All the tough guys are gone! – This should be self-evident --- professors who would look students in the eye and say, “Yes, you failed the course --- and you deserved to fail the course. So what do you want from me?”

One of the toughest of the tough guys was Tom Murrin. Tom’s motto (though I never actually heard him say it) was, “You take a pass … he’ll have your ass.”

When I joined Duquesne back in 1999, Tom was probably the first (and for a while, it seemed like the only) individual on the faculty and/or its management that not only welcomed me to the program, but that also showed me which way the wind was blowing. His support was so very important to me. To have a guy of his caliber (he was also once president of what he liked to call the “Dirty Hands” businesses of Westinghouse) who really never cared much about whether or not you were slick, glib, and/or hip. He only cared about results.

Many a night, Tom and I would sit in his office and he would tell me stories about the halcyonic days of Circle W. The stories were great --- the truth even better. I never knew that so much fun could be had in an environment of growth and learning.

But as one who had grown up in the world of small business, I soon came to realize that there was a significant gulf between that which happened in a start-up and that which took place in a major corporation.

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Every company in America has a niche --- something that they do differently; hopefully better --- than their competition.

Sometimes this niche can be significantly different (an example that comes to mind is the Apple iPhone --- which for an inordinate amount of time enjoyed a completely monopolistic position) while at other times the amount of differentiation is virtually imperceptible. A good example of less-dramatic differentiation might be the service one receives at a local restaurant.

Sometimes you have to look very hard and very closely, but it’s really hard to fathom a business that is without some kind of differentiator.

This “special distinction” is generally known as the “value proposition” offered by that particular business. It’s the primary reason why the client patronizes that business in the first place.

I bring this up in light of the fact that, and even though every company in America has some way of differentiating itself from others, the salespeople for these companies still persist in selling based on price and price alone. Allow me to illustrate.

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For those of you (like me) who study the great entrepreneurs, you may have already figured out that the individual I’m describing here is Walter Elias Disney, quite possibly the greatest non-scientist entrepreneur in the history of this great country.

Why Disney? Simple. Because I’m writing this column while with my family at Disney World, his “touch” is everywhere. You can hardly not think of him.

Moreover, Walt would have been proud of the fact that my family is with me while I’m working on this article because it was his belief that “family is everything”. In his own words, “The most important thing is the family. After all, family is the backbone of our whole business.”

I knew very little about WE Disney when I and my family recently traveled from Pittsburgh for a four-day mini-vacation to the Magic Kingdom. Oh, I knew that he was the driving force behind the magnificent Walt Disney Corporation (magnificent then, not necessarily now, unfortunately) but I never really studied the man himself. And, neither did I study the events in his life that propelled him to the great successes he achieved.

Entrepreneurs are a tough-minded bunch. And here, I’m talking about the real ones --- not the, “Look at me, I’m an entrepreneur, too” --- as they accept and then burn millions of dollars in start-up capital --- kind.

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Last month, I was consulting with a software company on a deal and it seemed the more they tried to pin down the various flanks and end-points of the agreement, the further they (hereinafter “we”) got from defining anything that might work for both sides.

What we were writing (or, attempting to write) was the working definition of a software product/service for a brand-new client. The buyer didn’t wish to pay for the product up-front. Instead, he wanted only to do a “pay-as-you-go” deal whereby his monies would be released only when he was “satisfied” that a particular software program “worked.”

This, of course, brought up a number of issues and definitions. Chief among them:

And these were only the “Big” issues, of course. There were myriad other points of negotiation, including such classics as:

I had been hired to help both parties get this deal DONE! And as I sat in the room watching and listening to the back-and-forth, I realized that this negotiation was doomed; for the more definitions and “work-arounds” the two parties came up with, the more complicated the overall deal itself became.

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The other day, I was talking to our young sales guy about his sales prospects. I was just trying to get a handle on which accounts might be closing in the near-term.

As we went through each name, the salesman began to tell me about one particular account that he had forecasted as “90% closed.”

