Pam:               I’m Pamela Wasley, CEO of Cerius Executives, one of the largest North American providers of contract executives for part-time, temporary, interim and consulting assignments. These executives are available to step in the companies on short notice to fill sudden gap in leadership, to run a key initiative, or to provide specialized skills and knowledge for a temporary period of time. Today we'll be talking to members of the Cerius team who are experts in either hiring or placing executives in full-time, part-time or on a consulting basis. Let's get right to the questions shall we? Matt, why would a company hire a management consultant? And what is management consulting?

Mat:                      Well the reason that a company would hire a management consultant. One is that there may be difficult decisions that current management team doesn’t really want to make such as a downsizing situation or a situation where the company is in dire straits and they need to bring somebody in to help them make the most difficult decisions about how to streamline a company to make it profitable and there may very well be that the current owner is having difficulty making that decision on their own. Another one that I always like to use is, I’m the CEO of a company and my brother-in-law is in charge of sales. You know you realize that I’m never going to fire my brother-in-law but sales are stagnant. So I bring somebody in, I bring in a management consultant to head out my sales team and to teach my head of sales -my brother-in-law- how to do this job, how to go out and get new sales, grow organically and find new markets. And I get to keep my brother-in-law and the management person that we brought in at the end of the time when they’ve done their job they move on and they go do that for somebody else. As far as management consulting. Lots of different definitions, I think Kristen talked about it a few minutes ago, but management consulting is really that business where I have an expertise in a specific discipline and I no longer do it for a company, just one, but I provide that service to multiple companies. I go in, I look at what their needs are, I make an assessment, I help them put together a solution to that particular issue or problem and the difference I think between Cerius and most management consulting is that once I’ve made that proposal I move on and I go to another company and I do the same thing again. Cerius, we go in and we make a proposal on how to help them solve their problems and then we stay on and we become part of that management team long enough to actually execute a particular solution that we provided then.

Pam:                      So you don’t just advise, you also execute?

Matt:                     That’s correct, we do. Cerius, we do both of them.

Pam:                      Great. Thanks Matt.

Kristen:                 Pam, I would like to add on to that.

Pam:                      Sure.

Kristen:                One of the biggest challenges is that the company is hitting that plateau and it’s really hard to come up with the solutions and see your company from an objective standpoint when you’re inside of it. You need that outside perspective and as much as you can hire in individual to your company, those individuals come with needs and a handful of other company experiences because they’ve not always been there full-time. Management consultants may have experience that you get when you work with 10 companies within the given year. They can bring that perspective into your company and give a whole different view and take on things. You and I both know as business owners, sometimes it’s just too hard when you’re inside of it. You need someone from the outside.

Pam:                      Excellent. Yeah, I totally agree with that. CEO’s today do not get enough outside perspective. They get very myopic. I get myopic in my business and all CEO’s complain that the same thing and they just need s