The Startup Magazine Female Founder Interview: Gabriela Rodil, Consultant and Latina Leader

As part of The Startup Magazine Female Founder Series, we interviewed Ms. Gabriela Rodil. Gabby is the CEO and Parachuter Par Excellence of Gabriela Rodil & Company. Her business is a consulting services company that solves the puzzle of reliable financial reporting, efficient processes and IT tools for small and midsize businesses. She has some great advice for startups and businesses of all size. Here is more of her story:

Describe your product/service in 10 words or less:

We help companies improve their bottom-line and/or get ready to sell.

Explain a bit more about what your company does?

We provide consulting services in the following areas:

Creating processes and procedures to streamline the business, increase profits and reliability of financial information.
Support company’s existing teams during transitions and special projects
Get a company ready for sale: per due diligence work and support during the sale process
Implementation or revamp of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems

What inspired you to start your company? (Share with us what problem you’re solving)

What inspired me to start my own company was my desire to provide multidisciplinary consulting services to small and mid-sized companies. I wanted to be able to select clients that are a good fit and can benefit from my finance, IT and international experience.

How is Gabriela Rodil & Company impacting the world/your clients?

Our clients have more efficient operations, higher profits/value and streamlined processes after they work with us. Our clients’ employees enjoy their work more and are able to make a greater impact.

Besides the direct impact to the clients we serve, we impact the world in the following ways. We provide job opportunities for our employees and contractors; donate company money and time for community projects and create an example for other women and minorities considering entrepreneurship.

What are the disruptive factors in your industry that make it so promising?

There are three factors that impact businesses and, therefore, increase the relevance of the services we provide:

We see fast changing technology that requires companies to constantly rethink their infrastructure and update their tools to remain competitive.
We notice the trend of industry consolidation. This is where several small and mid-sized companies have the opportunity to be acquired by larger companies and we help them optimize that.
We observe the changes that come in a fast-paced globalized economy. The ever-changing reality is that companies operate internationally even if they do not think they do. We help companies handle the complexities of doing business in multiple countries and cultures.

As your company grew, what were the primary challenges? Hiring? Quality control? Capital?

The two challenges to growth are getting talent acquisitions and developing scalable methodologies and training to onboard and mentor the growing team.

Going back to your early career decisions, tell us what factors influenced your decision to be an entrepreneur?

I became an entrepreneur because I wanted the freedom and opportunity to experiment. It gave me flexibility to select my company’s clients, choose my team and ultimately call the shots on my own. I know how much responsibility this would entail but overtime I always knew becoming an entrepreneur would give me the lifestyle that I always wanted.

And what characteristics do you have that particularly contributed to your ability to jump from a startup success to a scale up success?

I think that my background and experience in scaling up businesses allowed me to do the same for my own business.

As you have a history of building early stage companies, what is the most important thing you tell startup founders?

I tell them to do it right the first time. I suggest companies put systems and procedures in place as early as possible. It is easier and faster to start right than to have to clean up and fix it later.

Here are a few simple tips:

Make sure you keep proper accounting and documentation from the beginning.
Build building a database of your clients/suppliers/contacts in a centralized system such as Outlook from the start.