Small Business Consulting

Grow and develop the skills of your organization while maintaining full control of everything happening in your business. Empower yourself by learning a proven process and then repeat it to level-up your company’s scale again and again through a short-term business consulting arrangement. Companies who commit to management and operations consulting get a strong ROI as we guide you on your journey. Are you operating a small team (think 5-50 employees) and noticing the added struggles that come with scaling beyond a few core individuals? The ideal solution is getting small business help from SBG Consulting.

Wondering what a small business consultant does? Read our article about what consulting includes.

Short term small business consulting is often suitable for organizations that have a few people on payroll, but haven’t yet scaled to multiple levels of management – flat hierarchy can present challenges resulting in flat performance. Consultancy services at SBG specialize in supporting businesses that are trying to expand beyond single digit headcounts. You’ll receive recommendations from an experienced Accredited Small Business Consultant® each step of the way. This service for small business support is a contracted agreement for at least 3 but no more than 6 months. We have found that most organizations are able to continue the discovery we did together on their own after this time with the enhanced understanding they acquired and the additional strengths their team has uncovered.

Small Business Operations Consulting typically occurs in three phases:

1. Analysis. In this first phase of consulting services you learn the blind spots in your small business operations and together we identify your strengths and places for opportunity as a leader of your company. You will uncover the real problem(s) you are facing, which often isn’t the problem you thought you needed help solving. The analysis looks at the way the business functions within six key areas.
2. Planning. During this phase we’ll draft a 90 day plan for execution and ensure there is a plan to improve a wide range of business processes. We stop looking backward (analyzing) and move focus to the future. Using the OWT Formula from Barry’s forthcoming book, we establish a goal from each of the opportunities, weaknesses, and threats of the most recent SWOT analysis. This plan becomes the highest priority. Your team can focus strictly on this plan for the next quarter. As a result you will get “OWT” of the day-to-day grind so you can think bigger.
3. Implementation. This is the last two to three months of the relationship. We put everything we spent the early days researching about your business operations into practice. At the end of this phase you’ll receive a complete report documenting our discoveries, your journey and potential next steps. If desired, we can schedule a complimentary meeting six months from the end of our engagement to review your continued progress and ROI. In addition, many business owners choose to continue their involvement with Barry and “graduate” to his leadership coaching relationship.

Looking for a longer relationship? Check out our Fractional COO service for engagements of 6 months or longer.

How is consulting different from coaching?

Operations and Management Consulting is about finding answers and implementing solutions, in a fixed amount of time. We analyze your business from top to bottom using proven tools and systems to uncover root causes of any problems. After that we put the fixes in place to optimize your operations. The work is done as a collaboration, where you get advice based on our experience and you’ll learn not only the right processes to use in your business for the long term but you see results in the short term. When consulting we don’t want to build a multi-year relationship with the client, because then we aren’t valuing the problem they are facing today. Think of the process of working with a consultancy service more as an intensive bootcamp, and here at SBG that never lasts more than 6 months.

Leadership coaching on the other hand, is more about the individual than the organization. This exploration takes a little longer but isn’t as intensive; possibly meeting only once per month. When you sign up for coaching you are trying to learn personal skills, in this case how to lead and empower the team around you to achieve their highest potential. If you’re considering coaching you may already have a goal in mind and you probably already know you are capable of being a great leader (everyone is) but you might not know how to unlock that potential. In leadership coaching we go through a process of discovery focused on the future you envision as your goal, being a great leader and a world-class manager.