Business Manager

Hill Country Consultants · Remote / Hybrid — United States · Full-time, Salaried

Two positions open — one Eastern, one Pacific

Clarity. Strategy. Organized Growth.

About us

Hill Country Consultants gives small and mid-size businesses the capability of a full staff without the payroll. For one flat monthly fee, we handle documentation, compliance, coordination, systems, brand and marketing — the work that quietly eats a growing business alive.

We serve six industries — construction and contractors, authors and personal brands, food and hospitality, small and mid-size business, nonprofits, and landowners and agriculture. We've been working with businesses nationwide since 2024.

The role

You run the entire business day to day, reporting only to the Administrator.

We're hiring two Business Managers — one covering Eastern hours, one covering Pacific. We serve clients and staff across every U.S. time zone, and a firm that operates coast to coast needs management awake at both ends of the day. You'll cover your window, host your own morning meeting, and lead the Accounts Managers — and through them, the specialists — in your coverage area.

This role splits roughly in half: 50% sales, 50% running the firm. You're not a manager who occasionally sells. You carry real new business alongside real management responsibility, and you'll be expected to be good at both. You won't start from a blank page — we provide a local leads sheet (a starter list of prospects in your area) on day one, and you build your own pipeline from there. Leads aren't purely self-generated, and they aren't handed to you finished either.

These are our first management hires. You're not inheriting a finished machine — you're helping assemble one, and you'll have a real hand in how it ends up working.

Where you sit: you report to the Administrator. Our Accounts Managers report to you, and our Engagement Specialists and Creative Specialists report to them. You're the top of the operating structure — everything below the owner runs through you.

You'll build and lead that team, keep our clients, manage our vendors, hold the quality standard on everything that goes out the door, and make sure we never sell more work than we can actually deliver. It's a broad seat with genuine influence, and it suits someone who has looked at a growing business and thought I could organize this.

What you'll own

The daily management meeting

You host it every business day by video, at the start of your coverage window, with your Accounts Managers. It's the heartbeat of the firm — where the day gets set, blockers surface before they cost a client, and nobody works a whole day in the wrong direction. You set the agenda, run it on time, resolve what can be resolved in the room, and publish notes afterward.

You'll also hand off cleanly to your counterpart in the other zone, so nothing falls into the gap between coverage windows.

Client retention

This is the number the firm lives on, and it's yours.

Know where every client stands before they tell you — watch for the quiet ones, the unused hours, the slower replies
Own renewals early, never in the final week
Make the value visible. Clients don't renew because we worked hard; they renew because they can see what they got.
Handle escalations personally, before they become cancellations
When a client does leave, find out why and make sure it doesn't happen twice
Turn good relationships into referrals and testimonials

The team

Accounts Managers in your coverage zone report directly to you. Through them, you're responsible for every Engagement Specialist and Creative Specialist in your zone.

Recruit, screen and interview across all roles
Develop your Accounts Managers into people who can run their own books well
Set the standard for onboarding, training and coaching, and make sure it actually happens
Manage schedules, coverage and capacity across the zone
Hold performance conversations, the encouraging ones and the hard ones
Step in directly when an account or a specialist needs it

Quality and capacity

Review proposals and quotes before they reach a client
Confirm what was sold matches what gets delivered
Spot-check work going out the door. Our documents go to architects, funders and inspectors — our name is on all of it.
Track committed work against the hours we actually have, and flag when we're approaching the line

Construction submittals

Construction is our largest industry, and this is our most technical service. You'll carry submittal work directly — not just supervise it.

Assemble submittal packages: manufacturer cut sheets, index, marked project data, Bates numbering, transmittals, compliance checklists and RFIs on the client's letterhead
Review packages before they go to a contractor of record for signature
Set the standard for how specialists produce them, and train against it
Step in on high-stakes or high-volume packages

(We prepare and organize. We don't stamp or certify engineering — the client's contractor of record reviews and signs.)

Vendor relations

Source, vet and negotiate with vendors, contractors and specialty providers
Manage our preferred vendor relationships and keep that bench current
Hold vendors to scope, timeline and quality — the same standard we hold ourselves to
Own contracts, renewals and pricing with every outside provider
Bring in outside help when a client need falls outside what our team covers — for example, in-person event planning and on-site event coordination are delivered through our event vendor, and you own that relationship

Money

Invoicing, payment schedules and collections follow-up
Commission calculation and verification
Expense tracking, vendor and contractor payments
Coordinate with our bookkeeper and CPA

Systems, build and design

Maintain our website — pages, copy, service updates, forms
Build and maintain our internal staff portal
Connect our platforms so information stops getting retyped
Build internal tools when buying one doesn't make sense
Design internal and client-facing materials — one-sheets, proposals, reports, presentations
Hold brand consistency across everything the firm puts out
Write the process documentation this firm still needs

Sales — about half the role

Work the local leads sheet you're given, and build your own pipeline from there
Meet business owners through referrals, professional networks, trade associations, chambers and industry events
Run free 30-minute strategy sessions
Recommend the right level of service based on what you heard, and close the agreement
Grow existing accounts — you'll know them better than anyone, since you're also the one keeping them
Step in when a prospect needs someone senior in the room

