The Suit Magazine

The economic downturn and credit crunch of the past few years have not been kind to small businesses. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, loans from big banks to small businesses dropped by 14 percent between March 2010 and March 2011. Many small business owners seeking to expand will have to do it on their own.

It’s a daunting prospect, but Lucid Business Strategies founder Jeff McElyea believes it’s the best way to gain that extra edge.

Lucid’s approach to helping small businesses is two-pronged: first, it offers performance improvement consulting, where McElyea and his team diagnose and fix problems that could be holding a business back. Lucid’s second service is marketing strategy, which takes a similar diagnostic approach. “We look at every conceivable thing that could be driving revenue or holding revenue back,” said McElyea.

Lucid is truly a full-service firm; it guides small companies from creating a plan to troubleshooting to execution. The company started with business plans and soon added marketing plans. But McElyea said that too often, the third-party design firms his clients would use ignored Lucid’s plans, so McElyea recently added design services as well. “We added those things so we could actually implement the plans we put together,” he said.

All of McElyea’s hard work pays off when he sees his companies succeed. He talks about one client who went from teaching to starting a business that now has more than 20 employees. “We helped the client from inception to growing and becoming successful,” he said. “For Lucid, that’s incredibly gratifying.”

For more information please visit: www.lucidbusiness.com

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