Fixed-Fee Consulting for Northwest Arkansas Owners | consulting@ziphealthy.com
Fixed-fee consulting for owner-led businesses in Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale, and Fayetteville. We agree on the outcome, the measures, and the value before you spend a dollar — then we work alongside you until the numbers move.
Thousands of owner-led businesses make this corridor run — supplier offices, healthcare practices, logistics firms, trades, restaurants, professional services. They face enterprise-grade demands on Main Street budgets, and the consulting industry mostly ignores them: too small for the global firms, too important for guesswork.
We built ZipHealthy Consulting for exactly these businesses. Senior advisors, fixed fees, and one test for every recommendation: does it leave the owner measurably better off?
And no force is reshaping those businesses faster than AI. A 2026 Cornell SC Johnson study of 30 companies frames the shift plainly: the advantage no longer goes to whoever produces the most analysis, but to whoever can direct it, judge it, and decide well — from being a producer of analysis to a decision architect. That's what good consulting has always done; AI just raised the stakes — and both our principals hold Cornell MBAs.
ZipHealthy Consulting is independent of, and not affiliated with, any retailer or anchor company.
Every practice area is run the same way: objectives first, measures second, fee third, work fourth. Start with the one that keeps you up at night.
A strategy you can explain in two sentences and execute this quarter — not a binder for the credenza.
How we help
Find where margin leaks — rework, waiting, workarounds — and close the gaps without adding headcount.
How we help
Keep the people you can't afford to lose and build managers your team doesn't want to leave.
How we help
Clean numbers, honest margins, and a cash position that lets you say yes to opportunity.
How we help
A brand that commands a premium and marketing spend you can trace to revenue.
How we help
Technology that serves the process — chosen for fit, implemented with adoption, secured from day one.
How we help
Turn one-time buyers into repeat business with experience worth talking about — and a CRM your team actually uses.
How we help
Sourcing, logistics, and continuity built for supplier-ecosystem demands — without carrying a warehouse of just-in-case.
How we help
Practical AI for owner-led businesses: real use cases, measured productivity, no science projects.
How we help
A website that earns trust and produces inquiries — engineered, measured, and owned by you.
How we helpTypical of the results clients pursue in these engagements. Every business is different; these are illustrative objectives, not promises.
Illustrative of engagement objectives — results vary by organization and are not guaranteed.
The process is borrowed from the best independent consultants in the world and sized for Northwest Arkansas businesses. No discovery phases that never end. No invoices for meetings about meetings.
We begin with the decision-maker — the owner. One conversation about where the business is, where you want it to be, and whether we are the right people to help close that gap. If we aren't, we will tell you, and we'll usually tell you who is.
Before any proposal, we agree on three things in plain language: the objectives (business outcomes, not activities), how we will measure progress, and what achieving those outcomes is worth to you — in dollars where possible, in quality of life where it matters more.
You receive one proposal with three ways to work together at different levels of depth and investment — a choice of yeses, not a take-it-or-leave-it. Every option carries a single fixed fee tied to the value we agreed on.
We do the work with you, on site in Northwest Arkansas or wherever your operation runs. No junior staff learning on your invoice. You work with the people on this page.
We review progress against the measures we set in step two — not a slide deck of effort, but the numbers and conditions we agreed to change. The engagement ends when the outcome is reached, not when the hours run out.
We do not bill by the hour. Hourly billing rewards slowness and punishes candor — the longer a problem lasts, the more an hourly consultant earns. Our interests should point the same direction as yours: at the result.
The core objective, addressed directly. The leanest path to the outcome we agreed on in conceptual agreement.
The core objective plus implementation support — we stay alongside you and your team while the change takes hold.
The full engagement: objective, implementation, and the surrounding capabilities that make the improvement permanent.
Every proposal you receive contains these three options with one fixed investment each — quoted only after we agree on objectives, measures, and value, and sized so that the value identified is a conservative multiple of the fee. No surprises, no meters running, no change orders for asking us a question. HSA-style simplicity: one number, one outcome, one accountable firm.
Fees are established in a written proposal after conceptual agreement. Outcomes depend on factors within your organization's control; no specific result is promised or guaranteed.
Stephen has spent the last decade on both sides of the table at once: owner of ZipHealthy — founded in 2016 and built to sustained profitability with no outside capital — and senior product-technology executive at Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he led the turnaround of IRS Online Services, platforms serving 150 million Americans. At Walmart he directed the supply-chain technology portfolio spanning ten thousand stores and distribution centers — the ecosystem many of our clients sell into.
He is also a licensed clinician and military veteran. Strategy firms model your business; Stephen also understands the humans who run it — why good employees leave, why owners can't let go, why change stalls. That is the difference between a plan and a result.
“Improving the client's condition is the only deliverable that matters. Everything else is paperwork.”
