Today’s business world offers wonderful opportunities for those interested in bringing innovation while profiting from reasonable and constructive strategies. However, without proper understanding of business theory and a steady access to resources, no such strategy or innovation will succeed. This is where business consultancy becomes an important addition to modern day business endeavor and many firms, both small and large sized ones, utilize outsider help and advisory to help build stronger business networks and connections. One of such consultancy and advisory companies that have brought significant innovation and success into their clients’ performances is Dream Source Consulting LLC out of California, USA. Being the founder and CEO Alberto Riehl’s brainchild, the company provides “Predictable Premium Systems” which focus on technical and business related insights and advisory to boost business performances for the company’s clients. Working on a subscription based system, the company employs highly educated and experienced business professionals and assigns them to specific client needs and demands for optimal performance and results. Consequently, the clients and companies receive excellent assistance and guidance at a fraction of the costs associated with other companies involved in similar fields of the consultancy business. Thus far, Dream Source Consulting LLC has managed to gather in a large number of loyal customers who have taken their success stories online to help build a more plausible reputation for the company and return the favor of good will and constructivism for Mr. Riehl.
David Mammano for Forbes Magazine has taken notice of this success story to interview Mr. Riehl himself and reflect on his experiences and ideas regarding his company. Mr. Riehl states that after going through some career failures, he decided to gather his knowledge and experience to move towards a more professional and individualized direction which led him to start an insurance company. After integrating his family members into this company, he invested all of his personal funds and began to target interested customers, while ensuring them about the safety and security of his system. This was when insurance fraud was popular in the United States and more than 80% of all fraud happened with online transactions. After bringing in huge sales numbers, Mr. Riehl was investigated by his bank, whose name he refuses to give, to be exonerated of all accusations, with the bank actually apologizing to him and de-freezing his business accounts following the investigation. Although he lost some clients in the process, he decided to continue with the remaining ones to offer them business advisory, while making sure that they received their remaining payments from the previous project. As a result, his new project, Dream Source Consulting LLC was born and his previous failures proved to be great lessons for Mr. Riehl and helped him develop a far better and technical understanding of business and finance. Although according to himself, he still takes risks with his business strategies, he does not do so with others’ money and this attitude has gained him significant respect in the eyes of his new customers.
Hunter Lovings for the Huffington Post reports on the consultancy industry by interviewing a key professional in it: Laura Gitman, who has been working with large-scale companies for the entirety of her professional life. Gitman refers to “positive change” as the most optimal outcome of business relationships as the most important learning out of her professional life. In a time of turbulence for the American state, society and politics when the country is losing international leadership in several subjects of concern such as global climate change, women’s empowerment, human rights and anti-corruption, she believes in positivism as the absolute solution. According to Gitman, true business leadership is the only way to deal with such a traumatic reality while she also teaches the subject at Bard College’s MBA in Sustainability program to bring business consultancy in line with academic standards. Much like Mr. Riehl, Gitman also makes note of the importance of honesty and communal learning for business entities and clients. The importance of the state business and its politics is that they tend to take away this element away from their partners and the public alike for practical purposes, which at large damages every aspect of business in America. However, with smart and opinioned business consultancy, it becomes possible for struggling businesses and their clients to survive such political surges and having educated students about such possibilities is a definite plus as well. This is where Mr. Riehl and Gitman have converged in terms of intent and procedure as both have come to the conclusion that it is equally important to educate people through theory and experience as actual business practices. As a result, both have managed to reach out to thousands of people to provide them with valid and utile information about business, politics and legality.
