June - Septemeber 2005
June, 2005
When I went into business, I was prepared to work seven days a week. I knew my craft. I knew management. I undertook a massive effort to learn sales and business development. What I was completely unprepared for was the emotional aspect of being a business owner: living life daily on a bucking bronco. Enduring ups and downs that determine my livelihood. Seeing promises and project approvals evaporate without so much as a courtesy phone call. Watching a near perfect credit score and debt-free status deteriorate despite my greatest efforts.
Count-Me-In - both through the mentoring process and my many new acquaintances - has given me the first-time understanding that this is normal for new businesses. Unbelievably normal. My mentor, Cheryl Mayberry McKissack, shared her grand successes that brought her enough money to live on Chicago’s Gold Coast, buy her mother a home, and be permanently retired, if she so chose. But she also went through debt-ridden days. “I make mistakes, but I try not to make the same mistakes over again,” Cheryl told me without even a twinge of regret. With grace, she accepted her mistakes as part of being human and built on them to soar. What a contrast to the safe and secure world of people who master their jobs and stay in them for decades. They don’t make mistakes, but they also don’t grow. This understanding increased my peacefulness.
I feel I am in a grand metamorphosis. Not yet the butterfly, I am being turned inside out, but the new creature will spring wings unlike anything I have known before. Daphne Woolfolk, my business coach, worked with me on a crucial aspect of this transformation. She dealt with me on the interplay between one’s sense of self-worth and confidence and pricing and control over business matters. There were two situations, in particular, over which I felt I was losing control. Without her insights, I would have continued my lifelong habit of overriding my powerful God-given intuition by deferring to others. Instead, I took control with great confidence.
As Daphne says, deep-seated thinking and long-held beliefs are collapsing, creating new modus operandi. I have new eyes now, thanks to Count-Me-In. Sometimes I get so excited that I can’t wait to see where I will be a year from now. A new life is building – and what an exhilarating ride it is.
July, 2005
Good news! We had to temporarily abandon our 90-day plan.
No, we’re not being irresponsible. The 90-day plan was a marketing program designed to bring in more business. And, for the moment – and only for the moment - we do not need new business. Instead, my summer endeavor has been to continue client work while strengthening company infrastructure to support rapid growth. A year ago, our company had $350,000 in the pipeline and much of it never materialized. The company now has $4 million in multi-year contracts, $3 million of which has just been signed into contract.
Because she has walked the road before, my mentor, Cheryl Mayberry, continues to share with me valuable insights on all aspects of building the business. Our July session focused on the physical aspects of expansion – work stations, computers, networking, space – and she clarified my thinking on financial aspects of this effort. My Dutch roots and attitudes toward money have served me well while money was tight, but there are times – such as now when revenue is predictable – when spending money is important. A difficult concept indeed! We are using our American Express Open for Business card to purchase five work stations, new computers, and other furniture and equipment.
Although it took a year longer than I expected, it is exhilarating to see the company grow just as I envisioned it would – with a government base providing predictable, recurring revenue combined with a growing pool of corporate work. This process has clearly been a testament to the importance of planning based on specific, measurable objectives.
I feel deeply blessed to have the support of Count-Me-In and its connections to many people who deeply understand the amazing difficulties and rewards of this journey. To celebrate, we have adopted a company champagne called “Le Rêve.” A French phrase, it has a special significance for our firm. It means, “The Dream Come True.”
August, 2005
As I reflect on the past two years of the Vander Weele Group's existence, I marvel at how many lessons I have learned lessons obvious to those who have grown up in the business world, but hard-won to those of us who left the helping professions to enter business. Business requires making important decisions on a daily basis. Whether to buy a $15,000 copier. Who to hire and at what pay rate. How to spend one's time. What strategic relationships to enter and what business opportunities to pursue. When to move into new space. Woe to the business owner unable to pull the trigger effectively and quickly. Procrastination creates a paralyzing backlog of almost-made decisions, posing the greatest type of risk: inaction. Because of the sheer volume of decisions, it has become critical for me to develop a framework for how those decisions are made. Here are some guidelines I have developed.
1. Like many new business owners, my first mistake was believing that promises were something other than vaporware. No project is real until the purchase order is delivered or the contract executed. Even then, it may fall through. Therefore, no financial decisions at least in the service industry - should be made based on what one thinks will come through. Planning in advance how the work will be executed is prudent; spending money is not.
2. In business, every decision has to be quantified in terms of money. Emotional, heart-driven decisions must be tested on the spreadsheet. One of the easiest emotional decisions to make is to over-promise financial compensation to employees and one of the most difficult actions is to extricate oneself from those promises when revenues don't materialize or the employees don't perform. At the risk of being regarded as stingy, I've fortunately reined in my natural tendency to be generous upfront. I'd rather surprise my employees with bonuses when revenues abound than create resentment and distrust when promises go unfulfilled. A cautious mindset creates, in the long run, a financially robust company in which strong performers who stay with the company will share the profits.
