“I have never actually thought of our story as a success. Certainly not one important enough to share with others. It seems that all we did was write a Business Plan each year and then focus one day at a time achieving it. After 15 years of this strategy, it's working! Perhaps you'll find in here some advice or kernel of wisdom that you can use... please consider that it comes from a husband and wife who co-own a manufacturing business and love working together AND who claim to have no answers about this subject. It is an on-going inquiry into the power of declarations, the importance of education, lots of hard work, and a bit of luck along the way. In early 1989 we purchased an ongoing business that needed a serious turn-around to succeed. We knew nothing about plastics injection molding but when you're married to an engineer, they think "No sweat!" about how things work. We both left corporate careers to enter the domain of private family business ownership. In spite of all the advice to not work together, the short report is that our company is 15 years old, we will celebrate 40 years of marriage this year, and we couldn't be happier! Using retirement funds from my teachers' fund, we invested $60,000 to purchase the business with seller financing for the balance. It is only recently through Protégé studies that I find it is another example of a "Nothing Down" Deal. Due diligence with our CPA convinced us that this was a serious opportunity where we could apply our collaborative competencies and turn this company around. February 1st of 1989 we walked in as owners. We quickly discovered after taking over that the records were fraudulently represented, sales figures were bogus, and filed tax returns completely inaccurate. What to do? I strategized with an attorney... we had to ask ourselves if we still wanted the challenge and we said YES... so it was up to me to renegotiate the sellers' note. I spoke about the fraudulent nature of his representation, that we would use the balance of the funds we owed to sue him, and invited him to present a proposal to convince us to stay on as owners. My strategy was to get him to present his best option first and if I didn't like it, to come down hard on a possible lawsuit plus IRS notification. Imagine my surprise when he proposed that we pay him only 4 months payments (instead of 3 years) and he would cancel the balance of the note. This proposal was far superior to anything I thought he would even consider. Perhaps all the evidence I presented shocked him into discovering he wasn't dealing with a wimp! I bargained for only 2 payments and we settled on 3. So instead of paying $450,000 for the business, we only paid $75,000 total. Quite a deal... and we were off! That negotiation skill has served us well in other business matters. We always ask ourselves these three questions no matter what the subject is... (1) How much is enough?, (2) For the Sake of What?, and (3) What Do I Really Care About? Those questions serve us to reflect and then act with conviction! You might wonder what our company does and what value do we bring to clients? Our core offer is to create products from client drawings in plastics, assemble, and ship them to their distribution centers. We concentrate on medical devices, bio-tech products, and chip carrier trays used by wafer manufacturers. Boston Scientific, U.S. Surgical, Abbott Labs, Molecular Devices, IBM, and Hitachi are some of our major clients. Additionally we work closely with venture-capital firms where their funded companies are at risk if projects don't go quickly and smoothly. Because we are engineering-focused and understand the concerns of the medical marketplace, we are well-known for delivering on-time and at-budget. Products are produced in a clean room environment both in California and India, our new location for manufacturing. We say we make products you hope you never see because you'd be under anesthesia! Our slogan is "Where Good Ideas Become Great Products". One creative strategy we use with start-ups is in our quotation responses. We quote our normal margins in building the molds that produce their products, BUT we add a section in there for granting stock awards if we come in early. We still have to be competitive but our competitive processes allows us most often to complete their timelines early... hence we receive private placement stock that is very valuable when they go public. In one case, we have 10,000 shares that is currently valued at $98,900 after 3 months. One of the early challenges we faced was the notion of a woman leading a manufacturing business. Most manufacturers are led by men, housed in less than pristine buildings (think girlie calendars on the walls), and employ people not well-trained. It was difficult at first to be taken seriously in a room of male-CEOs, especially when we were learning the plastics manufacturing business. There are only two plastics injection manufacturing companies headed by women in this country. I work hard to produce an assessment of competence, willingness to learn, and open to sharing. It didn't matter to me what they thought so long as I continued to produce actions consistent with our vision. And I realized we were better off joining forces with them than alienating them. We never lost sight of our dream. Slowly we began to get noticed... taking a few accounts from them, winning industry awards, and being appointed to the Board of the most powerful manufacturing association in Washington, DC. The advantage of not being "loud" about our actions was purposeful. I'd rather just add clients quietly over time to keep the competition off-guard than announce our strategy. Results speak louder than claims. I am most proud of our team members... they are the reason for much of our success. It was important to include them in our vision, compensate them well in a clean, organized environment, and recognize their value through 401K participation. Ongoing education and training are most important for them to advance, and we tie compensation to the total results and their learning. Every payroll period, I write a memo informing them of the business, client news, new offers, and how they can contribute. I offer my assessments of where they are weak and where they are strong collectively as a group. Also where I am satisfied and where I am dissatisfied with our progress. This memo dispels what I call "water-cooler talk" where gossip spreads. The importance of these memos was brought to me by a spouse of one team member who said that they were the most important piece of information each payroll... otherwise they knew nothing of what was happening when their spouse went to work. These memos have also helped when we've had to make the tough decisions like layoffs. Including them in the business rationale for layoffs and our collective thinking for how they were implemented is shared. This eliminates the "made up stories" of favoritism. Where are we now you might ask? Our Company is the most well-known firm of its kind in Silicon Valley, CA. We have the cache over all others... our identity is strong and we are sought out. Our firm has been fortunate to win many awards: IBM #1 Supplier of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Vendor of the Year, #12 Largest Woman-Owned Business in the Bay Area, #23 of Top 100 Fastest Growing Enterprises in the Bay Area, and others. Peter Jennings World News Tonight did a featured segment on us. Wall Street Journal wrote about our employee successes and value of education. Business Week has quoted me several times on economic news. Now a woman owned manufacturing company is worth writing about... we have something to say! Right now We are working to build the enterprise for sale in 2-3 years. Knowing the valuation model for a manufacturing business, we are in a project to grow the business more profit ”--Stephanie H & Jack H - Total Gain: $15,637,509
