Make Money for Bob: The Bottom Line on Entrepreneurship

By Bob Gourley

Smart, practical, and readily applicable, Make Money for Bob: The Bottom Line On Entrepreneurship is an empowering source for any enterprising individual looking to create, launch, and grow a successful business.

More than a book title, Make Money For Bob is the mission statement that made Bob Gourleys own company the talk of the graphic arts/printing industry and it offers a straightforward directive for every entrepreneur to keep a close eye on making the bottom line profitable.

Gourley empowers both the beginning and the seasoned entrepreneur by sharing personal, behind-the-scenes lessons that combine beyond-the-classroom wisdom with real world know-how.

Learn how you can create the three core business plans every aspiring entrepreneur needs to launch and sustain success.

Master the skills you need to engage investors and secure the money needed for your venture.

Discover how to personally build networks with reachable people who have the knowledge, influence, and money to get your deal done.

From creating a complete business plan to developing an authentic business culture, Make Money for Bob: The Bottom Line On Entrepreneurship is a first-rate primer for entrepreneurs to learn the essentials of making money when operating, growing, and selling a business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452069845

Book preview

© 2011 Bob Gourley. All rights reserved.]

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 1/19/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4520-6985-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-6986-9 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-6984-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010912301

Printed in the United States of America

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

This book is dedicated to the best business partner I will ever have—and my only life partner—my wife, Elizabeth Marlese Gourley. Without Marlese’s keen advice, unbelievable tolerance, unwavering support, and unconditional love, this book would not exist, because there would be no Bob Gourley success story.

Contents

PART 1: Discovering Entrepreneurship

Chapter 1 The Beginning of the End

Chapter 2 Entrepreneurship Begins

Chapter 3 Early Lessons

PART 2: Visualizing and Scoring Success

Chapter 4 Recognizing Opportunity

Chapter 5 Going into Business the Right Way

PART 3: Surviving the Game

Chapter 6 When Buying a Business is the Goal

Chapter 7 From the Launching Pad

Chapter 8 Mind Your Manners

Chapter 9 Growing a Business

Chapter 10 Operating an Ongoing Business

Chapter 11 Support Your Core Business

PART 4: Handling Moneybags, Power Brokers, and Other Professionals

Chapter 12 Dealing With the Pros

Chapter 13 Think Like an Investor

Chapter 14 Negotiating the British Way

Chapter 15 Understanding Corporate Culture

Chapter 16 How to Sell a Business

Chapter 17 Fulfill a Need

Chapter 18 Know What You Don’t Know

PART 5: The Work/Life Balancing Act

Chapter 19 Finding Balance

Chapter 20 The Final Word

Exhibits

Acknowledgments

This is scary, because I am so afraid of missing someone that has supported me in this huge learning experience of writing a book. I will start with a profound apology to any that I may miss. It is easy to acknowledge the first person—my wife, Marlese. She has read an untold number of manuscripts, corrected my grammar and bad spelling, and, most importantly, ensured that the stories were accurate and fair. She has never been faint of opinion.

Starting from ground zero, thank you to Tom and Jeannine Akins for transcribing my rough, handwritten notes into the form of a manuscript. It was Paul Wenski who first provided professional editing to my rough story. It was Paula Firestone who woke me up to the fact that it was a good story for my family but not for the new entrepreneur. She said, People do not care much about what you did; they want to know what you learned that can benefit them.

With this good advice, I set about writing the second book. So to those of book one (Tom, Jeannine, Paul, and Paula): thank you for the book (my story) that is now reserved for my family. I want you all to know that I consider this book of great importance in letting our current and future family members know of the hard work and ethical values that have gone into our family estate—and how Marlese and I expect them to carry it on.

My deep appreciation goes to Robin Blakely and June Clark of Get There Media who would not let me consider quitting when we got into the revolving door of yet another editor’s makeover. They pushed and prodded to get it done. Finally, to Carol Johnson, thank you for your dedication to get every t crossed and every i dotted in the final editorial effort.

Thank you to all who have helped and supported me along this fabulous entrepreneurial journey.

