It took longer than college and grad school. Two hundred hours of classwork. But finally after four years I graduated the Coach U Coach Training Program! There are many shorter programs out there and if I had it to do over again I might have chosen one of them, but as long as I spent the time and effort, I may as well rationalize! It was a genuine gift to spend so much time thinking about and studying coaching within Coach U, which is the largest coaching education organization in the world. Every class included students from across the globe–Australia, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, Qatar, and dozens of other places. Getting that perspective was wonderful. And it was enlightening and gratifying to realize that peoples’ needs and issues–from work-life balance to entrepreneurial struggles to family crises to personal health to spirituality–are not much different in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world.

Many of the Coach U classes involved the blocking-and-tackling of coaching. But the best classes were the many “practice labs” I took in the last year after taking all the preliminaries. In these classes the students coached each other with a virtual roomful of people listening, often covering very intimate subjects. We then wrote thoughtful critiques for the coaches: how effective were their listening skills? Were they able to ask questions that revealed the information needed to maximize the benefit of the coaching for the client? Did they use language for the greatest impact? Did they help the client create actions that can lead to positive results? These were some of the most valuable learning experiences I’ve had, and I had the benefit of dealing with this material at a time in my life when I’m most receptive to it. So thanks, Coach U, it’s been a blast. Now I start the next leg of the journey, toward the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) designation granted by the International Coach Federation. But I think I’ll wait a few weeks. Am I too old for Spring Break in Daytona?

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One of my coaching clients is a wholesaler for a mutual fund company. Even though she works for a big company, she is really an entrepreneur, running the show in her territory. Needless to say, in today’s market climate, her business has never been more challenging. A key problem is an inherent conflict in the nature of her business: financial wholesalers tend to be transaction-driven (working hard so that their clients will ‘drop a ticket’–and hopefully a very big ticket, resulting in a commission); while the financial advisers (FAs) they call on are relationship-driven. FAs used to be brokers and were compensated on transactions, too, but that’s less and less the case. Nowadays, they are more likely to be paid on a fee-basis, collecting a percentage of an investor’s assets under management.

Last week my client drove six hours to make a 10-minute sales presentation. Obviously it was a critical meeting and we are waiting for the sweet sound of a big ol’ ticket dropping, which I am sure it will. But she definitely is overwhelmed with having to keep up with an opportunistic market. Our conversation turned to a couple of things:

To rise above opportunism with clients and customers, see the bigger picture–theirs and yours. When my client stepped back to reflect on how she wants her clients to view her, she envisions herself as a trusted advisor and true business partner. That’s her brand statement.

I asked her, Why is it so important on a day-to-day basis for you to think about how your brand is expressed and simultaneously how that fits into your long-range goals? Her answer was: So that I can have a business within five years that is 100% referral-based, where I will never make a cold call on someone I haven’t been introduced to through a strong connection.

That is every salesperson’s ideal state, and it is totally achievable.

Stepping back to see beyond the tree line is critical. You have to really know your motivation for what you are doing in business day-to-day. And you need to remind yourself, daily, why you are doing what you are doing. Come up with a phrase, a mantra of sorts, that you tell yourself every day. Something meaningful that drives your behavior and outlook. Tell it to yourself at the same time each day. Write it down and tack it on your bulletin board or the dashboard of your car. When you think about your vision, don’t judge yourself on whether you executed it well today or wasted your time. If you reminded yourself of your vision, yesterday and today, and again tomorrow, you are moving closer to it.

Tags: financial

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As my blog title suggests, I coach executives who want to become, or are already becoming, entrepreneurs. I focus on this market because I know it so well–I am one of them. That doesn’t mean I have done it perfectly or that I don’t struggle with entrepreneurship. I sure do struggle. My sales are up more than 400% YTD over last year. The market segment that I started addressing three years ago for my special events catering business has mushroomed so that I now routinely have multiple jobs a day. As I look at the work schedule for the upcoming 30 days, I just pray I stay healthy.

Thinking about my situation, which I hesitate to call a problem because, after all, 400% is 400%, I signed on for a webinar/teleconference from the folks at E-Myth. I remembered from reading the book by Michael Gerber a few years ago that the core message revolves around learning how to work on, rather than in, your business. The idea is worth repeating here, from the E-Myth website:

“The ‘E-Myth,’ or Entrepreneurial Myth, is the flawed assumption that people who are expert at a certain technical skill will therefore be successful running a business of that kind.

• “I want to be my own boss”
• “I want to make more money”
• “I want to have have more time to enjoy my life”

Most small business owners assume that owning their own business will deliver on these goals.

