Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at TheBusinessmakers.com. I'm at another one of those real cool Oracle Smart Strategies to Keep Your Business Growing event along with Bill Arend once again, Regional Manager with Oracle. Bill, thanks again for having the BusinessMakers here. Why don't you start by telling our audience about this all-star group of experience business executives you brought in here in San Antonio?

Bill: That's right. Thanks Russ. It's always a pleasure. It's fun to be able to collect folks who have been there, done that and today we have Darrell Glover who built a company from the ground up and recently sold. He's a retired CEO now. Congratulations Darrell. We've got Mike Dwyer with Startech Foundation, building the business wrapped around life science background and Ken Trevett who's a CEO of a company called Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research. The idea behind today's event was really to grab some wisdom around lessons learned in this crazy time we live in.

Russ: All right. Cool. Well why don't we start with you Michael? Tell us about Startech Foundation both how it operates in general and what it's like in this sort of challenging economic time.

Michael: Yeah. Startech was started about ten years ago as an economic development activity both privately and publicly funded in San Antonio and has migrated over ten years primarily to work with entrepreneurs to inspire them to create new businesses, help them find sources of funding to start the companies and continue funding to grow the businesses. So it's got a really organic growth benefit to the community particularly where we have a lot of research being done on the tech side in San Antonio at Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, Southwest Research Institute and the University of Texas Health Science Center, UTSA and other organizations. We have a lot of companies spawning new businesses. We work on average with over 150 different startups each year and over the last five years those companies have raised over $150 million in capital because of those efforts. So it's a very important organization.

Russ: Well it sounds very impressive as well. What's it been like though say the last 18, 24 months?

Michael: Well the challenge has been both for the organization and for the entrepreneurs we've had to look at alternative sources of funding both for our own organization at Startech and for the startup companies. So we've become a little faster on our feet. We've dug a little deeper around the country in terms of looking at things we didn't look at before, private foundations, other mechanisms to create capital for us and for the companies that we're helping start.

Russ: All right. Real cool. All right, Ken now to you. I know from a little research that you kind of think that when times are good you don't get quite as much creative thinking out of the organization. Expound upon that a bit.

Kenneth: Well I think when established sources of revenue exist and things seem to be pumping into the system fine there just isn't the human motivation to try some different things and gain on what you're already doing. In times of more constraint you're really forced to either go out of business or you say, "What can we do to really bulk up?" For us I think this kind of searching actually is programmatically desirable too Russ because I think organizations like ours need to reach out more to industry, to clinical practices that are research oriented to further the technologies we discover and get them into the medical marketplace.

Russ: Great. Well Bill to me that sort of sounds to like this phrase I've heard you use a lot lately is that in these disrupting times there's often quite a bit of opportunity.

Bill: Absolutely and that's what the theme is here is it's sort of an oxymoron of having smart strategies to keep your business growing in a down economy. At the end of the day we found a lot of great stories out there and this is what we want to do is celebrate those and highlight them because there's a lot of wisdom that can be learned from it.

Russ: I continue to hear all sorts of business historical statistics that point out it's in times like these that there's a lot of cool startups that turn out to be very successful.

Bill: Yeah. I mean the last - I don't know the exact number but it was - believe it was 57 percent of the Fortune 500 was built during recessions.

Russ: Cool. Now Darrell I heard you make a statement too that I found pretty interesting and it was something like this. It's, "In good times we focus a little bit too much on the income statement and in bad times too much on the balance sheet." Tell us about that.

Darrell: Well I think in good times typically people - revenue comes easier, profit comes easier and people get enamored with the bottom line which is obviously what you have to be enamored with but you can have a good bottom line and still get your balance sheet in trouble depending on how capital intensive and other items and the types of businesses you're going into and your expansion plans. So I'm just thinking down times businesses go back to the balance sheet more than the income statement or at least put more emphasis than they normally would because that's what's going to give you the adaptability, the flexibility to function through the mine fields that are out there in down times.

Russ: Right. Speaking of down times I heard you also make a statement sort of comparing what you thought maybe was the worst down time you'd been through before, 1979, talking about those high interest rates and high unemployment rates but contrasting that to this is it's a different animal completely. Right?

Darrell: Yeah. I think that's when they coined the misery index [laughter] and I guess if you add inflation which we don't have in everything now but I think borderline deflation is worse than the inflation at the time. I mean to me money's tighter, commoditization of the our markets is more severe now than I've seen it in 40 years and I think Mike you mentioned that as well.

Michael: Absolutely.

Russ: This is worst time. So maybe there's more disruption happening which means there's more opportunity than ever before.

Darrell: Well we muddled through in '79 in that second worst time and came out okay. So I think there's a lot of people can do that now.

Russ: Okay. When it comes to planning in this type of environment maybe it's more real world than before. In fact Ken I heard you give your impression of this sort of popularity of the high fashion strategic planning that goes on nowadays where companies go away and plan for weeks at a time. You weren't very complimentary about it. In fact I kind of totally agreed with you on it. Share your vision strategic planning.

