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Dear Friends, Colleagues and Clients,

I am writing a book…

My hope is this book will become a must-read guide for you and other business executives who are committed to growing and developing their businesses, themselves and their next generation of leaders. It is a distillation of more than 20 years of my hands-on experience including:

• Serving as CFO/COO for a business we quickly grew to over $1 billion dollars in annual revenues and eventually sold:
• Personally interviewing thousands of business executives about how they grew their businesses and the difficulties they faced;
• Spending years in one-on-one meetings with hundreds of CEO’s, counseling them on issues they could not share with anyone else;
• Sitting on and chairing several high-profile boards of directors;
• Numerous successes that emerged out of what were initially BIG and PAINFUL failures;
• Building a thriving coaching practice focused on helping business leaders take their company and themselves to the next level; and
• Reading everything I could get my hands on about business growth and successful leadership.

My goal is to help you maintain (or rekindle) the excitement and optimism for passionately pursuing your dreams and make a difference in your business and the lives of those you impact in your professional career.

This book is meant to guide you toward becoming a leader your colleagues will admire and to provide a legacy to which others will aspire. I’m including true stories and case studies that will inspire you by demonstrating what has — and, just as importantly —what has not worked for other leaders.

Yes, you can grow your business without learning everything the hard way… And, finally, through this book I hope to show you how to take your business to the next level and generate a new kind of wealth that is far more satisfying than money alone.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK

I have always been fascinated about what makes a business work. Why are some businesses hugely profitable and stable, while others fight the same battles day after day and month after month, only to level out in their profitable growth and never reach their full potential? What, exactly, do successful companies and the people who lead them do differently?

As much as I thought I would find very complex and difficult to understand strategies, I discovered just the opposite. It’s all about recognizing and dealing what turn out to be Overly Obvious and Embarrassingly Simple root causes. I have come to recognize significant, predictable patterns that are true for every business. Although the way your business grows is unique to your situation, the challenges that growth itself presents are common to all. And while you cannot always prevent these completely normal patterns and crisis points, you can take a variety of very simple steps to carry your company through each challenge with success and stability.

How You will be able to Use this Book

1. Start by reading about The Business Life Cycle™, noting the survival and growth characteristics and the profitability strategies that describe businesses at Levels I, II and III. Decide where your business falls on The Business Life Cycle™.

2. Review The 12 Warning Signs of Success™. Study the Overly Obvious and Embarrassingly Simple root causes that relate to the challenges your business is facing. Be honest with yourself, and listen to your intuition (even if you don’t completely like what you hear). Which of these signs may be present in your business?

3. Answer all the Business Self-Assessment Questions. Again, be honest with yourself. Speaking the truth is the first step toward improving the situation.

4. Pay special attention to the Case Studies interspersed throughout the book to understand what has worked for other leaders in the same situation.

5. Start a conversation with your leadership team and your employees about what needs to be done to revitalize the business. Honor them with the same honesty and compassion that you gave to yourself, recognizing their contributions in the past and knowing that change alone can be the biggest challenge for many of your people.

Issues this Book will Address

The Business Life Cycle™ — analogous to climbing Mt. Everest

• Understand why it is critical that you know exactly where your business is on The Business Life Cycle™.
• Learn why the solutions and systems you implement today eventually sow the seed of decay as your company grows.
• Learn how to abandon past practices and to implement the systems needed to grow profitably to the next level.

The 12 Warning Signs of Success™

• Learn to recognize the Overly Obvious and Embarrassingly Simple root causes behind the challenges your business must overcome.
• See through the confusion to understand the obvious and simple causes – you will wonder why you never saw them before!
• Understand how you can make the necessary changes to scale you business through the critical inflection points that every business encounters.
• Learn how to make big changes with honesty, fairness and stability.
• Learn from other people’s efforts by reading case studies.

Business Self-Assessment Questions

• Clearly identify the current realities of your business as well as your future goals.
• Understand how to move from where you are to where you want to be.

Take the Deep Dive into Leadership – How Other Leaders Keep it R.E.A.L.

• Gain inspiration and insight from thousands of business executives, business leaders, church leaders, coaches, athletes and other people facing the same challenges you face.
• Learn how other leaders grew and developed their organizations and the difficulties they faced by reading case studies.
• Understand the undenaible trends that the all successful leaders use to transform their businesses, themselves and their next generation of leaders.

BOOK OUTLINE AND CHAPTER SYNOPSIS

PART ONE: The Business Life Cycle™. As companies grow and mature, the need for radically different management practices increases. What worked well in the past may be your undoing in the present. These kinds of changes are perfectly normal, but in order to move through change successfully, you must understand The Business Life Cycle™ and know where your business is located in that cycle. In Part One, I will explain every developmental stage of The Business Life Cycle™, detailing the characteristics of each. I will clarify why all businesses must pass through these same predictable phases and why understanding this normal sequence of events is critical to your long term success.

