Business &amp; Branding

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Learn how Sara Blakely, creator of Spanx, went from selling fax machines to founding the popular shapewear company.

Learn how Sara Blakely, creator of Spanx, went from selling fax machines to founding the popular shapewear company. | SUCCESS

Shaping Sara Blakely: Meet the Billionaire Founder of Spanx

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Sara Blakely on Celebrating Failure & Creating Spanx | SUCCESS

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Jill Becker

Experts Weigh in on 17 Investments for a Rich Life

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We’ve all heard the expression, Money can’t buy happiness. Or can it? A poll of experts, in fields ranging from food to finance, discuss the ways you can spend money and gain prosperity.

We’ve all heard the expression, Money can’t buy happiness. Or can it? A poll of experts, in fields ranging from food to finance, discuss the ways you can spend money and gain prosperity. | SUCCESS

Experts Weigh in on 17 Investments for a Rich Life | SUCCESS

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This Entrepreneur Built a Business on Values-Based Investing Before It Was Cool

Is your money working for you? More importantly, is it working for the betterment of others? That’s the question Brian Kaminer, the founder of <a href="https://talgra.com/about-us/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Talgra, a New York-based sustainable investment consulting firm</a>, aims to help his clients answer. “Investing doesn’t have to mean ignoring your values,” Kaminer noted recently. “Investments can earn a return and also be focused on what is truly important to me and my family.” And he wants to share that insight with as many people as possible.



Kaminer’s general philosophy is that once your basic needs are met, it’s more about <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-complete-guide-to-money-how-to-create-wealth/">what you do with your money</a> than how much of it you might have. Through Talgra he educates others about how they, too, can align their money and their beliefs through more socially responsible investing. Otherwise known as <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/impact-investing.asp#:~:text=Impact%20investing%20is%20a%20general,serve%20society%20as%20a%20whole." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">impact investing</a>, the options can range from putting your money in a small, independent community bank to helping finance the construction of a massive solar power field in the Chilean desert.



After graduating with a business degree from the University of Vermont in 1990, Kaminer began working in his family’s brokerage firm. Working so closely with his relatives had its rewards, but after 17 years, he started getting antsy. “From a personal enrichment standpoint, something was missing.”



In 2007, Kaminer left the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/its-a-family-business/">family business</a> and created Talgra. “I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do when I left, but I was fortunate in that I was able to take some time to explore my options. My desire was to work for myself for the foreseeable future, and I knew having a company would be a beneficial way to do that. Talgra was set up as a business tool so that I could explore different opportunities as they revealed themselves.”



The first year was challenging, but Kaminer was intent on keeping himself open to a variety of options. One of the ways he did that was through <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/voluntourism-seeing-and-serving-the-world/">volunteering</a>. (“I like learning by doing,” he says.) He’d become interested in environmental issues and donated his time to local schools as they introduced <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-green-your-small-business/">sustainability</a> into their curriculums, all the while educating himself on issues such as <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/innovation-and-creativity/">renewable energy</a>.



Over the next few years, Kaminer did more and more sustainability consulting and became an investor in some small-scale <a href="https://www.seia.org/state-solar-policy/new-jersey-solar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">solar projects in New Jersey</a>. Then in 2010, he attended an event for <a href="https://slowmoney.org/">Slow Money</a>, a national nonprofit that promotes investments in sustainable food and farms. “I thought I was moving away from investing, the money piece of it, but what that did was it brought me back around to the investing side of sustainability.” Kaminer had found his purpose, which was to help spread the word that investing can and should be more intentional.



The concept of intentional investing, which the entrepreneur defines as “making investments for a financial return with the intention of creating a positive social or environmental impact,” isn’t exactly a new one. <a href="https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-state-of-socially-responsible-investing" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Socially responsible investing</a> has been around for decades, but in the early days, it revolved around so-called negative screens. This meant people simply excluded companies from their investment portfolio that dealt with alcohol, tobacco or other things they felt weren’t in line with their core values. Today, as the standards are evolving and more companies are willingly reporting on their <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/environmental-social-and-governance-esg-criteria.asp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ESG</a> (the environmental, social and governance aspects of their business), potential investors are increasingly looking at positive screens. For example, how much water a company uses, how much they recycle, or the diversity of its employees and board of directors.



