lørdag den 28. august 2021

The CORSIA Timeline

CORSIA, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, addresses the increase in total CO2 emissions from international aviation above 2020 levels.

The corsia timeline outlines the mandate which was adopted at the 39th session of the ICAO Assembly in 2016.

CORSIA’s obligations have already started. As of January 1, 2019, all carriers must report their CO2 emissions on an annual basis.

The aviation industry is committed to technology, operational, and infrastructure advances to continue to reduce the sector’s carbon emissions. Offsetting is not intended to replace these efforts. Nor would the CORSIA make fuel efficiency any less of a day-to-day priority.

It is forecast that CORSIA will mitigate around 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 and generate over USD 40 billion in climate finance between 2021 and 2035. Learn more about the CORSIA timeline today.

https://www.iata.org/policy/environment/Pages/corsia.aspx

Contact Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels, LLC to learn more about our sustainable, cellulosic, commercial scale, ASTM compliant designer aviation biofuel in Washington State, using a voluminous supply of woody biomass from local feedstock suppliers.

fredag den 27. august 2021

NWABF Selects Black and Veatch as its EPC of Record For Aviation BioFuel Initiatives

Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels (NWABF), known for its expertise to produce sustainable jet fuel capacity for the financial marketplace and lender communities, announced that it has selected Black & Veatch, the global engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm as its EPC of record for its sustainable aviation fuel project. Black & Veatch is also being hired to complete the FEL2 and Front-end Engineering and Design Study, (“FEED”), for the Project, prior to the Construction phase. During the FEED, B&V will assemble the Technologies to process up to 3,000 dry tons per day of woody biomass into approximately sixty million, (60,000,000) gallons of Sustainable Aviation Fuel annually.

“We are excited to move forward with Black & Veatch as we progress on our sustainable aviation fuel project,” says Dave Smoot, Manager of Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels. “Black & Veatch is a well-respected company with great experience for these types of projects, and we look forward to combining our expertise with theirs on our sustainable aviation fuel project.”

Black & Veatch will be an integral part of the project, working as the technology and engineering quarterback to vet and validate all milestones and benchmarks for productivity, efficiency and scalability in the aviation biofuel project.

“We are excited to work with Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels throughout the entire project,” said Gary Martin, Associate Vice President, Black & Veatch. “As one of the most diversified contractors in the industry, Black & Veatch offers seamless integration of its project engineering, design, procurement, and construction teams, Black & Veatch is uniquely positioned to offer NWABF a thorough and comprehensive project approach on the sustainable aviation fuel project.”

Project Background

NWABF will be the primary provider of sustainable aviation fuel to help Delta Air Lines become carbon neutral in the years ahead. The sustainable aviation fuel Offtake Agreement and partnership with Delta Air Lines involved the airline investing into NWABF’s Project in 2019 to develop sustainable aviation fuel, (SAF), as well as making carbon offsets.

For more information on the NWABF aviation biofuel project, please contact us at Chris Whitworth, Project General Manager Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels, LLC at www.nwabiofuels.com

Bio Jet Fuel Initiative Under Development for Major Airline

The next step in the race to find renewable energy sources to power our global economy is sustainable aviation fuel, and one company has taken a big first leap toward that goal: Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels, LLC (NWABF). In a recently announced $2 million partnership with a major airline, NWABF is currently working on Phase 1 of a feasibility study to create that bio jet fuel from wood residue deposits and wood slash on forest floors known as woody biomass.

Providing Solutions for Air Lines with West Coast Operations

With the Phase 1 “Advanced Planning Study” of a bio jet fuel production facility underway, NWABF is already planning for a Phase 2 Front-end Engineering and Design Study that will allow the Project’s world-class Engineering and Construction Partner to design and construct the renewable bio jet fuel facility in Washington State. First deliveries are planned for the end of 2023 for use of the renewable jet fuel in this airline’s operations up and down the West Coast.

