One of motivational speaker Zig Ziglar’s best-known sayings is “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

The expression rings true for Alan Richardson, executive director of Riverhead Resources. Launched in January, the Des Moines-based consulting firm specializes in providing strategic development and outsourcing services and business improvement systems to entrepreneurial companies.

“We believe in service leadership, and that entrepreneurs need help,” Richardson said. “We at Riverhead are a bunch of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs at heart and after hours, because most of us own other businesses and we do other things on the side. So we are entrepreneurs ourselves, helping other entrepreneurs.”

Riverhead Resources’ 17 team members provide services to entrepreneurial companies at all stages of their life cycles. The firm also serves as an incubator to develop new subsidiary businesses for its parent company, Feed Energy Co.

About two years ago, Robert Riley Jr., Feed Energy’s president and CEO, hired Richardson to retool the company’s marketing efforts. Richardson instead found himself working with Riley to reshape the agribusiness firm’s strategic direction. The 26-year-old Des Moines-based Feed Energy specializes in processing soybean oil components into animal feed, fertilizer and other products.

Using an organizational approach that Richardson found called the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), Feed Energy and its two subsidiary companies were able to focus on what they do best, Richardson said.

“It’s allowed them to row in the same direction and be focused on the same things,” he said. “One of the things an entrepreneur will do is try to do too many things and therefore lose focus.”

Riley, who also serves as president and CEO of Riverhead Resources, last week was named one of 25 finalists in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition in the Central Midwest. He contributes his services to numerous economic development organizations and boards, among them the Iowa Department of Economic Development Board, the American Feed Industry Association, the Iowa Poultry Association, The Nature Conservancy in Iowa and the Community Foundation of Greater Des Moines.

“It is through my own experiences that I realized a need to package what I’ve learned and offer these insights to other entrepreneurial organizations,” Riley said of his newest company. “The fact that we now have two trained EOS implementers on staff is a clear indication of our commitment to small and medium-sized businesses.”

Riverhead’s consulting fees, like the services provided, are based upon the needs of the clients and can vary from a flat fee to a daily rate. “Part of our strategic plan is a triple-bottom-line approach that guides us – social, environmental and financial responsibility,” said Richardson, whose outside business pursuits range from growing Chinese chestnuts on his farm near Adel to running a coin-operated laundry and distributing MonaVie products.

“Bob Riley believes in giving something back; we all believe in giving something back,” he said. “If it’s a start-up business and they may think they don’t have a lot of money right now, we can help them. But it has to be a win-win-win or we won’t get engaged. If we believe in the business proposition and what they’re trying to do, we can work with them.”

EOS was developed in 2001 by Gino Wickman, a Detroit businessman who was among the 10 original members of the Entrepreneur’s Organization. Wickman, whose book, “Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business,” was published last year, has begun training EOS implementers to take his concept nationwide. Richardson and Troy Shoen, Riverhead’s marketing director, are among just 17 certified EOS implementers in the country so far.

EOS is built on a model that begins with a “crystal clear vision” for the company as its foundation, and emphasizes accountability, problem solving and goal setting.

Practicing what it teaches, Riverhead Resources has applied EOS to its own development, using the system’s Vision/Traction Organizer to outline the firm’s values, goals and strategies. Among those goals is to form at least one new strategic business unit for Feed Energy each year and to engage at least one new service client each quarter, “because we know we’re not working hard enough if we aren’t,” Richardson said. “We know they’re out there.”

For Feed Energy, a renewed clarity around its vision led to sales growth, Shoen said.

“There wasn’t a lack of vision, but there was a lack of clarity around the vision,” he said. “So we went in to help them clarify what that vision is. They were going along every year with the same sales figures, and (Riley) was extremely frustrated because he wasn’t seeing growth.”

By assisting Feed Energy in setting weekly production goals, “we helped them to identify a vision to drive toward,” Shoen said.

Also on Riverhead’s leadership team are Katherine Harrington, a human resources specialist; John Eubank, accounting; Chase Gochnauer, information technology and business improvement; and Mohan Dasari, laboratory services and research.

Shoen said Riverhead Resources will offer a variety of organizational development tools in addition to EOS, among them such internationally known methods as Six Sigma. The firm will also partner with other local business development organizations. “These are not canned solutions,” he said. “First of all, we (work to) understand who they are and what their needs are, and then put a proposal together and create a unique solution for them.”

Among the organizations with which Riverhead Resources will partner is Poertner Consulting Group LLC, to offer that firm’s VitalSmarts training to clients.

“That’s where I think it can be a win for me, a win for them and a win for their clients,” said Shirley Poertner, the firm’s president. “If they have a client that could benefit from my public workshops, or if there are enough clients, perhaps we could have a workshop specialized to that group.”

Poertner said though her knowledge of Riverhead Resources is “real recent,” she knows several of its senior leadership team members. “I do find them to be very bright, capable and creative people,” she said, “and I believe them to be above reproach in all of their business engagements.”

Riverhead also works with Mark Stanley, principal of The Why! Co. LLC in Johnston, who is a third EOS implementer in Greater Des Moines. “Mark’s a good friend of ours,” Richardson said. “In fact, we have Mark engaged on a supply chain management project right now.”

Shoen said collaboration will benefit the entire entrepreneurial community.

“We’re definitely not here to compete with other organizations providing these services to entrepreneurial companies,” he said. “We’re here to collaborate with them and to help grow this community of services to entrepreneurs.”