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Episode 236: 785% Growth in Two Years? This Local CEO Made It Happen

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Or read Kimberley Singletary's interview with Michelle L. Thomas (transcript below):

Kim Singletary: I'm Kim Singletary, and you're listening to BizTalks, a weekly conversation with local business leaders about topics affecting New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana. Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of BizTalks. I'm Kim Singletary, editor of Biz New Orleans Magazine, and this week, I'm super excited. We're going to talk with a special guest today whose business has had tremendous growth in the past two years, 785% growth, to be specific, in the past two years.

Kim Singletary: Her name is Michelle Thomas, and her company is Thomas Consulting Group. So, welcome, Michelle.

Michelle L. Thomas: Thank you so much for having me.

Kim Singletary: So we're super excited when I got this sent over to me I was like the number just really caught me 785 percent is a pretty good couple of years.

Michelle L. Thomas: Definitely.

Kim Singletary: But you are a New Orleans native is that correct?

Michelle L. Thomas: No, I grew up in Laurinburg, North Carolina the rural town southern part of North Carolina.

Kim Singletary: Awesome but so when did you come down to New Orleans?

Michelle L. Thomas: I moved here in June of 2011 to be deputy mayor for operation.

Kim Singletary: Cool okay so talk a little bit about your background because you have a pretty strong governmental background.

Michelle L. Thomas: Yes, I actually started my career in higher rate administration and when I was in graduate school I became really in affordable housing and so my first. When I left Chicago, D.C. and worked for a federal contract, it was my client, and worked on a variety of projects with HUD, particularly I gave leadership to a national technology initiative, housing in 1,600 communities across the country. But, you know, things changed when I moved to New Jersey and took out for a private sector job. Cory Booker was making his successful bid for mayor. I ended up volunteering with his, he had created a think tank to develop policies that he would implement should he be mayor, and so did some of that policy work with him. And when he won and took, I did four years in the Booker administration, most of which I was administrator, which is responsible for 4,000 employees and over a billion dollars in budgets. At the end of his first term, I went back to the private sector working for a lobbying firm until I was lured back into the public sector by former Mayor Landrieu. And when I left the New Orleans, I started my own group.

Kim Singletary: Oh, wow. Okay, so your company, it's obviously named for you, Thomas Consulting Group. But your company, explain how you help people. It's not, well, you work with different organizations, with philanthropic organizations, with city governments, things like that, and including all over the Southeast, so Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, but also up into New York and Pennsylvania. And California. You know, forget that. So you, I'm reading off of here, your company excels at improving the systems, processes, and operations that result in efficient government performance, especially during times of transition or crisis.

Michelle L. Thomas: Absolutely, yes. I think cities are going to be the key to, over the next several years, making sure that we have the greatest ability to plan. You know, often it's said that all policies are local. And the greatest impact happens at the local level, which is why KCG has chosen over the years to really focus in the local space because we really do see that as the opportunity to have the greatest well we're definitely seeing um for better or worse that a lot of the control being pushed back um towards local governments right now so i'm assuming you see you see that to be good for.

Kim Singletary: your business going forward.

Michelle L. Thomas: Absolutely um we definitely lots of opportunities that exist um you know as the landscape just cities are going to happen um in in some cases they're going to have doing more with less which is where operational play um in other cases they're going to have to deal with decentralization uh of things that historically have been, centralized and being able to make sure that there's not service interruption in as much as they can for their residents and constituents.

Kim Singletary: Okay what do you mean.

Michelle L. Thomas: But what are some examples of that? Well, some things that are being rumored to go away are like community development, black grant funding in jeopardy. But when you think about medical care, which a lot of it happens at the local level, but with federal and state funding. So you think about rural health care, medical contracts, then you're going to have a lot of rural communities without health care. and creative ways to be able to either transport their residents to where the care is, even with Social Security and offices in cities, including New Orleans. The cities are going to have to find ways to be able to try to bridge the gap for their residents and help them gain access to the critical services.

Kim Singletary: So, what does your company look like? What's, like, staffing-wise, where are you at? And then, how do you operate if you have, say, a city that needs your help or a non-profit like that? How do you, what's kind of your steps?

Michelle L. Thomas: We have 10 employees and a cadre of bid partners that we partner with on different types of engagements. And, you know, each engagement is unique and different. So, it's a bidding process with a government agency through the regular contracting, and there's a really clear scope of work and timeline with milestones and deliverables, and we work towards those milestones and deliverables. In other instances, you know, we manage mayoral transitions. And so, in those instances, we have a moving methodology that works. And so, when we get... In a mayoral transition, we implement our methodology and carry that through the steps. Authentic engagement around long-term planning for the change that they want to see in New Orleans. And so on that, you guys, we worked with Mayor LaToya Trell, the city of New Orleans, on their affordable housing goals. We created the city's 10-year housing ecosystem.

