About SBG
SBG was founded in the wake of the 2020 pandemic when Chip Carter and Jack Gruber realized that nonprofit leaders and small and medium business (SMB) owners needed a new kind of coaching.
Their extensive experience growing large and small organizations in both the private and non-profit sectors — leading, managing, marketing, and coaching — led them to three important insights:
Three Fruitful Insights
1. SMB owners today are overwhelmed
Even successful ones. In today’s volatile, uncertain and disruptive world, SMB owners need help understanding and implementing the complex array of business tasks needed to grow a business efficiently and sustainably. And knowing what to prioritize and how to start is anything but easy.
2. Good help is hard to find
Most marketing consultants and business coaches can’t help. Why? Because their expertise and tools are too narrow (think digital marketing or search engine optimization) and do not address all elements needed to generate more customers, revenue and profit. Thus, they typically offer no quantifiable guarantees.
3. An integrated solution does exist
SBG created a solution — a whole-system approach and methods — to deal with the pandemic scenario (e.g., VUCA change). It combines different sure-fire elements proven to produce significant revenue growth. Alone, these elements are not particularly innovative. But combined, they produce a shockingly high level of growth.
We like the idea of empowering a business owner
or nonprofit leader to grow their capacity and revenue.
Empowering a leader is a service to that leader. It can only happen
if the coach-leader partnership focuses on co-creating permanent
resilient solutions and capacity for both the leader and the organization.
What makes SBG unique is that we commit completely to this approach
and to the development of the whole human-being and the whole organization.
As a value-centered practice, we promise not just revenue growth, but fun work, efficiency, and work-life balance.
No hit-and-run engagements where a temporary solution is dropped, along with the bombshell of a big spend without real, guaranteed results and crisis-ready capacity that remains long after the coach is gone.
And we uniquely stand behind our commitments
with a written, 200% return-on-investment guarantee.
SBG Founders
Chip Carter
Co-founder, CEO
Chip has over 25 years of business leadership and coaching experience.
Chip has served as a business/leadership coach, technology leader, operations leader, strategist, executive board member, software architect, and meditation teacher. He has held senior C-level positions as a COO, CIO/CTO and CMO leading impactful transitions for complex stakeholder groups in both private and nonprofit sectors. He has coached executives and leaders from a wide array of disciplines and companies, including Sonos, IBM, Siemens, Food for Free, and others.
In 2007, he was awarded Manager of the Year in the IBM Software Group. While CIO/CTO and interim CMO at two global NGOs working in 30+ countries, he led sweeping infrastructure changes, overhauled business practices and culture, and drove dramatic improvements to mission alignment and productivity.
More recently, he ran Harvard Medical School’s Institute of Coaching and serves as a Senior Advisor there. He has also served as the Chief Operating Officer for several education-software start-ups.
Chip is a certified coach with a BS from Davidson College in biology and an MTS from Wesley Theological Seminary (Summa Cum Laude, comparative religion, psychology, and philosophy). He has done PhD work at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University, and has given numerous keynotes and lectures on a variety of subjects: coaching effectiveness, revenue growth, leadership, business process, corporate culture, change management, and mindfulness.
Jack Gruber, 1947 - 2024
Co-founder
Jack Gruber, co-founder of Summit Business Growth, passed away unexpectedly on January 30, 2024. Jack was a beloved family man, friend, and business partner.
Over three decades, Jack built and coached organizations in both the public and private sectors. He guided financial advisors in business growth, portfolio construction, and asset allocation modeling. He developed and coached business development programs for the National Bank of Saudi Arabia and Bank Franke of Switzerland. He created and coached the first retirement and investment education program for the pilots and engineering teams at United Parcel Services (UPS) in Louisville, KY. Through public and corporate forums, he has coached groups on tax management, retirement income, and the ever-changing face of global economics.
Before coaching, Jack was city Manager of Oak Park, IL. managing eight city departments and six hundred employees. During his military service, Jack was assigned to the White House, providing communication, security, and advance work for the President and Secret Service.
Jack earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon, a master’ degree from the University of Kansas, and he was accepted into a program focusing on Global Economics and Policy at Oxford University, UK.
Jack is survived by his loving wife, Martha; children, Jocelyn and her husband Pete, Kerrin and her wife Allison; and three grandchildren: Scarlett, Avalon, and Xavier. He is also survived by his brothers, Bob and Rick. Jack was predeceased by his parents and namesake grandson, Jackson.
Jack was simply a force of nature. He brightened every space he occupied. His positive spirit infuses all of SBG’s activity and work.