About Justin Swartz | SURE Optima

The Person Behind It

I'm Justin Swartz, founder of SURE Optima. Chicago raised, San Diego based. Midwestern work ethic, global perspective, built across two decades of international teams and cross-functional execution.

Twelve years at 3M taught me the system framework, how people, products, and processes work together to achieve more, efficiently and effectively. What came next was a different kind of school: the startup environment. Lean, fast, and pivot-oriented. Wearing multiple hats while staying locked on outcomes. Building commercial businesses out of R&D operations. Launching an automotive center of excellence for additive manufacturing. Taking a company from little to no revenue to over $1M in its first commercial year. I've done the technical work, the strategic work, and the execution work, often at the same time, often under pressure.

SURE Optima exists because that combination is uncommon. Technical excellence, operational efficiency, and commercial success are each hard enough on their own. Most people who understand manufacturing haven't built a commercial strategy. Most consultants with a strategy haven't been on a factory floor. I've been on both sides, and that's what allows me to find the work that actually matters and drive it forward.

I bring frameworks, but I adapt them to meet you where you are in your journey. I learn your business fast, diagnosing the reality of the situation, defining the right problems, and attacking the areas that will break through and create flow. The goal is never dependency. I measure success by the relationships that outlast the engagement.

I work with a small number of clients at a time, by design. Relationships matter more than volume, and mutual success is built on trust, not transactions.

If you've been referred here, let's find out if there's a fit.

The Why

I didn't build this set of skills alone. Throughout my career, people donated their time and energy to give opportunities to a young person they believed had potential worth investing in. Mentors who opened doors. Leaders who saw something worth developing. Teams who trusted me to figure it out alongside them. That investment shaped who I am and how I work.

What I came away with doesn't package neatly into a standard job description. It crosses too many disciplines, lives too far outside the org chart, and focuses too much on what's real over what's reportable. The corporate world has a hard time valuing what can't be easily categorized or measured. But the companies who need it most feel its absence every single day.

That's why I built SURE Optima. To work on my own terms with people who genuinely want it. Not to consult indefinitely, but to step in, make a real difference, and leave the client stronger than I found them. First principles over frameworks. Coaching over directing. Tangible outcomes over polished reports.

What We Value

Trust

Commitments are kept and words are meant. Trust also means giving space to work. Discovery is a process, and the full picture is rarely available at the start. The best engagements are built on the understanding that not everything is known or knowable at the outset, and that finding what matters requires the freedom to look.

The best engagements begin with the understanding that the full picture emerges through the work, and that finding it requires space to look.

Order

Clarity comes before execution. Work starts with a thesis, refined through discovery and analysis into frameworks that guide decisions. Structure is applied at the right level, giving direction without locking in answers before the questions are fully understood.

The best engagements build the process together, define what good looks like, set a standard worth reaching, and keep improving from there.

Industry

Hard work is non-negotiable. Focused, purposeful, dedicated work toward the outcome that matters. The results reflect the effort both sides bring to the work.

The best engagements are fully collaborative. Both sides show up ready to work.

Curiosity

Staying close to the actual work, the floor, the process, the people doing it, is where the real picture emerges. Breakthroughs happen when perspective shifts, and that shift requires genuine openness to what is actually there.

The best engagements produce at least one moment where the real answer surprises everyone in the room.

Open-mindedness

Good ideas come from anywhere. Evidence is weighed fairly, other perspectives are considered, and past experience never closes the door on better answers.

The best engagements challenge assumptions on both sides and are better for it.

Generosity

Giving the best to the people we work with: time, knowledge, perspective, and effort. Success means being invested in client outcomes.

The best engagements leave the client with more capability than they came in with.