Business Leaders Insight Podcast

Sometimes a business owner just needs some fresh ideas to move forward. Lee can help.

This Business Leader’s Insight Lunch will be VERY special. If you make one lunch this quarter, make it this one. Chuck Blakeman will interview Lee Thomas and the two will swap stories of starting, growing and running businesses. Lee has built 15 companies in his 38 years in business, including a dental practice with 16 offices and many other very successful businesses. Lee is the author of “Magical Business Solutions: Adventures of a Serial Entrepreneur and Lessons Learned” and is currently a Business Coach and Consultant with Integrity Business Ventures.

Lee is a humble giant in the world of startups and local business. What you will find most striking and most encouraging is that Lee is plain people – no airs and no slick, high energy snazzy approach. Lee will make you feel like you can do it, too. His desire is to share his experience and knowledge with other “entrepreneurial oriented” people to help them avoid costly mistakes/misteps and continue on the path to business success. We can’t encourage you strongly enough to be there. Bring a pen and paper – throughout the lunch you’ll be writing tips on what to do and what not to do as you build your business.

We normally have a panel of three people for these lunches. Lee Thomas’ years of experience is like having a panel of three. Come to the Business Leader’s Insight lunch and find the next step in building your business from Lee!

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What is Your Offer? Do You Really Know?

Tuesday, March 12th

Find out what how to make your offer unique from everyone else’s, no matter what industry you are in.

In virtually ANY sales transaction the customer is listening for the answer to four questions:
1. What are you trying to sell me?
2. How much is it going to cost?
3. Why should I believe you?
4. Ultimate question: What is in it for me?

All four of these can be answered by two simple pieces of information. If you have a narrow and well identified target market (what we call a hedgehog), that’s not enough. You may have their attention by being narrow and specific, but you won’t hold it if they don’t understand your offer quickly.

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The Mindset, Mechanics and Missteps of How to Start or Reinvent a Business

February 26, 2013

Ever thought your business needed a complete facelift? Or you wanted to start something new and didn’t know how to transition?

We’ve got a panel of three incredible entrepreneurs who have started or completely reinvented businesses and sometimes themselves, many times.

Michael Pearson: Co-founder and President of Solidyn Solutions, Inc, a software and systems development company specializing in the defense and intelligence community. Solidyn was started in 2005, has 50 employees, and generates over $10M annual revenue. Mike is also Founder and President, or VP of a number of real estate investment companies, holding companies, and a property management company, and has a real estate portfolio valued at over $14M. Three of the most prominent real estate companies are Ashdon Investments, LLC, Darkhorse Angels, LLC, and 21st Arlington Apartments, LLC.

Mike Wiesner: Recently stepped down as Executive Director of an International
Non-profit working in Micro Finance in Central America. Mike turned the organization around in three years, creating a profitable, efficient and stable institution. When he left it had 55 employees, a 2 million dollar operating budget and 15% annual growth. At the end of this last year he determined that it was a good time to install more local leadership and pursue his dream of owning his own business. Mike is currently in a “trapeze moment,” looking to start his own consulting firm in the International Micro Finance sector.

Victor Amaya: Partner with ClearPath Accountants. Victor and 2 others started ClearPath Accountants in the middle of the recession. Now the company has grown organically and through mergers to employ 8 people total (4 partners, 4 staff). Victor has been involved with Crankset since the on-set of his business and has found it to be instrumental in keeping him focused on his goals. His business is 4 months shy of its BMD and Victor is looking forward to seeing that day come.

Chuck Blakeman will interview Michael, Mike and Victor, whose stories will give you the clarity you need to take the risk to reinvent yourself, your business, or even just a part of your business.

What is the mindset you need to grow and expand? What are the mechanics these people found valuable, and what missteps did they encounter along the way that can save you untold time and money? Come to our Business Leader’s Insight lunch and find out how and why they did it, the struggles and joys along the road, and where they want to go next. This will be a hugely inspiring lunch because these people are real-life business owners who have learned their lessons in the trenches just like you.

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Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Opportunities to come along side two people like the following come along very, very seldom. If you miss this Business Leader’s Insight lunch, you’ll be hearing about it from others and wish you came.