Despite the obvious benefits of impactful investing, there are numerous factors that keep it from becoming more mainstream. One is the common misperception that you can’t make as much money by practicing socially responsible investing. Kaminer notes there are several companies putting together case studies to disprove the notion. Another reason is that a lot of people’s financial advisers just aren’t well-educated in that area, so they don’t push those particular products.



The information about impactful investing is out there, though, Kaminer says. In fact, because there’s so much material scattered around, it’s overwhelming to a lot of people. So one thing Talgra does is to orient clients toward available opportunities.



“I typically sit down with them and explain that there’s a much greater opportunity now than there was 10, 20, 30 years ago to really think about the impact we can have with our investments along with getting the financial return we are looking for. And it turns into a fairly personal conversation. I’m trying to provide some background information to them, at the same time exploring what some of their values are and some of the things that are most important to them, and then help them connect the dots.”



Another significant way Kaminer is educating potential investors is through <a href="https://investwithvalues.com/about/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">InvestWithValues.com</a>, a detailed directory of topics, resources and organizations that are “focused on creating positive social and environmental impacts through money, business and investing,” according to the site.



“The directory came about because, as I was learning about more of these topics, I felt these types of opportunities existed in silos,” Kaminer says, “and I wanted to help people make those connections. It was hard to find everything covered in a comprehensive way, so I started organizing it on paper as my own way of understanding it. Then I wound up turning it into a PDF that I made available on the Talgra website. I started getting a lot of response from it, so in 2013 I turned it into a more interactive website.”



The site has recently undergone even more changes, including a new name (it was formerly the Money &amp; Impact Investing Directory), and updated design and content. “It will be more engaging and welcoming to a broader audience,” Kaminer said before the unveiling. “It will have a search filter giving people the capability to search by topic. We’re also adding a discussion forum for sharing ideas.”



Kaminer admits the time and effort he’s put into the site, which Forbes called a “one-stop site that paints a clearer picture for impact investors,” is a trade-off to cultivating new clients. “But that will grow on its own,” he says. “And I felt the urgency to get the site to the next stage.” Equally important to Kaminer is that people can access information on the site for free. “It’s primarily a passion project. The main thing is I want people to know the resources exist to help them do this, whether it’s through my site or not.”



This article was published in Febuary 2015 and has been updated. Photo by @Yankasvetlanka/ShutterStock

The concept of intentional investing, which the entrepreneur defines as “making investments for a financial return with the intention of creating a positive social or environmental impact,” isn’t exactly a new one.

The concept of intentional investing, which the entrepreneur defines as “making investments for a financial return with the intention of creating a positive social or environmental impact,” isn’t exactly a new one. | SUCCESS

Values-Based Investing Pioneer: The Entrepreneur's Journey

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Personal Development

Personal Development Archives

Personal Development | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

1. On living life to the fullest: “You’ve got one shot at life. This is not a dress rehearsal.”

2. On her auspicious move from Clearwater, Florida, to Atlanta, Georgia: “If I hadn’t moved to Atlanta, I don’t know that I would have invented Spanx. This is the exact city I was supposed to be living in to create this product, because growing up on a beach, nobody cares about fashion. I didn’t grow up reading fashion magazines. I didn’t dress up for anything, basically. And then I moved to Atlanta, where people dress up to go to lunch. And I kept thinking, What’s going on? What am I supposed to wear under these white pants? So things happen.”

3. On not taking it all for granted: “I have such a deep gratitude for being a woman born in America in this moment, at this time, and the connection to that gratitude gives me the courage to do things that I wouldn’t normally. I have gratitude for this life I’ve been given, and I’ve had a connection and a strong feeling about wanting to help women for a long time, since I was little. I just wasn’t sure how it was going to show up and happen in my life. I think it’s quite funny that I started with their butts. I did not see that one coming. But you have to start somewhere, and it turns out it was a pretty good place to start.”

4. On regrets: “I have very few regrets. Probably because I’m very focused on not regretting things. But if you were to really press me, I would say I regret not learning a foreign language and not learning an instrument. If I could do it over again, I’d be bilingual and I would play the guitar. I would have taken the time in school when I was there to gain those two things.”

