As hiring has picked up lately, the drive to broaden the background of each consultant has continued. "Consultants join DLC for a number of reasons," Sweeney says. "Most are looking for variety, but all are looking to accelerate their development as finance professionals." His company tries to leverage existing skills to provide "exposure to new industries, software environments, and functional disciplines." If they've been in only one industry, or have "deep but narrow subject matter expertise," that can be expanded by careful placement. If, for example, SEC reporting for a financial services firm is a person's strength, she or he might then get a chance to work in an M&A environment. "After a while, with so many experiences in so many fields," says Sweeney, his consultants "become almost industry-agnostic." And many finance executives today like that feeling.

Both Sweeney and his own CFO, Brad Gray -- who is based in Woodland Hills -- first learned the DLC system through consulting experiences involving the firm. Sweeney was a divisional CFO with agricultural giant ConAgra, and his unit was a client of DLC's for more than a year before he was hired as COO in 2004 by founding CEO David Lewis (who gave DLC its name.) One challenge at the time: helping scale the business from its then-annual-revenue base of $17 million.

Gray, who previously had worked in finance jobs with J.C. Penney and Nestle, came to DLC as a consultant, and was assigned to clients including Universal Studios and Virgin Entertainment. As CFO, he now has a key role in DLC's five-year growth plan.

"We've prepared for the expansion by ensuring that our operations can handle the additional geographies and volume," says Gray. DLC itself implemented Salesforce.com and Oracle a couple of years ago, so it is "well positioned for growth and expansion." He says the turmoil in the stock market recently hasn't affected DLC much, because it doesn't currently need access to markets for financing or for its market expansion plans. "What we focus on is whether it is having any impact on our clients and their demand for our services," he says.