Three years ago, Lori Bryan made the conscious decision to grow her consulting business. She invested in a rebranding. She expanded her team of trainers and facilitators.
And then Lynch Bryan Consulting landed the largest project in the 14 years Bryan has been in business for herself. An international energy corporation hired her team to handle every piece of a major training initiative.
“Last year, 2014, was the single biggest year ever,” said Bryan, who used to oversee executive and leadership development at Hallmark. “It was huge for us.”
Unfortunately, the client—stung by lower prices affecting its industry—didn’t have a follow-up project. For Bryan, though, the job represented a breakthrough.
“It made us realize that, hey, we can do this,” Bryan said. “We can compete in the big world.”
She’s more determined than ever to hit—and surpass—the highs of 2014. That’s why she applied for ScaleUP! Kansas City, an elite program that helps local business owners master the skills they need to grow their companies.
Participating entrepreneurs are offered training, one-on-one coaching, roundtable sessions and other resources, thanks to funding provided by the U.S. Small Business Administration. ScaleUP! Kansas City is administered by the University of Missouri-Kansas City Innovation Center.
The program has completely changed how she looks at her business, Bryan said.
“I’ve been very fortunate to practice what I consider my craft,” she said. “… But if I’m going to grow and have a business model that’s sustainable over time and have an exit strategy, then it has to be more than that.”
GOING BEYOND THE BUSINESS CARD
Get ready to be jealous: For the first decade she was in business, Bryan never really needed to do much in the way of sales or marketing. Most of her business came from word-of-mouth.
“Until about three years ago,” she said, “the only kind of marketing I ever did was to have business cards printed. I was just lucky enough that people would call.”
While she’s got a strong stable of existing clients, Bryan wants to strategically pursue new customers, too—even though it’s one of the least favorite parts of her job. “I am not good at selling myself. At all,” she said. “It’s not comfortable for me.”
ScaleUP! Kansas City has helped her with this in a couple ways.
First, she’s devoted more time to defining her company’s value proposition: what Lynch Bryan Consulting does that’s different from competitors, and why clients should hire her team.
Bryan said her company’s specialty is tailoring training to the actual work that clients need to get done.
Let’s say a corporation wants its managers to sharpen their communication skills because they’ll have to share some tough news with employees in a few months. Bryan and her team will work with the company so their training helps managers tackle that specific task.
While they’re solving a short-term problem, the managers also build skills that endure.
Because Bryan knows her value proposition, she’ll be better able to articulate her case to potential clients.
And second, ScaleUP! Kansas City has shown Bryan how to drill down into her business’s financials and use them as a guide for growing the company. She now knows what types of clients tend to be more profitable, so she can pursue similar types of customers.
THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE HELPS YOU TODAY
Bryan doesn’t plan to retire anytime soon. Maybe in another 50 years, she joked.
As a result of ScaleUP! Kansas City, though, she’s started thinking much more seriously about her exit strategy.
That’s important because professional-service businesses like hers can be harder to sell. So much of their value lies in the owner’s knowledge and personal relationships.
The good news for Bryan is that she can build the kinds of systems and assets that will create long-term value. For example, she’s creating documentation that shows precisely how her company runs.
“You have to have a process for every single thing that you do,” she said. “You have to have a sales management system of some sort, that somebody can say, oh yeah, you’ve got things in the pipeline, contracts in place—all that stuff that we’d sort of been doing, but it wasn’t documented.”
And Lynch Bryan Consulting also has a valuable supply of intellectual property: the workshops and training that Bryan and her team deliver.
“We’ve got so much intellectual property that we’ve been working on this last year, trying to get it shored up,” she said.
This work has two big benefits for the company. “If I ever do get to the point where I want to sell it someday, that’s part of it,” Bryan said. “And part of it, it makes the business run better. It’s more efficient.”
ScaleUP! Kansas City’s training is helping Bryan reach her potential, so she can show her clients how to achieve theirs.
“I really, in my heart of hearts, I think the reason why we’re on this earth is to reach our potential,” she said. “It sounds so corny, so cheesy, but it’s really what I believe.”
What’s in a Name?
Lori Bryan originally did business as Sheer Potential, but three years ago, she rebranded to Lynch Bryan Consulting. Lynch is her maiden name, and the change is partly a tribute to her late father, who owned a grocery store in her hometown and was one of her inspirations as an entrepreneur.
