According to Norm Brodsky, serial entrepreneur and Inc. Magazine columnist (“Street Smarts”), being a successful entrepreneur is a matter of following some basic rules (other than having no rules – more on that later).  But hearing Norm speak on the subject at the Wharton Club of NJ’s dinner meeting on March 12, 2009 brought those rules to life.  A candid and articulate speaker, Brodsky is a consummate raconteur who delivers substantive advice with a heavy dose of humor and wit.  Norm is not modest, but he is self-deprecating and willing to tell stories that show him at his worst as well as his best.

Club members and guests in attendance at Suppa’s Restaurant in Pine Brook were dazzled with a wide-ranging, free-wheeling and fascinating talk on the lessons Norm has learned through eight entrepreneurial businesses that he has founded.  They include the business he built from $0 to $140 million over an 8-year period and took from $140 million to $0 in another 8 months, as well as the business he sold most recently for $110 million.

Herewith, devoid of the engrossing anecdotes and humorous tales, are many of the lessons he shared:

•    Listen to your customers – he got a client to sign up just by saying okay to a request that a prospect’s business be processed differently than his company’s “best practices” approach – as he said, he wasn’t asked to evaluate the request, just to fulfill it.
•    Take responsibility – an entrepreneur has to look to himself or herself when things go awry, and work with employees to find a solution to fixing the problem, not blame the employee(s).
•    Don't follow the norm – when competitors all perform a service the same way, be creative and look for another way; the “normal” methodology is not necessarily the best.
•    Learn from your mistakes.
•    Demonstrate common courtesy – Norm and his employees walk every customer, vendor, prospect and visitor to their cars; it’s a lesson he learned from a king.
•    Use the personal touch – Every new customer receives a handwritten note of thanks for entrusting the business to his company. 
•    Treat customers like prospects – Once his company lands a customer, it continues to be responsive as if the customer were still a potential customer.
•    Never hire from competitors, potential employees must have 2 prior jobs, and train your employees – Norm hires for attitude, not technical skills or experience; he believes anyone can be trained to do a job.  He looks for individuals who want to work their entire careers with his company.   He wants employees to have experienced at least 2 previous positions, because only then does the employee know what they’re really seeking in a job.  He avoids hiring competitors’ employees because he regards it as taking a short cut; he would rather train an employee in the business and avoid the bad habits that a person may have picked up at a competitor.
•    Have no company rules (or at least as few as possible) – Norm’s company only has 2 rules – no drug use and no smoking (the latter because the company is in the paper document storage and retrieval business and the risk of fire is intolerable).  He sets no other rules so that employees will not do things mechanically, but use judgment.
•    Make work fun – there are many ways to make work enjoyable for employees, many that cost little or no money, but which bind the employee to be loyal to the company.
•    Employees are the company’s most important asset – Norm’s company gives its corporate tickets to sporting events to its employees first, and customer only if employees can’t use them.
•    Don't be social with employees – it only makes the difficult task of terminating an employee, when necessary, more difficult.
•    Never downgrade a competitor – explaining the strengths of his own company and highlighting those attribute

A lively and extended Q&A followed Brodsky’s remarks; asked whether it was important to be passionate about the business that an entrepreneur chooses to build, he responded that he has only 3 criteria for identifying a business opportunity:

•  The business concept has to be 100 years old – he doesn’t want to have to educate the market as to the need for the product of service.
•  The competition must be antiquated – he competes by “sitting on the edge of technology” and offering services and efficiencies that outperform his rivals.
•   It must be possible to identify a market niche – his document archival business succeeded by offering law firms “Iron Mountain”  type services that were much closer (and therefore able to deliver in a much shorter time interval).

Attendees were able to have Norm Brodsky sign copies of his recently-published book (co-authored with Inc. Magazine Senior Editor Bo Burlingham), The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up.   The last person to leave the meeting?  Norm Brodsky – he was busy sharing ideas and learning new lessons about how entrepreneurs succeed.