(615) 219-9181
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Consulting for small businesses

Take the first step

A small business consulting firm that takes the stress away

Small businesses like yours provide some of the most beloved products and services and rarely get the credit they deserve. Many small businesses are the lifeblood of their communities and provide more support than just their products and services. This is why we find it so important to offer small business consulting in Nashville, TN.

Small businesses face many challenges on a daily basis, including scaling their business. It might be managing cash flow, finding the right customers, building a strong team to support their “why”, or wearing every hat imaginable to keep the business running.

Not to worry, we’ve got you covered. Our team at Take the Stairs can help support your small business through its growing pains and journey to success. When times are tough, we can develop a plan to take some of the load off your shoulders or provide temporary support while we hire the perfect replacement for your company. When times are great, we can continue your moment by helping you scale. Regardless of your needs, we can help you take the next step in your small business. Don’t believe us? Call today to get a free, no-obligation discovery meeting on the books with our small business consultants.

Small business consulting services

We offer a wide range of small business consulting services in Nashville, TN, and beyond. Though there are many ancillary areas we can offer you support, we feel that our branding, marketing, and operations services are where we can best set your business up for success.

For any inquiries on how we can help your small business thrive, please call (615) 974-1919, or fill out our form below.

When you are a small business trying to compete for market share against the convenience or price of a national competitor, your business’ brand becomes all the more important. Your brand is not as much your logo and colors, as the purpose and drive that made you start your small business in the first place. By uncovering your purpose and the clients you are trying to appeal to, you can begin to use marketing dollars to communicate only to those targeted audiences that are most likely to love your business. It’s important to find those core customers who love your brand, as they will be your biggest advocates and provide you with more opportunities for great word-of-mouth referrals. 

Your small business strategy is everything. You can’t compete on the same level as corporate-sized marketing budgets so we can help you work smarter by spending your marketing dollars as efficiently as possible. The more in tune we become with your business, the better your results will be.

Helping you to know your clientele is not enough, you need to spend the time to find and communicate with them as well. Regardless of your business, there are many strategic ways to communicate to your audience. At Take the Stairs, we don’t specialize in one form of marketing. Instead, we focus on the channels that are most likely to reach your target consumers to start a conversation that resonates with their needs. 

Whether you need website development, content marketing, search engine optimization, social media management, paid advertising (e.g. AdWords), graphic design, video creation, or anything in between, we’ve got you covered. We’ll even handle more traditional marketing like TV, radio, PR, printed material, trade shows, or anywhere your clients can regularly be found. To us it’s all about the result: we’ll adapt our tactics however we need to, in order to speak to your clients.

Getting more clients in the door isn’t the only way of increasing your revenue. Oftentimes, small businesses can become most profitable when they increase the efficiency of their internal practices. Whether that’s finding more cost-effective vendors, creating new workflows that save time, or better defining job descriptions for employees to gain an exceptional company culture. Regardless of your operational challenges, by understanding where you’re trying to get to, we can reverse-engineer a plan to get you there. Don’t believe us? Put us to the test by scheduling a free discovery consultation with our team.

When you are a small business trying to compete for market share against the convenience or price of a national competitor, your business’ brand becomes all the more important. Your brand is not as much your logo and colors, as the purpose and drive that made you start your small business in the first place. By uncovering your purpose and the clients you are trying to appeal to, you can begin to use marketing dollars to communicate only to those targeted audiences that are most likely to love your business. It’s important to find those core customers who love your brand, as they will be your biggest advocates and provide you with more opportunities for great word-of-mouth referrals. 

Your small business strategy is everything. You can’t compete on the same level as corporate-sized marketing budgets so we can help you work smarter by spending your marketing dollars as efficiently as possible. The more in tune we become with your business, the better your results will be.

Helping you to know your clientele is not enough, you need to spend the time to find and communicate with them as well. Regardless of your business, there are many strategic ways to communicate to your audience. At Take the Stairs, we don’t specialize in one form of marketing. Instead, we focus on the channels that are most likely to reach your target consumers to start a conversation that resonates with their needs. 

Whether you need website development, content marketing, search engine optimization, social media management, paid advertising (e.g. AdWords), graphic design, video creation, or anything in between, we’ve got you covered. We’ll even handle more traditional marketing like TV, radio, PR, printed material, trade shows, or anywhere your clients can regularly be found. To us it’s all about the result: we’ll adapt our tactics however we need to, in order to speak to your clients.

Getting more clients in the door isn’t the only way of increasing your revenue. Oftentimes, small businesses can become most profitable when they increase the efficiency of their internal practices. Whether that’s finding more cost-effective vendors, creating new workflows that save time, or better defining job descriptions for employees to gain an exceptional company culture. Regardless of your operational challenges, by understanding where you’re trying to get to, we can reverse-engineer a plan to get you there. Don’t believe us? Put us to the test by scheduling a free discovery consultation with our team.

Ready to take the first step?

Call now Schedule a Discovery

When do I need a small business consultant?

At Take the Stairs we believe that large corporations aren’t the only companies that should benefit from the services of consultants. The job of a small business consultant is to be a professional problem solver for your business. There are a number of ways we can impact your small business strategy so we’ve outlined some of them below:

When you’re running a small business, every day can feel like you’re stuck in quicksand. When you check something off your To-Do list, two more things fill its place. It can be tough to feel like you are making enough progress. A Nashville-based small business consulting firm like Take the Stairs can help by handling the legwork for some of your most difficult tasks. 

