Russ McGuire has served as a mentor and trusted advisor to many business leaders, both in formal/structured relationships and informally.
Through SDG Strategy, Russ helps values-driven leaders of tech-driven startups with the hard decisions they face every day. Russ also currently serves as a consultant/advisor for BetaBlox, working closely with portfolio companies to build value for customers and to aggressively grow their businesses.
Russ has served as Entrepreneur in Residence at Oklahoma Christian University. In this role, he came alongside students with startup ambitions and helped them take the next steps. He advised two student teams who won the Small Business division of the Love’s Entrepreneurs’ Cup business plan competition and helped launch Altimeter Software and VisuALS Technology Solutions out of the university.
Previously Russ has served as a mentor in the Sprint Accelerator program (powered by TechStars), specifically working closely with Ollo Wearables. Russ has also served as a “coach” helping teams participate in “startup weekend” activities, and as a mentor for BetaBlox in Kansas City.
As Chief Strategy Officer for TeleChoice (2000-2002), Russ had many opportunities to serve as a strategic advisor to startup and 
established businesses. He served on strategic advisory boards for Mantra, PhotonEx, Crescent Networks, and BayPackets. Russ also led more than a dozen Strategy Labs (see a representative list). These intense 2+ day sessions helped shape the strategic direction forward for management teams and usually resulted in an ongoing trusted advisory relationship with the founder and/or key team members.
Russ has also served on the advisory board for nine conferences or industry groups:
- 2013 MobileBeat (July 9-10, 2013)
- 2013 Next Generation Telecoms Summit (June 3-5, 2013)
- 2013 VentureBeat Mobile Summit (April 1-2, 2013)
- 2012 Mobile 2.0 (September 11, 2012)
- 2011 Next Generation Telecoms Summit (October 25-27, 2011)
- 2011 VentureBeat Mobile Summit (April 25-26, 2011)
- 2010 MobileBeat (July 12-13, 2010)
- 2009 MobileBeat (July 16, 2009)
- Reinvent Mobile/Fame (2009)
In this role, he helped event organizers to develop an agenda and to line up the right speakers to meet the needs of the intended audience and otherwise achieve the objectives of the event.
As a trusted advisor, Russ’ greatest strength is his ability to help business leaders to address their most critical opportunities and challenges. In dialog with a leader, he listens well and then asks probing questions that often lead the executive to reconsider key assumptions previously forgotten, or to uncover new opportunities or threats previously unseen. Russ will often introduce into the discussion a framework for better understanding the opportunities, challenges, options, and/or tradeoffs that a leader is struggling to resolve. In his role as a strategic advisor, Russ often views himself as a Catalyst – not the active participant in the effort and often not bringing any new materials to the process, but instigating reactions that accelerate the process of strategic decision making, making it more effective and efficient, and driving to a more complete resolution than would have been achieved without his participation.
In addition to external advisory roles, Russ has also mentored many leaders within his company and community. Protégés praise Russ for his ability to help them work through decisions they face in their career or life, helping them to better understand their own goals, limitations, desires, and capabilities, and how to frame the decision to better rationalize those factors to make it much easier to evaluate options and make a decision.
Russ also has served in advisory roles in the community. He served on the advisory board for the Entrepreneurship Academy at Emerson High School, part of the Oklahoma City Public Schools Career Academies program. He also served as a community organizer for the 1 Million Cups Oklahoma City chapter. From 1998-2002, Russ also served on the Board of Tulsa Habitat for Humanity.