Joe Abraham

Out from under a rock…

// August 2nd, 2010 // View Comments // Next Gen. Entrepreneurship, The Next Generation...

Hey everyone

Yes I have been under a rock for the last few months. Sorry about that.

I haven’t posted to my blog in a while. I have been MIA on twitter and facebook. I have done next-to-no traveling this year. But it’s all for a good reason.

I’ve been working on the final draft of my book Entrepreneurial DNA and I am excited to say that it is finally done!

I am also excited to formally announce that the publisher for the book is the great McGraw Hill. We just finished signing all the agreements and are now in the manuscript editing phase. God willing, the book will hit bookstores in early spring 2011. McGraw has decided to do the first release as a hard back, so we are all pretty jazzed about that.

I have also been under the radar for the last few months as we went through several versions of naming, brand positioning and behind the scenes stuff for BOSI that was just too premature to talk about with anyone.

Now that all that craziness is behind us, I’m ready to jump back out in the public eye and start beating the BOSI drum. If you have been hanging out with/around me for more than a year, you’ll be glad to know that a ton more research has gone into the BOSI concept and the results are simply outstanding.

I’ll start to trickle out some of our findings toward the end of August and getting into the fall season.

Here are some things to watch for in the month of August.

1. A brand new BOSI website to replace the ugly home-made beta site that exists today!
2. The brand new BOSI Assessment and BOSI Profile Report.
3. An opportunity to participate in the first BOSI video documentary – more info on that shortly.
4. Launch of the BOSI social media footprint (you tube, twitter, facebook, myspace).
5. A chance for you to get to know the team who will be playing in the sandbox with me at BOSI – including my business partners.

I hope you had a great summer and that you are eagerly anticipating some great things happening in your business and life in the months to come.

I’ll be cheering you on every step of the way. Always here to support you when needed.

Joe…

The Story Behind BOSI DNA

// December 29th, 2008 // View Comments // Next Gen. Entrepreneurship

Before the story gets too convoluted or watered down from the numerous times I’ll probably have to tell it, I wanted to archive the “real” story of BOSI DNA.

In case you didn’t have the faintest clue what BOSI DNA is, BOSI is the concept behind the book concept I am working on called “BOSI Entrepreneurship”.

So here’s how the story goes…

I was sitting at my desk one afternoon…frustrated!

I was frustrated with our clients (both past and present). We had rich clients and broke clients, we had super-high profile clients and clients who were only celebrities to their own kids.

We had men, women, those in their early twenties and those in their sixties.

Every shape, size and culture was represented in our historical records.

But here was the frustration. They didn’t all act like I wanted them to!!

After all, they were all entrepreneurs right? So why was it so hard to figure out which ones we wanted to work with and which ones we didn’t?

I had learned the hard way that just because a client can “pay” for our services didn’t make them a good client. Sometimes the ones who could pay us the most, were the biggest jerks!

So what I had was a profiling problem. I guess it was no different than being the high school football coach on tryout day. If coach didn’t know exactly what he was looking for in a quarterback, a lineman and a wide receiver, he’d have a small nightmare on his hands right?

But fortunately the big beer bellied high school coach had a “system” with which to profile his athletes. Through a series of exercises, he could evaluate which players had the highest potential to be stars and which ones were better off printing flyers for the booster club.

I didn’t have a system. Come to find out, nobody did. I search all over the web and through my library of business books and ALL of them lumped entrepreneurs into one big category.

The mindset was that “One Size Fits All” if you’re an entrepreneur.

But that just didn’t sit right with me. So I prayed (more about the frustration than anything else). Then I took a pen to paper and 20 minutes later, BOSI was born!!

No kidding, that’s the honest truth. In 20 minutes or so, I ended up putting on paper a few dozen names of clients and business owners from my past. As I put their names down on paper, the movie was playing in my mind of how these particular entrepreneurs functioned.

I pictured their faces. I recalled their MO in business. I though about how they each ran their enterprises.

As I did, lo and behold, they started to separate themselves like oil and water. Jim and Sue seemed to be more similar while Steve and Jane bunched up together.

At first, I ended up with 3 categories. The B, O and I. Then I discovered the “S” (who happen to be the largest group of the bunch).

So I called Adam and Jon (now former staff members), and ran them through my finding. I was greeted with the typical “Ah ha, that’s great Joe…sounds interesting…”. It was like being told your ugly drawing from art class was “interesting”. But I knew I was on to something.

[ADD moment - maybe that's why Adam and Jon are now former staff members???]

The more I thought about, the more real it became. Then I happened to be in Dallas meeting with Garry Arasmith who heads up our Advisory team. We grabbed dinner at an italian joint (Maccaroni Grill I think). From the time it took the waiter to take our order and bring us our meal, I had done my paper napkin presentation to Garry. (That’s what I like about chain restaurants…they feed you on paper table cloths – excellent for brainstorming!!)

As I walked Garry through BOSI, he lit up like a Christmas tree! Now I really knew we were on to something.

I was ready to tell the BOSI story to the world!! But first, research! I bet that’s going to take at least a year or so.

So there it is, the story the way it happened. Maybe a year from now, after I’ve told it enough times, I’ll be claiming it was delivered to me in a vision by angels wearing dancing tights.

No, no, no. This document will serve to confirm that the BOSI story began with very meager means. It began with a frustrated entrepreneur trying to prayerfully understand how to deal with his zany and unpredictable peers!