We’re all in for a treat on Feb 12th. Chuck will be there, but will just kick things off and get out of the way. John Heenan, a successful business owner with a mature fulfillment and distribution company in Belfast, Ireland, and Eddie Drescher, a long-time business advisor and formerly successful financial planner from Virginia Beach, VA will be here to share with us their experiences on building great businesses. And they just so happen to also be building their own Crankset Group businesses as well.

John Heenan is responsible for getting Chuck into business advisory and connecting him with Eddie in Virginia six and a half years ago. Chuck will interview these guys and invite you to ask them questions as well. This is real bullets and real business-in-the-trenches. We can talk about it all day long, but here are two people who have lived out what it means to move from survival right through success to significance. You will find something in their lives to take away to build your own business. Don’t miss this fresh perspective on what it means to grow a business.

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How A Hedgehog Will Make You More Money

January 22, 2013

Join us for this transformational Business Leaders Insight Lunch with three local business owners who have embraced their Hedgehogs and as a result, now make MORE MONEY IS LESS TIME.

Our three guests are infectious people – come get a dose of how their Hedgehogs have made their businesses more successful.
Debra Robinson: President of Centennial Revenue Management, is a cash flow expert with decades of experience. She specializes in cash flow consulting to help doctor’s obtain a healthy cash flow for their practice. She offers an unparalleled work ethic, high integrity, and attention to detail.

Bill Simmermon: Financial Professional and Retirement Planning Specialist with AXA Advisors, LLC. Bill has been with AXA for over 6 years and specializes in working only with successful business owners who want to preserve and pursue more value from their businesses in a more tax efficient manner.

Danny Ballard: Owner/Partner & National Sales Director for Wave Financial Partners, Inc. Wave is an independent Property & Casualty Insurance agency offering both Personal and Commercial lines of Insurance. By partnering with Financial Professionals, Danny’s team has created a proven referral based program that has allowed them to become one of the fastest growing insurance agencies in Colorado, and have expanded into other states as well.

We think we should go wide and sell to everyone, but these three business owners will show you that getting specific about what you do, going narrow and deep, is the road to success.
Do you have a Hedgehog that separates you from others in your industry? Are you going narrow, not wide? Need more Clarity on that???
OUR GREAT PANEL WILL HELP YOU TO:
• GET A FACE ON YOUR BUSINESS
• GET A VOICE FOR YOUR BUSINESS
• GET AHEAD!

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Chuck has been consumed for years with the question, “What makes some people successful in business while others struggle?” In the last couple months it has begun to come together as possibly just one thing, and ONLY one thing.

If you who know Chuck, you know he doesn’t believe in quick and easy fixes, silver bullets, or “three magic steps” – all of which sell false hope to those looking for the easy road.

But what if there truly is just one simple thing that we could all focus on every day, that could ENSURE success? Is it possible? It just might be.

Over the years Chuck has identified key success attributes like Vision, Commitment to a goal, Speed of Execution, Time in Market, Lifetime Goals, The Law of Intentionality, Conation and many others. But what if all of them are simply bits and pieces of The One Thing?

Possibly the subject of a future bestselling book, we want you to come on Tuesday, January 8 to engage in a highly interactive discussion of what could be The One Thing that will make people successful. Please join us and together we will brainstorm, work together and test The One Thing to see if it is as simple and as groundbreaking as it seems.

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Do you want to get off the treadmill? If you do, you’ll need to move from a Stage Two, Three or Four business to Stage Five, where our business begins to give us both time and money, not just money. To get there you’ll need to embrace “The Big Mindset Shift”.

The key element is to stop trying to make money yourself and begin to trust your processes and your people to make money for you. The Big Mindset Shift is one of the most important “trapeze moments” to build a successful business.

We’ve got three great panelists who understand The Big Mindset Shift from a Stage 4 to a Stage 5 Successful Business, and we want these great business owners to share with you how they did it. You’ll come away with some very practical ideas on how to continue to build a business you’ll love and have a life, too.

OUR GREAT PANEL:
These three are infectious people – come get a dose of their Big Mindset Shift.

Nathaniel Bruno: Owner of College Hunks Hauling Junk and College Hunks Moving, the only national junk removal and full service moving company.

Lyric Turner: Owner and Principal of Red House Staging, a unique service that positively transforms properties to improve their listing potential.