5. On her fear of flying: “I am so stressed every time I take off, I basically have a panic attack, and I don’t want to feel that way anymore. I’m going to continue to fly regardless, but I don’t want my body to go through this anxiety. What has helped is Bose noise reduction headphones, and my good luck song [Mark Knopfler’s ‘What It Is’]. Believe it or not, that has helped me a lot. I have to listen to it every takeoff. It has a really good intro for when the plane is going down the runway. It just works. The song is called ‘What It Is,’ so I think it’s sort of reminding me that it is what it is, like you’ve got to let go.”

6. On her fear of public speaking: “The more you do it, the more you just continue to face your fears, the less control it has on you. Although it does ebb and flow. I can be giving speeches for months and then get up one time and completely be a wreck and nervous. I’m still nervous every time I speak.”

7. On Wayne Dyer: “He’s had a tremendous impact on my life. He really spoke to me in a way that made so much sense, and I just started really paying attention to how I was processing life and thinking about things, and I started really training myself to see the hidden blessing when things happened and, I guess, just truly recognizing how much control you have over your own attitude towards life. That’s something you are fully able to change, and no matter how you were raised or your upbringing or what walk of life you come from, at the end of the day, that’s something that you truly have control over, and your attitude toward things directly impacts the life you live.”

8. On the benefits of a mentor: “I think a mentor is a really important and wonderful gift in someone’s life. I would also just say that equally important is having someone in your life who believes in you.”

9. On successful business calls: “I have never, ever made an important phone call sitting down. The outcome of the call is always better when I’m standing. It probably has something to do with energy, confidence, delivery. It’s just a subtle nuance I have found to be&nbsp;helpful.”

10. On self-preservation: “I think one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is letting go of what other people think of us.”

11. On dark days: “I definitely have down days. I feel it, I go through it and I recognize it for what it is. I give myself permission to feel really bad some days. Some days I feel really frustrated. But I don’t think the goal is the absence of feeling bad. I think it’s just taking it all in and using all of it—the good, the bad, the ups and the downs.”

12. On defining success in one word: “Hmm. Success in one word? Happiness is a pretty good goal. I think if you’re achieving happiness and a happy person, that’s figuring it all out. Even if it’s not going exactly how you thought it would be, if you can be a happy person day in and day out, that means you’re successful.”

13. On being warned by friends, family and colleagues not to appear on The Rebel Billionaire: “I have two different ways I approach decisions. I either check in only with myself, or I will seek the advice and opinion of a small circle of people and then still check in with myself and factor in their thoughts. And on that particular one, I sought the advice of several people and then checked in with my gut. And my gut told me to still do it. My lawyer was begging me not to do it. He said, ‘You own your own company, you’re the face of a brand, you’re going to turn over your likeness to Fox and Fox may be able to portray you in a way that you’re not.’ He was very nervous, like, Why would you jeopardize all that you’ve worked for and what you’ve already accomplished? He was nervous about that. He just thought it was an unnecessary risk to take at that point in my journey.”

14. On her time on The Rebel Billionaire: “I did put my life at risk on that show. Richard [Branson] even came out and said that they almost lost me in particular. It was a very intense show.”

15. On giving back: “The premise behind Leg Up [a program Blakely developed to help spread the word about budding female entrepreneurs and their businesses] was for me to pay it forward, my Oprah moment, because I got to be on her show when I had no money to advertise, and I had just invented something, and I was sitting in my apartment in Atlanta, Georgia, and she exposed my invention to millions of people, and that made a huge difference. So I have an opportunity [with the millions of customers whose trust I’ve earned over the years] to expose other women entrepreneurs and their products or their art and inventions to them, and I do that through the Spanx catalog. I put them in there. I take their product, a picture of them and a brief bio or a clip about their story and expose them and shine a light on them. You know, the gift that I can give, with my platform from Spanx, is exposure. Like Oprah used her platform of exposure to end up doing so much good for so many people.”

16. On introducing Spanx products for men: “When we invented the compression undershirt for men, we realized that men didn’t take their shirts off [the same way as women]. They grab the middle of their backs. We actually put in an instruction card, because all these men kept emailing and saying, ‘I can’t get it off. I can’t get it off.’ It was very funny.”