Bob Gourley

Introduction

Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover

Can you believe the audacity of someone who titles a book Make Money for Bob: The Bottom Line on Entrepreneurship? Even more outrageous, Make Money for Bob was the most effective mission statement of any company I owned or operated. It simply meant that if everyone contributed by bringing money into the company, everyone benefited. You’ll find the rest of the story in chapter 9.

This is not a book about how great I am. It does not dwell on the details of my struggles or successes. Instead, it clearly defines valuable lessons that I learned from real-life business experiences—lessons I’m certain will benefit you on your entrepreneurial journey. Perhaps it will shorten your learning curve and accelerate the path to success. I sure wish that I would have had much of this experience without having to live through it.

This book will have high value for those who aspire to entrepreneurship—the kind of entrepreneurship that sets this great country apart from any other nation on the planet—the kind of free enterprise system that allows individuals from meager means and limited backgrounds to try, fail, learn, try again, and move on to success. This is my story.

This book is different, because it does not rely on researching business experiences of others. It is not written by someone who had one over-the-top, great idea for a new product or service and hit it big. It does not come from someone who took an existing business and expanded it. My experiences reach across several different businesses in a number of different industries. It involves a broad and continuing learning curve (see Exhibit 3: Deals Done).

There is a substantial amount of research beyond the experience factor. I wanted to understand the skills that are necessary in successful entrepreneurship, skills that are not taught in the classroom. Most universities and business schools do a good job on the basics of accounting, finance, marketing, and management; some are even expanding into entrepreneurial curricula. This book covers the soft skills that play an equally important part of business and social interaction. Some of these skills, such as vision, strong will, perseverance, and attitude, are gifts, but much can be done to improve these natural abilities.

I am confident that you will also find new approaches to the hard skills like creating effective business plans to engage those that are needed to supply funding for your venture. By learning to think like an investor, you will stand a much better chance of getting the money. You may also benefit from seeing how we bought businesses on favorable terms and at a fair price while being concerned about the needs of the seller. You will see how we learned to be fair while making sure that we had proper leverage on our side in negotiating the sales of our businesses.

Finally, I hope you will see the value in service to your community and to individuals. Choose this service carefully, as it can be good or damaging to your business. I believe it is vital to keep a balance of values, starting with your responsibility to your family and friends. You may realize after reading this book that entrepreneurism just is not for you, and that’s okay, too.

A good reason to invest in this book is that 100 percent of the net profit from the sale of it will go to charity via the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation.

Join me in this great learning adventure.

Sincerely,

Make Money for Bob Bob Gourley

PART 1:

Discovering Entrepreneurship

Are you a strong performer, yet you don’t quite fit in the corporate structure or as a support person in the start-up world? Maybe your talent and skills are trying to tell you that you’ve got what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

—Bob Gourley

Chapter 1

The Beginning of the End

The conference room was expansive and silent.

The officers of Fuji USA sat stoically on the far side of a twenty-five-foot-long, highly polished conference table decked out with all of the latest electronic gizmos. They could be in instant visual and audio contact with executives back home in Japan if they had to—with the touch of a button. The conference room was at Fuji’s opulent US corporate headquarters in Elmsford, New York, just outside New York City.

As my CFO, Tom Prater, and I entered the room, we noticed how carefully they had arranged the chairs. We were not only put at a strategically lower power location, but our chairs were a good four inches shorter than theirs.

No matter—by then, we had experienced nearly every possible tactic the other side might try to use to claim the advantage during a negotiation setting. So I didn’t flinch.

Instead, as we took our seats and waited for the senior officer to make his appearance, I couldn’t help but smile to myself thinking how a guy from tiny Mountain Grove, Missouri, was about to negotiate a multimillion-dollar deal with an international corporate powerhouse.

Looking back now, I might have flinched if I had known what was really about to happen. What I didn’t know was that, in one swift stroke, I would be facing something much bigger than I had ever imagined. That day in the Fuji boardroom was about to produce a startling chain of events that would become one of the biggest deals of my entrepreneurial career.

What would I do next? The most obvious solution would be retirement.

I have since realized that you never retire as an entrepreneur; you just get on a glide path in a new direction. Part of that new path for me was rewinding my experiences of buying, growing, and selling businesses to write this book. People have often asked me for advice on successfully mobilizing talent, knowledge, and skills.