Jeff Krommendyk: Principal with Security First Insurance Agency, a property and casualty insurance company in business since 2004.

THE BUSINESS LEADER’S INSIGHT LUNCH
Want a business that makes money when you’re not around? We’ll see how a few very simple tweaks to our personal business practices applies very practically to our businesses today, and can have a huge impact on how effective we are with our daily time and efforts.

If you’re a business owner or their staff looking for potential strategic alliance partners, come join us for the Business Leader’s Insight lunch workshop every 2nd & 4th Tuesday of the month 11:00 – 12:30 pm

All lunches are available via podcast shortly after the live training and can be found on http://live.cranksetgroup.com

See below for more info/directions.

Invite others! We always have a few seats for last minute guests as well. Please plan on buying lunch – it’s one of the reasons we don’t charge for this – so you can support the restaurant instead.

When: Every 2nd & 4th Tuesday of the month (except holidays)
Time: 11:00 am-12:30 pm
Cost: The training is FREE. You only have to buy your lunch
Where: Chinook Tavern, 6380 S. Fiddler’s Green Circle, Greenwood Village, CO 80111
free parking behind building. Turn on left side of bldg. to enter garage

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Too many people are in business because they have a mortgage to pay, or a payroll to meet, or to escape the drudgery of the cube and working for the man. They went into business with great expectations but since then have forgotten that business was supposed to be fun.

There are a lot of ways to stretch ourselves in business; most of them are dangerous, a few depend on the situation, and a few are always good. Learning when and when not to stretch ourselves is an art, and is correlated strongly to our success. We see people stretch themselves right out of business and yet others seem to just keep expanding the business by stretching.

How do we know when to stretch and when to stay in our comfort zone?

Come Tuesday, November 13th and we’ll set you up with some tools like the Expanding Product Circle, the Profit Bucket, The Full Engagement Principle and others you can use for years to come that will help you stretch when you should and sit tight when it’s right. Chuck will be sharing some of these tools for the very first time.

There’s no exact science on when you should stretch yourself and your business, but the tools you’ll get from this Business Leader’s Insight Lunch will help you make the right “Stretch Decisions” for years to come.

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COME AND FIND OUT HOW IT CAN HELP YOUR BUSINESS

Come Tuesday, August 28th and learn from a panel of three business owners (see below) interviewed by Chuck Blakeman on why you should be incorporating social media/digital media into your overall marketing program. These business owners are in the trenches, and they will show you it’s not that hard. Embracing social media for business offers huge potential for generating discussion about your products and services and, eventually, winning new customers. It’s free and carries very little downside.

As we all know, in just a short time social media has almost completely changed the face of online marketing.

If your business has not yet taken advantage of this truly incredible channel, now is the time to do so. It’s extremely cost effective, easy-to-use and can put your product or service in front of hundreds of millions of potential customers.

The question really isn’t why should you be on social media? But why shouldn’t you?

Our Great Panel
We have assembled three local business owners who will share from their experience how using Social Media/Digital Media can be the best thing that ever happened to your business. Meghann Conter, the Mistress of Social Media™, who provides cross-media branding, contemporary marketing strategies, and consulting in the latest and greatest social technologies. Chris Tamm, CEO of Madlom Real Estate, will share why he relies so heavily on Social Media for the success of his business. And Rita Zamora, a Social Media & Relationship Marketing Expert who is a highly sought-after consultant and speaker.

THE BUSINESS LEADER’S INSIGHT LUNCH
Want a business that makes money when you’re not around? We’ll see how a few very simple tweaks to our personal business practices applies very practically to our businesses today, and can have a huge impact on how effective we are with our daily time and efforts.

If you’re a business owner or their staff looking for potential strategic alliance partners, come join us for the Business Leader’s Insight Lunch on the 2nd and 4thTuesday of each month from 11:00am-12:30 pm

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Tuesday, September 25th from 11:00-12:30 pm

Everybody needs sales. It’s the first domino that starts all the other dominos in our business. But most of us didn’t go into business to do sales. So how do we acquire and retain more customers when we would really rather just be making the chairs, not selling them? We’ve got three great people to the rescue. At our next Business Leader’s Insight Lunch, Chuck Blakeman will interview two experts on creating a steady stream of potential clients, and one business owner who is in the trenches doing it just like you.