Kim Singletary: Oh, okay.

Michelle L. Thomas: And that was used, that was released in July of last year. And a lot of the housing advocates used the plan, the tool to help voters with housing trust funds. And so that referendum was passed by the voters last fall.

Kim Singletary: So what is that going to look like for us? I haven't heard very much about it. What kind of, because I know affordable housing is critical in all over the country, but right now for your 10-year plan, what I guess, what's the ultimate goal there?

Michelle L. Thomas: To spur development, more rapid development of affordable housing in New Orleans. You know, part of the challenge has been over the years, much low-income housing tax credit dollars flowing into New Orleans. And so there are not consolidated and dedicated funding sources to really spur affordable housing development. So one thing the plan recommended was to have 2% of the city's general fund budget obligated to an affordable housing trust fund, make funds available to do gap financing for various types of affordable housing development deals, amongst other things.

Kim Singletary: Okay. I feel like I'm kind of all over the place, but you guys do some really cool stuff. But, again, the 785% growth just totally threw me off. But that's something. So you've had the company since 2013. So you're 12 years old. But a couple years ago, you participated in Goldman Sachs, where a lot of this recent growth has kind of been spurred from.

Michelle L. Thomas: Absolutely, absolutely. I was a part of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program, which is a very robust program. And, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, if you don't have an MBA, there's a lot about running a business that, you know, trapping and figuring it out as we go. I found the 10,000 Small Businesses Program did several things for me. Number one, it required me to have discipline that it takes to work on my business. in my business. There was a lot of my time in going through the program, which then conditioned me over that four months that I can't spend all the time doing the work that I have to also focus. on growing my business. So that was like one of the first big takeaways, excuse me, for me in that program. But you also, through the course of the program, develop a growth plan for your business where you are very specific in the things that you want to do to grow your business, your target market. You know, what are you going to do around operations and all the things that you're going to do different. You develop a financial model for your business where you have new targets every year, a strategy for how you're going to reach those targets. And so my plan was extremely. aggressive in terms of the numbers, but I felt like we were at a place where we could, really turn a corner and make a quantum leap.

Kim Singletary: So what did your business look like two years ago versus what does it look like now?

Michelle L. Thomas: Well i did the program during covid so um when i did the program there were three um and then next year there were five of us and then this year there were eight of us and now there are ten.

Kim Singletary: Okay so what are some of the i guess some of some of the biggest things that you learned that you would credit for this enormous i think one having a plan having a well thought out plan executing against your plan treating it as if you know it's it's the bible and it's how we're gonna it's how we're gonna do this thing um that was a big thing making time.

Michelle L. Thomas: to work on the business and not in the business, Being able to find and retain amazing talent and diversify my client base. All those things taken together, done at the same time is what led to...

Kim Singletary: So you're out of here, you're based out of New Orleans, right? So when you were looking for talent, is it something that you could find here or did you have to go outside of the city? And how did you get talent and then work on keeping it, onboarding, all of that kind of stuff? Because I know that's a huge thing for most businesses here is just finding the right people to do the job. And I've been hearing from other businesses that it's kind of hard here for some skills. And so they've been looking outside and especially nowadays...

Michelle L. Thomas: and things like that so is that something that you had to do or and how did you go about doing, your talent yes we are 100 remote of the 10 of us three are in new orleans based the other seven are, five okay so how did you what was effective for you in getting good people in i started with my.

Michelle L. Thomas: network and i'm still i'm still i've got um friends and former colleagues from the country and so of the people that i have known i've watched them and was able to retention for us about giving our employees a meaningful experience, about a rich benefits program that is the whole person. We have a meditation coach, for example, who is available to all of our employees on an ongoing basis. We do 100% medical, dental, vision, life, and we have unlimited paid time off. So our folks have, and we invest 3,000 per year per employee in professional development that's aligned with the growth that they want to experience with TCG. So we have a generous benefits program. We invest in our employees, but I think more important is the work that we get to do together. Our team is really, really passionate about the work, and I think that goes a long way in terms of retention.

Kim Singletary: So how do you keep being remote, like a lot of companies are, how do you keep a sense of collaboration? Communication, a sense of ownership with your employees, of what you guys are doing, I know that that's something that's been talked about to be a little more of a challenge when people are remote. How do you deal with that?

Michelle L. Thomas: We've actually not had many challenges, and I think it's the way, in general, our project methodology and the way that we get things done is collaborative. So there's not a deliverable that goes out on behalf of the firm. We haven't had at least two or three team members who touch and collaborate on it. And so because our environment is collaborative, it also allows us for the flexibility that, you know, if someone... A family need that requires them to step for a minute, then others on the team will step up and stand in the gap while they, you know, balance. their work and life. And so we just, in part, I think it's also the team that we have and the humans that work at TCG because we are a very collaborative culture.

