Biotech Conference: Looking Forward
Productivity: It’s All About Integration
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Kathleen McGinn Spring were prepared for the
September 24, 2003 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Trenton’s Week: Getting the Baker Out of the Bakery
169>Most people start a business because they are tired
of working for someone else,” says Michael Pucciarelli,
a partner in the Lawrence-based accounting firm, Bartolomei
Pucciarelli.
The behavior that follows this decision is predictable, he finds,
and does not bode well for the long-term health of the new venture.
A key casualty often is the value of the business.
Pucciarelli talks about “Building Business Value” at a free
Trenton Small Business Week event on Monday, September 29, at the
Trenton Marriott at Lafayette Yard. The week — celebrating its
10th anniversary — includes a raft of other events, including
seminars and panels previewed below and others listed in U.S. 1’s
Business Meetings section, beginning on page 11. For information on
Small Business Week call 609-989-5232 or visit www.smallbizweek.com.
After giving up on a longtime dream of becoming an FBI agent,
Pucciarelli
fell into the business of helping small companies build value, and
says, “I loved it right away.” A Lakewood native and graduate
of Montclair State (Class of 1981), he majored in accounting and
obtained
his CPA because a friend of his father’s told him that everyone else
was taking the J.D. route to the FBI. With white collar crime a big
issue at the time, the family friend assured him that a CPA would
have a better chance of making it into the elite agency.
The year he graduated, however, President Reagan froze federal hiring.
There would be no shot at the FBI, and Pucciarelli says, “I had
to do something.” Forced to give accounting a try, he signed on
with a Lakewood firm, met with his first small business clients, and
realized that accounting was not just numbers. He saw that it could
also be about helping people who had invested their whole lives in
their companies.
Hooked on advising small businesses, he joined two other CPAs in
forming
Bartolomei Pucciarelli, now a 12-person firm with offices at 2155
Brunswick Pike. In 22 years of practice he has seen “mediocre
businesses, businesses that fail, and successful businesses.”
The difference, he says, lies in how the entrepreneur sees his
enterprise.
If it is merely a job replacement, there will not be much success,
and certainly not much value to sell at the end of the day. Yet this
job replacement trap is alluring.
Business owners, he says, tend to be “entrepreneurs for five
minutes,
managers for five minutes, and then they fall back into the technician
mode.” He defines a “technician” as a person who spends
his time working at his craft, whether it be baking or consulting
on human resources issues. In starting a business, new entrepreneurs
have to break out of this comfort zone.
People have to be entrepreneurial in deciding to strike out on their
own, and they have to be managerial in finding a location, signing
leases, ordering letterhead, and nailing a shingle on the door.
After seeing the vision of a business and working at bringing it into
being, however, these new entrepreneurs tend to go right back to doing
whatever it was they did in their jobs, or whatever job-replacement
craft they have chosen.
Big mistake, says Pucciarelli. Work in the business, rather than on
it, and you will never have much of a business. That can be okay,
he hastens to add, if you realize that what you want is just X number
of dollars a week to support yourself. “Then, that’s your
vision,”
he says.
Most struggling business owners he sees have a different, albeit
poorly
articulated, goal. They want their companies to grow, but are stuck.
