Who I am! Kris Bovay: Small Business Generalist (and Specialist). Your Small Business Advisor.
My name is Kris Bovay. My biography describes who I am and how I got here.
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Who I am is really a function of what I've done over my past. I’ve been working in, and on, small, medium and large businesses for more than 25 years. My specialties have been in marketing, sales, communications, business and strategy planning and more recently in human resources, operations and leadership work.
I started my career working in traditional big business.
Working for a company with more than 55,000 employees and billions in sales. Much of who I am today comes from what I learned during my years at that company, which was bought and sold four times over a 10 year period.
While working in big business, I enjoyed working with a wide range of management styles and objectives (I’m actually being serious – it was a great learning experience having to rethink business strategy on an ongoing basis) and I enjoyed doing so in the framework that big business provides.
My time working within big business taught me that there needs to be structure at the foundation of all good business – that structure can (and should) change but it needs to be carefully built and often reviewed. Success in small business management depends on that structure.
What I found I didn’t like about big business, was the lack of agility and the slowness to make decisions and/or take action.
So from big business, I moved to a medium size business.
It was a bit of a shock.
Okay.
It was a big shock.
I really had to learn how to do more with less.
There were no big business departments such as Human Resources, Legal, Planning, Transportation, Purchasing, etc. to help run the business. Each employee (there were 54 when I started working with them and 80 after a five year good business growth period) had to do their job and some cross-over work – from the most junior plant employee right up to the General Manager of the company (me).
Prior to my joining the company, the business had grown rapidly for a 10 year period, actually you might even say it had ‘outgrown itself’, just like a pair of pants that was now too tight or too short.
When I joined in 2002, the company owners had recognized that the business needed to add to its structure and its foundation and my job was to help the business do that while continuing to grow. We built a wage structure, job descriptions, mission statement, business and marketing plan, standard operating procedures, overhauled the employee handbook, developed new policies, and grew sales by 48% over a 5 year period.
Then, just when I was getting comfortable (maybe too comfortable); I opened my own small business services company.
My small business experience came from building my own business and marketing services company, Voice. With Voice, I learned to do it all because I was all there was. Then, one sleepless night when I was wondering how I’d gotten into a business that allowed me no time to breathe, much less think, I ‘got’ it.
I was letting my business run me; I was not running my business.
It was time to get control of my business and my life. Drawing on contacts I had made during my work experiences, I began to build a business community of people who were good at what they do and learned how to use them as resources, of course paying them for their services when it was more than casual advice I wanted or needed.
Why do I think I can help you in your business? Because of who I am today, and because of how I got here. Small business success depends on learning and adapting quickly. As your business advisor, I can help you do that with this website. You can ask questions or ask for help by using the
contact us
form.
More-for-small-business.com will provide great resources to work with; to help you run your business.
And so today, I’ve built a great group of associates to work with, as well as building an excellent resource base. I connect with these individuals to bounce ideas or challenges off them and to hear their perspective on how they might tackle certain issues.
During my experiences, I have connected with experts who have a wide range of business skills. And who I am today, comes in part from what I have learned from some of these experts (as well as what I have learned through my own experiences and education) - they are my business
community.
My associates include a prolific business writer; an award winning graphic designer; an operations specialist; a senior sales and marketing executive; an ex-journalist public relations practitioner; a human resources specialist with many years experience in both hiring and, unfortunately, laying-off staff; a stellar leadership coach and small business consultant; an accountant with years of experience (and some lessons to learn) in both public and private practice; and many more excellent contacts in my
network
of business managers and owners.
My associates and I dialogue often and regularly. I hope that as a website visitor we will do the same and that you will be able to connect with some of the pages on this site.
I specialize in business and I have built a business community that I’d like to share with you.
The unique value that I bring to this website is the experience and knowledge that I have gained working for small, medium and large businesses.
There are a lot of resources for business owners on the web but many of those resources talk in a theoretical language – it can be hard to apply what they tell you to do because their advice is often not practical (particularly for small business owners with limited, or no other, staff).
Who I am today, is someone who wants to support other business owners to grow their businesses - I want to be your small business guide.
My goal is to build a user friendly business resources website that acts as a one-to-one counselor – think of me, and use this website, as your virtual small business consultant.
