Two Years as a Food Safety Consultant

I am a small business owner! While I continue to seek advice, tips, and tricks from others as I graduate to new and bigger business challenges, I’ve reached a tenure in my business that now budding consultants seek input from me. Although I did food safety consulting as part of The Acheson Group (and its predecessor), and I’ve got a good sense of what I like to do and what I don’t, these past two years have brought into focus the unique value we bring to each client: we help them reach their food safety destiny. We help companies and organizations that have outgrown their food safety capabilities solve complex food safety challenges and prepare them to tackle the challenges lurking around the corner.

I learn new things with each client engagement, but my greatest growth in the past two years has not been expanding my food safety knowledge as much as it has been in running a business.

I immediately set up the business, filed my Articles of Organization with my state, and established an LLC. I quickly got professional liability and business insurance. And continue to learn that when it comes to insurance, it’s never enough! Some clients require cyber insurance, others require auto insurance (even though I do not have a commercial fleet!), others require waivers of subrogation (had to Google that and still don’t entirely understand this, other than to know I need to pay more). When I expanded and hired two employees in January, I had to get workers' comp insurance. Because I wanted to offer a 401 (k) benefit, I had to get an ERISA bond (another thing I had to Google).

And who knew that when you hire people, even though you set up tax accounts and unemployment insurance with the states (yes, plural. Setting up shop in two states has also been loads of fun. Not.), you also need to make a sealing with totally different agencies to check if your new employees owe child support? Not me! Not until I got a warning letter. Oops. (My home state of Maryland has a small business website, and this was not part of the checklist! Like many other food safety professionals, I am a rule follower. I read the instructions. I seek to comply. Yet I missed this.

The most unanticipated evolution of the business has been the expansion. I am blessed to know many awesome people in the world. But now, as I have sought counsel on the running of the business, I have connected with other small business owners, mainly women-led consulting firms. They are my inspiration and my sounding board. And they are very fascinating. I met some people through a free networking event hosted by Smart Gets Paid. I subscribed to that podcast and realized I wanted (or to be honest, needed) to grow my business mindset and capabilities. I invested in myself and the business (and Gretchen) by signing us up for the Smart Gets Paid Academy, which has me articulate the unique skills, network, and approaches that Food Safety Strategy brings to our clients.

With two years under my belt, I have a clearer idea of the clients and projects that are a good fit. I have an equally clear idea of the types of projects and clients that aren’t. I always deferred when I knew I didn’t have the right skill. But in the early days of the business, if I could do the work, I generally said yes. I’ve learned how to identify the client engagements that are most likely to be successful, where I feel good about what we have accomplished together. Our team developed a "welcome packet” that communicates style and expectations. We don’t want to create client dependencies and string them along forever. We aim to provide the tools, resources, understanding, and confidence so they can manage food safety themselves. That requires them to do work. We are consultants, not freelance food safety staff.

Having a team is great. It forced (in a good way) discipline around systems, processes, and communication. I love efficiency. I’ve worked in organizations where bureaucracy slowed things down, and therefore, I wanted to build agility and nimbleness into our operations. It’s a work in progress, but we’ve made tremendous progress in 4 months.

With the increased capacity of a team (and a good team, I learned long ago that I only want to work with the best and brightest, regardless of their role or rank), I am super energized by what we have planned for the remainder of 2025. We see patterns in client needs and can provide services that address not only the issues that prompt them to reach out but also the underlying issues that we can diagnose and address using our Client Insight Tool. We’ve developed turnkey packages and blend them with the customized, high-touch approach that we value. Our Client Newsletter provides our perspective on news and updates, and our quarterly client-only webinars allow for frank discussion of hot topics. I could not have conceptualized and implemented these things on my own. I’m thankful for the team- Gretchen Wall and Lucy Sokol, as well as the network of colleagues who provide expertise to support our clients—Laura Strawn, Tejas Bhatt, Sergio Nieto-Montenegro, Amy Philpott, Melanie Neuman, and many others.

I can’t imagine going back to a ‘normal’ job. I know I have a lot more to learn. And I’m sure there are things I don’t even know I need to learn. But that’s pretty exciting. I want to sincerely thank all who supported me in this journey, who sincerely believed in me, threw me a bone, a life raft, made awesome Food Safety Strategy swag, and brought me a chocolate peanut butter cake. I don’t take any of it for granted, and will keep paying it forward.