3. The same principle applies to the empathetic business owner's tendency to tolerate poor performance or failure to meet deadlines. When I encounter this problem, I first determine whether I created it by failing to spell out expectations, failing to make decisions upon which the project is dependent, or failing to provide adequate training, time, or tools to perform the job. If the problem persists after I have provided adequate support, I part ways. The individual will not fit as a strategic partner or employee in my firm. We are building too much of a high-performance culture to allow one individual, however sympathetic he or she may be, to drag down the company.
4. In my first two years, I wasted much time responding to individuals presenting grand business ideas that would not have been a good mix for our firm and in the process I've learned to distinguish and more quickly disassociate from the talkers versus the doers, the puffers versus those who execute with precision and timeliness. Although everyone gets backed up occasionally, those who engage in a pattern of not returning emails or phone calls or following up on agreed-upon action items without explanation are quickly moved off the IA list of priorities. And I've learned that those who wish to pursue opportunities that are outside the firm's capabilities are as misdirected as I was when I entertained their grandiose ideas.
5. James Carville reportedly once said he never became successful until he started to be himself. When I first entered business, I tried to conform myself to the desires, cultural norms and standards of all prospective clients and became terribly unhappy in the process. Gradually, I returned to the self-assurance of my youth and came to accept that I will connect extremely well with some prospective clients and strategic partners, but will not with others. The failure to connect is often based on differing value systems. One of the greatest joys of being in business is that my livelihood is not dependent on any one individual and I can choose the people with whom I share my time and to whom I devote my efforts.
Undoubtedly, many more lessons lie ahead. The journey is truly an amazing one. We had our first coaching session with Dresden at Action International, where we discussed our personal and business goals. We look forward to our second session in early October. This was a fun session for both of us as while we had always felt our personal goals and values were well aligned, when we actually articulated it aloud, we realized that our personal values are even closer than we had suspected. One of the very exciting results of Make Mine a $Million was that we were invited to speak at a New York Times-OPEN by American Express conference in New York City. Julie and Jen decided to switch off acting as the spokesperson for the company, and Jennifer went to the conference. It was a great experience, Jennifer was on a panel entitled Navigating Growth which addressed the issues of a growing business, with the CEO of Zipcar (a very cool car-share company) and of a financial software company. The panel was moderated by Susan Sobbott, CEO of OPEN for American Express. The questions from the audience ranged, reflecting the concerns and interests of people just starting their businesses, to those with established businesses. It was a great opportunity to meet people from The New York Time, American Express, other companies, the founder of Kinko's and more. We laid the groundwork in September and all summer for media coverage of our new products and we look forward to seeing the results of that in the next few months. Some possible coverage includes Entrepreneur Magazine (a direct result of competing for the $Make Mine a Million), The Washington Post, and more. We continue to be extremely pleased and grateful that we were one of the lucky businesses to be a part of 3M and to benefit from the increased personal attention form American Express, the PR opportunities, and so importantly the loan. We have just finished the paperwork re receive part of the loan and look forward to paying off some printing bills with it, in advance of our receivables coming in at the end of Q4.
September, 2005
The work stations are in. The training manuals are done. The server is up. The payroll continues to grow - and client work product is being produced in a high-quality fashion. I've hired a new project manager who has accomplished an unbelievable amount of good work in the past month. I'm watching a miracle in the making. I've never given birth to a baby, but I can only imagine the thrill of watching the first step, the first graduation, the first prom, the first marriage. If I were to define the official end of the business start-up phase, it would be the point at which revenues routinely exceed expenditures and the owner can command (or return to) a six-figure salary. The Vander Weele Group is reaching this benchmark of success. We have many more benchmarks to hit, but they are in clear view. Paying off debt. Moving into new space. Hiring more full-time employees. Establishing a robust ongoing training program. And, of course, hitting a million dollars in revenues a year.New projects continue to flow in. A veteran businessman warned me that growth should follow revenue, not visa versa. Don't hire, he said, until the work comes in. Market aggressively even in the face of multiple prospective projects. There were always fears, however, that execution would suffer if projects came in simultaneously. I'm finding through sheer hard work, aggressive hiring, systemization of processes, and being clear about expectations with clients, however, that the work load is manageable. There is fatigue in my seven-day-a week schedule but it is of the happy sort. Seeing a dream come true is an unbelievable privilege. I wish more of America made the connection between reward and accomplishment.
