Growth Stories

Following up with former program participants.

Meet Bruce Flory, an expert mentor with the FAST Forward [now Small-biz.XLR8] program.

“Business mentors offer business owners invaluable access to multidisciplinary
expertise aimed at amplifying results and helping to avoid costly missteps.”

Q & A

When and why did you join the program? How was your business doing at the time?

I was invited to attend a Fast Forward [now Small-biz.XLR8] workshop right when my son was starting to work for my company and we had to create enough income to afford him. At that time, we were still having most of our operations done by hand and at home. The business paid our salaries and we had a small profit. Doing the program together was pivotal to the benefit we received from it and it opened the possibility for him to get a new position when he was ready to leave because of his clear understanding of business principles.

When and why did you join the program? How was your business doing at the time?

Through the progression of the program, we were able to understand business principles and projections that allowed us to set the foundation for growth. We increased our revenue by 20% in the subsequent 3 years and were able to live through 2020 with a small profit.

We created systems that allowed us to have projections, started using software programs for managing teams, hired professional external bookkeeping services, and hired marketing service to rebrand our company, as we understood our clients better. We also hired 1 administrative assistant and 1 sales assistant and increased the number of cleaning teams.

When and why did you join the program? How was your business doing at the time?

Participating in the program changed my mind and possibilities forever. As a business owner with no training in business but the experience of doing business, I truly appreciate the ease and practical to apply principles and formats that I received.

The support of the trainers and couches together with the camaraderie of the participants made the experience enjoyable and the challenges of entrepreneurship felt shared.  We are re-branding our business again to adapt to the future as so many things have changed in the lives and homes/offices of our clients. We are creating a new training program and will be using new marketing tools as well.