Figure 1 — Business Levels I, II and III and the Predictable Challenges Along the Journey

Chapter One: Level I Business – The Entrepreneurial Start Up. Remember the excitement you felt when first starting your business? You loved coming to work, and the air was virtually buzzing with the electricity from your entrepreneurial seizure. Are you still in that “honeymoon” stage, or have you discovered that the passion, focus and energy needed to grow your business is much more than was necessary to start your company? In Chapter One, I will discuss the primary characteristics of Level I businesses, why they are important and what actions are necessary to move your company to the next level.

Chapter Two: Level II Business – Rapid Growth and/or Survival. As a company is reaching the point of moving into the next level of performance, it begins to experience a few “growing pains.” The ways in which you address these perfectly normal challenges will determine if your company goes to the next level, remains static or begins to decline. In Chapter Two, I will discuss the primary characteristics of Level II businesses, why they are important and what actions are necessary to move your company to the next level.

Chapter Three: Level III Business – Market Leader. This should be the objective of all growing businesses, but experience and research show that only 10% of the companies that grow to Level II succeed in making the transition to Level III. The remaining 90% slide back and get smaller, tend towards mediocrity or go out of business when they hit the crisis or transition period between Levels II and III. I will discuss what actions you can take to enable your business to be in the 10% that make it to Level III.

PART TWO: The 12 Warning Signs of Success™. In Part Two, I will describe in detail The 12 Warning Signs of Success™. Although all are completely normal as companies grow and expand, they are predictable and, therefore, can be prevented with right action. One or more of these obstacles to growth may be holding your company back. I will help you make that determination, and I will discuss how to overcome the obstacles and free you from the pain they can cause if ignored.

Chapter Four: Sign #1 – Cultural Decay: The corporate culture is under attack. US vs. THEM becomes more prevelant.  What was once considered a non-negotiable way of operating starts to get compromised.

Chapter Five: Sign # 2 – Unqualified People in Key Positions.: These include friends, family members or long-term loyal employees who are not qualified to occupy key positions.

Chapter Six: Sign # 3- Poor Communications: There is a lack of authentic and transparent communication that engenders trust. Senior managers lack direct contact with day-to-day operations and are losing control.  Problem solving meetings become awkward, time consuming and, at times, ineffective.

Chapter Seven: Sign # 4 – Leadership Void: The leaders roles are not appropriately defined considering the company’s size and leadership needs. Leaders do not actively seek out opportunities to challenge and grow themselves along with the business.  The differences between a business owner and a business leader have become blurred.

Chapter Eight: Sign # 5 – Careless Growth: Diversifications into products or new businesses do not fit the company’s expertise and market experience. Sometimes acquisitions are made or new products are introduced before the company is properly structured to integrate them. This drains cash, time and focus.

Chapter Nine: Sign # 6 – Management Deficiency. The executive leadership and management team spend far too much time “working in the business” instead on “working on the business.”

Chapter Ten: Sign # 7 – “Rake” Organization: Too many people reporting to the president and/or other senior staffers. Thus, the senior management team feels overwhelmed and really does not operate as an aligned team to guide, plan, lead and manage the company.

Chapter Eleven: Sign # 8 – Strategic Anemia: The company lacks a strategic plan that gets and keeps the proper focus and/or the plan never really gets implemented.

Chapter Twelve: Sign # 9 – Systems Outgrown or Obsolete. Accounting, financial performance reporting and control systems and processes are obsolete for the size and complexity of the company.

Chapter Thirteen: Sign # 10 – Poor Financial Performance: Data needed to make critical decisions is not available, appropriately gathered, easily accessible or properly analyzed.  The data is not considered as important as an individual’s personal sense of what is right.

Chapter Fourteen: Sign # 11 – Poor Rewards: The middle and senior management compensation process is not tied to accountability and results or the metrics do not drive the right behaviors.

Chapter Fifteen: Sign # 12 - Imprecise Accountability: Clarity is lacking in management accountability and in designing and using the data needed for creating accountability.

PART THREE: How Leaders Keep it R.E.A.L.

Gain inspiration and insight from thousands of business executives, business leaders, church leaders, coaches, athletes and other people facing the same challenges you now face. But rather than just reading and talking about the changes necessary to move your company to the next level, this book will challenge you to take action and to make great things happen for your business. And it will act as your trusted guide along that journey.

CASE STUDIES A wide variety of case studies will be included throughout the book, placed where they most appropriately illustrate the topic under discussion.

APPENDICES The Appendices will include a number of tools, ideas and worksheets (including the Business Self-Assessment Questions) designed to help you develop growth strategies for you and your business.

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT at I am writing a book. Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration of my work in progress!