The instant my life changed forever (and yours can too)

It was just days after my father, Chet Holmes’ funeral.

Though that time is mostly a blur for me, it’s as if a snapshot of that moment is burnt into my memory.

I was seated in front of my computer and every surface of my room was filled with flowers. Flowers from my father’s funeral that everyone had so lovingly sent us.

Little did I know it, but I was about to discover something profound that would change the course and trajectory of my life for the next decade.

It came in the form of a Profit and Loss statement.

 

Back then, I was just a father’s daughter. A singer/songwriter hustling to release my fourth record.

Trying to tour the west coast and make music that would move people.

Luckily, this Profit and Loss Statement wasn’t completely lost on me because the theoretical concept was covered in my finance class in college.

 

My “Oh sh*t” moment started to dawn on me as I opened the document and continued to scroll across the P&L.

 

Looking at all the different companies my father ran, I started to realize I didn’t even know what half of them were.

The more I scrolled the more overwhelmed I became until I literally broke down into sobbing tears.

How could I, a mere singer, be responsible for this?

Ask me to write a poetic sonnet about the utter dread filling my every being. That I could have done.

But this. This was more than just some words that would get me through this one.

 

It would be years before the numbers ever started to make sense to me.

I hired CEOs, CTOs, CFOs, auditors, you name it. I tried them all.

 

Scrambling to make sense of this company I’d inherited, with zero succession plan.

Don’t get me wrong, my father built a MACHINE, he hadn’t been in the day to day of the business in years. His executive leadership team meeting had roughly 30 staff in it who would report to the rest of the company.

 

And yet of everyone there, it seemed my father was rather close to his chest about his numbers and didn’t give much foresight to others.

 

Flash forward to today, eight years later…

You’d better believe after living in that black hole of misinformation for years, I learned from my mistakes.

Now, at the start of every week, my team delivers dashboards of where we stand.

 

How many website visits, opt-ins, email open rates, click-throughs, purchases at every step of my customer journey, appointments set, contracts signed.

My fingers are so close to the pulse that if we skip a beat, I know. And I know quickly.

 

I can remember back in the day, sitting in meetings with our radio ad buyer.

We’d just spent another hundred thousand dollars that week and we were only able to guess at the exact results of that ad budget.

 

Don’t get me wrong, my father was an absolute GENIUS in advertising. His analytics I’m sure were better than 95% of companies out there. It was just a lack of technology that wasn’t present like it is today.

So. After several years of assisting businesses of all shapes and sizes, I’ve recognized that dashboards and data are something every executive wants, but very few actually have.

 

POP QUIZ: ANSWER ME THESE TWO QUESTIONS

  • How many leads do you generate on average a week?

  • What percentage of your leads turn into a sale?

The majority of executives will make up a number… Guessing what the answer to these two very basic questions is.

A very rare executive, we do find them every once in a while, but it is rare… Do they have their fingers on the real data of their business?

 

If 88% of executives hate their CRM system, you know it’s probably also true that those marvelous dashboards we all want aren’t giving the proper data.

However, that is only a symptom of the main issue that 92% of businesses don’t even have a sales process. So how can you track something you lack a system for?

The moral of this story comes from years of anguish.

 

My battle scars are deep and they’ve been painful.

But they have taught me one thing and my father said it best,

“A way to achieve goals quickly is to measure effectiveness every step of the way. If you are constantly measuring, then you can adjust.” Chet Holmes

This last year was one for the record books. A pandemic that swept the world and left us all questioning what will be the future.

66% of CEOs still feel that the “new norm” won’t be for another 2 years. Of that, 30% say that we will never go back to “normal.”

In such an absolutely volatile market, with so many changes sweeping businesses across every industry, it is absolutely mission-critical to know EXACTLY where we stand.

 

Forbes research reveals the best thing executives can do right now is be agile, flexible. But how can positive decisions be made without a clear, objective, look at the business and its numbers.

 

That’s why I made a tough decision. Something that my company had never done in its 30 years of business.

 

My father developed a system working with 60 of the Fortune 500 as clients, and refined it over decades of consulting work.

A process that still to this day, our consulting clients pay $36,000 for, to diagnose every area of their business, find the places where money is left on the table and biggest room for growth…

 

That whole process centers around a self-administered Opportunity Assessment review that is part of our secret sauce that has led to hundreds of millions, and billions of dollars in sales generated for clients.

Against the advice of some of my top executives, I’ve decided to make this available to everyone at a nominal amount.

 

Why am I practically giving away our coveted intellectual property?

Because I know what it’s like to feel like I’m running my business in the dark. Not knowing where to go, unsure where the profitable options are, unclear as to the next steps.

 

I don’t want you or anyone I’m associated with to have that feeling.

I want to make a difference for you, so you can be better armed to make this year the best in the history of your company.

 

Click here to get yours.

May it fuel you so that the latter half of this year you make one of the most memorable.

 

P.S. I have to say I did the diagnostic back in November and it completely shifted my strategic plan for this year and because of it we’ve had two record-breaking quarters.

Enjoy the Opportunity Assessment. May it bring light to those places of your business that are dark or in hiding.

 

With humbleness and gratitude,
Amanda Holmes

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