17. On if she’ll ever sell her company: “I’ve been approached so much for so many years, and the story behind that is when I first invented Spanx, in the first six months of the business, everyone kept asking me what my exit strategy was. And I didn’t know what an exit strategy was. Well, one day I said, ‘I want to exit the room and look good. That’s my exit strategy.’ And all these men were like, ‘What?’ I’ve never taken a business class in my life, so I didn’t even know that people started businesses just to sell them. I didn’t realize that people were starting businesses with the end game in mind the day they’re starting their business, because all these people were asking me my exit strategy and I was just starting. So fast-forward 15 years later, I operate so much from gut and instinct, I feel that if and when that time arises [to sell Spanx], I’ll know it.”

18. Whether she’d leave Spanx to head a company such as Coca-Cola or Delta: “No. I would only find myself inventing something else, creating another category. I get all my energy from making things that already exist better or creating something that didn’t already exist. My mind’s thinking of things all the time. I&nbsp;have like three or four really, really good&nbsp;ideas in other industries right now that I think someone should take and run with. I keep a notebook full of them.”

19. On her husband, Jesse Itzler: “He is a character. He just wrote a book called Living With a SEAL. One day he came home and said, ‘Honey, do you mind if a Navy SEAL moves in with our family for 30 days and gets me in really good shape?’ And I said no, and then three days later the Navy SEAL was at my breakfast table. And so he blogged about his experience of living with the Navy SEAL, and the Navy SEAL agreed to do it under one circumstance: that my husband do everything he told him to do.”

20. On her motto for success: “I don’t necessarily have a motto for success, but I do have a life motto, and my life motto is the more you experience, the more you have to offer others. So I seek out experiences even if they scare me, and how I get my energy and courage to keep doing them is because I keep thinking I’m going to have more to offer others. I will just become a more understanding human, a more empathetic human, a more interesting human. It’s like going back to that gratitude and the purpose, and I can really mobilize myself to do things in the name of helping others and especially helping women.”

21. A funny story about her life motto: “I was at a cocktail party with my husband and I had a bunch of people standing around me, and at one point the conversation led to me mentioning that I have a life motto that I live by, and someone at the party said, ‘Well, what is your motto?’ and … I forgot my motto. My husband, who has a great sense of humor, thought that was so hilarious. He’s like, ‘You have a life motto that you live by and you forgot it?’ So he had a custom neon sign made for me that says, ‘I have a motto I live by, but I forgot it.’ I came home from a business trip and hanging in my living room [is this big neon sign], and I’m like, ‘I get it, honey.’”

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/shaping-sara-blakely-meet-the-billionaire-founder-of-spanx" title="Shaping Sara Blakely: Meet the Billionaire Founder of Spanx | SUCCESS.com">Sara Blakely is featured in the January 2016 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Discover the 4 success secrets that boosted her career and business, and how Oprah Winfrey and Wayne Dyer changed her life forever.</a>

Sara Blakely speaks her mind: ‘You’ve got one shot at life. This is not a dress rehearsal.’

Sara Blakely speaks her mind: ‘You’ve got one shot at life. This is not a dress rehearsal.’ | SUCCESS

21 Bits of Wit and Wisdom from the Woman Behind the Billion-Dollar Brand

Billion-Dollar Wisdom: 21 Insights from the Brand's Leading Woman

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Kyle Kesterson has been a driving force behind several technology startups, but in high school his attitude and performance were so poor that a teacher told him by age 20, he’d “either be dead, in jail or flipping burgers,” according to <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/from-homeless-to-ceo-is-i_b_2760071" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a HuffPost story</a> by Kesterson. During his formative years, he’d been homeless, lived off food stamps, attended 14 schools and was tormented by bullies. He dropped out of school in 10th grade.



That’s hardly the upbringing one expects from someone as enterprising and successful as Kesterson. Prior to his <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylekesterson" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">current chief operating officer role</a> at OPTIMAL XR, Kesterson was founder and chief storyteller at Seattle-based tech firm Freak’n Genius (now known as Campfire), which created the popular <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2014/yakit-freakn-genius/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YAKiT mobile apps</a> that turned everyday photos into hilarious animated videos. Before that, he helped found Giant Thinkwell, another software venture based in the thriving Seattle tech hub. For Kesterson, the road to the promised land may have been paved with potholes, but in many ways those struggles helped him get where he was going.



