Take the Guesswork out of Growth

Program Description

According to a compilation of several studies by Moya Mason, an estimated 100 Million companies are started each year worldwide (11.000 each hour). About that same amount also fail each year. One of the major causes of failure or stagnation in business is growth. There are myriad reasons for this such as poor hiring, financial mismanagement, poor strategy, growing too fast that all can be traced back to mismanaged growth. It is easy to fall into this trap over time which is why most businesses fail in less than a decade.

Companies that endure, that last decades, generations and centuries typically make a handful of decisions right. For instance, when Alan Mulally helped to turn around Ford in the middle of the worst financial crisis of our lifetime, he focused on these four things:

1. Aggressively restructure to operate profitably at the current demand and changing model mix. (EXECUTION)
2. Accelerate development of new products our customers want and value. (STRATEGY)
3. Finance our plan and improve our balance sheet. (CASH)
4. Work together effectively as one team. (PEOPLE)

1. How growth can become a silent killer of business
2. How to build a systematic decision framework for your business like Alan MulallyPractice, Practice, Practice –
3. Bill will lead us through at least 2 simple, practical and actionable exercises

Value to members

The audience will come away with a real sense of why and how growth if managed improperly can stealthily stall and/or kill their businesses. They will also be led through practical exercises that they can act upon as soon as they get back to the office.

Bill has devoted the latter half of his career to giving back to his fellow entrepreneurs by helping them to turn great ideas and businesses into exceptional ones and great people into exceptional leaders and teams. Before that, he has spent 3 decades helping to start up and growing business in different roles and industries. Bill has spent 9+ years as a business advisor/coach. He is also an 8-time startup VP, Sales, and 2-time CMO. In those 30 years, Bill has worked for or advised over 30 companies including 20+ startups (10 operationally with 6 successful outcomes) many starting at ground level with few customers growing up to thousands in a few years. He has been involved in 2 IPOs and 7 acquisitions. As a GM, he led a successful division turnaround for a $100MM+ IT services company where he also was Corporate CMO helping to set up the company to be acquired by Best Buy.  Bill’s global experience includes opening/managing satellite offices in Europe and the Asia Pacific.

Over the past several years, he has become a Certified Gazelles coach and Predictive Index Practitioner. He travels the country each year speaking to hundreds of CEOs as a Vistage Resource Speaker. He also keeps his hands in the startup world as a Mass Challenge Mentor and volunteer for NFTE (Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship).