About Me
I left the active duty Army Medical Service Corps in 1999. I loved the Army, the feeling of “service” and “doing my part” but I decided not to stay for a career because I was just too excited to get into the front lines of business.
In 1999 Pfizer hired me. That year, Pfizer had a lower acceptance rate than Harvard. And once I experienced Pfizer’s onboarding program, it was easy to see why so many people applied there.
It really taught me in a visceral way the impact on morale and motivation and job satisfaction (maybe “job elation” is a more accurate phrase) that a world-class onboarding process can have on attracting and retaining good people.
I loved Pfizer for four years, got promotoed, and met (and learned from) many talented business leaders. But I found myself wanting a more entrepreneurial experience, so I went to work for a smaller company. It was a regional office furniture dealership. They too had a great onboarding process in their own way in their own scale, so it reinforced to me how important that is.
I worked with incredible people there as well, and got my wish of working in a smaller company where I had a far more entrepreneurial experience. As good as the onboarding was, we all still had to go and figure out how to grow our part of the business. I loved it. Except for the driving.
I was commuting to Boston every day from 1999 to 2014. Fifty miles one way, which in “Boston traffic” is 90 minutes minimum. White-knuckle frustration for a total of three to four hours round trip each day for 16 years. Lots of time to think about whether it was worth it.
Maybe you’ve had a similar experience? You’re “earning & achieving” but feel like you’re paying for it with your soul every day.
I’d get home after dinner, excited to see my family, but also very tired. I wasn’t very present or engaging at that hour. What made me even more tired was just thinking about getting up to do it all over again at 5 AM the next morning.
When the stock market crashed, weeks went by and major firms fell to bankruptcy like one domino after another.
My company’s business dried up right away. We were an office furniture dealership so most of our clients puckered up to conserve cash. Many were joining the layoff party, reducing staff by 50% in some cases.
They certainly didn’t need new furniture then.
The owners of my company navigated it very well, and I learned some lessons I would take with me when I had to steer my own company through the pandemic of 2020.
Adding Layers and Skills
In 2012 I was scanning the internet for some type of writing work I could do for a second income when I stumbled upon an ad from About.com. It was owned by the New York Times back then, and the Times told us About.com was the 9th most-visited internet property in the world.
And they were looking for writers.
One in particular that caught my eye was their need for an editor/writer that could be responsible for the Medical Supplies channel. It meant writing at least eight blog posts per month, with images and hyperlinks, SEO keywords, and HTML. The whole pantry.
I was an officer in the US Army Medical Service Corps from 1995 to 1999, then sold blockbuster drugs for Pfizer Inc. from 1999 to 2003. While at the furniture dealership, I had been focusing on selling to hospitals and was promoted to establish their healthcare and laboratory sales division.
So MedicalSupplies.About.com sounded like it had my name written all over it.
Fortunately, the Times thought my experience fit the bill too, and as they say in Paris, “voila”, I landed my first side hustle, to the tune of around $680 per month.
Freelance Writing as a Side Hustle
Every Saturday and Sunday morning I would crank out my blog quota.
A year later I added a second side hustle writing blogs for martial arts schools. I was training in Krav Maga during those same years, 2012 to 2015, so I knew my audience well.
In 2015 I became a partner in Mkind Inc. I led our manufacturing company, doing business as Right Height Manufacturing, as its president. The founder brought me on board (and awarded me with a generous portion of the equity) to grow the company from a small regional player to a nationwide manufacturer.
We made the Inc. 5000 List three times in a row!
The Pandemic shutdown hurt us, like so many companies. But thanks to the shutdown putting our back up against the wall, it spurred us to get creative.
By creative, I mean lean.
Getting Lean During the Pandemic Shut Down
We pivoted our go-to-market strategy for our height-adjustable desks, focusing more on the home office rather than the corporate office. It helped. In fact, Google bought our desks to supply their employees who would be working from home.
UMassMemorial Healthcare used our healthcare product for its drive-through Covid-19 swab stations. It was such a hit that the local newspaper, the Worcester Telegram, ran the story.
This is our ad-hoc rapid assembly line building Covid-19 Swab Stations for UMassMemorial Medical Center.
It was a rush job; we had to assemble and deliver within 24 hours. March 2020
It was an all-hands-on-deck moment. I snapped a photo here while the team took a breather from assembling another batch of Covid-19 Swab Stations. (I’m not sure why I’m making that face. Hot and tired I guess.)
The finished height-adjustable Covid-19 Swab Stations at UMassMemorial.
But aside from that, our hospital business dropped off too, because hospitals needed all hands on deck to combat the onslaught of coronavirus cases. They put our charting desk on hold for about a year.
So we got lean. We let only one employee go, reduced our office space by 95%, and outsourced our logistics. (We negotiated with our new logistics contractor to hire our displaced employee.)
Almost everyone in our company has been working from home ever since.
More cost-savings came from moving our manufacturing from overseas to the USA. I’m serious. You read that right, and I didn’t write it backward.
