How Well Did You Or Your Company Do This Year Financially?  You Won’t REALLY Know the Answer Until You Listen to Bennett Stewart

It doesn’t take more than a cursory look at the calendar (or out the window) to see that 2014 is coming to an end.

For many savvy business owners, as well as astute heads of households, this is often a time of reflection, specifically, an honest, sit-down analysis of the financial data you have incurred over the past 12 months.

You break down the income and revenues.  Itemize and categorize the expenses.

Economics 101 teaches you that if the former is greater than the latter, then you’ve made a profit, and it’s time to celebrate.  But if the tables are turned, you maybe didn’t do as well as you would have liked this year, and it may be time to hit the drawing board for 2015.

But according to economist Bennett Stewart, the founder of EVA Dimensions, the mere idea of “making a profit” only begins to tell the tale of how well you REALLY did this year, and how you could have done even better, simply by doing a deep dive analysis into your company’s operation….every nook and cranny.

In 1982, Stewart launched his first company, a global consulting firm, Stern Stewart and Co., where he developed the signature concept that would define him for the next 30-plus years: EVA (Economic Value Added).

Building on the concept of traditional “accounting” profit (the aforementioned “revenue minus expenses” model), Stewart introduces the added dimension of “economic” profit, taking into account the “opportunity cost” of the earning potential of your assets, as opposed to their actual earnings.

(Example:  If an individual employee earned “x” amount of profit for you, how much moreprofit would he or she earn if you eliminated or redirected the “busywork” that would otherwise bog down that employee from doing the more important tasks that he or she does that earn the most profit for your company?)

EVA is a revolutionary concept that has become widely embraced in the business community, but is also applicable on an individual level as well.  Sure, it’s nice to watch the football game, or the finale to “Dancing With the Stars,” but what if you were able to redirect the time spent doing that towards something that made (or saved) you more money (A second job, a money-making hobby, cutting coupons)?

We all can make more money, either on our own, or by maximizing our time at our jobs in order to make more money there.   On Sunday, Bennett Stewart talks with Raja about his story, the concept of EVA, and how we can look within ourselves to help achieve economic success.  Plus, he also explores EVA Dimensions’ latest project, an in-depth analysis of how effectively CEO’s of S & P 500 companies are leading those companies to success, and which ones aren’t holding up their end of the company’s success.

Sith Lords……Zombie Apocalypses….Overseeing a Billion Dollar, Publicly Traded Company…..All In a Day’s Work For Overstock.com Founder/CEO Patrick Byrne

It’s been said that a typical entrepreneur tends to live by his or her own rules.

That typical entrepreneur would probably take a look at Patrick Byrne and say, “Wow!”

Byrne, the son of longtime Geico CEO John Byrne, has certainly amassed his share of milestones in his 50-plus years:

PHD from Stanford (in Philosophy).

Protege of Warren Buffett.

Three-time cancer survivor.

Black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Professional boxer.  (Well, he attempted to, during his days at Stanford).

But it was a decision he made in 1999 that set the tone for the rest of his wild entrepreneurial journey.  At the time, the ability for companies to sell their wares on the internet was in its relative infancy, with e-commerce titans Ebay and Amazon just a few years old at the time.  While those two grew larger and larger in scope, many, many other such companies fell by the wayside.

But Byrne had a vision.  As neat as it was to, at the time, go shopping for, essentially, whatever you needed while sitting at home in your pajamas, what if you were able to actually find bargains at the same time?

Fortunately, opportunity came knocking in the form of D2: Discount Direct, an online retail startup predicated on the idea that they would take the unsold inventories from failed dot coms and liquidate them on their site.

D2 certainly had a dream niche, but what they did not have was money.   Enter Patrick Byrne, who invested $7 million (most of his net worth) for a majority share of the company.  He quickly became CEO, changed the name to Overstock.com, and off he, and the company, went!