“I was the poorest kid, not to mention the smallest kid, and soon thereafter, just the worst kid in school, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/why-attitude-matters/">from my attitude</a> to my grades,” Kesterson said of his early life. “There was always a feeling of not being good enough. There was <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-overcome-self-doubt-and-become-the-hero-of-your-story/">constant self-doubt</a>. But out of that, I learned to live with less, to appreciate the smallest things, to be resourceful, resilient, scrappy. Not having money to throw at problems, it meant <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/a-4-question-guide-to-unlock-your-creativity/">having to rely on creativity</a> to find opportunities.”



<h2 id="h-how-kyle-kesterson-discovered-a-passion-for-creativity">How Kyle Kesterson discovered a passion for creativity</h2>



That creativity turned out to be the key to unlocking his future. He <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/9-ways-to-know-what-passion-you-should-pursue/">discovered an interest</a> in art (from sketching to sculpting) and design. “I got into it because it made me feel something,” he recalled. “[Before] I was in a dark place; I felt numb and negative. When I tried art, I was like, Wow, this is really cool. Art gave me something clear to put my energy toward.”



Kesterson said his early artistic efforts weren’t very good, but they were incredibly fulfilling. Then people started to respond to his artwork. He said he hadn’t really felt that respect before, and the validation provided the fuel for him to continue learning, at which point Kesterson applied to the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.



Before that, he was self-taught and didn’t understand the fundamentals of art. But he clearly showed promise: When his instructors saw his work, they suggested Kesterson skip his first year and move immediately into second-year coursework. He told them no, saying he “wanted to start at the beginning and learn the tools.”



Ultimately <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-to-do-when-your-passion-isnt-enough/">he became disenchanted</a> with pursuing art and design as a career. “I was doing the thing I loved and was passionate about, but I learned pretty quickly that even people going to a liberal arts school weren’t there for the same reasons I was. They were excited to get a big paycheck, because design was starting to become very trendy. It wasn’t passion-driven. So socially I didn’t really fit in with most of the people there,” he said.



<h2 id="h-entering-the-startup-world">Entering the startup world</h2>



After two years, Kesterson left Cornish and worked whatever creative jobs he could, still searching for that ideal outlet. In one misfire, he was a toy developer at the Funko toy company, where he had a hard time fitting in. When his enthusiasm wavered and he stopped putting in the same amount of effort, he was fired. At that point, a friend encouraged him to attend <a href="http://startupweekend.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Startup Weekend</a>, where he rubbed elbows with local entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders.



<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/launching-a-business-against-all-odds-3-tips-for-startup-success/">His foray into startups</a> had begun. Kesterson’s first new enterprise was Giant Thinkwell, co-founded with Kevin Leneway and Adam Tratt. The partnership, however, was fairly short-lived.



“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Kesterson said. “We realized really quickly that we built the wrong thing for the wrong audience at the wrong time. That harsh realization would leave us asking, ‘What next?’ And we’re spending our investors’ money figuring it out. [During Kesterson’s tenure, the company created <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2011/giant-thinkwell-scores-cash-partners-sir-mixalot-facebook-game/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mix-N-Match</a>, a ‘celebrity-based’ Facebook game, and <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2011/turntablefm-video-flickmob-gathers-friends-watch-youtube-clips/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">FlickMob</a>, a social media site where people would watch and rate YouTube videos; neither is still around.]



“There was just so much pressure amongst these product failures that contention within the team built up, and we didn’t have systems in place to solve our huge communication issues…. We were responding to each other emotionally. It just came down to an implosion within the team, and somebody had to go. And it was me….



“It was terrifying, because that was the first thing I had ever done as a creative person where it really started to gain momentum. That brand was an extension of me. When I left, people were like, ‘That was you.’ I had controlled the tone and the voice, what people experienced. And when I left, it was like, Oh my God, a piece of me just died.”



<h2 id="h-early-experiences-impact-on-kyle-kesterson-s-resilience">Early experiences’ impact on Kyle Kesterson’s resilience</h2>



Kesterson’s fears eased quickly, though: As soon as <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2011/eating-squid-kyle-kesterson-charts-giant-thinkwell/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a blog post</a> went up about his departure from Giant Thinkwell, emails crammed his inbox, and his phone rang steadily. “People reached out. People wanted to work with me. Freak’n Genius was born in that first week of meeting after meeting,” he said.