Maybe you had a great idea months or even years ago, that you didn’t have the time or energy to implement? By having an external voice and a fresh pair of eyes, you can start to plan how your best ideas can come to life. The best part is that we can help with the heavy lifting so you can focus on keeping your business up and running.

Marketing strategy for small businesses can be one of the most important elements of your entire business strategy: without sales, you cannot invest in further innovations and updates to your business. As serial entrepreneur, Gary Vaynerchuck, would put it, “Cash is oxygen.” 

We help our small business’ not just to find revenue but to find the right new business by developing buyer personas. Buyer personas help small business owners better understand the key demographics and behaviors around the people most likely to buy your products or services. Only when we understand who we are selling to, can we create the most effective and authentic set of messages.

We love to help our customers save money and grow their profit margins. After years of running your business, you can often become comfortable with the set up you have developed around you. This includes your employees, vendors, partners and ways of working. As time goes on they aren’t always as efficient as you last remembered.

If you’re feeling like your profits are a little “under the weather”, getting a new perspective on your business environment can be just what the doctor ordered. For example, one of our customers who was used to using manilla folders to track jobs was frustrated because they didn’t have visibility across all their projects. We worked with them to implement a free project management tool called Trello, where we made all job folders digital. Now every member of the team is able to check the status of any project right from their phones or laptops. The new process was so easy that the general manager decided that he no longer needed to hire an assistant to help manage their projects, saving the company a full year’s salary just from implementing a free tool.

We believe there’s no such thing as the perfect candidate, only the perfect hire. In other words, it’s not about finding the most qualified candidate, it’s about the right fit for your company. Depending on the role there will often be prerequisites for any candidate to walk through the doors but the right hire will be the one who loves coming into work day after day.

Every small business needs to make those crucial hires that can make a significant difference within their business. A small business consulting firm like Take the Stairs can handle the entire process for you. From setting up a job posting based on your needs, the initial screening process and assignment planning all the way through to testing the candidate’s skill set and the final interview, we can get you there. Your ideal fit is out there, and we can help you find them.

Why Take the Stairs for small business consulting?

When it comes to small business consulting, Take the Stairs is not your average firm. Our goal is to leave every single business we work with in a better place than we found it. We are willing to go the extra mile to learn about what makes your business special so we can help you communicate your differentiators to the rest of the world. Our process is different to that of the typical firm as we’re big believers in the power of collaboration. We want to work with you every step of the way: your input and feedback ensure we stay on track to meet your expectations. At the same time, we train your employees to take over running that element of your business, leaving us to get started on a different part. This type of collaboration really works and together, we can reach the top of the staircase.

We are really good at removing chaos

Chaos can feel like it’s always around the corner. There are so many elements that can go from ‘good enough’ to ‘completely ineffective’ without proper organization and oversight. While it can be difficult to handle in the moment, the process is rather simple. We investigate the root cause of the chaos and regardless of the cause, the next step is to answer the following questions:

What happened?

Why did this happen?

How can we prevent this from ever happening again?

How can we make it right for those affected?

Once we find the answers to these questions, the process is a matter of putting the right actions in place to move forward. Though it’s simple, it’s still easier said than done. Having a partner by your side could be the thing you need to make the right change and move from chaos to order.

We work at your pace

When you are already pressed for time, taking additional meetings from a small business consulting firm can feel like the last thing that is going to help. We’re here to tell you we understand, the first step is the hardest to take. When you are ready to make the change your business needs, we’re ready to help get you there.

Once we determine your project’s scope and timelines, we can set an allocation of hours needed to complete accomplish the objectives. From there, it’s about deciding how quickly you want to move through the project. Whether it’s due to availability or financial resources, we get it. We’ll set a monthly allocation that fits your budget.

Whether you just need a couple of hours for consulting or 100+ hours per month, we can put a plan together that works with your budget. So if your budget is smaller, that’s okay. Though we may not be able to tackle your entire wishlist today, we can prioritize the most important activities and chip away at completing them. One. Step. At. A. Time.

Don’t believe it? Put us to the test. Schedule a discovery meeting and we’ll put together a free action plan for you and your small business.

We can help you scale

Growing pains are a difficult hurdle for any small business to overcome. You’re battling a continuous process of updating and improving all of your company resources. When faced with particularly complex challenges, it can be best to have another pair of hands to help with the decision-making and implementation processes. 

Our process is to evaluate the current state of your business so we can best determine the steps to take to overcome your current challenges and reach your goal. From there it’s a process of reverse engineering a plan to get there. 

For example, a personal trainer may work with a client whose goal is to get a 6-pack. When the goal is understood by the trainer, they put a nutrition plan together and core-focused workout plan into action to reach that client’s goal of what it means to be fit. 

Scaling your business is all about having a plan of purposeful activities that you believe will help get you there. There will be ups and downs on every journey but with an iterative plan of attack, you will get there.

Set up a meeting with our small business consulting firm today

We will never be able to explain our small business strategy simply enough to put all the information on one page: businesses are too diverse for that. If you’re a small business owner interesting in learning how to overcome your business challenges, call (615) 219-9181 or fill out our form below.

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