When I went into business, I was prepared to work seven days a week. I knew my craft. I knew management. I undertook a massive effort to learn sales and business development. What I was completely unprepared for was the emotional aspect of being a business owner: living life daily on a bucking bronco. Enduring ups and downs that determine my livelihood. Seeing promises and project approvals evaporate without so much as a courtesy phone call. Watching a near perfect credit score and debt-free status deteriorate despite my greatest efforts.
Count-Me-In - both through the mentoring process and my many new acquaintances - has given me the first-time understanding that this is normal for new businesses. Unbelievably normal. My mentor, Cheryl Mayberry McKissack, shared her grand successes that brought her enough money to live on Chicago’s Gold Coast, buy her mother a home, and be permanently retired, if she so chose. But she also went through debt-ridden days. “I make mistakes, but I try not to make the same mistakes over again,” Cheryl told me without even a twinge of regret. With grace, she accepted her mistakes as part of being human and built on them to soar. What a contrast to the safe and secure world of people who master their jobs and stay in them for decades. They don’t make mistakes, but they also don’t grow. This understanding increased my peacefulness.
I feel I am in a grand metamorphosis. Not yet the butterfly, I am being turned inside out, but the new creature will spring wings unlike anything I have known before. Daphne Woolfolk, my business coach, worked with me on a crucial aspect of this transformation. She dealt with me on the interplay between one’s sense of self-worth and confidence and pricing and control over business matters. There were two situations, in particular, over which I felt I was losing control. Without her insights, I would have continued my lifelong habit of overriding my powerful God-given intuition by deferring to others. Instead, I took control with great confidence.
As Daphne says, deep-seated thinking and long-held beliefs are collapsing, creating new modus operandi. I have new eyes now, thanks to Count-Me-In. Sometimes I get so excited that I can’t wait to see where I will be a year from now. A new life is building – and what an exhilarating ride it is.
July, 2005
Good news! We had to temporarily abandon our 90-day plan.
No, we’re not being irresponsible. The 90-day plan was a marketing program designed to bring in more business. And, for the moment – and only for the moment - we do not need new business. Instead, my summer endeavor has been to continue client work while strengthening company infrastructure to support rapid growth. A year ago, our company had $350,000 in the pipeline and much of it never materialized. The company now has $4 million in multi-year contracts, $3 million of which has just been signed into contract.
Because she has walked the road before, my mentor, Cheryl Mayberry, continues to share with me valuable insights on all aspects of building the business. Our July session focused on the physical aspects of expansion – work stations, computers, networking, space – and she clarified my thinking on financial aspects of this effort. My Dutch roots and attitudes toward money have served me well while money was tight, but there are times – such as now when revenue is predictable – when spending money is important. A difficult concept indeed! We are using our American Express Open for Business card to purchase five work stations, new computers, and other furniture and equipment.
Although it took a year longer than I expected, it is exhilarating to see the company grow just as I envisioned it would – with a government base providing predictable, recurring revenue combined with a growing pool of corporate work. This process has clearly been a testament to the importance of planning based on specific, measurable objectives.
I feel deeply blessed to have the support of Count-Me-In and its connections to many people who deeply understand the amazing difficulties and rewards of this journey. To celebrate, we have adopted a company champagne called “Le Rêve.” A French phrase, it has a special significance for our firm. It means, “The Dream Come True.”
August, 2005
As I reflect on the past two years of the Vander Weele Group's existence, I marvel at how many lessons I have learned lessons obvious to those who have grown up in the business world, but hard-won to those of us who left the helping professions to enter business. Business requires making important decisions on a daily basis. Whether to buy a $15,000 copier. Who to hire and at what pay rate. How to spend one's time. What strategic relationships to enter and what business opportunities to pursue. When to move into new space. Woe to the business owner unable to pull the trigger effectively and quickly. Procrastination creates a paralyzing backlog of almost-made decisions, posing the greatest type of risk: inaction. Because of the sheer volume of decisions, it has become critical for me to develop a framework for how those decisions are made. Here are some guidelines I have developed.
1. Like many new business owners, my first mistake was believing that promises were something other than vaporware. No project is real until the purchase order is delivered or the contract executed. Even then, it may fall through. Therefore, no financial decisions at least in the service industry - should be made based on what one thinks will come through. Planning in advance how the work will be executed is prudent; spending money is not.
2. In business, every decision has to be quantified in terms of money. Emotional, heart-driven decisions must be tested on the spreadsheet. One of the easiest emotional decisions to make is to over-promise financial compensation to employees and one of the most difficult actions is to extricate oneself from those promises when revenues don't materialize or the employees don't perform. At the risk of being regarded as stingy, I've fortunately reined in my natural tendency to be generous upfront. I'd rather surprise my employees with bonuses when revenues abound than create resentment and distrust when promises go unfulfilled. A cautious mindset creates, in the long run, a financially robust company in which strong performers who stay with the company will share the profits.
3. The same principle applies to the empathetic business owner's tendency to tolerate poor performance or failure to meet deadlines. When I encounter this problem, I first determine whether I created it by failing to spell out expectations, failing to make decisions upon which the project is dependent, or failing to provide adequate training, time, or tools to perform the job. If the problem persists after I have provided adequate support, I part ways. The individual will not fit as a strategic partner or employee in my firm. We are building too much of a high-performance culture to allow one individual, however sympathetic he or she may be, to drag down the company.
4. In my first two years, I wasted much time responding to individuals presenting grand business ideas that would not have been a good mix for our firm and in the process I've learned to distinguish and more quickly disassociate from the talkers versus the doers, the puffers versus those who execute with precision and timeliness. Although everyone gets backed up occasionally, those who engage in a pattern of not returning emails or phone calls or following up on agreed-upon action items without explanation are quickly moved off the IA list of priorities. And I've learned that those who wish to pursue opportunities that are outside the firm's capabilities are as misdirected as I was when I entertained their grandiose ideas.
5. James Carville reportedly once said he never became successful until he started to be himself. When I first entered business, I tried to conform myself to the desires, cultural norms and standards of all prospective clients and became terribly unhappy in the process. Gradually, I returned to the self-assurance of my youth and came to accept that I will connect extremely well with some prospective clients and strategic partners, but will not with others. The failure to connect is often based on differing value systems. One of the greatest joys of being in business is that my livelihood is not dependent on any one individual and I can choose the people with whom I share my time and to whom I devote my efforts.
Undoubtedly, many more lessons lie ahead. The journey is truly an amazing one. We had our first coaching session with Dresden at Action International, where we discussed our personal and business goals. We look forward to our second session in early October. This was a fun session for both of us as while we had always felt our personal goals and values were well aligned, when we actually articulated it aloud, we realized that our personal values are even closer than we had suspected. One of the very exciting results of Make Mine a $Million was that we were invited to speak at a New York Times-OPEN by American Express conference in New York City. Julie and Jen decided to switch off acting as the spokesperson for the company, and Jennifer went to the conference. It was a great experience, Jennifer was on a panel entitled Navigating Growth which addressed the issues of a growing business, with the CEO of Zipcar (a very cool car-share company) and of a financial software company. The panel was moderated by Susan Sobbott, CEO of OPEN for American Express. The questions from the audience ranged, reflecting the concerns and interests of people just starting their businesses, to those with established businesses. It was a great opportunity to meet people from The New York Time, American Express, other companies, the founder of Kinko's and more. We laid the groundwork in September and all summer for media coverage of our new products and we look forward to seeing the results of that in the next few months. Some possible coverage includes Entrepreneur Magazine (a direct result of competing for the $Make Mine a Million), The Washington Post, and more. We continue to be extremely pleased and grateful that we were one of the lucky businesses to be a part of 3M and to benefit from the increased personal attention form American Express, the PR opportunities, and so importantly the loan. We have just finished the paperwork re receive part of the loan and look forward to paying off some printing bills with it, in advance of our receivables coming in at the end of Q4.
September, 2005
The work stations are in. The training manuals are done. The server is up. The payroll continues to grow - and client work product is being produced in a high-quality fashion. I've hired a new project manager who has accomplished an unbelievable amount of good work in the past month. I'm watching a miracle in the making. I've never given birth to a baby, but I can only imagine the thrill of watching the first step, the first graduation, the first prom, the first marriage. If I were to define the official end of the business start-up phase, it would be the point at which revenues routinely exceed expenditures and the owner can command (or return to) a six-figure salary. The Vander Weele Group is reaching this benchmark of success. We have many more benchmarks to hit, but they are in clear view. Paying off debt. Moving into new space. Hiring more full-time employees. Establishing a robust ongoing training program. And, of course, hitting a million dollars in revenues a year.New projects continue to flow in. A veteran businessman warned me that growth should follow revenue, not visa versa. Don't hire, he said, until the work comes in. Market aggressively even in the face of multiple prospective projects. There were always fears, however, that execution would suffer if projects came in simultaneously. I'm finding through sheer hard work, aggressive hiring, systemization of processes, and being clear about expectations with clients, however, that the work load is manageable. There is fatigue in my seven-day-a week schedule but it is of the happy sort. Seeing a dream come true is an unbelievable privilege. I wish more of America made the connection between reward and accomplishment.
posted by Maribeth Vander Weele at Wednesday, December 14, 2005
