By Shari Valenta
Create Dynamic Results, LLC
It’s midnight on New Year’s Eve and confetti pours down, as revelers cheer and hug. It’s a happy occasion, and also one for retrospection. You may ask yourself, “What did I achieve in the past year?” or members of your team may think, “What is our major focus for next year?” and “How can we achieve the results we want?”
With the help of enthusiastic Christina Moorcroft, the owner of Create Dynamic Results, LLC, a franchise of Best Year Yet, and program leader Wendy Eccher, a business is well on its way to greater success.
These are just a few questions from both the individual and business workshops offered by Create Dynamic Results, LLC, using the Best Year Yet® system. Best Year Yet, at www.bestyearyet.com, is a proven, international program (found in 20 states and 13 countries) that has been around for 25 years. Some big-name clients include the Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft and Nextel.
Best Year Yet is a yearlong planning and implementation process for actually achieving previously unattainable levels of business performance. It’s the only system that begins with the planning session, but then facilitates and monitors progress throughout the full year, holding people accountable for organizational goals.
Just thinking about planning for a whole year brings about an immense feeling of fatigue and hopelessness. With the help of assured and enthusiastic Christina Moorcroft and program leader Wendy Eccher, a business is well on its way to greater success. Moorcroft is the owner of Create Dynamic Results, a franchise of Best Year Yet, based in Fort Collins.
“We offer our program primarily to management teams and to businesses,” explained Moorcroft. “Our vision is to generate success and wealth for our clients using expertise, humor and creativity.”
Moorcroft’s business helps organizations of all sizes around the country achieve success of monthly and yearly goals through use of workshops, audiotapes and a book. In addition, individual coaching via phone or e-mail is also offered.
Eccher says she doesn’t tell her clients what to do.
“Our client is an expert at what they do; that’s why they’re doing it,” said Eccher. “So in a lot of ways we’re not like a traditional consultant that comes in and says, ‘You’re doing this right,’ and ‘You’re doing that wrong.’ Instead, we’re there to help create the goals of what they want to achieve over the next year and coach them on a monthly basis. Before each monthly meeting, the client scores how well they have done with their monthly goals before going into that meeting. It keeps them very focused.”
Individuals interested in achieving personal goals are welcome to participate in the program as well. Moorcroft often works one-on-one with sole proprietors to help their business grow.
“I believe in having the individual Best Year Yet coaching included in the yearlong commitment a business makes, because the individuals become familiar with the process beforehand, and secondly, they have their individual plan, which very well may contain some personal professional goal,” said Moorcroft wholeheartedly. “But it also covers a more holistic aspect; we’re bringing balance to their lives.”
Often people are skeptical of programs like these and think trained professionals aren’t necessary to “nag” them to get things done. One might wonder, ‘Who has really benefited from this program?’ A major success story is posted on the Best Year Yet website in which a blind climber named Eric Weihenmayer and his team used the program to successfully climb Mount Everest in 2001. At base camp before the climb, they went through the Best Year Yet team workshop, establishing roles and the goals for the team, and they held meetings throughout the expedition. In doing so, they made it to the summit of the world’s highest mountain; Weihenmayer was the first blind climber ever to do so. According to Weihenmayer, the most helpful thing was having a strategy in order to focus and not get lost in individual hidden agendas.
“One of the things that came out of it that was most important was a clear strategy on what we wanted to do,” said Michael O’Donnell, Best Year Yet coach. “The strategy was based on a plan, and the plan was based on all the goals and what people wanted. It’s very simple and concise; it’s everything you need for success.”
Climbing Mount Everest seems like an ambitious goal for those who would be happy if they could just increase their profit margin or change occupations. In another inspirational study, a senior account executive of a consulting group found he was surprised at the multitude of things he accomplished.
“In twelve weeks, I accomplished goals that have been lying around for 18 years,” he said. “I bought the car I’ve always wanted, I was appointed to political office and threw my hat in the ring for another one, I bought two investment properties and I switched jobs. All I can say is ‘Wow.’ I’m not only clear about what’s important in my life… I’m systematically going after it and making it real.”
Moorcroft believes in this program so deeply she’s willing to guarantee it.
“I don’t think I’m putting myself out on a limb to say that I would make a full money-back guarantee if a business doesn’t achieve dynamic results,” she said.
If you’re wondering what the backgrounds are of the motivational artists behind the program, and if they’re qualified to really push for greater business and professional results, wonder no further.
“I’m a certified management accountant with an MBA,” said Moorcroft. “I taught accounting and management for 18 years at Luther College in Iowa. I’ve done a lot of international accounting consulting, in the areas of health care, manufacturing and nonprofit organizations.”
