Sports Psychology and Work

Win At Work Using Sports Psychology


So what if you don't play on Sunday? You might not be a pro athlete, but don't think that your weekly grind doesn't take a mental and physical toll. In order to do your best at work, you have to have the right mental approach. Many pro athletes use a sports psychologist, and you can apply some of the same techniques to your own work routine.

Visualization
Description: To practice visualization, athletes use pictures in favor of words to see what success looks like. According to Robert Troutwine, Ph.D., who is a consultant for a number of NFL teams, you should picture doing something over and over again, but make sure the image you have is of you doing it correctly.

Applying it to work: You can help yourself by picturing the flow of a presentation (before you give it) or imagining a meeting with a client. Don't focus so much on the words you'll use; instead, try to think about the big picture. If you find yourself slipping up at a key step, it's probably something you need to work on. If the visualization goes smoothly, do it again and again, so that when it counts, it'll feel like second nature.

Monitoring your self-talk
Description: Athletes talk to themselves as a way to focus and keep their confidence under pressure. Utah Jazz fans have seen Karl Malone talk to himself at the free throw line. What's he saying? He's reminding himself why he's there and why he needs to succeed -- for his wife and his family.

Applying it to work: You can do this too. You don't have to literally talk to yourself -- just listen to the voice in your head. If it sounds negative, back away and focus before you continue. That voice inside you is the best tool you have to tap into your psyche, so you need to listen to it.

Relaxation
Description: Getting proper rest is the key. But it also means taking timeouts during your day to rise above the stress. Athletes use everything from video games and music to quiet time alone. Of course, if you happen to play for Phil Jackson, you'll find yourself attending pregame meditation sessions.

Applying it to work: You might not always have time at work to relax, but at some point during your day, you need to make some time for yourself. Try yoga at the gym or pick up a hobby. If that's too much, take a walk at lunch. Anything you can do to take the pressure off will help you when it counts.

Though you won't be given a Heisman trophy at work, you should still set career goals to gauge your performance

Concentration
Description: Concentration is mostly a matter of controlling your mind and telling it to block out distractions. For athletes, this often means practice above all else. But what to practice? In Al Leiter's case, game situations could take up too much of his attention. Instead, the pitcher tried to concentrate on each pitch, and nothing more.

Applying it to work: Okay, so you don't practice work, but there are ways to get better. If you receive a new software program, play with it until you master it and you'll be a whiz at crunch time. Take a page from the pros and practice the essence of what you do at work. If you're a lawyer and your job is all about relating to a jury, you need to practice and concentrate on your public-speaking skills.

Mental routine
Description: Routines help you get into a zone. Anything that can help you focus will work. Athletes often try deep breathing, rumination or meditation. Anyone who's ever watched Nomar Garciaparra bat knows the importance of a routine. Graciaparra adjusts his batting gloves before every pitch. Yes, it's a little strange, but it also triggers his mind and tells him, "time to hit."

Applying it to work: For you, it could be as simple as that cup of coffee in the morning -- or maybe there's something else that just gets you going. Work that mental routine into your day. If you think better with a pencil behind your ear, make sure there are pencils on hand.

Letting go of mistakes
Description: You can learn from your mistakes, but once you get the lesson, let it go, or you'll dwell on it. According to Ken Ravizza, who has been a consultant for the Angels, pitchers need to learn this lesson the most. After a pitcher makes a bad pitch, he's very likely to do it again if he can't put the mistake behind him.

Applying it to work: Maybe you blew a big assignment. It happens. Own it and forget about it. It's sounds simple, but it can be tough to forgive yourself. Remember that what is in the past is beyond your control. In other words, you can't do anything about it, so stop worrying.

Setting goals
Description: Goals come in three varieties: performance, outcome and doing your best. In other words, you can set personal goals, goals for winning or goals that simply ask you to give 100%. Coach Pat Flannery of the Bucknell men's basketball team set a goal for his players: Have fun in the game. That goal came from the advice of a sports psychologist, and it helped them get to the NCAA tournament.

