Feb. 5, 2025

This paid piece is sponsored by Startup Sioux Falls.

They first came together decades ago as fairly new small-business owners, each with a handful of successes but with some hurdles to overcome too.

The group of 10 CEOs was brought to the roundtable by Gene McGowan, whose company McGowan Capital had invested in many of them.

“I believed that coaching was the answer to helping grow as a business leader,” he said. “If you’re lacking in some ability, it’s not going to change your life to go to a seminar. What changes your life is participation and surrounding yourself with other like-minded people.”

For years, his group came together monthly for three hours each time. McGowan provided content that addressed a variety of business-related topics. And then, every participant had 15 to 20 minutes to update the group on priorities or issues being addressed in that person’s business.

One person each time sat in “the hot seat,” which meant up to an hour of reporting on the business and answering questions from the group.

“They had to report on their projections and where they needed help – people problems and everything else a small-business person runs into showed up around that table,” McGowan said.

“We chose people based on what they could bring to the meeting, not on how much they needed the meeting. And over time, we’ve seen largely over-the-top success for the people who were part of that CEO roundtable.”

Now, two of them are bringing the benefits they found in such a group to a new group of entrepreneurs.

Kurt Loudenback, owner and CEO of Grand Prairie Foods, was a member of McGowan’s roundtable and served as the facilitator of the first Startup Sioux Falls Growco cohort last year.

Joe Zueger, founder of Workplace IT Management, sat alongside Loudenback in McGowan’s group and will serve as the facilitator of the upcoming Growco cohort.

“I pulled components like the hot seat directly from Gene’s group,” Loudenback said.

“The beauty of it is that all CEOs need accountability, and we saw that with the first Growco cohort. The accountability factor was alive and well, and by the end of the yearlong program, they were sharing intimate details about their businesses and just learning about how other people solve problems.”

The Growco program offers monthly 3.5-hour meetings held at the Startup Sioux Falls downtown headquarters. They’re led by a facilitator, coordinated by Startup Sioux Falls staff and supported by a board of strategic advisers comprised of business leaders for quarterly reviews and strategy sessions.

For Zueger, who will facilitate this year, “the core format is still what we learned from the master, Gene,” he said. “In the early stages, it will take awhile to get everyone going, but we’re not reinventing a program.”

The curriculum revolves around GrowthWheel, a tool for business advisers to help entrepreneurs make decisions and take action that’s based around business concept, customer relations, operations and organization.

The content will be tailored to the participants’ needs, Zueger added.

“We’re trying to craft impactful content based on the stage of business they’re in,” he said. “And we’ll continue with elements from last year’s content that proved to have the highest traction.”

It won’t be a large group, likely limited to seven or eight participants, and all are expected to attend each monthly session in person.

To gain the most benefit from the program, a founder should be generating profit and oversee employees, either full time or contracted, along with being ready to take the next step in scaling their business.

“The short time we spend together is not going to fix your business,” McGowan said. “But we think we can make a difference in how you grow your business. This can be a significant contributor to your ability to have a successful business in five, 10, even 15 years.”

The goal is that participants leave the program with a clear, actionable growth strategy and ways to measure their success, along with a robust network of peers and advisers.

For the McGowan group, that has proven to have staying power decades after the final meeting.

“It’s the start of building trust you can maintain,” Zueger said.

“I’ve maintained a relationship with Kurt and Gene and others. That’s invaluable whether you’re doing business together or not. For me, it helped me gain clarity and confidence and ultimately opened the door to impactful long-term relationships that profoundly changed my business.”

The deadline to apply for Growco is 11:59 p.m. Feb. 21.

For  information and to apply, click here.