Last week, we left off with Jim Conn’s longtime friend and mentor, Dick Harper, a clinical psychologist, helping Jim implement an open-book management system at BW Integrated Systems. Jim worked closely with the owner, Mark Johnson, to grow revenues from $7M to $13M with 60 employees. People, products, and performance continue to be the company’s success formula as an industry leader in designing and manufacturing end-of-line packaging equipment and robotic automation solutions and the execution of integrated packaging systems.

The open-book management system was the vehicle that empowered employees to be accountable and educated in how their efforts contributed to the bottom line. After five years and a heartbreaking departure, Jim does something completely different.

He and Anita return to where his childhood venture began, Alexandria, MN. For six years, Jim does odd jobs as a contract pilot and becomes primary caregiver and executor-manager of his parent’s estate, as the eldest of six siblings. His parents needed day-to-day care as their health declined and helped in managing their estate. To do this, Anita and Jim bought a cabin and year-round home in Alexandria.

Around 2007 and after his parents passed away, Jim meets a retired financial executive from 3M while working as a SCORE counselor (Service Corps of Retired Executives). SCORE is a non-profit organization founded in 1964. It has the largest network of volunteers in the U.S. Members of SCORE are current or retired business owners and corporate executives who specialize in various business skills. The SBA partners with them to build vibrant small business communities across the country through free consultations, mentoring, and education.

 The Great Recession hit in 2008. Jim describes his journey to becoming a 20% owner and managing partner with Thawzall, LLC, a Glenwood, MN company purchased by Tamarack Industries in 2018. They provide ground thawing and space heating equipment for the rental and construction market to keep builders building year-round. One usually doesn’t factor in an economic downturn before it happens when you perform due diligence on a venture opportunity. Jim found that out with Thawzall, LLC.

His last venture before retiring was a short stint with the aviation company Tanis Aircraft. Jim intended to buy the company but used his investment monies to keep Thawzall, LLC afloat. He retired in 2012 after a year with the company.

A tragedy occurred in 2017. Anita and Jim’s only son, Brian, dies from an opioid overdose at age 42. A big trauma like this takes years to untangle as a parent, and complex questions that arise can never be answered with satisfaction. Jim reflects on Brian’s spirit and kindness in helping others, how he could have been a better father, and what his two daughters, Laurie and Jackie, are up to.

You will learn how Jim is volunteering as a pilot with a purpose and his four takeaways from a 60-year entrepreneurial career in eight ventures (Angleworms and catching frogs for Norm Lund at Lund’s Bait Shop at age 8 to Lakeside Spraying from 12 years of age to 18. Wood & Conn Corp., Rice Lake Weighing Systems, BW Integrated Systems, Streamfeeder, LLC, Thawzall, LLC, and Tanis Aircraft). You can follow along as Jim talks about each lesson.

Jim’s Four Entrepreneurial Life Takeaways:

1. Everyone needs a mentor, even if you feel you don’t need one. You need one, especially when times are tough. Proactively reaching out is never regrettable with so much help available. Jim says, “if I had the skills to manage emotional difficulties, I probably would have been richer in all areas of my life.”
2. How do you measure success? Business acumen and emotional intelligence. The ready, fire, and aim approach didn’t work well for Jim. He suggests building your business acumen and emotional intelligence together. Choosing the right venture based on the marketplace vs. business management skills.
3. Be retrospective in your early business life — even if it hurts! Help yourself understand each part of your life and take the time to develop emotionally and learn from each trauma. Jim focused on learning the technical, sales and marketing, and financial management aspects of each business. He didn’t take the time to address his emotional needs. This is where asserting self-leadership is so important. Taking charge of your emotional development all of your life.
4. “False Pride” in business is dangerous. Jim took pride in his accomplishments and felt blind-sided by market downturns. “Pride goeth before a fall,” as Jim applies that saying to himself. Jim didn’t see the potential downturn markers in the marketplace until they were upon him.

I put into context how entrepreneurs are present and future-focused and usually optimistic. That is where they invest their time. Since 82% of businesses fail because of cashflow difficulties or not having enough cashflow, I always talk with clients about cashflow and a business model with marketplace flexibility.

A cashflow strategy I have been using for decades works well in any entrepreneurial venture. Work with a bookkeeper or chief financial officer to create three financial projection scenarios. This COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of implementing this cashflow strategy.

