Hi, I’m Sylvia Inks. I’m a long-time business consultant, turned financial coach for small businesses. I have experience helping businesses and individuals achieve maximum efficiencies and optimum outcomes.

Before I began SMI Financial Coaching, I worked for ten years as a Consultant for one of the largest professional services firms in the world. I worked with multinational Fortune 500 companies to establish goals, improve processes, implement change, and optimize outcomes. My experience working as a change agent within the world’s largest organizations taught me about best practices for goal setting and achievement within a business context, which should also be applied to achieving goals as a small business owner.

Ten years into my consulting career, I had been promoted several times, and had what most would consider to be a great job, with great pay, and a good quality of life. However, I knew that there were aspects of my life that I wanted to change. So I used the tools I had developed over the last decade to negotiate the change I craved in my life.

I left my corporate job, pursued my personal goals, and over time began providing advice to people within my network who were looking to make financial and career changes. Ultimately, SMI Financial Coaching was born.

My passion is to work with individuals and small business owners to help solve the problems that come along with running a small business. I primarily work with small business owners to make the often confusing financial world of small business easy to understand and less intimidating  – so they have the money and income to grow their businesses. I also work with clients to streamline and optimize their personal finances in order to pursue their passion and start their own businesses.

SUCCESS IS A GAME. PLAY TO WIN.

So do the professional services consulting and individual coaching/consulting worlds have anything in common? Yes! You may be thinking, “But I’m not a Fortune 500 firm with billions in assets; I’m not sure if Sylvia’s coaching would be right for me.” The truth is that there is very little difference between the best approach to working through problems and optimizing outcomes within giant corporations – and working through problems and optimizing outcomes with individuals, families, and small businesses. The framework for assessing needs and affecting change is the same.

I’ve developed an easy-to-remember, and easy-to-implement framework that’s worked well to shape the coaching process for financial coaching, career management, and business consulting engagements; I call it GAME: GATHER, ASSESS, MOTIVATE, EXECUTE . I’ve found that every successfully completed engagement has consisted of an information gathering phase, a needs assessment and planning phase, a skills building and motivational phase, and an execution and evaluation phase. It’s worked for many who came before you, and if you commit to and invest in the process, it can work for you, too.