In “What We Do“, the first “We” is “you and me“. Team. Client and Phil collaborating.
Sometimes my clients need an Advisor (think “sounding board” or “confidante”). Other times a Consultant (think “help me work out my marketing strategy” or “how do I recruit the right sales people?”). And on occasion, a Coach (think “OK — how did you do with your list from last month? Don’t lie.”). These tasks rely on my MBA skills, my junior therapist skills (mostly asking questions) and my preacher/guru genes (“you’re never gonna have enough data, so why don’t you pray on it?”).
Some examples
- The owner of a Local, Artisan Food Business sometimes needs me as his occasional Advisor and confidante when he has major questions like whether and how to take on a partner; or how well his new business plan fit into his larger life plan. On other occasions, he has needed me as a business Consultant to dig deep into his marketing strategy and the rollout of several marketing campaigns. And on other occasions, he’s used me as his Coach to, in his words, “keep me accountable to my own promises” — to help him decide what he’s willing to commit to, and to keep to his commitments.
- The owner of a New York bank needed me as an Advisor and sounding board — to talk out her plans for selling the bank that had been in her family for generations, and to figure out why the offers she’d been receiving “looked good on paper but didn’t feel right in her gut.” What happened in the end? See the client story, here.
- The principal of an Environmental Services company needed an Advisor to help her think through her company’s options for either selling the company in the near future, or keeping the company with its current partners until they had a stronger reason to sell. She also needed a Coach to help her evolve from micro-manager to manager to leader.
- The owner and publisher of a Higher Education Website first needed a Consultant to create a new marketing strategy to attract advertisers to his site. After we made that strategy work (more than doubling annual revenue to a six-figure total), the owner needed an Advisor and Consultant to help him sell the website to a buyer who would want to run the site in a way that was true to the owner’s original vision, and who would pay the owner a seven-figure price that the site deserved. We were happy to succeed on all counts.
For more examples, please click to my Testimonials page.