The Invisible Mentor

Interview With Jim Love, Partner, Performance Advantage

This interview was first published in the November 2006issue of my newsletter Ambeck Edge, but learning from the mistakes of thers is important so that we do not have to make those same mistakes.

Avil Beckford: Describe a business challenge you had and how you resolved it?

Jim Love: The key challenge for me was to grow the business beyond just me, and an idea. This is a huge challenge for entrepreneurs.

Resolution: I made many mistakes. One mistake was panicking and saying that I had to bring other people into the business. I didn’t handle this process as well as I could have, and one classic example was bringing in salespeople who couldn’t or didn’t sell. I expanded too rapidly and hired people who I shouldn’t have. I did all the right things to resolve the challenge, but I didn’t do them well. The renaming of the company from True North to Performance Advantage reflected a crisis point that we hit and I had to fix that. Now I have expanded much more cautiously with much more deliberateness. I have two partners in the business and we have a selection of consultants. We were more rigorous in the selection process.

A key thing, which helped me, was to take my own advice, the advice that I give to my clients. I did a plan and looked at some of the metrics in my business. I looked at where we wanted to go and that took me a long time to complete, which gave me a newfound respect for why some companies do not want to do strategic planning. In the planning I looked at what types of people and revenue we wanted to attract, and how they fit together. Now I know what I want, and I am aware of what offers to take and which to leave on the table.

AB: What lessons did you learn in the process?

JL: Lessons Learned:

1. It’s important to understand how your business runs at every level – from the strategic to the operational
2. Know what you’re passionate about, know what you can do that can beat the world, and know what metrics drive your business. The better I got at doing this, the better I became at solving crises and not just the challenge I talked about
3. Business success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent discipline. You have to work in pursuit of your goal
4. You have to plan for strategic success and follow the plan. Stop worrying about the attributes that you don’t have and start exploiting the things that you do well, recognizing the places where you don’t want to go
5. Be able to be true to your moral compass

AB: In your opinion, what is the formula for success?

JL: “To thine own self be true” by William Shakespeare sums up the formula for success. To me, it is to know who you are, what you want, what you are passionate about, take the time to plan for it and celebrate milestones along the way, and NEVER deviate from your moral compass.

Excerpt November 2006 Ambeck Edge

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