As I move forward with the vision of Lone Wolf and growing the company, I bear in mind a number of lessons that I learned from some mentors that I was lucky enough to have when I was younger. I thought I would take the opportunity today to share them with you.

First was Roy who taught me that there were three important attributes in getting ahead;   working hard, being smart and being organized.  As a matter of fact, he had a formula for getting ahead that basically said that the most important attribute to have was that of being organized.  Being organized helps you get a lot of things accomplished.  Next was working hard.  A hard-working person who was also organized would see greater results of their labor than a disorganized hard-working person.  Last was being smart.  Being smart means that you direct the hard work you are prepared to do into the areas that you will do well at.   So basically his formula was "Success = Organization X Hard work X Smarts".  And woe to the person who was smart but not prepared to work hard or was disorganized.  So each factor is important but the lack of one of them can bring down the rest.

Second was Paul who taught me that you don't fight a fight that you didn't choose.  He was a paratrooper in WWII and he said when they landed where they were supposed to be, with the equipment they were supposed to have and at the time that they were supposed to be there, they fought like hell.  If anything wasn't going according to their plans they ran like hell and fought another day.  How does that translate into a business career?  Let me give you an example.  I had a competitor once whose program cost only 80% of what Lone Wolf did.  But our program was 200% better than their program was. So we would normally win the prospects' business in a head to head sale.  They had started before us in the business but at the time we both had about 40 clients.  Then they dropped their price to less than 33% of what ours was and we started to lose sales.  Now they had picked when the fight was going to happen, they had picked where it was going to happen and they picked what we were fighting about.  If we had have fought, we would have lost.  So I took the lessons I had learned from my mentor and took a step back.  What fight could I choose?  I took some intelligence I had about the competitor and realized that the company was run by an owner who said abusive things to his clients and was really not a people person - and I am being very kind here.  But he had a salesperson that was a smooth operator and made the clients happy up front.  So I approached the salesperson, who I figured couldn't be any happier working for this fellow than his clients were, and asked him what he was paid.  Then I made him a better offer, hired him away, and we never looked back.  That company never got any bigger and Lone Wolf went on to what we are today.  We picked the fight and won it using my mentor's lesson.

Third was Gary who taught me how to think big.  His premise was that most entrepreneurs (a word that I think is a fancy French word for a guy who is broke) became so focused on their pie, which they have their hands tightly wrapped around, that they lose focus on how to grow the pie. They fell in love with their ideas and being blind to what they could be if they let other people put a fork in their pie.  If you realize that growing your business means making a bigger pie, you will also realize that a smaller piece of a much bigger pie can be a lot more than that little pie of your own you started with.  This might sound funny coming from a guy who started a company called Lone Wolf, but I followed Gary's lesson and gave up pieces of the pie.  The first piece was to Des O'Kelly, who joined me twenty years ago and has been my loyal right hand for all of that time and my best friend.  He and I started making a bigger pie.  Then we gave a piece to investors, which allowed us to take the company into areas that we could never have done on our own.  Every year we give a piece to our team members because without them, we would be back to our little pie we started with.  So as we start our twenty second year in business, I can thank Gary for teaching me how to bake a bigger pie.

There have been other people over the years that have had a great influence on how and what I think about.  I truly appreciate all of them and my hope is that by the end of my career I have had the opportunity to be a mentor to others as mine were to me.  I greatly admire and respect people who take the time to pass along knowledge and wisdom, and if I can encourage everyone, following in the theme of last month's missive, the place to begin mentoring starts at home.

Lorne C. Wallace, C.A.
President & Founder of Lone Wolf