Most of the problems Dream Source Consulting LLC and Mr. Riehl himself observed regarding the consultancy business have been observed and discussed by many other professionals as well, who have been involved in this field. Matthew Stewart for the Independent reports on his past career as a business consultant when he finally decided to enter the market after a total financial collapse: just like it was the case with Mr. Riehl’s entry into the market. His first impression was that this was a fictional field and that it took literally no intellect or intelligence to become a business consultant. Adopting a philosophical approach to the issue, he takes note of how the current civilizational approach to business has created millions of people like himself who rake in millions of dollars every year while returning simply nothing substantial except for some extension and approval of corporate reputation. After repeating several times that he knew nothing about the subject matter, he concludes that the field is more destructive than constructive, raising attention to the necessity of a proper business education. Connecting his dots with Mr. Riehl’s story, it is seen that the two business professionals have both come to the same conclusion while reserving an obvious respect for their trade and their customers alike. In the case of Mr. Riehl however, his notion of education was more experience based with minimal theoretical fundamentals, which led him to keep a close connection with his clients and customers to better understand their problems and challenges. He kept the explanatory stage at a minimal level while spent significant time to reduce costs and maximize profits for the sake of continuing and supporting such businesses: an approach that is seldom adopted by the current day consultancy firms.
Katie Hope for BBC takes a more explanatory and insightful approach to the issue and begins her article with a great joke: “A consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time, and then keeps your watch…” Noting the misconception about the business of consultancy, namely how such companies charge high prices for absolutely useless services, she refers to McKinsey as a good example and interviews the company’s global head, Dominic Barton. Managing a company that totals more than $8.3 billion annually, Barton seems to have a firm stance on the functionality aspect of consultancy to conclude that McKinsey is a unique company because it does not waste people’s money for nothing in return. According to Barton, the most powerful tools of help and aid for the company are restructuring programs, new products and services along with innovative advertisement campaigns that target the management structures of varying markets and companies with efficiency. By altering the perceptions of other companies, the market and customers, McKinsey creates value virtually out of the thin air, while the company maintains a strict policy regarding internal operations to make sure that the procedure functions seamlessly well without outsider interventions or impedance. In this sense, the “right model” as Barton puts it, is to provide the right price for such a standardized yet effective methodology to extend the scope of the company’s operations to include as many partners as possible. This has helped McKinsey develop an extensive network of operations and a huge database of information to produce innovative solutions for numerous observed problems. In the case of Mr. Riehl’s own approach, it is seen that he also managed to attract customer attention from a variety of different business fields to develop a similar strategy. As of today, Dream Source Consulting LLC serves its premium systems to virtually every business field in existence in America with numbers of customers varying between such different fields. However, as the company gains more momentum and reputation, such numbers will surely increase and Mr. Riehl will achieve his goal of maximizing business efficiency and customer satisfaction alike.
Jonathan Chew for the Fortune Magazine considers the issue from a totally different perspective to report on how numerous retired individuals are starting careers in business consultancy. Chew refers to retirement as “an earned, equable epilogue” while also taking notice of how many of such retirees are concerned about the boredom factor over the financial benefits of the issue. As retirement becomes more boring, the monetary aspect loses importance and individuals are forced to reinvent themselves. As a result, millions of retired individuals are “partaking in the gig economy, where workers with considerable experience in their professions see a lot of appeal in the idea of becoming independent consultants.” The independency and security offered by this specific type of employment helps such retirees to have better life/work balances as retirement does not necessarily mean not being able to work. As for tips and advice, Chew takes not of how retired people should “find the channels of opportunity”, “stay current and connected” and “be open to change.” If they were to follow this simple routine, they would be able to reinvent themselves easily and quite fast to reintegrate into the society as valuable and important members with function, income and relevance. Mr. Riehl’s experiences with his business consultancy firm also has been constructed on useful and efficient teachings of previous experiments with different firms which falls in the same directory as Chew’s description of a productive and profitable retirement. Although Mr. Riehl is not technically retired, Dream Source Consulting LLC was his final project after fiddling with numerous issues in his past projects, which can be considered as an escape from the non-functional dynamics of business to enter the realm of more abstract, theoretical, yet equally useful business consultancy. All in all, experience and know-how are eternal elements in human life and they are always handy for business which means people should pay attention to the possibilities put forth by business consultancy to make the maximum use of such gains out of their lives to help themselves and others at the same time.