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Christine Mathews Consulting

Christine Mathews Consulting, Christine Mathews

Location: California
www.christinemathews.com
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How SCORE helped.

“My SCORE mentors are invaluable to me as my team of advisors and I am grateful every day to SCORE that I finally have guidance and counsel on how to optimize my success in running a small company.”

How Did Your Business Get Started?

Christine Mathews, an amazing bubbly woman, graduated from Stanford University in 1986 with a BA in Human Biology and went through an Operations Training Program at JP Morgan in New York. There she started as an internal consultant, and then became an Officer of the Bank. Through her training program at JP Morgan she discovered that Human Resources was where she wanted to direct her career. She subsequently moved back to California in 1990 and took her first job in HR at a technology company, Ungermann-Bass. She was in a rotation program there and worked in all aspects of Human Resources. Then she took a pause for a few years at home caring for her small children. 
 
In the year 2000, she took a job in Human Resources at the start-up medical device company, Novacept. Initially the company had 42 employees. Soon the company grew and she oversaw the Human Resource function of 500 employees in the division. That was a big experience for her.
 
In the year 2005, she left the job and decided to start her own business. As Christine was then a single mother, she decided to reduce her travel and have more flexible hours for her sons.  So she started consulting on her own at first, then within two years she started adding others to the team as she had many clients. The business she started was growing over the years and became a thriving small business.
 
Her Company is a boutique Human Resources consulting firm, called, Christine Mathews Consulting. They support about 25 small companies in Silicon Valley in medical device, biotechnology, high technology and venture capital. The business grew and after 10 years it has about 12 employees, and 3-5 strategic partners. In addition to running Human Resources on an outsourced basis for small companies, they perform strategic projects and Human Resources compliance audits, as well as mentoring and developing internal Human Resources staff at client companies. 
 
 In 2012, she stopped consulting in her business and took a job as a VP of Human Resources for one of her clients. But she still owned her business and managed it from afar by hiring some additional consultants.  After a year, the company she had joined was unable to raise their next round of financing, and was sold.  She returned to her business again and resumed consulting directly with clients.  While she was away, she did not have the time to effectively oversee the business and it started to deteriorate. She felt she needed help.  At that time her mother, whose friend received a lot of valuable support from SCORE, suggested to her to contact SVSCORE.                                                    
Christine contacted SVSCORE and has been working for nearly two years now with Neal Weinstein who has a broad background in all aspects of managing a business and 40 years of leadership experience in companies ranging from startup, and John Edwards who has over 30 years of management experience with both for-profit and nonprofit businesses.  Both counselors have helped her immensely to turn things around in her business and migrate to an infrastructure, systems and processes, which fit her growing needs.
 
“When I first met John and Neal, they told me that I was running my Company like a Human Resources person rather than a business person. They helped me understand the financial aspects of the business and guided me in building a budget, forecast and running a cash flow analysis every month.  At first, I was unsure about all that extra work, but now I see the incredible value in planning and in having the data to analyze and monitor the status of the business”.
 
She implemented a timekeeping system called Ebillity to avoid any the billing problems she had in the past. She also implemented consistent team processes such as business review meetings, feedback from clients, feedback from team members, and a great review process for team members.
All of this has resulted in a Company which now has increased its revenue by nearly 40% and profitability by nearly 50% over the past two years with the help of SVSCORE team.
 
“I meet with Neal and John for 1.5 hours each month and I plan to do that for as long as they will have me!  They are invaluable to me as my team of advisors and I am grateful every day that I finally have guidance and counsel on how to optimize my success running a small company.” 
 
As per her mentors’ advice she is planning to build a full business plan for the future to have a better long term vision of what she wants for the business and for herself. Also she hopes that SCORE will help her continuously in the future. 
 
 “I believe my mentors are very proud of me that I have learned a lot from them and implemented their advice with great success and I believe they would say that I now (for the most part) am running a company like a business person rather than a Human Resources person”!
 
While we were talking, Christine was showing her gratitude to SCORE every now and then. We wish her all the best.

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c/o San Jose Chamber of Commerce P.O. Box 149
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San Jose, CA 95103
(408) 453-6237

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Funded, in part, through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.

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