Solve Every Problem in Your Small Business

We’ve been running this small business planning workshop every quarter for 15 years. It’s called the Growth Plan Workshop and it’s working for hundreds of business owners. What’s working exactly?

The key is this—a good plan will solve every problem in your small business and, if it doesn’t solve every problem immediately, there’s a plan in place so you know every problem will be solved.

What kind of problems are we talking about?  All of ‘em! Business owners solve multiple problems with the comprehensive (yet, all on 1 page; more on that later) plan they create in the Growth Plan Workshop. Problems like:

• Unpredictable cash flow
• Finding and keeping good employees
• Hitting a wall in sales
• Struggling to increase profits
• No succession plan for how to step away from the business
• Unmotivated or under-performing employees
• Not enough hours in the day and no time to enjoy life

Every business faces these problems. Every solution you’ll ever need to these problems, or any to come, can be found in the GPW planning process. The GPW planning consists of 2 pieces:

1. The first piece is the “Single Sheet Business Plan.” This sheet houses your long term (5-20 year) goals and your mid-term goals (1-5 year) goals. One of our happy clients described the SSBP this way:

“… 1 million details transformed into clear and focused priorities… and all on 1 piece of paper so you can see them all at a glance.”
Publishing Company Owner after completing his company’s first SSBP

2. The second piece is the “Quarterly Action Plan.” Once each quarter you take your 4 or 5 annual goals from the SSBP, transfer them to the QAP, and assign who will do what by when. These quarterly check-ins are the way to insure consistent, incremental progress toward your long term goals.

Brian Tracy said, “Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution; this gives you a 1000% return on energy!”

Solve every problem? Yes! it’s really do-able

As your business grows and you begin to work through other people more and more, it’s vital to regularly provide a clear roadmap for what you want them to accomplish in the upcoming quarters so that they and you can move fast. Conversely, a lack of clarity, i.e. unclear or no goals, breeds confusion, frustration, and uncertainty among every single person that works in your company.

There’s no question that the SSBP and QAP will make a huge difference for your business.

Here’s the experience of one of our clients, and info tech company, as told by their business coach:

When I first met with this leadership team, they were a little lethargic. They’d kind of gotten into a rut where meetings were about day-to-day survival, fire-fighting, frustrations, and frequent negative discussions about what was happening around them and to them.

On this particular day, our coaching agenda was to review their 2^nd quarter QAP and the energy in the room was palpable. It was really exciting to see it. They’re holding each other accountable for the actions they’ve committed to, they’re supporting and encouraging each other, they’re jumping in to offer support, advice, and encouragement. The energy is right there. They’ve got tons of new ideas coming out; even actions that aren’t on the list are being identified and acted upon. The momentum that’s being built from just 2 quarters of planning is tremendous! It really is amazing to see how they’ve simply transformed in that short a time. The fun thing is that they’re on the right path. We’ve gotten prices increased to all of their customers, we’re working on their USP (unique selling proposition) so that we can really identify what makes them special. Then we’re doing corresponding work to create a guarantee that takes that uniqueness and codifies it in a way that can be marketed and presented to the world. We’ve begun to work on identifying their ideal clients. We’re handling the real difficult issue of finding people in an extremely low unemployment environment. We’re working on right-sizing inventory and taking actions to minimize the impact of actions that’ve built inventory over time, some inventory they can sell and some they’re stuck with and they’ve got to figure out to handle. But it’s all dollars tied up in their business and they’re trying to find a way to free those up and then preventing it from happening again. We’re talking about training their people and developing their people and some really great ideas are coming from that and some great partnerships are happening from that.

All that said, it’s really about this group of people being transformed… going from being in a rut, generally down on themselves, their organization, and their future and now being in a place of really seeing and feeling what’s possible for them!

Its just the most exciting thing to see. So many of us have such great potential and we just don’t unleash it. And sometimes it takes something so simple as a planning process, as an accountability process after the plan is created, to generate that kind of momentum and that kind of transformation.

We invite you to join us in the next Growth Plan Workshop. It’s a 6-hour group setting with other business owners who are also working on their business’ operating plans.

Our coaches will spend one-on-one time with you, ask you the right questions, and give you the advice you need to walk away with a completed SSBP and QAP

Register here for the next Growth Plan Workshop.

Thur., Apr. 3, 2025, 9:30 – 4 pm
Holiday Inn, Indianapolis/Carmel, 251 N. Pennsylvania Pkwy, Indianapolis 46280

You’ll walk away with:

• A clear picture of where you want your business to be in 5-20 years, a 3-5 year plan, a 90-day plan, & a ready-to-implement action plan to get you there
• Your 12-month goals broken into bite-size quarterly goals, monthly milestones, & weekly actions
• Strategies to build your profits right away
• Transformed actions and attitudes of all your team members

To your transformed business,
Certified Business Coach Roger Engelau and His Team of Expert Business Coaches