A big part of his job is showing them how to stop working in the
business,
and start working on the business by:
Building an organizational chart. “Even if you’rea one-person business, you need an organizational chart,” heinsists.”Your name may be in every box, but you need to have it.”That way, when it comes time to hire, and you put another name ina box or two, you will know exactly what tasks your employee is takingover.Creating a business in a box. Writing a “how we doit” book goes hand-in-hand with the organizational chart.Descriptionsof how to do each task are in the book. That way, says Pucciarelli,”things get done the same way every time.”You may never franchise your business, but act as if that is yourgoal. “When people buy a franchise,” he says, “they’rebuying a business in a box.” That is the appeal. That is wherethe value lies. A stand-alone business that runs like clockwork ona written plan has a similar value.Actively managing employees. When the baker has enoughbusiness to hire a bookkeeper, he generally sighs with relief, andhappily gets back to doing what he enjoys, thrilled to be free ofthe accounting chores. Turning full attention on the bread is notthe way to go, however.Just because an employee is now handling a task that you once hadto do, does not mean that the task is not still your responsibility.You need to give the new hire a job description and then make surethat he is doing the job.Constantly monitoring feedback. Pucciarelli often convenesa gathering of eight or ten of a client’s customers, and asks themto talk about what the client is doing right, and about where he isfalling down.”At first, they just sit there. They think they don’t haveanythingto say,” he recounts. But once the ball starts rolling, “theycan’t shut their mouths,” he says with a laugh.The results often surprise the business owner, and this is onesurprisethat he badly needs. “Your customers’ perception is reality,”he observes.Working on making the business better. Busy entrepreneurshate to stop what they’re doing, but Pucciarelli advises that theymake time to attend seminars, workshops, and classes on how to buildup their businesses. In one recent seminar that he gave, he talkedabout the importance of asking clients for referrals and fortestimonials.Success in business, he says, is not about doing one thing well —even perfectly — “it’s about doing 1,000 small things.”Asking for testimonials can be seen as one more distraction, or itcan be seen as an important way to win new business.Being on the look-out for new opportunities. “Ifyou’rea baker,” says Pucciarelli, “maybe you can team up with awedding planner. Maybe you can sell wedding cakes wholesale.”Taking the imperative one step further, he suggests that a time couldcome when starting a wedding planning component to the business wouldsense.Getting ready to get out. The exit strategy must beginon day one. “Where do you want the business to be in 5 years,10 years, 20 years?” ask Pucciarelli. “Do you want to sellit, to pass it along to your kids?”He has seen that the most successful entrepreneurs are those who startout by thinking of how to get out. It flies against traditionalwisdom,but the baker cannot be too attached to baking. The bakery that runslike clockwork while its owner is out fishing is a bakery anyone canbuy, and that a great many people will want to buy — at a goodprice.Top Of PageBiotech Conference: Looking ForwardFew industries have had as many ups and downs asbiotechnology.What’s the state of the industry now? And what does the future hold?What segments of biotechnology are hot now? All of these questionsare given lots of attention when the Biotechnology Council of NewJersey and the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Association hold a jointconference on Monday and Tuesday, September 29 and 30, at the HyattRegency on the Hudson and the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City.The cost is $825, but less for attendance at only the workshops orthe symposium. Complete details and registration forms are atwww.biotechsymposium.com.Information also is available at 609-581-8244.The conference begins with a 7:30 a.m. registration on September 29.That morning there is a choice of three concurrent workshops, onnanotechnology,biotechnology for the non-scientist, and fundamental business andlegal strategies for life science ventures.The official opening, at 2:30 p.m., provides an industry overviewby a panel that will consider trends from the past, the present direstraits that now keep CEOs and CFOs up at night, and what the expertssee in the future.The keynote, at a 7 p.m. dinner, will be delivered by IrwinLerner,chairman of Medarex.Concurrent sessions on September 30, beginning at 9 a.m., includea look at synergies to cure disease, advice on riding the wave ofbiotech and pharma mergers and acquisitions, and a primer on meetingnew compensation and staffing challenges. Next, at 10:30 a.m., aresessions on vying for biodefense research dollars, forging researchpartnerships with universities, and ensuring the growth ofbiotechnologyin the New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania corridor.The day’s keynote, at a noon lunch, is delivered by MicheldeRosen,president and CEO of ViroPharma.On the afternoon of September 30, there are concurrent sessions onnavigating the FDA approval process, the emergence of specialtypharmaceuticalcompanies, and creative ways to structure deals when cash is scarce.The closing session, highlighting an issue on everyone’s mind, ison mega financing, on how to raise capital from strategic partnersand the private