What we're looking for

A bachelor's degree
Five or more years of sales experience. Half this job is selling, and we need someone who has carried a number before — services, retainers, B2B, professional services, insurance, real estate, recruiting or similar.
Five or more years managing operations, a team, or a book of client accounts — including managing other managers, or ready to step up to managing managers as the team grows
Notary commission — current, or eligible and willing to become commissioned. We offer notary services to clients. Each Business Manager holds a commission in their own state, so that between the two zones we have notary coverage on both coasts — you're responsible only for your own state, not the other zone's. If you're not currently commissioned, you'll be expected to obtain it in your state shortly after starting.
You've actually managed people — assigned work, given hard feedback, and been accountable when someone underperformed
You can hold several moving projects and several people in your head at once without dropping one
You're comfortable telling someone no, including someone whose income depends on yes
You can hold a client relationship. You've kept accounts, handled unhappy customers, and turned a complaint into a longer relationship rather than an exit.
Strong written communication — process documents, coaching notes, meeting summaries, client responses
Numbers literacy: invoicing, commission math, hours against budgets, revenue against capacity
Construction document experience is a strong advantage — submittals, bids, prequalification or project documentation. If you haven't done it, you'll be trained, but you'll be expected to become genuinely good at it.
A dedicated, quiet workspace, reliable high-speed internet, and a setup you can host a video meeting from every morning

Technology — not negotiable

You'll live in software all day, across several platforms at once, and you'll be who others come to when something won't work.

Strong general computer skills — you troubleshoot your own problems before asking anyone
Fluent in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365
Comfortable running several platforms at once — our portal, our website, a CRM, project tracking, video conferencing, e-signature, invoicing, cloud storage
Quick to learn new software without hand-holding
Spreadsheet capable — formulas, filtering, and building a tracker from scratch
Able to teach a tool to someone else once you've learned it

Coding and programming

Working knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript — able to open a page, find what's wrong, fix it, and know you didn't break something else
Comfortable inside a website builder and in the underlying code when the builder won't cooperate
Understand how APIs, integrations and webhooks connect platforms — and able to set them up
Experience with automation tools such as Zapier or Make
Able to read documentation and work out an unfamiliar system on your own

You won't be building enterprise software. You'll be the person who makes our systems work together, and who fixes it Tuesday morning instead of waiting a week for a contractor.

Graphic design

Fluent in a professional design tool — Canva at minimum; Adobe Creative Suite or Figma preferred
Able to design a clean, professional business document from a blank page
Working understanding of layout, typography, color and hierarchy
Can build and maintain brand templates others can use without breaking them
A portfolio or work samples. We'll ask.

Preferred: experience in a service business where hours are sold and delivered — agency, consulting, staffing, professional services. Account management or client retention experience in a recurring-revenue business. Bookkeeping or light financial operations. Any exposure to construction, food service, agriculture, publishing, media or nonprofit work.

What we can't train

The ability to switch gears. You'll close a deal in the morning and handle a client escalation and a payroll question in the afternoon. Both halves of this job have to get done.
Judgment. Half this job is working out the right answer quickly with incomplete information, then making the case for it well.
Follow-through. A report that goes out 47 weeks out of 52 is a broken system.
Directness delivered with respect. You'll tell a specialist their proposal is wrong and a client their expectation isn't in the agreement.
Reading a room you can't see. Much of retention is noticing a client who used to reply in an hour now takes three days, and picking up the phone before anyone asks you to.

Your first 90 days

Days 1–30. Learn the business — every service, every rate, every term. Sit in on client conversations. Read every active client file. Meet everyone one on one.

Days 31–60. Take the controls. Host the daily meeting. Take on proposal review and quality checks. Build the capacity picture. Start weekly coaching. Begin working your leads sheet and running your own strategy sessions.

Days 61–90. Fix something. Build out your Accounts Manager bench, or develop the one you have. Find the three worst bottlenecks and resolve at least one. Document two processes that currently live only in someone's head. Own collections end to end. Establish the renewal calendar and complete a first review with every active client.

Compensation

$40,000 per year, salaried. Remote / Hybrid — primarily remote, with local and regional on-site as needed.

Commission on your own sales:

10% of every initial sale
5% of every recurring payment after that, for as long as that client stays with us

All commissions are calculated on revenue actually collected from the client (not merely contracted), and are released after the client has been retained three months. Refunded or clawed-back revenue isn't credited.

Quarterly client-retention bonus — 5% of the firm's quarterly profit. Retention is the number this role most directly controls, and the bonus is tied to it. Keep clients with us and you share in what the firm earns.

Half this job is selling, so the commission isn't a rounding error — it's a real part of what you take home, and the recurring piece keeps paying as long as your clients stay.

Specify which position you're applying for — Eastern or Pacific. You'll work standard full-time business hours Monday through Friday in that zone (a salaried management schedule, not the client-facing booking calendar), and the daily management meeting anchors every business morning.

Equipment and security

Because we handle client data, every role meets the same baseline:

A Windows computer with a dual-monitor setup
A wired Ethernet connection — not Wi-Fi only
A smartphone and/or tablet that can run apps
Antivirus, and an updated, encrypted Windows installation
Two-factor authentication on all work accounts
A secured home network
A signed confidentiality agreement
Consent to a background check

To apply

info@hillcountryconsultants.com · 470-478-1590

Tell us which position you're applying for — Eastern or Pacific.

Then tell us about a system or process you built from nothing — what was broken before, what you put in place, how you got it approved, and how you knew it worked.

Please include work samples: something you designed, and something you built or coded.

Must be legally authorized to work in the United States and working from within the U.S.

Hill Country Consultants · info@hillcountryconsultants.com · 470-478-1590 · Serving businesses nationwide since 2024