Issue 4 2021

CEO MONTHLY / ISSUE 4 2021 13 The TeamTaking Business Consultancy by Storm and glowing word of mouth reviews. Its dedication to keeping these aspects at the centre of its operational model comes from its CEO, Thomas P. Shivers, who recently participated in an enthralling panel hosted by The Entrepreneurs Forum. He started Fourstone Partners in his basement with a grand total of $500, beginning the journey with only one client. Since then, with ambition and tenacity, the company has reached great new heights and drawn to it a charismatic team that matches the energy of the founder. Internally, Fourstone Partners is a highly competitive group of people that does not believe the word ‘quit’ should enter their vocabulary. The staff being the driving force behind the company’s momentum and the reason so many of its clients go away completely satisfied, the recruitment process is one of ensuring an applicant will fit in. It seeks great team players, highly intelligent people, and those with exemplary leadership skills. All these things make up its in- house culture, and it believes that every person contributes equally. In this way, the CEO has fostered a culture of mutual responsibility and care within Fourstone Partners’ ranks that ensures all employees take personal pride in their work. Furthermore, Thomas Shivers’ own competitiveness is also continuously bringing new opportunities into the business’s orbit, and the journey has been supported by the many ‘great mentors’ that he encountered throughout education and his corporate career. That very first client whose business catalysed Fourstone Partners was one such tutor, a friend of the CEO’s that had found themselves in need of good sales consulting. It was this that spurred Thomas Shivers’ idea to grow the start- up into a national consultation service that would rival even the biggest voices in the sector. Nowadays, of course, he is proud to say that it has achieved this; and with such a dynamic and changeable industry, there is no shortage of challenge and opportunity to keep the CEO and his company on its toes. Its numerous consultancy clients each bring a new case and a new angle to the table, meaning that the job is never dull as no job is ever the same – for the CEO personally, who has a background in sports coaching, it draws on his skill for being adaptable in his supportiveness. This means that he has developed an intuition for knowing what a person will respond positively to, and what kind of support they would benefit from, over the course of discussions with them. The skills needed for this is something he shares with his staff, supporting them just as much as they are supporting his business. In this way, he firmly sticks to an attitude of team playing, believing that to be an effective team leader, one must first immerse themselves in that team. Thus, the hierarchy at Fourstone Partners is a flat one. In addition, the CEO is always on the move within the corporate sphere to see where he may be able to take his venture next. In one of his more recent moves, he has been working closely with his healthcare consultancy clients to grow that element of Fourstone Partners even further, acquiring a pharmacogenomic testing company to enhance this. This company recently won the 2020 Business Intelligence Group Innovation award, and as a toxicology company, it will be seeking to grow the products it sells going forward. In tandem with this, Fourstone Partners bought both a forensic auditing and a legal services company in 2019, both of which it will be similarly seeking to grow in the next few years. From these moves and the increasing influence held by Fourstone Partners, evidently, the collaboration between its CEO and the team has bolstered the good repute it enjoys in its sector and in the corporate world. With such an airtight operational model and exemplary attitude towards customer service, we daresay that the accolades it has earned so far will soon be joined by many more. Company: Fourstone Partners Contact: Grace Guenzer Website: fourstonepartners.com