Consulting Startups and Small Businesses in Australia - GROWTH STRATEGY LAB

The Business

Growth Strategy Lab was an Australia-registered consulting practice I founded, delivering business and data-driven marketing advisory to startups and small businesses. The focus was practical: revenue growth, operational structure, and disciplined marketing — not slide-deck strategy that clients could not execute.

Role & Fit

I was Founder and Consultant. The practice existed because I wanted a formal vehicle for work I was already doing informally alongside Normcore — helping small business owners structure their commercial thinking. Running my own consulting entity while operating Normcore forced a useful distinction between operator work and advisory work, and taught me how to be each without confusing the two.

Context

The consultancy launched in March 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 shock in Australia. Small businesses faced compressed revenues, unclear customer behaviour, and operational disruption simultaneously. Most consulting services were priced for larger clients and structured around long engagements; smaller operators needed something faster, cheaper, and closer to execution.

Challenges

Three recurring issues across the client base. First, clients knew something was wrong but could not locate the root cause. Second, marketing spend was untethered from business outcomes — money was being spent because it was budgeted, not because it was working. Third, operators confused activity with progress, staying busy without getting closer to measurable goals.

Approach & Execution

I kept the engagement model tight. Each project started with data collection and current-state assessment, followed by a written analysis that defined the real problem rather than the surface complaint. Solutions were built around the client's actual operational capacity — nothing was recommended that the team could not execute. Reviews were scheduled so that solutions were treated as hypotheses to be tested, not decisions to be defended. This is the same three-step structure — analyse, execute, review — that anchors my consulting work today.

Outcomes

Across the two-year period, the practice worked with a range of small operators and startups on revenue growth and operational improvement. Equally important, it became the testing ground for the consulting methodology I carry into every engagement now — evidence-based, execution-anchored, iterative.