By 2000, Overstock had made its first million, featuring just under 100 products.  But that was just the beginning, and the niche play Patrick had gambled on paid off big time, en route to an IPO just two years later.  By 2009, annual profits had reached over $7 million, and by 2010, Overstock had become a billion-dollar company in terms of annual revenues, specializing in hundreds of thousands of products, expanding well beyond the mere….well, overstock….of failed companies.

Despite the success of his company, Patrick was not one to leave well enough alone.  While shares of his company were being traded inside Wall Street, Patrick was on the outside, so to speak, railing against many of the practices of Wall Street traders, including his biggest pet peeve for which he has attained a degree of notoriety, the practice of naked short selling.  (He became known in investment circles for his role in a 2005 conference call in which he declared that Wall Street was driven by a “Miscreants Ball” of players who had conspired to exploit systemic investment flaws to drive down the stock price of many companies, including Overstock.com, and that this effort was, in fact, headed by a “Sith Lord”.)

Many observers hailed Patrick as a prophet, of sorts, citing that the economic turbulence the U.S. had experienced during the late 2000′s was due in part to the practices against which Patrick had been so vocal. On the other hand, critics cited Patrick’s efforts as desperate and conspiratorial in nature, and not worth the time to pursue further investigation.

Patrick Byrne’s campaign against the perceived evils of Wall Street was just one of a number of the maverick entrepreneur’s “against the grain” philosophies that have caused many to take notice. The pattern continued early this year, when Byrne planted himself firmly in support of the controversial virtual currency known as Bitcoin, citing it as the U.S.’s primary hope to save it from a “zombie apocalypse”.  (His term for what he sees as another looming recession).

Byrne certainly has a lot to say about business and the economy, and on this edition of The Raja Show, he talks with with Raja about why he thinks what he thinks.  He also discusses his own story, and what he was able to do to position Overstock.com so strongly in a marketplace where many fellow dot coms fell notoriously short.

Why Do We Buy What We Buy?  (…And Why Does Britt Beemer Know What That Is Before WE Do?)

If you’re looking for a telltale indicator of how things have changed, look no further than how you shop.

While, in some cases, the stores you frequent may be in the same location as they were 20 or 30 years ago, that’s about where the similarities end, as the customer experience inside those stores has changed significantly during that time.

If you think about how you interact with your favorite grocery store, department store or clothing store nowadays, it can be stunning.  By presenting real time coupons, discounts and specials on the things that you buy the most, among many other tactics, it’s as if they know what you’re going to buy, even before you do.

And that’s just on a micro level.  Take your experience, and multiply that by the hundreds of millions of people in the U.S., and retailers are now taking a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to what consumers are buying, and thus, their operational efficiency increases exponentially (which means, if you pardon the cliche, they “pass the savings on to you”!)

How did this happen?

The answer, as it does in most cases in the world of business, lies in the data.  And when it comes to consumer behavior, no one in America is better equipped to break down this data than C. Britt Beemer.

Hailed by many as the foremost expert on consumer behavior in the United States, Beemer is the Founder and Chairman of America’s Research Group, a Charleston, South Carolina-based organization devoted to the research and analysis of consumer behavior at all levels, from the mom-and-pop store down the street to the “big box” retailers that dominate our malls and shopping centers.

Beemer uses this data to essentially “see the future” of how consumers will shop, providing all of us shoppers with a mirror to see our habits, and providing retailers with critical information needed to make spot-on purchasing and pricing decisions for their merchandise, to not only get a jump on their brick-and-mortar competition, but also the burgeoning alternative of e-commerce.

On Sunday’s edition of The Raja Show, Beemer joins Raja to discuss his work, including tips for both shoppers and retailers to take advantage of the current retail climate in the U.S.  Plus, he discusses the current state of retail in the U.S., and impact that the recent economic turbulence has had on the shopping decisions of American consumers.

(And he peers into the crystal ball to discuss what lies ahead for the next six weeks, as, like it or not, we are now fully immersed in the 2014 holiday shopping season.)

