Small Business Consultants

Small Business Consultants

My name is Richard Christiansen, I am the author of Bootstrap Business: A Step-by-Step Business Survival Guide. I also recently finished The Zig Zag Principle: The Road to Success is Never a Straight Line. Now also enjoy serving as one of the qualified small business consultants. I think that one of the key things that differentiate me from other small business consultants is that I have indeed been in the trenches and done the work.

My background is in the corporate world. I followed the traditional road to success, by getting my MBA with an undergraduate in Electronic Engineering. I followed the corporate path.  It left me unfulfilled and wanting more. Midway through my career, I made the deep plunge into the cold waters of creating my own companies. I have lived it, I have slept it, I have breathed it, I have the battle scars to show it. Indeed there are many small business consultants out there and many of them are good. Many of them are very academic; the thing that I have discovered through my experience is there is a very fine blend of skills, knowledge, and real-life experience needed to be one of the top-notch Small Business Consultants. This job requires a mix of the heart and the head. So many individuals attempt to approach it from a heart or the gut feel. They often think intuition, a good idea, and fortitude is all it takes. On the other side is the camp that takes the purely academic approach.

As I was considering writing my first book, Bootstrap Business, I read stacks of other entrepreneur books and the top 10 business books. The primary thing that propelled me to actually write the book, was all of the other books I read. I was frustrated that all these other Small Business Consultants were coming at it from a very academic stand point or a very soft, touchy standpoint. The reality is that you have to share the real stories about success to give good advice. I have developed several very interesting small business assessment tools. These tools include everything from idea generation to utilizing the Porter Model to quickly determine if the business idea has a good probability of success or not.

Most recently I have developed a methodology that exponentially increased my probability of success. This is called The Zig Zag Principle. My first six business attempts were utter failures. Then I got into a pattern where I started three companies simultaneously. Usually, one would fail, one would become mediocre, and one would become a multi-million dollar business. Since following the pragmatic approach and the structure as outlined in The Zig Zag Principle I have now had four out of the last 5 businesses become multi-million dollar successes. Indeed I claim to be the premier Bootstrap Entrepreneur (and also small business consultants) in the United States and as one of these premier Small Business Consultants I encourage individuals to control their own destiny. I encourage people not to buy into venture capital as the first choice of funding and financing their business. Instead I help people understand how to start a small business and maintain control of their company. Of course there is a time to seek external funding, but often we use it too frequently. If individuals control their destiny by getting to profitability quickly and zig zagging to success rather than directly racing to the goal, they will be traveling the safest road to success. Nine out of ten small businesses fail in the United States; I do not like those odds.  I am convinced the best way to start a small business, is to:

-     Deliberately drive to profitability.

-     Add resources and processes.

-     Putting the scale element in place.

One of my favorite sayings is “nail it and then scale it”, you don’t scale it and then nail it.  So many small business owners attempt to do it the wrong way, as do many small business consultants. I am indeed a Small Business Consultant and would look forward to having dialog with you in the future. Feel free to follow my Zig Zag blog for interesting stories about success, business advice, and excerpts from the book.