What a business consultant in Northern Colorado actually does for a 10-person company

The short answer: a good one changes a number, not a slide deck

Here's the plain version. For a company with 1 to 25 people, a business consultant in Northern Colorado should be doing three kinds of work: fixing your prices, fixing where your hours go, and getting cash that's already yours into your account faster. That's it. If somebody shows up at a 10-person shop in Loveland or Greeley with a 40-page strategy deck and a five-year vision statement, you've hired the wrong thing for the size you are.

I've owned a bakery. I built escape rooms. I've rehabbed houses and bought and sold businesses. At a company this size, the problem is rarely "what business are we in." The problem is Tuesday.

So the test for anyone you're thinking about hiring, including me: can they name the dollar result in the first call? Not "improved alignment." A number, a direction, and a rough timeline. If they can't, don't sign.

The three problems that usually sit underneath

From Berthoud to Windsor, a small shop's trouble usually comes down to one of these three, even when the owner describes it as something else.

• "I'm busy and broke." Revenue looks fine, the bank account doesn't. That's usually a pricing problem or a cost-of-delivery problem. A shop quoting off a 2023 price list in 2026 is donating the difference.
• "I'm the bottleneck." The owner is quoting, dispatching, invoicing, answering the phone, and doing the thing they're actually good at after 7 p.m. That's a calendar problem. Every hour you spend on $22-an-hour work is an hour you're not spending on the work only you can do.
• "Someone owes me money." There are three invoices sitting out there and nobody has called about them because calling is uncomfortable. That's free money with a phone call attached.

Notice none of those need a consultant with a framework. They need somebody who will sit next to you, open the actual books, and do the uncomfortable math out loud. I sold my bakery with seller financing, which means I carried part of the price myself. When you're the bank, you care a lot about whether the numbers are honest. Honest numbers first. Everything else is decoration.

What the first 30 minutes should sound like

A good first call is mostly them asking and you talking. They should want to see something real fast: a P&L, a price list, last month's calendar, your aging report. If you're a nonprofit, your 990. I read those before discovery calls, because they're public and they show you where to ask.

Green flags:

• They ask what you charge and when you last changed it.
• They ask how many hours a week you personally work and what you do in them.
• They triage out loud. Is it flammable, or is it on fire? Different answers get different speed. That distinction is literally what our triage work is for.
• They tell you one thing you could do this week that costs nothing.

Red flags:

• Discovery that takes four weeks and bills you for it before anybody touches a number.
• They won't quote until they've "scoped." A range is always possible.
• Heavy AI vocabulary with nothing behind it. We use AI tools here every day, and an actual assistant answers our line, but a buzzword on a slide is not a result. If someone's selling you a bot, make them show you the thing running. That's the whole point of an hype audit.
• They never say a number out loud.

Strategy decks versus work that changes a number

Big-firm consulting exists because a 4,000-person company genuinely can't see itself. You can. You're in the truck. You already know which crew is slow and which customer is a pain. You don't need insight, you need somebody to do the arithmetic and then hold you to it.

Here's the arithmetic that keeps showing up. Say you do $900,000 a year at a 12% net. That's $108,000. Raise prices 5% across the board and hold volume: that's $45,000 of new revenue that drops almost entirely to the bottom line, because your rent and your trucks and your insurance don't care. You just moved net profit up about 42% with a new price sheet and three uncomfortable conversations. That's a hypothetical, but run it on your own numbers tonight. The shape doesn't change.

Now run the other direction. Cutting 5% of costs on the same business, on a cost base of $792,000, gets you about $39,600, and that kind of cut tends to take months and make everybody miserable. Price first. Always.

One more rule of thumb: whatever you think a change will cost in time and dollars, add 20%. The oopsie fund. It's real and it's always there.

Why local actually matters here, and it isn't about coffee

The seasons in Northern Colorado are not the seasons in a case study. Trades and construction front-load the summer and then stare at January. Greeley and Johnstown move on ag cycles and the cash that comes with them. Fort Collins restaurants and shops ride a student calendar, which means August is a different animal than July, and May falls off a cliff while everyone else's summer is just starting.

That matters for three decisions an out-of-state advisor will get wrong:

• When you raise prices. You do it going into your strong season, not in the dead month when you're scared.
• When you hire. Competing for the same labor pool as every other crew in April is how you overpay. The hiring conversation starts in February.
• How you reserve cash. A business with a six-week dead stretch needs a different cash cushion than one that's flat all year, and a generic "three months of expenses" rule won't tell you which month to be scared of.

Local also means the person can drive to you. I will sit at your counter in Johnstown or your shop in Windsor. Hard conversations go better in person.

How to size the fee so it pays for itself

Small-shop advisory generally comes in one of three shapes: a one-time project (a pricing rebuild, a buy or sell, a systems cleanup), a monthly retainer sized to how much work you're handing over, or hourly for one specific fire. Fees vary too much for a market number to mean anything, so make every advisor give you a real range for your job.

My rule: I have to make you more than I cost you. If an advisor can't see the path to that in the first conversation, they should say so. It's a filter. An advisor who gets paid whether or not anything moves is a liability, and you want an asset.

Practical way to structure it: find the number first, then size the fee against it. If the work is worth $45,000 a year in recovered margin, a few thousand to go get it is an easy yes. If nobody can name the number, the fee is a guess dressed as a proposal. Our monthly advisory is one way to do it, and the free Business Checkup exists so you can see whether there's a number worth chasing before you spend a dollar.

Questions to ask before you sign anything

Copy these into your phone.

1. What number do you think moves, and by roughly how much?
2. What's the first thing you'd change in week one?
3. What do you need from me, in hours per week? (If it's more than two, be honest about whether you have them.)
4. Who does the work, you or a junior?
5. What does month three look like if this is going well? What if it isn't?
6. How do I end this? Month-to-month or a 12-month handcuff?
7. Have you owned a business, or only advised them?

That last one isn't snobbery. I'm just a dude who has made payroll with his own money, and it changes what you notice. When you've eaten a slow month yourself, you stop giving advice that only works in a good year.

When you don't need a consultant at all

Plenty of times. If you know exactly what's wrong and you're just avoiding it, you don't need me, you need a Tuesday morning and a phone. If you're under about five people and growing and nothing is broken, spend the money on a bookkeeper instead. If your problem is a single line item like insurance that jumped, go rebid it yourself. Three quotes, one afternoon. Zero American dollars in consulting fees.

And if the business is genuinely on fire, payroll in nine days and no plan, don't hire a strategist. Get somebody to triage it this week. Flammable gets a plan. On fire gets a bucket.

If it is worth a conversation, here's how to eat the elephant: one bite. Pick the single number that scares you most, write it on a sticky note, and bring that to whoever you talk to, including me on a 30-minute call. Everything else can wait a week. That one number can't.

Questions I get about this

Todd Schreier has owned a bakery, built escape rooms, rehabbed houses and sold businesses. He runs Schreier Group with his wife Amanda out of Johnstown, Colorado. Call him at (970) 591-4263.