John Hutchinson
Hey Entrepreneurs!
Feeling overwhelmed by your endless list of things to do?
You Can Effectively Communicate Your Vision, Attract and Inspire Top Talent and Deliver Extraordinary Customer Experiences, Without Sucking the Life Out of Everyone at Your Company (Including You)!
Learn and Implement Everything You Need to Get Out of the “Startup” Phase
and Be Ready to Scale Your Business 10X - All Within One Year!
• Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the amount of work there is to do and that if you want it done right, you need to do it yourself?
• Does it feel like there’s a huge need and opportunity to make a difference… but you can’t move fast enough to make the dent you wanted to make?
• Do you feel totally frustrated by the slow “one step forward, two steps back” progress you’re making?
On the path to success, most entrepreneurs end up running into the same problem: you can see so many opportunities and options that you end up stuck!
Do I build a blog? Work on my funnel? Run a webinar? Spend time improving and expanding the products? Hire and train some help? Try and raise some money? Try to drive some traffic with Facebook Ads? Maybe I should finally figure out how to get Workers’ Comp going for my employees? And what’s this Periscope all about?
For most of us, the goal is NOT to simply replace our salary by creating a JOB for ourselves (especially one that doesn’t pay overtime and keeps you glued to your cellphone on nights and weekends).
The goal is to BUILD A BUSINESS.
So what do I mean by ‘building a business’ exactly?
A real business is one in which there are systems and processes designed to get ALL the work in the business done. There are also management practices in place to ensure those systems and processes are getting done. In addition, there needs to be a culture of taking responsibility for the success and improvement of the business over time… because without that, any business’s days are numbered.
So, what does it take to move from ‘startup mode’ into a real business?
Well, there are several things you’ve got to get right all at once….and it’s a lot of work. It took us several years to get from where we were - a ragtag team of about seven people just hustling to stay afloat - to where we are now.
Where we are now is that we have an incredibly well-organized set of systems and processes that are designed to do the work and fulfill the promise of our business.
We have a specific management system in place, we have reporting in place, we have project management, internal training programs, formal HR systems, billing and accounting systems, detailed processes for hiring (and firing), for solving a support request, for launching a new feature….really, for EVERYTHING.
As we spent the last several years building all this, we’ve learned a lot.
We’ve also been pretty successful and have amassed a stable of awards to show for it.
We’ve grown to over 100 people and done it mostly bootstrapped and profitably, which is unicorn-rare for fast growing technology businesses like ours.
While I’m not a big fan of tooting my own horn, this success hasn’t been an accident. This is my third successful venture and the fifth for my partner and President Lena Requist. Over a couple of decades and several major entrepreneurial projects, we’ve learned a lot about running and growing a business.
It took us over four years to get all the pieces in place! This stuff is hard, and no one is really teaching entrepreneurs how to do it. We don’t see any good training out there on how to build a real business. There’s no course on how to build an incredible culture or how to systemize your business in a way that works but ALSO doesn’t suck the life out of everyone who works for you (including you).
You shouldn’t have to go through all that pain.
So, we’re going to teach it.
I know from painful personal experience that if I’d known five years ago what I know now about building and growing a significant business, it would have literally saved me years of suffering.
We are convinced we can do that for a few good businesses, and we’re committed to making it happen.We are going to be focused on helping a small group of entrepreneurs move through a specific phase of their business growth as quickly and effectively as possible, while creating a foundation for growing their businesses 10x. To be able to do this in one year is a small miracle. (It took us over four years to get all the pieces in place!)
In 2016, we’ll be working together on the “Systemize” phase of your business - It’s a make-or-break phase which will determine whether you struggle along forever or thrive in a business that you love. It will determine who you have around you on your team and your relationships with them. And it will determine whether you’ll ever make it to the third phase where you really kick growth into high gear.
In this yearlong course, you’ll get:
• Strategies to break through the ceiling of complexity you’re running into so you can stop jumping from emergency to emergency every day.
• The easy way to get effective business infrastructure in place so that you don’t miss out on major opportunities and see your good ideas go to waste because you can’t execute fast enough.
• Secrets for conquering a plateau in your business so you can get back to real growth and stop the fire from waning.
• What it takes to master a variety of business-building skills so you can break through any challenge your company is facing.
• Our best secrets for attracting, hiring and managing a team of A-players so you can build a team who personally takes responsibility for the success and improvement of your business over time.
• Our philosophy on coaching, promoting, delegating, disciplining and firing so you can build an effective organization of inspired, committed and talented people.
• Methods for organizing your projects and resources so you can get the most out of what you’ve got to work with.
• Effective delegation strategies so you can ensure that critical work is getting done right and on-time, without micro-managing.
• Techniques for communicating your vision in the most compelling way so you can encourage your team to offer their best efforts and ideas.
