Who we work with
Businesses built
to stay.
We work with owner-operated and privately held businesses of 5 to 500 people that count success in more than money. If you’re building something your community or town will still depend on in twenty years, we’d like to help.
Seven things, and we look for all of them
The Common Good standard.
Before we talk about an engagement, we talk about fit. These are the seven things we look for.
Book a 30-minute callThese seven points align us on values we hold in common. They’re rarely put into words, and few of us were ever asked to think them through, because it isn’t what Milton Friedman taught us about business. Business got reduced to one question: did you make money? We work with businesses where these seven points resonate at a minimum, and at best are adopted. Companies that care about these things are our ideal fit.
Owner operated
You still hold the decisions. You care about the craft of your work and you’re connected directly to your stakeholders. You sign your name to your work, because quality still means something to you.
You measure success differently
The impact your business has on your employees, your customers and the land you work on, and whether you make a profit, all carry equal weight.
Rooted in a place
You know your town and you plan to stay in it. You know your employees, customers and the land you’re on, you know how you matter to your community, and you want to make it a better place.
Solving a worthy problem
Your work brings real value to your community. It meets real needs so your community can flourish, and it doesn’t win at the cost of people, neighbors or land. It’s good work.
Work is good
Work is a creative act. It’s where you bring the best of yourself and the people you lead, to build your community. It’s worth doing well.
Scale is a tool
Growth is something you use. You don’t serve it. You care about what enough looks like, and you can say it.
Built to hold
You’re playing the long game. If the real reason for the work is a higher price at sale, we’re the wrong partner.
Measuring success
Four measurements of success.
Most businesses only measure profit. We take a broader perspective, and we measure all four next to the hours saved.
Human
How your people are doing. Tenure, turnover, and whether they’d tell a friend to work for your company.
Social
How your customers and your community are doing, and what your business puts back into the town.
Natural
How the land is doing. Is the ground better or worse than when you got it?
Financial
Whether you’re making a profit. It matters, and it’s one of four measurements.
Scale is a tool.
It is not a value.
Our limits are on purpose
What we refuse.
- We don’t help a business that harms its people, its neighbors or the land, whatever the economics look like.
- We don’t build a playbook for an owner who is building to sell.
- We don’t take a percentage of outcomes, revenue or savings, and we don’t take equity as a fee.
- We don’t write code before we understand the business. Code locks a process in place, and locking in the wrong one costs more than doing nothing.
- We don’t oversell, about anything.
- We’d rather resign an account than tell a client what they want to hear.
Let’s see if we fit
Start with a conversation.
Book 30 minutes with us. We’ll learn about you and your business, including what you want it to be in ten years. If we fit, we’ll lay out what working together looks like and the outcome you could expect. If we don’t, we’ll say that too, and we’ll have enjoyed getting to know good people.
Your request is in.
We’ll reach out to to find 30 minutes that work for you.