Consultancy for Start-ups, it seems a contradictio in terminus. Startups are either too stubborn to admit that they would benefit from it or don't have the budget. Natalie Turner, founder and CEO of Innovation Agency entheo has found a way to convince startups that consultancy can be really beneficial to become high growth. Having her office in the middle of Shoreditch, she sits in the heart of the new creative and corporate startup culture. She talks with The NextWomen about it:

When did you start your company? With whom?

I started entheo in August 2006 after leaving a corporate role as an Innovation Director in a research business.  My husband and I started the business together, although he didn’t join full time until September 2007.  He was the initial investor. He now runs the company as the Managing Director which has freed up my time to focus on building business and client relationships.

What are you offering to companies?

We work with two principle markets: corporates who are looking to increase their capability to innovate and high-growth SMEs who need to scale and get results but don’t have the time or expertise to focus on the important internal aspects of their business; attracting and retaining people, having a clear market proposition and building an effective management team.

Our services fuse facilitation, skills development, coaching and consulting. For example, we are working with a fast growing digital design agency called Maynard Malone.  They have to triple the size of their business over the next couple of years and need to keep focused on delivering excellent client service. They realise that in order to do that they need to build the right people systems and culture to attract and retain highly creative people. We are partnering with them to do this. They can buy from a menu of services according to their monthly needs. We work to strict budgets and are focused on delivering tangible results that will affect the bottom line.

We will work with them to either create or hone their vision and strategy, agree on the bold steps they need to achieve and work out roles and responsibilities for achieving them.

And your own team and profitability?

We have eight people in the team, from a variety of backgrounds. Because our work crosses the commercial and the psychological, we have a variety of skills in the business; HR, Product Development, Research, Marketing, Organisational Development as well as administrative support.

The first two years of the business we experienced profitable growth, we are just doing our end of year accounts for year three so not sure how much profit we have made yet. It has been a tough year!

Who is your role model?

At the moment Obama, I admire the way he is attempting to lead amidst complex domestic and international pressures.  He communicates with passion, admits his failures and is a brilliant orator.  I think he “dances with dilemmas” with grace and authenticity, a rarity amongst leaders in the business or political worlds.

Where do you see the most issues with startups?

Start ups are often chaotic places to work, and in part this is their attraction. They are usually run by an enthusiastic Founder who has created an innovative product or service.

Their chaos is due to having to wear multiple hats and juggling multiple tasks.  Businesses go through stages of growth, the important thing is to notice when you are on the next growth curve and get in the support that you need.  From personal experience, as well as experience of working with small businesses, it is best to outsource the things that detract you from the core of what you are trying to offer.  This doesn’t mean that those things are unimportant, they are critical to success, but you might not be the best person to focus on it.

Know yourself! This is the most critical thing. Know who you are, what you excel at and play to those strengths. Build up a team that can compliment your skills and get better at what you love doing.  Invest in your own personal development and ability to communicate and influence.

Think early on about the culture of the business that you want to create and how to create it.  This is getting more critical as people need to find meaning in what they do and are attracted to joining businesses that are vibrant and ambitious.  Culture will just not happen if you don’t consciously create it and then reinforce it.  I have enjoyed building the culture of entheo, as much as I have building the service we offer. In our case, they reflect each other greatly.

Where do you see the most issues growing business?

Growing too fast, having to scale down ambitions, hiring the wrong people, not having the right processes to support growth to name but a few!  We work with leaders to help them assess their values and communication style.
Often you will find leaders have a high external orientation, and that is what they need to have in leadership, but if they don’t get enough support on building the right processes to support growth things can topple over.

There is also an issue around not being adaptive enough….you have to have an evolving strategy that allows you to bend and flex as things change. This can mean you will need to refresh your proposition and your communication to hit the right buttons, and get the company behind you to deliver and operationalise this.  It has been hard for us all in the recession because what we designed last year might have been great, but might not necessarily fit the current needs of clients.

Founders especially can get wedded to their ideas and be very passionate about them, getting external perspective is especially important to stop becoming overly protective.

Having a flexible business model is critical.  In our business if we get too dependent on projects you move from feast to famine, you need to find ways to generate cash flow on a continuous basis so you have a “runway” otherwise you won’t develop a strong foundation on which to grow.  Having a great idea is only the beginning, commercializing and scaling this is the key to successful growth.

What is your future? And your business?

My ambition is to grow entheo into a new breed of consultancy which is more facilitative in nature, working in partnership with companies to help them grow.

We contribute to the design and facilitation of the European Leadership Programme, a network for venture backed and private equity owned companies. This means we have firsthand experience of the challenges facing CEOs and Managing Directors.

Are you looking to expand in Europe?

Yes, I would like to grow entheo hubs internationally that share the same business transformation ethos.