It’s a common misconception that because someone understands the nuts-and-bolts technical work, they will similarly understand how a business providing that sort of product or service should function.

From the E-Myth point of view, small business owners struggle to achieve success because they are working in their business when they need to be working on their business.”

So simple and yet…

I had an E-Myth coach, Susan, all to myself for yesterday’s call and she was very helpful at diagnosing the difference between my vision of what I want from my business and the impediments to getting to the vision. Susan was surprised that I am generating as much revenue and profit as I do with no full-time employees. I explained that I intentionally do not have employees on payroll because part of my vision is for a simple business. For the most part, I have opted to have referral partners to whom I can parcel out jobs. The downside is that partners have their own agenda and schedules and may not be available when I need them. So maybe I need to rethink whether it would be best for me to employ someone to handle all aspects of marketing and lead-generation and another person to handle operations, while I focus on on something called “strategy” and “the big picture” as well as doing the financial and business planning to get the business from here to there. Maybe I want to avoid that really hard work and I kid myself that being the ultimate technician, in Gerber’s parlance, is what I should be doing. Entrepreneurs, if you are listening, advice and war stories are welcomed.

Tags: College marketing, E-Myth, Entrepreneur, Michael Gerber

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If you are thinking of leaving your corporate job to start a business, nothing is more important than having Reserves. I am talking about a great big virtual warehouse filled with tangible and intangible items. If you don’t have them when you start your business, your engine will soon fail. If you run out along the way, you’ll be stalled on the side of the road in the blazing hot west Texas desert sun with no water, like that guy in No Country for Old Men. “Agua, agua!” And you know what happened to him. So here’s a list of what you’ll need to pack for your journey.

(Note to readers: I am addressing Baby Boomers –by and large, people with families, mortgages, and age. if you’re 25, some of this may be interesting but you are young and invincible so you can ignore my warnings.)

1. Plenty of cash. (Not that cash did Josh Brolin much good in No Country for Old Men, which I can’t stop thinking about.) So many businesses have failed because they run out of cash. It’s heartbreaking to see. Within my own franchise, and all other franchises, many people leave the business not because they didn’t believe it would be a winner eventually, but they could not afford to get to Eventually. How can you avoid running out of cash? The best way is not to start the business. And that’s a better outcome than starting it, spending all you have, and risking being left with nothing. If you are not absolutely positive you have, or can easily lay your hands on, enough dough to get through not one year, but several (I’d say five) under adverse conditions, please, please, please keep your job or find one you like better, but don’t start a business. Don’t break your family’s hearts by taking a chance on losing your house and your retirement. Speaking of retirement, I am vehemently against people tapping into their IRAs and 401(k)s for money to start businesses. That is retirement money! I don’t give a #(%(@ about the Dennis Hopper commercial.

2. Plenty of family support. At your Reserves Central virtual warehouse, you will want to have an entire section with at least 100 tractor-trailer bays to load in all the family support you will need to be an entrepreneur. I have seen marriages break up because both spouses weren’t firmly behind the idea of starting a business. One spouse indulges the other because it’s easier at the time than saying, “No freakin‘ way are you spending our money to open a healing-crystals store!” Your significant other has to be in for the whole ride. That means if he has to get up at 3AM to make the donuts on a snowy February morning because you’re sick, he’s okay with that.

3. A team and network you trust. Finding a great CPA isn’t something you do after you start the business. (Hint: the guy who does your taxes today probably isn’t the guy you need.) You find the CPA six months before you start the business. Same thing goes for attorney, business coach, virtual assistant, and any other critical members of your startup team. You reach out into the local business community through the chamber of commerce, Kiwanis, and other groups before you start the business, not after. You join BNI before, not after. This is a case of “do what I say”, not “do what I did.” I didn’t do any of those things before starting my business–i just hurled myself into the flames. While I have many amusing stories to tell my future grandchildren of near-catastrophic injury (physical, emotional, financial) they were mostly all avoidable. Too bad this blog wasn’t around for me seven years ago! Stay tuned for more Reserve ideas in future posts. And let me know what you think should be on the list.

Tags: BNI, cashflow, Reserves

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If you’re an executive who has become an entrepreneur in the last few years, you will relate to this post. If you are thinking of giving up your pinstripe suit, you’ll want to read this closely.

Once you become an entrepreneur your relationship with money changes dramatically. Back in my executive days I had a very impersonal relationship with money. My paychecks and commission checks were direct-deposited. I never opened the stubs the company handed out twice a month, and never checked to see if my commissions were accurate. They were large numbers, and that was nice. Every two weeks for the paycheck, every month for the commission check. Predictable. Never changing.