and public markets in this economic climate.Top Of PageBe Ready for ChangeThere is a time to move on. That’s the message fromRoland Pott, who struggled with a decision to walk away fromday-to-day management of the Urban Word Cafe and Conduit, restaurantand music venues at the center of a nascent arts revival in Trenton.”It was hard. It was like leaving my baby,” says theentrepreneur.Yet leave he did, shuttering both venues, at least for the summer.Pott, now a real estate broker with Segal Commercial Real Estate,is moving toward bigger dreams.Pott urges others to do the same, and is organizing a Trenton SmallBusiness Week seminar around the theme of starting over:”ReinvestingYour Investment,” on Tuesday, September 30, at 5:30 p.m. atConduit,located at 439 South Broad Street. The panel discussion, moderatedby Tom O’Neill of Partnership New Jersey, will look at “whatdo you do when things don’t go the way you planned” and promisesentrepreneurs that “If you miss a market opportunity, successis still in the cards.”Success has been pretty much of a constant for Pott, who at barely30 years old, has been involved in turning a big chunk of unlovedTrenton real estate into not only a coffee house and a 500-seat musicclub, but also into a number of retail stores and artists’ studios,which remain open. Art and business were the twin foundations of hischildhood, and continue to be his passions.His mother, Dr. Judith Pott, is a psychologist, but he describes herfirst as an artist. “She’s been singing with the New AmsterdamSingers for, well, 20 or 25 years,” he says, “for as longas I can remember.” His brother, Sam Pott, is a jazz and balletdancer, who performs in San Francisco. His grandfather was anarchitectand a painter. “My family is very artistic,” he says, “Iwas always encouraged to be involved in the arts.”At the same time, he was catching on to the benefits of marketplaceenterprise. “I was always the kid with the lemonade stand,”he says. Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, he alsoexperimentedwith sharing business ideas and burdens with others. “I had anewspaper with a partner,” he says. “It was called ColorfulNews in Black and White.” He liked making money right from thestart: “It was a way to buy baseball cards.”Leaving his businesses behind, Pott attended college at Oregon’s ReedCollege (Class of 1995). The move put him in Portland during theheydayof the coffee house revolution. “Portland was an inspirationalplace to live,” he says. “There were all kinds of coffeehousesspringing up. It rains all the time there,” he says. “Peoplerun around in slickers, jumping into espresso shops, talking withfriends until late at night.” He enjoyed the joe, the talk, andthe poetry jams that were a coffee house feature.”If I didn’t have family here, I’d still be there,” he says.But, with his family anchored in the New York area, Pott did comeback east, where he signed up with a teacher placement agency inPrincetonand started looking for an apartment. “I was used to cities, soI looked for the nearest city,” he says. That would be Trenton.Since Trenton is not a hot topic in Manhattan, and certainly not inOregon, Pott says he was lucky that he had never “heard thenegativeperceptions.”He went in fresh, and found an apartment in the historic Mill Hillsection, where a renovation movement was well under way. Walkingaround,he bumped into David Henderson, who, along with John Hatch, had formedthe Atlantis Group to buy and restore houses in the neighborhood underthe name. Henderson and Hatch, architects with a keen interest inurban revitalization, quickly became his friends.That is where architecture, entrepreneuralism, urban enthusiasm,pioneerspirit, and an interest in historic preservation and in the artscombinedto create the Urban Word and Conduit.The trio, using savings and money from family and friends, and justa little bit of cash from the public till, formed Trenton Makes. Thecorporation purchased a string of Victorian structures, and openedthe Urban Word in 1999, and Conduit in 2001. New Jersey Monthlydescribedthe Urban Word as “a cutting-edge literary performance space thatserves up great food.” Reviews of the coffee house were not alwaysso positive. There were complaints about high prices, slow service,and uneven food. Regardless, Trenton residents rejoiced in the rebirththe Urban Word seemed to signal.A year or so after the Urban Word opened, Pott was quoted as saying,”We wanted a cafe in our neighborhood, so we said `Let’s buildone.’” It is a sentiment well known to residents of Trenton’smany excellent residential enclaves. Enjoying houses full ofinterestingarchitectural details and the camaraderie of close-knit neighborhoods,they long for what Trenton does not yet offer much of: places togather,eat, drink, and shop.The Urban Word was warmly received, and Conduit, which opened justafter the terrorist attacks of September 11, followed. The partnerssaw a place for a large, alternative music space in theheavily-populatedcorridor between New York and Philadelphia. The Urban Word, sittingright across the street from the Sovereign Bank Arena, would belargelyfor the locals, and Conduit would draw visitors from a wide area.In large part, the plan worked. Philadelphia’s Citypaper.net calledConduit, “an enclave of the arts; an Esalen in Trenton.”Significantly, the arts/entertainment/dining complex was fundedprivately. The partners, and their backers, were taking a big chance.And were they just too early? Pott doesn’t think so. He sees Trentongoing only up. He points out that residential real estate prices areway up. His partners, he says, have