How do you grow when you’re plate is full?

 

Every effective business needs to balance planning for the future with managing day-to-day operations. When your plate gets too full to keep your focus on both of these essential elements, it’s time to hand some over to your second in command. Which is where your Chief Operating Officer comes in.

The job of a COO is a versatile one. The exact role you need your COO to fill depends on your business, your industry, and your personality as a CEO. Maybe you need someone to meet with regularly and help plan the high level strategy of your business. Maybe you need someone to take on overseeing the day-to-day operations of your business so you can focus on the big picture growth. Or maybe you need some of both. Maybe there’s one key area of leadership that you need support in. Maybe you work best when you have someone you can work in tandem with. Maybe you need an outside eye to work with in developing more streamline processes and procedures. Your COO could fill any (or multiple) of these roles.

Unfortunately, for most small and medium sized businesses having a full-time COO is a pipe-dream.

Fortunately having a Virtual Fractional (very part time) COO means you can have all the upsides without needing someone full-time. We can plan a package and timeline that works for you and your business. We’ll use a combination of video chats, phone calls, emails, texts, and all the wonders of modern technology, combined with optional onsite visits to effectively and efficiently elevate your business.

In a few short months, Gwen has helped me bring in a world class marketing team, redesign my business model to generate consistent revenue, and put me in my zone of genius. I can now focus on leading my business and living my business priorities, to have fun, have it be easy, have it be lucrative and make a huge impact on the members of the community and the clients I’m here to serve. With Gwen’s support, I feel like we are amazingly on the way to making all that happen.

Elena F. Deutsch, MPH

Founder and CEO, WILL – Women Interested in Leaving (big) Law

When you need someone to help you with the holistic view of your business.

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In a world of specialists that fit your business into their model, I specialize in being a generalist who uses the wide variety of tools in my toolbox to create custom solutions for your particular business. Business is business no matter the industry, but each is their own unique combination of strengths, weaknesses, and resources, and therefore an individualized approach is the most effective.

My toolbox has grown and expanded over the course of a wide reaching career. When I left high school my plan was to be a math teacher, but that future was quickly hijacked as I discovered computer programming. With a degree in computer science firmly in hand I worked in the industry for years. By the time I laid myself off at the dot com down-turn in 2000 (along with dozens of people from my department), I had accomplished many of my career goals and was ready to try something new; so I turned to my life-long hobby of knitting and became a professional knitting instructor (yes — there really is such a thing)

Fifteen years later I’ve transitioned to consulting and speaking bringing my breadth and depth of operational and instructional experience to helping businesses succeed.

My first job while still in college was working as a professional consultant, and my first client was General Mills (yes, that General Mills). I’ve been doing business consulting on and off for the last 35 years. I have wide ranging experiences, including as a consultant for Ernst & Young, running the IT department for a competitive phone company, working with boutique businesses, and having my own consulting firm. 

Helping successful visionary entrepreneurs move past their plateaus is what I do best because my specialty is being a generalist. Instead of fitting you into a premade process, I hand select and curate from lots of the other processes out there and apply them when appropriate for your business.

Operations is my zone of genius and I’m always told that people are amazed by the insights that I deliver.

Prior to working with Gwen, my business was at a comfortable plateau. It was profitable and solid, but I knew it could grow further. 

Now I’m seeing all sorts of new potential. Gwen and I have worked together for 5 months and I’m on track to increase my business revenue by 50% this year. Which, after three years of same-ness, feels amazing!

Amber Kinney

Business Consultant, The AK Collective

 Offerings & Rates:

Part of offering individualized solutions is creating custom packages that work for you and your business.

Packages are structured on a retainer basis, and are customized to meet your needs. They vary based on a number of elements including time commitment, and the level of strategic visioning and/or hands on implementation that works best for your business. Additional on-site visits, and specific trainings can be coordinated as needed.

Some ways I’ve worked with clients are:

  • Ongoing strategic planning – we meet once a week or once every couple of weeks for management meetings to work through any blocks you run into as they appear, and keep your business moving forward strategically. You could think of this as a part time COO helping you focus on the strategic issues around your business operations. These packages are billed on a monthly retainer basis and are completely customized to you and your business, schedule a call and we can find a solution that works perfectly for you. These packages start at $750 per month.
  • Quarterly planning and weekly accountability – we focus on a calendar quarter to keep goals, tasks and activities manageable while still creating a significant impact in your business. We call our quarterly review and planning sessions the Quarterly Tune-Up. It is a great way to create focus and establish a routine of accountability to help move your business forward.

For any package that involves in ongoing implementation I always recommend a minimum of a 6 month commitment, and I strongly encourage you to commit to a year, so that we can create deep, effective and lasting change.

 

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The other thing I really value in Gwen is that she is not attached to a certain approach. Consultants that I’ve previously worked with have their program, and unfortunately it does not always fit with every single business owner’s business model. Gwen pulls from all of the knowledge that she has, taking a tool from here and perhaps some learning from there, to make it work in my specific niche market. 

If you’re looking to have a higher level of clarity, and you want to be able to channel your energy to what matters, I would highly recommend working with Gwen.

Deborah Bakti

Seniors Care consultant, coach, speaker and trainer, Think Breakthrough Inc.