Fast-forward. I am in business. No paycheck. No commission check. Bank balance going down instead of up as I spend wildly on–I mean, invest in–my new business. At first I spend as if my paychecks and commission checks will somehow keep coming even though I am no longer employed. Just out of momentum.

After a while a funny thing happened. I started to notice how very beautiful $20 bills are, especially when there are a bunch of them all together in a nice pile. What craftsmanship, what art! Why, that’s Andrew Jackson on the front. A great president, got a bit of a bum wrap after the war. I started to think I’d like to hold on to my Andys a while longer. Andy, what do ya say we cook dinner tonight instead of going out? Name your dish. Beef stew? I make a great beef stew! What wine do you want to go with that, Andy? What’s that you say? A $7 bottle is often as good as a $14 bottle? Can’t be…well, if you say so. HEY! You know, this ain’t bad! Say Andy, the kids’ spring vacation is coming up. We usually go to Club Med. Say what? You never heard of Club Med? Maybe we should do what? Stay at home and play games together and do other things close to home to bond as a family? Wow, that’s a 19th century idea, but I guess I can give it a try. Hey Andy, Scrabble is really fun!

Wake up and clip the coupons, people. As an entrepreneur, you need to learn the Zen-like joy that will come from saving money and postponing gratification. When you finally fix that hole in the ceiling and remodel the bathroom, you will admire sheet-rock like you never have before. So here you go, executives who are turning entrepreneurial–the start of a list of ways to improve your relationship with money. (More will be coming in future posts.)

1. Have a Money Buddy: Before you spend more than $500 on anything for your business or home, consult a buddy. Do you have to spend it today, or can you wait six months? Get a reality check.

2. While You are Spending Less, Work on Making More: Like a Fortune 100 business, your small business can’t cost-cut and save its way to growth. You have to create more sales for the business even as you think frugally. Skip Amazon.com and go to the library (the building with all the books in it–and they let you borrow them for free!) and check out The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. If Rhonda were an ice cream flavor she’d be tutti frutti, but she has an important message. While I can’t promise that if you close your eyes and imagine checks arriving in the mail your wishes will be answered, I do think that you can behave in a way that promotes sales even while you are sober about spending. Get the audio tape rather than the book, and listen to it twice. The first time you will be put off by her strange Australian accent and even stranger ideas. The second time (I’ve listened to it about eight times) it starts to have meaning.

3. You Don’t Need to Have it All Right Now: Our front door was a mess. The lock was busted, the paint was chipped all over. I hated the front door! I wanted a new front door. A contractor said we could have one for $6,000. It was really nice in the catalog. A few years ago, new door! Now….a can of paint cost $20 and a locksmith was $200. And you know what, I really like that new color. I love our front door! For the Boomer generation that is used to having it all, it can be a hard turn to fix rather than replace. But try it. That applies to home repair, cars, appliances, any big ticket item. Get just one more year out of them and you will be thinking like an entrepreneur.

Tags: cashflow, entrepreneurship, money, Rhonda Byrne, small business, the Secret

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If you are a newly minted entrepreneur, you will need to stop caring what your former work colleagues and your friends think about what you are doing. When I started my business in 2002, my friends and ex-work associates thought I had gone completely nuts. I began as a franchisee of a company with the unusual but catchy name Maui Wowi. To go from being a bigwig at the likes of Ziff Davis, LendingTree and other respectable employers and plunk down a big hunk of cash to wear a Hawaiian shirt and sell smoothies for $5 apiece at events is rather a change of professional pace. Hey, no wonder my friends thought I was nuts!

Within weeks of completing franchise training in June 2002, I convinced the New York Yankees to allow me to run a concession in the Stadium. By early August, I was at Gate 4, right at the entrance, dressed in my wacky shirt, selling smoothies (with rum, lots and lots of rum) from my tiki hut to the well-heeled season ticket holders who sit in the good seats. I was so busy getting my business up and running that I hadn’t gotten around to telling a lot of my friends what I was up to. I will never forget the day my buddy Scott showed up at the stadium. The astonished look on his face when he saw his former publishing industry colleague slinging smoothies to hordes of rowdy Yankee fans was, well, astonishing!  Not only that, but I had also recently memorialized my break from the corporate world by getting a tattoo on my left forearm. When he saw that on top of the tiki hut, blenders, and me in my shirt, well, I don’t think his eyes could have widened any further. I was immensely entertained by the look on his face as my one employee and I frantically made drinks, hundreds and hundreds of them, for $8 apiece ($3 extra for rum). For me, this business was the perfect rejection of corporate life. Rather than selling advertising programs for $100,000 or $1 million, here I was selling instant gratification in a cup. I felt not the least embarrassment for trading in my suit for jeans and an Aloha shirt.

