Q1. Please give our readers an introduction to your business. Please include what your business is all about, in which city you are located and if you have offices in multiple locations/ cities.
Ans : I work with individuals, coaches, consultants, and executives. With each individual, I help them do four things: (1) Improve key skills they already have, (2) Develop new skills that they never knew they’d need, (3) Retool outdated beliefs they never knew they were influence by, and/or (4) Rebuild the basic architecture of their homespun, family- and school-bread worldviews.
I work from my home office in Irvine, California. I also work with clients in their homes and offices, wherever they’re most comfortable. The decision about where we work is mutual, agreed to on the basis of what’s most equitable. I also do a fair amount of virtual coaching and thought partnering.
Q2. Please give us a brief description about yourself (it should include your brief educational or entrepreneurial background and list some of your major achievements).
Ans : Early on, I was a diplomat with the United Nations. I was UNICEF’s Assistant Area Representative in the Middle East. After this I was an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving an 18-month tour of duty in Vietnam. For the last three decades, I’ve been an organizational coach and consultant, internally with Kaiser Permanente in Southern California and then externally with companies in the Automotive, Healthcare, Aerospace, Communications, and Computer Industries. Across these years, I coached thousands of front line employees, supervisors, executives, and union leaders, and challenged by consulting assignments in more than three dozen corporations.
Three decades of coaching and consulting with thousands of senior leaders, middle managers, and front-line employees has shown me that these days personal and professional learning is both necessary and possible for every individual, and it has shown me that what I’m best at is being a coach and thought partner to those individuals who either know, or are willing to consider the idea that success for both individuals and organizations begins with specific, particular individuals, and the personal and interpersonal transformations that they’re willing to pursue. To this end, I work with individuals. They can be private clients looking to resolve old issues or open new pathways for themselves. Or they can be coaches, consultants, or senior executives who come to me with a sense that they need to reevaluate the ways in which they’re currently seeing the world, especially the complexity they’re facing and the roles they seemed destined to play day after day. Often these clients are facing problems they don’t really know how to handle. Or they’re wondering whether the problems waiting for them just over the horizon are going to be too complex for them to cope with. As their coach and thought partner, my job is showing them how to examine beliefs that, before now, they weren’t able to discern, let alone question or change.
Q3. What inspired you to (start a new business venture) or (to make significant changes in an existing business)? How did the idea for your business come about?
Ans : In 2012, I took a year off from the organizational coaching and consulting I’d been doing for the past several decades to assess and evaluate my work. The basic questions I was asking myself were these:- “Where, when, and how can I do my best work? With whom should I be working? Eventually, I recognized that I’d be happier and more effective working as a personal and professional thought partner and coach than I’d ever been when I was working as an organizational consultant and a coach. My three decades of coaching and consulting had shown me that, at this point in time, transformational learning is a critical work and life skill for every individual and that, in this context, I’m at my best when I’m being a coach and thought partner to individuals who either know, or are willing to consider the idea that personal and professional success begins with specific, particular individuals, and the personal and interpersonal transformations that they’re willing to pursue.
Q4. What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
Ans : For me, the three skills that a successful entrepreneur needs to have if they want to substantially increase the odds that they will be successful are these three:
For me, the question is not what are the three top SKILLS a successful entrepreneur needs to have mastered. In my experience, there aren’t any single skills that an entrepreneur needs to have mastered. Rather, when it comes to skills, the entrepreneur who is looking to strengthen their skills needs to think in terms of WHICH SKILL-SETS do they need to develop, not which skills. Entrepreneurs who want to strengthen their abilities need to think in terms of multiple skill-sets, not individual skills.
In this context, the three skill-sets I believe are crucial for entrepreneurial success are these two
- Mindful Awareness
- Agility and Resilience
Q5. How many hours do you work a day on average?
Ans : On average I work about six hours a day
Q6. To what do you most attribute your success?
Ans :
- A high quality network of long-term clients who have referred me business
- A high quality network of colleagues who have referred me business
- A persistent, at times dogged insistence on staying current with the way that the world is changing and, in response, the ways in which the coaching and consulting world has evolved along with it in order to stay current.
Q7. How do you go about marketing your business? What has been your most successful form of marketing?
