This email comes to you after my first pause in the weekly schedule in about 20 years. (Only people of a “certain age” can reference doing something for 20 years, and it appears I have attained it.) The holiday period and early weeks of the year were a good time to reassess this mailing and its fit and role amongst the other developments in my business. So today, I bring you a newsletter filled with actual news and updates about my work:
It was a record year. My business attained a revenue level I did not think was possible for a solo consulting practice, far surpassing my previous annual record, which I reached on two separate occasions. Now I realize I was thinking too small. There is room to further grow, even as a solo.
Most clients are now engaging me for multiple years. They seek years of sustained 15-30% annual growth. So we work on the launch initiative which typically runs six to 12 months. And then we transition into sustaining, supporting, and evolving their growth program for several additional years. Our annual work focuses on maintaining buy-in and enthusiasm among participants and iterating their program over time to ensure maximum growth. One of my best clients and I just agreed to a second five-year annual agreement, which will put us at 11 consecutive years together at the end of it. Multiple new clients last year engaged me for the launch project plus multiple additional annual support years.
My clients and I have learned that my growth process works particularly well in a slower economy with higher interest rates and growing inventories. The only way to create growth in a slower economy is to take market share from your competition. And the only way to take market share is to be proactive. My program is completely focused on proactive growth of wallet share with your customers.
Call me at 847-459-6322 to discuss creating 15-30% organic growth annually.
I am working with more private equity firms that own multiple companies that I help. Privately owned clients are also being acquired, and, it turns out, private equity firms like proven, predictable, and systematic growth initiatives. My work dramatically increases the value of their firms, grows EBITDA, and attains a much higher exit sale price.
I am writing a new book called Outgrow. It will be my seventh book, and my first about the systems and processes my owner and executive leader clients use to implement my revenue growth approaches — heretofore to be known as the Outgrow program. This book will lead to some exciting developments and a brand new initiative that will tell you more about as time goes by.
As such, I will be focusing my content more towards leaders making change and creating intentional, organic revenue growth. This will be easy and natural, as it is the work I do daily.
Finally, my family and I spent the New Year week in Naples, Florida. And when we returned and stepped off the plane to 20-degree temperatures — far higher than the ensuing multiple consecutive days that reached -15 degrees and -40 degree windchills here — I wondered out loud why we spend our winters here, in the Chicago suburbs. In 3.5 years our kids will go off to college, and if you wish to see me in the winter then, I expect it will be very close to a beach in warm, humid air and sunny skies.
I will write you more next week about the mailings you can expect from me this year.
Call me at 847-459-6322 to discuss creating 15-30% organic growth annually.
Thank you,
Alex
847-459-6322