The business has morphed almost entirely since then. I have shifted it from a high labor content/moderate margin to much lower labor and very high margin by dealing only with catered events and getting out of retail completely. I have hundreds of customers, including over 50 colleges, dozens of event planning firms and corporate clients, and countless individuals who book our services for parties.

It’s a perfect business for me. It offers nothing in the way of status, though. For many corporate executives looking to do something else, status is still important. In many businesses you might get into, after corporate life, you can count on your friends not “getting it” and wondering what’s up with you. If you care even slightly what other people think, my advice is not to go down the entrepreneurial road.

Tags: Entrepreneur, franchise, Maui Wowi, smoothies, yankees

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Just read this story in the New York Times about a corporate executive who after 30 years gives it all up to go back to school for a degree in meteorology so he can become a weatherman. He has always had a passion for the nuance of the weather, so when he lost his job in a downsizing he acted on it. His wife is anxious about the future but supportive. Her husband tells her that forecasting anything farther out than seven days is just speculation anyway. Bravo to them all. For a great book on the subject, check out Second Acts by Stephen Pollan.

Tags: New York Times, Second Acts, Stephen Pollan

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I wrote a few weeks ago about my favorite entrepreneurial role model, my dad. He’s 87 now and retired. I think about his business every single day of my life because I grew up with it. We had a gourmet food store on Lexington Avenue and 73rd Street called Service Delicacies. (It’s now a restaurant and bakery that I sometimes walk into, stand in the middle of, and just breathe.) It started out as my mother’s father’s deli, then my dad took it over. He had a thing for fancy foods. He was passionate about customer service. He was always in motion. He was almost all business. The only time I would see him smile was when I looked at him and smiled at him during the busy Saturdays I spent at the store from the age of 12 until I went to college, and even after. So, some lessons from my observations of Jerry York, one of the best entrepreneurs I’ve known:

1. Have an eye for the new. When we went on rare family vacations (usually the Catskills, Poconos or somewhere driveable from Queens) we inevitably wandered into food and farmers’ markets. While my brother and I squirmed, dad pored over the merchandise. Often he would find products being test marketed out of the city. He was the first in New York to offer Maxim Freeze Dried Coffee, around 1963. He found it somewhere in East Nowheresville, PA. He asked the store manager how much he had in stock, and my dad cleaned him out. He paid something like 25 cents a jar for a few dozen jars. The following week the window display of our store featured this revolutionary product in a pyramid display, selling for something like $2.50 a jar. Sold out immediately. Another time it was a salty snack called Bugles and Whistles (same snack, different shape). Same out-of-town trial. Same bazillion percent markup. Those corn chips paid for summer camp for my brother and me for years. Jerry was the first to have sourdough bread flown into from San Francisco. The first to have pre-prepared frozen gourmet entrees and hors d’oeuvres. He could see a trend or a fad, and he didn’t care which it was. It was a thick roll of Twenties in his pocket every day.

2. Packaging, environment and attitude are everything, no matter what the business. Every day the Fink bakery truck delivered loaves of pumpernickel, rye, wheat and white bread which were left by the front door. When the clerks arrived at 7AM they would slice the pumpernickel bread into 1/4-inch stacks and wrap the slices 10 to a pack in cellophane, which they would heat-seal closed with a blow-dryer. The bread went on the counter for sale. The loaf of Fink bread cost dad 50 cents, and he sliced it into about 100 slices, or 10 packages, and sold each package for $1. A 20-bagger in each loaf! Enough to make a venture capitalist proud! How come it worked? Everything in the store was gourmet. When you picked up that package of sliced bread, which set my dad back 5 cents, it was viewed against a backdrop of gourmet foods from around the world. The store was gleaming. Everything was dusted and in order. The clerks’ aprons were gleaming white and pressed. He could have charged $2 for the bread.

3. Let your customers drive your new product development strategy. Phone rings one day and dad answers. “Yes, Mrs. Smith, tomorrow 5 o’clock. Sandwich trays for 30 people. Salmon and cream cheese canapes. Uh hmm. Yes. 900 Park, PH 1, yes, yes. … (pause)….wooden folding chairs…(pause). Of course. Good night, Mrs. Smith, see you tomorrow.” Wooden folding chairs. We don’t carry chairs. Yellow Pages….here we go. Dial. “Deliver two dozen wood folding chairs to Mrs. Smith at 900 Park, Penthouse 1, tomorrow and send me a bill.” Done. Two days later the phone rings. It is Mrs. Smith. “Jerry, you almost ruined my party. Those chairs were disgusting. Broken down and awful looking. If I didn’t know you so well….” It was that call from Mrs. Smith that got my dad into the highly profitable party equipment rental business and eventually out of the food business. The party rental business that my brother took over, grew 10-fold and sold to the largest company in the industry late last year. All because of a Park Avenue lady who needed some folding chairs. The one downside of all this: it hasn’t been possible, in all of Manhattan, to get a really great rare roast beef sandwich on wheat bread, sliced paper-thin, with just a little butter, salt and paper, since 1975.

