Oct. 4—With more than 25 years of experience in the community and more than 15,000 clients served so far this year, Eagle Consulting is up for a small business of the year award for the state of Alabama.
The Decatur-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce recently announced that Eagle Consulting was a finalist in the 51- to 100-employee category. Winners will be announced at the Chamber of Commerce Association of Alabama and the Business Council of Alabama meeting on Nov. 18 in Birmingham.
CEO and founder Larry Little said anywhere he goes in Decatur, people come up to him to tell him the difference Eagle Consulting has made in their lives.
“(They) say, ‘We’ve been to your counseling center, and they saved our marriage. We’ve been to your counseling center, and it helped my child go through this hard time,'” Little said. “I thank God for that every time I hear it because that’s a testimony of our team and how our team truly has impacted this community.”
For Little and other Eagle Consulting leaders, being a finalist for the award affirms the abilities of the staff that they’ve been aware of for a long time.
Eagle Consulting started as The Enrichment Center in 1999 and operated out of First Baptist Church. In the beginning, it wanted to offer services for what the team saw as the “mainstream need of America.” Areas of expertise ranged from marital issues and parenting issues to anxiety and depression.
It didn’t take long for The Enrichment Center to have a space of its own. In 2001, it moved to an office space on Sixth Avenue. The counseling center had outgrown that space, too, by 2003.
“We found ourselves, quite frankly, inundated, overwhelmed with the response,” Little said. “We grew. We moved three times in five years because we kept growing. And we kept growing because we were meeting a need. The community saw that.”
The company later decided to become a for-profit business with two branches: Eagle Counseling and Eagle Center for Leadership. It has counseling locations in Decatur, Cullman and Huntsville, as well as a telehealth option for video appointments.
Eagle Consulting works as an employee assistance program (EAP) for different businesses and organizations, including the police force and firefighters in Morgan County. As an EAP, the company provides employees with counseling if the need arises.
On the leadership side, Eagle Consulting has an international presence. It offers one-on-one coaching sessions, as well as group programs. Sometimes companies will have Eagle Consulting deliver a one-off seminar. Other times, the business develops curriculum for a team to work through together, and it helps them for as long as a year.
Eagle Consulting sends out surveys to clients to gather feedback.
“They are saying things like ‘My coach has really challenged me to come out of my comfort zone. They helped hold me accountable,'” said Business Development Lead Moriah Jarrett. “Maybe there was a challenge for them in a certain area, and (the coach) helped them to create a growth plan to work through that so that they can improve. Just really awesome little nuggets from the people that we’re serving.”
The business’ core values are growth and excellence. It doesn’t measure growth financially though, Little said.
“When you think about a goal, we want to be able to impact families, impact people to be better business leaders, to be better employees, to be stronger parents and friends and family members. That really drives us,” said President and co-founder Melissa Jackson.
In 2018, Eagle Consulting moved to its current location at 206 Fourth Ave. S.E. in Decatur.
According to Jarrett, 10 years ago, the business provided around 100 leadership coaching sessions per month. It now has over 600 sessions per month.
Eagle Consulting uses frameworks from Little’s book “Make A Difference” in its counseling and consulting. The book discusses “the Little Profile,” a personality test that more than 1 million people have taken. Little explained that it helps people understand themselves and others better.
Little and Jackson remember being excited when they filled the first drawer of a filing cabinet after starting in the basement of First Baptist Church in 1999.
“How do you last 26 years? The secret sauce has been we’ve always been about relationships,” Little said. “Whether it’s been in a counseling session, whether it’s in a leadership session, whether it’s each other — we value relationships. We always like to say it this way: ‘We are relationship-driven.'”
When reflecting on Eagle Consulting’s business of the year nomination, they directed focus back to the team’s work.
“This team, they’re the ones that did this,” Little said. “They’re the ones that put us in this position. They’re the ones that have worked hard. They’re the ones that have built relationships. They’re the ones that provided quality care over and over and over again.”
— GraciAnn.Goodin@DecaturDaily.com or 256-340-2437