Bert Shlensky, PhD:
When Bert Shlensky was 25 years old, he had a PhD from MIT’s SLOAN school, and was suddenly teaching management classes of 30-50 ambitious night school MBAs. After a few months of teaching mostly 30-40 year-olds with 5-10 years of experience, one student asked: how can you teach management when you have no experience? Bert’s answer, which he still believes, was that there are critical principles and rules in any profession that facilitate effectiveness. However, Bert began to believe him and understood how experience and practice are necessary to perfect skills. Thus, he went into the even worse field of consulting. There, he did lots of research and analysis, charged lots of money, and told people with decades of experience how to run their businesses. Those experiences taught him more than anything why some of the most successful entrepreneurs quit school to start their businesses.
Finally, one of his consultant clients said “if you know all the answers then you go run this mess.” The business had had 5 presidents in 4 years, and was losing a few million dollars per year on $30 million of sales. After turning the business around, Bert Shlensky spent over 30 years turning around businesses. One of his key strategies was to identify and maximize opportunities and minimize problems, rather than just cutting costs, which was the common practice.
The most recent venture Bert Shlensky was involved in was Surefit Slipcovers, where the business ultimately grew the business from $50 to $150 million in sales. The key opportunity was capitalizing on the internet, where we grew the company’s direct catalog and internet marketing business to $60 million in 4 years. That also included a direct ship internet program for many of our retail customers, like E-bay, J.C. Penney, and Kohl’s. Remember, this was 2000-2003, where you had develop the solutions as you went along.
Over the past six years, Bert Shlensky initiated five start-up businesses focusing on home furnishings and internet marketing. While they achieved sales within six months of their funding, the results included some successes and some failures. Bert also learned to be sure you and your partners had the same parameters and have excellent people on board. Like hiring your key investor’s wife as the designer in not a good idea.
Most recently, Bert Shlensky also became one of the top counselors at SCORE. Bert Shlensky was one of the top ten counselors among 30,000 mentors who provide free services to start up and continuing businesses. He has counseled over 1500 clients in the last three years, led several marketing and planning workshops, and developed and assembled over 200 templates to help clients succeed with various elements of their programs.
Bert Shlensky started Startup Connection because he believes clients need more hands-on help on the “how” instead of the “what” than is generally available for small businesses. In addition, they need specific resources to solve their problems, rather than expert theoretical opinions and pre-designed manuals. In short, Bert Shlensky is still answering his student’s question of what do you know and how can you help us. Bert is now confident that he has both. In addition, Bert Shlensky has the independence to help clients through the tough questions and challenge them to succeed.