Applying it to work: Goals help you stay motivated. You should have a goal for everything, from a project due next week to a promotion a year down the road. There's only one catch when it comes to setting a goal: It needs to be attainable.

Put Your Game Face On

There's probably more of a connection between sports and work than you think. Many pro athletes make big money after they retire by lecturing corporate types on things like teamwork, discipline and leadership. Yes, sports are still a blast to watch, but we can learn a lot from competition at a high level.

Who Are the Real Entrepreneurs?

Who Are the Real Entrepreneurs?

A noted entrepreneur explains why many people who share that lable are not really entrepreneurs.

From: Inc. Magazine, Dec 1996 | By: Norm Brodsky

Street Smarts

Pioneers, innovators, and 'one-ers' all build businesses, but a real entrepreneur is something else

Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur these days, and--judging by the way the word is thrown around--you might think that everybody is one. For all kinds of people, from the guys who play three-card monte in Times Square to the heads of giant corporations, "entrepreneur" is the job designation of choice. It's applied to politicians and college presidents, cabdrivers and bookies. People like Donald Trump, a real estate developer, and USA Today's Al Neuharth, a big-company executive, are held up as models of entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, newspapers routinely refer to inner-city drug dealers as entrepreneurs, presumably because they're trying to sell something at a profit.

This is nuts. Entrepreneur is not a meaningless word, and we shouldn't let it become one. It's the only word we have to describe a person who performs a particular function that's critical to our economic well-being. I'm talking about the conversion of ideas into viable businesses by means of ingenuity, hard work, resilience, imagination, luck, and all the other ingredients that go into a successful start-up. That process is not the only way to create wealth in a capitalist economy, and the people who do it aren't members of some sort of business elite. But they do something that's important and different from what other businesspeople do, and they deserve to have a name.

So what is the definition of an entrepreneur? I have a very simple one. In my book, entrepreneurs are people who, starting with nothing more than an idea for a new venture, have the ability to take it to the point at which the business can sustain itself on its own internally generated cash flow.

Notice I said "ability." I'm not talking about people who happen to be in the right place at the right time. Luck is a factor in every start-up, but I don't count people who start one company and then can't do it again to save their souls. I call them "one-ers." They're entrepreneurs by accident. The example I usually give is Eugene Ferkauf, who founded the E. J. Korvette retail chain in the 1950s and failed at numerous attempts to repeat his success.

I also rule out people who build on existing businesses. My friend Jack Stack, for example, is a great businessman and one of the best managers I know, but I don't consider him an entrepreneur. The business that became Springfield Remanufacturing Corp. was already in operation when he and his cofounders bought it. They started out with a factory, equipment, cash flow, inventory, employees, customers, you name it. Granted, Jack had to be very creative to survive, but what he did was different from what entrepreneurs do.

The same goes for Ray Kroc, who built McDonald's from a successful hamburger stand into one of the greatest companies in the world. He was without doubt a pioneer and a business giant, but the people who got the company up and running were the McDonald brothers, who turned out to be one-ers.

By the same token, I would exclude people who inherit a business, no matter what they do with it afterward. Ned Johnson of Fidelity Investments, for example, has revolutionized the financial-services industry, but his father, who started the business, was the entrepreneur. Ditto for Donald Trump.

As for Al Neuharth, he did a great thing when he launched USA Today for the Gannett Co. I'm sure he is a fine businessman and an innovator. I don't think you qualify as an entrepreneur, however, if you go into business with all the resources of a giant corporation at your disposal.

Nor do you qualify if you do nothing more than acquire existing businesses, like most of the people doing so-called industry roll-ups. They go around the country, buying up local businesses--say, ambulance services or delivery companies--which they then bundle together to create a new national entity. To be sure, they call themselves entrepreneurs. A couple of them have even been designated "Entrepreneurs of the Year," which is a joke. By and large, they're just smart accountants. The exceptions are people like Patrick Kelly of Physician Sales & Service, the national supplier of doctors' offices, and Ken Hendricks of ABC Supply, the largest wholesale distributor of roofing supplies, both of whom built their own businesses before starting to acquire others.