Tags: customer service, Entrepreneur, innovation

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Entrepreneurs often have a tough time in an economy like the one we are in now.  One of my coaching clients in financial services has just a few months of savings in reserve. He was close to panicking when we spoke for our weekly call. His situation, which is all too common nowadays, always reminds me of a startup I worked for a decade ago. You have probably heard of it–LendingTree. One of the more impressive entrepreneurs I’ve ever met was the CEO/founder, Doug Lebda. I remember at one point we had perhaps three weeks of payroll in the bank.  I was starting to hyperventilate a bit, but Doug wasn’t fazed by this at all! (If he was, he didn’t show it–another great sign of leadership.) I remember saying to him something like, ”Boy, you sure do seem to enjoy living on the edge.” To which he replied, with a grin, “This isn’t even close to the edge.” That was an amazing statement from a guy in his twenties who had borrowed and mortgaged everything he had and taken millions more in investment to get his company going.  Even 10 years ago, before LendingTree was a household name, there was plenty to lose, a lot at stake. I think Doug managed his way through it because he was able to de-personalize the situation. That the company was going through a rough patch, even potential insolvency, wasn’t a reflection on him personally–it was a business problem that could and would be solved.

To bring this back to my client’s situation, we looked for sources of short-term cash infusions and discussed an approach to restructuring his financial obligation. This client has so much going for him in his approach to business, sales, ethics and self-discipline that he has all the tools he needs to stare down this mini-crisis. There’s a lesson here for small-business owners and entrepreneurs: The edge probably isn’t as close or as sharp as you think, especially if you can step back from it and gain perspective–and then, calmly, plan as if today’s “crisis” is just another business problem to be solved.

Tags: cashflow, doug lebda, entepreneur, financial, lendingtree, small business

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I recently attended a seminar given by a motivational speaker. A few of the things he said and did reminded me of some key “do’s and don’ts” of public speaking that I’d like to offer here. Let’s start with the Don’ts.

Don’t start off by apologizing to your audience for what might go wrong with your presentation. If the airline lost your luggage and you are wearing cutoff shorts to address a banker’s conference, then apologize. But spending the first minute(s) of your time on caveats for your potential nervousness, forgetfulness or other problems only undermines your credibility and makes your audience nervous. So your flight was late, you didn’t sleep. Forget it! And don’t make it the audience’s problem! They are there to be entertained, educated, enlightened. Not to hear about your bad night’s sleep.

Don’t aggrandize yourself and your rags to riches story. Speaking for myself, I am not impressed by knowing that four years ago you were homeless and now you own a bunch of houses. If I am not near homelessness and bankruptcy, I have a hard time relating this experience to my own life.

Don’t spend 90 minutes on 30 minutes’ worth of material, particularly if you are in a hotel that has really uncomfortable chairs. Respect your audience. Give them the information neat and fast. If you were supposed to fill 90 minutes and only have 30 minutes of content, end early and let people ask questions or leave.

If you are going to speak in public, you absolutely, positively have to eliminate annoying speech mannerisms from your act. If you say the word “right” after each sentence, after 200 or 300 times, all the audience hears is “right” and not what you said before it. Same goes for “you know,” “uh,” “um,” and “like.” Get rid of this junk. You have no business getting up in front of an audience for 90 minutes until you have polished this aspect of presenting. Work with a coach and fix the problem.

Don’t use any kind of profanity. It is never, ever appropriate in a public speaking forum unless you are a football coach addressing your team at half-time when you’re down 28-0.

If you are not a good speller, don’t use easels and pads, and don’t write things down as you go. Have everything done ahead of time. Remember Dan Quayle and the “potatoe” fiasco?

Don’t forget to have your name, address, telephone number and website on the handouts you distribute.

And now for the “do’s”, which the speaker I just raked over the coals did well: Have a message that people can remember and reflect on. People will remember very little of the specifics of what you say in your presentation, so if you can give them just one thing to think about, you’ve done them a service. Involve your audience whenever you can–get them to talk to each other, ask questions, and otherwise make your presentation as bi-directional as possible so it’s not a monotonous lecture.

Tags: public speaking, small business

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