Framing Success: 20 Essential Lessons for Achieving Entrepreneurial Greatness from a Self-Made Multimillionaire

By Leslie McIntyre-Tavella

Being a successful entrepreneur is exhilarating, but it’s not for the faint of heart. In business today, being good is merely the entry fee. In order for your business to thrive, you must be consistently exceptional. No one knows that better than Leslie McIntyre-Tavella, who, at the age of only twenty-two years old—without a high school diploma and with the odds stacked against her—started her own business, which she bootstrapped into a $20 million award-winning firm. 

     Framing Success highlights Leslie McIntyre-Tavella’s keys to entrepreneurial success, including how to

• build a strong foundation to construct a solid business;

• find and secure a rock-star crew through strategic and unconventional talent optimization practices;

• cut through the distractions and noise of a business and quickly get to the root issues;

• provide outstanding engagement for your customers;

• articulate, share, and grow your vision.

     The lessons Leslie offers aren’t things you can learn at Harvard Business School; they are crucial lessons she learned on the job. Now you can take her hard-earned, practical, and invaluable experience and create your own rewarding blueprint for entrepreneurial triumph and success!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
• Release date: Aug 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736028353

Book preview

Preface

Running a small business for thirty-plus years afforded me a lot of learned lessons. Business starts and ends with the customer—acknowledging, honoring, appreciating, and pleasing the customer—in every single interaction. I’ve spent a lot of time speaking to customers about their experiences and what they truly want in a business partner. In business today, being good is merely the entry fee. In order for your business to continue and thrive, you must be consistently exceptional. Everyone talks the same talk—but few walk the walk! Managers and C-level executives are busier than ever these days, being bombarded by meetings and chats, emails, text messages, social media, and so on. It is the duty of leaders to help them cut through the clutter and noise and deliver a superior experience and product repeatedly and consistently.

When I was twenty-two years old, I started my own business when all odds were stacked against me. You see, I did not finish high school or attend college. I have an eleventh-grade education. I had a very unsettled home life and was eager to start out on my own, knowing I could only depend on one person—me.

At a young age, I had the unique opportunity to get a glimpse—that is, a glimpse of two lifestyles I could choose for myself. I lived in two extremely different household environments for many years, which allowed me to clearly see the long-term consequences of both. Bouncing back and forth between an abusive, unpredictable, and addiction-filled home and a loving, nurturing, and supportive one gave me a very clear illustration of what kind of life I could have when I set foot on my own path.

My mother returned to work three days after I was born, which placed me securely in the hands of my godmother, Marian McIntyre, and into a home filled with wonderful smells and nurturing, kind people. Aunt Marian was a person who would eagerly sit on the floor and play Candy Land for hours at a time, happily neglecting most of her household chores or other impending tasks.

But at home, my siblings and I witnessed some very ugly behavior and many dark events, things that children shouldn’t have to see or survive. My sister, who died a few years ago from alcoholism and other self-inflicted complications, was forever haunted by our childhood. My brother, who is still alive today, probably endured even more than I did, and perhaps the worst of us all; ultimately, he was the one who always tried to protect my mother from the fallout my father brought home every night.

By the grace of God, I was able somehow to survive those events, change my destiny, and choose a path that would bring me happiness and success. I left high school at fifteen years old, got a job, and soon after, found an apartment of my own. I navigated away from a life of uncertainties and volatilities. Luckily, through the nurturing, kindness, and life lessons my aunt and uncle showed me, my confidence soared. They told me I could achieve anything I desired. And I did.

My father was a gritty, hardworking plumber who was truly loved by many. I inherited his personality and the ability to engage and cultivate strong relationships with people. But the best gift he gave me was the drive and the will to succeed, not because he had these qualities but because he did not. He lost everything we had.

My dad had been given a successful plumbing business from my grandfather, but he gambled and drank it away. After that, he managed to lose our beautiful Silvermine, Connecticut, family home. One day, my mom’s prized 1966 lemon-yellow Mustang Fastback mysteriously disappeared from our driveway—without explanation, never to return. And I’ll never forget the morning—I was probably about ten years old—when throngs of eager tag sale shoppers came into our house and rummaged through each room, leaving with boxes and handfuls of our possessions. Bit by bit, I saw my toys, my clothes, and the contents of my entire bedroom walk out of my home, forever, with strangers. When I repeatedly asked my mom what was happening, she told me to be quiet. I think she was in shock too.

The very next day, we had a terrible ice and snowstorm, but a small box truck still managed to show up and carry away the few belongings we had left. And just like that, suddenly, we lived somewhere else. There was no explanation. Nothing.

