WISDOM AT THE TOP

AuthorHouse

Contents

Introduction................................................1Attitude is Everything......................................5A Family Business Flourishes................................9Little Things Matter........................................13Transforming Lives Through Art..............................18The Client Comes First......................................22The Calculated Risk.........................................26Respecting the Employee.....................................30Stay on Goal................................................34Keeping an Eye on the Big Picture...........................38Leading By Example..........................................42The Chance to Fail..........................................47Working for Lasting Social Change...........................51Transparency and Caring.....................................54Perpetuating a Work Ethic...................................58Preserving Jobs in a Global Economy.........................62Securing the Ship...........................................67Making the Right Bets.......................................71Finding Opportunity in Crisis...............................75Helping the Forgotten.......................................79From the Ground Up..........................................84Outside the Box.............................................88Making Time to Dream........................................93Every Business is a People Business.........................97Money is the Reward, Not the Reason.........................101Nurturing a Culture of Values...............................105Finding a Niche.............................................109A Business with a Heart.....................................113Own What You Do.............................................117The Power of One............................................121Putting Egos Aside..........................................125Providing a Service We Take for Granted.....................130Keeping It in Perspective...................................134The Personal Touch..........................................138A Question of Balance.......................................143Always More Than a Transaction..............................147A Final Word................................................153About the Author............................................155About The Rosen Group.......................................157About Transformations.......................................159The CEOs and their Companies................................161

Chapter One

JOEL ADAMS, PRESIDENT, DEVON CONSULTING

Like many entrepreneurs, Joel Adams started his company in a rather modest setting-his second bedroom.

"I had an ironing board, a washing machine, and my desk," he told me.

Founding Devon Consulting back in 1982 was quite a risk for Adams, who never thought of himself as an entrepreneur. But success, in his view, is all about attitude.

"I thought, 'I'm not that kind of a risk taker,'" he said. "But entrepreneurs don't view risk in the same way as other people. For an entrepreneur, the risk is, 'I'll keep working for this company and my fate is in their hands. If I've got my own company, I have a lot more control over who's going to be laid off, and it won't be me.'"

Adams was working as a software salesman at the time, but was restless.

"I wanted to do something on my own," he recalled. "I wanted to be self-employed so I didn't have to put up with a sales manager I didn't like. That was my original goal, not to make $5 million or something like that."

Adams took the risk.

"Before I started the business, I was a commission salesman and had an incredible first four months of the year. I had the same amount of money in my checking account that I had earned the entire year before. So I had a cushion to get the business started. That's when I quit the software sales job."

Devon, located in Wayne, Pa., has since grown into a full scale staffing company, specializing in placing temporary, professional workers in the information services industry and in clinical trial administration. Revenue reached $11 million in 2008.

But, as with all chief executives, Adams has faced and overcome numerous challenges.

"If someone had laid out for me, step by step, all the difficulties and problems I'd encounter, I would have said, 'Oh my god, we can't do that.' But problems come up on a day-by-day basis, and that's how you deal with them. You solve today's problem today."

One of his first problems was cash flow. As every business owner knows, employees and bills need to be paid every week, but clients don't always pay their bills on a weekly basis. "You're profitable," Adams said, "but you don't always have the cash on hand to cover expenses."

To make up the shortfall, Adams used personal assets-stocks and bonds he had saved to buy a house-as collateral for bank loans during the company's early years.

"Eventually I found a house I liked, went to the bank, and said I needed my stocks and bonds back in exchange for the mortgage as collateral. The big bank said, 'What will we do for the three days between the time you cash the stocks and bonds and pay for the house? We'll have no collateral during that time. We can't do that.'"

Luckily, Adams found a local community bank that understood the needs of small businesses and was willing to immediately lend him $15,000 on his signature. "And they said when you need the other $10,000, come back and we'll put it on the mortgage." (That banker was Ted Peters, now Chairman and CEO of the Bryn Mawr Trust Company, also profiled in this book.)

But the greatest lesson Adams has to offer is not the nuts and bolts stuff, but attitude.

When asked for the advice he would give aspiring CEOs, Adams responded, "Confidence. You have to have the confidence that you will survive or succeed despite the obstacles thrown in your way."

Then, in his open, disarming way, Adams admitted that confidence has often escaped him as CEO. He said he learned to be optimistic only during the last three years, when Devon wasn't doing as well as in the past.

"The company was floundering, and either I didn't know why or wouldn't acknowledge why," Adams recalled. "I was afraid that I couldn't manage the sales process. I didn't have the confidence that I could make changes and they would come out all right. When the company started losing big sums of money, my optimism went out the window. I became very pessimistic and was having trouble sleeping."

Adams realized he had to work to change his attitude.

"I made a rule-I'm only watching comedies," he said with a smile. "No news, no dramas. Only reruns of Seinfeld and Friends because I couldn't take any more bad news.

"And then I picked up a Buddhist practice. Every day I would write down three things I appreciated and could give thanks for, instead of focusing on problems. I really came to the intellectual decision that it was my attitude that was holding us back."

