7seven
small
jewels
True Partners Consulting
From left: Cary McMillan, co-founder and CEO of True Parters Consulting, and managing directors James Kane, Stanley Jozefiak, James Sweeney and Holly O’Connor.
SOMETIMES, ALL A CONSULTING FIRM NEEDS IS AN
opportunity. In the case of Cary McMillan, co-founder and CEO
of True Partners Consulting, that opportunity came about six
years ago with the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. True Partners, a tax and business advisory firm, actually didn’t even launch
until late in 2005, but the groundwork for that launch was laid
back in 2002 with Sarbanes-Oxley. “Sarbanes-Oxley was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It was the best thing to happen to auditors
since the passage of the Securities and
Exchange Act in the 1930s,” McMillan
says. “But the act meant that audit firms
needed to distance themselves from their
audit clients. As a result, we’re getting an
opportunity to bid on work that the auditors would have previously done.”
Chicago-based True Partners, like so
many other success stories in consulting
over the last few years, was founded by
six ex-Arthur Andersen partners. Five of those partners were in
the tax practice at Anderson. McMillan left Anderson before its
demise in 1999 and was the chief financial officer of the Sara
Lee Corporation before launching True Partners.
“The genesis of True Partners was our thought of, ‘Why be
partners with auditors when you can’t share clients with them?’
The answer was True Partners. We tried to create the same quality and feeling of a big accounting firm for our tax people without having the downside of the auditors,” McMillan says. “We
offer the best of both worlds: We’re a firm with
Big 4 expertise, but without the accompanying bureaucracy and potential conflict of interest.”
When he launched the firm, McMillan says he
was concerned about how it would be perceived
in the marketplace. “We’re not one of the Big 4.
Will we be accepted by the types of clients we wanted with a
name—True Partners—that’s only been around for a few
years,” he says. “The most encouraging part of this so far to me
is that the client reception and reaction to us has been extremely
positive. We’re thrilled with our client list, and I would match
it up with any of the Big 4.”
And that client list must be growing, as well. From its original Chicago office and six co-founders, True Partners has
grown into a firm with seven offices
and 200 billable consultants. McMillan says he expects the firm to do
about $35 million in 2008—more than
50 percent higher than the $23 million
the firm did the year before. Meanwhile, it increased its revenue nearly
200 percent in 2007 from 2006, when
it billed $7.8 million in revenue. By
2011, McMillan expects the firm to be
between 400 and 500 billable consultants and $70 million and
$100 million in revenue.
“We started with six, and now we’re closing in on 200 people,
and we pretty much built this business from scratch,” he says.
Building a firm that grows some 50 percent every year organically is no small task. And, like with many firms, finding and hiring qualified talent has been the biggest challenges and
impediments to growth for True Partners, McMillan says. “That
first year, our eyes were bigger than our stomach,” he says. “The
Headquarters: Chicago
Offices: 7
Billable Consultants 2007: 152
Revenue 2006: $7.8 million
Revenue 2007: $23 million
Projected revenue for 2008: $35 million
“Good things happen to those who grow.
At True Partners, you’ll be getting all those
opportunities that come with it . Cary McMillan, co-founder and CEO of True Partne”rs Consulting
