A six-week course for business owners and managers to focus their attention on six business disciplines that are absolutely vital for organizational health and business growth
Almost every business owner I know has multiple Jekyll and Hyde moments over the course of a single day. They love what they do. They are solving problems, creating products or providing services that revolve around something about which they are incredibly passionate. Could there be any better way to spend the day? But moments later, they’re buried in an employee conflict, customer service crisis or vendor problem – maybe all three at once – that suck the oxygen from the room and steal away the warm, fuzzy feeling from just a few minutes earlier.
The cycle repeats, maybe multiple times in a day, day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. There might be abundant financial rewards, but the pressure of running the business finally takes its toll. They’re tired, isolated and at the bottom of the funnel for everything that happens in the organization.
The business can’t grow because there is no more of them to go around. This isn’t what they bargained for when they hung out their shingle a few years earlier.
Here’s the really frustrating thing – they know other business owners (who have businesses of similar size and complexity) who seem to have their arms around everything happening in the organization but aren’t buried in the daily press of business. They have time to plan for future business health and growth, are surrounded by a competent and committed staff and feel the freedom to be out of the office or plant for several days or even weeks at a time without the fear that the operation will crumble in their absence.
So what’s the difference between them and their seemingly much less burdened fellow owner? That second owner has built a solid Business Framework. A system that –
The journey from the experience of the first owner to the experience of the second isn’t a walk in the park. Intuition must be replaced with policy. Reaction must be replaced with proactivity. “It’s easier to do it myself” must be replaced with “Here, let me show you how and let me tell you why I do it this way.” But the effort is worth it. The transformation positions the business for unbounded future growth, creates a community of employees who treat the business as if it were their own, creates customers who see the business as not only a trusted provider of goods and services but also a valuable member of the community and frees the owner to enjoy the benefits of his or her work and finally be running the business they dreamed about when they founded it.
I’m Mike Chirveno. I grew up in the home of a successful small business owner. I saw how hard it was for my dad to make that business work. There were lots of early mornings, late nights and weeks away from home. I saw the struggle to find and keep good employees, the battle for dependable vendors and the ongoing challenge of filling the sales pipeline.
Even after spending 24 years in corporate America, those memories were still vivid. When I quit my job and started my own small business in 2006, my singular goal was to help people like my dad – small business owners. Since that start in 2006, I’ve spent my time becoming the best resource for small business owners that I could. I’ve leveraged an undergrad degree in education, an MBA, the knowledge and experience of 24 years in the corporate world where I was fortunate enough to work in strategic planning, operations, project management, sales management, customer service management, tech management, logistics and collections and have now added to that 13 years of working with dozens of people I admire greatly – small business owners across the country – people who have risked their personal resources to build a better life for themselves and their family. My consulting clients have ranged from startups to 80-year-old, family-owned businesses and almost everything in between. I don’t think there’s any question that I’ve learned more from them than they have from me because each of their unique challenges have driven me to find good, practical answers to pressing business problems.
Here’s what I’ve discovered – every business is different. The people inside those businesses are different, their products and services solve a customer problem in a unique way and the circumstances they face are unlike those of any other business. But here’s another thing I’ve discovered – every business is the same. Every person inside the business wants to do meaningful work, it’s a challenge to keep everyone on the same page, operational problems surface at the most inconvenient time, vendors sometimes drop the ball, cashflow gets tight – the list could go on and on.
I needed a tool that would help business owners manage their unique situations but still address the common challenges they all face. That’s how the Business Framework was born. It brings structure to the most critical parts of the organization, but gives freedom within that structure to address unique challenges. It’s like guardrails on a highway – the guardrails provide direction and boundaries, but you can drive freely between them.
The results have been more than I could have asked. They’ve been anecdotal like “You saved my business” and “I don’t hate coming to work anymore” and empirical like decreasing turnover by 40%, increasing year-over-year sales by 29% and, for one client, winning one of the most coveted awards in their industry.
The owners I’ve had the privilege of working with have told
me various permutations of these
Nothing takes more time than people problems, but nothing is more vital to fueling growth and providing a great experience for your customers than the employees, contractors and vendors in your organization. Many business owners feel like their efforts up to now look like herding cats instead of building a cohesive, effective team.
Most of the time it’s because there aren’t policies and processes in place that allow the boss to have confidence that other people in the organization will solve a problem the same way he or she would. Previous efforts at creating policies have ended up in a file cabinet drawer never seeing the light of day.
But not everyone is sure what a good job looks like. Does it mean the customer is always right, so we automatically agree to whatever they ask? Does it mean we give a little discount to make sure we get every sale? Does it mean we automatically implement the latest “best practice” we learned at the latest industry conference?
Without a bulletproof implementation methodology, even the best plans will get swallowed up by the daily press of operational problems.
A Six-week online course to transform your organization and make it healthy, operationally effective and poised for future growth
Click each plus sign (+) to see the full module description
The best marketing, operations, technical and financial plans in the world are going to fail miserably if they’re released into a toxic work environment. Employee infighting, self-serving priorities and departmental turf wars act like anchors that drown even the most brilliant strategies and tactics. Conversely, a healthy culture is like fertile soil. Just like plants thrive in an environment that is rich in nutrients, businesses with healthy cultures effectively execute work that develops employees, delivers value for customers and creates financial rewards for shareholders.
Getting the culture right and putting mechanisms in place to keep it right is the best way to ensure that every subsequent step gets maximum traction. The organization will be poised for true transformation.