As an entrepreneur, I certainly was no overnight success. My story is filled with episodes of learning through trial and error, dogged persistence, and plain hard work. In that sense, mine is an entrepreneurial coming-of-age story of an impatient young man who wanted more out of life and was fortunate to be able to pursue and realize his dream.

Later in this book, I’ll get back to the unexpected events that unfolded as a result of my visit to Fuji’s US headquarters. First, let me take you back to my inauspicious beginnings.

It’s often said that there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened. I like to think that I’m the man in the middle—I like to make things happen. To say that I’m passionate about entrepreneurship is an understatement. I’m drawn to it like an insect to bright lights. To me, the individual entrepreneur and free enterprise are what continue to set the United States apart from other nations. And I not only think that we need this system, I believe we’ll always need it.

I came from a very average (by today’s standards, less than average) family background. I grew up in the small town of Mountain Grove, Missouri, as the younger son in a family of housepainters. Yet, over the years, I’ve owned and operated companies in a variety of industries—food brokerage and meat packing, national food and beer distribution, printing and publishing, banking, one-hour photo lab retail operations, and a natural gas distributorship, plus a number of investment partnerships. (refer to exhibit 3, page 219) The experience of creating and growing operations over a wide spectrum of industries has, I believe, given me a unique view of what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. It also has taught me the importance of thinking like an investor and, most importantly, how to make plans and presentations that will engage the people who can close on a deal.

Many great service and product ventures simply die in the process of being taken to market. The outstanding ones eventually get there on the second or third time around. Most of the world doesn’t understand the real effort required to get there. Too many people prefer to focus on the rare stories about making it big with little visible effort. For many, it’s more exciting to hear how someone stumbled upon an idea (like the Hula-hoop), how the market magically ran with them, and how the creators became fabulously rich. Although that can certainly happen in our great USA, it’s a little like trying to catch a glimpse of the tooth fairy. Most entrepreneurs need more than the luck of being in the right place at the right time. What I can show you is how to do it the hard way, the complete way, the proven way. For those fatalists who say that you can’t go from rags to riches and that it’s not worth the effort—you’re talking to the wrong person.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

If you’re like me, you probably have noticed a persistent entrepreneurial itch inside yourself since you were very young. Early on, I helped out with sanding, scraping, puttying, prime painting, and some finish painting with my father and uncles from the age of about fourteen. I was sure, however, that I did not want this to be my career. There is nothing wrong with this good, honest work; I just had an itch for something else.

I was certain that I needed a college education, and I knew that I would have to do it on my own. After high school, I worked for one year in Kansas City. With little savings and sixty dollars from my dad, I enrolled at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. I earned a meager but much appreciated football scholarship toward my first year, which covered books, tuition, and meals five days a week. This, along with door-to-door sales (a great experience) and anything else I could do to earn an honest buck, helped me make it through my first college year. In my second year, I landed a full-time job in a local shoe store working fifty hours per week making seventy-five cents per hour. With a few summer school classes, I was able to carry a full college credit load. I sometimes wish that I had been able to experience the campus life at college, but you can’t have it all.

Primed and ready to hit the business world full force, I graduated from college after four years, where I’d gravitated to a business and economics major. There was only one problem. I had joined the Reserve Officers’ Training (ROTC) while in college. That meant that a military obligation was waiting for me when I graduated. I had to fulfill my contract with Uncle Sam, set to start in seven months. The army provided me with a dress uniform for my college graduation ceremony, as I didn’t even own a suit. I needed to find a short-term job until active duty began, and I sure didn’t have any money.

Fortunately, due to a friendship developed during college with two sales representatives with the Burroughs Corporation in Springfield, I was able to gain a starting sales position at the Burroughs regional office and service center in Kansas City.

This was pretty big. Burroughs manufactured, sold, and serviced office equipment from adding/calculating/accounting machines to large-scale computer systems. I agreed to give them a good effort and return after fulfilling my military requirement. I completed army basic training at Fort Riley, Kansas, the summer between my junior and senior year and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the army infantry upon graduation. I served eight years, both active duty and active reserves. After transferring to a US Air Force unit based in the Kansas