losing money on breakfast because she hadn't factored in labour costs properly. A logistics company found they were subsidizing their smallest clients at the expense of larger accounts.

By 2021, we'd worked with over two hundred businesses across New South Wales. The requests kept coming for deeper dives into specific industries – construction has different metrics than hospitality, which looks nothing like professional services.

Financial analysis workspace with reports and data visualizations

What Guides Our Work

Real Numbers Only

We don't work with hypotheticals or textbook examples. Every case study comes from actual businesses we've analyzed. When we teach ratios, you're calculating them from real financial statements with all their messy reality intact.

Industry Context Matters

A healthy current ratio for a software company looks terrible for a retailer. We spend time understanding the specific benchmarks and cycles that matter in your sector before making any recommendations about what's working or what needs attention.

Skills That Stick

You shouldn't need us six months after finishing a program. Our goal is that you can pull quarterly reports, spot trends yourself, and have informed conversations with accountants and investors without feeling lost or dependent on external analysis.

Business professionals reviewing financial documents

How We Actually Do This

Most of our programs run over three to four months with weekly sessions. You'll bring current financial statements from your business. We work through them together – calculating margins, analyzing trends, comparing against industry standards.

The first month usually focuses on understanding what different financial documents actually tell you. Most people have seen P&L statements but haven't really thought about what rising revenue with falling profit margins might signal.

By month two we're into forecasting and scenario planning. What happens to your cash position if receivables stretch from thirty to sixty days? How much buffer do you need for seasonal fluctuations?

The final sessions are about building dashboards and reports you can actually maintain. We're not interested in creating fancy systems that collapse the moment we leave. You need something sustainable that fits into your existing workflow.

Lukas Thornberry

Principal Financial Analyst

Before starting dravonelixir, I spent eight years doing financial restructuring for mid-sized manufacturers and distributors. Saw too many businesses fail not because their products were bad or markets dried up, but because owners didn't understand their numbers until it was too late.

I'm not interested in making finance seem mysterious or complex. It's just systematic thinking about where money comes from, where it goes, and whether those patterns make sense for what you're trying to build. Most people can learn this stuff – they just need someone to explain it without the jargon.

These days I split time between developing new program content and working directly with participants. My background is in manufacturing and logistics analysis, though we've expanded into retail, hospitality, and professional services over the past few years.

Our Next Program Starts November 2025

We're currently accepting expressions of interest for our autumn intensive, which begins mid-November. Sessions run weekly through February 2026. If you're interested in understanding your business finances at a deeper level, we should talk about whether this is a good fit.

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