New Growth Journeys: Help Clients Launch Products and Services!

As business advisors you want to help your clients the most in their growth journey.

There is a lot to take care of in a business but the real problem is not having the proper resources ready to use with clients.

So we created 8 different Growth Journeys where clients can expand their business and you can help them do so one tool at a time!

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In this video, Elizabeth shares more about the Growth Journeys and how to use them:

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The First Journey: Product Launch

Releasing a new product or service into either current markets or new markets can be daunting.

Clients need to think through the value, the pricing, and the right market or customer segment for this new offering.

We curated this package of Decision Sheets to help clients that are thinking about offering a new product or service:

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The Second Journey: Market Entry

Entering into a new market or customer segment is as exciting as it is overwhelming.

Clients need to think through this new market - how are they similar and/or different from their current customers, how should products and services be priced, and who is the competition in this new space?

We curated this package of Decision Sheets to help clients that are thinking about entering a new market or expanding to a new city/country:

New feature: Introducing GrowthWheel AI 30-60-90 Days Plan

With our new GrowthWheel AI, you can now generate 30-60-90 days Action Plans – automatically. It feels like magic!

As business advisors, you need to help clients make complete action plans to achieve their ambitions – and keep them accountable.

However, one thing is to think about what decisions and action items are needed. And a complete other, to write them down to create a plan with timelines. 

You can certainly come up with action items yourself, but with AI helping you, you can do it much faster. 

The real magic happens when you add your expertise by reviewing and refining the text the AI generates.

It works like this:

1. Create an ambition or a goal for a client.
2. Make it smart by making it specific, measurable, and on a timeline.
3. Click "Generate Action Plan" and see the first 7 suggestions.
4. Click again to get as many suggestions as you want
5. Refine by editing and deleting before you share with your client.

New update: Create Outcomes directly from Create Ambitions

Now Ambitions can be converted to Outcomes with a click, making it faster than ever before to keep track of the client’s journey and celebrate achievements.

As a business advisor, you want to track your client’s outcomes to see economic impact and take the opportunity to celebrate their progress.

That’s why you want to keep a list of outcomes whenever an ambition has been achieved.

With this recent update, you can now easily convert Ambitions into Outcomes:

• Click the three-dot button located to the right of the achieved ambition(s)

• Select the ‘Convert to Outcome’ option

• Proceed to provide any additional information in the Outcomes dialog

With this new feature, you can now track the client’s journey much faster, and at the same time help clients make a more convincing GrowthPlan to lenders showing the progress that has been made.

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In this short video, Elizabeth Binning will show you how to use this new update:

Update: Easier Client Tags with Suggestions

This month we improved the Client Tags feature so you now have suggestions and standardized tags 

As an advisor, you want to keep your clients organized and have an easy way to search or filter them.

However, tags can get messy if written in different ways.

That's why we made standardized tags and suggestions based on what other advisors in your organization have used.

With our recent update to the Client Tags feature, you will now be able to:

• See a list of tag suggestions from your organization – start typing and see all similar previously added tags.

• Select any tag from the suggestion list to ensure you and your team use the same tag.

• Add new tags anytime – now all of your team will see this as a suggested tag.

With standardized tags, you can now easily keep your clients organized, and help your colleagues do the same. 

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In this short video, Elizabeth Binning will show you how to use this new update:

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Update: Improved Design for Celebrating Client Outcomes!

This month we re-designed the Outcome feature so you – and your clients – have an even better experience when recording and celebrating small or big wins – or tracking economic impact.

As business advisors, you need to track all kinds of outcomes from your work with clients – and show them their progress. 

However, by not having a good place to keep track of them, this often gets overlooked, and you miss out on recognizing your client’s progress  

That's why it’s important to have a place where both the advisor and the client can systematically track outcomes on a quarterly basis.

With our recent update to the outcome feature, you will now be able to:

• Track both quantitative results and qualitative achievements

• Add economic impact like jobs created, business started, or sustained.

• Have a new and improved design of the page which works on your phone.

You can also download the outcome directly from the pop-up dialogue,  and as usual, decide to share it with your clients with one click on the share button!

With these updated features you can now easier track both general progress and economic impact from your work with clients and as a bonus the opportunity to remind clients of all the things they have achieved through the  year.

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In this short video, Elizabeth Binning will show you how to use this new update:

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Easily Track Client’s Outcomes
— With a re-designed pop-up, which can even be filled out on your phone!

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New CRM feature: Email with Meeting Minutes Generated Automatically!

This month we made it easier to send meeting minutes to clients after each meeting - automatically

You might have been asking yourself if there was an easy way to put items from the 30-60-90 Action Plan into an email with a summary of the meeting.

Well, now there is!

Take a look at any of the meetings you have recorded with a client and you will see a new section with an email template ready to send to the client with one click!

