Sparring Partners
Paul Reavlin, 28, was an accountant with a serious martial arts hobby when he opened a company designing and selling athletic gear 18 months ago. He is part of a group of start-up business owners who act as an unofficial “board of directors” for one another’s companies. Group members have learned to trust each other and to ask tough questions. Reavlin was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.
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All the members of this group have businesses that are between zero and 5 years old. Most of us are running these companies alone, and the real incentive for us [in starting this group] was to have someone hold us accountable. If I didn’t achieve my goals before, no one was there to tell me I was doing something wrong. It is easy to let important issues slip through the cracks and never face them when you work by yourself.
But when you are held accountable, you know that if you can’t justify your goals, someone else will make you set new ones. We all noticed the benefits of this from the first meeting.
I have had to ask myself the very same questions that I’m asking the others--and to judge yourself is a very difficult thing to do. I realized that I had been avoiding a lot of those questions! But since I asked them, it has become more clear to me what I want to do and how I’m going to accomplish it.
Most of the group members work out of the same office building. In order to maintain a solid macro perspective, [we’ve assembled a group of] businesses in unrelated industries. A variety of different viewpoints has been helpful, and at the core, most of our problems are similar.
At first we went around the table and everyone had about 20 minutes. But after a while that became less effective. We realized then that we had never agreed to be completely honest with each other or to promise that whatever was said would not leave the room.
We laid down the rules that we had to be willing to bring up whatever was on our minds without worrying about looking bad, and everyone had to feel free to comment without worrying about sparing someone’s feelings.
We also decided that we would devote each meeting to one business and that each person--when it was their turn to present--would come to the table with a set of business goals and a plan for how to achieve them. The rest of the group would decide if those goals were proper and if the approach was sound.
We found this worked well because it forced us to reevaluate our businesses and set realistic goals. One business owner set a goal for growth that would cost a certain amount. We had to literally pin her down in terms of exactly what the costs were and where the financing was going to come from. We asked: “Are you going to tap family or find loans or go to the government? If you are going to seek capital from a bank, how many banks are you going to hit this week--three or five?” If she didn’t address that issue, everything else she had planned was irrelevant.
We started out with another member who decided quickly that her business was nobody else’s business. We respected that, but we also felt that if you don’t open up and trust, you will miss a lot of the benefits you can get from peer contact.
More Smal Business: D4-5
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At A Glance
* Company: Revgear Sports Co.
* Owner: Paul Reavlin
* Nature of business: Manufactures and distributes boxing, kickboxing and martial arts equipment
* Location: 1015 N. Lake Ave., No. 205, Pasadena
* Founded: 1996
* Employees: 1
* Annual revenue: $100,000
