About The Profit Process®
The Profit Process® started as the “3-Day MBA,” a financial workshop I created for small business owners intent on understanding financial statements. It gained traction as a small business advice column in the Sacramento Business Journal.
The original workshop morphed into a series of small business “management know-how” workshops, responding to the needs of my clients. The workshops built on each other; going from a sole owner “start-up,” to a business with a “value stream” that allowed for its sale, when the owner was ready to move on.
You can get a flavor of the workshop from the Executive Summary below. Together with client stories, the 12 workshops became the basis for Living by your Wits and Discussion Guide.
I delivered these workshops to owners and their senior teams for over 20 years. For a time, I put units of The Profit Process on the internet as a “self-help” project that owners could do alone or with their teams.
But something was missing. Small business owners are isolated and needed more than a do-it-yourself program. They also needed a trusted advisor or coach to lead them—which I did for my clients.
One of my clients introduced me to the idea of forming a group of owners to collaborate and support each other—and I formed a CEO advisory group as part of my practice. The circles kept each of us inspired and accountable for what we said we wanted.
In the guidebook I encourage owners to find a coach and form or join a group—I call them Prosperity Circles—to keep inspired and focused on both business and personal goals.
Having an advisor or coach and working with a group is not just a good idea, it is essential
The learning curve of the small business owner is steep and a life-long process. Having an advisor or coach and working with a group is not just a good idea, it is essential.
I’ve put the stories and insights from my clients and the circles into Living By Your Wits: A Guide for Small Business Owners. The text in each chapter tells the tale of a small business owner’s struggles to succeed. The Discussion guide following each chapter provides owners and teams, with exercises and “how to” templates for tracking and increasing profits.
These 12 workshop events have evolved into the book, Living By Your Wits:
The Original Profit Process® Executive Summary
1. The Owner’s Big Agenda; Creativity in Visualizing Your Goal
Discover your big agenda in life and energize your business goals with the sense of aliveness and focus you bring to what you’re passionate about.
2. How We Get There; Building on Existing Strengths
A brief review of your business and it’s infrastructure and development potential using traditional and non-traditional data.
3. The Customer Advisory Board; Finding Our Unique Difference
Using input from our most valued customers, we learn what our compelling value is, as seen by outsiders, and discover the market’s unmet needs and key frustrations.
4. The Strategic Planning Day; Developing a Business Model that Delivers the Difference
Gaining team focus with a strategic plan, developed by the team, which exploits our unique difference as discovered in the Customer Advisory Board.
5. The Team Advisory Board; An Assessment of Team Strengths
We make an assessment of your team’s strengths and create a plan for building on existing strengths and filling unmet needs.
6. MBA-4-Entrepreneurs—Financial Management and Business Operations—Profit, Return on Investment, and Cash Flow
In this 3-day training program, the team connects the dots between business operations and financial results. Literally, how money gets made!
7. Awesome Customer Service; Getting Our Customers to “Wow”
The team develops the standards for measuring the delivery of our unique difference at the highest levels customer satisfaction.
8. Superior Cash Flow; How We Do It Here
Re-engineering operations with a focus on delivering increased cash flow and our unique difference.
9. The Perfect-Fit-Customer; We Don’t Want Everyone
How we find and keep more great customers for our unique product or service offering.
10. Targeting Financial Results; Constantly Raising the Bar
You develop the metrics, goals, budgets and cash flow models to project and track progress.
11. Managing for Value; Watch Your Wealth Grow
Keep it all going; constantly increasing profits, cash flow and value with a minimum of reports and meetings.
12. Claim Your Reward; Prepare and Sell Your Business for Enough to Live Well
You bank the value that you have created by turning that value into a stream of income—for life.