A Personal Message from Richard

Whenever I think about any kind of business relationship with someone I don’t know (even if it’s just buying a book on a website) there’s always a little concern about who I’m dealing with. Are they honest? Are they legitimate? Are they decent people?

I can’t convince you of any of that on a web page, but I can, at least, let you know how I came to be here and a little about what makes me tick.

My “family business” was education; my father (and his father, and his) were teachers. Although I wasn’t excited at that career, I didn’t have a better idea in college so I stumbled along to a degree in psychology. This completely unmarketable degree produced exactly zero job prospects, so I started running a huge campus “restaurant” where I’d worked part-time for a savvy old Greek guy. He taught me a lot about how business worked (and didn’t) and I made him a lot of money. But it didn’t make me much money and I didn’t want to spend my life in Champaign, Illinois anyway, so I went to business school and came out with a shiny new MBA and the usual goals of big career, big money, big toys, etc.. Off I went to find fame and fortune in corporate America. I worked in huge companies, mid- and small-sized companies, and was a VP in two of them. I turned around lost-cause businesses, designed and implemented systems and management structures and put millions to the bottom lines of those companies. Successful, I guess, by the standards of many.

But I came to really hate the politics and lack of ethics and slavish devotion to money that most larger businesses include. Plus, the big money wasn’t worth the personal hardships and my work wasn’t making a contribution to anything more meaningful than a stockholder’s dividend check.

So there I was, with an arsenal of business management, financial, and systems development skills, all honed from in the unforgiving environment of big business and a desire to do something really useful with them. But what?

I looked back to my days running the restaurant and realized how hard the old Greek worked (he was around my shop or his other business every day, all day, and I don’t think he had dinner at home with his family in 20 years. He died at 47.) and thought about how much easier his life would have been if he’s run his business using the really efficient systems I knew so well.

And the light bulb came on: I’d create a way to provide the systems tools and methods that make big business unrelentingly efficient to the small businesses owners, and I’d make it practical and affordable and personal. And I’d boil it down to just the essentials do it in plain English, and focus on creating better lives, not just more money for owners.

So I started working with small business owners 1993 and in 1995 my wife Jayme and I founded Pinnacle Consulting Group. We started Contractor’s Business School in 2005 to address the needs of the building industry, and renamed Pinnacle as Standalone Business Impact in 2009 to more accurately reflect what we do.

And that brings me to now.

We’ve created the life that we think every business owner deserves. Our son never spent a day in daycare. One of us is always there when he comes home. I work reasonable hours of my own choosing, and never on weekends. I have excellent business associates around me who I can depend on to do things as well (and usually better) than I can. It hasn’t been (and still isn’t) a cakewalk, there are still a million things that always need doing, and we won’t be buying a private island anytime soon, but I always know that I’m doing something worthwhile and doing it my way.

And most importantly, there’s a long list of people who are living better lives today because of our work. I take great satisfaction in that.