The point is that entrepreneurs, real entrepreneurs, are people who create companies from scratch. They start with nothing except what they themselves bring to the party--a concept, a few contacts, maybe some capital, plus all of those intangible qualities that are important to success in any new venture. And that's about it. There are no salespeople, no offices, no telephones or computers, no accounting system, no operations, no customers or suppliers. The entrepreneurs' job is to put everything together, wearing 10 different hats, juggling 20 different balls, relying on their own knowledge and instincts and creativity to get them to positive cash flow.

And the best entrepreneurs are masters of the process, which is not to say that they're necessarily the greatest businesspeople in the world. Very few of them are industry pioneers. Many of them have a hard time managing the companies they create. They may even fail in a new business venture now and then. But they know how to bounce back from failure, and they keep on trying until they succeed. What they're good at is starting businesses. They can do it again and again.

So who are the real entrepreneurs? Ross Perot is certainly one of them. So is Steven Jobs. I myself would also include Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Federal Express founder Fred Smith, although I'd have to admit that, technically, the jury is still out on them. They could be one-ers.

But most real entrepreneurs are people you've never heard of. There are thousands and thousands of them--men and women of every race and nationality, in every industry and every corner of the globe. They're starting businesses every day, and the world is a better place because of it.

For their sake, I'd like to propose a New Year's resolution. Let's agree that, in 1997 at least, we'll reserve the title of entrepreneur for a particular group of people--the ones who've earned it.

Norm Brodsky is a veteran entrepreneur whose six businesses include a former Inc. 100 company, a three-time Inc. 500 company, and a start-up that he hopes will become eligible for the list in 1996. His column, Street Smarts, will appear every other month. Readers are encouraged to send him questions care of Inc.

Quotations

"There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes."
William H. Bennett

"Entrepreneurs are visual artists. The economy is their canvas."
-Adeola

"Sculpting an idea into a profitable company requires creative vision, couragous action, improvisational planning, indomitable will and objective reason."
-Adeola

Liberals and Class

Liberals and Class: Part III
by Thomas Sowell

Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping. Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of "menial work" or "dead-end jobs."

Think about it: Why do employers pay people to do "menial" work? Because the work has to be done. What useful purpose is served by stigmatizing work that someone is going to have to do anyway?

Is emptying bed pans in a hospital menial work? What would happen if bed pans didn't get emptied? Let people stop emptying bed pans for a month and there would be bigger problems than if sociologists stopped working for a year.

Having someone who can come into a home to clean and cook and do minor chores around the house can be a godsend to someone who is an invalid or who is suffering the infirmities of age — and who does not want to be put into an institution. Someone who can be trusted to take care of small children is likewise a treasure.

Many people who do these kinds of jobs do not have the education, skills or experience to do more complex kinds of work. Yet they can make a real contribution to society while earning money that keeps them off welfare.

Many low-level jobs are called "dead-end jobs" by liberal intellectuals because these jobs have no promotions ladder. But it is superficial beyond words to say that this means that people in such jobs have no prospect of rising economically.

Many people at all levels of society, including the richest, have at some point or other worked at jobs that had no promotions ladder, so-called "dead-end jobs." The founder of the NBC network began work as a teenager hawking newspapers on the streets. Billionaire Ross Perot began with a paper route.

You don't get promoted from such jobs. You use the experience, initiative, and discipline that you develop in such work to move on to something else that may be wholly different. People who start out flipping hamburgers at McDonald's seldom stay there for a full year, much less for life.

Dead-end jobs are the kinds of jobs I have had all my life. But, even though I started out delivering groceries in Harlem, I don't deliver groceries there any more. I moved on to other jobs — most of which have not had any promotions ladders.

My only official promotion in more than half a century of working was from associate professor to full professor at UCLA. But that was really just a pay increase, rather than a real promotion, because associate professors and full professors do the same work.

Notions of menial jobs and dead-end jobs may be just shallow misconceptions among the intelligentsia but they are a deadly counterproductive message to the poor. Refusing to get on the bottom rung of the ladder usually means losing your chance to move up the ladder.

