Our beliefs

An open letter about our core beliefs

Before I dive into our beliefs and who we are, I feel it is important to first touch on where we came from. No, not a history on Brian from Boca and Patrick from France, but rather why we decided to give up on promising careers at a Fortune 100 company and start Seventh Element.

As I sit here at the beach, my place of peace, I cannot communicate in an eloquent manner how excited I am to dedicate myself to the pursuit of helping small businesses. We are not out for fame, glamour, or anything superficial like that, we started 7L for the same reason John became a Rabbi and Jane became a social worker, we ultimately want to help people. What makes both Patrick and I happy is seeing the fire in an entrepreneur's eye for that ingenious idea they dreamt up and helping them develop a successful business that will spread their fire in a mindful way.

So why did I just use the word mindful? No, I am not sitting with a thesaurus. Mindfulness is the seventh element in the eightfold path to enlightenment in Buddhism. It is defined as a calm awareness of one’s body, environment, and consciousness, the practice of which supports analysis resulting in the development of wisdom.  There are so many times when we as individuals start new ventures in our lives that cause us to run a million miles a minute and not see the clearest path. When Patrick and I brainstorm together we have the perspective and ability to calm things down without crippling our client's fire to ensure their business is developed in the wisest way, hence our name Seventh Element.

Ok, so why small businesses? Throughout our lives we have met both Entrepreneurs and Fortune 100 business leaders and frankly, the big difference between the two groups comes down to passion. The passion of entrepreneurs is contagious, motivating, and most importantly inspiring. An entrepreneur’s idea has the ability to make this world a better place. We want to live our lives knowing that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves and believe there is no better way to do that than to help entrepreneurs realize their dreams and change the world.

So now you know why we chose each other to begin this pursuit, why we chose small businesses, and how our name chose us, but how are we different than any other consultant? Honestly, we probably aren’t as intellectual as the guys at Mckinsey and we don’t see this as a stepping stone in our career as many of the other firm’s consultants do.  Helping small businesses is what we do, our passion and what we love. We don’t believe and won’t try and sell Synergies, Winnovation, Getting your ducks in a row, or creating “VALUE”, we are here because we care and truly want to make your business dream a reality. We feel it is important to listen and connect with you. We want to hear what you want and where you see things for your business and then help you take it there.

Our one belief that will never change is honesty.  At 7L we will never part with our integrity. Other than honesty, we do not have a cookie cutter approach that we try to force fit you in. We won’t try and compare you to other companies that you have 60% in common with. We sit down, take the time to break your company down to its smallest pieces and devise and implement a tailored plan to make your dream a reality. For 7L, it is not about the easiest way or the most self-profiting way, but the smartest way or as we call it the mindful way.

The core pillars of a successful, growing, and enduring business are scalable processes, financial analysis and being in touch with your customers. Everyone will agree that these are important ingredients to the recipe of a healthy company, but it is our approach to teach and help you with these tools to be versatile and have the ability to adapt in an ever changing market.

To us, life is about the journey and not about the destination as cliché as that may sound.  The world is full of knowledge and we are both curious to learn as much as we can. Small businesses are the backbone of our world and we are dedicating our lives to help them.  

-Brian

 10-28-2010