Create a Business, not a job

January 26, 2022 | Colleen O’ Connell-Campbell


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Meet Louise Motuzas, president and founder of Thrive Business Consulting. Louise started her career in banking, in Toronto, with roles across group life insurance, mortgage, and collections. When the prospect for a better quality of life for their children and the ability to work together presented itself, Louise and her partner Len moved back to their home town of London, Ontario.  Unfortunately, the company that brought them home went bankrupt.

So now what?

Spotting a need for computer hardware wholesale distribution, locally, they created Bolen Distributing Inc (1995). And so began their entrepreneurial journey. A journey that led to millions of dollars of business, connections across industries, and culminating in a sale in 2013. Since then, Louise & Len have been sharing the wisdom of their experience with the business community at Thrive Business Consulting.

Dividing work by expertise

Louise calls herself ‘matchmaker’ and ‘nurturer’. Her expertise is hiring people – the ability to zone in on exactly the kind of people she wants. She extends conversations and makes customers feel connected. Len on the other hand brings the technological operations. He finds great systems, and spots the opportunities and gaps.

“Business ownership should not just be a way to earn a paycheck. You could do that working for someone else. When you invest your time, money and resources growing a business you deserve to have created wealth for yourself and your family.” Through Thrive Business Consulting, Louise wants to use her knowledge and experience to guide others to make a significant change in their businesses as well as their lives. Minimizing the mistakes along the journey helps businesses grow faster.

The importance of foundation

Louise’s advice when you are thinking of starting a business, is to focus on putting a solid foundation into place from the very beginning. Starting with getting a firm handle on who your competitors are, finding the right people, and systems. Having a mentor to help you do that helps. People are the greatest challenge for most businesses. For example, very often, companies focus too much on salespeople who know the industry, or product, well, when really, it's more important that the salesperson knows how to sell. They can learn about the product and bring a technician with them for the deeper material. Louise talks of a printing company that always hired salespeople that had been in the printing industry. And they were disappointed with the result more than once. She worked with them to hire a salesperson who had never had any experience in that particular industry, which really worked out fantastically.

The exponential value of remote management

Louise digs into the topic of remote management – ever relevant in our long-term hybrid environment. “Instead of having an IT person in your company, have a team that is remotely managing all your computer services. What used to be one person, who can't possibly know everything to help you out, will now be a group of people, with a system.” It’s a no-brainer. And an idea Louise has offered from well before the pandemic.

The importance of attitude in talent

You can train a person for a particular skill but attitude is what matters the most in the end, in Louise’s experience. Being a life-long learner and being ready to help in any field - those are key traits to look for in talent.

Fun, frank advice from Louise

Louise’s overarching advice? Choose to create a business rather than just creating a job. It may be difficult. It may take time and it may be exhausting but ultimately it’s very worth it.

Listen to the entire interview here: https://iamamillionairesonowwhat.libsyn.com/ep210-create-a-business-not-a-job