During Kesterson’s tenure with Freak’n Genius (he left in 2018), the company graduated from the Microsoft Kinect Accelerator in 2012 and participated in the International Consumer Electronics Show in January 2014. When the company’s YAKiT Kids app was released early in 2014, it quickly shot up the ranks to become the <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2014/heres-happens-apple-features-app-app-store/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">No. 1 free kids’ app</a> in the iPhone app store. 



Even in 2014, Kesterson—only about a decade past his homeless days—had no intention of panicking if Freak’n Genius steered off course or sunk altogether. He had experienced rock-bottom. “Sure, if it fails, that’s gonna suck, and we’d have a huge ego bruise. I’ve already embraced fear as a driver. Because no matter what, I’m not going to be sleeping under a bridge. I’ve built a community of people who support me. There’s a net underneath me,” he said.



This article was published in October 2014 and has been updated. Photo courtesy of Kyle Kesterson.

Kyle Kesterson went from high school dropout to a C-suite executive. Here's how—and what his experiences taught him about resilience.

Kyle Kesterson went from high school dropout to a C-suite executive. Here's how—and what his experiences taught him about resilience. | SUCCESS

From Dropout to C-Suite

Kyle Kesterson's Journey from Dropout to C-Suite | SUCCESS

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&ldquo;I was always doing things that were very entrepreneurial,&rdquo; says Rand Stagen, the managing director of <a href="https://www.stagen.com/about/who/" target="_blank" title="Stagen | Who We Are | Stagen.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Stagen</a>, a Dallas-based management consulting firm with a client list focused on mid-market corporations such as Which Wich and Studio Movie Grill. In high school, he says, &ldquo;I was doing things like printing out T-shirts with our school mascot on them.&rdquo; In college, he started an underground Greek newspaper. By age 23, he had gotten enough investors (37 in all) to start an alternative newsweekly called The Met, and was soon running a small publishing company. Before selling The Met in 2000, he had already teamed up with friend Brett Thomas to launch Stagen. He and Thomas shared a passion &ldquo;for the idea of developing others,&rdquo; he has said, and 15 years after teaming up, their work is being praised and recognized by executives nationwide.Q: Who is your typical client?A: Our clients really fit two profiles: entrepreneurs and family businesses. They&rsquo;re all growth businesses, and they&rsquo;re coming to us because they&rsquo;re committed to learning and being better. A lot of times they&rsquo;re either stuck (they&rsquo;ve been high-growth for many years and now they&rsquo;re plateauing), or they realize that if they don&rsquo;t improve, they may get stuck at some point in the future.Q: And how do you help them?A: We originally thought that we could help organizations go from scrambling to scaling. A scrambling organization is highly entrepreneurial and opportunistic and exciting and firefighting, and there&rsquo;s lots of heroics. A scaled business is a professional business that&rsquo;s more mature. And so to help them go from scrambling to scaling, we thought we could work as consultants in a more traditional sense, where a CEO or a business owner would hire us to come in and work with his or her organization. But we found that when we worked with organizations where the owners or the CEOs weren&rsquo;t actually engaging in their own learning simultaneously, we failed to create the results we all wanted. However, when we had executives who were actually engaged with us in our leadership training, who were also working alongside their companies, we had much more success. And so we started to better understand the relationship between the business owner and the business itself.Q: What is that relationship?A: I often say, &ldquo;Leaders get the organization they deserve.&rdquo; Their organization is nothing more than just a big reflection of who they are. All their strengths and weaknesses are reflected in the organization.Q: Can you give us an example?A: An entrepreneur comes to me and says, &ldquo;Rand, I &nbsp;need your help. We&rsquo;re having a lot of issues with sales, and my sales leader is just not doing a good job.&rdquo; Then he&rsquo;ll say, &ldquo;I also need help with my CFO, because the reporting I&rsquo;m getting is not effective.&rdquo; And he may go across his team and complain about two or three key people. And I&rsquo;ll ask the entrepreneur, &ldquo;Who hired those executives?&rdquo; And he&rsquo;ll pause and be embarrassed and say, &ldquo;Well, I did.&rdquo; And I&rsquo;ll say, &ldquo;Then who are you complaining about? Are you complaining about the executives, or are you actually willing to take responsibility for hiring those executives? And if those executives aren&rsquo;t doing their jobs, then either you don&rsquo;t have them in the right role or you&rsquo;re not being effective at helping them be successful. This isn&rsquo;t really about them, it&rsquo;s about you, so let&rsquo;s stop having a conversation about them and start having a conversation about the source of this problem, which is you.