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The struggle for talent is real. Hiring managers kiss lots of frogs on their way to finding a well-hidden prince or princess. And when they find a stellar employee, the organization is challenged quickly to find the best way to engage them in meaningful work and give them opportunities to lead and grow.
And, maybe more importantly, those employees must work seamlessly with a new team that must quickly produce results where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Owners and managers long to be surrounded with people they trust – people whose highest professional aim is the good of the organization, people who are committed to lifelong personal and professional growth. This session provides the framework for finding and keeping those people.
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There are only a handful of business activities that approach “holy grail” status and value creation is one of them. Value creation is the key driver of consumer choice and business profitability. It might seem hard to believe, but the mechanical components of value creation are the same for every organization – public sector or private sector, product or service, for-profit or not-for-profit. Since the discipline is so pervasive, it’s imperative that every business owner and manager understand it fully.
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Healthy organizations are fiscally disciplined. Sales revenue is carefully forecasted, acquired and collected. Expenses fund employee productivity, development and efficiently create the product or service for the client. Money on hand is carefully managed and deployed in appropriate investment vehicles. Debt is used judiciously.
Clearly, a one-hour workshop can’t cover everything that an organization needs to know when it comes to finances, but we’ll identify some areas that represent common struggles for businesses.
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Unfortunately, in many organizations, the only metric for “winning” is the amount of money left in the bank at the end of the month. Healthy organizations have accurately identified a handful (6-12) of key performance indicators that are truly indicative of organization health. Just like body temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate and blood pressure constitute “vital signs” for health, these metrics (though different for each business) accurately measure and report performance on activities that are essential for the continued viability of the organization.
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Every organization needs an operational framework – systems for tracking performance, processes for execution, meeting management methodologies, project management methodologies, regular strategic planning and a strong technology platform underlying all of it. This module provides an outline on which strong managers can build out a robust operations and implementation framework.
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Innovation is rarely the by-product of light bulb moments and random flashes of brilliance. Instead, it’s the ability to solve a problem in a unique way that resonates with the people who have that problem. The ability to synthesize input from existing and potential customers, input from employees, ideas from other industries, ideas from other disciplines and the value creation capabilities of the organization can yield valuable new products, services and processes. This is the skill that propels companies into sustained competitive advantage.
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What do other business owners and managers say about the principles from The Business Framework?
Bonus # 1 – Introducing Change into Your Organization – If you’re going to join the brave business owners who are benefitting from the Business Framework, there will be some friction during the rollout. This guide will help you implement the changes more effectively. It will be emailed to you as soon as you enroll.
Bonus # 2 – Crafting a Great Customer Experience – A unique whitepaper that explains how one ClearVision Consulting client won the most prestigious award in their industry by focusing fanatically on a frictionless customer experience.
Bonus # 3 – For the first 24 people who sign up – A three-month membership in an online Mastermind Group for Business Owners – We’ll meet once a month for three months and discuss together an important topic – Month 1 – Making Time to Work On the Business, Month 2 – Accurately Assessing your Industry, Month 3 – Strategic Planning
Ready to install the Business Framework in your organization and finally have the business you’ve always wanted? Join Us for The Business Framework
6 Video Modules
(plus bonus)
Downloadable Resources
Member
Q & A Forum
Everything in the Core Course plus the ability to submit homework from each session for written review and feedback
Everything in the Core Course plus four one-on-one one-hour coaching calls for homework review and more
We are in the business of helping business owners build the business they’ve always wanted. If you attend the first two sessions and do the homework and aren’t 100% satisfied with what you’ve heard and seen, send us an email and we’ll send your money back – no questions asked and no hoops to jump through.
Your The Business Framework experience starts immediately, once you click the “Enroll Now” button. Click the button above and you’ll be taken to our secure checkout.
After your registration is complete, I’ll send you an email receipt. Then, I’ll send your login information for the online course portal to the email address you provided during registration. Your two sign-up bonuses will be immediately available on the online course portal.
If you’re one of the first 24 to register, I’ll send you an email welcoming you to the Mastermind Group and giving you the schedule for the sessions.
Still have a few questions? Check out the FAQs below. If you still have a question or two, contact me at mchirveno@clearvision.consulting.
That’s no problem. Session recordings will be uploaded to the course portal and available for replay about 24 hours after the original session is over.
Absolutely. In fact, this is a great time to think about what you want the culture, infrastructure and processes of your business to look like. You’ll most likely save yourself some time and money by not making some of the common mistakes that new owners make.
If you attend the first two sessions and do the homework and aren’t 100% satisfied with what you’ve heard and seen, send us an email and we’ll send your money back – no questions asked and no hoops to jump through.
Any strides you make in being deliberate about making your business healthy are never a waste. You’ll have access to the course portal for one year after the class begins, so you can catch up or work at your own speed.
I know you’re busy. I’ve tried to be very respectful of your time across the entire course. Each course video is about one hour. The Q & A Coaching Sessions will be about one hour. The homework will focus on the highest impact takeaways from the video session and should take you about an hour. However, don’t confuse the homework with the resources available with each module. Those are tools you can use as you rollout the Business Framework to your team. You can use as many or as few as you want. Some of them are quite detailed and might take hours to work through with your team.
One module will be opened each week. As soon as the course video for that week debuts, all content for that topic will be available. The seventh bonus video will be available after week 6.
I hope you’ll join me at your computer, tablet or phone for six business-transforming sessions. The discipline to work ON your business and not just IN it is rare. Only those owners and managers who see, simultaneously –
make the commitment.
I look forward to making this journey with you.
Mike