Kim Singletary: So you don't have a ton of employees, but it sounds like you do have some overlap, like everybody kind of understands what everybody's doing. Is that fair?

Michelle L. Thomas: That's correct.

Kim Singletary: Okay. Yes. As far as your growth and finding new clients, how did you go about that? Like you said, you had a very aggressive plan, so what did that look like? If other business owners are listening to this going, okay, I would love to grow 785% in the next two years, is there any advice you could give on that end?

Michelle L. Thomas: You know, it's hard to give advice in the current environment. I can only speak, I mean, I think timing was part of what was successful for us and part of our growth plan. For 2025 had to pivot because the environment isn't what it was when we certain targets for 2025. But I think in general, knowing your market, finding what differentiates you from your competitor, being aggressive to be out there. And, you know, a lot of our work is word of mouth and refer from one city leader to another. I think the biggest change that we had, though, was moving into having philanthropy as clients. Around the time we began implementing the growth plan, that has been tremendously successful.

Kim Singletary: So when you're talking about pivoting and the things that you're already seeing changing, assuming because you're working with nonprofits. and the non-profits are having some federal funding issues question mark we talked about.

Michelle L. Thomas: earlier on it's like city governments that that's going to look probably different in the next few years or are there what are some of when you're talking about pivoting what what are you and our our primary um clients are these even even the work that we do with philanthropy we're doing it on their behalf to assist cities excuse me and so you know there's a lot of uncertainty now in the country there are major projects that have installed or the funding federal funding has. been clawed back on projects some of which are like in the middle of implementation you've got some large-scale infrastructure programs that have gone away and you've got rule changes on a lot of programs that impact, cities. And so, you know, part of it is staying abreast of the changes that are happening and being able to advise cities on how best to navigate, how best to try to retain the funding. that has not been talked with a lot about making sure that you stay compliant with the terms of your grant agreements and what does that look like. So, you know, part of it is just the uncertainty day-to-day and helping our clients to navigate that uncertainty.

Kim Singletary: But this current climate, like you said, it's got a lot of uncertainty, which to me sounds like a lot more likelihood that governments and organizations would be reaching out for.

Michelle L. Thomas: assistance. So do you feel like this should kind of be good for your business?

Kim Singletary: We certainly hope so. So, okay. And like you said, you're based here in New Orleans. Is there, Is there any other work that you're doing with the city here or any non-profits here that you'd like to talk about?

Michelle L. Thomas: Actually, most of our work is national, and so presently we're not doing any work in the world.

Kim Singletary: I see. So is there, I guess, kind of any closing thoughts as far as, I guess, being a business owner right now, as far as talking to other business owners right now, and kind of making sure that we all kind of survive the next couple of years? Do you have any thoughts on that end?

Michelle L. Thomas: Sure. I think, you know, I know of businesses that have already been impacted by the changes that are happening, and, you know, it's going to require that we all be nimble and innovative, and where possible. Make investments in our growth, even if that means innovating in terms of the services and products that we produce and or provide, and broadening our outlooks in terms of who prospective clients could be if there are some challenges with your current client base. You know, I think in general, this might be a lot easier for service businesses, professional service businesses, than it is for businesses that have products to produce and sell. My thoughts and prayers are with those businesses that do exports and or from other countries where impacting their ability to produce their products. And unfortunately, I don't have any advice on that. But I do think we... We have to stay encouraged, stay together, support one another where possible. support local, but keep our eyes on the prize and look for innovation opportunities at every turn. And I think we can all survive this and even grow from it as we continue to pay attention to what's going on and assess everything that could be perceived as a bad thing as a prospective opportunity and find where our opportunities are as business owners.

Kim Singletary: I hear a lot when it comes to opportunity about AI. Is that something that you guys work in or are involved in at all?

Michelle L. Thomas: I think most businesses use AI in some ways or perform, but it's not something that we're involved in. It is a tool in the toolbox.

Kim Singletary: Yeah. Well, wonderful. It's been such a joy talking to you and congratulations again on the success. So your company, And as number 15 on the 2025 Inc. list of fastest-growing private companies in the Southeast, which was huge for this year. So, again, congratulations on that growth. Yeah, please keep us posted on your future.

Michelle L. Thomas: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Kim. I appreciate you having me on.

Kim Singletary: Thank you. And thanks, everybody, for listening. Biz Talks is brought to you by Biz New Orleans Magazine. Follow us on social media at BizNewOrleans and visit BizNewOrleans.com for daily news and stories.