Many years ago I took at class at Wharton taught by a very old gentleman who owned hundreds of small companies, each under $1 million in sales a year. He was interested in all kinds of businesses, as long as there was no competition, no SIC code (because if it has a business category, there must be other people doing it already), and demand from customers that can’t be easily satisfied. Some examples that have stayed with me over the 20+ years since the class: A business that removed dead animals from farms. “When a horse dies, you don’t go out for bid to see who’s going to remove it!” In another case, he bought a warehouse full of old mainframe punch-card readers and then leased them out for a nominal amount each month to companies that had mainframe programs still running. He would lease them on an open-ended basis. “Just return them when you’re done” was his policy. He’d collect checks for $100 a month for each one…and none ever came back. Once he was in the accounts payable systems of his clients, it cost them more to return the device and take him off the list than it did to just keep paying him! The professor said his businesses existed “in the space between the elephant’s toes,” meaning a niche where no one was likely to find him and he could make good money under the radar of competitors. I never forgot that phrase. I own a business today that’s in that snug space. Not everyone needs what I do, but I’m more or less the only one who does it for hundreds of miles. So customers find me, pay me well, and refer me. One of the keys to success in a small business is finding that space for yourself where customers find you but competitors don’t.

Tags: Entrepreneur, Maui Wowi, small business, Wharton

No Comments

Welcome to E2E Coaching. E2E stands for Executive to Entrepreneur, which is a transition that increasing numbers of Baby Boomers (and others) are making — or at least thinking and dreaming about. I have been coaching business people for about five years after a 20-year executive career. In that career I had what most would describe as great success. I reached the top levels of corporate management and had many of the trophies of business accomplishment. But ultimately corporate life was unsatisfying to me because I never felt I was my true self when I suited up for my role. Indeed, I felt it was a role. Good thing I had been a theatre major at Northwestern way back when; I could act the part, most of the time.

After 9/11, along with millions of others, I reassessed what I wanted to do in life and realized that being a corporate executive no longer had any appeal to me despite the rewards of that life. I set off, tentatively at first, and unevenly for a long while, on a course of independence, self-employment and entrepreneurship. It is only now, after six years of living in this new skin, that I am truly comfortable with it–and excited at the potential I see in myself and in others who want to make this enormous transition.

One of my favorite blogs is Escape from Cubicle Nation by Pamela Slim. She’s terrific but I think her focus is different from mine. The people I coach haven’t been in a cubicle in many years. They’re more likely to be in the corner office. They fly business and first class, earn $250,000+ a year, manage multi-million-dollar businesses (for someone other than themselves), live in 5,000-square-foot houses, have assets (not including their home) of $1,000,000+, travel 50% of the time, have not much spare time, feel quite a bit of stress, might need to lose a few pounds, miss a lot of their children’s growing up, and know there is something else out there for them. Some of them have moved to independence from corporate jobs. For others, it’s still a vision taking shape. I stand for those people.

Tags:

No Comments