Welfare can give you money but it cannot give you job experience that will move you ahead economically. Selling drugs on the streets can get you more money than welfare but it cannot give you experience that you can put on a job application. And if you decide to sell drugs all your life, that life can be very short.


Back around the time of the First World War, a young black man named Paul Williams studied architecture and then accepted a job as an office boy at an architectural firm. He agreed to work for no pay, though after he showed up the company decided to pay him something, after all.

What they paid him would probably be dismissed today as "chump change." But what Paul Williams wanted from that company was knowledge and experience, more so than money.

He went on to create his own architectural company, designing everything from churches and banks to mansions for movie stars — and contributing to the design of the theme building at Los Angeles International Airport.

The real chumps are those who refuse to start at the bottom for "chump change." Liberals who encourage such attitudes may think of themselves as friends of the poor but they do more harm than enemies.

Menial Jobs

Menial jobs can teach important life lessons
Washington Business Journal - November 21, 1997
by Jeffrey Gitomer

Where did you develop your character? Where did you get your life skills? How have you become successful at what you do? Where did you get your experience?

Julio Melara, author of "Do You Have Time For Success?" and president of the Baton Rouge Report, is a master salesman.

I asked Julio about his secret of sales success. His answer will help you.

Julio said, "I decided to make a list of all the jobs I ever had as a youth. It shocked me to see the number of them I held before I reached age 21. As I made at the list, I realized that most of them were menial jobs, but I also realized that each one provided some positive influence toward my success.

"I decided to write the lesson of life I got from each job," he said. "The results stunned me, and I wanted to share them with everyone so that they could make their own list. Here is a list of jobs you won't find on my resume, but lessons that have lasted a lifetime and crafted a salesman."

• Started cutting grass for profit at age 11.

Life lesson learned: It's important to give things a clean, professional look.

• Sold newspaper subscriptions door-to-door.

Life lesson learned: The joy of rejection. You may have to knock on at least 30 doors before you sell one item.

• Stock clerk at a food store.

Life lesson learned: If you want to sell something, have the merchandise in stock.

Also indicated what effect running out of something as trivial as Cornflakes had on a customer. You'd think the world had come to an end.

• Janitor in an office building.

Life lesson learned: The importance of cleanliness as it relates to image.

• Porter at a used-car lot.

Life lesson learned: Serving is the gateway to selling. Make the car sparkle, and people are more attracted to it.

• Dishwasher at a restaurant.

Life lesson learned: There are lots of jobs that no one wants to do. Bigger lesson: Most people leave a lot of food on their plates (they don't finish what they start).

• Fry and prep cook at a steak house.

Life lesson learned: The importance of preparation and the impact of the right presentation.

• Merchandiser of wine in food and liquor stores.

Life lesson learned: How to arrange and position things so people will have a greater desire to buy.

• Shipping clerk at a plumbing supply house.

Life lesson learned: Delivering your product on time is just as important as selling it.

• Breakfast cook at a hotel.

Life lesson learned: How to do 15 things at once. (And people like weird things on their eggs.)

• Cleaned cars at detailing shop.

Life lesson learned: The importance of details. There's a big difference between washing a car and detailing a car.

You can pay $15 to wash the outside of the car, or $150 to clean the car inside and out and cover all the details. Details are a pain, but details are valuable.

• Retail shoe salesman.

Life lesson learned: If you find what the customer likes, they'll buy more. Sell customers what they want and like. Complement people and be sincere.

• Busboy at a diner.

Life lesson learned: People enjoy being served with a smile.

People hate a dirty table. People love a clean table.

• Courier for business newspaper.

Life lesson learned: Even though it was the lowest job in the company, the organization could not function without deliveries.

The messenger is just as important as the message.

"In every one of these jobs I can remember experiencing some type of failure and some type of frustration, but it never stopped me from trying to do my best," Julio said.

"Most of these jobs I quit to get a better job -- one I got fired from because I wasn't doing a good job. Once fired is enough.

"The biggest lesson I learned came from setbacks. They gave me determination.

