Strategy and planning
Where the business is going, what it will stop doing to get there, and which three things happen first.
Woodside, Queens · since 2011
About the firm
A published day rate, a fixed number of days, and a written answer at the end of them.
Why it started
Dana Reyes ran operations for a ninety-person food manufacturer in Long Island City for eleven years, including the two in which it nearly went under. During those two the company bought advice twice. The first firm produced a strategy document with a phased roadmap in it, which was read once and could not be acted on by a business that could not fund the first phase. The second sent somebody who spent four days on the floor with a notebook, said three unwelcome things about how jobs were priced, and charged less than the printing bill for the first one.
The company survived because of the second one. Woodside Management Partners started in 2011 to be the second one, and everything odd about how this firm sells — the published rates, the boundary page, the fact that a quarter of first meetings end in a no — comes from that.
What we work on
How a business runs, rather than what it sells. Seven areas: where it is going and what it will stop doing; how work actually moves through it; who does what and who decides what; where the revenue comes from and what it is priced at; what it runs on; where the margin actually is; and what has to be true before the owner can leave. Most engagements touch two of those, because almost nothing in a small business is only one thing.
Operations and process
How the work actually moves through the business, where it stops, and what it costs every time it has to be done twice.
People and hiring
Who does what, who decides what, what each role is paid, and how the next person is hired without it taking six months.
Sales and growth
Where the revenue comes from, how concentrated it is, what happens to an enquiry, and what you charge for the work.
Systems and software
What the business needs a system to do, which one to buy, and how to get it in without stopping work for a month.
Numbers and margin
Which work makes money, which work does not, and what the monthly numbers would have to show for you to know without asking.
Owner succession
What has to be true before the business can run without you, and how long that actually takes.
Who we work with
Businesses of roughly four to a hundred people, across Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan and Nassau County. Light manufacturing, wholesale, the trades, food, services, home care and logistics — seven industries, each on the list because there is something specific about it that changes the work rather than because we would like the enquiries.
Below about four people there is usually not enough structure for this to be the right spend and we say so. The middle of the range — fifteen to sixty — is where a business has grown past its structure without noticing, and it is where nearly all of this work happens.
The seven industries, and what is specific about each
Three things that are unusual about how we sell
The rates are on the website
A partner day is $2,200 and every fee here is that or one of the other two rates multiplied by a number of days. It costs us some enquiries and it is worth it, for reasons that have their own page.
The boundary is in the navigation
What we do not do, and which profession each of those belongs to, is a page rather than a paragraph in a contract. Management consulting is not licensed, so the risk is drifting into work that is.
About one first meeting in four ends with a no
Which is why the meeting can be ninety minutes and free. A firm that converts every one of them either charges for them or has stopped saying no.
The office
Two rooms on the first floor of a brick building on 61st Street, four minutes from a station that reaches Grand Central in eighteen. Most of the work happens at your premises, not ours. The office on 61st Street is where the writing gets done and where a first meeting happens if you would rather not have one at your own place with your own staff watching.
- Two rooms on the first floor of a brick building on 61st Street
- A meeting room with a long table, used for first meetings and for the read-out at the end of a piece of work
- Three desks, which is where the writing happens
- A step-free entrance from the street and a step-free route to the meeting room
- No reception desk, no waiting area and nobody whose job is to answer the door
This is a demonstration website. This is a demonstration website. Woodside Management Partners is not a real firm, no enquiry sent from this site reaches anybody, and the telephone number is a placeholder. It was built to show what a small professional firm gets for a fixed price.
The people
Six, and the one who sells it does the work
Dana Reyes
Managing partner
Strategy, margin and owner succession
Ran operations for a ninety-person food manufacturer in Long Island City for eleven years, including the two in which it nearly went under and the four after that. Started this firm in 2011 because the advice that business got when it needed it most was worth less than it cost. Does most of the first meetings.
Peter Nowak
Partner, operations
Process, capacity and scheduling
Twenty years on and around a shop floor, first as a machinist and then running production for two fabricators in Maspeth. Will spend two days standing in the way with a notebook before he says anything, which is the part clients find strange and then find useful.
Adaeze Nwosu
Partner, people and hiring
Roles, pay, structure and hiring
Built the people function of a home-care agency from thirty carers to three hundred, which is the size range where structure stops being optional. Is careful about the line between management questions and legal ones, and will tell you when you have crossed it.
$2,200 a partner day · ninety minutes free · about one in four we talk out of it
Start with the assessment, or just telephone
The assessment takes about four minutes and gives you a written summary of what your answers suggest and which engagement addresses each thing. It is indicative and not professional advice, and it is a better opening than a blank contact form. If you would rather skip it, the telephone works and the first meeting is ninety minutes and free.