38-year career as an engineer, and I went on to a career as a college soccer coach, high school math teacher, executive coach, seminar leader and facilitator / guide on a variety of business topics.
I began to teach my seminars, The Self Concept Course and The Adventure of Life, to high school students in the summers of 1991 and 1992. By 1992, I started teaching those classes to adults. And then the fateful decision to not be hired as a high school head soccer coach came in 1993. And then the five loooong years of preparing to step out on my own. I left a tenured teaching position at a great high school to start a business, and I didn’ t even have a business card. As Steve Jobs said in his famous graduation speech at Stanford University,“ You can’ t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.” The key is to maintain the purpose and the passion to do whatever it takes to be able to launch into and sustain your own business.
Find a Great Mentor.
As I was leaving high school teaching and starting on my own, one smart move I made was to ask a lot of people a lot of questions and to write down every one of their answers. I was an absolute sponge and picked up ideas every day.
Perhaps the most important person that I asked questions of was Alan Weiss, who is the absolute worldwide guru on starting and thriving in your own independent consulting business. I saw him speak two days after I left teaching on Jan. 17, 1998. He gave incredibly valuable and practical advice. Then in August 1999, I sat at a Roundtable Discussion with Alan as the leader of the table. He gave even more great advice, so I hired him to be my mentor. He was mentor until December 2007. His advice on a million small and large topics was absolutely incredibly helpful to me.
Search for Great Clients.
There are clients, and then, there are clients. I took on anybody who was willing to work with me. I once coached a person who worked in a jewelry store. My entire payment was that my mom got to pick out a bracelet that she really liked.
However, the biggest break of all was during my last few years as a high school teacher. On Dec. 1, 1995, I self-published a book titled,“ Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living.” A student in my high school class had a father who was the regional vice president of McDonald’ s in St. Louis. He bought my book and gave it to his director of operations, Lee Renz.
On Dec. 1, 1996, I got a call from Lee, and he asked me to meet him for breakfast. Lee ended up hiring me to do four workshops for his team at McDonald’ s in 1997. However, Lee was promoted to Oak Brook, the world headquarters for McDonald’ s, right before my first workshop so he didn’ t attend any of them. I did the four workshops in St. Louis, and then I reached out to Lee to say thank you. I offered to come to Chicago to meet Lee in person to go over the material as a way of saying thank you to him. That was on Aug. 6, 1997.
At the end of our conversation, Lee said,“ Will you be my executive coach?” I said,“ Of course, I will be happy to be your executive coach, but what’ s an executive coach?”
Sometimes it is better to be lucky than smart, and in that case, I was incredibly lucky. From that day to this day, I have provided over 5,000 one-on-one executive coaching sessions for over 300 executives. I had found the medium that allowed my talents and passions to be of their most value to other people.
Try Many, Many Ideas to See What Works and What Doesn’ t Work.
As an entrepreneur, I encourage you to try lots of ideas to add value to your customers and potential customers. Then be honest with yourself in identifying which ones work for you that you enjoy doing and which ones don’ t work for you. It’ s not a failure to identify what is not working for you. It just allows you to spend more of your time, talent and energy on the things that work for you. Here are a dozen things I tried over the past 25 years. I’ ve broken them down into the six that did not work well for me, and the six that did work well for me.
Did Not Work Well
• Writing Books: I LOVE to read good, non-fiction books, and I thought I could naturally write good, non-fiction books. I wrote six books and combined they sold very, very few copies. I’ ve learned to love to read books and not write them.
• Keynote Speaking: Several people told me they thought I would be a great keynote speaker. However, my heart was never really in it. I don’ t believe that people learn best by listening to one person talk for 45 minutes to an hour. So, I invariably turned my keynote speeches into interactive, discussion-oriented learning, but that’ s not what people are looking for in a keynote speech.
• Dealing with Macho Know-It-Alls: This one represents the worst moments of my life as an entrepreneur. I define an arrogant executive as a person who thinks he or she has all the answers and has nothing left to learn from anyone else. I suffered through about five of these relationships before telling myself that I will absolutely, positively never endure one of those again. Now, I just look the person in the eye and say,“ I don’ t think this is going to work out. Good luck with your work.” And a rude, arrogant person is even worse to me than an arrogant person. I have one simple rule now when I meet a potential new customer: I don’ t work with jerks.
• Writing Articles for Major Magazines: This would have been so helpful in getting my name out to a lot of people, but I never had any success at it. At some point, I decided to pour my efforts into other activities.
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GearedUp | 2025 Issue 3
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