Stupid jobs made me smart," reflected Julio.

"The biggest secret to get to the top is: You have a better chance if you start at the bottom.

And when you start at the bottom, in order to get to the top it only takes everything you've got."

What dumb jobs made you smart? And what sacrifice did it take to get your experience?

Beware: Experience has no value unless you apply it in new ways. And are you willing to give it everything you've got?

So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur?

Interview with Allen Andersson, a serial entrepreneur
Ali Ashurov (OG), Co-Editor, News & Campus Affairs
Posted: 10/27/03

Mr. Andersson's first entrepreneurial experience came when he was 16 years old. With savings from the stock market, he acquired an ice cream shop in his neighborhood, hired his siblings and his father (without pay), and made it a successful business which put him and his siblings through college. His most recent success was LightSpeed International, a telecom software company which he sold to Cisco Systems for $160 million in 1998. Prior to that, Mr. Andersson developed the first what-you-see-is-what-you-get word processing software when he founded Interleaf in 1981. In between, he started and ran numerous other businesses. With a masterful brand of self-depreciating humor, Mr. Andersson readily admits that most of those businesses failed.

Today, Mr. Andersson is busy investing his fortune in new promising ventures. He likes what he calls "underappreciated sciences." He is also president of the Frances and Henry Riecken Foundation, which he created to build libraries and communication centers in the farm villages of Central America. I invite you to join me for my conversation with Mr. Andersson as he shares with us what it is like to be an entrepreneur.

Harbus: Please briefly tell me about yourself.

Andersson: I grew up on Cape Cod. Half a century ago it was like growing up in a different country - Cape Cod was an island economically, culturally, and even politically. I grew up in carpenter's family, the poorest family in the richest village. I was really good at math which I learned in the early age. I grew up with an idea that I would have to work really hard and get things done to earn some money. Even today when my friends invite me to play golf, I say "I won't play golf but I can carry your bags. I am a really good caddy." I enjoy doing my job well more than simply putting a small ball in a tiny hole. I went to Phillips Academy on full scholarship, but then I was expelled when they went out looking for someone who cut the bell ropes.

Harbus: That someone was you, I presume.

Andersson: Yes, yes. I ended up going to MIT instead of Harvard, because MIT didn't require people to have high school diplomas. So, I studied math, because I've always liked theoretical things. I've never been interested in facts and still don't have good factual memory. I would rather think than remember. That means I have a short attention span and have trouble following discussions in class and board meetings. So, I went to MIT. Then I was an active draft dodger and joined the Peace Corps.

Harbus: Where did you go?

Andresson: I went to Honduras and taught math at a university there. Then I became a computer programmer, almost by accident. I really liked it and I was really good at it. I became a computer software development manager, but I did something that no other computer programmer does - I followed a carpenter's work ethic. That meant finishing your work on time, completing it on budget and remembering that you're working for a customer. Surprisingly, nobody does that. Creative people don't like to earn their pay. They like to be subsidized.

Harbus: Is it because they are doing things for the sake of their passion?

Andresson: Well, I have a passion for computer programming, too, but I also feel responsible for results. None of the major software projects were ever completed on time, but all of mine were. That's the only thing I'll brag about. What I realized over time though is that this specialty of mine wasn't really appreciated at places I worked. I was never a conventional person. I never followed cars and baseball and, as a result, had nothing to talk about with my co-workers. I was unhappy everywhere I worked. I would get fired more often than not. And so at the age of 36 in 1980, I quite my last job, threw a champaign party for my colleagues and decided to become an entrepreneur. I decided to become an entrepreneur for the reason so many of us do - we couldn't think of anything else to do. We had no other prospects. Nobody wanted to hire us and we didn't want to work for them anyway. We had to go through pain and serial failure of being entrepreneurs because it's the only thing in life that we can even stand. That's my story and a story of many of my friends. None of them went into it boldly saying "this is what I always wanted to do."

Harbus: Interesting, because I think that's different from what you might find here in the business school. People usually have a plan. Many of us spend quite a bit of time on the fence, pondering our next move. Most end up taking regular jobs.

