Full Description

• Create a business plan that get results
• Get clients to call you
• Avoid the four failed marketing strategies every firm uses
• Implement an organization structure that works
• Strengthen your project management
• Improve your cash flow forecasting and collection procedures
• Get decent results from your recruiting efforts
• Produce better brochures, newsletters, and client-tracking databases
• Manage the hiring process
• Uncover the "real" financial numbers growing firms should be tracking to stay healthy
• What to include in your buy-sell agreement

If you’re a top manager in a fast-growing firm, you may sometimes feel like the firm is running you more than you’re running the firm. The trouble with growing is that you keep outgrowing everything. You outgrow your office, you outgrow your systems, you outgrow your organization, your cash flow, everything... On the one hand, these are good problems! But, they’re still problems.

So how can you address these problems? The answer for hundreds of A/E/P & environmental consulting professionals has been to attend Mark Zweig’s Managing a Growing Firm seminar. Designed exclusively for fast-growing firms, this seminar offers practical advice on how to take control of your growing firm, keep growing, and keep your sanity.

Managing a Growing Firm: A Video Seminar for A/E/P & Environmental Consulting Firms offers practical advice on how to take control of your growing A/E firm, keep growing, and keep your sanity. This six-lesson video seminar covers business planning, marketing, recruiting, project management, cash flow, organization structure, capitalizing your firm, and more.

Mark Zweig, your video seminar leader, knows a thing or two about growing firms because he’s been there, as a principal and manager in two ENR 500 firms, as a consultant to hundreds more, and as the founder of his own successful organization. Mark knows what you need to know to take it to the next level. And he’s ready to share it all with you.

Lesson 1: Business Planning for a Growing Firm
There are many good reasons to grow. It makes your firm more valuable. It’s more intellectually stimulating to the owners/managers. It’s also easier to make money the larger a firm gets—just look at any salary survey and see how pay goes up for just about every position in larger firms.

The first lesson in this six-part video seminar takes a look at the unique challenges faced by growing A/E/P and environmental consulting firms. It reveals some of the falsehoods still practiced by many firm leaders. Mark also examines the right way to produce an effective business plan—who to invite to the business plan retreat, what five essential ingredients to include in the plan, how to communicate the plan, and more.

Lesson 2: Marketing for a Growing Firm
Your firm is growing. You’re struggling to keep up with the pace. So, you may ask, "Why do I need to worry about marketing when all of this business is pouring in?" You’ll get your answer in this second lesson. It won’t take you long to catch on to Mark’s enthusiasm for marketing—and why establishing a marketing process is critical, even for growing firms.

This second lesson debunks the marketing myths that are prevalent in the A/E/P & environmental consulting business, and discusses the importance of establishing your firm as an expert in a particular market sector. Mark shows you the secrets of process marketing and offers specific ways to improve your marketing efforts—including your brochures, newsletters, original research, and more.

Lesson 3: Recruiting for a Growing Firm
Most growing firms are having difficulty hiring the right people to keep up with the present workload. And with so many firms looking to add staff, and the talent pool getting smaller by the day, the challenge of hiring first-rate professionals is a make or break subject.

In this lesson, Mark shares his experience with hiring hundreds of professionals and support staff in A/E/P and environmental firms. He shows you what resources to use to find qualified candidates, how to make effective offers, and ways to establish an ongoing recruiting program that works.

Lesson 4: Project Management for a Growing Firm
Owners and top managers from many different A/E/P and environmental firms all share one thing in common—they’re not happy with project management in their firms. Like you, they’re all looking for ways to fine-tune their project management.

No firm has a utopian project management system—one where every single job goes exactly the way it’s supposed to in every way. But there are firms out there that do a better job managing projects than the rest. In lesson four, Mark tells you what these firms are doing to manage their projects effectively and shows you how to implement the ideas at your own firm.

Lesson 5: Optimizing Cash Flow & Organization Structure for a Growing Firm
Every owner in an A/E/P or environmental firm knows you can make all the paper profits you want, but unless you turn those profits into bank deposits, you have nothing. In the first section of this lesson, Mark shares proven methods to help your cash flow—methods used by clients with average collection periods in the high 40-day to low 50-day range.

In the next section, Mark advises firm leaders to get away from the matrix structure—the predominant form of organization in the industry. It’s one where the PMs reside outside of discipline areas, and each project has a unique team assembled for it. Sounds great in theory, but doesn’t work well in practice, unless you are a mega-firm that can put a team together for a job that will last eight years! Watch this lesson to find out how you can implement a different structure—one that will keep people happier and more productive.

Lesson 6: Capitalizing and More for a Growing Firm
In spite of the increased interest and activity in mergers and acquisitions, internal ownership transition is still the most common way for existing owners of A/E and environmental consulting firms to cash out. That being said, many flaws still exist in the ownership plans used by firms in this industry. Whether it’s the quality of their advisors or that, as an industry, we’re not very creative financially, the bottom line is the same: many growing firms need to revisit their internal ownership transition plans.

In the final lesson of this video seminar, Mark explores some of the myths and realities surrounding ownership transition, and offers advice on selling stock to employees, what to include in your buy-sell agreement, and more. He also addresses some of the other common challenges faced by growing firms, such as mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, and managing issues.

So if you’re a top manager in a fast-growing firm— and you sometimes feel more like the firm is running you— then Managing a Growing Firm: A Video Seminar for A/E/P & Environmental Consulting Firms is for you!

Contents

Disk 1

Lesson 1 – Business Planning for a Growing Firm

• Why I love being a part of this business
• What’s wrong with management thinking in our industry?
• What’s unique about growing firms?
• Why grow?
• What’s wrong with the way we do planning in this industry?
• How to do a decent business plan
• Conducting the business plan retreat
• Making people accountable
• Communicating the plan
• Business Planning Q&A

Lesson 2 – Marketing for a Growing Firm

• Why marketing is so critical
• Three types of marketing experts
• Four failed strategies every firm uses
• Process marketing
• Positioning/creating a brand name for your firm
• Ten steps to take to get clients calling you
• Better brochures
• Newsletters
• Conducting original research
• Numbers to track to tell how you are doing marketing-wise
• Marketing Q&A

Lesson 3 – Recruiting for a Growing Firm

• What’s wrong with the way we recruit in this industry?
• Supply-side human resources management
• Recruiting is selling
• Managing the hiring process
• Ten steps to take to improve recruiting effectiveness
• Numbers to track to tell how you are doing recruitment-wise
• Recruiting Q&A

Disk 2

Lesson 4 – Project Management for a Growing Firm

• What’s wrong with how we manage projects in this industry?
• 12 steps to take to improve project management effectiveness
• Numbers to track to tell how you are doing PM-wise
• Project Management Q&A

Lesson 5 – Optimizing Cash Flow & Organization Structure for a Growing Firm

• Why we have cash flow problems in this industry
• Billing—Who does what?
• Cashflow forecasting
• Collection procedures
• What’s wrong with the matrix
• Why a market sector structure?
• The role of the Board of Directors
• Why executive committees fail
• Other positions that don’t work
• Implementing a different structure
• Cash Flow and Organization Structure Q&A

Lesson 6 – Capitalizing and More for a Growing Firm

• What’s wrong with the way we handle internal transition in this industry?
• Selling stock to your employees
• Four provisions to include in your buy-sell agreement
• Ownership versus management
• Outside investors
• Managing a network of offices
• Rewarding your people
• Mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures
• Capitalizing and more Q&A