At the time, Adams was talking to a business coach once a week.

"One day she said to me, 'Joel, I want to talk to you about one of my clients. He keeps talking about bankruptcy and saying he might have to sell his company.'

"I said, 'Sheila, I got it. I have to stop talking about that stuff and only about how we're going to be successful.'"

Adams wrote a phrase inside his pencil box, so he would see it every day: "Unfailing optimism and steadfast courage."

"That's what it takes," he told me. "And I'm so much happier than I was six months or a year ago. Devon has just as many problems as it's had many times in the past. I could be really upset and worrying about it. I could be unhappy, but I'm not. I'm very optimistic. The biggest change is not in the numbers but in my attitude."

Adams calls himself "an idea person" and derives enormous satisfaction from helping people start or improve their businesses. He has invested in half a dozen startup companies, either serving as an advisor to the founder or actually taking responsibility for sales and marketing for an initial period. He gave me a recent example.

"This 20-something kid calls me, a very nice person. He has an energy drink that he's designed and packaged. He doesn't have any money and is borrowing from his father. He wants someone to put up $750,000 so he can distribute it in every convenience store in six states. It old him I wasn't interested.

"Well, I thought about it all weekend. I called him back on Monday morning and said, 'You know what? You don't need my money-you need my advice. Can I be your mentor?' He says sure.

"So I flew down to Texas and met with him and all his people. They think they need $300,000 to run radio commercials, and they only have $40,000. And the kid is saying he wants to be the next big energy drink, doing $55 million a year.

"I got a big kick out of sitting around with them and talking about what markets they really wanted to be in. I said, 'Why would you want to be in a convenience store sitting next to the big energy drink that has a $50 million annual ad budget? Why not be where the competitor is not?' I helped them come up with a plan, focusing on what they would accomplish in the next 30 days. I got across a few things. His team left with a clear vision, as well as their short-term marching orders. He has since found someone to buy a chunk of the company and I hope he's successful."

But in the end, Adams pointed out, advice from other people can only go so far.

"Being a CEO is autodidactic," he said. "You have to learn on your own. Your company is going to be very different from everyone else's, even if you're in the same industry. What makes your company great is going to be personal to how you lead it, and that cannot be taught. You've got to be the CEO that you're comfortable being.

"CEOs will get plenty of conflicting advice all the time," he continued. "The best CEO is the one who is able to judge a situation and apply the right piece of advice to that situation. And I don't believe there is any way to teach that. You can read a lot of case studies. You can learn to see patterns of problems and ways to solve them. But which piece of learning you apply still comes down to the choices you make."

Finally, Adams emphasized that CEOs must never forget the example they set for their employees.

"In leading people, everything you do counts. It makes a difference if you show up wearing sneakers or shoes. It makes a difference if you smile and say good morning to your employees or have your head down. You may have your head down because your child got kicked off the Little League team, but your staff doesn't know that. If your head is down they immediately assume you're going out of business or that they're going to be fired.

"Everything you do affects the whole company and creates the culture of the company. What's most important to my employees are the little things I've said to them that I don't even remember. As a CEO you're always on stage, and you have to play the role every minute."

Chapter Two

MARC BROWNSTEIN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, BROWNSTEIN GROUP

Many of the CEOs I interviewed never dreamed of a corporate or business career when they were kids. Not true in the case of Marc Brownstein. He was attracted to his father's advertising company from a very early age.

"I'm one of three kids," he told me. "I was the ad brat, the writer. When I was a kid, I was either playing hockey or writing. I loved coming into dad's office at an early age. He took me on client calls when I was three.

"He was really babysitting," Marc added with a smile, "but I always came into his office on school breaks. I wrote my first ad campaign at age 13 about a regional chain of sandwich shops."

Marc's father Berny founded what is now Brownstein Group back in March 1964.

"Dad was an artist, a fine painter," Marc said. "When his buddies were playing baseball, his passion was a paintbrush. He won a painting scholarship to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. But then he realized, 'I got three kids, I better be making some money.'"

Brownstein's father turned his artistic interests in a new direction. He went to work for N.W. Ayer in Philadelphia, the country's first and biggest ad company. A few years later, with Marc's mother Beverly, he founded Brownstein Advertising.

Marc always planned to work in the business. After graduating from Penn State, where he cut his teeth running the school newspaper, he went to New York to learn best practices in the industry.

"I went from Happy Valley to Manhattan," he said, "and worked for Oglivy and Mather, the firm that was the smartest strategically and the best creatively. The plan was to work there two or three years, then go back and work in dad's firm.

"Well, after eight years in New York, my father asked me, 'Are you coming back?' I didn't think I would. I was starting to hit my stride. I was living in Manhattan. I had a wife and child, I was looking for homes. Dad is thinking, 'He's gone.'

"So finally he comes to New York and says, 'I really need you. I'm either going to bring you back or bring in a partner. Here's a plan I drew up. You'll do x, y, and z, and we won't step on each other's toes.'"