Andersson: A lot of entrepreneurs are people who got bad grades at school and have trouble getting along with others. You've seen enough of me to say that I am a nice guy, but at the same time I am not somebody who goes out of my way to be affable, or conventional, or follow rules, or look like the rest of the crowd. A lot of people like me never had a promotion in their lives.

Harbus: Was that a deciding factor in your success? Sounds like you didn't have any other options, but to become an entrepreneur.

Andersson: It was because I didn't have other options, but it was also because there was something entrepreneurial about me. Many terrible things happen to you if you pursue entrepreneurship. But many good things happen to you, too. It's like climbing a mountain. You know that you have a high probability of frostbite and being crippled, that you'll be in pain on the way up and down, and that you have a considerable possibility of losing your life. But people volunteer for that, because it's such a rush!

Several years ago I decided to retire with a small fortune that I made to write my novels. But then opportunities came along and I just had to do it again! Everything is a combination. Most of the things we choose in life we do because we partly have to and partly want to - and neither of those would be quite sufficient. A lot of happiness depends on deciding to enjoy the things that you have no choice about anyway. It's like being placed in an arranged marriage where you made a spouse to a stranger. Well, you can make that work if you want to. I got myself pushed out of the corporate world in which I didn't fit, but I decided to have a good attitude about it. Many of these things are inborn. A friend of mine told me that entrepreneurs are typified by their ability to get from one failure to another to another with undiminished enthusiasm. You either have that or you don't. It's not something that you choose to have.

Harbus: So can entrepreneurs be made?

Andersson: Like almost all of our identities, entrepreneurs are partly born and partly made. Say, you had a conventional career all your life and suddenly you decide to become an entrepreneur. What you'll probably end up having is a more sober business, where you will apply lessons that you learned in more sober ways. Your business plan will be more complete, your upfront financing will be more solid, and your percentage ownership in the company will be smaller.

Harbus: Smaller?

Andersson: Yes, smaller. If you line up everything that you ought to do instead of jumping into it half baked, if you have everything planned in advance instead of taking a flyer, if you involve other people and pay them salaries instead of maxing out your credit cards, then obviously other people are going to own a lot more of your equity. Other people will also have more control of your situation. That means that if you are not entrepreneurial by nature and you're going into this, you will eventually recreate for yourself a more conventional type of business. The outcomes of such a business will also be more conventional - you will have a lower risk and lower reward. And that's fine, I applaud that, it's just not for me.

Harbus: What you're saying is that there are shades of gray of
entrepreneurship.

Andersson: Yes, there are shades of gray of everything.

Harbus: What is your definition of entrepreneurship then?

Andersson: Entrepreneurship, as I know it, is when people, or entrepreneurs, invent their way of living, they invent their way of working, and they invent their own types of companies and projects. It's not a pattern. Each situation is a reflection of a unique personality. Nothing that I will tell you is necessarily going to apply to any another person.

Not to any other inborn entrepreneur, not to someone who is not an entrepreneur, or not to someone who wants to become one. I almost have a bad conscience about teaching to people. What I want to tell is my story. It's just what one guy did.

Harbus: My observation here in the business school is that many aspiring entrepreneurs end up not pursuing their passions because they have so much already invested in their lives. They are afraid to risk and lose what they have. What would you tell those people?

Andersson: Again, you imply that there are objective sorts of analysis of motivations and risks. But these things are not objective at all. These are all essentially matters of personality. When you talk about risk - well, what is risk? If you talk about losing all your money, and getting a bad credit rating, and getting a bad reputation, and having to start over from scratch - is that a risk? I don't think of it that way. Most people would, but I've actually gone that cycle many times over. I think of it as a learning experience. We live in a country where no person of sound mind is going to starve on the streets. I can fail at business any number of times, but I can still make a living and feed my children and get emergency medical care. I don't think of it as a major risk. Here's what I think of as a risk that maybe you don't. I worked for a year as an actuary to pay some bills. My idea of a risk is that I become comfortable with that, that I earn some salary, that I rotate and climb a corporate ladder, that I wind up with an office on the 40th floor, that a lot of people work for me, that I make a six figure salary and have several million dollars in stock options. To me- that's a risk! It sounds like the most miserable life I could lead. These are not questions you analyze, this is about what you are. I will not say to anyone "be an entrepreneur, be like me." I think that's wrong. Try to be honest with yourself and you will be happier.

