Up until I took the role as President and COO of Summit Imaging, I'd never worked for anyone outside of my jobs while I was in college. From the first business I acquired in 1983 up until that point in 2011, I was always running my own company, and most of the time, money was tight.
I got back to consulting in 2015 when I co-founded Middlerock Partners, and the only subsequent role was my surprise overnight appointment as COO of OAC. Before that, OAC was an advisory client like all the others.
All of my paid consulting work was after the sale of Open Interface North America to Qualcomm, and I was reluctant to get into the business in the first place, but companies kept asking me for help. Since then, I've been a formal consultant to, I'm guessing, well over 30 companies in both short and long engagements, and I've watched a lot of the same patterns over and over. My book and all chapters here were a summary of the bigger lessons, but the core hurdle of overcoming client mindset still remains one of my biggest challenges.
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