This email template will automatically populate meeting information like the meeting date, location, topic of discussion, purpose, next meeting, and — not the least – the decisions and actions added to the action plan and marked as shared with the client.

You will be able to edit the template before sending it to your client, so you can add a personal note. 

With this new update, it will be much easier to share meeting minutes with clients. And if you are using a back-end CRM system you can even send the mail bcc so your meeting minutes are automatically recorded in all the places you need.

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In this short video, you will see how to use this new feature:

2022 in Review: The Biggest New Features on GrowthWheel Online

2022 was yet another year with monthly software updates — as always based on requests from the community of GrowthWheel Certified Business Advisors.

In 2022 we released 9 new features and services in addition to various backend features in the software. Check them out below or see them in action on GrowthWheel Online.

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Release overview

Continued Education Program for Certified Advisors at no additional cost!

The GrowthWheel Continued Education (CE) program offers Certified Advisors - at no cost - to continue their professional development every month as often as they wish, and get proof of a higher skill level.

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“5-packs” - The Decision Sheets packed with all 5 tools under each Focus Area.

With this update you can now send more tools faster, so when the clients would like to focus on “Marketing”, “Financing” or “Employees”, you just send them the whole stack to work on with one click.

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Email all clients at once!

With this update you can now select multiple or all clients from your client’s list and choose the option in the bulk action menu ‘Send Email’. You’ll get a template with all the clients’ emails for you to just add the message and click send!

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Share clients with any other advisor from other organizations in your network!

From the team member's page of a Client Company, you can now quickly search by email, name or center and find any GrowthWheel Certified advisor from other centers who are part of your network.

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Register SBA 888 trainings with aggregated or participants data.

Advisors with SBA-funded agencies in the US are now able to register training sessions on GrowthWheel Online with all the required fields and validations to get an error-free report to upload on EDMIS NG.

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Export SBA 641 & 888 Forms – Error-free reports to upload on EDMIS NG.

SBA-funded agencies (US) can now submit error-free reports to upload on SBA’s EDMIS NG! Thanks to our upfront data validation and conditional logic, business advisors will have all data entered correctly into GrowthWheel Online.

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Easily add Quarterly or Monthly budgets!

Decide to plan budgets by quarter or now – with most of our recent update – by month! The easiest way to get the big picture of future financials with the specification the client needs.

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OnDemand Recorded Training to your clients on a co-branded LMS platform

Now you can at no cost offer  7 OnDemand Training for clients delivered effortlessly. Direct from GrowthWheel’s Elizabeth Binning to your clients!

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Migration to GrowthWheel CRM from current CRM systems.

With this technology you are now able
to switch to GrowthWheel as your new CRM-system with a fast and easy data migration.

We have designed a 7-step process to customize the platform, import data,
and get your team onboarded to start using GrowthWheel as a new CRM & Client Collaboration platform

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That's all for 2022! 

We will continue in 2023 with more updates from our community to help you be the best business advisors you can be.

New update: Option for Monthly Budgeting

Decide to plan budgets by quarter or – with our upcoming update – by months! The easiest way to get the big picture of future financials.

Now you – and your clients – can decide to switch to add budgets data by quarters or by months.

By having the option available on each page where you usually track budget data by quarter, you can now switch to a monthly tracking page, for an more detailed view of the future numbers.

The page will adjust table entry and graphs to a monthly view. Here you can enter numbers distributed differently than on the quarters view.

You can always go back to the quarter and get an overview of the numbers you added before, if that’s the case.

As always you can print these pages as a nice PDF file to share with the client.

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Easily Track Budgets by Month or by Quarters
— With Beautiful Autogenerated Graphs!

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New: OnDemand Training for Entrepreneurs

You can now offer – at no extra cost – OnDemand Training for clients. Delivered effortlessly. Direct from GrowthWheel to your clients on a co-branded eLearning platform with your logo

Each workshop covers the topics of one of the 20 GrowthWheel focus areas and when taking the course, participants will get access to the frameworks, decision sheets, and articles.

We will design a customized and co-branded e-learning platform for your center, with your logo, links to one or more pages on your website, and of course, with a custom intake form so you can gather the information about participants that you need.

It is your decision to charge - or not - for the GrowthWheel OnDemand Workshops (terms apply if you charge). And also, we can host your own recorded content for a small monthly fee.

It takes us less than seven days to get your new ondemand course platform up and running!

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Example of e-learning site
— With GrowthWheel and Own Content

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New: Easy migration from other CRMs!

It has never been so easy to change to GrowthWheel as your new CRM system! We have a migration team ready to help you with the transition from an old system to GrowthWheel.

