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INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | SEPTEMBER 5, 2000 MANAGEMENT The Making of a Business Coach Stever Robbins' unusual background -- and dogged determination -- helps him help others
"Everyone's life is profoundly affected by business -- your self-esteem, your net worth, how your community looks," Robbins says. "Let's have a show where we really look at, say, layoffs in a company where the CEO got a bonus and the rest of the company is doing just great. What does this mean about the power that we've given business? What role does the average Joe on the street play in all this?" That's not how typical business-school graduates talk, but little is typical about Robbins. He has a degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard, designs business-school curricula for Harvard, is a veteran of several successful startups, and last year founded his own startup, Venture Coach. In that business, he advises clients who are starting or looking to transform companies. ON HIS OWN. It's not the most lucrative venture he has ever tackled. "Especially in the Harvard Business School environment, it's very easy to fall into thinking, 'I must do [what] has the most money attached to it,'" Robbins says. "For me, the spark is working one-on-one to help people achieve what they want to achieve. It feeds my sense of rightness with the universe in a way that being a dealmaker just doesn't." Robbins, 36, has had a lot of practice being both unconventional and successful. He started supporting himself in junior high. His parents were divorced, and at 14 Robbins wanted to move out of his mother's home and live with his father. Because his father's house was too small, he suggested his son move into an apartment nearby and helped the youth obtain emancipated-minor status. Three months after Robbins moved to the apartment, his father left town. So Robbins paid the rent through high school and college by working as a computer programmer. Only small startups, with little capital, would hire the young Robbins, who developed an affinity for small companies. Still, "I was miserable from 14 to 18," he says. His social life in Southern California featured an early version of the Internet, which connected mainly universities at the time. He felt at home on the MIT site, and spent much time conversing with students and professors there. Robbins had no idea that MIT was a top school, he just knew he wanted to go there -- and he did. The possibility of not getting in never occurred to him. "I really did work very hard," he says. "I have this ethic: I'll just do what it takes." "SATISFACTION." While pursuing computer studies and his MBA, he fed his interest in psychology by taking courses in and reading about "everything from hypnotherapy to cognitive science." He says this understanding of how adults learn helps him in his coaching business, which is partly about the company but largely about the person running the company. "What gives me satisfaction is...helping people really understand what's in the way of being effective and helping them take care of that," Robbins says. For the short term, he wants to develop a full coaching practice with a broad client base, giving him a wide range of issues to work on. Within about 15 years, he'd like to move to half-time coaching, giving him the chance for that television show that would bring business concepts to the masses. Maybe Oprah Winfrey, who has taught business at the University of Chicago, will coach him.  By Theresa Forsman in New York Edited by Robin J. Phillips  | | |
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