Antonette Lucente, President, of Blue Gill started the company back in 1989. Antonette had been a paralegal with a 125-year old law firm in Dayton, Ohio, for ten years. Then she joined the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce where she headed up all small business programming. She soon managed the famous CEO Development Program and then became the first Director of the Small Business Development Center when a grant from the State of Ohio and the United States Small Business Administration teamed up with the Chamber to provide services for small businesses. She soon developed a small team and grew the Center from seven inquiries to 50 per week. The model developed is still a working model today. The Center provided Antonette a place to grow and learn more about businesses from exporting to federal procurement opportunities.

After six years, Antonette was offered ownership in Business Round Tables International a local peer-mentoring organization for Presidents and Owners of small businesses. She bought out the owner a year later. Antonette once again added her strong marketing stills and grew the business to nearly 50 small businesses. Her work brought in speakers from all over the world to share their thinking with small business owners. The private, peer-mentoring groups were well known throughout Dayton. Antonette ventured into managing associations in 1990 and managed five associations and foundations.

Her most successful association was the Dayton Tooling and Machining (now Manufacturing) Association (DTMA). Antonette facilitated the development of the organization’s first strategic plan, grew volunteers from 12 to 125 and increased membership significantly. With strong board leadership and committed volunteers, Antonette helped brand the DTMA with a national reputation and recognition among its peer groups as a leading association.

Her company also managed the Engineers Club of Dayton Foundation, the Miami Valley International Trade Association (of which Antonette was a founding member and Vice President) and others. The variety of experience and interactions created a deeper knowledge of business. This wisdom became the heart of Blue Gill Consulting Group. Soon Antonette was teaching companies all over Ohio. She was sought after by trade associations to work to improve not only their member companies but also the organization itself.

Strategies Plus, Inc. was the predecessor company. Antonette started Blue Gill Consulting Group LLC in 2004 and now provides services to a variety of organizations in the fields of:

Manufacturing
Health care
Construction and Supporting Trades
Information Technology
Professional Service firms

Blue Gill was started with the message of “We teach companies how to fish.” That is an old Proverb which means if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day but if you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.”

This is more than a creative tag line it is the essence of what Blue Gill does. Ensuring companies make the new knowledge its own a goal of every Blue Gill assignment. We stick with the company until we see it “fishing.” That is, we want to see the organization utilizing the new learning and having that learning become intrinsic to the organization. We apply this thinking whether we are providing observational consulting, career coaching or training.

At Blue Gill, we take a tip from the Tertuliana, the author of Catching Bluegill, when he encourages the reader to stop, think and re-examine some of your approaches.” We provide proven methods “no matter how you fish.” We urge our clients to do the same and challenge themselves to identify the strengths of their organization and move from Good to Wise©.