Pedro Echavarria · Oakville, Ontario
Small businesses, big climbs.
One problem at a time.
We help small and medium businesses grow and evolve: using digital where it helps, and working through the hard problems one switchback at a time.
20+ years in digital transformation
Duke MBA · Scotiabank · Citi · Mercer · McKinsey
The straight line looks faster on paper. The switchback is how you actually reach the top.
Why “switchback”?
Most fixes fail because they need a version of your week that doesn’t exist.
You can’t climb a steep mountain straight up. Trails zigzag, breaking the climb into stages you can actually walk. Business works the same way: the big, all-at-once transformation burns out teams and budgets. Switchbacks are smaller turns, each one measured, each one taking you higher.
01
Measure
Start from a baseline: where your time and money actually go today.
02
Pick the next turn
Choose the one fix with the biggest payoff for the effort, not the longest wish list.
03
Build it with you
We build it, we don’t just recommend it. No report-and-vanish.
04
Prove it, then climb again
Check the result against the baseline, then pick the next turn together.
What we do
Four ways up the mountain.
Most business climbs start in one of four places. Most engagements end up touching more than one.
Find the Route
Strategy & growth
Get clear on where you’re going and why customers should choose you over the shop down the street.
Positioning
Pricing
Competitor research
Local marketing
Get Found
Digital & e-commerce
Make your website, online store and inbox work as hard as you do, for customers, search engines and AI assistants.
Website & AI-search audit
Shopify catalogue
Email marketing
Analytics dashboards
Smooth the Trail
Customer journey & experience
Make every step easy once a customer finds you, from the first enquiry and booking to the repeat visit and the review.
Customer journey mapping
First-impression review
Booking & checkout flows
Reviews & feedback loops
Lighten the Load
Operations & AI
Take the busywork off your plate with practical automation, so your week goes into running the business.
Invoice automation
Cash-flow forecasting
Faster month-end
SOPs & training
Who’s behind Switchback
Enterprise discipline, at your scale.
I’m Pedro Echavarria. For more than 20 years I led digital products and transformation in financial services, most recently heading International Banking Retail Digital Solutions at Scotiabank, delivering across 13 markets in Latin America and the Caribbean. Before that: Citi, Mercer and McKinsey, and an MBA from Duke.
Now I bring that same discipline to small and medium-sized businesses in Oakville and beyond, sized to your budget and your week. And I build it with you. I don’t just recommend it.
20+
years leading digital transformation
13
markets across Latin America and the Caribbean
Duke
MBA, plus Scotiabank, Citi, Mercer and McKinsey
Ways to work together
Start small. Climb in stages.
Every engagement starts with a free conversation and a fixed price. You approve each stage before the next one begins, so you’re never locked into a big project you can’t see the end of.
(01)
Trailhead Call
Free · 30 minutes
Over coffee in Oakville or on a video call, wherever you are. Tell us about the climb, and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help and where we’d start.
(02)
Basecamp Review
Fixed fee · 2–3 weeks
Understanding the mountain you need to climb: where the business stands today, where you want it to go, and what’s really in the way, from strategy and customers to systems and your week. You get a clear map of the climb and a prioritized list of next turns, ranked by effort and payoff.
(03)
Switchback Projects
Fixed fee per phase
We build the fixes together, one phase at a time: automation, analytics, e-commerce, process. Each phase has a fixed price and a clear finish line, and everything we build is yours.
Selected work
Real climbs, real businesses.
Client names are kept private. The work isn’t.
Outside-in review
Independent running specialty store · Halton Region
Turning a specialty store’s expertise into an edge online
A week on the shop floor, then an outside-in review: what makes this store hard to copy, and how to show it online, in the inbox and at the till.
Positioning
Competitor research
Shopify catalogue
Email marketing
Local marketing
Read the story
Automation pilot
Multi-location café group · Toronto & Oakville
From typed-up invoices to a cash-flow picture the owner can trust
Vendor invoices were typed in by hand and store costs split manually. A pilot now reads invoices automatically and drops them straight into the owner’s cash-flow workbook.
AI automation
Cash-flow forecasting
Finance operations
Read the story
Website content & analytics
Municipal election campaign · Ontario
A dynamic, always-current website for a fast-moving campaign
A campaign website has to keep pace with the campaign. We redesigned its content to be dynamic and easy to keep up to date, and built a weekly dashboard showing what visitors read and which calls to action worked.
Analytics dashboards
Content strategy
Website content redesign
Read the story
Free download · 20-minute read
The Small-Business Digital Checkup
Twelve plain-English questions to find where your business is leaking time and money, from your Google profile to your month-end. No jargon, no sales pitch.
Is your website winning customers or quietly losing them?
Can people find you on Google Maps and in AI assistants?
Where do customers get stuck between finding you and buying from you?
Which admin tasks are eating your week, and which ones a simple automation could take over?
Let’s talk
Tell us about the climb.
Not sure where to start? That’s normal. Send a note or grab 30 minutes on our calendar: coffee in Oakville or a video call, wherever you are. The first conversation is on us.
Oakville, Ontario · In person or virtual