The One Behind the Ones Who Made Silicon Valley What It Is Today:  Inside the Mind of Regis McKenna

Apple.  Microsoft.  Electronic Arts.  AOL.  Compaq.

Over the past 40 years, these names have come to define tech culture in the United States, if not throughout the world.

But, like even the smallest tech startup, they all had to start somewhere, and, frankly, none of them would have gotten to market, en route to achieving what they achieved, without the unique, masterful vision of one man.

Regis McKenna.

The man who has been hailed by many as the preeminent marketing guru of the Silicon Valley has set the standard for what it takes for a tech company to rise above the noise in order to be heard in the marketplace.   Throughout his 50-plus year career, hundreds of companies, including the aforementioned quintet of tech giants, have sought his advice and guidance when creating the path to market domination.

His 1985 best-seller, “The Regis Touch”, serves as a blueprint for what companies of any size need to do in order to move forward in the marketplace.   And almost 30 years (and countless books and writings) later, his insights on the world of business and technology STILL carry substantial weight among the heavy hitters of tech around the world.

On this edition of The Raja Show, Raja and Regis go one-on-one to discuss Regis’ remarkable career, the experience of being on the proverbial “ground floor” with the likes of Jobs, Wozniak and Gates, his role in the creation of the iconic Apple logo, and his thoughts on what companies need to do in 2014 in order to grow and sustain themselves in the fast-changing world of tech.

To help Raja discuss ways in which you can improve your chances for financial success, Raja welcomes a pair of the savviest experts around when it comes to finance and accounting.

First, Ahmie Baum, Managing Director of the Baum Consulting Group and UBS Financial, joins Raja to discuss some of the most important, yet practical, wealth management strategies you can employ right now to ensure that your financial picture is as stable as possible.

And even though most individuals and professionals associate April 15 with “tax day”, there’s never a bad time to get the jump on your accounting to-do’s.  Dave Wilke of Wilke and Associates CPA joins Raja to take a look at the Top 15 tax deductions that most people never even consider when figuring out their tax picture for 2014, and the future.

When Life Tried To Throw Him Some Curves, He Built His Own Instead – The Journey of Gary Heavin

As a child growing up in Texas in the 1960′s, Gary Heavin had lofty ambitions. Specifically, he had wanted to become a doctor, and worked odd jobs to put him through a college premed program before eventually running out of money to pay the tuition, and just like that, the ambitions he had were gone.

Fortunately for Gary, he had a brother, David, with more moderate ambitions.  David had just purchased a gyn in Houston, and needed somebody to run it, even if it meant somebody with NO experience running a gym before, such as Gary.

Despite a tumultuous first year in business, Gary’s new ambition was in place.  Turns out that he eventually became pretty good at running a gym.  He loved fitness, and became proficient in the area of sales, especially when it came to selling to women.

In what seemed to be a curious move at the time, Gary decided to effectively slash his membership base in half, offering memberships to women only, and renaming the enterprise “Women’s World of Fitness”.  The move was a smash hit, and within years, Gary and David opened a dozen more locations throughout Texas, welcoming over 50,000 members and growing the enterprise to the point where Gary had no choice but to get a pilot’s license and fly a plane from location to location to keep tabs on what was going on.

But ultimately, bigger was not better for Gary Heavin.  The expansion resulted in bigger lots for their locations and more amenities, which led to increases in overhead costs, and the only way to mitigate these costs was to reopen membership opportunities to men.  The women, in turn, left in droves, uncomfortable with the idea of going to a coed gym.  Morale among the local management was declining rapidly.

Inevitably, Women’s World of Fitness filed for bankruptcy.  Gary lost everything….the house, the cars, the plane, and even his wife.  He was in debt for millions of dollars, a situation so bad he spent time in jail for failure to pay child support.