While the product and labor were more expensive in the US, we were able to save money on ocean freight, which was skyrocketing. We were able to keep our credit line lower and improve cash flow since we didn’t have to build so many products at once. My partner scrambled during the first few months of the pandemic to put these steps in place. He has excellent CFO skills.
Again, With The Writing
Along the way, and especially during the pandemic shutdown, I built up my freelance writing business again. I wrote blogs about products and services I’ve used and today I still make residual income thanks to my affiliate links.
Dotdash Meredith, “America’s largest digital publisher,” contacted me early in the pandemic to write for their VeryWell Health brand because the editor had read my work at About.com. I wrote seven articles for VeryWell Health until I asked to move over to Investopedia where I could write more about real estate and software. The Investopedia editor hired me and went on to publish 45 articles of mine in 2020 and 2021.
Say “Yes” to SaaS
And I did have first-hand experience building a software company too, so that helped me evaluate the software and apps Investopedia hired me to write about.
In 2018 we at Right Height Manufacturing had an idea to create an app that would connect to our height-adjustable desks via Bluetooth. The app raises and lowers the desk from your phone, but more importantly, it teaches every desk user what seated and standing desk heights are the best fit for them in order to minimize back, neck, and wrist pain.
It’s an app that gives you a custom fit to your desk.
And it also reminds you to change posture between sitting and standing throughout the day. There are other features too. We decided to spin it off into a separate SaaS company that we called StanData in 2019.
The enterprise version enables employers to collect data on whether their desks are being used, which is a huge need during the growing hybrid work trend. Employers need to understand where to allocate funds for furniture. How many people are in the leased space using desks on any given day? How many are being used at employee homes? Should they convert to shared workstations in the offices? Can you reserve a shared desk?
These are the problems we were solving for Corporate America.
Business Coaching and Business Consulting
I’m now largely focused on helping businesses plug up their profit leaks as a business coach. I take on clients through invitation or referral only. As a client, you experience a deep and focused listener asking you powerful questions meant to knock you off your feet and out of your “business-as-usual” mindset. Your assumptions are challenged and stress-tested. You hear things from me that other people are too afraid to tell you.
We also go through a software analysis of 40 different aspects of your business. It’s the most thorough analysis I know of for optimizing your profit.
That’s how we find a clear direction, redundant costs, and hidden profit. Your purpose, passion, and profit find alignment.
Thank goodness that no matter how many failed attempts you have, just one success can make all the difference. So now as a Profit Strategist, I’m able to save my clients years and many dollars worth of failed attempts. I’ve taken the risks to test out the trends, and I’ve also put the fundamentals through their paces. You have to do the 40 fundamentals well, but the trends also help to spark creativity.
I especially enjoy taking what works in one industry and overlaying it onto a different industry. To be better you have to think differently than your competition. Introducing new strategies from a different industry can often produce breakthrough results. This is exactly what made AirBnB, Uber, and WeWork billion-dollar companies.
I find it so rewarding to help a client find expenses they don’t need, increase revenue streams, and grow their profit. This stuff is life-changing for a small business owner.
Accountability Partners
Working (and becoming friends with) small business owners, founders, and side hustlers helped me notice a common pain point: accountability.
What I mean is that all of these motivated folks read book after book filled with the latest business idea, or entrepreneurial memoir, but they would remember very little of it. And implement even less.
Same for courses. They spend thousands on courses year after year but still don’t execute.
When I dug into it, I realized that many people had great ideas for businesses but just needed some close accountability, or what I affectionately call, “hand-holding.”
Some of you perform better when you know you have to meet me on Zoom twice per month to review how you moved the needle in your life.
Some of you are motivated and have read books, but just need me to walk you through the details of the initial steps, kind of like an adult running alongside a child learning to ride a bike. You need me within arm’s length to navigate. But once you pick up speed, you fly.
Some of you want me as a second set of eyes to comb through your business plan, your business model canvas, or your expenses. We almost always talk about marketing too. But while amateurs worry about marketing noise solely, we make sure we work on costs and profit so that we build a healthy business.
If you arrived here searching for an online business coach to hold you accountable, one who is focused on your LifeDesign so that you can earn more and work less, then… You. Are. Home.
I believe in you. I’m committing the next few decades of my life to helping you become financially resilient by growing your small business profitability, creating systems so your business can run without you, and make your business more valuable to future buyers.
Like you, my life has been a series of highs and lows, wins and losses, successes and failures. I do not have everything in life or business figured out. I remain imperfect. And I am so grateful for that.
My imperfections have been my greatest teachers. The most important thing they have taught me is to treat people with compassion always.
If you are looking for someone to be that second set of eyes on your business, or that accountability partner, someone who is willing to walk the hard path alongside you rather than leave you all alone with a downloadable course, then let’s connect.
I want to help prevent you from financial stress due to market crashes, recessions, bubbles, and mass layoffs. Avoiding these common stressors has saved marriages, and even lives.
I’m all about that. Let’s create a life well-lived.
The Power of Compound Growth
This first video is less than 5 minutes and it shows you the massive effect small improvements and compound growth can have on your business.
Let’s go!