This single project will help with the goal of reducing this airline’s carbon footprint and positively impact the environment by reducing wood residuals in forests that cause fire hazards and prevent the growth of future trees.

A Growing Trend

Airlines today are interested in sustainable aviation fuels.  Beginning in 2021, airlines will be required to track their carbon footprints on international flights in advance of meeting certain obligations of a global mandate. Failure to achieve reductions in airline carbon emissions through the use of renewable fuels may result in fines and penalties from a multitude of countries.

Dave Smoot, Head of Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels, LLC said, “All of the woody biomass we utilize in our operations will be traceable, creating the pathways of a qualified renewal feedstock.  With qualified feedstock, supported by a recently completed $40 million 5-year study from NARA (Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance), the Project can meet the Federal Government’s sustainable aviation fuel standards and ASTM’s International fuel standards.  This will enable airlines flying internationally to meet new carbon reduction standards worldwide.”

The need for renewable fuel sources for airlines certainly won’t be resolved in the near future, but a project like Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels LLC is developing will certainly go a long way to meet that need for the airline industry now and well into the future.

To learn more about Northwest Advanced Bio-Fuels, LLC visit our website today.

torsdag den 26. august 2021

Do You Want to Learn CEO Succession Planning Best Practices?

Did you know the ideal timeline for succession planning is 5 years? It is possible though for the unexpected to happen and if/when it does, a ceo succession planning best practices is to have a game plan i.e. a succession plan all lined up and ready to go to ensure continued success with your business.

Take a look at the CEO Succession Planning timeline here:

THE SUSTAINING PHASE

Begin this phase 2-3 years in advance. The executives are preparing to thrive under the new leadership; Right Mindset, Future Outlook, Organization's Sustainability, Updated Strategic Plan, Executive Team Assessment, and Internal Team Candidates.

THE TRANSITIONING PHASE

Begin this phase 6-12 months before the leadership transition and consider overlapping with the Sustaining Phase. The organization embarks on the executive search process for the successors that may include board members, management team, and executives. Extensive work is done with transition planning.

THE ONBOARDING & SUPPORT PHASE

The heavy lifting is completed within the first 3-4 months of this phase but the hand-off process continues over a 6-12 month period. The board and senior management team access and adjust to the new leader’s management style and leadership role.

CONTINUED SUCCESS PHASE

The succession preparation and planning process should begin as early as possible. However, there are cases when you do not have the luxury of 4-5 years to plan. In these cases, it is best to have a contingent succession plan in place in the event that an emergency arises.

Value Growth Partners is here to assist with all of your succession planning needs. Request a 15-minute consultation with Value Growth Partners now to set up your CEO Succession Planning.

Are You Planning to Sell a Business? Avoid These Traps

It has been said that some business owners have been known to refer to due diligence as “the entrepreneur’s proctology exam.” While this is a crude analogy, it is a good representation of what it feels like when a stranger pokes, prods, and looks inside every inch of your business. 

Most professional acquirers will have a checklist of questions they need to be answered if they’re considering buying your company. They’ll want answers to questions like:

  • Do you have consistent, signed, up-to-date contracts with your customers and employees?
  • Are your ideas, products and processes protected by patent or trademark?
  • What are the loan covenants on your credit agreements?
  • How are your receivables? Do you have any late payers or deadbeat customers?
  • Do you have any litigation pending?

In addition to these objective questions, they’ll also try to get a subjective sense of your business. In particular, they will try to determine just how integral you are personally to the success of your business. 

Subjectively assessing how dependent the business is on you requires the buyer to do some investigative work. It’s more art than science and often requires a potential buyer to use a number of tricks of the trade, such as:

#1: Juggling calendars

By asking to make a last-minute change to your meeting time, an acquirer gets clues as to how involved you are personally in serving customers. If you can’t accommodate the change request, the acquirer may probe to find out why and try to determine what part of the business is so dependent on you that you have to be there.

