Steve Kohnke is the CEO of Denver Business Coach and has helped hundreds of owners build value and scale since 2011. Steven has been part of the team since 2016 and works with business owners implement the right processes and systems to achieve their full potential and create self-sustaining companies.
Business Challenges
At Denver Business Coach, their philosophy is “methodology agnostic,” meaning there is no one-size-fits-all system or process for improving all businesses. Instead, Steven takes bits and pieces of various methodologies to provide owners with a customized solution to their unique problems.
As such, they’ve invested in a large suite of successful methodologies and systems, including Prosci, EOS, Story Brand and Profit First. With a robust suite of tools to offer owners, Steve often found himself overwhelmed. Because each methodology was so valuable, he didn’t know where to start with each client. He needed a powerful diagnostic tool to identify an owner’s shortcomings so he could recommend the correct next course of action.
Steve’s wish list was simple. He needed a diagnostic tool that identified an owner’s pain to help prescribe the right solution. It needed to be fast and easy to use, so that even the busiest owners would be inclined to do it. Lastly, whatever system he chose, it needed to integrate with his existing toolkit of services.
Why Value Builder?
Steve was drawn to Value Builder for a very specific tool, its flagship Discovery Questionnaire called the Value Builder Score. This 34-question online questionnaire is used by thousands of advisors worldwide to benchmark an owner on the 8 Key Drivers of Company Value. Eight unique attributes that are important to acquirers. Owners who complete the questionnaire receive their score out of 100, as well as their score on each of the individual drivers. It only takes the owner 14 minutes to complete.
The questionnaire helped Steven benchmark an owner’s strengths and weaknesses, but he later had a revelation when diving into each driver. Each of the Eight Key Drivers perfectly match up with a different methodology in his toolkit. For example, if a business owner scored low on a driver called Hub & Spoke, it meant that the business was too reliant on them. This diagnosis would lead Steven to offer them his EOS coaching service. If an owner scored low on a driver called Financial Performance, he would offer his Profit First coaching service.
When describing how Value Builder was the perfect complement to their existing services, Steve said, “Value Builder put a framework to what they were already trying to do.” It quickly became the starting point for every single client engagement. Steven and his team created a simple mapping from each driver acting as the diagnosis, to the methodology they would deploy and prescribe as the solution.
Furthermore, Steven states, the Value Builder Score provides “benchmarking data and helps them understand where these businesses are struggling from an empirical standpoint.” Rather than gut or feel, Steven can back his coaching advice with numbers.
While each client will ultimately have a unique engagement with him, they all follow the same process. They first complete their Value Builder Score, Steven first assesses where they need the most help, then deploys the most appropriate methodology.
With many clients, Steven asks them to complete their Value Builder Score a second time months or years later to measure their overall improvement within each driver. This exercise gives Steven the opportunity to sell new services, extending client lifecycles and increasing revenue per client.
Results
Explaining it’s impact, Steven said, “We added Value Builder in 2018 and [it] has since become the backbone of our practice. Value Builder perfectly complements the other tools, methodologies, and personal experiences we use when helping a business thrive without its owner.”
Value Builder helped Denver Business Coach increase revenue per client by 3X. Having owners complete their Value Builder Score gives Steven the ability – and the credibility – to sell owners on their full suite of coaching services. By repeating the questionnaire with clients multiple times, not only are they able to demonstrate their ROI with numbers, it helps them sell owners to improve other parts of their business. With Value Builder, Steven is now backed by a reliable tool for diagnosing an owner’s pain and prescribing the right solution.
