Penny McConnell

About Penny McConnell

Have you ever felt the feeling of betrayal? I thought my business had betrayed me. Come to realize, I had betrayed myself. I’d started a small wholesale bakery in Austin, selling to local coffee houses and small chain stores. When my accountant showed me our mid-month sales numbers,(which were the only numbers I understood) the sales were impressively high. But as I looked at the bottom of the report, I noticed a big, fat, bright-red negative number. I knew that wasn’t good. And more importantly, how could that be? My accountant patiently explained why we were losing money with every cookie we sold. His explanation triggered my stunning, sobering realization. All of our hard work provided no profit because of the way I was running my company. The whole, “I don’t understand business” thing had finally caught up with me and was costing us big time. In that pivotal moment, I vowed to understand the science of business as much as I understood the art of baking. I can’t believe that was 25 years ago, but it was. And in those years, I learned what it takes to grow and sustain a successful business. This deeper understanding supported me as I won the business at Southwest Airlines™, opened vendor relationships at Starbucks™ and Whole Foods™, enjoyed features on Food Network™, and more. Since selling my bakery almost ten years ago, I’ve spent my time helping hundreds of small business owners built strong, scalable, profitable companies. Whether I’m writing business plans, speaking to groups, working one-on-one, or developing products it’s always about helping you build the kind of company you want that supports the lifestyle you love. If you want to build a company that loves you back; if you want to taste the freedom that comes from reaching your desired outcome, I would delight in getting to know you.

Experience

1. Owner Principle Consultant

   Margin Consulting

   Nov 2010 — Present · Austin, TX, US

   At the core of the MARGIN brand is a very special calling. What gets us up in the morning and keeps us going all day is our mission to help small business owners, like you, create solidly successful businesses. Every day we live our responsibility and deliver on our promise. Built into every product or service is a set of uncompromising guidelines: • Treat every entrepreneur as an individual. Every person measures success by their own yardstick. Whether your vision is to create an extra income or to grow a global empire, at MARGIN Consulting our job is to hear you and support your objectives. • Everyone deserves to live the life they have imagined. Whoever you are. Wherever you went to school (or didn’t go to school,) whatever your ethnicity, race or culture, your business vision is to be respected and nurtured. • We find new ways to look at old problems. So many of us recycle our business problems by working with old business or marketing models. At MARGIN we built modern strategies that take you off the merry-go-round and point you in the right direction. There\'s a popular quote that says,\"She\'s a dreamer, a doer, a thinker. She sees possibility everywhere.\" So do we.

Skills

• Marketing Strategy
• Creative Direction
• Strategic Planning
• Marketing
• Marketing Communications
• Business Strategy
• Fundraising
• Start-Ups
• Business Development
• Small Business
• Feature Articles
• Social Media Marketing
• Management
• Forecasting
• Microsoft Office
• Speech Writing
• Sales
• Execution of Business Plans
• Coaching
• Training
• Public Speaking
• Product Development
• Direct Sales
• Fmcg
• Customer Service
• Script-Writing
• Small Business Marketing
• Retail
• Sales Management
• Business Planning
• Entrepreneurship
• Copywriting
• Project Management
• New Business Development
• Nonprofits
• Blogging
• Budgets