sold houses in Mill Hill for upto $300,000, a figure that was unimaginable just a few years ago.”Over the next few years,” he says, “more privatedeveloperswill decide to come to Trenton, especially with commercial projects,not just residential.” But still Pott and his peers “werepioneers. Someone has to do it.”Closing the Urban Word and Conduit did not have a lot to do with howwell they were doing financially. The main reason they were closed,says Pott, is that running the complex was consuming, exhausting,and ultimately, not what he wanted to do. In little more than sixyears, he had gone from teaching at the Newgrange School to runningseveral businesses.”It’s a question of what you want to spend your life doing,”he says. “I had worked on that project for six years. We had grownvery fast, from three employees to 50 in three years. It was veryexhausting.” Besides, he continues, “I’m an entrepreneurialperson. I like to get things started. The more it became an issueof the day-to-day grind, the more it wanted to be something I wantedto delegate.”Other factors were manageability, and of course, profitability. UrbanWord and Conduit would do better as separate entities, Pott says.He expects that the two will open very soon, under new ownership,as two different businesses. Meanwhile, he and his partners stillown the real estate.But Pott is free of day-to-day management chores. “It was hardat first,” he says of the transition, “but the farther awayI get, the better I feel. I’m exposed to lots of otherpossibilities.”Declining to provide details of any deals he is working on —”Ihave no announcements yet” — Pott says he is looking around,and looking to play “on a bigger playing field,” but stillin or around the Trenton area, where he lives in a former auto servicegarage that Hatch and Henderson renovated.While his mother, brother, and grandfather turned him toward the arts,his father, Dr. Nick Pott, a psychiatrist, taught him not to be afraidof risks. “In another life, he would have been an explorer,”Pott says of his father, who enjoys mountaineering and otherphysicallyrisky pastimes.His advice to other entrepreneurs: “It’s not necessary to staywith the original idea. Allow it to transform. You have to be willingto give up a little in order to be able to move on. Stay in motion,and continue to pursue your dreams.”Top Of PageProductivity: It’s All About IntegrationFor every $10,000 an employer pays a worker, more than$1,000 is spent to have him rummage around for memos, files, reports,and the like. The statistic comes from Grazina Crisman,organizationexpert and consultant. “You can say,” she adds, “that10 to 12 percent of the money employers pay is being wasted insearchingfor things.” In addition to the monetary toll of disorganization,there is the mental toll. Is anything more frustrating than diggingthrough mountains of paper for background information on the clientwho is due to arrive in two minutes?Crisman soothes harried paper pushers with down-to-earth advice whenshe speaks on “Elements of a Productive Business Day” at afree Trenton Small Business Week event at 9:30 a.m., on Wednesday,October 1, at the New Jersey State Library at 185 West State Streetin Trenton.After growing up in Queens and on Long Island, Crisman attendedHofstra(Class of 1974), where she studied math and business. She then earnedan MBA from St. Johns University. “What can I say,” sheshrugs,”I’ve always had a logical brain.” She is sure that thereis a connection between logic and organization, and she exhibitedthe latter at an early age. She never had to be told to pick up herroom, she recalls. It was always neat, and perfectly organized.She spent the early years of her career as a computer programmer,but disliked “sitting behind a desk,” no matter how wellorganized.So she jumped to the vendor side of technology, working for a numberof companies, including Wang Laboratories, Oracle, and Logic Works.”I was always around a sales environment,” she says,”alwaysclient oriented.”Crisman spent some 25 years in a corporate environment, where sheoften heard “Give it to Grazina, she’ll never lose it.” Whydid she leave big business to start her own business? “I camefrom high tech,” she answers. “We all know what happened tohigh tech. In 10 years I was with three companies. Each one got boughtout. I was always on the end that got bought out. They gave me jobs,but not the great ones.”Moving into an entrepreneurial life, making a living by helpingbusinessesand businesspeople to get organized, Crisman says she never misseda beat. “The skills are transferable,” she quickly found.She and her consulting firm, the Productivity Shoppe (609-987-9601),share an office address, 212 Carnegie Center, with her husband, Doug,who is the principal in Old Horses, a consulting firm that works withsmall businesses.”I’m doing it for the lifestyle,” she says of the freedomof owning a business. “If I went back, let’s put aside thedifficultyof getting a job, I would have had two to three weeks ofvacation.”Now she often works through the weekend, but doesn’t mind. It’sdifferent,she says, when it’s your own business. “There are trade-offs,”she continues. “High tech is well paid, but I’m nothing butgratefulto be out. I didn’t want to deal with that rat race.”Now she is helping denizens of the paperless officesthat never quite went paperless to organize their days and their desk.She starts most jobs by observing her clients at work. She asks: Whatis your biggest frustration? Some people have just one, or a handful,others, she says, “are disorganized on every level.” Gettingorganized isn’t all that