Our Services

Our services and programs help professionals and owners of small businesses transition their organization from one that depends on their constant input on daily operations to a business that becomes an asset with value in itself. Our services are customized to the individual needs of clients and often includes one of more of the following:

1. Purpose Clarification
2. Small Business Development: One-To-One Consulting, Coaching and Mentoring for Transitioning Your Small Businesses into an Investment
3. Team Leadership Development
4. Mastermind Group
5. Career Growth and Development
6. Assessments
7. Leadership Retreats and Workshops
8. Resources

Purpose Clarification

We start with the end in mind. We see business as a means to an end, and want to be clear about what you ultimately have to have in your life, how you define success for yourself, and how your business will help you get there.

Small Business Development One-to-One

Small businesses go through stages of infancy, adolescence and maturity, each with definable characteristics in the transition from concept to success. In our one-to-one work with clients we help them combine the action of leadership with the insight from coaching which every situation and opportunity in business requires. We have extensive small business knowledge and experience that we bring to our clients.

We provide a variety of tools to assess your business and strategies to move from an owner-centric business to one that functions without you there on a day-to-day basis. We help you create equity in your business that allows you to sell it, or pass it on to your children.

The owner of a small business, however, is too often alone at the top. Our one-on-one work gives you a sounding board for your ideas and challenges, and a strategy to start putting into place steps for your business to operate in a new as well as profitable way. Working with us, starting with the end in mind:

• You will create a vision and mission for your company that will be the focus and motivator for your team.  If you want people to follow, you need to be able to tell them where you are going.
  
  
• You will be able to convey quickly to your ideal client what problems you solve and your promise to them.
  
  
• You will understand your dominant strengths and communication styles and how they play out for you.
  
  
• You will develop strategies for your growth with critical business issues such as:
  • Market segmentation
  • Workflow criteria
  • Time management
  • Life balance
  • Systemization
  • Reporting
  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • Financial performance
  • Customer services
  • Transition and succession
    
    
• You will be able to practice difficult conversations that you need to have with clients, staff, peers, and service providers – before you have them.
  
  
• You will develop strategies for your successful handling of situations, challenges, goals and opportunities.
  
  
• You will develop and begin to put into place systems and procedures that can move you from an owner-dependent business to a business investment.
  
  
• You will develop an organization baseline of your current business and an organization strategy for when your business is self-sustaining.
  
  
• We will help you focus on the big picture and get to work on the nitty-gritty.

One-to-one coaching is like having a ghost partner for your business. It is not that you don’t know what to do, but having the opportunity to work through your thoughts with a trained professional accelerates the process from concept to practice. It was Einstein who said, “How do I know what I am thinking until I say it?”

Team Leadership Development and Team Coaching

Your team is the most important resource of the organization.  Just as we do with the organization’s leader, we often work with team members and staff one-to-one and in groups to develop individual and collective leadership.

We help you develop a team that is aligned with your purpose and vision. We help you develop organizational strategies and job descriptions that are embraced by your team.

We work with the owner, the senior leadership team and the entire staff to implement your strategy of a self-sustaining business.

Mastermind Groups

The mastermind brings together business owners as peers with different experiences and ideas in a collaborative experience to support each other in accomplishment of their goals, through common trust, shared knowledge, and commitment. It is like having your own personal experienced board of directors interested in your success, sharing ideas, resources and learning other’s points of view and creative ideas.

We lead mastermind groups of 6-8 business owners. Each group is balanced to have business owners with similar needs and at similar levels of their business.

Career Growth and Development

Career Growth and Development Coaching supports middle and upper level executives who want to reach their greatest potential, are looking for the edge they need to be most effective, and want to unlock the potential that will help them become great leaders. They are very knowledgeable about what they do, have high standards of excellence, are persistent and committed to success, welcome assistance in achieving their goals, are interested in learning new ways and tools, and are willing to invest in themselves.

They are people in the early stages of their career seeking success, and they are seasoned people with ten or more years of experience who find themselves in a cul-de-sac and want more.  They are leaders in transition between jobs, to a new career or starting a business of their own.

We provide in-depth job search training and tools for marketing yourself in the larger context of managing your career.

Assessments

We utilize a number of assessments to help our clients understand their leadership and communication styles, personality profile, behavioral assessment, and business development needs.

Leadership Retreats

Off-site programs provide opportunities for focusing on opportunities and challenges. The EcoRetreat, our signature off-site program, provides a unique and proven approach for helping individuals and organizations achieve results through experiential fieldwork where nature is the catalyst for learning. Recognizing that human activity originates from and, indeed, is part of nature, you will learn how to participate in and draw upon this resource where many paths are woven together into a whole that prospers. In these off-site experiences, you access new levels of awareness that support you in your goals for yourself, your organization and your community. 

Resources

We have important relationships with several other professionals, coaches and consultants who are experts in:

• Sales
• Family Business
• Presentation Skills
• Financial Planning
• Career Counseling
• Industrial Psychology

Our relationships with them allow us to offer expertise for most needs of our clients. We also have close relationships, which we can recommend without hesitation, with people in a number of professional fields including: 

• Accountants
• Bookkeepers
• Small business attorneys
• Labor relations attorneys
• Business and health insurance
• Financial services
• Meditation
• Information technology

We are also a resource for references, books and literature on small business development. We often recommend materials for our clients. Some of my recommended books for the small business owner are

• E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber
• Instant Systems, Bradley Sugars
• The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey
• The Five Temptations of a CEO, Patrick M. Lencioni
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick M. Lencioni
• The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki
• The Art of Possibilities, Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander
• Profitable Growth, Ram Charan

Learn more about how our services are implemented by reviewing some of our Case Studies.