About

I’m Albert Sanders. I work with owners who need a decision, not a deck.

Albert Sanders, consultant, Dunwoody Georgia

I have been advising owner-led companies around Atlanta since 2008. The nine years before that were spent inside a distribution business, four of them running operations, and that stretch shaped how I work more than anything I read afterward.

Three areas take up almost all of my time. Business strategy, which usually comes down to deciding where the next dollar goes. Financial planning, meaning forecasting and margin rather than bookkeeping. Operations, the least glamorous of the three and often where the money turns out to be hiding.

The practice stays small on purpose. A handful of engagements at a time, run out of an office off Ashford Dunwoody Road, and I do the work myself rather than handing it to an associate.

Most of my clients arrive through other clients. That is a slow way to build a practice and it has kept the standard where I want it.

Office interior, soft focus

Most of the companies I work with have between five and forty people, and an owner who is still in the building every day.

How the work runs

01.

The first call

Forty-five minutes, no charge, and a straight answer about whether I am the right person for this.
02.

Counting

A week or two inside your numbers and your calendar before anybody proposes anything.
03.

The constraint

Naming the one thing holding the company back. Rarely the thing you walked in believing.
04.

Options

Two or three real paths with the costs attached, including the option of doing nothing.
05.

The decision

Yours, not mine. I argue for one of them, then I write down what we chose.
06.

Doing it

Commitments with dates and names on them. I stay close enough to notice when they slip.
07.

Ninety days

We agreed on a number before we started. We look at it and we say out loud what it says.
08.

Handover

The habit should end up inside your company. If I am still running it in year three, something went wrong.