1. Best Case Scenario. If everything goes right and we achieve or exceed our financial goals (this could be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually), the projected financial picture of what could happen will happen differently than you imagined it.
2. Most-Likely Case Scenario. If we reach 50% to 75% of our best-case scenario, this is what the cashflow for that period will look like. What are the most-likely ways we can manage cashflow fluctuations? Once you figure out how to bridge any gaps, let go of the outcome and focus on goal achievement.
3. Worst-Case Scenario. If everything goes to hell in a handbag, how will we survive? Even though we couldn’t predict this pandemic, many have practiced this scenario enough that they could problem-solve quickly and get a cashflow survival plan in place. Or some businesses weighed the risk and realized the best decision was to shut down before collapsing into debt. Others have bridged the cashflow gaps and put in place deadlines for subsequent decisions to be made. Whatever the circumstances, diligently plan how to survive cashflow shortcomings by envisioning with intention and detail what achieving your financial goals will look like is a practice every business owner can master.

Jim concludes by saying that he loved being an entrepreneur despite all the ups and a few tough downtimes. Overall he feels he has had a wonderful entrepreneurial life with few regrets. I hear the layers of excitement in learning and adventure; Jim expresses his thoughts with impressive clarity, courage, and passion. A great way to finish out our four meaningful podcast conversations about an entrepreneurial life spanning 60 years. DOWNLOAD

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Try this exercise:

I decided to take Jim Collins’ definition of a great company and see how we could apply it to Jim Conn’s 60-year entrepreneurial career. You could then get ideas about how you could take your entrepreneurial history thus far and do the same exercise on yourself. Here is the example based on what I have learned from Jim.

1. Performance (generates enough cashflow to be self-sustaining). Jim has more than provided for his family and supported his flying adventures. He has invested in other ventures and volunteers, giving back to the community. Jim knows a silver-lining awaited every downturn in his career, critical insight into being a calculated risk-taker and able to take leaps of faith into the unknown. Resiliency, being open to learning, and flying has fueled his ability to make lemonade out of lemons.
   1. How did he perform as a husband and father? I rephrased the question. How engaged, devoted, and loving was he as a husband and father during his entrepreneurial career? Jim’s self-analysis and appraisal were harsh. Only Anita and his living adult-children, Laurie and Jackie, can answer that question.

2. Impact (shapes their industry through innovation or size). Jim estimates he has had a direct impact in hiring over 300 individuals during his career. He had a knack for identifying gifted youngsters in technical businesses he either owned or managed and left each venture much better off than where he started with them. Jim aligned himself with companies where he saw an opportunity to exploit, bettering the company, stakeholders, and the economy. He helped create a lot of wealth for himself and others, stretching the boundaries of what is possible.
3. Reputation (admired and respected). Jim’s tremendous pride and accomplishments were not only attributed to hiring talented individuals. He says the hundreds if not thousands of years of lifetime employment he created for others was part of what he takes great pride in. He is both admired and respected, even his bold and brash side. Extremely gifted, intelligent, and talented in building his business acumen, he saved ventures from collapse (Wood & Conn Corp.), built strong relationships with end-users, and built effective sales teams. He has been highly resourceful, able to seize opportunities, capitalize on opportunities, and build multiple-profitable, sustainable multi-million-dollar ventures with others. I admire the talent, vision and business skills, and commitment Jim brought to each of his eight ventures. Jim has flown over 6,500 hours in the aviation field and is an active member of four flying organizations. He still flies over 100 hours each year. He has built an admirable and respectable life filled with lessons he continues to learn from. Cultivating humility is what Jim is focused on now.
4. Longevity (remains healthy and self-renewing for decades). Jim has a track record of landing like his airplanes, safely on the ground, no matter the circumstances and weather conditions. Jim’s life view serves as a resiliency tool. He believes a silver lining awaits him after each negative experience. It is up to him to capitalize on an opportunity or not.

Of the six ventures Jim was involved in as an adult, four out of the six are still going. The other two companies were bought out; BW Integrated Systems bought StreamFeeder. In 2018, Thawzall, LLC was bought by Tamarack Industries. That is an incredible track record when you consider that 50% of businesses succeed after two years in business, and of that 50%, half of the remaining small businesses make it beyond the five-year mark.