Small business owners, it’s time for your hustle to pay off.
Less Chaos, More Profit
Regain control over your time, energy, money, and attention & chart a course toward your BIGGEST, BOLDEST vision of success.
The Tradewinds 6-month Coaching + Consulting program gives you access to the wisdom, knowledge, mindset, and strategies of the top 4% of successful small business owners so that you can: step out of imposter syndrome, scale your profit, and build a business that loves you back.
Stop holding your breath, waiting to know whether your business will be “successful.” Breathe easier knowing the exact steps you’re going to take to get it there – and create your journey with intention.
“I’m ready to breathe easy.”
Most small business entrepreneurs start their business for one BIG reason…
They want freedom.
They crave a life that’s bigger and more fulfilling than the 9-5 grind for someone else’s dream.
What most small business entrepreneurs really want is something pretty simple… Time with their families and enough money in the bank to feel comfortable while they do it. They want to make a difference for their customers, and their employees too. They’re good people who want a good life, full of the things that truly matter to them, a life they can feel proud of.
In the face of these simple dreams, the realities of building their business can be crushing.
Working more and making less than they would in a j.o.b.
Every spare moment and thought going to their business.
Never feeling present with their loved ones. Inconsistent cashflow that leaves them in a constant state of stress.
Fires. Fires everywhere. All the time.
Potential clients who just don’t get the value of what they do.
Time-sucking tasks that aren’t even making them money.
The early stages of business can feel less like freedom… and more like a trap.]
[If you’re like most of our clients (and I’ll bet you are)…
You’ve poured your heart and soul into your business, all your spare time (and maybe some time that wasn’t so spare) and all you want to know is when it’s all going to pay off. When the late nights, the missed time with your family, and the anxious sleepless nights staring at the ceiling… are going to finally, finally lead to the freedom you’ve been hoping for.
Which of these sound familiar:
- You are tired. You started your business with a fire in your heart, but that fire feels dimmer and dimmer all the time. You catch yourself wondering, “Is this really worth it?”
- Money is coming in… but somehow it’s never enough money… and it’s not necessarily predictable. You just wish you had a steady cashflow you could count on.
- The chaos is killing you. You’re constantly putting out fires, doing rework, or working extra hours that you can’t expect from your team—and you’ve thought, more than once, “If only I could take a week away, I could finally get organized… could finally get back on top of everything.”
- You can’t remember the last time you thought about your business without a tide of worries and stresses washing over you. You started your business to fuel your life, but instead you feel like it’s consuming it.
- You know that something is missing, but you don’t know what it is, or how to find out… so you just keep hustling, hoping things will finally “click.”
If you’re like most of the entrepreneurs we work with, you might feel frustrated, embarrassed, or even ashamed of the cocktail of worries and fears and doubts swirling in your mind…
Like them, you might be relieved to know you’re not alone.
You might be relieved to know that what you’re experiencing in your business isn’t just normal… it’s expected. You’re not failing. You didn’t make a mistake.
Welcome to the Doldrums
In nautical slang, the doldrums is a space of stuckness. There’s no wind. No movement. You’re just trapped in the middle of the ocean on your massive trade vessel, hoping a big storm will blow in and carry you where you’re wanting to go before you and your crew starve or eat each other.
And while it sounds like a handy metaphor for feeling stuck in your business, it’s actually a Catch-22 stage that ALL businesses go through. The Doldrums is a period of tension and inertia… your business is floundering. You’re not quite failing (you have the revenue… most of the time), but you’re not quite succeeding either and you can feel that something has to change.
If any of those struggles above sounded familiar… you’re in the Doldrums.
And that’s actually great! (Even though it feels pretty terrible.)
It’s great because it means you’ve made it through the first stages of business. You started your venture! You struggled and hustled and finally had a year that made you go, “Yes! I’m really doing this! This is going to work!”
Now you’ve hit the Doldrums.
You’re working and working, but things just aren’t clicking the way you need them to, and this pace, you know, is unsustainable. Something’s gotta give—and soon.
You know that your business needs to be growing, but you can’t find the resources—time, energy, money, quality employees—you need to take your business to the next level.
You’re tired. You’re struggling to have faith that this entrepreneurship thing is ever going to feel good. You’re wondering what happened to that time freedom society promised you’d get. Sometimes… sometimes you wonder whether this was right move, whether entrepreneurship is really for you after all.
