Anthem man offers hand to small businesses

MARC BUCKHOUT ~ MANAGING EDITOR ~ 9/15/2011

In a day and age where news of companies going out of business has been the norm Anthem resident Larry Vivola is not only helping small business people stay afloat, but thrive.
“It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the economy,” Vivola said. “People use that as an excuse, but it’s not an excuse. Some of the biggest businesses out there were built during the war and recession. What are we waiting for? Too many people use it as a crutch. People are grabbing market share every day. I tell my clients two of your competitors will be out of business in the next six months. I ask them what they’re going to do to emerge to serve those clients.”
Vivola, a New York native, who moved to Anthem five years ago has a background in the restaurant industry. With his background as a small business owner he said he often found himself fielding questions from friends and acquaintances about getting their efforts off
the ground and said his advice was well received.
“Informally I’ve been coaching people for years and I finally had that ah ha moment where it dawned on me that I should take my hobby and passion and turn it into my business,” he said.
Approximately 18 months ago Vivola started Inline Business Advisors, continuing to offer advice to clients back east using Skype, but also developing a client base locally.
“I have clients from a wide variety of fields, from a chiropractor, to an attorney to a personal trainer,” he said. “Regardless of what type of business it is, we all have a lot of the same issues.”
One of the first things Vivola asks potential clients about is how their business stands out from their competition.
“If you don’t have a unique selling proposition you’re just like everybody else,” he said.
John Koc, owner of Back to Life Chiropractic, located off Tatum and Bell, has been working with Vivola for seven months and said its been an eye-opening experience.
“I’ve been a chiropractor for 11 years and in the past I’ve worked with my colleagues and asked them about growing a business. They tell you about their experience, but they’re health care professionals. It’s nice to be working with a business guy. The key is the marketing. He gives me so many different avenues for marketing that if I even use one or two I know I’ll see results. With Larry you know you’re not only marketing, but you’re doing smart marketing. It’s relationship building. It’s handing out business cards and getting in front of people.”
Koc, who has seen his business improve threefold, said he and Vivola meet up for an hour three times a month.
“I’ll leave a meeting and I’ll have up to eight or nine tasks that I need to take action on,” he said. “Larry will ask me how I did on the tasks we came up with from the previous meeting and then talk about those results. If I didn’t get results we sit there and trouble shoot and come up with a different way of attacking the issue. I’ve worked with other groups and you’d ask a question and they’d come back with, ‘what do you think you need to do?’ I’m not paying them money to be asked what I need to do. The key with Larry is if I have a question that comes up in the middle of the week I can contact him and he gets right back to me with answers and ideas.”
Vivola is quick to point out the onus is on the business owner to make themselves successful, but he compares himself to a coach with a game plan.
Among the things Vivola tries to do is help business owners reduce marketing costs, increase lead generation, increase profits, motivate employees, increase free time, improve customer retention and increase market share among others.
For Katie Stumbo, who runs a personal training business called Katie’s Fit Life, the experience of working with Vivola has been more than she had even hoped.
Stumbo has been in business for three years,
working primarily in Scottsdale and North Phoenix in the
Desert Ridge area.
“He has helped me establish a much better referral program,” she said. “Through some of  his ideas I’ve been able to get in front of 100 new people in the last two months. I hadn’t been in front of 100 new people in a year.”
Stumbo, who has a young child and is dealing with
having her husband overseas in the military, said Vivola
has helped her be more efficient with her time.
“We meet once a week, three weeks out of the month and he has been willing to work around my daughter’s nap schedule,” she said. “We Skype our appointments. In six months of working with him I’ve doubled my business. He has helped
me pin down goals, streamline my approach and has given me a
better vision of myself as a business woman.”
Jimmie Judon, a Desert Hills resident, who runs Judon’s Painting also has seen strong results since he started working with Vivola.
“I was a little skeptical at first, because of the economy, but I really wanted to grow my business. I would say within a month I could already see my business starting to turn around,” said Judon,
who is doing approximately 2.5 times as much business as he was a year ago, before he started working with Vivola.
Judon said the three times a month meetings are invaluable.
“You really leave them with a solid plan in mind that you have to accomplish from week to week,” he said. “We’ve developed a format that works. I talk to him about my
challenges and he always seems to have good advice.”
For information on Vivola’s services go to inlinebusinessadvisors.com or call 480-320-2566.