Cobblestone Solutions

Cobblestone Solutions officially launched in March, and since then I’ve already made a business model adjustment to account for new information, new findings, and the market reaction. Expect my plans to change regularly - the beauty of a small business is its agility. I wanted to give you a quick update on the new direction.

With the initial model, I wanted to solve two problems at once: many good companies need help with sales and marketing to grow and many good people are underengaged and looking for more work with good companies. I wanted to solve these market inefficiencies and serve as a matchmaking service.

But I ran into a few problems: 1) Legal: to place people at a client, you need to be very careful to ensure that they look like contractors not employees and the line got blurrier if I wanted to oversee their work at a client. In the end, my best bet was to hire temporary employees and act as a temp agency or hire full time employees and act like a standard consulting firm. Neither of these am I prepared to do just yet. 2) Financial: This plan was going to put me into debt and therefore at greater risk. I am not averse to debt but I realized it was a choice I was making and perhaps less than ideal. 3) Selling: I am pretty good at selling potential clients on what I can do for them. But selling them on what my network can do for them got harder.

All of these things added up up to me deciding to focus initially on building a more traditional sole-proprietor consulting practice rather than a placement firm. Fewer legal headaches, less financial risk and easier to sell. Longer term I hope to build in that direction - adding more people and consultants as my practice grows. And I also want to maintain a network of talented contractors (the Cobblestone Associate Network) to address client needs that are beyond my availability or capabilities.

So my consulting practice today focuses on working with early stage social enterprises and working with them on business development, sales and marketing.

I could say more - but get in touch with me if you’re curious.