About LANCE continued ...
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Only one person signed with the Rams out of 240 guys at the tryout. This is when I gave up on my football dream and refocused on what I was going to do. A few months later I decided to join the U.S. Peace Corp and was assigned to Ethiopia, in east Africa. I was there two years teaching family hygiene, developing a sports program for kids and setting up a hybrid farming plot for corn and experimental chicken raising. I wrote a plan and got $5,000 in funding from the British Relief Organization, OXFAM, to help pay for the program. While in Ethiopia I had amoebic dysentery many times, a bad case of typhoid, a kidney stone, I fell off a motorcycle and broke my leg, and I was treated by a Swedish Mission hospital doctor for a sever case of Malaria which I almost died from. This taught me that you never know how much you can take until you have to take it!
When I returned to the U.S. I went to graduate school at the University of Central Florida and received a Masters in Counseling Psychology. I then worked with an Entrepreneur helping him open five counseling centers in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. When that relationship ended I decided to open my own counseling center and named it: Counseling & Personal Growth Center. After that I started a training company and raised $50K from investors to fund it. This led to my first experience of being betrayed in business. After raising the money and launching the business my partners changed the locks on the door and voted my out of the company. I pursued them legally for two years and got $20K returned to the investors.
Following that I wanted to leverage my talents so I opened a consulting company in Orlando, Florida and called it the Business Development Center. Because of the services I offered I needed to learn about funding companies. In order to do this I needed to find a financial guru who could teach me and I did.
I read an article in "Success Magazine" about the late Jim Howard, a Harvard graduate, owner of Symbax Business Services in New York City, former owner of the 6th largest public relations firm in America for 18 years, and the "Nixon for President" PR campaign managing firm when President Nixon was elected. Jim sold his PR firm and started Countywide Business Services. It was a company that did business valuations, funding and business acquisition and sale consulting. The article said Jim helped negotiate the purchase and sale of 300 businesses in a five year period and that he had developed a substantial reputation in political and business circles. I figured out how to contact him and was able to negotiate an agreement to pay him $30K in advance for one week of training in New York City. That meant I had to write a business plan, raise the money and go to New York City to be trained by him. To do this required my sincere commitment. I made the commitment and a year later raised $2.5 million for a client and received a very nice bonus for that. Every time I went to New York City I would meet Jim at the Harvard Club for lunch and mentoring.
Over an eight year period I consulted with and was an executive for a number of companies. These experiences and the mentoring I received from Jim played a key role in my thoughts and ideas for developing The BOSS™ program.