#2: Checking to see if your business is vision impaired

An acquirer may ask you to explain your vision for the business, which is a question you should be well prepared to answer. However, he or she may ask the same question of your employees and key managers. If your staff members offer inconsistent answers, the acquirer may take it as a sign that the future of the business is in your head.

#3: Asking your customers why they do business with you

A potential acquirer may ask to talk to some of your customers. They will expect you to select your most passionate and loyal customers and, therefore, will expect to hear good things. However, the customers may be asked a question like ‘Why do you do business with these guys?’ The acquirer is trying to figure out where your customers’ loyalties lie. If your customers answer by describing the benefits of your product, service or company in general, that’s good. If they respond by explaining how much they like you personally, that’s bad.

#4: Mystery shopping

Acquirers often conduct their first bit of research behind your back before you even know they are interested in buying your business. They may pose as a customer, visit your website, or come into your company to understand what it feels like to be one of your customers. Make sure the experience your company offers a stranger is tight and consistent, and try to avoid personally being involved in finding or serving brand-new customers. If any potential acquirers see you personally as the key to wooing new customers, they’ll be concerned business will dry up when you leave.

If you are thinking it is about time to sell a business Chicago, then it’s time to contact Value Growth Partners. We can help you build your business value before you sell a business. Call us for a no-fee initial consultation at 312-525-8382.

onsdag den 25. august 2021

5 Ways That Your Website Is Costing You New Business

Why Your Website is Costing You New Business

With technology growing at an alarming rate over the last decade, the Internet has been at the forefront of each and every single one of these advancements. Smart phones and tablet devices are now a part of everyday life. You can even use them to do your banking and to pay for items and services. Yes, technology is most certainly king and for that reason, if you want to stand any chance of succeeding within the business world, you need to embrace it and get with the times.

The size of your business is irrelevant. The simple fact of the matter is that if you want to stand any chance of succeeding, you will need to own a website for your business; and if you want your business to flourish in these new times, your website will need to do more than the days of old.  Your website will need to work for you. If your website is outdated, neglected, or just simply poorly designed, this could potentially be costing you thousands in lost revenue every single month.

If your business is suffering and you’re not quite sure why, maybe, just maybe, your website could be to blame? Here’s a look at 5 ways in which your website could potentially be costing you new business.
wireframe.jpg

Your site does NOT have a clear call to action

One of the best ways of actually getting what you want is to ask for it, and in simple terms, that is essentially exactly what a “call to action” is. On your site it is your job to encourage or even to direct your customers towards exactly what it is that you would like them to do once they’ve finished browsing your services and/or products.

Exactly what you require them to do will of course depend on what your business is all about.  Do you want them to sign up for a free trial? If so, a simple hyperlink linking to the “free trial” page with the text “Click here for your free trial” is all that you need to do. Do you want them to browse your service or products? If so, “Click here to browse our full range of products/services.” Place these clickable links strategically throughout your website, ensuring you don’t overwhelm the customers with too much text or content.

It’s essentially the same as using bait while fishing. A few carefully placed links with simple call to action text will bait customers into clicking them, seeing your products, seeing something they like the look of, and purchasing it  — while making you a tidy profit in return.

Your site layout sucks

On average, a new visitor to your website only spends six seconds evaluating whether to stay on your site or to click the back button and go somewhere else.  If your website’s most important information is buried under the fold, then there is a pretty good chance it’s not being seen. The layout of your website is arguably one of the most important factors to consider when creating a new site for your business. Although there are a number of “create your own” websites out there that cost little to nothing at all, it is advisable to always hire professional web designers to create and design your website for you.

You should think about what you want each page to say, and then look for ways of saying it using as minimal text as possible. Hey, if you have a talent for writing, that’s great – that’s what your blog is for.

Most of your potential customers will be visiting your website to browse your products and services, not to read long walls of text. They want to be able to find what they’re looking for as quickly and as easily as possible. Make sure you keep the text to a minimum, don’t try to include too many images, and make sure each page is well balanced.

Your design is outdated

A great website design can validate to consumers that your business is a legit, professional business that they want to patronage. It can either boost your reputation or turn potential consumers away.

