On Episode 060 of the Epic Business Growth for CPAs Podcast, I interview Donna Leyens of the Provendus Group, and Pumpkin Plan Your Business about how to grow and stand out in a crowd.
Donna is an entrepreneur, a Certified Professional Business Coach and has an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurial Studies. She spent the early part of her professional career on Wall St. analyzing and raising capital for public and private companies. In other words, Donna knows what makes a company tick.
Donna and Mike Michalowicz have partnered to create Pumpkin Plan Your Biz, where business owners receive training and certification in the pumpkin plan methodology to become certified Pumpkin Plan Strategists.
The Pumpkin Plan
In the book The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field, author Mike Michalowicz draws a connection between growing a business and growing an award-winning pumpkin. The key is that you can’t use a pack of ordinary pumpkin seeds to grow these pumpkins: the typical pumpkin seeds you buy at the grocery store simply don’t have the ability to grow this large. Your business is the same. You have to start with an underlying strategy and plan that has the capacity to grow as much as you want it to grow. There are three elements to this strategy that allow you to grow your business:
- A unique offering– This is like striving to be the biggest, award-winning pumpkin instead of blending in to the thousands of other basketball sized pumpkins. You want your business to stand out from the other options.
- Know your top clients– Different than your ideal client, understanding who your best clients are helps you save time and money in order to focus on them. The 80-20 rule says that 80% of your profit and success will come from 20% of your clients. Focusing on this top 20% and giving them what they need will be much better for your business than focusing on the problem clients in the other 80%.
- Establishing Systems and Processes– You might be able to attract great clients, but if you do not have systems in place that allow you to effectively give them the product or service they are looking for they are useless.
Where these three pieces overlap is the sweet spot. Make sure your unique offering is something your top clients actually want and then set up sales and marketing systems that will allow them to access this offering.
Learn More
Episode 060 is full of great information about The Pumpkin Plan and how to stand out by implementing the strategy in your business – listen now! If you like this idea of separating yourself from the crowd, and want help with the process, know that I am a certified Pumpkin Plan Strategist. I am applying so many of these concepts to great success with my own clients, helping them double their income with a third of their client load. If you would like to learn more about how we could work together to implement The Pumpkin Plan, schedule a free 15 minute session with me, and let’s chat.