The Doldrums have defeated many an entrepreneur.
But they won’t defeat you.
It’s time to get the wind back in your sails
Introducing:
The Tradewinds Program
Get out of the Doldrums and turn your business into a wealth engine that lights up your life instead of burning it out.
The Tradewinds Program is your one-way ticket to momentum. A done-with-you business development program that offers in-depth business analysis and down-to-earth strategic planning to find the gold in your business and unlock your business’ profit potential.
This is not a one-size-fits-all, formulaic model of business growth. This is six-month access to your Advisory Board Dream Team—a group of professionals and experts invested in understanding your business, and offering solutions, strategies, planning, and advice geared specifically toward you and your desired outcomes.
The thing about getting out of the Doldrums is that there’s no easy answer, because structuring a business for success is an all-hands-on-deck process. It requires multiples facets of expertise that no one person can possibly provide.
That’s why we created the Tradewinds Program.
We were tired of providing pieces of the solution and hoping our clients managed to figure out the rest. We want you to have everything you need to get the wind back in your sails and your business propelling itself toward success. We want to truly make success predictable. So that’s what we’ve done. We’ve pulled together all the knowledge, support, and expertise you need to get out of the Doldrums and back in motion. Better still, we’ve packaged it into a powerful, fast-track, six-month process so that you can get closer to your dreams faster than ever. Most of our clients see rewarding results in 2-4 weeks!
The Tradewinds Program is a six-month done-with-you business strategy program that’s going to help you design a business and life you love, and take the first bold steps toward realizing it.
No fluff.
We’ll build a concrete, actionable strategy grounded in real numbers and actual data.
No fill-in-the-blank templates.
We’ll work together to create a unique-to-you strategy, based on YOUR business, YOUR goals, and YOUR life and legacy.
No more doing it alone.
You’ll get a team of specialized experts committed to you and your success. We’re talking insights, advice, troubleshooting, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing you don’t have to have all the answers—but you know exactly where to get them.
“I’m ready to escape the Doldrums”
Here’s how it works:
Your Catalyst:
The Coach & Consultant Dream Team
This is not “just another” coaching program.
Coaching is powerful, and our coaches are excellent at building strategy and intentionality into your business, and elevating your business decision-making with birds’-eye perspective.
But the thing that sets our process apart isn’t the caliber of our coaches, but the dream-team Coach + Consultant relationship. The creativity, curiosity, and flexibility of coaching merges together with the right-brained landscape of spreadsheets and CFO-level business formulas, frameworks, and know-how to form a full-picture scope of business expertise that is completely unique to The Tradewinds Group, and absolutely invaluable to the small business entrepreneur.
It also means we can field just about any business question that arises as you work through the Tradewinds Program—from corporate structure, to imposter syndrome, to taxes, we’ve got you covered.
(And whatever questions lie outside our expertise don’t go unanswered—our curated team of specialized experts are on your side too!)
The Tradewinds Program is for you if…
“I’m a Details Person, Tell Me EVERYTHING”
The Tradewinds Program is thorough. There’s even a Gantt chart we use to lay out the exact process with our clients so that you can see exactly what you’re going to get and do throughout the program, and the timeline it’s going to fall on.
Here’s the breakdown:
Phase 1: Find the Gold in Your Business (approx. 10 weeks)
The first phase of the Tradewinds Program is about transforming your relationship with your business. We start by getting to know you and your business, and then work together to streamline your business back into something you love. The small, swift pivots and shifts you make in this first step of the program will create massive change in your business and your life, setting you up to fully execute on later strategy.
“Hit the Ground Running” Tradewinds Intake
In this high-powered full-day (or two-part) process you get to know your coach and consultant, they get to know you and your business, and together you identify your business’ current most significant needs and opportunities, so you can craft crystal clear program outcomes that scare and excite you.
This is not an awkward meet and greet where you try to explain your business to someone who just doesn’t get it. This is your first strategy session, and you’ll walk away feeling seen, heard, and understood, with your first action items in your pocket, ready to be carried out.
“Make it Shine” Business Model Evolution
After your intake, we carry out the Business Model Evolution process. Here we dig through the ins and outs of your business to identify the gold at the heart of your business, and use CFO-level tools and 4%er strategy to identify how to make it really shine – so that people can see it from a mile away.
This is the moment you get to stop doing the wrong things, and double down on the right things so that your business starts to feel streamlined and less overwhelming. And it’s only the second session.
