When a friend, a startup CEO, asked me what exactly I do in my consulting work, I knew this post was long overdue.
It’s simple–I bring my perspective on building communities and markets, products and brands to your business as a partner.
Beyond that, of course, nothing is simple, least of all running and building a company.
Consulting as a model honestly has always seemed broken to me. Buying advice ad hoc in bits and pieces doesn’t really help anyone. Advice thrown over the transom in Hallmark-styled headlines may be momentarily inspiring, but fades away quickly. True value happens over time, tied to execution and iteration of the product, the brand, the market itself.
I’m four years into working with companies as an advisor now.
I care less about the definitions of consultant, advisor or mentor. I care about bridging the ‘advisory action gap’. About becoming a partner in fleshing out decisions, applying my background and my thinking to the somewhat messy and always slightly nervous job of making business decisions. About bringing my informal approach to a focused and ongoing relationship with my clients.
To the question—what do I do?
My work breaks into four malleable chunks:
1. Ongoing advisory board member
Companies naturally build a network of experts and supporters as they grow. Market development, market perception, product, channels, team building and fundraising are what I do. Long term is my preference, flexible is my style, and committed is my nature,
2. Office Hours
A lighter touch, ongoing advisory service, with focused, consistent meetings scheduled over time. The stronger the team or exec, the better this works. I don’t manage processes or individuals, I mentor people and teams, help design solutions and share expertise. More details here.
3. Deep dive
With an opportunity on the horizon. A team in place. A whiteboard and a couple of days blocked out.
Diving in (and deep) with an outside point of view is exactly what is sometimes needed to insure you are giving the opportunity your best shot. To shake up common thinking. To challenge too much navel gazing. To rejigger the data and challenge whether you have the right data at all. To insure that you are not seeing the world strictly from need and counting on the results before they happen.
I seriously love doing this!
4. Projects
Sometime, timing is the biggest determinant. Often bringing in a stand in CMO, sales or BD lead to get one crucial piece moving. Hiring a team. Making certain that the holiday selling season is prepped from manufacturing to commerce to customer service to filling the funnel. To integrate an acquisition or figure out if one is needed at all. Invariably, these projects demand that someone is hired to be me on completion.
Being an advisor naturally just works for me, my informal (and intense) style, my skill sets. It’s the perfect playing field to bridge strategic thinking and operational actions with always new sets of issues and opportunities.
As a business model there are challenges of scale with consulting. Challenges of how to price services over time. And the flux of working with a number of startups and mid size companies at once. Business is definitely never all black or white. We do what we are great at and love– and innovate the model to make it work.
For a long while, I built and led teams, taking to market a wide variety of products and services. I truly loved it.
As an advisor, I get to add value to your company as you take the leadership role in building your team, you business and the market.
When the partnership is right, this is as good as work gets.
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For more details on my Consulting Services and Office Hours solution.