Harbus: Thank you, Mr. Andersson.

Andersson: My pleasure.

How to Bootstrap

Think Cheap

We asked some successful bootstrappers how they were able to build their companies on a shoestring budget, with no outside start-up money. Here are some of their tips:

• Train employees to be experts - don't buy outside expertise unless you have no other option.

• Entice potential employees with performance-based compensation plans and bonuses rather than high salaries.

• When at all possible, don't outsource what you can do yourself, even if it means jumping on your bike rather than calling a courier service.

• Tap into the mom-dad market. Stay-at-home parents are a great part-time labor pool.

• Give the company checkbook to the tightwad.

• Don't buy for the future. Buy only what you need right now.

• Tell your customers that your policy is to collect at least partial payment up front and that you will give them below-market prices because of this policy.

• Sell yourself to your vendors as you would to your customers - convince them they will be thankful they did business with you (and allowed you to pay in 60 days, rather than 30) because you'll remember them when you make it big. Pay early when you can.

Start-Up Sizzled Without Venture Capital

By Sarah Schafer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 27, 1999; Page H7

During his first two years in business, Mark Nelson, founder of Ovid Technologies, had a simple morning routine: Wake up at 7 a.m. Wake up sister sleeping in next (and only other) room in the apartment. Push mattresses up against the wall. Begin manning phones.

Nelson, whose company electronically catalogues vast amounts of medical data, would have preferred a more glamorous first office. Problem was, he said, "there wasn't really any start-up money."

So he forewent a fancy office for his apartment in Manhattan's Spanish Harlem, where drive-by shootings were a weekly occurrence. As his business grew, Nelson simply rented more apartments in his building, until computer network wires snaked in and out of windows and through the halls. To make up for low salaries, Nelson allowed employees to live in their offices rent-free.

Nelson, who sold his business in October for $200 million, is what the entrepreneurial world considers a bootstrapper -- someone who builds a company almost from nothing, taking no outside start-up money. These gritty entrepreneurs shun venture capital, which might force them to give up too much control of their companies, takes too long to secure or simply can't be had due to their inexperience.

The concept is quite simple -- "maximizing cash in, and minimizing cash out," said Brad Dawson, founder of Dawson Associates, a consulting firm in Reston that teaches entrepreneurs how to fund their company's growth internally.

Successful bootstrappers, he noted, carefully weigh return on investment before making even the smallest purchases. And, most important, they do not fall into the trap of "cozy comforts," he said, a common mistake made especially by those who have fled large corporations but seem to want to replicate their former environment by purchasing thinks like artwork and plush furniture.

Nelson endured summers with no air conditioning, even though leaving the windows open meant he and his sister would often have to hole up in the bathroom with the phone so customers on the other end of the line would not hear the constant whine of police sirens. (He did spend money on tipping the building superintendent -- especially after his computer network sapped the building's power -- to keep him from complaining to local authorities.)

Instead of borrowing to buy the computers on which he loaded his custom software (in 1987, few of the libraries he served had their own), he collected partial payment from his customers up front. He took that cash to buy computer parts and worked into the wee hours to build the PCs. That saved nearly $2,500 per computer, he figures.

By 1994, Ovid had 150 employees and, for the first time, Nelson sought outside investment. He took the firm public that year, raising about $10 million. By then he had moved out of Spanish Harlem, where, he bragged, "people said we were the fastest-growing business in the neighborhood besides the crack dealers."

Shortly before the initial public offering, Ovid moved into a converted fur vault, formerly owned by a company called Fred the Furrier. "Very cheap," Nelson is quick to point out. Ovid still rents space in the neighborhood, alongside several other software companies.

© 1999 The Washington Post Company