VaVooM: Vision, Values, Mission
The strongest businesses start with heart. VaVooM is the heart you put into your business when you allow your decisions and culture to be guided by your values and vision. VaVooM is what magnetizes ideal clients and dream-team employees.
We help you identify that underpinning heart of your business, and then collaborate with your team for deep buy-in and concrete implementation so that you can grow a business full of people as committed as you are, serving delighted and loyal clients.
4% Financial Analysis
Your consultant directs his CFO-level expertise toward your business’ financial past and present. Far beyond what a bookkeeper, accountant, or financial advisor provides, this analysis is all about identifying financial pitfalls, bottlenecks, and opportunities in your business’ numbers. We’re talking a full product-line and project-level profitability analysis, modelling, and projections.
Once he’s done crunching the numbers, he’ll sit down with you and tell you the story the numbers are telling. Complete with fun graphics and clear English explanations, he’ll help you truly understand your numbers, and identify which ones you actually need to pay attention to and which ones you can ignore, based on your goals and desired outcomes.
You will also receive a series of four business finance trainings & numbers reviews to support you in your financial decision-making today and into the future.
Onboard the Marketing Expert
Meet the Marketing Expert who will be offering a strategic marketing insights for your business in Phase 2 of the Tradewinds process. You will have a chance to explain your unique struggles in these areas, and then they will help you identify key differentiators, ideal client avatars, and channels to you and your specific opportunities for growth and change.
The Alchemy Sessions
Throughout the program, your alchemist (coach) will be your primary interface with the process. Together you’ll be working through mindset blocks and doing the deep 4% CEO perspective work that’s going to lead to success in the process of developing your vision and strategy, and ultimately in taking action on them. You can also expect to learn the fundamentals of business strategy, and be introduced to the Tradewinds proprietary 4% Success Framework.
You will be pushed to dream bigger, and to commit to a vision for your life and your business that will feel intimidating, but will also reignite the entrepreneurial passion that’s been waning of late. You will be asked to release hope in exchange for clarity and confidence, and to commit to taking radical action in your business so that you can go all in on creating a life and business you love.
Phase 2: Map Your Course to Success (approx. 10 weeks)
The second phase of the Tradewinds program is a deep-dive into strategic planning. We’ll take the data and insights gained in Phase 1, and pull it together into a cohesive, step-by-step 1 year-plan that will take you through the next big leap in your business success.
Because you’re a business owner, but also a whole person outside your business, we’ll consider not only your business goals, but your life goals, too—and uncover the most strategic path to achieving both. This is the moment where you finally start to see that everything you want is more than possible – it’s absolutely within your power.
Expert Insights
Your Marketing Expert and Consultant join forces on marketing strategy and goals and we begin to incorporate those into your broader, in-depth, year-long plan of action.
Your Personalized Map to Success
Bringing together those expert insights, along with the financial CFO work and the strategic decisions you’ve made with your coach and consultant, we chart your course to success.
This is a 1-year or one business-cycle strategic plan capitalizing upon all the work you’ve already done, and establishing the exact process you will follow to achieve the success outcomes you established at the beginning of the program.
This “success map” will guide your focus and keep you on track as the program wraps up and you move forward into your personal action-taking phase.
The Fuel Your Life Blueprint
You don’t just want your business to be a “success”—you want it to act in service of your personal life. You want the lifestyle. Your Integrated Corporate Life plan is a personal financial projection out to the age of 95.
We take your lifestyle and impact wants (not just needs), factor in your current financial picture and the growth and value of your business, and create a clear, concrete, and grounded-in-reality financial path to creating the fulfilling life you’re almost afraid to believe is possible.
The Alchemy Sessions
Your coaching sessions in Phase 2 will revolve around learning applying business strategy and decision-making to the process of creating your Success Map. You and your coach will pull the diverse pieces together into a cohesive whole that makes sense, and is exciting and actionable. Your “Pilot” out of the Doldrums.
You’ll continue to work on mindset for high-performance, and tackle any residual of the imposter syndrome holding you back from your boldest success.
As you develop your Fuel Your Life Blueprint and tease out your truest lifestyle goals, your coach will also use these sessions to onboard your spouse or partner, and get you both on the same page. The early years of business can be tough on personal relationships and low-key business relationship coaching can be key to a happy home and a successful business.
