Tim Boberg spoke to the Midwest Entrepreneurs class yesterday via teleconference from his ski lodge in Telluride Colorado. “I just came off the slopes. It is a beautiful day to be skiing”. He began the discussion by sharing his experiences at Monmouth College from 1965-1969 and how he became successful in management consulting. “I was sitting where you are 40 years ago as a business major at Monmouth”, he said. “I had no idea before I graduated where my career would take me”. He was first hired by American Hospital Supply (acquired by Baxter in 1978 http://www.baxter.com/) to be a management trainee. Tim was grateful for the opportunity, but he met a successful management consultant in Lake Forest who was working for the Alexander Proudfoot Company http://www.alexanderproudfoot.com/home.aspx . After listening to his new friend’s career experiences, seeing his home and his new Bentley, Tim decided to pursue a new career. It was right out of the Hollywood movie In Pursuit of Happyness which depicts the life of Chris Gardner who became a successful stock broker in California in the late 1970’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pursuit_of_Happyness
Mr. Boberg was hired by Alexander Proudfoot and worked 16 years for the consulting firm. They were considering a sale of the firm and tried to get Tim and an associate who was an operational expert by the name of DeWolff to sign non-compete agreements binding them to the company. Tim believed it was unethical and along with Mr. DeWolff refused to sign it. They were both fired.
“Mr. DeWolff and I started our own firm out of necessity, we were both on the street”. Since Tim was a specialist in analyzing efficiencies and DeWolff was a “master of execution and implementation” they made a great team. DeWolff, Boberg & Associates was born with no corporate offices. http://www.dewolffboberg.com/
The process was simple. We had a team of salespeople who sought consulting assignments with a unique guarantee. “No one else in the industry would guarantee results, so we promised we could provide $3 in savings for every $1 invested in our services. In 20 years of service with hundreds of large consulting assignments, we only had to repay the fee once”.
Tim led the team that would do the efficiency analysis and they found ways to save the company money. “A lot of our work was common-sense stuff that could not be solved internally by our clients–because it was too political or difficult to pull off”. DeWolff’s team made sure the recommendations were implemented.
Before Tim retired in 2006, they landed a huge contract from a military contractor and the US Navy. However, it wasn’t always easy sailing. “DeWolff and I didn’t get a paycheck or any financial return for the first three years. We were fortunate to survive those lean years, but things really clicked after the initial launch. We had some good clients, did some great work and we increased our full-time employees from 10 to 200 … sales increased to $60,000,000 annually”.
“We were profitable because we didn’t pay for offices or non-performance. Every employee would get a quarterly bonus and informal review based on their performance. Usually the majority of the compensation came in the form of those quarterly bonuses so evryone focused on satisfying our clients and the bottom line. It was clear who was contributing, and who was a slacker. We became very profitable, but I was always gone and it cost me two failed marriages. Some of my emplyees pay that same price because they leave on Sunday night and don’t return home until Friday for 40-50 weeks a year.”
Tim feels that you can learn a lot about someone’s character by how much they love learning. It is important to care about one’s physical well-being, but one’s mental well-being and desire to learn is just as important. Must work the intellectual muscles.
He hired college graduates because they had a better work ethic and made better employees, but he had to train them all, so it is important that they are teachable, trainable.
