Real Business

Carmen Castillo moved to New York in 1992 because she wanted to learn to speak English and she’d been told it was the land of opportunity.

Once there, she worked as a chef but also kept her eyes open, developing new ideas for a business. Her opportunity came along when she found herself serving dinner to Richard Stenclik. Knowing he was a successful businessman, she told him her idea, which was to use technology to centralise vendor relations for big companies. She wasn’t a technologist and she had no money, but Stenclik liked her attitude and he began to give her advice.

Fifteen years later, her business has 11 offices around the world, including in Beijing and Ukraine. Carmen was – and is – ferociously hardworking, determined and disciplined. But she says that what made the difference to her was getting good advice. Of course, to get that good advice, she needed the courage to ask for it. In retrospect, that may be the single most important quality she had.

Every entrepreneur needs help starting and building their business. At first, you’re on your own and you need sounding boards. Then, as you start to hire employees, your relationship is close and often informal – but because you’re the boss, there will always be issues you can’t share with everyone. Moreover, no-one inside your business is without an agenda. This isn’t a bad thing; it is simply inevitable. The IT team will always see the company through the lens of their own expertise and interests; the sales folk will only ever really care about revenue and the marketers will think that everything depends on messaging. All their expertise is essential, but none of it is as informed, objective and well-rounded as you need it to be.

As your company grows, you can get lonely. When I was building my tech companies in the US, I’m sure my husband grew tired of hearing about issues I could trust no-one else with. He could give me insight and advice – but he had never worked in a commercial business, so there were limits to what he could advise.

That’s why successful business leaders seek out mentors and networks; they know they don’t know enough, that they have to keep learning and that they need objective insights into their own performance. All of the very finest MDs and CEOs I know put a lot of time and attention into building their support structures. They go out of their way to find people more knowledgeable or experienced than themselves, who can give fair, untrammeled advice.

Those running private companies invariably have advisory boards and those running public ones always have a kitchen cabinet they trust and depend on.

Many entrepreneurs I know belong to Vistage, a peer-group mentoring organisation where CEOs give each other advice. Vistage also brings

in external speakers, coaches and subject experts to widen the horizons of their members. A more recent arrival on this scene is Footdown, a group mentoring and individual coaching organisation, with groups of 15 business leaders dotted around the country. Each member knows the others’ business, helps them address current issues and watches for damaging patterns or recurrent crises.

They’ve all been in the top job, they know what it’s like – so there’s no bluster or posturing. Instead, there are honest admissions of confusion, doubt, frustration and fear. And in return there’s a vast amount of experience, insight and support.

No-one ever grew a successful company alone. No CEO knows it all. The smartest ones are as eager as Carmen Castillo to seek help. What still amazes me, however, is how many entrepreneurs don’t ask for help. Some, of course, don’t want to be beholden; others feel that asking for help is weak. But only fools think they know it all.