Heart. Mind. Soul.= Growth
Connect with the heart, mind, and soul of your customers and your team. Lasting, profitable growth you can see on the P&L will follow.
We help consumer brands grow, along with the leaders who run them and the investors who back them. Our sweet spot is multi-unit and experience-led businesses in restaurants, hospitality, retail, and sports and entertainment, where a strategy only counts if the front line can deliver it, every location, every day.
Who we help grow
Startups, emerging brands, and established leaders. Founder-led, private, and public. We have worked inside all of them.
Our core is restaurants and hospitality, sports and entertainment, and retail. We also work in education and consumer products, because some of the best answers come from outside your own category. Our relationships across all of them are part of what we bring.
CEOs, leadership teams, boards, and franchise systems
For brands that have stalled, or are ready for the next plateau. One-on-one counsel and mentoring from someone who has held the job, an independent read for the board, and one plan the CFO, operators, and franchisees all believe in.
Private equity and family offices
An operator's read on a category as you weigh where to invest, on a target before you buy, and value creation priorities management can run after you close.
Startups and emerging brands
Getting market-ready: a sharper offer, a clearer story, a path to the customers who matter, and the next layers of incremental growth, with a senior partner alongside you.
Where it fits, we also invest alongside the founders we work with.
What we do: the HMS Growth Formula™
Heart, Mind, and Soul tell us where growth comes from. The formula is how we turn them into results, one disciplined step at a time. It has driven sustained growth across the brands we have led, and the most successful brands we have watched. Start anywhere. Take the full formula, or just the piece you need. Oh, and we are proud to use AI, but prouder to pair it with the wisdom and judgment that only experience brings.
In this order, almost always. We have seen it tried the other way. We don't recommend it.
See the business clearly and agree on where to go.
Focus on what makes money, and cut what doesn't.
Targeted innovation on a simpler base, proven before it scales.
The plan embraced by the front line, and measured so it sticks.
The Three-Point North Star™
One aligned north star, fixed from three points.
Navigators fix their position from three points. We fix your brand's the same way, from what your guests, your leaders, and your front line are already telling you.
Refined across multiple brand transformations.
Shaped around you
Start with a focused project, or with ongoing counsel from a trusted advisor and connector, walking alongside you. Many clients do both. When the work calls for it, we get closer to the work on your biggest priorities. Senior counsel on every engagement, decades of relationships across consumer industries, and experienced operators from our network when the work calls for it.
A senior partner for a founder, CEO, or C-suite leader.
Ongoing counsel for founders, CEOs, boards, and investors, there for the everyday calls, not just the big ones. Advice that lives in the business, not a report that sits on a shelf.
Senior operating experience where it matters most.
We help shape the plan, pressure-test it, and keep it on track, while your team owns the execution.
Vision, mission, purpose, positioning, values, and unique, ownable brand attributes, from what your guests, leaders, and frontline teams already tell you, so every decision points the same way.
Where growth is coming from, where it is leaking, and what to do first, across the customer, brand, unit economics, organization, and system.
A look under the hood at pricing, mix, labor, food and supply costs, and unit economics, and the operating moves that turn growth into profit.
Where the category is heading, how the brand is really performing with guests and against competitors, and what to do about it.
How engaged the team is, whether the culture supports the strategy, and whether the organization is built to deliver it.
Before you invest, an operator's read on the category and who is winning in it. Before you buy, a clear view of the target's customers, team, upside, and risks, and what they mean for valuation. After you close, the value creation priorities to act on first.
Sized to fit. Some work needs one senior advisor. Some brings in seasoned operators and specialists from our network, matched to the assignment. Either way, fees are fair, agreed up front, and scoped to the work, with no surprises. A focused project stands on its own, with no ongoing commitment required.
Not sure where to start? That is what the first conversation is for.
How it starts
Thirty minutes, in person in Dallas or virtual. Coffee's on us. You tell us what's keeping you up at night, and we'll tell you honestly whether we can help.
If there's a fit, we scope it together: a focused project, ongoing counsel, or both. Fees are agreed up front, with no surprises.
You get a clear answer and a plan your team can act on. Then you decide what's next, with no ongoing commitment required.
When you're ready to grow, let's get to work.
We started HMS to put the wisdom of C-suite leaders, each with over 25 years of experience, to work for good humans building something great. Dallas based, working nationally.