Phase 3: Take Bold, Brilliant Action (approx. 6 weeks)
The final phase of the Tradewinds program is a course in leadership – fully stepping into your CEO Identity and responsibility. Armed with your 4% business strategy, and the business wisdom and tools you’ve gained so far, you’ll work to take massive action toward your outcomes, and grow as a leader of your business and your team.
Leadership Evolution
You have your map. You know all the next steps. Initiate and execute on the next first steps toward your dream business… and dream life. Business success is as much about how much you grow as the CEO as it is about building out that vision and plan to reach it.
Learn to lead with more authority and confidence, and practice making, executing on, and tracking results of strong decisions—with your coach + consultant team at your side. Take action. Grow as a leader. Own your path and title.
Create Loyal Employees: A Crash Course
Learn the key principles of building a loyal, motivated team. You’ll get a crash course in how to keep the team you are building through employee communication, rewards, and benefits – creating a well-rounded package that is not just based on unsustainable raises and financial bonuses. This will be essential as your business grows more stable and profitable, and you’re finally able to stop under-hiring, and begin choosing the right people.
Wealth Engine Fine-Tuning
Your coach and consultant will work to ensure your corporate structure is optimized for tax and legal efficiencies, work with you on the execution of any necessary changes, then incorporate it into your financial plan.
This process happens mostly behind the scenes. We will be taking into consideration the current and projected value of your business, your exit strategy, your financial goals, and any extended family relationships, and review your Articles of Incorporation, Share Register, minute books, and any shareholder agreements.
The end result is an expertly designed, tax- and finance-savvy corporate structure that you’re confident will get you where you want to go.
BONUS VIP DAYS
As a Tradewinds client you get free access to any 4 of our VIP Day workshops/seminars throughout the year following your enrolment. These days are designed to be professional development for business owners as we tackle specific topics from employee retention to managing tax burdens to wise investment strategies, and including our biannual Do This Next business planning workshop, where we get hands on in helping clients plan out their next 6-12 months of business.
These workshops are unmissable opportunities to regularly make time to work on your business in a strategic and intentional way.
The Alchemy Sessions
The first phase of the Tradewinds program got you to see your business differently; this phase will have you seeing yourself with new eyes. In this space, your coach will work with you to step fully into the role of confident CEO as leader of your business and your team, making wise decisions and tying them to real measurable goals.
You can expect to uncover your core strengths and begin to work on optimizing your life and business around what you’re already best at. You will work through any lingering mindset blocks (fear of success, money-mindset-messiness etc), build essential leadership skills, and meet your boldest, most brilliant self.
You and your coach will continue to strategize, and your Alchemy Sessions will be the home in which you are supported in making the crucial decisions that come with business leadership.
It’s time to take success back into your own hands
You have a choice to make.
Are you going to keep struggling? Chasing leads, putting out fires, missing out on time with your family as you work so so hard to keep your business running?
Or are you ready to make some changes? Are you ready to shift your business into a profitable, streamlined machine that feeds a life you love?
We can call it out – this is a big investment, of time and money. Both of which you feel like you don’t have enough of. You might be thinking, “I’ll just keep hustling. I’ll just keep going. Something’s gotta give eventually.”
But that hasn’t worked yet. And for most entrepreneurs—it never does.
Most business owners think growing means more leads, more sales, more employees working on more projects—but that’s not the kind of growth that will get you out of the Doldrums, and at this critical point in your business journey, growing wrong will kill your business.
Standing still isn’t an option either. You need to go forward… or backward.
Staying in the Doldrums kills businesses.
You already know that where you are right now is not sustainable. You’re already wondering how much longer you can do this. You can choose to stop. Right now. You can say “no thank you” to the chaos and the overwhelm and begin structuring your business into something that actually feels the way you thought it was going to. Something that actually feels good.
Stop hoping and praying that your business is going to succeed to the level that you feel successful. Stop holding your breath waiting to find out. Stop wondering, “When is all this hustling going to pay off?”
Success can be predictable.
Success can happen on purpose.
Here’s the thing…
You deserve time and financial freedom.
You deserve the peace of mind that comes from money in the bank, a business that keeps standing if you look away for more than a minute, time to get to soccer games and go on 4-week vacations, stress-free date nights with your partner or spouse. You deserve a good night’s sleep—or even many—and a Sunday afternoon you can actually enjoy.
Let’s get it for you.