Thankfully, my mother had a work ethic like no other, and she showed me that hard work could be fulfilling and rewarding. She, too, lost plenty and dealt with great adversity because of my father; in her mid-forties, she found herself without a dollar in the bank, separated, and nearly homeless. Bruised physically and mentally, she was forced to start her life over paycheck by paycheck. My mother worked as an insurance agent and remained at the same firm for sixty-one years before retiring, staying on through three sets of owners. In addition to her full-time job, she worked weekends as a banquet waitress. Seventy-hour weeks were commonplace for her and also became commonplace for me.

She is super tough and extremely resilient to this day, and I am deeply thankful for her genetic footprint as she continues to thrive at the age of eighty-seven.

My childhood was far from storybook, but I am truly grateful for the lessons it taught me. I am now gritty, resourceful, and extremely independent, and although my past has often caused me great angst, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t trade it for any other life.

Your life defines you, but the future is yours to control. My past made me who I am today: the woman who—over the course of three decades—built one of the most successful and reputable boutique staffing firms in all of Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Through organic growth only, I bootstrapped my business into a $20 million award-winning firm, becoming one of the highest gross profit earners in the industry, and retained a tenured workforce long past those at most other staffing firms. Other staffing businesses coveted my people and practices, day in and day out. And after thirty-one years, I sold my firm in a multimillion-dollar cash deal.

Prior to selling, I ensured that our portfolio of customers was diversified and well balanced; I made sure that no customer made up more than 10 to 12 percent of our total revenue. Additionally, we achieved a gross profit of 45 percent and maintained exceptionally strong and loyal customer relations; most of our customers spanned fifteen-plus years with our firm. Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) averaged 70-plus for both customers and candidates, which was renowned and highly uncommon in the staffing industry. Initially, our firm started in the Connecticut marketplace, focusing on administrative, clerical, and accounting and finance positions in both the consulting and direct-hire verticals. After we grew these two divisions substantially, we expanded into creative, information technology, and medical positions. Additionally, we expanded geographically into the tristate areas and ultimately into several states in the US.

We won numerous awards every year, including first place in Best Places to Work in Connecticut and eleventh in Women-Owned Businesses in Connecticut. Additionally, our business was the leading brand among staffing agencies in the community.

But when our thirty-year anniversary came in 2016, I knew in my gut that it was time to sell. Over the previous two years, I had grown restless within my firm and felt in my heart that I was done with this chapter in my life. My choices were to find investors to grow my firm substantially larger (which would result in many new issues and challenges); grow by acquisition; invest personally; or risk having my perfectly balanced company that I had built become ravaged by a future recession or other business challenges.

I knew the timing was right for change, as staffing firms were being successfully acquired with large multiples, and my company was positioned perfectly for a sale. The staffing industry was due for a major disruption, and the mergers and acquisitions market for staffing firms was at one of the highest levels in fifteen-plus years; there would be no better time to sell.

It’s interesting how much clarity and hindsight you gain after you sell your business. Your thoughts are no longer consumed and clouded by the thick of your business. Chaos comes before clarity. Yes, there is confusion at first and some identity issues, but once those fade away, there is a renewed coherence and ability to fully unpack your journey as an entrepreneur and leader. Issues you struggled with so desperately as an owner become obvious in hindsight. You are allowed to go on your journey again but with the complete precision and focus you weren’t afforded before.

I decided I needed to share what I’ve learned along the way: the important lessons of how to guide your business by implementing extraordinary customer service practices, providing exceptional engagement for your customers, using strategic talent optimization practices to hire best in class talent, and building a rock-star team of people to share and grow your vision. The lessons I offer aren’t things you can learn at Harvard Business School; they are lessons that were learned on the job, by being highly observant, having a willingness to do any job, and seeing the value in delivering unprecedented service to customers. I will teach you how to find someone who might not have the obvious skill set you think you need and show you how to uncover their underlying foundation—revealing a strong structure that can be built on.

Being a successful entrepreneur is exhilarating, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Navigating the pitfalls of small entrepreneurial start-ups is no easy task. Eight out of ten small businesses fail in their first eighteen months of operation.¹

I can help. In my thirty-one-plus years, I have learned a great deal about people and business. Sure, I’ve made mistakes along the way—none dire, thank goodness! In these pages, I am going to share my top lessons with you.

If you don’t like constant change, don’t thrive in uncertainty, or aren’t able to make gut-wrenching decisions quickly, you might want to rethink your decision to run or own your business. Understand that no one will work as hard as you, love your business like you do, or see things quite the way you do. Twelve- to fifteen-hour days become the norm, weekends get cut short, personal and family engagements get sacrificed, and disappointment and frustration are common.

For me, these things were recurring themes, already learned from my childhood. I remember waiting on my aunt’s stoop every weekend morning for a mom who often didn’t come, and I had plenty of other ugly and upsetting disappointments as a child. However, those moments equipped me with the invaluable tool of resiliency and empowered me to overcome disappointment.