Getting your historic data to be migrated into GrowthWheel is now an easy task. We have designed a 7-step process to get data and team ready and onboarded to start using GrowthWheel as a new CRM system, and Client Collaboration Platform 

You will have a stress-free migration process to GrowthWheel, usually in 2 weeks, and with full support from the GrowthWheel Migration Team.

New update: Share clients with advisors from other centers

Now you can easily share clients with any other advisor from other organizations in your network!

From the team member's page of a Client Company, you can quickly search by email, name or center and find any GrowthWheel Certified advisor from other centers who are part of your network.

You can revoke access to the advisors you have shared the clients with at any time!

This is an easy and simple way to share your clients with other colleagues that may not be part of your organization, but are working with this client too.

Contact us if you are working closely with other centers and are not already set up as a network.

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New update: Report Form 641 & 888 data to EDMIS NG (for SBA-funded Agencies in the US)

Don’t worry any more about long error reports when uploading your 641 and 888 forms. You can now make error-free reports from GrowthWheel Online to upload on EDMIS NG!

Thanks to our upfront data validation and conditional logic, business advisors will have all data entered correctly into GrowthWheel Online. By the time you are required to report your 641 or 888 forms data to the SBA, with just a few clicks you will be able to export an XML file without errors to upload on EDMIS NG.

This is the easiest and fastest way to get your reporting ready to avoid delays, extra work and stress on the team.

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New: GrowthWheel 888 Training Form – (For SBA-funded Agencies in the US)

We added the last piece for being EDMIS compatible, with the implementation of the 888 Training form on GrowthWheel Online!

Advisors are able to register training sessions on GrowthWheel Online with all the required fields and validations to get an error-free report to upload on EDMIS NG.

With this new feature you’ll be able to:

• Fill out a 888 form for all your training sessions to report back to SBA.

• Register participants by individual or aggregated registration.

• Make an export of an XML file with the 888 training sessions of your organization.

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Add Training Registration by Participants
— and easily add demographic information

Using this method you will add training participants with their demographic specifications and get calculated the aggregated data required for the reporting.

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Congratulations to the first GrowthWheel Certified Professional Advisors in 2022!

At the beginning of 2022 we launched a new ‘Continued Education Program’ for GrowthWheel Certified Business Advisors to continue their professional development at no additional cost.

Now we are happy to announce that the first advisors have completed their higher-level certification. Here they are:

Andrea Williams
Jamaica Business Development Corporation

Bc Clark
Nebrska Enterprise Fund

Safura Atan
StratNaviGO Consulting

Vern Richberg
Youngstown Business Incubator/Ohio MBAC

William Eric Linzey
19Seventeen, LLC

Eric Clock
Business Foundations Inc

Marcos Reyes
TruFund Financial Services

Edgardo Rodriguez
Meda/MBDA Minneapolis

Nicolas Mayerhoeffer
Arkansas Small Business and Technology Dev. Center

Steve Bob
​UIC CBA Entrepreneurial Support Program

Cleesia Martin
CUL-MSBRI

Carlos Mendoza
Oregon SBDC

Cheryl Tucker
Roanoke Regional SBDC

Jill Hathaway
Missouri SBDC at University of Missouri-Kansas City

Jeisy Castillo
East Colorado SBDC

Wescar Eliscar
KLAD Consulting & Services (KCS)

Lissette Galloza
Delaware SBDC

April Williams
Mississippi SBDC

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To obtain the new Professional Certification, advisors must complete three qualifying “Continued Education Workshops” (2 hours ea) along with an annual Re-certification (4 hours) and also have been a GrowthWheel Certified Advisors for at least a year. 

We are looking forward to welcoming more advisors in the months to come as GrowthWheel Certified Professional Advisors! Certified Advisors can sign up here:

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The Certified Professional Workshops successfully completed were the followings:

Workshop 1: Your Personal Advisory Style

Advisors learned:

• How to pick the right advisory style for different clients and situations

• How to use GrowthWheel tools as an advisor, coach or facilitator

• How to use coaching principles to empower clients to take ownership

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Workshop 2: Engaging Client Companies

Advisors learned:

• How to make clients realize their needs and the value of having an advisor

• How to engage both clients head and hearts

• How to overcome circumstances that stop your clients from engaging

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Workshop 3: Growth Plans with Impact

Advisors learned:

• How to help clients define their true ambitions and describe them

• How to make GrowthPlans as a better alternative to traditional business plans.

• How to track progress in ways that create value for both client and advisor

Update: Email multiple clients at once!

Share events, courses invites, tools and much more to multiple – or all  – clients with just a few clicks. The easiest way to communicate with all your clients.

Select multiple or all clients from your client company’s list and choose the option in the bulk action menu ‘Send Email’. This will generate a template with all the clients’ emails for you to just add the message and click send!

It is fast and easy to reach all your clients whenever you need – it will help you reduce time and efforts.

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