Marc's father wisely understood the challenge sposed by family members working together.

"Dad did a lot of homework," Marc went on. "He spoke to other family businesses and patriarchs about how to do it right, so you have a functional family business rather than a dysfunctional one. Some family businesses need professional counselors in order to function. Fortunately, that's not the case with us."

Brownstein joked, "Partly that's because we limited family to just the two of us."

Marc came back to his father's firm in 1990 and the collaboration has been extremely successful in the years since.

"If we disagree, we have a lively debate and that's it. We share the same values. We want the same things for the business. We have never fundamentally disagreed and kept it there. We've always aligned our thinking."

Marc worked as creative director at Brownstein Group for seven years and was the strategic lead for the agency. Over time he evolved into CEO as his father gradually pulled away from the business (although Berny

Brownstein is still very much involved in the firm). Brownstein Group employs 65 people and earned $10 million in revenue in 2008. The company has offices in Philadelphia and Seattle, with clients primarily located in the Mid-Atlantic states and Pacific Northwest. Major clients include Microsoft, Comcast, Ikea, ESPN, and Goretex.

"We're a brand communication company," Marc told me. "We create unique brand identities for clients. But we're digitally centered as an agency, which means that we're non-traditional. Instead of thinking TV commercials, we're thinking, 'Where are the customers and how do we reach them?'"

That means going outside usual advertising venues.

"It might mean using Twitter," Marc continued. "For Ikea, we manage their global Facebook page. Our public relations team is managing blogs and writing on websites."

Brownstein said the company repositioned for the digital era about 10 years ago. They created a firm that built and marketed websites, which put them ahead of the curve in responding to the internet age.

Asked how he leads people, Marc stressed the importance of common ideals and goals.

"People may have different personalities," he said, "but what aligns them are shared values. We're clear about our core values. I want people who take smart risks. I want people who have sweaty palms in terms of their ideas, because their ideas scare them a little. I want people with fire in their bellies. I want people with integrity. I want wickedly smart people. I want people who think about 'we' rather than 'me.' The culture is very strong here and weeds out people who interview well, but who don't really share those values."

As CEO, Marc travels a lot and spends about 50% of his time on business development with new and current clients. Like many chief executives I interviewed, he's never complacent.

"I never feel secure. It's the nature of the business. As soon as I win an account, I worry about losing it. That just drives me to work harder to make sure we don't lose it. I have to touch that client on a weekly basis, which stretches you a bit."

Like many of the chief executives I spoke with, Brownstein benefits greatly from using other CEOs as mentors. He's the current chairman of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), a group of dynamic CEOs from around the globe.

"I'm in awe of these guys. They learn about communication and productivity from me, and I learn how to manage in a more disciplined way. My graduate degree is from YPO."

Because of the pressures of their jobs, CEOs can face health risks. Brownstein finds balance from "two things-family and exercise."

"I'm still married to my bride," he said, "and I have three great kids. That gives me balance. And exercise-I belong to four gyms. In a creative business, it's essential. It wipes away stress, and keeps the blood flowing and the imagination firing. I also play golf, tennis, and take long bike rides."

For the future, Marc wants Brownstein Group to continue to lead the way by "staying on the cutting edge and always reinventing, even after 45 years."

"We embrace change, as long as it's in best interests of our clients and the agency. We come up with unexpected ideas and solutions for clients. We think like an Oglivy, but we behave like a nimble, two-person shop. A lot of companies come to us because they get frustrated with the cumbersome approach of large global networks that think about Wall Street and quarterly earnings, rather than the client's business."

How does he view his legacy?

"That I made a difference and did it the right way. My moral compass is very important to me. I sleep at night because I knew I did the right thing.

"I don't have a good memory, so I couldn't cover my tracks if I wanted to," he added, laughing. "That's what my dad taught me-do it the right way, so you don't have to look over your shoulder."

He encourages aspiring CEOs to "play to their strengths."

"It's a clich but I really believe it: one, fill an unfilled need, something the marketplace needs, and two, make sure that need plays back to your strengths. If you do those two things, you'll find success. You can waste a lot of time doing too much or the things you're not good at."

Marc's last point is especially welcome, after recent corporate abuses.

"The greatest leaders aren't arrogant, but always believe they can improve and learn."

Chapter Three

RICK A. LEPLEY, FORMER CEO, A.C. MOORE

As soon as we sat down to talk, Rick Lepley disclosed the personal touch he brings to his leadership role at A.C. Moore, the chain of more than 130 arts and crafts stores located throughout the eastern U.S.

"Here's an example," he said, "of the little things we like to do. There's an 83-year-old man who used to live in Florida. His wife died, so he moved back to Pennsylvania to be close to his children and grandchildren. His hobby is building dollhouses, and there was an article in the paper where he said he buys everything he uses at A.C. Moore.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from WISDOM AT THE TOPby SCOTT D. ROSENBY Copyright © 2010 by Scott D. Rosen. Excerpted by permission.
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