hard, though, she insists, not even for themost harried. Here’s how:Control your time. No manner of physical organizationmakes up for sloppy time management. Even if an office is impeccablyorganized, its inhabitant may be horribly unproductive.”You have to be in control of your time,” Crisman insists.”It’s the most important thing. If you don’t do it, you’rethrashingaround, constantly trying to restart.”Turn off that E-mail bell. A big obstacle to time controlis E-mail. It’s ironic, really. What is more efficient than shootingout an E-mail to order a product, plan a group lunch, or keep in touchwith a client. But allowed free rein, E-mail is nothing short of a”black hole,” declares Crisman.The problem comes when the habit — the obsession, really —of reading E-mail as it arrives sets in. Letting a bell signalincomingmail is to signal an end to a productive day. “Whatever you’redoing, you lose focus,” says Crisman. Let the E-mail pile up,is her advice. Schedule a time to read, delete, and answer themessages,and let them wait patiently in the meantime. Get on with your work,and do not worry that an unattended E-mail will be your downfall.”I have a news flash,” says Crisman, “E-mail is not yourjob. It allows you to get and disperse information better than ever.People lose track. They think of it as their responsibility. The think`E-mail is the job!’ They get sucked into it.”Break the day in blocks. With E-mail tamed, turn to therest of the day’s tasks — both personal and business. Slot themin, making sure to set priorities that will assure that the essentialtasks make it onto the schedule, and that meaningless distractionsget filtered out.Crisman’s clients nearly always tell her that they are overworked.”Overworked?” she exclaims. “They’re working until 10p.m., but working on non-essential stuff.””You need balance,” she says. “You need a map. If youhave a map, things fall into place.” Learn to ask “`Is thisinterruption critical?’” If it isn’t, politely turn the visitoror caller away, and get back to work — so that you can get homein time to exercise, have a nice dinner, and spend time with familyand friends.Thrive in an organized environment. “If you can’tfind what you want, you’re creating stress,” says Crisman. Gettingorganized doesn’t mean stripping down to a minimalist environment,she insists: “That’s not reality.”A simple way to create order is to arrange your desk in concentriccircles. Put the things you use all the time, perhaps the phone andthe keyboard, at the center. Arrange active projects around them,and move second tier projects to the next circle.As for the little notes on stickies, get rid of them. “It’sclutter,clutter, clutter!” insists Crisman. “You can’t help but bedistracted.”Write your life down. “I used to use a Day Timer,”says Crisman. “Now I use a PDA; I needed to make the leap becauseof what I do, but I don’t care if people use a calendar.”Pull together your work life and your personal life. Itis common for businesspeople separate the two, keeping one calendarfor weddings, dentist and vet appointments, PTA meetings, and dinnerdates, and another for business appointments and deadlines. No good,says Crisman, brushing aside privacy concerns. Commingling may notbe good when it comes to bank accounts, but in her view, it is theway to go in scheduling. One life, one schedule.Write it all down. In one place. Because, says Crisman, “the mindplays tricks. We need to see it! Our lives are too complicated.”Take the time to learn about your technology. PDAs andcomputer programs can do amazing things, but few people take the timeto learn more than the basics. When she was a corporate woman, Crismanhad Outlook, Microsoft’s E-mail and calendaring software loaded intoher computer, but says, “I only used 5 percent of it. I didn’thave time to use it all.”Now, forcing herself to become well-versed, she says “I can’tbelieve I ever did without it.”Being realistic, she says that not everyone has to know every trickhis productivity software can perform. “You don’t have to useit all,” she says. “Use 50 percent. It’s a huge change.”Become fully integrated. The Outlook feature Crisman ravesabout is its ability to integrate all kinds of data. She makes sucha strong case for integration — whether through Outlook or anyrival software — that it is hard for even the mostorganization-phobicto keep from getting excited by the possibilities. “When you putin an appointment,” she explains, “you have a place to writein the history.” The history of the client or customer couldincludepersonal details — the names of his twins — or businessdetailssuch as the last time he placed an order. The contact’s phone, fax,cell phone, and pager numbers sit together, along with his E-mail,URL, and the names of his favorite cocktail, ski resort, andrestaurant.Data put into a good productivity program can be sorted any numberof ways. You can, for example, see all the information on all thepeople working on a particular project — or attending an upcomingevent. “Categories,” says Crisman. “That’s the power.Integrating is so important, so powerful. All of a sudden, you havea few thousand names on your cell phone. You’re walking around witha database.”Crisman uses her personal database for all kinds of things. “WhenI walk into a bookstore,” she says, “I already have the titlesin front of me.”Crisman makes the whole organization thing sound almostglamorous.But, she warns, it can take a little time to untangle life’s knots.”You don’t flip the switch overnight,” she says. “youhave to ease into the flow.”Previous StoryNext StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