Kenneth: Well I think there's a difference between what has become kind of classic strategic planning versus strategic thinking. All of us should be engaged in strategic thinking all the time. On the other hand, formalized time consuming process of strategic planning that ends up with a book on a shelf and a lot of frustrated people because of all the time they put in I don't think really moves the ball along. So I think there are really good opportunities to get core people together to talk about taking advantage of new opportunities or how do we cost save or how do we get into different markets, those kind of things. Of course. Then there can be a process and needs to be a process of getting a broader group of staff to be buying into these visions but I think the classical strategic planning isn't what it's cracked up to be.

Russ: Well I also heard you kind of respond to somebody saying, "I think course correction planning and activity is very cool and you need to do that for sure."

Kenneth: Yeah. That's right. I believe that business owner meets on a quarterly basis with his other partners and they do a very aggressive analysis of what's happened in the last quarter, what's likely to happen in the next quarter and how to respond to that and also to review the skills and the commitment of employees within their group. It's a relatively small company. I think he did initially use the phrase that that was a strategic planning process and I said, "Well if you wouldn't mind a friendly amendment I would call that a course adjustment process," and he said, "Yes, that's what it is."

Russ: Well in my experience there was a lot of course adjusting. Now before we wrap this up I'm going to ask you three and I'm going to start with you Michael and I'm going to give you a little time to think about this question but let's imagine that there's a young, aspiring business person, maybe a startup person, maybe a person just really interested in getting in the corporate world and you're going to be able to give them some advice, what you would do if you were 20, 23, 24 just getting in. Now be thinking about that because before I ask you, Bill, in case somebody just tuned in and saw okay, Oracle does Smart Strategies to Keep Your Business Growing this is a national thing. Right?

Bill: We decided we wanted to put in motion a road show that really highlights ideas coming from the field from our customers and prospects to talk a little bit about strategies in general. We get the opportunity. We're with a lot of different companies, a lot of different industries. So we've done this in several cities around the central part of the United States. I've got the privilege here being in Houston. We're doing Austin, Houston, San Antonio and New Orleans. It's just fun to be able to listen to the feedback from the folks who have experienced it and grabbed some wisdom and nuggets of knowledge coming out of these events but it's been a lot of fun.

Russ: Well I think it's fun and very positive. It's not like a business survival strategy. We're kind of hoping everybody's going to survive but growing is the key thing to be focused on.

Bill: Absolutely. There's an opportunity.

Russ: Cool. Okay. Michael it's to you. What sort of general advice would you give to a young, aspiring business person?

Michael: Well fortunately or unfortunately I'm living that experience because two years ago my son-in-law position got terminated at a real estate development company and he and one of his colleagues decided to start up their own new business two years ago in real estate. As I told them at that time it's kind of like the worst of times and the best of times. Certainly there was no one else doing what they were going to do but there was also no work on the horizon and business activity because people just don't do that when times get tough. So they - I actually mentored him for nine months, he and his partner on the business and it took them a year to get their first business in place and it took them two years to get their first big check that they got on a deal or a transaction they closed and they have struggled mightily through that period of time both in supporting their families and trying to start the business. But he just has endless enthusiasm. He's tenacious. He's competitive and he's very personable and now he's probably very well positioned to take advantage of the future as it goes forward in doing it. I also helped him raise some private capital for his business to help him through that period of time.

Russ: Fantastic. So you did it in the real world. Just hearing that, that first order and that first check to me are just the more important things in one's business mind.

Michael: Oh incredible. Particularly when I was writing checks in between.

Russ: I get it.

Michael: To feed his family.

Russ: I understand completely.

Michael: It was personal.

Russ: Darrell to you. What sort of advice would you give to a young, aspiring business person?

Darrell: Well I think if you go back to Ken's comments I agree 100 percent that you don't spend all the unnecessary time on the strategy documents that are going to sit on the shelf but in times like today I do think you need to have a plan and I think the margin for error is less than it is in good times. So I think a shorter range maybe for somebody aspiring and go where your strengths are and try not to over leverage yourself in the early days and build a foundation that gives you that flexibility and adaptability to come through this thing and then expand.

Russ: All right. Great advice. Ken?

Kenneth: A couple of things. First of all, Mike is a living representation of this. I think all of us who have been successful have been extremely well served by mentors, informal kinds of relationships where people inspire us, instruct us, motivate us. So I think to be able to take advantage of mentors, again, not formal mentorship programs but just take advantage of people in a positive way in their skill sets. Secondly, being open to professional opportunities so there really I think is a skill in identifying serendipitous events and taking advantage of serendipitous events. I think the third is there are going to be a lot of things early on in your career in particular that aren't particularly pleasant activities to do professionally.

Russ: I can relate to that.

Kenneth: Do them well. That will do two things. One, it'll impress your supervisors and, secondly, you're going to learn some things even if it isn't a particularly interesting or engaging activity that you have to do. Do them well.

Russ: Cool. Great advice from all three of you. Bill thanks again for having me attend these. I appreciate it.

Bill: A lot of fun. A lot of fun. Thank you.

Russ: You bet. All right. All right. You bet. You're listening to the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and seen online at TheBusinessmakers.com.