“Rewriting our business plan with primary goals being substantially changed. The first is to restructure the company so it is positioned for purchase before the end of 2006.”--Eleanor M - Total Gain: $7,518,303
“ My journey has allowed me to grow and give of myself to others along the way!! My wonderful partner and husband Denis read some Robert Allen books and always wanted to own some rentals. I kept saying "I don't want to clean toilets etc…" He was gentle and kept bringing it up now and again. We did a few successful retail flips commencing in October of 2003. We decided to step it up and attended our first evening through RAI in Mesa in January of 2005 after seeing an infomercial very late at night(they do work). We bought the 3 day for $5,000, had a great 3 days, took it all in, did an assignment within one week, purchased a pre-foreclosure and did some retail flips and held a few rentals (yes I was cleaning toilets). In May/2005 we attended another one day through RAI and bought the Field Training which I attended in October 2005. I was determined to make my education costs back and I did. We purchased more Real Estate. I received an email from EWI to attend a Wealth Retreat in May of 2006. I took it all in. I did an interview for an infomercial. It was an awesome 5 days and I became a Mastery student. I called my husband and said "I'm quitting my job" and I reassured him we would be fine. He simply stated "OK." He later told me that he lay in bed that night and was thinking "what have I done? I've created a monster." After all he had introduced me to the idea of Real Estate. I came home and did everything I was instructed to do. I attended 12 Bootcamps and a few seminars in just a little over a year and had my entire family's support (2 fabulous boys and my husband). I have done over 60 SFR's rehabs for myself and my out of state clients. I am involved in various investment products and partnerships. I paid down our personal debt. So, looking forward to another leg of my journey. What a great ride it has been and continues to be… the people, the experiences, the pains, the challenges, etc.....ALL worth every minute if you don't lose sight of WHY you are doing it. We want to spend years with our families enjoying "time and being" with them when we want and for how long we want...that is exactly what financial freedom will afford us. Our charity is giving to the working poor who have very sick children with special needs. We want to be able to give much more. I have a passion for teaching what I am good at and would love to give back to EWI in some teaching capacity in the very near future. Until the next entry. ”--Beatrice B - Total Gain: $1,939,699
“I had bought numerous RE properties since 2003, learned so many strategies through RAI and EWI, put them into action, became a buy and rehab expert if you will, did this successfully for some time and was asked to do it for other people by a previous mentor of mine. I began speaking about this type of program. People bought the program and I started to manage purchases and rehabs for other investors for a fee. I love this and plan on doing this for another 1.5-2 years during this opportunistic time in Real Estate. I am also doing it now for my own clients as well. RE consulting/managing is currently my main business.”--Beatrice B - Total Gain: $1,939,699
“My latest story is one that I seriously feel started some time ago but was planted in Anaheim at the Wealth Retreat. My partner in Real Estate consulting, Alison shared that weekend with me. We had bright RED T-SHIRTS made up just for the retreat as our live business cards. We love to network. We decided that our new company name together would be Portfolio Builderz and that we would offer various opportunities through that company as we had been doing independently of one another as well as together. The name stuck and we were excited at the response to our RED T-SHIRTS. Both of us were Mastery students and had spent much money on education and learning over the last few years. We came to the Wealth Retreat as we felt the need for a boost from some of our mentors on the Schnitter team and pick up the positive energy of the weekend.... During this lending/credit time we were faced with our momentum slowing down to a crawl and we needed to get back on track quickly. We networked like crazy in Anaheim....actually spoke to Robert Allen and Tom Painter on the Wednesday evening after having walked across the stage to pick up our gain awards, that was awesome! We took on the Rich in Six Challenge and told each other that we were going to Tahiti! It was EXACTLY what we needed to get our head of steam back up again. THANK YOU ROBERT ALLEN! We had a business filled weekend of planning and taking action. WE have since dabbled on EBAY and have sold numerous items totaling several hundreds of dollars, actually created and launched our new website, started a new company in Real Estate Consulting and acquired new clients. We have pending offers for our clients again (which will bring in approximately $20,000 this month for our business and twice that for the client in equity and cash out) Because we ended up starting our own Hard Money Division of our Company in order to keep the deal flow going within our control, we have raised at least $100,000 for that and have leads interested as well currently. We had also been involved in yet another Passive Income stream where we actually became General Partners in oil Drilling Partnerships last weekend. We have raised at least $60,000 for that with our goal being $800,000 by November 15th. As you can see we have become very focused and driven and we will plow forward despite the grim media...we have great people who help us in the day to day and they will never go unrecognized. I have begun reinvesting in my own market of Phoenix, AZ and will have placed hundreds of offers on REO's by the end of the week. I am looking to purchase several houses here as well. There is so much to share and so little space. It boils down to the fact that we DID get the boost we needed in Anaheim and there is no stopping now...thank you Robert Allen for laying down the tracks for our locomotive! Our seed is growing into an enormous tree with numerous limbs. My dream of spending more time with my family (they are ALL in Canada) whenever and for however long I desire is within my reach. I can see it so clearly! I am going for it! ”--Beatrice B - Total Gain: $1,939,699