Twenty-five years in technology and cybersecurity, including enterprise security and digital-infrastructure work with Fortune 100 companies. Daniel leads our technology, cybersecurity, and AI-adoption engagements.
The person you meet is the person who does the work. No pyramid of analysts learning the trade on your invoice — two Cornell MBAs and a combined four decades of operating experience on every engagement.
Large firms sell hours; we sell outcomes. One fixed investment, agreed in writing before work begins, sized against the value at stake — so candor is free and speed is rewarded.
Most consulting fails at the human layer: adoption, conflict, trust, change fatigue. Our principal is a licensed behavioral clinician as well as a strategist. We build plans people actually follow.
We serve Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale, and Fayetteville — the supplier-ecosystem businesses, healthcare practices, and owner-led companies that make this corridor run. Local references, local presence, no airport consulting.
Composite scenarios drawn from the kinds of situations we work on. Details altered; client identities not used.
Illustrative composites for explanation of method — not statements of past performance, and not a guarantee of results.
A randomized trial: firms receiving structured management consulting raised productivity by 17% in the first year through better practices alone.
Bloom, Eifert, Mahajan, McKenzie & Roberts (2013) — “Does Management Matter? Evidence from India,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 128(1). doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjs044
A randomized trial with SMEs: subsidized access to consulting improved productivity and grew employment measurably against controls.
Bruhn, Karlan & Schoar (2018) — “The Impact of Consulting Services on Small and Medium Enterprises,” Journal of Political Economy, 126(2). doi.org/10.1086/696154
Across 732 firms, structured management practices — monitoring, targets, incentives — correlate strongly with productivity, profitability, and survival.
Bloom & Van Reenen (2007) — “Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(4). doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2007.122.4.1351
Research informs our methods. Findings describe study populations — not a promise of results for any engagement.
Short, contrarian, written for owners. If our point of view is useful before you ever hire us, it will be more useful after.
Not the forty-line P&L your software prints. Three numbers, reviewed the same morning each month, that tell you whether the business is getting stronger or merely busier.
Read the insightThe resignation letter is the last step, not the first. What actually drives regretted attrition in owner-led companies, and the arithmetic most owners never run.
Read the insightNew software wrapped around a broken process gives you a faster broken process. The order of operations that saves six figures of shelfware.
Read the insightOne boundary we keep: we advise healthcare practices of many kinds — dental, primary care, physical therapy, med-spa, veterinary — but we do not consult to mental- or behavioral-health practices, to keep a clean line between our consulting work and our own clinical practice. ZipHealthy Consulting is independent of, and not affiliated with, any retailer or anchor company named on this site.
Owner-led small and medium businesses in Northwest Arkansas — Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale, and Fayetteville. That includes supplier-ecosystem companies, healthcare practices (dental, primary care, physical therapy, med-spa, veterinary), professional services, trades, and retail. We do not consult to mental- or behavioral-health practices, to keep a clean line between our consulting work and our own clinical practice.
One fixed fee per engagement, established in writing before work begins. We agree on objectives, how progress will be measured, and what achieving the objectives is worth to your business — then the fee is sized against that value, conservatively. We never bill by the hour, so you never hesitate to pick up the phone.
Nothing. You talk directly with the principal — not a salesperson — about your situation. If we can help, you'll get a proposal with three options. If we can't, we'll tell you plainly and point you somewhere useful.
Three ways. You work with senior people only — the consultants named on this page, not a rotating bench of analysts. You pay a fixed fee tied to outcomes, not day rates. And our principal is a licensed behavioral clinician as well as a Cornell MBA, which matters because most plans fail at the human layer: adoption, conflict, change fatigue. We build plans people actually follow.
Yes. Mutual confidentiality is standard in every engagement, and engagement terms are documented in a written statement of work before anything begins.
It depends on the objective, and the proposal states it plainly. Focused engagements often run weeks, not months. The engagement ends when the outcome is reached — we don't park people in your office to bill time.
Both, weighted toward on site. We're based in Bentonville and serve Northwest Arkansas exclusively, so being in your operation — the floor, the clinic, the warehouse — is normal practice. Working sessions that suit a screen happen on a screen; nothing about your business is learned from a conference room only.
You'll get a reply from the principal — usually the same business day — to schedule a conversation. After that conversation: either a written proposal with three options, a referral to someone better suited, or an honest 'we're not what you need.' No drip campaigns, no handoffs to a sales team.
One conversation with the principal — a Cornell MBA, not a junior associate. Whether your pressure is AI, growth, cost, or people, we'll tell you where we can move a number and how we'd measure it. If we can't help, we'll say so.
Prefer the phone? (479) 259-1390 · 240 S Main St, Suite #270, Bentonville, AR 72712
Most of our clients come to us by referral from other Northwest Arkansas owners. If someone sent you here — tell us who, so we can thank them.
