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Advice & action.

(2 minute read.)

Ask, listen, guide...

I provide a variety of one-off or short-term or ongoing business advice & support services to solopreneur/small/medium businesses.

I avoid corporate gigs, because too often bigger firms are relatively 'slow lumbering beasts' with resistant-to-change internal politics which hamper getting stuff done.

Bluntly, if I really need a pain in the ass there's other ways I can easily get one; I don't need to go work with a large 'Inc' entity.

Anyway…

'So g, let me see if I got this straight…'

'You talk to people about business, and they pay you money?'

Almost. Not quite.

In my consults I have conversations with people about their business.

We talk about what they're doing and how things are going… problems, opportunities, what they want to do, etcetera.

Then I suggest ways to improve things, and help them do it.

'Ask, listen, guide…' that's what I get paid for.

It's all very simple… when you strip away the complexity there's only three things you need to know in business…

  • What to do.
  • How to do it.
  • And some appreciation of why.

Of course, it also helps to have an ally who provides no-nonsense practical how-to advice and can either do the work or knows upon whom to call to ensure principle makes it to practice. And, at risk of sounding a little glib, that's the stuff I cover.

There are two core aspects to my work:

Much of my work has often been longer-term… there's people I've advised for more than twenty years, during which time we've become genuine friends.

Where appropriate (mutually beneficial and agreeable), as an alternative to providing paid advice and support I sometimes acquire equity in a client business as a basis for ongoing participation.

And, 'geography is not an issue'… my interaction with others is largely by email and phone rather than face-to-face; I'm not a fan of travel—it's often unnecessary and at times also genuinely counter-productive, or impractical (UK-based, much of my work is with people in the USA).

As noted, nowadays only in very limited circumstances am I available for advice & support and/or mentoring.

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