Mary Adelman

I've been counseling small business owners since 1991, helping them with everything from marketing and financial assistance to loan assistance, operational support, and connecting them with state-level grants and funding. Sometimes I even turn into their therapist, but primarily I focus on business strategy. I came from a corporate background and was laid off for the fourth time, which is when I said that's it, I'm done, and started my own virtual assistant business. Over the years, that morphed into business counseling with business strategy. I was state president for a women's organization and very connected to the state agencies because of my role with the Small Business Development Center, where I was the assistant director and then ran the center for a couple months before I left. I've worked with CDFIs and different lenders, and that's really how I began to build my client base. Now, because I've worked so long in the industry, those agencies, organizations, and connections will just do direct referrals into me. I work with clients who are 3 years or more in business - I don't really work with straight-up business plan kind of businesses. I also do AI with clients as well. I'm all about the client and their success - if a client has success, I can attribute that to my success. Just this week, two clients I'm working with entered a pitch competition and came in second and third place out of 400 people. Seeing my clients succeed is why I do what I do.