Here I sit writing the first blog from Leverage Point Advisors. In general, I’m a get (immediately) to the point type of person, not really big on small talk. So the topics we will cover are things I believe will be relevant to the daily operations of our clients’ businesses. This first one, though, I thought I’d share the story of how Leverage Point Advisors came to be. After this, I promise much “meatier” topics.

After spending over 15 years in Fortune 500 companies, I left to see what the entrepreneurial world was like. So, for the past 5 years, I have worked in much smaller organizations and spent much of that time providing marketing consulting services to clients. Through these experiences, I have come to believe that there is a gap in many small companies that is usually filled by a senior marketing or strategy person in larger organizations. The reason for this gap is that individuals with these skills are expensive and are needed to a greater or lesser extent, depending on exactly where a company is in its life cycle. So, hiring full-time employees with these skills doesn’t make sense.

This expertise, however, is critical to the long-term success of an organization, and hiring a strategy or management consulting firm to complete a project, deliver a strategy and then go away is not the right solution. Small companies and the executives who run them need a colleague they can call on to bounce an idea off or bring to an important meeting, no matter what the topic. They need an executive-level contract employee who is fully engaged in the business but on a less than full-time basis.

So, I began Leverage Point Advisors with the goal of providing these senior-level strategic marketing and business development skills on an as-needed basis to executives in small companies within the life science and consumer product markets. I am confident that leveraging (pun intended) our skills will assist our clients in achieving greater long-term success than they would have without our insights and guidance. It’s the best of both worlds for our clients: executive-level expertise fully committed to and engaged in your business but without the cost and overhead associated with hiring a full-time employee at this level.