In other words, the only thing that was missing from this deal was the check and a signed contract.

I probed some more and in doing so, I asked him when it was that he had last spoken with the economic buyer for this account.

His answer floored me … “November,” he said, “the first week of November.”

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In the spirit of the holidays, I give you three short, rather than one long, columns. Enjoy.

The last of Pittsburgh’s old-time newsmen, Bob passed away on Christmas Eve. He was 85 years old, just five days shy of his 86th birthday.

Bob’s daughter, Carol Finelli walked into my broadcast studio on my birthday, December 10. When she closed the door behind her I just had the feeling that something was very, very wrong.

And it was, for not a minute or two later she confided in me the fact that doctors had found cancer in Bob Dickey at a routine examination just a month earlier. She told me that he “might not make it to Christmas,” and then asked that I keep this to myself.

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You know those famous aphorisms about, “there are just two kinds of people in the world?”

Well, here’s yet another:

There are just two kinds of people in the world: “initiators” (I’ll also call them “creators” or just “I/C’s”) and “reactors.”

An initiator is someone who can’t stop thinking about the business or the task at hand. He or she is goal-driven. His/her mind never stops thinking of ways to succeed.

The reactor is the opposite. They think up nothing and they wait for their next set of “marching orders,” which they secretly hope will never come.

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The other night, and just after having completed a radio show; Brian McMahon, Andrew Rossi, and I stood outside of the Renda Broadcasting building.

It was a balmy night and so we had plenty of time to converse. Plus (and this very, very rarely happens) no one had to be anywhere else at that particular time.

We all walked Andrew to his car and as we reached it, we noticed that the front right fender had been seriously “assaulted.” It was badly dented and scratched.

“What the hell happened to you, Drew?” Brian questioned, “Did you clip somebody in a parking lot or something?”

To which Andrew replied, “No, this actually happened while I was asleep in my apartment (he lives on the Southside). Somebody actually threw a garbage can at the front of my car.”

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The change is so imperceptible that you probably don’t even see it.

But it makes sense. Total sense. And along with other drivers such as the Marcellus/Utica Shale, high-tech start-ups, and healthcare, this quiet trend is doing a great deal of good in terms of “saving” our fair city.

I’m talking about Pittsburgh’s role as a back office “home.” I’m talking about moving the “glamour” work to the coasts (along with the requisite glamour people) while the grind-it-out people and the stuff they produce stays fixed within the boundaries of your favorite three rivers.

A good friend of mine, Mark Laskow, calls Pittsburgh the “Bangalore” of big industry. And he’s right. He’s right because big industry is no longer characterized solely by manufacturers. Instead, we’re talking primarily here about industries like law and medicine and banking.

The idea is simple and, really, as old as this country itself. You put your “pretty boys” --- those who can sell, those who can hustle deals --- on the east and west coasts. You allow them to throw lavish parties and ink outrageous contracts. You then take the business they generate this way and send it back home for the “muckers and grinders.”

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About two months ago, our CEO came to me and asked me if I could write my columns further in advance. I had no problem with this --- I actually appreciated it, as it gave me some breathing room.

I tell you this because I’m referring in this particular column to a column that you only read a couple weeks ago but was based on events that took place closer to seven or eight weeks ago.

I’m referring to my article entitled, “Stayin’ Alive.”

If you’ll recall, this column was me pretty much venting about an investment I had made over roughly a twelve-month period. It was in a high-tech start-up run by two guys who had yet to see their 25th birthdays.

When I originally wrote “Stayin’ Alive,” the young founder of this company had, and through a third party, already notified me of the fact that he was getting completely out of the business and that my six-figure investment was unfortunately now lost.

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Perhaps the most distasteful job an entrepreneur/CEO/manager must do is terminating a non-producer.

I have either directly terminated, or at least participated in the termination of, more than two hundred and fifty people over the forty years I’ve owned companies. (Frankly, I’m not even sure of this number --- this is just my best guess.)