COME TO THE BUSINESS LEADER’S INSIGHT LUNCH AND GET YOUR SALES ON!

Our Great Panel

We have assembled three business owners who will share from their experience how to acquire and retain more customers.

Matt Rowe, is the Chief Sales Officer with SalesLeadership, Inc. and is helping companies create award winning Emotionally Intelligent sales leaders. Brenda Abdilla is a Certified Professional Coach and President of Management Momentum. She works with sales professionals who want to move their career forward. And John Geringer, President and Trusted Advisor of The Geringer Group, who helps Middle Class Millionaire Leaders make smart choices about their money and realize their ideal life.

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Who is your competition? Are you sure?

Come Tuesday, September 11th to learn how you can be the one company that customers consistently choose over the others? What can you learn from the competition that will actually make you more attractive to your potential buyers?

There is a lot of standard stuff out there on how to view the competition, what to do about them, and how to take the best part of each of them and make yourself even better. But most of the traditional teaching on competition made more sense in the Industrial Age. Come to the Business Leader’s Insight lunch and learn a revolutionary new way to eliminate the competition. We’ll look at some real live case studies of companies that have taken a whole new approach to competitors, and are making a lot more money because of it.

THE BUSINESS LEADER’S INSIGHT LUNCH
Want a business that makes money when you’re not around? We’ll see how a few very simple tweaks to our personal business practices applies very practically to our businesses today, and can have a huge impact on how effective we are with our daily time and efforts.

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What are you selling – really? And to whom – really? Lumber? Shipping? Mortgages? Financial services? Computer networking? Websites? Cosmetics? The next best thing to sliced bread? As a business owner or sales professional, I imagine you are fairly certain of what you are selling. I would bet though, that you have very little idea of what your customers are buying.

Your market niche is one thing we talk about a lot – what is your hedgehog. But at this Business Leader’s Insight Lunch we’re going to focus on how to present your product or service itself. We’ll learn how to describe it best from the customer’s point of view, and to create simple messaging that will make them want to buy from you.
Identify what you really have. Describe it in your customer’s terms, and watch your sales go up.

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COME AND FIND OUT EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HIRING EMPLOYEES

Employees are a pain – NOT! Come tomorrow, July 24th and learn from a panel of three business owners (see below) interviewed by Chuck Blakeman on how employees can be your road to both financial freedom and more time for vacation. These business owners are in the trenches, and they will show you it’s not that hard. Adding employees is one of the most important “trapeze moments” a business owner will face. Let go of the “I’ll do this alone” trapeze and grab the employee trapeze – it will change your business for the better!

Are you a business owner, or are you running a chair-making “practice”, where the only time you get paid is when you personally make a chair? You’ve probably heard from others that employees are a pain to manage, but that is never the case when you do it right. If the employee is seen as a problem, it is almost always because we hired without paying attention and didn’t set up an environment for success. When you do it right (and it’s not hard to do it right), employees can be one of the best ways to grow both your own personal income and, more importantly, your own personal time off.

Our Great Panel
We have assembled three business owners who will share from their experience how employees can be the best thing that ever happened to your business. Patrick Johnson, owner of Colorado HR Advice, is an employment and HR expert for small and local businesses, and will share how you can easily manage employees in a way you would never have imagined. Julia Gentry, founder of Intern America, will help you see how easy it can be to find the right people. And Alan Wyngarden, Senior Loan Officer at NOVA Home Loans and owner of a couple other businesses, will tell his own stories of how having just a couple employees in each of his companies has changed both his businesses and his own lifestyle, and how learning to motivate and manage them has made having them around a lot of fun, not a pain.

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There is an epidemic of allergies among America’s young people. Allergies are on the rise like no time in American history. Our economy and the businesses that run it have gone through three years with an allergy to recovery. Every business has seasons where the pollen of problems makes us focus more on the problem itself than on the business. And then there’s those chronic diseases, too.

Where does it all end? More importantly, where does it all come from? The great news is that the allergies that attack your business and the chronic diseases that are attacking your profitability are all very controllable. We actually don’t have to live with them and the cures are more in our hands than we think. Come tomorrow and find out why dirt just might be the answer to your business problems!

