Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Xavier Lederer, CEO, and Founder of Ambrose Growth Business Coaching, located in Cheshire, CT, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

I am a business coach, and I love helping mid-market companies grow. I work with growth-minded CEOs who are frustrated by the way their business is often growing. They spend their days fighting fires and can’t focus on their most important priorities – typically a sign that their company has outgrown its management approach.

In short, they feel stuck in their growth. I know the feeling: I have been in their shoes when I was running a business that we turned around from sales decline to double-digit growth. As a business growth coach, my passion is to help leadership teams define their actionable growth strategy, create a culture of accountability, and become better leaders – so they can grow faster and with less pain.

Tell us about yourself

My core purpose is to help grow businesses that grow leaders who grow stronger communities.

Fifteen years ago, my dream was to run a chocolate company. When that happened a few years later, I thought that I had achieved the pinnacle of my career. Then I realized that my real job was not to run the business: it was to reinvent our management approach. We were an 80-people company run like a smaller business. This created frustration, a lack of accountability, and slow growth. Once we started upgrading our management systems and grew again, hope for a better future arose among the employees, and motivation came back - which helped fuel the next stages of growth.

That is why I do what I do: business growth is a virtuous circle that creates opportunities for people to develop themselves and better their lives.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

When I started working with this client, he had lost 60% of his business overnight due to Covid. We took what remained of his business, and, within a year, we more than doubled its size. We achieved this by establishing clear, actionable strategic goals and priorities, setting up a disciplined accountability system - that enabled the CEO to know what was going on without micro-managing his employees - and establishing a rhythm of personal development efforts for the leadership team.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

In the first years: keeping the faith when marketing/sales efforts don't yield much immediate result.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Surround yourself with people who can help you gain a different perspective in periods of hardship - often, these are not the same people as the ones who were around you in your prior life.
  2. Build the discipline to do what you have to do (e.g., sales and marketing activities) repeatedly, every single day, even when you don't see immediate results.
  3. Take the time to define why you do what you do (core purpose) and what you want to achieve in the long run. This will help you keep a clear course of action when you get overwhelmed with day-to-day activities.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.ambrosegrowth.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Xavier_Lederer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xavierlederer/


If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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