Efficiency Consultant Talks About Starting Small Business and Using Those Skills in Corporate World

What does it take to share business experience in management, through consulting? In my last job, I acted as a continuous improvement manager, consulting with the management team. We focused on improving lead times, reducing costs, improving quality and increasing worker productivity. They appreciated my consulting work.

With a strong background in customer service, sales, marketing, purchasing, planning, expediting, production control, and HR, including operating several small businesses, it made me a perfect candidate to provide advice for business consulting.

I am an expert customer service manager and have been for a long time. I sold my first business the day I was 16 because I was tired of working for a multitude of bosses in my babysitting and housecleaning venture. I was able to sell my customers list in that company to my sister and her friend for a months' worth of work. The cost to them was $1920 dollars, paid to me over a period of about six months. At the time I was making $12 an hour for forty hours worth of work. At 16, I worked after school, nights and weekends supporting my clients.

My second adventure into self-employment was selling Kirby Vacuum cleaners - I didn't get very far with that. I also tried Avon Beauty products, and found that I bought more than I sold. In the mid 80's I became a Nu Skin Sales Rep, and participated in a multi-level marketing network, selling skin creams and hair growth products and getting other folks to join. I did okay with this, I had some co-workers who were balding and willing to do almost anything to grow back their hair. I also was able to build a small network but it was not worth my time.

In the early 1990's, I co-owned and operated a small business that specialized in commercial carpet cleaning. Our major contract was cleaning office buildings and hangars at Bradley Airport. Because of the location of the work, we had to undergo a background check and be bonded. At the same time, my 2^nd husband and I also did a bit with selling and delivering balloons to people for special occasions. That wasn't as lucrative as we had hoped. We spent a lot of time in the car delivering, so we gave up those two businesses and decided, instead to get into produce.

We networked with local growers,farmers and established Carey's Farm Market. We found a location on the backside of Bradley Airport, on Rte 20, next to spec's, (a local hotspot for spectator's to sit and watch the planes come and go). It had a lot of traffic, particularly the kind we wanted, those coming and going from home to work. Consulting demographics and traffic flow is another key area to focus before you start a business.

Every morning, my husband would get up at 4:00 and run to the Hartford Farmer's market where he would buy locally grown product in bulk. I would meet him at our farm market at 6:00am to help him unload and set up the store. Then I would drop my daughter off for daycare and would go to my day job at Sweet Life Foods. My "real" job at the time was buying and selling truck loads of groceries, all day long. In my first year on the job, I made that company 4 million dollars in profit, against a 34 million dollar business. Not too shabby. I was pretty good at learning new things and consulted my network in the market when I was unsure of a buy.

My daughter Cassandra, who was four at the time, would sit up on the counter, eating strawberries or watermelon. She was just so darn cute, customer's would buy whatever she was eating. I learned to maximize that marketing ploy, and pretty soon she was punching the keys on the register, ringing people up to their delight. She also learned about picking through nasty, rotten produce every morning to get the displays ready. I believed in teaching my daughter about life, working and making money through my actions.

Some of our more famous customers were Radar from Mash and one of the Guitar players from NRBQ, as they lived in the area. The local farmer's like Max, and Richie, would drop by with boxes of tomatoes and sacks of corn. Richie covered his corn field with plastic that year, and we had the earliest corn crop ever, unheard of in New England at the time - we, unlike our competition, had corn for the 4^th of July.

We also networked through my contacts at Sweet Life and pretty soon we were asked to deliver produce to the Big Y Stores, through Sweet Life. We had to hire people to mind the farm stand while my husband delivered this product. We were given expert status and the business consulted with us on the perfect produce.

As the season's changed, so did our wares. We sold Christmas trees in the parking lot and we moved the rest of the business inside the building. Pretty soon, we were peddling Poinsettia's door to door, times were better back then but I was still making 40 dollars a pop, each time I walked into a business with an armload of plants.

For Holidays like Mother's Day and Easter, we would get the required permits and set up weekend farm stands, locally. We would pedal are plants for the buyer rush. These weekends were always frantic as we rushed to make the most profit we could in the fastest amount of time.

I remember one year, it was my birthday, March 31^st, it was Easter, and I was freezing my butt off on Rte. 75 next to Dale Drugs, in Windsor Locks about a mile from the airport. It was snowing and I wasn't getting any birthday cake, but for two days worth of work, we made $5,000 - Happy Birthday to me.

My experiences with owning and operating small businesses didn't stop there, either. Since then I've been a co-owner of Balbi Painting- LLC where we offer commercial painting for high end residential, business and some minor home improvement work.

In addition, I manage and am part owner of Chainsmoker, an all original rock band, established in 1997, that has 45 songs, 3 Cd's and a wide range of fans. We have played throughout the Hartford, CT area.

I've learned that in order to be successful, you must listen to your customers and give them what they want. It is so simple but sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees. Stepping back and creating a business plan is the first step in starting a small business. The Small Business Association in Hartford, CT is an excellent resource that offers additional consulting services.

Graduating to an ACE (Achieving Competitive Excellence) Management consultant for UTC, at Hamilton, for their biggest international repair facility, was a logical and rewarding career choice for me. I earned an education in Six Sigma, and was close to receiving my Black Belt as a sensei. I hosted and supported many process improvement processes where the projects I lead or supported, collectively was estimated to have saved that company upwards of 100M, annually. The numbers speak the truth, nothing I can say, more than that could convince you in my ability to provide business management consulting services.

I believe that with my experience owning and operating several small businesses, coupled with working for other owners in a multitude of functions, in large and medium size companies has afforded me expertise that I can leverage. This includes writing how to's and offering business management consulting services to help others be successful in starting and/or managing a small business.