The Blueprint Quarterly - 1Q 2008

Blueprint to a Billion Ranked #4 on 800CEOREAD’s 2007 Best Selling Book List!!!

Where do Business book authors and businesses and investors meet? They meet at 800-CEO-READ or www.800ceoread.com . The books are ranked by volume on a weekly, monthly and for the first time, their annual list has been issued. With the top 3 books being leadership, The Blueprint to a Billion is the top management book on the list.

Thank you to all my readers, Marquee Customers who spread the word and buy lots of books for their teams, associates and friends and especially to my Big Brother alliance partners: SAP, Tatum, IBM and the Association of Corporate Growth.

>>800CEOREAD’s Best Selling Book List for 2007

Order the Blueprint to a Billion by contacting aaron@800ceoread.com

TOOLS YOU CAN USE

Apply the 7 Essentials Scorecard Test

There are 7 management practices common to all Blueprint Companies, independent of industry. These 7 Essentials are the “Blueprint” that management teams utilize to achieve exponential growth. In fact, over 90% of Blueprint Companies utilized 5 or more of the 7 Essentials. Employing these essentials will unlock your company’s exponential growth potential. Think of these essentials as the 7 Habits of exceptional growth companies.

We developed a 7 Essentials Scorecard that you can use to measure your company’s effectiveness against the success pattern of Blueprint Companies as they grew from a million to a billion. The scorecard is simple to use. It will just take you 20 minutes to complete this confidential 7 Essentials Scorecard. Over 200 companies have taken the scorecard. You should be delighted with its effectiveness.

Identify your performance gap or opportunity! Your company’s or business unit’s current performance for each Essential will be scored in one of three colors: Red for a score of 1-2 or under performing; Yellow for a score of 3 or average; and Green for a score of 4 or 5 or over performing.

Leverage the 7 Essentials Scorecard to focus on your under performing Essentials. Meet with your team and lead to a discussion of the7 Essentials Scorecard results. The goal of this discussion will be to develop team consensus on the opportunity gap between your business’ performance today and what the best exponential growth companies have achieved. Turn these insights into action.

>>Take the Scorecard Test - It's Free

Utilize the 7 Essentials Workshop

This one-day workshop is designed to help your company or business unit benchmark how it is currently performing against each of the 7 Essentials — and to create a practical plan to close the gap. The main end-product of the workshop will be an actionable roadmap to turn your company’s under performance into excellent performance for each of the Essentials. This customized 7 Essentials Roadmap will become your plan to turn these insights into the actions required to achieve exponential growth! A very high return on invested time for you and your team.
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My goal is to help your company enter and accomplish this unique growth journey. What ever the size of your company, growing successfully to the next level is the first step to becoming an exceptional growth company. This workshop will help your company or business unit not only grow to the next level but achieve exponential growth!

Is This Workshop For You? The 7 Essentials Workshop is for standalone public or private companies or business units that want to achieve exponential revenue growth with returns. This one-day workshop is both pragmatic and aspirational, with lots of problem solving and discussion. If the workshop is focused on one company, it is important that the entire management team participate. If the workshop is for a small group of 5 or so companies, then typically the CEO and COO/CFO or President of each of these divisions should participate.

The workshop methodology has been developing for over the past year. My last workshop was just before the holidays with Peter von Jess is the CEO of USfalcon. USfalcon is a logistics company, primarily serving the US Army that is on a trajectory from a million to a billion: with current revenues of about $50M this company has over $300M in order backlog. Pete shares his experience from the workshop, ‘The workshop for my board and management team has fortified the roadmap for USfalcon to grow into a billion dollar business. We like to say, “Think Big, be Big” and “Consider it Done”. If you want your business to be big, you need to take this workshop”. Visit www.usfalcon.com

>> Download the brochure

DEVELOPING INSIGHTS

Leading Forward: Management Techniques from America’s Highest Growth Companies

There are many leadership books. In fact, the top three on 800CEOREAD’s best selling list are about trust, how to be an authentic leader and how focus should be on empowering your people rather than a chain of command. All are necessary but not sufficient to achieve exponential growth. Even with great leadership, companies still fail. What is missing? A unique set of Management Techniques.

I am currently researching the elements of these management techniques for my next book entitled Leading Forward. I have found that the best leaders and teams managed beyond the quarter: they take actions today to lay the foundation for future growth. They apply a unique set of management techniques. I am interviewing CEO teams to identify the top 10 management techniques.

Recently I had the opportunity to interview the leadership pair from Endo Pharmaceuticals. Endo Pharmaceutical is a wonderful story of a management pair that created a new billion dollar company. Endo Pharmaceuticals will be exceeding a billion in revenue in 2008 as a leading supplier of new drugs and therapies for the treatment of pain. Over 20% of America suffers from acute pain. Almost everyone has a family member or knows someone who is affected by pain. Endo Pharmaceuticals improves the quality of life.

On its way to a billion, Endo was led by a really dynamic duo – Carol and Marianne. While Carol Ammon is the Ex Chairman and Ex CEO and Mariann MacDonald was the executive Vice-President of Operations, they were recently known as a real “Dynamic Duo”.

>> Download one of the 10 management techniques

Build your Board of Essentials Experts

There is little research to help companies develop best practices for attracting, retaining, rewarding and drawing value from their boards. Often, chief executives are unsure of the appropriate: intervals for board meetings, compensation, and diversity of the board's members. I would like to bring a special report to your attention.

As a way to cogently and concisely answer these questions, the Vell Entrepreneurial Boards Composition Survey identifies trends in boards of directors. They surveyed 150 CEOs, venture capitalists and vice presidents of human resources and board directors from various industries - more than 18 in total - with a special focus on small software and technology companies in the United States. Approximately 50% of responding companies had average annual revenues of less than US$10 million and have been in operation between five and 10 years. Most are privately held.

The Vell 2007 Entrepreneurial Boards Composition Survey offers a narrower focus and an updated perspective with new angles relevant for 2007's entrepreneurial business climate. The results will be helpful to many directors serving mature companies, as well as companies seeking to find the best and brightest board members.

For readers of this newsletter and the book, you can receive a free copy by contacting dora@vell.com. Please mention this note for your free copy. Of course, you are welcome to pay her! You will find the Blueprint findings cited. Enjoy!