By Paul Riat
Business News Update
To badly paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Life is like hiring a big CPA or
consulting firm. You never know what you’re going to get.”
Not so with newly founded financial management startup Ken Homza Consulting.
Hire him, and you get Ken Homza. He says his 16 years of experience blows away
any junior partner you’d get stuck with elsewhere.
Homza started his career at an $8 billion a year computer hardware, software
and services firm hopping through a variety of finance and marketing positions
in 10 years.
“I really learned how to understand the strategy of a company, and to relate
the financials to the strategy,” he told Business News Update. “(I learned) how
to really understand a companies business model – what are the key things they
need to do to make money.”
Five years with LensCrafters, a billion dollar company was topped off with a
move to St. Louis in March of 2000 to join WorkNet just before it failed. Homza
says that even though he was at WorkNet for only a few months, it was a real
education.
One thing at a time
“Had the company stuck to its core business, it
would have succeeded,” he says. “Instead, it devoted its resources to ‘voice
over IP’ and other things. When they got their funding in Dec. 1999 it came with
expectations that they expand at a very rapid rate. They were a victim to the
mindset of the time.”
Companies need to stay focused and not try to expand too fast, Homza said. He
finds it interesting and challenging to help a management team move forward by
bringing them a skill set that they might not have.
“What you tend to get (with smaller firms) is companies that look at their
financial statements at the end of the month (and) it comes without analysis or
understanding,” Homza said. He starts his work with a small firm by educating
the management team so that they have a common understanding of what the
financial statements mean.
When everyone is on the same page, Homza does some financial projections to
predict where the company will be in a few months or years, given the path that
the company is on right now. Then he helps the management team decide what they
need to do now in order to grow the company to where they want it to be in the
future.
Company: Ken Homza Consulting
Industry: Financial management
Founded: June, 2001
Management Ken Homza
Employees: Ken Homza
Investors: Self funded, operating out of revenue
Revenue: Projected “six figures” for first 12 months of operations
Customers: Site Resource Corp., of Cincinnati; Collection Intelligence
of St. Louis; Misco Shawnee of St. Louis; and IndexProphet.com of St. Louis.
Homza says he’s looking for companies from startup to about $70 million in
revenue.
Competitors: CPA firms and larger consulting firms
What keeps him awake at night? “It’s finding the next revenue
opportunity,” Homza said. “It’s getting out there and meeting people. I found
myself going from a finance person to a marketing and sales person – and the
sales piece is certainly new to me.”
Contact:
Ken Homza
P.O. Box 16658, Clayton, Mo. 63105
(314) 863-6637
[email protected]
Paul Riat covers tech and biotech business news in and around Missouri for Business News Update.
Copyright © 2001 Business News Update, Inc.