These days, most of us don’t get to experience disappointment as often as we should. I believe learning to bounce back from disappointment makes you stronger than ever and gives you new tools for the next time you hit a bump in the road. We need to learn how to fail, how to hurt—and also how to recover and win. Being an entrepreneur offers all of this—the losing, bouncing back, and winning. It’s exhilarating, as it allows you to chart your own course, create solutions for customers that you love, help other firms achieve their greatness, build a strong culture filled with like-minded people, and be a part of something thrilling and inspiring. I wouldn’t trade my experiences for any other!

Introduction

During my thirty-plus years in the business trenches as a successful entrepreneur, I didn’t have the typical higher-learning degrees that often accompany many (but certainly not all) successful business leaders. Along the way, I have succeeded and failed at many challenges, learning from small mistakes and missteps.

I have also enjoyed more than twenty-five years in the remodeling field, restoring old houses, commercial buildings, and condominiums. As I started this book, I couldn’t help but continually see the similarities between building and remodeling a physical structure and building a business. When I opened my firm, I was able to clearly see what was needed to build relationships with customers, seeing the end game even before the work began.

Once I set my sights on a customer that I wanted to do business with, I invested my time wisely by finding out everything I could about their company, their products, and their people. I immersed myself in their business; I uncovered their struggles and pain points and then set my sights on helping them. Quite often, their issues were people-related. Therefore, by relentlessly pursuing the customer and showcasing better and stronger talent for them to employ, I developed a trusting relationship with them, and many of their problems went away.

I spent many years working to cut through the distractions and noise of a customer’s business to quickly get to the root issues. Whether those issues involved people, marketing, or supply chain problems, I was able to quickly land on the right ideas and solutions and help the customer create better processes. I could do this because I was an unbiased outsider looking in. In fact, I feel fortunate that I was often able to see the result before the journey even began—believing we would be successful even when others didn’t. Entrepreneurs often possess the ability to very clearly see their vision even before execution. It’s an innate sense that allows them to look far ahead and see the successful outcome even before the venture begins.

This vision carried into the purchase of my first home at the age of twenty-two, when I realized I had the foresight and ability to cut through all the ugliness of a tired home and envision a restored, remodeled one—just as I am able to do when building up a business.

Starting with that very first house, in my mind, I was instantly able to take down walls, move rooms around, reconfigure structures, strip off wallpaper and horrible paint colors, and see a spectacular finished product. And because luck always plays a small factor in someone’s success (or because I am great at vetting talent and reading people), I married an extremely talented contractor/entrepreneur. Together, we have taken thirteen structures in disrepair and turned them into profitable turnkey business ventures and homes that we have enjoyed for many years.

The same year I bought my first home and began to build it into my vision, at the age of twenty-two, I also started The McIntyre Group from a blank canvas and grew it into a $20 million business that became one of the strongest, most esteemed staffing firms in the Connecticut marketplace.

My unconventional upbringing and the inability to finish high school taught me the importance of a strong foundation. I realized the importance of it, and I craved it. Starting out with a strong foundation is the key to constructing something solid, whether it is a good business, a building, a relationship, or a marriage. You must be on strong, solid footing when you venture into a business of any kind. From there, you need to create a blueprint, a business plan, or an outline that you will utilize every day to move your business forward. It is critical that you create proper structures, measures, and principles so that everyone has a solid plan to follow. Thankfully, due to the foundation I built my business on some thirty years ago, we were able to withstand three recessions, Y2K, 9/11, and the financial meltdown of 2008–2009—all events that were unplanned and required swift action. If we did not have a solid foundation, we wouldn’t have survived.

It all starts with finding the right crew—the group of people whom you hand-select to take your business or project to the next level. Finding, securing, and retaining talented staff is key to your success. Your crew can make or break your business—and your vision—so it’s imperative to hire and select the right people. From the beginning, I chose to look for talent that offered diverse views and opinions, which would help grow our firm. I’ll admit, my interviewing style was a bit unconventional: I did not demand certain degrees or backgrounds. I sought out strong personality and character traits, like determination, grit, self-awareness, persistence, and a strong moral compass. These are many of the necessary qualities that took me through life and allowed me to grow an extremely successful business; they’re traits that no school can teach.

Many of the job opportunities available today don’t really need a degree, and firms get too wrapped up in pursuing only degreed candidates. In no way am I knocking people who have degrees— my daughter just finished her master’s degree at NYU, and I admire her hard work and achievements. But, so many companies miss out on extremely talented candidates because they don’t have a degree, even though they are often far more skilled than the degreed candidate the company chose instead.

I am living proof of this. At the start of my career, I may not have looked like the kind of job candidate who was going to succeed; after all, I had only an eleventh-grade education. But I had other strengths that made up for what I lacked in schooling. I was raised