If you’re trying to save money by doing it yourself, you could actually be losing potential customers, and in the end, losing money. By taking design into their own hands, small business owners cause themselves more headaches and risk by ending up with a poorly designed and planned out website.  Not surprisingly, 41% of small business owners who are unhappy with their current website say design/aesthetic is one of their top priorities.

Word of advice – do it right the first time. Hire a professional web design company and make sure your website looks contemporary, attractive, and allows customers to easily engage with your business.

You don’t have any social networking links

Social networking is now a part of everyday life, and whether you like it or not, it looks set to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

First of all, if you don’t have several social networking pages created for your business, you need to consider getting them set up ASAP. Social networking is ideal as it’s a great source of free, or very cheap marketing and advertising, millions upon millions of people use these pages, and it’s a great way of potentially drumming up more business.

After you create your first several social networking pages like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest etc., you will then need to ensure that you provide links to each page from your website. Linking to social networking pages is ideal because it allows you a way of keeping in touch with potential customers, and keeping them up to date with what’s going on. So let’s say you are having a sale.  People love sales, right? By promoting your sale through social networking sites you have a direct line of communication to people who are already interested in what you’re selling.

Your friends, fans and followers then see the amazing deal you’re offering and will likely take advantage of it because you’re speaking directly to your target audience. We spoke about calls to action earlier, and social networking links are prime examples of how effective a call to action can be. Simple text such as “Stay informed by liking us on Facebook” with a direct link to your Facebook page is all that is required, and it’s proven to be extremely effective.

Your site is not mobile-friendly

As mentioned previously, smart phones and tablet devices are now extremely common, with close to 68% of all US citizens actually owning at least one of these devices. For that reason, more and more people are using these devices to browse the web rather than laptops or computers. If your website isn’t mobile friendly you could be missing out on a lot of customers.  This is something that you should address as soon as possible!

Websites that are not user friendly show up incredibly small on the screens of smart phones, forcing the user to have to enlarge the text and to then scroll left, right, up, and down, every few sentences. If there are any clickable tabs or links on the page, they often inadvertently get clicked by accident, which is extremely frustrating for the user. Rather than spending 10 times as long as normal to simply read a few paragraphs, the user will instead search for a much simpler alternative, namely one of your competitors with a mobile friendly website.

Mobile friendly websites recognize when a user is browsing via a smart phone and will display the text in the perfect size for your device’s screen. This means you won’t need to enlarge the text, you won’t accidentally click on the wrong page, and you won’t need to scroll left and right every few words. You simply read the text and scroll down as you go. It’s simple but it works so much better than the non-friendly alternative.

Your contact information is hard to find

Studies and expert research have both found that including your contact information on every single page of your website is the most effective way of maximizing your potential to increase and boost your sales.

Many businesses make the mistake of placing their contact information solely on their ‘contact us’ page, or sometimes not at all. Visitors don’t want to navigate through different pages just to find a telephone number or email address.  Visitors want to be able to find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible.  You can easily eliminate any frustration by listing your business phone number, your operating hours and business email address at the top and bottom of every page.

For further benefit make sure to include links to your social networking pages with your contact information. The easier you are to get hold of, the more likely you will be to land yourself extra leads and sales. You get the results you want, and so does the customer who easily finds exactly what it is they’re looking for without wasting time by navigating through page after page.

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søndag den 22. august 2021

Where Does Success Or Failure Begin?

Let me demonstrate just how powerful the right mindset is when you are monetizing your business. The wrong sort of thinking could even make you broke and hungry. These examples will show you how a shift in thinking can make the difference between success and failure.

The Customers Dream

Do you have any idea how long customers normally have to wait to get their furniture delivered? The standard wait time in the industry is three to six weeks for in-stock merchandise. That’s just crazy!

Then along comes AMAZON! When you can shop at night and sometimes have it on your porch the very next day! In many industries before Amazon– that was UNHEARD OF!

