I am a seasoned business writer working exclusively with attorneys to provide their clients with:
Because my work touches on many points of law, I typically provide them to organizations through their attorneys, who can provide important legal oversight.
We have provided market rate compensation studies for the nonprofit and for profit clients of attorneys, certified public accountants, and the valuation departments of mergers and acquisitions firms, for the past seventeen years.
One such study fully prevailed when an international law firm used it as its sole defense of a nonprofit client challenged in United States Tax Court.
in another, our compensation study supported an annual compensation of upwards of $5M.
Please see our Compensation Studies Case Studies for highlights of our past work.
We invite you to review our Compensation Studies Case Studies to gain insights into our proven track record.
Trust in our expertise to deliver a meticulous, authoritative, and compliant compensation analysis to support your client’s executive compensation decisions.
For over four decades, we have been the architects of comprehensive policies and procedures manuals for both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. These manuals are more than documents; they are instruments that engrave a legacy of consistency in quality and operational excellence across the entire spectrum of an entity’s activities—from its mission statement to its product and service delivery.
Since these documents often intersect with legal considerations, we work in concert with attorneys to provide legal oversight, ensuring that each manual not only meets but exceeds compliance standards.
Our extensive portfolio, refined over forty years, establishes us as preeminent creators of policies and procedures manuals. Our Case Studies provide a window into this rich history of our work.
Tailored with acute attention to detail, each manual we craft is a testament to an organization’s commitment to excellence, embedding a culture that breathes life into its values and aspirations.
In every manual, we weave the organization’s unique ethos with industry best practices, ensuring that our manuals can:
Technical writing firms who rely on cut-and-paste solutions from freelance journalists instead of true business writing from seasoned business executives sometimes achieve only marginal results.
Our writers are highly seasoned former business executives with a practiced eye on all details of business management for most industries.
We can revitalize existing manuals while bringing them current with present operations.
And, we can bridge gaps between existing manuals with new manuals or sections.
Our manual rewriting process can bring a refreshing consistency to old manuals, often filling gaps that were not perceived until long after the manuals were put into practice.
Fast-growing organizations can often outgrow their manuals surprisingly quickly.
When manuals stop being accurate, their use as a dependable reference by staff also stops.
A regularly-scheduled review of selected manuals by our staff, working with yours can identify areas in need of updating, then, facilitate the necessary changes to bring them current with your actual operations. The result: your manuals continue to represent the dependable authoritative source they were always intended to be.
Our recurring updating processes typically include:
Please see our Compensation Studies Case Studies for highlights of our past work.
Should a nonprofit client need assistance with organizational policy documentation helpful to the challenges of good governance, we can provide documentation exactly tailored to any particular need, all placed in a single source document for easy future reference:
Please see our Compensation Studies Case Studies for highlights of our past work.
Whether a client needs…
…our business advisory services are here to help in any number of cost-effective ways.
Each Case Study below is a narrative of our expertise, methodology, and the transformative outcomes delivered to our clients.
These case studies, while aligning with contemporary presentation standards, are also infused with narrative elements, reflecting the rich and insightful journey of each project. It is our hope that they not only inform but also resonate with the reader as deeply as they do with us.
Client Profile: Our client, a prestigious international law firm, represented a multifaceted trust with assets nearing the $1 billion mark, distributed across four trusts, 21 for-profit enterprises, and several holding entities. Show Me More
Challenge: The law firm's client required a meticulous compensation study to substantiate a proposed remuneration package for the trust advisor.
Strategy: Our approach entailed the creation of a comprehensive organizational chart detailing all associated entities and roles, followed by the development of twenty distinct position profiles linked to the trust advisor's responsibilities. Subsequently, we conducted a series of individualized compensation studies to calculate and aggregate the market rate remuneration for the advisor's multifarious and intricate duties.
Outcome: Armed with our detailed compensation analysis, the law firm successfully presented a case for adjusting the trust advisor’s compensation. This adjustment was ultimately ratified by the overarching board of directors, in conjunction with their legal counsel and accounting professionals.
Client Profile: We partnered again with a mergers and acquisitions firm, a returning client with whom we've had the privilege of collaborating in previous years. Show Me More
Challenge: This firm’s client, a charitable foundation, faced a delicate situation with its executive director's compensation. Established by the founder before the foundation's inception and influenced by for-profit standards, the executive's mid-six-figure salary was now under the microscope of the Internal Revenue Service due to the organization’s recent transition to foundation status, which required careful navigation of the IRS's rules against self-dealing under Section 4941.
Objective: The foundation needed a comprehensive compensation analysis to support and justify the executive director’s remuneration within the legal framework.
Methodology: Our team embarked on a rigorous study to pinpoint fair market compensation ranges. We conducted comparative analyses with nineteen similar organizations, ensuring the evaluation of counterparts holding comparable positions under parallel circumstances. The result was an exhaustive near 1,000-page reference "kit" designed to assist the board of directors in making informed compensation decisions for the present and future.