Having hit rock bottom, Gary then decided it was time for a comeback.  He got a job selling fitness equipment, and along the way, met a new wife, Diane, a former client of the Women’s World of Fitness who shared the same passion for fitness that Gary did.   With a new path and a new lease on life, Gary decided it was time to get back into the fitness business, this time, with a leaner, meaner approach that jettisoned many of the amenities he employed the first time around…..less equipment, no showers, and a rigid set of operating hours that ran counter to the 24/7 nature of fitness centers that had been popular at the time.

(….and a return to the “women only” strategy that served him so well the first time around.)

Diane even came up with a name:  Curves.

After opening the first Curves location in 1992, Gary and Diane watched as the revamped approach to women’s fitness exceeded their wildest expectations. After a few wildly successful years with their handful of locations, Gary, with additional inspiration from the deteriorating condition of his mother, decided to take the business to the next level, implementing more of a proactive approach to women’s health and, to the benefit of the bottom line, introducing a franchising model to the company.

Taking a hands-on approach to finding the right franchisees for his company, owners who had the same passion for women’s health as he, Gary’s decisions were right on the money.  In time, Curves grew to around 10,000 locations in the United States by 2004, and as observers noted at the time, a franchise that was popularly referred to as the “McDonald’s of Women’s Health” was on par with the Golden Arches in terms of the rate of growth, as there was one Curves location for every two McDonald’s locations in the U.S.

Since its peak in 2004, Curves has seen a bit of a downturn, as the number of franchisees has fallen off its once-torrid pace.  But through it all, Gary kept his calm and his faith, en route to navigating the changes with the steady hand that grew his women’s fitness to unthinkable heights….twice.

While he is no longer the CEO of Curves International, Gary Heavin still hold significant influence in the company, and he has since transitioned to a myriad of philanthropic efforts and charitable causes.

On this edition of “Your American Story”, Gary talks with Raja about the highs and the lows of his remarkable journey, and the lessons he has learned along the way.  Plus, he shares his secrets of running a successful business, and a successful life!  You will NOT want to miss this discussion whatsoever.

-Plus, we talk with Michael Annichine, CEO of Pittsburgh-based business support company C-Leveled, about a great upcoming event presented by the MIT Enterprise Forum, “Tales From the Crypt”, a symposium featuring some of the scariest tales you’d ever want to hear from the world of business.

From Fast Lane to Fast Lane:  How Howdy Holmes Transitioned From Racing Stardom to Running One of “America’s Last Great Businesses” 

Imagine you go to a store to buy some pre-packaged food product, take it home, taste it, and realize that something’s not quite right.  You reach out to the company to complain.  How surprised would you be if the reply you received was a personal phone call from the CEO himself?

If you knew Howdy Holmes, CEO of the Michigan-based Chelsea Milling Company, the parent company of the ubiquitous Jiffy Mix baking mix products, you wouldn’t be so surprised.

(And yes, this happened.)

Such behavior is nothing new for Holmes, who has prided his entire career on doing things differently.  Perhaps this is due to the maverick spirit that propelled him to be one of the rising stars of the CART racing circuit (now known as “IndyCar”) throughout the late 1970′s and 1980′s, competing in six Indianapolis 500 races along the way, finishing in the Top 15 each time.

Perhaps that spirit is why he decided to shake things up upon being named CEO of the Chelsea Milling Company upon his retirement from racing in 1988. This was not a typical “turnaround”, to say the least, as Chelsea Milling was the family business, started by his grandmother (the inventor of Jiffy Mix) in 1930, and run by his father for decades.

The move to put a man whom many thought to be a “clueless race car driver” in charge of the company ruffled a number of feathers within the organization, most of which belonging to other members of the Holmes family.  But Holmes had always maintained an interest in marketing, advertising and promotion, and he knew what buttons to push in order to turn a relatively innocent product like baking mix into a cutting edge enterprise.

