Based in the Lehigh Valley

Strategic advisory for Lehigh Valley businesses.

Eleven 186 is a strategic advisory and execution firm based in the Lehigh Valley. We work with owner-led and mid-size companies across Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and Lehigh and Northampton counties, and with clients nationally by remote engagement. We diagnose the problem, work out what should be done, build what's missing, and execute. Being local doesn't make the work small.

Start with a diagnostic

Who calls us locally

Owner-led and mid-size companies call for the same reason wherever they're based: something in the business has stopped scaling and the owner can't see the whole picture from inside it. Locally that tends to be manufacturers running processes built for a smaller shop, professional services firms where every decision routes through one partner, healthcare practices juggling clinical and administrative systems that were never designed to talk to each other, and contractors trying to sell to government buyers for the first time. If one of those sounds like your business, start with the problem rather than a proposal.

Owner dependency

The business still routes through you, and you cannot take two weeks off.

Operations that stopped scaling

What worked at a smaller size is now the thing slowing you down.

Fragmented data

You have the information. Nothing shows you all of it at once.

Build or buy

You need a system and cannot tell whether to buy one or build one.

On-site here, remote everywhere else

Being based in the Lehigh Valley doesn't mean being limited to it. Local clients get in-person kickoffs, working sessions when the problem calls for them, and a firm that already knows the regional business community. Clients elsewhere get the same method by video and shared documents. The diagnosis, the recommendation, and the standard of work don't change. Only the travel does.

Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, and the counties around them

Eleven 186 works with companies across Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton, and throughout Lehigh County and Northampton County. Engagements usually start with an in-person kickoff, continue through local relationships and, where it's useful, the regional chamber, and move at whatever pace the problem actually requires. The region has a real base of manufacturers, professional practices, healthcare operators, and companies doing serious work for government buyers. What it has had fewer of is firms built specifically to advise on the complicated problems those businesses run into once they outgrow whatever got them started.

What a local engagement looks like

A local engagement runs through the same four stages as any other. Diagnose establishes what's actually happening, from interviews and the numbers rather than from assumptions. Advise turns that into a recommendation you can act on, with the alternatives we rejected and why. Build creates whatever is missing, whether that's a process, a system, or a piece of software. And Execute runs the implementation until it's actually working, not just documented. Some clients stop after the diagnosis and act on it themselves, which happens here as often as anywhere else and is a perfectly good outcome.

Why an advisory and execution firm, rather than a coach, an accountant, or an agency

Most owners in the region already have an accountant, and some have tried a business coach or an agency retainer. Those are different services and none of them replace this one. An accountant reports on the numbers after the fact, a coach works on the owner rather than the business, and an agency executes a single channel without touching the operating problem underneath it. An advisory and execution firm starts by finding the actual constraint, wherever it happens to sit, and then does the work required to remove it, whether that turns out to be strategic, operational, or technical.

Questions we get locally

Do you meet in person?

Yes, for local clients, and especially at the start of an engagement. Working sessions, document review, and watching a process run are usually easier in person, so we do them that way when it helps.

Do you work outside the region?

Yes. The Lehigh Valley is where the firm is based, but it isn't where the firm stops. Engagements run nationally by video and shared documents, and the method doesn't change with distance.

Do you work with companies under $1M?

The advisory work described here is built for owner-led and mid-size companies, generally $2M to $50M in revenue. If you're below that range you're still welcome to start with the Operating Diagnostic, and the fixed-price deliverables on /services are available regardless of size.

Tell us what is going on.

Describe the situation in your own words and we'll tell you what it takes.