I help owners see what growth has made harder
For more than 35 years, I have worked with businesses whose capabilities evolved faster than the way they were positioned, explained, marketed, and sometimes managed.
My experience spans corporate leadership, agency leadership, consulting, and strategic advisory work across B2B and consumer markets. I have helped established brands, growing companies, and owner-led businesses make decisions about market direction, positioning, marketing, priorities, and growth.
Along the way, my work has included growing HoMedics at retail, building market share for Whirlpool’s jetted-bath business, leading growth at Consumers Credit Union, generating new billings at Osborn & Barr, and advising owner-led companies across service and industrial markets.
Today, I work with owners of established service businesses that have built real capability but may be harder for prospective customers to understand, trust, and choose than they should be.
I help them step back from day-to-day demands, see the business from the outside, and make clearer decisions about what deserves attention next.
Experience matters. So does staying current
Thirty-five years of experience gives me pattern recognition. It does not give me permission to rely on old answers.
Markets change. Buyers change. Search changes. AI is changing how people research businesses, compare alternatives, and decide which ones deserve further consideration.
What worked several years ago may be less effective today, even when nothing appears obviously broken.
That is why I combine experience with current evidence, outside-in research, and a willingness to challenge assumptions, including my own. Experience is most useful when it sharpens judgment without hardening it.
The work requires candor, not automatic agreement
Owners and leadership teams understand their businesses from the inside. They know the operations, people, customers, history, and realities that an outside advisor cannot fully see.
I bring a different view. I look for the difference between symptoms and causes. I test the business owners' knowledge against what prospective customers can actually find and verify. I ask whether current activity solves the problem or simply consumes time and money.
My role is to provide informed judgment, constructive challenge, and a clearer basis for deciding what deserves attention.
Strong businesses deserve to be understood
A company can be operationally strong and still be misunderstood by the market.
Its capabilities may have grown. Its people may be excellent. Its customers may know exactly why they stay. Yet its website, search presence, proof, positioning, or market story may no longer reflect the business it has become.
When that happens, a capable company can lose opportunities to competitors that are simply easier to understand, trust, and choose.
That is the gap I help owners address.
Your business should be understood for what it can do now, not what the market remembers or happens to find.
Steve Kunkel
Strategic Business Advisor
kunkel.sk@gmail.com
512-663-1121