Ans : I’ve been in the coaching and consulting business for several decades, and, during that time, I never actually did any formal marketing. All the coaching and consulting that I’ve done over these many years has always come to me as a referral from a prior or current client, or from another coach or consultant with whom I’d worked before.
Q8. What is the best way to achieve long-term success?
Ans : Like most of us, I don’t have a reliable answer that’s worth passing on to anyone. Long-term success, in my experience, is always a matter of personal presence, relevant skills, a broad network of friends, colleagues, and relevant professionals who there when you need them and know how to support, challenge, and encourage you when this is what’s needed
Q9. Where you see yourself and your business in 5 – 10 years?
Ans : Transformational learning is a very new field, one that, along with a goodly number of related fields and disciplines, is just beginning to find its. Footing. Over the next 5 to 10 years, I fully intend to be one of those who is riding the waves of personal learning and development that this new field of transformational learning will be generating. Learning, having fun, and helping those who are will to jump into the process with me.
Recommended Questions –
Q1 : How long do you stick with an idea before giving up?
Ans : Depends on how good the idea seems to be. If, after investigating for a while, the idea loses its credibility as a good idea, I drop it. If, while investigating and working worth it, the idea retains credibility with me and continues to pique my interest, I stay with it until it bears fruit in the real world.
Q2 : What motivates you?
Ans : My curiosity, mostly. If the issue or idea I’m involved with is a good one, then it provides me with the motivation to keep going. Good friends also motivate me, mostly in terms of returning their friendship.
Q3 : What are your ideals?
Ans : Personal integrity and honesty.
Q4 : How do you generate new ideas?
Ans : I don’t “generate” good ideas; good ideas are everywhere, all around us. The issue isn’t generating them as if out of out of nothing. The issue is simply deciding what good ideas to choose to get interested in.
Q5 : How do you define success?
Ans : I don’t worry about this. Doing good work and being a good friend are what matters. As long as I’m dong this much, then I’m being successful
Q6 : How do you build a successful customer base?
Ans : I don’t know. That’s what I’m needing to learn at this point in my career.
Q7 : What has been your most satisfying moment in business?
Ans : Surviing on my own for many, many decades of professional coaching and consulting
Q8 : In one word, characterize your life as an entrepreneur.
Ans : I don’t think of myself as an entrepreneurl
Optional Questions –
Q1 : If you had the chance to start your career over again, what would you do differently?
Ans : Nothing. Because, in my life, and in many others too, I suspect, serendipitous events have had too much influence on my career.
Q2 : What is your greatest fear, and how do you manage fear?
Ans : I don’t have a greatest fear. Sometimes I experience periods of anxiety (which is the prelude to fear). When this happens, I meditate and do existential breathing exercies
Q3 : How did you decide on the location for your business?
Ans : I didn’t. I am where I am because Irvine is where my son decided to go to high school.
Q4 : Do you believe there is some sort of pattern or formula to becoming a successful entrepreneur?
Ans : No.
Q5 : If you could talk to one person from history, who would it be and why?
Ans : Nelson Mandela. Because he successfully transcended so much adversity.
Q6 : Who has been your greatest inspiration?
Ans : No one particular person. But, If I had to pick one person, it probably would be James Carse, the author of the book Finite and Infinite Games
Q7 : What book has inspired you the most? (OR what is your favorite book?)
Ans : Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse
Q8 : What are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve made?
Ans : Not applicable. All mistakes are simply learning opportunities. If you approach what appears to be a mistake from this point of view, you can’t still see it as a mistake.
Q9 : What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
Ans : Swimming, reading
Q10 : What makes you happy?
Ans : Being with my son, and swimming
Q11 : If you were conducting this interview, what question would you ask?
Ans : I’d ask, “What is it that you still have to learn?
About Transformational Learning Opportunities is a consulting and coaching organization providing thought partner support to individuals and senior leaders who want and/or need to improve specific leadership or interpersonal skills. Transformational Learning Opportunities offers coaching and consulting services to individuals, coaches/consultants, and executives who want and/or need to improve specific leadership or interpersonal skills.
Company Name: Transformational Learning Opportunities
Address: 307 Esplanade,
City: Irvine
State: California
Zip Code: 92612
Telephone No.: (310) 567-2794
Website URL: https://transformationallearningopportunities.com/
