What RCAG does

Most businesses do not fail from a shortage of opportunity

RCAG Roland Conner
Advisory Group LLC
New York

They fail because the opportunity arrived faster than the business could govern it. A license comes through before the operating discipline exists. Revenue grows before the systems that would keep it. A lender says yes before anyone has read the terms against the profit and loss statement they will be repaid from. The opportunity was real in every one of those cases. The capacity to hold it was not.

That gap is what RCAG works on. Not the symptom the owner walks in describing, and not whatever solution happens to be easiest to sell, but the thing actually producing the symptom and the order in which it has to be corrected.

Owners rarely need one more advisor who knows one thing well. They need someone to determine what is genuinely about to break, decide what must happen first, and then assemble the specific expertise the objective requires, in sequence, fast enough to matter. RCAG does not pretend a single adviser knows everything. It organizes what the situation calls for, and says so plainly when the answer belongs with a licensed professional rather than with RCAG.

Advisory services

Five practice areas, and a way in that is smaller than all of them

Most engagements begin with a diagnostic, because a proposal written before the problem is understood is a guess with an invoice attached. Where RCAG cannot responsibly define the objective, the scope, and the definition of victory, it proposes a diagnostic rather than a solution.

A shorter Strategic Consultation is available where an owner needs a single question answered rather than a full engagement.

All advisory services

How RCAG works

Understand before diagnosing. Diagnose before prescribing.

Every engagement runs the same sequence, whether it is a two-week diagnostic or a year of standing advisory. The sequence exists to stop the most common failure in advisory work, which is moving from opportunity straight to solution.

Understand Diagnose Prioritize Organize Execute Measure

Beneath those six stages sits a longer internal operating cycle that RCAG runs on every client, prospect, referral, and opportunity, with a working template at each step. It exists so that no engagement depends on anyone remembering what to do next. See how RCAG works.

Why RCAG exists

Built by someone who was handed the opportunity and found out what it cost

January 2023
CAURD license 23-000002
The second legal dispensary in New York State and the first owned by someone the state had convicted of a cannabis offense. The governor came to the opening.
Since 2009
Project First Step
A Bronx transitional housing program for men coming home, founded after roughly fifteen years running businesses in New York City.
Currently
C.A.U.R.D. Inc. board
Interim Government Affairs Officer at the member organization representing more than 280 licensed New York dispensaries.

What followed the opening is the reason this firm exists. The opportunity was real and the capacity to govern it was not. There was no one modeling what a rushed opening would cost against the financing that would have to service it, no one negotiating the major contracts before they were signed, and no one in the room whose job was to say wait.

Those are not exotic failures. They are the ordinary ones, and they are survivable when somebody is watching for them.

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How RCAG holds itself

The rules RCAG will not break to win the work

Taken directly from RCAG's internal operating standard. They are published because a firm that will not state its limits in public does not have any.

RCAG does not accept the client's diagnosis merely because the client is willing to pay.
An owner who arrives certain of the problem is describing a symptom. Selling them the solution they asked for is the easiest engagement to close and the most likely one to fail.
RCAG does not prescribe before sufficient investigation.
A hypothesis is not a diagnosis until the evidence supports it. Where the evidence is not there, RCAG proposes the work required to get it rather than a plan built on assumption.
RCAG does not perform regulated professional work outside its competence or authority.
RCAG is not a law firm, an accounting firm, or an investment adviser, and does not act as one. Where a matter belongs to a licensed professional, it goes to a licensed professional.
RCAG does not let referral compensation determine professional selection.
The client's need decides which professional is introduced. RCAG qualifies competence before it creates compensation, and access to RCAG clients is not for sale.
RCAG does not allow scope to expand silently.
New work means a new objective, a new scope, and a new written agreement. Every engagement ends with an explicit decision to close, continue, expand, refer, pause, or terminate.
RCAG does not confuse its deliverables with guaranteed business outcomes.
Results are measured against a baseline recorded at the start. Where the result falls short, the question is which part fell short: the strategy, the system, the execution, or the diagnosis.

Tell RCAG what is happening

The client process begins with a questionnaire, not a sales call. You are not expected to diagnose your own business. If you do not know an answer, saying so is a useful answer.

Roland Conner Advisory Group LLC provides business advisory and consulting services. RCAG does not provide legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice. Submitting information through this website does not create a consulting or advisory relationship.