Eccher has her Master of Science degree in adult education, specializing in human resource management. She has extensive experience in corporate America as a manager and has taught management and career development college courses.
Moorcroft got involved in teaching businesses how to excel through Jinny Ditzler, the founder of this goal- and value-based philosophy.
“I started doing the individual Best Year Yet and it had a huge impact on my life. Jinny Ditzler was my coach,” she said. “It was life-transforming. I feel like I manage my life so much better and I feel I can accomplish more and can get things done… So much depends on accountability.”
According to Moorcroft, the price of the program is tailored to the needs of the individual business and also depends on the size of the organization.
“It’s really fashioned around the needs of the client. Any client will find it affordable and the benefits would far exceed the cost,” said Moorcroft.
How time-consuming is this program? For businesses, it takes a meeting once a month for two hours plus a one- to two-day preliminary workshop called “The Kickoff.” There’s additional contact if more coaching is needed, which is handled by e-mail, or phone calls.
Create Dynamic Results has a firm and swift answer when asked if there are any failures in this program: “Absolutely not!”
For more information, call 970-266-1150 or visit [http://www.createdynamicresults.com/].
Mad Greens
Mad Greens is a new eatery located in Centennial at Yosemite Park.
It’s January and for many of us, the beginning of a New Year is a time to start slimming down after the holidays. This means endless trips to the grocery store for fresh vegetables, and who has time for that, right? Mad Greens, a new salad restaurant in Centennial, located at Yosemite Park, may be the answer. The concept stems from a typical New York salad restaurant.
“The owners realized that this type of concept was missing in Colorado,” said Tracy Aiello, public relations representative. “There are a lot of places like this in New York. It’s modeled after a particular restaurant called ‘Tossed.’ You make your own salad, but it’s not a salad bar. All the ingredients are fresh and haven’t been sitting behind a sneeze guard for 12 hours.”
The restaurant, located on the northeast corner of County Line Road and Yosemite, has a very similar ambience to a Chipolte restaurant. There’s an array of prepared choices to custom build a meal, polished steel hanging artfully from the walls and blonde wood chairs. Like many modern restaurants, there are plans to have outside seating that will accommodate 42 people. The difference is the menu is not as simple, so you may have to wait a little longer for lunch while an indecisive type contemplates whether they want sunflower seeds or toasted almonds on their “Crazy Ivan.”
On the menu, pita folds are an option, but mad greens are the main attraction. All salads, which range anywhere from six to eight dollars, but generally cost more when adding meat, are named after “mad” characters of the past. One of them is called the “Ernest Hemingway.” It’s a spinach salad with toasted almonds, mandarin oranges, red onion and cucumbers topped off with a spicy yogurt dressing. There’s an option of marinated steak as an add-in. Or, a custom salad can be built with different types of lettuce and dressings, about 20 assorted vegetables to choose from. Of course, no salad is complete without cheese.
The men behind the roughage are Marley Hodgson and Dan Long. Just listening to the exchange between the two owners is akin to watching Abbott and Costello. The good-natured Hodgson’s humor may be responsible for some of the creative names of salads. Long, a shy, quiet, former Wall Street Trader turned chef, is the straight man in this salad comedy. The two have literally known each other since their “salad days.”
“Dan and Marley have known each other, I think, from kindergarten all the way up to college,” said Aiello. “They grew up together in New York, went to Colorado College and went back to New York where Dan went to the Institute of Culinary Education.”
Long also has experience working at Veritas, the very sleek and expensive three-star restaurant on 20th street in New York, and also at ONE CPS, the upscale 5th Avenue Plaza Hotel’s restaurant.
Hodgson has a great deal of culinary background as well.
“Marley has been in the business his whole life,” remarked Aiello. “He worked for one of John Hickenlooper’s breweries down in Colorado Springs where he went to Colorado College. Later, he ran a brewery out in Connecticut for a couple of years, and he also worked with Barolo Grill. His mother and father own the Smith Fork Ranch in Crawford, Colorado, which was recently written up in ‘Food & Wine Magazine.'”
The entrepreneurs say they chose this area due to its high traffic; nearly 130,000 cars pass through this shopping Mecca daily. Another asset is joining unique neighboring Colorado chains Peaberry Coffee and Illegal Pete’s, which are both located in Yosemite Park.
Marley Hodgson and Dan Long, the owners of Mad Greens, have known each other since their “salad days” of growing up in New York.
If Mad Greens in Centennial germinates successfully, Hodgson and Long are hoping to plant up to five more mad locations in the metro area over the next three years.
Mad Greens is located at 8283 S. Akron Street, across the street from Park Meadows Mall. Restaurant hours are from 11 a.m. – 9 p.m.
For more information, call 303-355-2499 or visit [http://www.madgreens.com/].