&rdquo; That line of thinking is basically our philosophy&mdash;that to transform a business, you have to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/maximum-leadership-improve-yourself" target="_blank" title="John C. Maxwell: Improve Yourself" rel="noopener noreferrer">transform the leader</a> of the business, and then the business will have space to do incredible things.Q: So, how much time would you recommend a business owner spend on learning and growing versus managing the day-to-day operations?A: If the business is really in startup, you can expect 90 to 95 percent of their time is spent working in the business versus working on the business. If you&rsquo;re working in the business, you&rsquo;re not thinking, you&rsquo;re just doing. You&rsquo;re experimenting, you&rsquo;re being opportunistic, you&rsquo;re learning. You&rsquo;re learning through experimenting, right? So it&rsquo;s a different kind of learning. It&rsquo;s very hands-on. Then, as a business moves to higher levels of success over time, entrepreneurs who were doers are like, &ldquo;Leadership training? I don&rsquo;t have time for that.&rdquo; Because they didn&rsquo;t have time early on. But as they develop success by being a doer, by micromanaging, by being involved, by being a hero, their identity becomes completely connected to the doing. And then when a person says, &ldquo;You should go through a leadership program or get an executive coach,&rdquo; they don&rsquo;t know how to reconcile that. They know how to be in the trenches with the teams, but they don&rsquo;t really know <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-let-go" target="_blank" title="How To: Let Go | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">how to delegate</a>&hellip;. They don&rsquo;t really know how to empower, they don&rsquo;t really know how to select the right people to get on the bus with them, and they struggle because they&rsquo;re not being asked just to spend more time working on the business; they&rsquo;re actually being asked to create a new identity for themselves of what it means to be successful. That shift in identity&mdash;of what it means to contribute, what it means to create results&mdash;is critical to address.Q: What are the three most common mistakes you see business owners making?A: They&rsquo;re micromanaging too much. They&rsquo;re not delegating. They&rsquo;re so involved in the details, they&rsquo;re not leading the people.&hellip; What happens is that most owners get so busy staying in the business that they don&rsquo;t pause and ask, &ldquo;Are we going in the right direction? Do we need to make an adjustment?&rdquo; And if they&rsquo;re so into the details, it&rsquo;s very difficult to make adjustments.Q: What&rsquo;s one way you can help?A: We ask questions like, &ldquo;Why are you micromanaging?&rdquo; And they&rsquo;ll say, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t trust that other people can do it.&rdquo; Then we give them tools and techniques that actually teach them how to delegate, that teach them how to create space for people to learn and grow. Very specifically, we teach people how to become coaches of their own employees. We teach them how to create safe and recoverable environments for their employees to learn and grow. And then what happens is the employees start to build capabilities. They start to learn on their own. But it can be very threatening to some of our clients, because they think, If I teach people how to do the things that only I know how to do, then what am I going to do?Q: What&rsquo;s your response to that?A: We&rsquo;re like, &ldquo;Well, you need to actually learn how to do new things. You need to come up with new ways of creating value in the business.&rdquo; And they go, &ldquo;Wow! I actually have to get comfortable with my own discomfort around all these talented people I&rsquo;ve hired who are now doing all this great work, and I&rsquo;ve got to come up with what I&rsquo;m going to do next.&rdquo; They&rsquo;re really reinventing their own roles and responsibilities, and that&rsquo;s a very difficult process.Q: Do you have your own executive coach?A: I have a mentor who&rsquo;s been working with me for 10 years, and I have an executive coach whom I&rsquo;ve worked with for the last seven years. I&rsquo;m on the learning journey as much as our clients are. I&rsquo;m a living expression of the age-old idea that the more one learns, the more one realizes how little he or she knows.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/tales-from-a-top-management-consultant" target="_self" title="Tales from a Top Management Consultant | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Read more of Rand Stagen&rsquo;s management insights&mdash;valuable leadership lessons from major brands, including Whole Foods, Zappos and Patagonia.</a>

&ldquo;I was always doing things that were very entrepreneurial,&rdquo; says Rand Stagen, the managing director of Stagen, a Dallas-based management