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The Dawn of the Participation Age and What it Means to Your Bottom Line
Tuesday, June 12, 2012 11:00-12:30 pm

The business world has changed immeasurably in just the last 10 years. The Industrial Age is long gone, the Service (post-Industrial) Age is ancient history, even the Technology Age and the Information Age are old news. There’s a new kid in town that is changing everything – the Participation Age and it’s a whole different animal.

Companies who embrace that new world are thriving and those that don’t are struggling. While each business “age” has gotten progressively shorter over the last 200 years, this one just might have staying power. And whether you are aware of it or not, it is having radical and lasting effects on your small and local business as well as the bigger ones. How you are responding to the Participation Age isn’t a matter of tweaking your marketing a little, or adding a product or service. It requires a different way of doing business.

Want to build a business with more revenue and a secure future? Come to tomorrow’s BLI lunch and learn about how you and your business need to function in the Participation Age.

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Learn how a local business celebrity built a successful business in a relatively short amount of time.

All you need is LOVE.

We are thrilled to welcome Maddy D’Amato, Co-Founder and Chief Love Officer of Love Grown Foods — an all natural health food company based in Denver, Colorado. You can find their amazing granola in grocery stores locally and nationwide. In just 3 years, Maddy and her partner have taken their distribution from a single store in the mountains of Colorado to over 3,500 stores across the United States and Canada. In addition to putting healthier, delicious and affordable products on the shelves, they are also passionate about making a difference and are actively working with schools and students across the country to spread health education.

Join us on tomorrow as Chuck asks Maddy some great questions on how they grew such a successful business and continue to spread the LOVE. And we’ll open it up for you to ask questions as well. Promises to be fantastic!

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We left the Industrial Age a long time ago, then flashed through the Technology Age. We’re now in the Participation Age and the hallmark of the Participation Age is “sharing”. The Internet has made “sharing” into something that we’ve never experienced before. We call it Digital Media.

Digital Media isn’t a fad, it is the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.

And some of you still shouldn’t be doing much of it. Others of you are missing the boat by not jumping all in. It’s different for everyone. Come tomorrow and find out what you should or shouldn’t be doing, and why social networking (different than social media) is still something you should be doing offline.

Are you ready for the future? It’s already here. Come tomorrow and find out what you should be doing about it.

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In a recent study of one million people around the world, researchers found that most viewed ____ as their biggest weakness.

Sorry you’re just going to have to come to the Business Leader’s Insight Lunch to find out. But if you come, we promise you’ll get something to take away that you can apply right away to your business and leadership of your business. Chuck will share with you the best time of day to make big decisions, why shopping is so exhausting and how that knowledge can help your business, why you need “maker days” and “manager days”, why you need glucose, why it’s good to have a woman in a group making a decision, and what one thing you have to fight against for 4-5 hours every day! And a bunch more.

Come tomorrow for a great discussion on Decision Making and Willpower, and walk away with one thing that will help you grow a business that makes money while you’re on vacation.

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If you don’t know where you are, you won’t know where you’re going. Do you know where you and your business are right now? Do you have an easy, simple way to always know – just a quick “check-in”?

We talk a lot about the 2.1 Planning Process for success. The first step is having a very clear picture of where you are right now; the “health” of your product, your marketing, your relationships with your customers, your numbers, your leadership, and most importantly, utter clarity on what I should be doing to continue to grow my business. Most of us are so busy making chairs and fighting off the Tyranny of the Urgent that we don’t see the importance of getting a snapshot of how things are right now – it’s going to change tomorrow anyway. But a “sane assessment” of where we are is the critical first step in getting where we want to go.

Come tomorrow and we’ll talk about three simple things you can do to always have a sane assessment of the health of your business right now. The first step in getting anywhere is knowing where you are. Let’s clear all the noise of the Urgent for a few minutes and figure it out together.

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What are you intending to create with your business? What are the things you need to do to get there? What’s the next waypoint? How can you be sure you’re measuring the right things to get there?

Success is quite predictable if we’re doing the right thing. Are you doing the right thing? Are you measuring it?

We do a lot in business. But we don’t always do what will make us successful, and too often it’s simply because we’re not measuring success the right way. Come tomorrow and let’s see how we to measure the few simple, key things that will make us successful. The Random Hope strategy of business doesn’t work. Let’s find something with real clear direction that gives us “utter clarity” about what to measure.

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