KVK Advisor Group
KVK Advisor Group illuminates pathways and provides solutions that raise your team's engagement and satisfaction, increase operational consistency, and ultimately enhance your brand and profitability. We want to help you do what we did at XIKAR - generate more enterprise value for yourself, your stakeholders and your heirs.
In 1996, I co-founded XIKAR, a boot-strapped startup, with my partner, Scott Almsberger. Over the next twenty-three years we built a world-wide brand leader of cigar accessories through persistent adherence to our Mission (Core Values and Strategic Focus), insights we received from our customers and teammates, and in reality, lessons we learned from our own mistakes.
Ultimately we experienced a clear path to success through corporate authenticity, our "why", from core values to value proposition, and through a customer-centric approach to all of our activities, our "how". Like an electrical grid, this path provides a conduit of values to all aspects of the organization, which in turn gives your customers, vendors and service providers a part of that authentic experience, a "why to buy". These pathways can make your stakeholders irrationally loyal to your brand!
I built this website to share my experience and research so that you may get a jump-start on the path to success that we ultimately found. If you seek an assessment of your organization, or would like to schedule a speech, seminar or workshop based on this material, please contact me via the link at the bottom of any page, and I'll gladly respond directly. Although I recommend going through the "conduit" in the page order of the website, I am also happy to address any of the individual topics. Good luck with your entrepreneurship!
Setting the stage for your culture and strategy, showing "true north"
How Core Values communicate your brand authenticity
How strategy communicates what, when, why and how to your team
Getting the right people into the right seats and on the right teams to deliver value to the customer and you
Hiring and training for right process
Management to objective and by exception
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
― Peter Drucker, Essential Drucker
To achieve your goals, you must start with a unique vision that answers a customer need, and then you must show your people the path to get there. This includes creating a cohesive culture by hiring incredible players who gel as a team through your great coaching and following a process that is unwavering in its quest to achieve your goals within the culture you have created.
How your team and processes create the most powerful brand message
Authenticity Marketing as the most powerful lever
Communications frequency and consistency to stay top-of-mind
Sales, a profession that involves an orientation toward the customers needs, not a type of personality, requires curiosity, caring and consistency. Everyone in an organization sells to somone; here are the tenets.
Successful innovation requires a solution that your customers value - because it solves their needs. This module walks you through the key components to get there: Empathy for your customer, Definition of their problem, Ideation of the Solution and execution of a plan from Prototype to Delivery.
Tools and key metrics to immediately improve the balance sheet and cash flows
How to right-size the balance sheet and keep more cash in your pocket
Managing the income statement for immediate and long-term impact
Quick Actions, Tools & Resources
Action Plans
(under construction)Calculators
- (under construction)
Finance: Tarsus, BUCS Analytics
People: Culture Index
Process: Marduk
Merchant card processing
Insurance: Key Man, Liability
Exit: Tarsus, BUCS Analytics