In continuation of Inspiring Business Journey Of Chris Powell: "There Is No Rush To Grow Big".

I live by a motto which I created and read every day. I call it the WIN Factor. Actually I'm writing a book on it. It means W.I.N. W-Write down your goals. Dreaming is like catching the wind in your hand you can't. It only becomes a goal when you put some roots under it, you have to write down your goals and plan the tasks it takes to accomplish each one. I-Integrity, in order for a goal to become a reality and to grow correctly, you have to be fair and do it right the first time. N-Never give up, we live in a world of other people's dreams. Look around you, everything we use or own was created by someone who created a business to provide the service or product that we use. It means that whatever your goal or business is, it can become a success if you continue to be determined not to give up.

I have tried to always live by these principles.


After my food company failure and the experience, it taught me how devastating it felt to lose my business and everything that went along with it I realized business is not for everyone. It's hard, exciting, creative, and most of all you have to create an idea into a reality. I also learned if you are an employee or business owner they both really need each other and are two sides of the same coin. Employees need a business to work for and businesses needs employees to work in it.

There I sat thinking should I go back into the food business or do something different. My rationalization was to start something new thereby no memories of the old only new experiences.

Well this time I was ready. I had already the displeasure of losing in business and I was ready to get back into business and this time become more successful. I decided to start a placement agency. At that time, temporary placement industry was the way for the future for people looking to find employment.

Big companies were always looking for ways to create jobs and did not want the hassle of keeping these employees on their payroll if these jobs became obsolete and temporary placement agencies would be used.

Once again on a shoe string budget I decided to get into the  placement agency business but in the medical industry by placing nursing. I did not have the slightest idea of how, but I knew by getting an office and getting my company set up, I had the confidence to learn. So I did. I read and talk to different nursing organizations and started marketing my services to the different medical facilities. I was beginning to see success. I then received a call one day from a larger company out of Southern California, who wanted to expand into the Northern California market. They noticed my business and the success it was beginning to produce and asked if we could create a merger between the two companies.  At first, I was not excited but still I decided this was a much larger organization and are more established than my company so I decided to take the offer.  Besides their financial resources available could really help the business grow. We created the merger and I was on my way to the top. My responsibilities were pretty much the same, doing to marketing the nursing services to the different medical facilities, negotiating for corporate housing, and structuring of contracts.

So I continued to create markets for the business and we grew. But with any merger of any kind, there will always be differences. Long story short you have to make sure when you're deciding to merge with another organization get to know who the head person, CEO, president are. Take time to meet them, get to know their character and what they stand for. Now I know all of this but back then, that's another story. I was excited that another company would want to buy and merge by company but what a mistake.

The corporate company was not paying the nurses nor their own internal employees including me. I was called into a meeting with about 22 anger nurses who were complaining about not being paid. I then contacted the corporate office and for a week, received no response. When I did get a response, it was to continue to push the business and don't worry about the nurses they would get paid. A week later again, the nurses began to call and complain and ask me what I was going to do about this. Well it only took another 14 calls to realized that this is not how you run business. I called the corporate office, gave them notice and immediately restarted my own organization.

Many of the nurses quit the corporate company from Southern California office and a few followed to my own company where the business did well. I continue to find them new positions in which many are still working at today.

The nursing business (nurse registry) is a 24 hour stressful business, so I decided to change and became a placement agency for the placing of industrial and high tech personal.

The change skyrocketed my business sales volume and we grew. But remember a lot of money does not mean you have a lot of money. What does that mean? You have to always look at the profit margin minus your expenses equal your net profit before taxes. Our margins were too low to continue to grow the business so we borrowed, and used other creative financing options from banks, and credit unions but this too made it difficult and added more debt than needed. Remember with growth comes more expenses and the trick is to learn how to keep your expenses down and grow your business.

Once again we continued to grow our sales and profit volume, but our expenses seem to also grow right along with our sales volume. I did plan, project forecast, expenses and burden cost estimate, but still growing a business always has unseen hidden costs.

After years again, I decided to close the doors to the business and again it took everything I worked for and had including a divorce.

I was devastated, but also more determined than ever before. It took me about two years to get back on my feet and to start another business in the engineering industry which I created to work with some of the largest fortune 100 companies in the world.

I knew this business would be the one that would retire me in the shakers and doers of the Silicon Valley, mega companies. And so I started..