TL;DR: HaBO Village is an online membership site and community, that uses a holistic approach and methodology to equip, train, and encourage business leaders to create passion and provision companies.
People start businesses to live out their dreams of creating something bigger than themselves. They have dreams of finding freedom, independence and eventually making an impact on their family and the people around them – maybe even the whole world – but those dreams rarely come true.
Gallop polls, along with other data, reveal that 80% of all businesses fail by their fifth year and 97% fail by their tenth year. Gallup did another poll, first released in 2010, saying that 74% (that’s really 3 out of 4) of Americans are disengaged at work. They defined “disengaged” as sleep walking through the day. People are essentially just going through the motions at work.
Who is HaBO Village for?
HaBO Village exists to provide business leaders training, coaching and consulting to help reverse these two trends. We want business leaders to gain the knowledge, understanding, skill, and wisdom that will get them unstuck and create the kind of company they've dreamed of that’s both profitable and fulfilling – what we call a Passion and Provision company.
Whether you’re just starting your business leadership career or more advanced and looking to sharpen your skills; a manager of many employees or the single employee of your company, there's a need to walk with other leaders in community. This looks like working together to identify and fill in the gaps in the areas of Vision, Leadership, Management and Operations, Marketing and Sales, Finance, and Culture.
In doing so you’ll learn to be better communicators and problem solvers, so you can traverse the adverse winds of today's competitive and challenging world of business like a sailboat heading against the wind.
We become thinking partners to help you find a fresh perspective in your company.
We believe in doing life with others who have the same goals and dreams of building a company to improve the lives of themselves and their families; and who want to employ people who will reinforce the behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that help you fulfill the vision for your company.
This starts internally and then spreads outward from the leaders to your staff, vendors and customers, ultimately leaving a legacy and making the world a better place.
We believe that when small business leaders succeed their employees and their cities reap the benefits.
Where is HaBO Village?
HaBO Village is an online membership site and community developed for business leaders who want to grow a healthier, more profitable and more fulfilling company. But the history behind the name is the essence of HaBO Village.
Michael and Kathryn Redman, founders of HaBO Village, also own a marketing company named Half a Bubble Out, so HaBO is an acronym, a nickname really. “Village” comes from the idea of culture and community, two of our core values since starting our company more than 15 years ago.
Kathryn is from York, England which is a quintessential university town in the north of England with an ancient Roman wall still surrounding the city center. The wall is large enough to walk on, tall enough to hurt yourself if you fell off, and nearly 2.5 miles in circumference.
For centuries butchers, bakers, artists, stone masons, traders and a litany of other professions from around the world came to York and created a vibrant economic place where goods and ideas were created and shared, and the people led a safe and thriving life. Ignoring a few bad moments throughout history, they survived and thrive to this day. This wall has been protecting the legacy of small businesses for nearly two thousand years.
Similarly, today we live in a small university town in Northern California called Chico. Both Chico and York are in the middle of vast farmland and marked by a sense of community. Whether you go to the grocery store, downtown to shop or to the movies, you’re bound to see people you know and love. This builds a sense of being known and supported and when life throws you a curve ball it's really nice to not feel alone – because we know that none of us can really do it on our own.
It's this sense of community that is captured in the name, HaBO Village. We believe that when you have wise council and community around you on a regular basis you can actually learn more, faster, and ultimately see your company thrive.
What is a Passion and Provision Company?
We really have a heart to see business leaders grow and experience life to the fullest in the context of work. We believe that as they grow it will impact their entire life and those around them.
One of the things we’ve learned over the years that is deeply dear to our hearts, is a concept we call Passion and Provision. It means having a profitable, successful, company that is also a thriving and fulfilling place to work.
Passion
The kind of Passion we’re talking about comes from a sense of pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose.
It’s as simple – and as profound – as being happy and having meaning at the same time.
Think of it this way, when you have Passion it takes one person’s toil and turns it into labor. Toil is hard work that bears little to no fruit and leaves you wanting at the end of the day. Labor is hard work that produces amazing fruit and leaves you satisfied at the end of the day saying, “That was a good day’s work.” Toil is the work that just sucks the life out of you, while labor is the kind of work that gives you life.
Passion doesn’t take away the idea of working – it gives it meaning and purpose, so you believe that it’s worth every moment.
Provision
In the book Mastering Leadership, Bob Anderson says, “We all long for noble purpose AND we also need to pay the mortgage.”
As much as we need a sense of Passion in our lives, we also need to have Provision for our day-to-day financial needs and enough to build towards our dreams of tomorrow.
Provision is when the financials, balance sheet, and bottom line all look good and your company is growing.
But it’s easy to do that and hate your job. It’s easy to grow your bottom line and have a culture that sucks the life out of people.
You can easily get your bottom line to increase, but in order to have a thriving company you need to understand the reasoning behind why crafting a culture that makes people want to come to work is key.
What would it look like to begin to change the way you do things in order to get your employees to be more engaged at work?
How HaBO Village Can Help You
It’s not realistic to always be at the optimistic stage of growing your company, especially when it comes to looking at the financials. It’s important to mention that while you always want to thrive, sometimes surviving is a merit badge of its own.
It’s a step towards thriving. If you don’t survive, you can’t thrive. There will be times that pessimism sneaks in and takes hold. The challenge then is to find the joy in the midst of the struggle and remember why you had this vision to begin with.
As small business leaders ourselves and people who have to make payroll twice a month, we have personal experience with the pains, struggles and fears that business leaders go through. We’ve been there and continue to work through them.
Part of what we do with companies is walk alongside them and coach them, encourage them, and help them see their potential so they can see a point in life where they’re thriving.
A good friend of ours says, “Nobody gets to clarity alone.” It’s important to find someone outside, a trusted friend or adviser or an outside consulting company that you can trust to get the clarity needed for a breakthrough.
Around here it’s often said, “it’s difficult to read the label from inside of the bottle.” When you’re inside the bottle, which is where you are in your company, it’s really difficult to have perspective and to understand what’s happening from a bigger picture. Sometimes having somebody who’s outside the bottle can actually tell you what the label says, where your strengths are, where your struggles and weaknesses are, and help you see your company from a different perspective.
Sometimes you just need outside perspective from people who are further along in the journey and have learned a few things along the way. That’s when you can find a clear path for success... and, more importantly, have less stress, happier employees, and a thriving company you’re excited to lead and grow.
Having both Passion and Provision is a game changer in helping you build and lead a company filled with profit and joy that leads you to more freedom and greater impact.
If you're interested in being a part of HaBO Village, Join the Wait List today to be notified of our next launch!
