Advisory Service

The business is open. Now something isn’t working.

Revenue can look fine while the position underneath it gets worse every month.

Debt, vendor costs, cash and the controls that decide whether the next six months work out, examined against the business as it actually runs rather than as it was planned on paper.

What this looks like from inside

You already know something is wrong. Knowing which thing is the hard part

A business under pressure rarely has one problem. It has five, they’re tangled together, and going after all of them at the same time is how owners run out of time and money before any of them get fixed. Meanwhile the pressure is doing its own damage, because decisions made in a hurry by a tired person are worse decisions, and you are the tired person.

The first job is not fixing anything. It’s working out how much runway you actually have, because that number decides everything else. What you can attempt with nine months is different from what you can attempt with nine weeks, and most owners in trouble have never sat down and worked out which one they’re in.

Then the order

What has to happen first, what can wait, and what makes the rest easier

Once we know the runway, we work out which single correction makes the other problems easier to correct. That one is almost never the loudest problem, and it’s almost never the one an owner would have picked. It’s the one holding the others in place.

Then everything else gets sequenced behind it, with dates and names against each piece. Not a list of recommendations, an order of operations, because a list of twelve things you should do is the same as no plan at all when you only have the capacity for three of them.

Usually first
The money

Debt structure, what it actually costs to service, and whether the terms you’re on are the terms you should be on.

Usually next
The outflows

Vendor costs, the contracts behind them, and the ones that were reasonable at a volume you no longer do.

Usually last
The controls

What has to be in place so the same thing doesn’t happen again once the pressure comes off.

Being straight about it

We don’t promise outcomes and we won’t pretend the maths works when it doesn’t

We write down where you started so the result can be compared to something real instead of just described. If it falls short, the question is which part fell short: the strategy, the systems, the execution, the people, the money, the leadership, or the diagnosis itself. That question gets asked honestly, including when the answer is us.

Some situations are past the point where advisory work is the right spend, and where that’s true we say so rather than taking the engagement. Where a matter belongs with an insolvency professional, a restructuring specialist or an attorney, that’s who it goes to.

There isn’t a clean line, but there is an honest conversation. If the realistic answer is that the money would be better spent on a restructuring professional or an attorney than on advice, we’ll tell you that at the screening stage rather than after you’ve paid us.
We can help you work out what to say and what you’re actually asking for, and where the conversation needs a licensed professional we say so. Walking into that conversation without knowing your own numbers is how owners accept terms that make things worse.
Sometimes the numbers point that way and sometimes they don’t, and we won’t pretend to know before we’ve looked. What we won’t do is reach for headcount first because it’s the fastest line to cut.
The other five

If this isn’t the one

All advisory services
Business Diagnostic & Strategy AssessmentWhere most people start Business Launch & Development AdvisoryBefore the doors open Owner & Executive AdvisoryThe ongoing seat Special Situations & Strategic ProjectsOne defined problem Cannabis Retail AdvisoryOur named practice

If it’s tight right now, say so early.

The options are always better six months before the problem becomes visible to everyone else.

Start a conversation See how the work runs

Scope, deliverables and timing are determined by the problem RCAG is being asked to solve. Every engagement is defined in writing before work begins.

Roland Conner Advisory Group LLC provides business advisory and consulting services. RCAG does not provide legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice. Submitting information through this website does not create a consulting or advisory relationship.