By Dave Warner

Mike McCarthy has done a lot in his life, but now he’s ready to give back by creating a company called Native Son Consulting, which aims to provide no-cost business growth and strategy consulting for owners of Little Falls businesses.

He said, “I was born here in 1957. My parents were from the area. My mom graduated from St Mary’s. We moved around a bit, but I moved back here in 61.”

McCarthy said that it’s not until you leave and see other places and get older that you start to appreciate more and more about how and where you came from, and how it has made you who you are.

“I’ve always been interested in coming back here to live, but my career path wasn’t going to take me here,” he said.

His first job out of college was in sales and advertising at an agency. The second job was becoming president of an agency when the existing president stepped down. “I kind of envisioned that I’d be president of the company one day, but it wasn’t anything I was thinking about a lot. I was still pretty young.”

Leading the agency at such a young age caused him to really think about what he wanted to do with his life. He ended up taking a career survey that told him he was just where he should be. “But I wasn’t enjoying it, and so upon further reflection, I realized I needed to make a career change.”

So, he went to grad school, got his PhD and became a professor. “I really wanted to come back to this part of the country, but there’s not really a big university. Between Syracuse and Albany, there are some colleges, but that didn’t work out, so I got a job in Ohio, and that’s where I went.”

He continued to return to the area to visit family, trying to be here two to three times a year. “As I was approaching retirement, I realized I’d have a lot more time on my hands, and we could spend more time up here, so we started looking for a place,” he said.”

McCarthy said they weren’t looking for anything too crazy and found the right place in 2020 and bought it. “I knew that once my dad passed, I probably wouldn’t make it up here very often unless I bought something.”

“My wife likes it here, so that’s our tie back to Little Falls.”

He said that many of the things he learned in Little Falls growing up helped make him successful, “Not just from my folks, but from the community.”

“I saw that a lot of what I liked about myself was because of here,” he stated, “So I asked, how can I help?”

McCarthy said that he thinks he knows some things that would be of value to people but that they probably couldn’t pay him for it. “If a big old company wanted to hire me to consult, I’d make them pay me. But, the shop owners and people in town that are trying to start a business, or maybe they have a side hustle they’re trying to get to grow – this I can help with.”

“I can help people think through problems and come up with ways to do things and be innovative. I know about marketing and all that kind of stuff, but I will say that the thing I can offer more than anything else is helping them think through the problems without telling them what to do.”

He said that a lot of companies have a problem making decisions about how to move forward. “I don’t have to know a lot about what you do, but I can help you think through other ways of thinking about it and maybe open up some ideas from you, not me, where you can say, ‘Maybe I can do this, not that.'”

McCarthy said he wants to see the City and its citizens do well and approach the issues they are facing from a different perspective. “When you’re inside something, sometimes you can’t see outside of it.”

What he knows can scale from a one-person operation to a large corporation, he said.

McCarthy said that he’s spoken to a couple of businesses since he’s been back. In one instance, the business owner had three or four ideas, and McCarthy helped him walk through all of them until he focused on just one that held the most promise.

“None of the ideas were bad, but maybe there’s something here you should stop doing,” he said. “You only have so much time in the day. Maybe instead of doing A, B, and C, pick B and do B well and see if that gets you where you want to go,” he stated.

His help might even involve thinking through selling your business. “I help people see multiple ways they can achieve their objectives.”

“It’s really interesting to me. It helps people out a lot, and sometimes, I see results right away. In a place like Little Falls, particularly where there is so much tradition in how you do things, being able to go in and help people see new opportunities by reframing their situation and offering another perspective should be helpful.”

He said there is no charge, and there’ll never be a charge, and he’d be happy to sit with you for ten minutes or an hour, “However long it takes. If you live and/or work in Little Falls and have a business, or you’d like to start a business, whatever it is, give me a call.”

If you want to connect with McCarthy, call or text 513-290-3880 or email nativesonconsulting75@gmail.com.