The fun thing about being a small business process consultant is that people tell you stories.

Sitting on a plane I chatted with a man with 7 martial arts studios.

He said it took them 12 years to get stabilized.

A couple of things got him there, in the end.

• moving from month-to-month payments to membership.
• getting very serious about training his teachers in the values of the studio, not just fighting

I’m happy that he made it.

That’s a painfully long time to go without stability.

We agreed that if he had had someone like me around, it could have been much shorter.

“Process consultant” sometimes sounds like I am obsessed with checklists.

(I’m not)

It really means giving courageous owners like this one a boost to get where he is going.