Our Work
We partner with associations, franchise systems, and scaling companies across North America. Here's a look at what we've built together.
Explore our work — select a project below to dive in.
Painting Contractors Association
Association
The Challenge: The PCA had built a strong community around the craft of painting, with technical training at its core. As their membership grew, PCA saw a natural next step: giving painting contractors the business knowledge to support their ability to grow more profitable, stronger businesses.
PCA leadership had a clear vision for what their members deserved. They sought the right partner to help bring it to life.
What We Did: We started by getting deep into PCA's existing content and member needs to understand where the biggest opportunities were. What emerged was a clear vision: a comprehensive business training library that would give painting contractors the knowledge, tools, and frameworks to build more profitable, better-run businesses.
We built an 88-module Business Training library covering financials, operations, hiring, leadership, and growth strategy, available in both English and Spanish. We designed and facilitated multi-year business training cohorts, including dedicated Spanish-language cohorts to serve PCA's full membership.
The Results: The Business Training program has become one of PCA's most valuable revenue-generating assets. Member program fees and sponsorship dollars have created a new income stream for the association. It has also become a growth driver, attracting new members and giving existing members a compelling reason to stay engaged.
Three years in, the cohort program continues to run and grow. Core Acceleration's role has expanded from content creator to strategic training partner — exactly the kind of long-term relationship we seek to build with every client.
Hear directly from Jill Thompson, Executive Director of the Painting Contractors Association:
Paul Davis Restoration
Franchise System
The Challenge: Paul Davis Restoration is one of North America's leading restoration franchise systems, with locations across the US and Canada that depend on strong leadership at every level to deliver consistently excellent service.
When Core Acceleration began working with Paul Davis in late 2023, they already had a commitment to developing their people and a foundation to build on. What they needed was a partner to help expand that foundation: adding depth to their leadership skills training and increasing their capacity to deliver the program across the network. A particular challenge was the promotion of high-performing technicians into supervisor roles — people with deep technical expertise but limited experience leading teams.
What We Did: Over the course of our partnership we have become a deeply embedded training partner across multiple workstreams.
We built out courses covering nearly every leadership skill in Paul Davis University's internal Leadership Development Program, giving their teams a structured, scalable way to develop the leadership capabilities the business demands.
We facilitated at Paul Davis conferences and ran leadership skill webinars, bringing the content to life and ensuring it translated into real behavior change, not just course completions.
We helped bridge a leadership coaching capacity gap, providing direct support to leaders across the system at a critical point in their development.
We chaired the LDP Steering Committee, serving as a strategic partner in shaping the direction of leadership development across the entire franchise system.
And in fall 2025 we launched the Supervisor Training series: 32 modules across 7 courses built directly into Paul Davis University, specifically designed to solve one of the most common challenges in the trades: great technicians being promoted into supervisor roles without the leadership skills to succeed in them.
The Results: The Supervisor Training series launched in fall 2025 and is currently being rolled out across the Paul Davis network, giving new supervisors a clear path from technical expert to effective leader.
What's already clear is the impact of the broader partnership: Paul Davis now has a more comprehensive, more consistent, and more scalable leadership development infrastructure than when we started, and a trusted training partner they can turn to as their needs evolve.
See the Supervisor Training series in action:
Aleph Ventures
Growing & Scaling Company
The Challenge: Aleph Ventures invests in and scales painting businesses across North America, acquiring stakes in local brands and integrating proven systems to accelerate their growth. When they came to Core Acceleration, they had already developed strong systems and processes — tested and refined through their first partnership. What they needed was a partner to help turn that institutional knowledge into leveraged, scalable training they could deploy consistently as they rapidly expanded their portfolio of partner businesses.
What We Did: We started by getting deep into Aleph's systems, processes, and culture to understand what made their model work and what every new partner business needed to learn to replicate it.
We built out 15+ eLearning courses covering Aleph's core systems, skills, and processes: their sales model, field operations, coaching frameworks, annual review meetings, and more. Each course was designed to be practical, brand-aligned, and immediately applicable for leaders and teams coming into the Aleph network.
We helped Aleph select and implement an LMS using our scorecard process, built specifically around their unique organizational structure, giving them a scalable home for their training content as the portfolio continued to grow.
We have supported the partnership through ongoing webinars and strategic support as Aleph's needs have evolved with each new stage of growth.`
The Results: When Core Acceleration began working with Aleph Ventures they had a handful of partner businesses. Today they have 25+ partners and have grown exponentially. Their training infrastructure has grown with them, giving every new partner business access to the same proven systems and processes from day one.
“We have had the pleasure of working with Max Olson of Core Acceleration to build out our online learning at Aleph Ventures. We invest and professionalize trades companies, and develop multi-family real estate. Our internal team and our partners continue to speak to the value they get as they onboard, train, and retrain in their roles. Max is highly intentional in his approach, ensuring he gathers the needs and the short term and long term vision for each course. Along the way he schedules feedback loops to ensure we are getting the value we are looking for. He is exceptional in understanding how the business operates and designs each course in a way that will fit all learning styles.”
- Alex Calof, Chief Operating Officer, Aleph Ventures
Breakthrough Academy
Growing & Scaling Company
The Challenge: Breakthrough Academy is a coaching organization serving hundreds of contractors across North America. They've built one of the most respected member communities in the trades, and they hold their programming to a high standard.
As BTA continued to grow, they identified two opportunities: to bring an outside leadership expert to speak to their Master Circle program for their most tenured members, and to upgrade their Foundations program to continue raising the bar on their member experience.
What We Did: Our work with BTA unfolded across two engagements.
First, we designed and facilitated a multi-day leadership workshop in Tulum for BTA's Master Circle members, their most experienced, longest-tenured community. BTA brings in guest experts each quarter to develop their Master Circle members around different themes. We were brought in as the leadership expert, delivering a workshop that received strong feedback from participants.
Second, we partnered with BTA to upgrade the eLearning component of their Foundations program — the training that serves as the spine of the member experience for every contractor who joins. We rebuilt the eLearning component of the program, giving BTA a stronger, more scalable foundation and a clear model for upgrading the remainder of their training curriculum internally.
The Results: The Foundations upgrade gave BTA a significantly stronger entry point for new members and a replicable model for continuing to evolve their training. The internal upgrade process is ongoing, with BTA's team now equipped to carry it forward.
The Master Circle leadership workshop delivered an experience worthy of BTA's most committed members — and demonstrated what's possible when leadership development is designed with the same intentionality as the business systems BTA teaches.
Hear directly from James Dale, Director of Coaching & Program Development at Breakthrough Academy:
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Every one of these partnerships started with a single conversation. Let's figure out what's possible for your organization.