Celebrating Two Years of Success

Starting a new business from scratch is scary, doing it on Halloween is just asking for it. Redhawk Consulting was started on October 31st, 2014 at 1:30pm. As we celebrate another All Hallows' Eve and our second year in business, I’m reflective about how much has changed since 2015.

In our first year of operation, we were laser-focused on revenue and generating the “next” client. Because we work with only entrepreneurial companies and non-profits on a project basis, we are constantly working ourselves out of a job—by design. We don’t advertise our services; almost all our clients are referrals. The next client is crucially important to us.

When I talked to people in that first year about Redhawk and what we did, I spoke in theory since most of that work had not been done or proven to be effective yet. I was confident in our approach, even if it was purely philosophical at that point. We killed ourselves to deliver value as our approach was far from refined.

Having survived the first year and proven that our business model was actually viable, we started to expand our client base, the services we offered, and our efficacy. I started the business in 2015 with one very large client. I hadn’t done any of the business development activities normally associated with starting a new business, because I was too busy working on that client’s projects. It was almost a full year before I started pounding the pavement and talking about Redhawk in our own local market.

The grind was real. I wasted time trying to farm members of the local chamber of commerce. I participated in several “networking” groups that were equal parts useless and creepy. I spent countless evenings going to startup events. Of the hundreds of meetings and other activities, only a handful of those produced anything worthwhile.

Then I started focusing on finding professional connections for whom I could add value. I demonstrated how the consulting we could do would directly benefit their clients, associates, friends, or other stakeholders. Stealing a page from Gary Vaynerchuk, I worked to create value first and relied on that to generate opportunities in the future.

Through that combination of brute force, strategic networking, and value creation, we started capturing more opportunities. Here are some highlights from our second year:

• We went from 4 clients in 2015 to 24 in 2016 (and growing)
• Clients’ total revenues in 2015 were $12 million; in 2016 that number is more than $100 million
• Redhawk engaged in 18 new industry sectors in 2016
• Of the 20 new clients added in 2016, 18 of them were referrals from existing clients
• 90% of our clients hired us for additional work after our initial engagement
• We added marketing, branding, and legal consulting to our slate of services
• We donated 17 hours of time in 2015 and more than 100 hours in 2016
• We have zero dollars written off to bad debt, despite generous payment terms

We're looking forward to growing, learning, and developing Redhawk in 2017 and beyond. To our families and friends who've put up with our constant rescheduling and dereliction of personal responsibilities—thank you. None of this would be possible without your understanding, generosity, and unconditional love.