When Amazon began, not a single store in town was delivering furniture to a customer’s home within a couple of days let alone overnight. That was just not the way things were done. Amazon wanted to deliver in three days or less. Do you think the business owners were scorned and warned by ALL the other furniture retailers who they asked for advice? Do you think manufacturers, vendor reps, and delivery companies scoffed and swore that it couldn’t be done? Of course!

Collectively, all those furniture stores in the area had the same mindset. Even though they had the same challenges as every other furniture store, Amazon believed that they could do it better and faster… and they DID! They had the mindset that something could be done – and they believed that they could profit from their platform of shopping! Those owners had the resolve of a bear looking for honey. They were not dissuaded from their plan by what the naysayers with a negative mindset advised.

NOW LET’S TALK RESULTS

We have personally experienced that their schedule was so booked, that we had to wait two to four weeks before they could take our order for “next day delivery”! Can you imagine how much of a competitive advantage this furniture company has over every other competitor in the marketplace? It’s huge!

Their positive mindset allowed them to grow beyond belief — and during a recession! However, this would have never happened if they didn’t change their mindset BEFORE they changed their business. This is exactly what you will have to do in order to grow your business to the next level.

Now, let’s take a look at the opposite side of that coin, when people continue to do business as usual, even though business as usual is slowly bringing one to the poorhouse! Purely by habit, some businesses cling to a stubborn or poor mindset – and it limits their business’s success.

Several years ago, there were several super-high end furniture stores within miles of each other in New England. These retailers were priced so high that only two percent of the population in the entire nation could afford their furniture. As the economy turned, those retailers simply refused to change their business model to reflect the change in the economy, because that’s the way they had always done business.

As a result, within six short months, ALL but one of those retailers went out of business.

But the furniture stores were not the only ones to suffer. Unfortunately, a poor mindset has also affected many other businesses and industries that could have easily weathered the storm of this economic shift with just a few simple changes to their businesses. However, they chose to ignore the changing marketplace and, consequently, went out of business.

What is needed to survive and even thrive in the New Economy? It starts with developing the right mindset.

Four Monetizing Mind Shift Pillars of Success:

1. Believe

There is still money in your local marketplace. Don’t buy into the negative mindset that people in your area of the world aren’t buying what you’re selling. Yes, they are! There are dozens of businesses right now in your industry or neck of the woods that are making unbelievable profits during tough times. The real questions are, “Will yours be one of these businesses? Do you believe that you can make changes in your business in order to cash in on your market during any economic condition – good or bad?”

2. Seek

Take advantage of the opportunities, no matter what is going on in the economy. Don’t hide your head in the sand. Every recession creates profit opportunities. In our furniture store example, the successful company recognized that consumers wanted furniture that could be delivered quickly. They wanted a good price, speed, and convenience. Ultimately, the key to your success will be determined by your ability to listen to your market. Then all you have to do is create a product or service to meet that need and you’ll instantly have increased profits.

3. Decide

Make decisions based on facts, not on news headlines. If you’re listening to talk radio, news reports, or another media source that’s pumping fear, doom, and gloom into your head, then turn it off right now! The majority of the media is in the business of selling fear, not hope. Fear paralyzes, it stops progress! Your focus should be on finding what your target market wants and then providing it to them, giving them great value. That’s it. Don’t let them drive you out of business by slowly breaking down your confidence and draining your will to fight.

4. Adjust

Change your business or go out of business. We’ll even go one step further to say, “Change your thinking, and change your business.” Every day we meet struggling business owners who simply refuse to do things differently. What they are currently doing is not working – they know this and yet they expect different results. According to Albert Einstein, this is the definition of insanity! You must be willing to change your staff, advertising, marketing, product and/or management, and anything and everything else that no longer works in order to survive during this new economy. That is the truth, plain and simple.

Ready to Monetize?

By the way, if you are ready to monetize your business more effectively and accelerate your business results, let’s connect. I know we can help.

click funnels certified consultant