Our Team:

Steve Shanck

Founder and Managing Director

781-752-7270 | steve@nautilus-strategy.com

Peter Pfister

Founder and Managing Director

207-719-5555 | pfisterp@nautilus-strategy.com

Steve has spent his career working with growth organizations and has come to understand that success shares common attributes, regardless of company size. His experiential 'truths' come from leading businesses in the telecom and defense sector with companies like Motorola, General Dynamics, Airbus and Siemens, both in the U.S. and internationally. In doing so, he has learned what works, what doesn’t and, importantly, what good looks like. Excellence? That is always the aspiration. 

He now applies these time-proven tools to address essential sales and marketing challenges in smaller businesses where they can be implemented more quickly and be more impactful. Never presuming to know a client’s business better than they do, he strives to work collaboratively to develop and execute ambitious, but actionable, objectives.

Raised in Michigan, Steve graduated with a BA from the University of Florida and went on to work across the U.S. including living in Asia for 6 years. When off the clock he spends time sailing, and enjoying life in suburban Boston.

Peter is a seasoned private equity investor with over 40 years of experience guiding middle market businesses across the manufacturing, distribution and service sectors. Peter's background in PE, with its relatively compressed ownership cycles, has conditioned him to driving value creation strategies with a sense of urgency. Executing these strategies requires a team with an aligned sense of purpose, accountability, communications, respect and reward - core objectives for a high-functioning organization.

Peter has deep transaction experience having completed dozens of platform and add-on acquisitions as well as liquidity exits. He managed limited partnership PE investment funds for 25 years at Weiss Peck & Greer and Red Diamond Capital and founded Monhegan Partners, an independent investment and advisory firm in 2010.

A New Englander, Peter graduated with a BA from Trinity College and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.  He resides in Southern Maine, is an avid runner and enjoys spending time outdoors with his extended family and friends.

Sam Johnson

Founder and Managing Director

706-344-8620 | sam@nautilus-strategy.com

Sam‘s career has been helping entrepreneurs, owner-operators, family-owned firms, and PE sponsors to scale, optimize, and plan for and execute transactions. With a keen understanding of how to optimize the top of a P&L, he’s uniquely capable of helping clients grow revenues, reduce cost of goods, enhance margins, and increase stakeholder value. He has benefited clients in industries ranging from banking, commercial printing, office products and aerospace, to packaging, import/export, RVs, non-profits, and automotive parts. He has led numerous mid-market companies over his career, and currently serves as Chairman of the Board of a large Indiana based RV manufacturer.

Sam attended the University of Southern Mississippi on a full, four-year football scholarship, and graduated with a BA in Business Management and a minor in Accounting. Sam is an outdoorsman and avid fly fisherman. He's the Executive Producer and Co-Host of Wild Bearings Outdoors, a show on The Country Network that takes viewers to exotic angling destinations.