&ldquo;I was always doing things that were very entrepreneurial,&rdquo; says Rand Stagen, the managing director of Stagen, a Dallas-based management | SUCCESS

Transform Your Business from Scrambling to Scaling

Transform Your Business from Scrambling to Scaling | SUCCESS

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Leadership coach <a href="https://www.stagen.com/people/stagen" target="_blank" title="Rand Stagen | Stagen.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rand Stagen</a> says you don&rsquo;t have to go through formal leadership training or hire a personal executive coach to understand the power of reflection.&nbsp;&rdquo;Everyone has time for reflection,&rdquo; Stagen says. &ldquo;You can take as little as 15 to 30 minutes a week to ask yourself some key questions. If leaders don&rsquo;t take a little bit of time to evaluate, it&rsquo;s difficult to make adjustments.&rdquo;SUCCESS sat down with the executive coach for the August 2014 issue. In this web exclusive, Stagen shares what lessons he has found most valuable from leadership at Whole Foods Market, Zappos and Patagonia.&nbsp;WHOLE FOODS CEO JOHN MACKEY HAS A &ldquo;JEDI-LIKE&rdquo; LEADERSHIP:&ldquo;About three years ago I was in <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/from-the-corner-office-john-mackey" target="_blank" title="From the Corner Office: John Mackey | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey</a>&rsquo;s office, and I asked him, &lsquo;John, Whole Foods is a global organization with 60,000 employees. Is there any relationship between your personal development and Whole Foods at this point?&rsquo; And he looked at me, paused, and said, &lsquo;Rand, all I can tell you is that for more than 30 years, every time I had a meaningful breakthrough, soon thereafter the executive team of Whole Foods had their own breakthrough.&rsquo; He said, &lsquo;When it was time for me to have one of those breakthroughs, I would know it because I was frustrated with Whole Foods. And when I got frustrated enough, I would realize it wasn&rsquo;t about Whole Foods, it was Whole Foods telling me, John, it&rsquo;s time for you to go and have another breakthrough.&rsquo; For me, that was like a Jedi kind of level, where he talked about having the experience of being in this dance, that when he grew, the organization grew. There will be readers of SUCCESS who, when they&rsquo;re frustrated with the performance of their employees, that frustration is as much about themselves as about their employees. And that&rsquo;s tough medicine for most people to swallow. But you have to take responsibility and transform yourself if you want to see your team or your organization transformed. Leaders go first.&rdquo;HOW TO MAKE MONEY WHILE DOING GOOD:&ldquo;Our company&rsquo;s whole reason for existing is that we believe that our clients can do the kind of things that <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/tony-hsiehs-next-act" target="_blank" title="Tony Hsieh's Next Act | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">Zappos</a> and Patagonia and other companies are doing out there, demonstrating that businesses can be unapologetic free-market capitalists and still deliver their businesses in ways that are conscious, purpose-based and intentional. They don&rsquo;t have to leave their humanity outside of the business. Our vision is to help more and more companies become these conscious capitalists, to awaken businesses to a whole new way of seeing themselves. Another way to think about it is sort of changing the narrative of business. Right now, people think, I&rsquo;m going to become rich and then I&rsquo;ll do something that&rsquo;s important. I&rsquo;ll start a philanthropy, I&rsquo;ll give back. And we say, &lsquo;Why do we have to look at it in such a compartmentalized way? Why can&rsquo;t we integrate the success we all want as businesspeople with the significance that we all want as human beings? Why can&rsquo;t we integrate those together and build businesses that allow us to express that within our business?&rsquo;&rdquo;HOW BUSINESS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD: &ldquo;We believe that the way to change the world is to change business, because business is where the power is on planet Earth right now. Business is controlling the marketplace, politics, community, everything. If business is where the power is, we&rsquo;ve got to make business a better culture, a better consciousness, but the only way to transform a business culture is to transform the leaders of the business, so our whole strategy at Stagen is to start with the leader. The leader affects the organization, and the organization affects the community and the society.&rdquo;

Leadership coach Rand Stagen says you don&rsquo;t have to go through formal leadership training or hire a personal executive coach to understand the power

Leadership coach Rand Stagen says you don&rsquo;t have to go through formal leadership training or hire a personal executive coach to understand the power | SUCCESS

Tales From a Top Management Consultant

Tales From a Top Management Consultant | SUCCESS

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