Outcome: With our in-depth report and the accompanying guidance of their attorneys, the foundation’s board of directors was well-equipped to determine a defensible compensation strategy for their president. This report further demonstrated its value when employed by an international law firm in tax court, where it was instrumental in the foundation's victory.
Client Profile: The client was a Florida-based investment banking and advisory firm. It, in turn, had as its client a global investment banking, securities, and investment management firm headquartered on Wall Street. Show Me More
Client Situation: The Wall Street firm needed a local firm to develop a full set of eleven policies and procedures manuals to guide its client, a local foundation-in-formation operating a large land conservancy.
Our Approach: We worked in collaboration with the client’s advisory staff consultants and the foundation-in-formation’s personnel to identify the scope and details of the project, in time developing eleven policies and procedures manuals whose centerpiece was a wide-ranging ranch operations best practices manual guiding everything from detailed horticultural practices and land conservation best practices to invasive animals, fish, and plants management practices.
Results: The result was a series of manuals that allow the (now fully formed) foundation to focus directly and efficiently on its important mission to bring best practices to its land conservation duties for the purpose of charitable, scientific, and educational purposes.
Both the client and the client of the client told us repeatedly throughout the process that they knew of no other consultants within their span of experience who could have crafted the work with such vision and precision.
Client Profile: The client was a successful franchisor with more than 250 franchisees with collective annual sales of (then) $300 million. Show Me More
Client Situation: The client’s franchisee manuals were becoming old and stale. While roving a national franchisor event, the client happened upon a set of franchisee manuals we had written for another franchisor in a different industry. The client liked the manuals, and engaged us to review and refresh its manuals.
Our Approach: We acquainted ourselves with the client’s industry, then, edited and, in part, rewrote its Production Manual for Franchisees.
Our approach included bringing the manual’s language and style into conformance with other manuals in its system, and improving the clarity and organization of subject matter while adding whole new sections.
Sections included an industry overview, working with customers, emergency job sequencing, estimating and bidding, technical services, forms, dispute management, information management systems, and highly-regulated and sensitive environmental compliance issues.
Results: The client heightened its relationship and credibility with its franchisees when it reintroduced the manual, and strengthened the franchisees’ sense of service and support from the franchisor.
Three years later, the client again turned to us to consolidate its technical manuals series into one comprehensive Technical Manual for Franchisees.
We approached the manual as we had the first, enhancing comprehension for the average franchisee user while matching the language, tone and style of other manuals in the series. Second, we reorganized the material to better suit its intended application (for franchisees) rather than its former use as exhaustive preparation for trade group certification testing.
The client again introduced the manual to wide acclaim from its franchisees, further enhancing technical comprehension and a uniformity of procedures while solidifying the franchisor/franchisee relationship ever important to franchisee retention.
Client Profile: The client was a licensed ship’s captain with a master mariner’s license and an entrepreneurial dream. Show Me More
Client Situation: The client received an attractive sale offer from the operator of a 110’ ship providing dinner and other cruises to tourists and contracted bus tour groups numbering approximately 50,000 passengers annually.
Approach: We were engaged to, first, conduct a valuation of the fair market value of the existing business, and, second, to project the client’s future operations under various purchasing and operating scenarios, all suitable for presentation to banks and potential investors. The ship had a surprising number of profit centers, including not only ticketing, but bar, restaurant, and concession sales as well. And, because the ship’s value perverted the excess earning valuation approach, the weighting of the remaining valuation methods required a deft touch.
Results: The client used the valuation, in tandem with a 5-year projection of financial statements, to assemble a combination of seller and bank loans.
The purchase was consummated, and the client now approaches his tenth year of successful operation in the cruise line’s twenty-five years of overall operation.
Because our work touches on so many points of law, we work exclusively with clients through their attorneys who can provide legal oversight.
Ken Oyler has been a management consultant for more than forty years. After military service as a U.S. Army Commissioned Officer, he co-founded and sold some five successful businesses, among them two industry leaders operating nationally today.
Finding himself in early retirement, he was surprised to receive unsolicited requests from business associates to provide them with consulting services, requests he continues to honor to this day.
Over the years, the market has consistently asked him for policies and procedures manuals, and, in the past ten years, primarily through attorneys, compensation studies.
His entrepreneurial experience, combined with an appreciation for writing and good management, gives him a practiced eye for helping clients.
He holds a BA degree in Communications from the University of Central Florida (for readers who might remember with amusement….Florida Technological University).
I often work in tandem, and have for many years and over many projects, with Mike Vestal, formerly of Vestal and Wyler, CPA’s, a well-known Orlando CPA and consultant.
We have always found it beneficial to team up with other consultants on our larger projects in order to provide the very best skill sets to the particular tasks at hand.
As a result, over the years, we have formed affiliations with individuals and firms with specialized skills in which they have become very, very good.
Separately, each affiliate is a stand-alone, seasoned practitioner. Together in affiliation, they represent solid support in any project we undertake.
And, because they have worked with us over the years, there is a natural cohesion at work that multiplies their effectiveness for you, the client.
