Business is hard, if it wasn’t everyone would open a business and be their own boss. Recently I did just that, but only after nearly 40 years learning the craft. I decided to offer my experience and education to help businesses grow and prosper, having seen a far share flounder and fail. I have seen good businesses prosper and grow only to be destroyed by a new generation of bad management. Business is hard, and it needs to be tended to at all levels.

In the beginning a person or a group of people have a great idea like let’s bring all the merchandise that’s sold by several stores and sell them in one big store. But what happens when a good idea goes bad or stops evolving. Many of the department stores of old are gone, either failed to adjust to a changing consumer or were mismanaged until they were swallowed up by a better run competitor. In the past year investors abandoned the largest retail department store chain, Walmart, in droves. On the day Walmart announced it would not meet it sales projection stocks tumbled 10% and have yet to recover. Two reasons for this were late entry into and a low financial commitment to the e-commerce realm, and an across the board salary increase to accommodate political pressure.

The questions to be asked would be why so late to the e-commerce arena, it is not a shock that is where a lot of people today are shopping. As to the salary increase it was a good idea to help invigorate a demoralized work force but back fired when hours and personnel were cut. There is a lot more wrong with Walmart, but the point is that a company with the resources available to Walmart should not make such basic mistakes. It also serves as a warning to the little guy that things can go wrong and you may need help to avoid them or recover from them. The help may come from a friend a neighbor or your Uncle Sal.

There is however another possibility, a consultant.There are likely as many opinions about consultants as there are consultants, many are not good. To dispel the worst of these, consultants are not people who just take your money and give you worthless advice. In fact, we are as passionate about our business as you are about yours. What a consultant can do is see past the emotion you bring to your business and look at the business with fresh eyes.

We also provide other services such as working as the Business Development office for those companies too small to maintain a full time staff. We write business plans and proposals and fill in other back office requirements as needed.Consultants have backgrounds and knowledge that business owners do not, nor do they have a need for. Brand building and brand protection are important to every business and sometime passion overtakes reason.

A good story for this goes back to the 1970’s when a famous designer, Bill Blass, lent his name to a line of designer chocolate. If you have never heard of Bill Blass Chocolate, it’s because it was a dismal failure. Blass had little to do with the actual company other than lending his name, one of the first celebrities to do so. The venture went so bad it nearly destroyed the Bill Blass brand and it never fully recovered.

Today with the economy recovering many businesses look to grow. Others are just starting up and are looking for help or at least direction. If you are in need of help, advice or just a suggestion or two, seek out a consultant. Your business will thank you for it.

If you do seek out and pay a consultant the first lesson to learn is to listen to them. An example of not listening I can give from my own past, while working for a small manufacture out of Southern California. The owner and founder of the company was a very good engineer who designed a unique way of doing something and the business grow rapidly. Unfortunately, after a few years, the product was copied in ways that bypassed the patent and made his unique design a basic commodity item, a fact he was reluctant to accept. The business continued to grow but much slower. He called in a group of consultants who in the end gave him advice he did not want to hear so he dismissed them. He merged the business with his largest competitor and lost it to his new partner who sold it to a large multinational. The moral is consultants do know what they are talking about, so don’t waste your money and listen.

I will end by reminding you what your teacher, professor and Mother have told you, if you need help, ask.