How Anita Havemann’s financial consulting business launched.
Name of Business: Lean Advantage, LLC.
How many years in business? Just had my 1-year anniversary.
What does the business do? Help finance teams with Business Process Improvement using lean concepts and provides interim Controller services.
What led you to do this business? “I’ve wanted to do consulting for many years now, but always needed to secure healthcare benefits as my husband was a substitute school teacher. After he landed a full time teaching position, the possibility of me being an independent consultant started to look realistic.”
What is working now? “My first client turned out to be my former employer. I knew my job was ending on Feb 28th, but didn’t know that about 3 weeks prior they wanted me to stay on, but in a different role. I asked if they would be open to having me as a consultant (they were) and that project went full time for many months. By the time it started winding down, a
Financial Consultant Anita Havemann, owner of Lean Advanatage.
long-time recruiter acquaintance was looking for someone to do a process improvement project at one of her nonprofit clients. I was quite excited to win that project, which has led to other roles there.”
Lessons learned/Advice/Take Away: “I know that I must continue to prospect at all times. There is no rest. But I really love learning new things while helping others improve processes.”
What is one thing Jackie really helped you with? “So many good points – seems like she knows exactly what is going to happen next and gives you a friendly warning. She knew that we were all struggling with setting our rates – especially women – we tend to downplay our value, but Jackie was right there saying “no!” And reminding us that the higher the rate, the higher the perceived value. She also wisely suggested that we do little summaries of our projects so that we have summaries of previous jobs to pull from when bidding on an RFP / project.”
Links to share:
www.leanadvantagellc.com – under construction!