It’s an ugly thing. From the moment you first decide that it must be done until weeks after it has been done, the twenty or thirty minutes spent in that room with that individual replays --- over and over --- inside your head.

Could I have said that differently? Might he/she derive the wrong meaning from that comment? Am I legally painting myself into a corner by saying that? These are just a few of the thoughts that rattle around in one’s head following the process of letting someone go.

I use the word “process” because that’s exactly what’s happening. Or at least it should be.

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About a year-and-a-half ago, I invested in a high-tech start-up.

At the time, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. These guys were brilliant and their idea had all of the trappings that I look for.

“I can’t believe no one else sees the value in this start-up,” I thought to myself. “And these guys haven’t exactly kept a low-profile either.” (It was true --- this business was literally started in a glass house.)

They plunged ahead --- taking a significant amount of my money with them. “So what,” I reasoned, “Compared to the payday that’s coming from this business, I’m investing chump change.”

About a year went by and instead of getting the sales results I expected, I was hearing an awful lot of excuses.

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I have this young sales guy that works for me. (The poor son-of-a-bitch made the mistake of working for a guy who: a.) is obligated to produce a column every week, b.) has less than ten employees to choose from, and, c.) regularly depends upon the day-to-day happenings in his company to come up with the ideas for his columns.)

Me.

Nonetheless, the kid is twenty-four, just shy of three years out of college, and only a darker shade of green than he was when we hired him in May of 2009.

Anyway, and like so many young people, this young salesman (let’s just call him “the salesman”) has this tendency to shoot bullets that haven’t even been loaded yet. It got so bad that we made him put a sign on his office door. This sign reads, “Slow down --- think it through.”

I’m not sure how he interprets this sign, but I do remember why he put it up. He put it up because of an incident involving a long-time customer.

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I have found that it is best to have other investors committed to the deal and not be the only early investor. I have ended up being the sole investor in several companies and it is hard work and very time consuming. You will end up raising the money as well as being an integral part of management. Not a good leverage model. So it pays to have a few partners to share the responsibilities and investments.

All I can say here is, “I agree!” The trouble is, it took me the better part of five years and probably a half-million-dollars to learn this (in retrospect) very simple lesson.

Try to develop some synergy among the various investments. Having a number of companies in the same space leverages your knowledge of a market and facilitates relationship building. Example: in a few weeks, I will have the IT staff from Eli Lilly visiting four of my investments in two days. Lilly could use the products of all four and be an investor in three of the companies.

While I see and agree with the wisdom in this one, I’m proud to say that I really only partially violated it. This is primarily because while almost all of my investments are in software, they probably were not large enough to warrant the kind of “cross pollination” Regis is talking about here. This is also due to the fact that I tend to invest in companies as early as the business planning stage --- not a lot for any visiting IT staff to even chew on.



I have noticed that new funds as well as new players in the venture business tend to invest in everything they see. This happened to Sevin Rosen when they started years ago and it happened with Softbank and me. There are a lot of deals out there with good...and bad ideas. The problem isn't throwing out the bad deals, it is understanding what it will take in terms of management, resources, alliances, etc. to turn a good idea into a good business venture. BE PATIENT.


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My life changed, and dramatically, some time around 1975. It changed that year because 1975 was the year that I met a guy whose last name was Roth.

Mr. Roth proved ultimately to be a scoundrel. He conspired behind my back to steal my company from me. He was in cahoots with the buyer and they jointly rigged the sale price so that I would come out on the short end. Not very nice.

But hey, it’s history and if I ever find the guy I’ll probably ring his neck.

But every dark cloud has a ray of light. And in this case, that “ray” was the fact that Roth was, and up until that point in my life, the most unemotional person I had ever met. Logic was his calling card. Everything he said and did was based on logic. (Including, I guess, screwing me.)

But I came out way ahead on this relationship. This was because prior to meeting him, my life was pretty much based more on fantasy and hope than rational thought and rational execution.

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