Michael Grandjean is the owner of GranCor Enterprises and an Argonaut from Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Being distinctly average at school I soon reached what I see as easy to reach peaks through early successes. At eighteen years old I was traveling the world with the Marine Corps, and really enjoying all that it had to offer. Coming back to the US I took small-time jobs washing tables while sleeping on friends’ couches, happy to cruise on less than 10K USD per annum. It sat OK for a while until my father lent me money for a something I wanted to do: With no business knowledge, sense or idea I bought a trailer, equipment and tools to set up a company from scratch. I took the plunge. Thirty days later I was able to pay my father back.
It hit hard, fast, and was an incredibly difficult time: suddenly I was facing a super high payroll, I really struggled, fought for the company, but failed. So the cycle of 18 hr. workdays, of seeing endless clients, clearing mountains of paperwork, writing proposals – started again. But even after years of experience, I finally learnt there are situations where you need support. Where you need to be able to reach out and find a hand that’s always ready to help and, not only that, but that it is OK to seek that hand, to ask for help.
It’s from this experience, to know that you need help, that I learned how important support for continuous entrepreneurial growth is. I thought I’d seen it all, could handle anything, but on discovering that this wasn’t actually the reality of my situation I decided to act. This is why I joined a very smart group of exceptionally qualified entrepreneurs based within the Argonauts’ Trust Circle. Now I understand why – as an individual – it can be so tough, why the troughs can be so deep, and the peaks not as high as they could, because as a Circle we are more successful through less failure. We guide and learn from each other in complete confidentiality, all the while facilitated by an experienced facilitator who is, themselves, an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur.
Within my Argonauts’ Trust Circle I have total, unfettered access to seven other entrepreneurs who, with the same kind of experiences, are facing very similar challenges.
Filling out a detailed template in advance you are forced to think about how your business has performed since you last met six weeks ago, and how that is impacting the future of your company and what we, as a Circle, can do about it.
I have learned that there is no more valuable a thing than sitting regularly together with a group of peers that know how to listen, communicate experience, and lead you to your own solutions.”
After sharing, you receive feedback from your Circle. No one dictates a course of action, or demands that you do it this way. Only a mandate that solutions are offered are brought to the fore and then provided as possibilities. It’s a blueprint, an idea on which to build your solutions, a guide with which to steer yourself though your problems, challenges and difficulties.
Finding the right niche for our company cost us years of opportunity. There was simply no “ready-prepared”, on hand tool that we could use as a resource to help us find a way through our situation. Until now that is, because what I have learned is that there is no more valuable a thing than sitting regularly together with a group of experts that know how to listen, communicate experience, and lead you to your own solutions.
This now possible for me through the means of being in a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who not only understand you, but who know you, the Circle delivers solutions for your situation. The Argonauts’ Trust Circle is a tool to live by, for life. Always available, always growing, always ready to deliver solutions for the problems we all face in business.
In all honesty the Argonauts terrified me when they first called me up on my biggest challenge, but not only did they make it easy to open up and be totally frank, they helped me to solve the problems I thought were mine alone. They also introduced me to some incredible people who are now two of my most valued team members, yet another invaluable confidence building experience.
Before I joined my Trust Circle I had one strategy consultant and one operations expert on demand. I was hiring both of them at least six-days a month, which came to $15,000 per annum. Now I sit with my Circle 2.5 hours every month and pay $350 a month. Finally, now, I am in place where I know I am equal to the sum of its parts, a community that will always be on my side for me, as I am for them. With the Trust Circle, there’s simply nothing like it for concept, value and support.
– Michael Grandjean
“More than anything else it is the fact that I am now finally on a journey that fulfills me. Not that it is complete, or over, but that I am developing the direction I want to.”
“Change. It’s here. Is has to be. This is the essence of The Argonauts: To be change, to make change: on an individual, societal and global scale. To change the present, so as to shape a new future.”