Ironically, one of those buttons could be considered “reset”, as Holmes decided to eschew the thought to modernize the look and feel of the product, instead keeping the retro feel intact, save for the government mandate on displaying the nutrition facts on the label.  Another one of those buttons could be considered “mute”, as Jiffy Mix refrains from any and all paid media advertising, endorsements, or couponing, instead letting word of mouth be the guide to getting their point across, and passing the savings on advertising costs onto the consumer by keeping the price of Jiffy Mix very low.

After a while, the skeptics came around, and today, Chelsea Milling is running like….well, the well-oiled engines that Holmes was intimately familiar with in a prior life.  And all because of a “throwback” product that never lost its cool.

On this edition of Your American Story, Howdy Holmes joins Raja to discuss his amazing journey, and the lessons he learned from the racetrack to the boardroom.

-Plus, Rich Lunak, President and CEO of Pittsburgh-based InnovationWorks, checks in with Raja to discuss all of the latest happenings with this leading-edge business incubator.  He also discusses his role in the upcoming Carnegie Science Awards, plus the big news about their new venture fund.

From Texas to Turner to Western Pennsylvania’s First “ACE” (And Beyond): The American Business Life of Jim Roddey

On this Sunday’s edition of Your American Story Radio, Raja welcomes one of Western Pennsylvania’s preeminent figures in business, politics, and leadership, Jim Roddey, onto the show to discuss his remarkable career.

And what a career it has been.  From earning his degree in speech from Texas Christian University to proudly serving our country as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps to his role on the board of Turner Communications (That voice in Ted Turner’s ear that said that a 24-hour all-news cable channel was a bad idea?  That was Jim.) to becoming the inaugural sole Allegheny County Executive, displacing the multi-headed system in place before his term, he has seen it all.

(And that DOESN’T include the fact that yeah, he’s also a top-flight entrepreneur, having an instrumental role in the startup and growth of dozens of companies throughout his 50-plus year career in business and leadership.)

Throw in the lightning-quick wit that also makes him one of the most sought-after dinner speakers in the region and we have one heck of a discussion in store for Sunday.  You will not want to miss a minute of what Raja and Jim have to say about business, leadership, and the political scene in Western Pennsylvania, and the country.

When Investing Money Isn’t Enough:  How Entrepreneur Saul Garlick Made a True Impact 

When Saul Garlick was in elementary school, he took a trip to South Africa, and what he saw in the lives and experiences of the kids that were the same age as he was deplorable.  No water.  No electricity.  No classrooms.  Essentially, no hope.

So he put his budding entrepreneurial mind to work.  While attending his high school in Denver, he started Student Movement for Real Change, and through his non-profit organization, he was able to generate over $10,000 towards the building of a school in that same South African village.

A few years later, while a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, he returned to visit that school and saw that it was boarded up and in shambles.   It was at that point that Saul realized that simply investing money in the problem wasn’t enough, so he put his entrepreneurial mind BACK to work, bought out his non-profit enterprise in favor of a for-profit enterprise, and Think Impact was born.  Saul organized the best entrepreneurial minds and resources he could muster to not only determine the TRUE areas of need in the region, but the most effective ways to address these areas of need.

Since the launch of Think Impact, the program has grown throughout Africa, expanding beyond South Africa to Kenya, Ghana and Rwanda.  And the scope has grown beyond simply building a school, to implementing enterprise education programs that enable the children of these areas to, in fact, help themselves through real innovation that addresses the needs of their people, be it the development of a rainwater catch system in Kenya or implementing a way to use cleaner charcoal in Rwanda.

On this episode, Saul joins Raja to discuss his story, and the inspiration behind Think Impact.  You will NOT want to miss this discussion.

-Also, Raja talks with one of the foremost authorities on employment trends in metrics in the United States, John Challenger of Chicago-based Challenger, Gray and Christmas.  John discusses the state of unemployment in the U.S., assesses where the jobs are (and where they will be), and previews the future outlook for employment in the U.S., as it pertains to the current economic recovery.