Women Of Influence

Lori Kaiser thought there’d be a point where she went back into the workforce and got another “real job.”

She’d left her job as a CPA with KPMG a few years earlier, as she realized the demanding travel schedule and hours required for work at that type of firm weren’t conducive to having young children. Instead, she started doing project-based work for a few clients, and within a year found herself with more business than she alone could handle.

It was time to decide: should she go back and get that “real job,” or should she turn her consulting practice into a real business.

“So I drafted a business plan, and had this grand plan for how I was going to serve large companies and grow into a big service firm,” Kaiser said during a recent interview for our Women of Influence podcast. “Everybody said I couldn’t do it.”

For a time, the pushback caused her to second-guess. Kaiser wanted to give employees a unique modeling of scheduling, wherein they could tell her how much they wanted to work and she would find projects to fit them. The people Kaiser brought her business plan to pushed back on that vision, telling her “big companies will not buy from you in the way that you want to provide services.”

“I decided I wasn’t going to let other people tell me what I could do,” Kaiser said.

Today, three decades later, Kaiser Consulting counts Cardinal Health, Nationwide, Honda, Express and Abercrombie and Fitch among its clients.

“I’m kinda thinking (the doubters) were wrong,” Kaiser said.

And while the unique scheduling model does change the way the company builds its culture and its team, Kaiser said she sees another benefit from it. People are eager to come work at the firm, giving Kaiser a leg up in a market where talent is increasingly hard to lure and keep.

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