A celebrated and inspirational expert in the business and entrepreneurship industry, Dr. Robert L Wallace shares a handful of educational insights for aspiring entrepreneurs and growing businesses.
BACKGROUND
Dr. Robert L. Wallace is a celebrated expert and business owner with over 30 years of experience in management consulting, engineering services, and business systems.
Wallace founded and led three companies including the IT company BITHGroup Technologies, the engineering and technical services firm BITHENERGY Inc., and EntreTeach Learning Systems, an education company that provides training to growing businesses.
He had also publisher five books on wealth creation, emerging markets, strategic partnerships, and entrepreneurship.
Currently, he is running as the Baltimore City Mayoral Candidate as well as waiting to publish his next book.
ENTREPRENEUR’S METHODOLOGY FOR SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
In one of Wallace’s books, he talked about the need for entrepreneurs to pay attention, develop, and build sustainable businesses. In order to achieve this, he highlighted a training methology which consists of four quadrants.
In the first quadrant, the main focus is one’s self because Wallace found in his research that successful and sustainable businesses usually have leaders whose strength is really aligned towards the type and values of their businesses.
“I’m a perfect example. I’m an engineer by background and by degree. And my strength has always been math and science. So, it is no mistake that my businesses that I tend to invest in, tend to be based on technology and science because that’s my gift. That’s where my passion is.”
Then, the second quadrant is about planning. He highlighted that the training is only a bridge towards your goal.
“The training plan is simply a bridge, right? It’s a bridge. And, and what does the bridge do? The bridge, it bridges you, the individual, from where you are today to where you hope to be in the future.”
Then, the third quadrant is about your principles. There are principles of success in your market but you need to understand and leverage it.
Lastly, quadrant four highlights alliances and partnerships. You cannot achieve anything on your own but you can achieve success when you have people to help you.
“We need people to help us… Every single person I’ve ever met acknowledge that there were people on the way to help them.”
THE 3Ws OF LONG TERM SUCCESS
The first W of long term success means “watch.” Watching is an intense experience as long as it is intentional because you can fully commit to watching every detail of a plan. Wallace used this as a strategy when he visited Thailand for a business trip.
Then, they started to do the “work.” Because they are in a foreign land, there is a huge cultural difference so they need to overcome and work on that barrier.
Lastly, you need to go to “war.” Consider that in business, you have to fight to get in, and sometimes, you have to fight to protect what you have.
“I used the analogy of, you know, of a war and it is a war. It’s an economic war, in this case. So yes, I do think that the watch, work, and war is critical but the wisdom is knowing when to watch, when to work, and when to war.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A DREAM
Wallace believed that there is nothing wrong on having a one chair barbershop or being a small full proprietor if it is what you want.
“If you are comfortable with that and that is an honorable and noble profession, nothing wrong with that.”
However, if you have a bigger goal for your business, then you need to create the future and then work backwards. Wallace recommends you to follow this strategy as he found that businesses have lost the ability to dream big as they are being consumed by date and day to day requirements.
With this, you need to discipline yourself to be able to stop working in the business and instead work on the business. Just like what Walace did. When he traveled in other countries, he was able to put his thoughts together and when he came back, he had a new game plan.
“I think that we need to do that. We need to dream… be able to dream too often. Life, it deprives us of being able to dream and we must never, never lose that ability to dream.”
RESOURCES
If you want to watch the full video of the interview with Dr. Robert L. Wallace as he shared a handful of educational and inspirational insights for aspiring entrepreneurs and growing businesses, then be sure to click the links below:
032: Dr. Robert L Wallace – Technology CEO – Public Speaker – Author – Business Consultant
https://govcongiants1.wpengine.com/podcast/032-2/
032: Dr. Robert L Wallace – Technology CEO – Public Speaker, Author & Consultant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_qP-dwuiXk
Check out our RESOURCES page for a sample letter that we use in response to government market research.
