Well, mostly because I like gardening, and they were flowering when I set up the company! But they are also a great example of partnership. Where the soil moisture is right, blue asters love to grow next to their flower companion – goldenrod. Why? Some scientists believe bees like the combination of a deep purple and blue flower (blue asters) and yellow (goldenrod), so that both flowers attract more pollinators when they are grown together. I hope my clients have a similarly beneficial partnership with me.

I can use your preferred contract agreement (or my own version) and include some provisions in the scope to align the plan with Blue Aster’s framework.

The initial scope will be for just the Discovery phase . If after that phase, you decide you don’t want to work together, there will be an early exit fee invoiced at termination. Otherwise, we will agree on a long-term retainer plan and begin relationship.

My preference is to spend all my time on Blue Aster work, but when I have bandwidth and the project seems like a good fit, I will consider one-off consulting engagements.  My hourly rate for those projects will depend on the scope.

Below I detail more specific examples of programs and efforts I’ve led. These are not all inclusive!

New business from Day 0: I co-founded and ran Scale Link, a first of its kind secondary market for loan sales. I was new to secondary markets but helped stand up the organization over a 6-year period, including everything from writing the business plan to financial modeling, hiring, and more. We met all projected targets over the first 3 years.

For Scale Link, I also built out the brand messaging, sales playbook, and sales to banks for the secondary market. This go-to-market work took an entrepreneurial approach to gaining customers and building a brand new product roadmap.

New programs: In addition to Scale Link, I helped design and launch the Charlotte Small Business Growth Fund. I raised funds from public and private donors, closed debt agreements, and worked with the technology vendor to stand up a loan marketplace with multiple lenders to make it easier to business owners to access credit. The program serves all of Charlotte is capitalized with $20M of support.

Scenario planning: While the Director of Market Intelligence for Inventure, I created financial scenarios for patent-based new businesses in the civil engineering and transportation space. I even earned a patent as part of that work.

As Scale Link was a startup, I also took on CFO duties, including building a robust financial model used for scenario planning as part of budgeting and sensitivity analysis each year.

For work with the Aspen Institute, I built a publicly available financial model for nonprofit organizations to use to model participation in lending programs. That also included a strategic decision-making tool for whether to participate in a program or not.

Strategic reviews: In partnership with Aspen, I helped review State Small Business Credit programs to improve their success and benefit for entrepreneurs. That work laid the foundation for designing and initiating the work on a loan level guarantee program at Scale Link.

As a consultant for the Microloan Accelerator Program, I reviewed the lending operations of 10 lenders to help them improve their volume. As the due diligence lead for new partners at Scale Link, I review more than 50 partners from their financial position to lending processes and operations.