• The secret to systemizing your processes so consistently that you’ll always be able to deliver extraordinary customer experiences at scale.
• Strategies for building an incredibly authentic company culture that will attract the right team members, customers and strategic relationships to your business.
Mastermind Graduates
“We were our own obstacle to the growth that we wanted in our business. We don’t have those obstacles today. The reason is ONTRAPORT Mastermind. We now have a team of people who have adopted the mission of our company. It’s now THEIR mission.”
We think there are four categories of skills required to be successful in business, and we’re going to organize our training around those. They are:
• Vision: ensure you’re headed towards the right goal.
• Strategy: figure out the best path to get there.
• Leadership: get the best people doing their best work.
• Operations: move the ball forward.
While those titles seem high-level or theoretical, this course will be anything but. We’ll be showing you:
• How we design operational systems and get our teams to build them.
• How we organize the entire company’s work-schedules and why
• How we recruit, hire, onboard, manage, promote, discipline, and fire employees.
• The specific format we use to design projects, then how we manage them
• The specific instructions we give our assistants about how to schedule appointments in our calendar
• How we run meetings, what meetings we run and how often.
• Our off-site and planning formatsHow we create and communicate visions for the entire company and for each project
• How we report on every aspect of our business
• … we’ll even share what we stink at, and show you how we’re tackling those challenges.
While this is just a small taste of the topics we’ll cover, it gives you a flavor of the kind of in-the-trenches detail that we’re going to get into. In my experience, it’s the kind of education that’s gravely missing in the entrepreneurial space, leaving each of us to battle through and figure it out on our own. What a waste.
The course will be delivered as four full-day trainings in-person in our auditorium in Santa Barbara, one per quarter. The dates of those will be:
• February 4-5, 2016
• May 5-6, 2016
• August 4-5, 2016
• November 3-4, 2016
In addition, there will be one monthly hour-long group training over the phone/web.
Finally, there will be a monthly accountability call with another member of the group. We’re committed not only to your learning our business management methodology, but actually implementing it in your business.
(Tip: Bring the spouse! Santa Barbara is amazing. Let him or her play on the beach, enjoy some wine tasting or go sightseeing while you work and then extend your stay for a long weekend getaway!)
The value that this course is going to provide for your business is immense -- while most businesses wrestle for years with the challenges faced in the “Systemize” phase, you can save yourself years of frustration and hundreds of thousands of dollars lost while your team waits for you to “get it together.”
Instead of wasting years (like we did) trying to function without the systems your business needs for explosive growth, you can take this course for $10,000 and save yourself the heartache. To register, there will be a $2k deposit due now. The rest of the fee will be charged when the course begins in January, and you’ll have two payment options:
• A one-time payment of $8,000, bringing the total cost to $10k.
• Ten monthly payments of $1000, bringing the total cost to $12k.
An additional fee of $2500 will apply if you choose to include an operational partner (recommended!) and this can be paid upfront or spread over ten payments of $300.
We are absolutely committed to making sure that the entrepreneurs who join us for this course see incredible results. Because we’re not willing to compromise on that, we’re going to keep this program small. We’re going to be picky about who we accept into the group - if we don’t think we can help you, we’re going to pass.
In order for us to be confident that we can help you, we need to you to:
1. Be confident that you know your business model. That is, be through the ‘start’ phase.
2. Be doing at least $100K in annual revenue.
3. Be dedicated to growing a significant business, not one where you do all the work.
4. Honestly care for the people on your team.
Industry isn’t important; between us, we’ve built businesses in software, finance, financial services, cosmetics, fitness equipment, interior architecture, real estate, and more. While industries are different, building an effective organization of inspired, committed, and talented people is the same everywhere.
If you’re accepted into this course, here’s what we can promise you:
In ONE YEAR, you (and your team) will learn and implement everything you need to get
OUT of the ‘startup’ phase and be ready to SCALE your business 10x.
I know from painful personal experience that if I’d known five years ago what I know now about building and growing a significant business, it would have literally saved me years of suffering. We are convinced we can do that for a few good businesses, and we’re committed to making it happen.
If you’re ready to tackle the challenges that are stopping your business from growing, once and for all, apply now for this program and take the opportunity to make your business absolutely unrecognizable to you by the end of 2016!
If you have questions, talk to an ONTRApeep! Call our sales team. Send a ticket to support. We’re here to answer questions and get you registered if it’s a good fit. When you’re ready, apply here. It’ll be fun!
- Landon Ray
Founder and CEO of ONTRAPORT
PS - We want to see your vision become reality just as much as you do. In order to make that happen, you’ve got to stop building a job for yourself and start building a business. You’ve positively got to stop frantically trying to keep up with a deluge of work, or you’ll never be able to actually scale your business in a way that matches your ambition. If you know you’re making excuses for why your business isn’t growing, it’s time to stop! You can do it, and we’re here to help.