About Me

I bet you started your business to gain control over your life, to get out from under The Boss, dreams of riches, a lost job, to follow a passion or a hobby, to make some extra cash, to gain freedom.  I know I did

Few of us are prepared for the struggles of building a business and fighting in that arena day after day to eke out an existence on our own terms.  I know I wasn’t.

We know that it can be better; that it SHOULD be better! and we are where we are not for a lack of trying, of working hard, but because something is missing, and for all we try we can’t figure it out.  It eludes us. 

We don’t know who to ask or what to ask, because we don’t know what we don’t know.  I am currently running my fourth business: the shortest run lasted a couple of years, and the longest was just about 15. I have always taught myself about business, reading everything I could and trying to learn from others and save myself from that extra bit of heartache.  This site is to help those who are embarking on that journey, to make it easier, to save time, to save heartache, and maybe prevent failure.

Good Morning!  I hope all finds you well.

My name is Roy Pellicano.  Are you just surviving in your business?  This is where you are being driven by your business, rather than you driving your business.  The difference may not be as clean as you think—as I will point out later in this story, you may think you are doing well, but have not yet reached the point where you are thriving. 

I started The-Business-Toolbox to solve the very real problem of business owners seeing survival as the measure of business success rather than that of abundance and independence, or what I like to call “Thrival”  The longer we do something, the more we get used to it as normal.  We become complacent.  This is a simple and evolutionary function of our brain’s physiology.  The result is that we “forget” the higher goals we want to achieve.  Our habits dull us to our realities, and so what was, at first, not-acceptable, over time becomes acceptable. 

To help business owners who are stuck in this Whirlpool of Acceptability, I have taken my life’s experience running my own businesses as well as advising other business owners, and have put it into this site and the other resources around The-Business-Toolbox.

You, see, many of us started our businesses to gain control over our lives–to get out from under the boss: the employer-employee work state.  Others decided to pursue dreams of riches and lavish lifestyles.  Some were forced into it by circumstance by losing a job or not being able to find one, or by being expected to take over the family business.  Some are following a passion, maybe a hobby that has grown, or might be able to grow into independence.  Finally, some may have even trained and studied for it, but are learning that their school-based business curriculums are not the same as the get-your-hands-dirty-in-the-trenches knowledge that they need to thrive in their business.

Many of us storied small business owners were not prepared for what we actually encountered.  The struggles of building a business from the ground up.  Yes, the stories of venture capital and private equity helping to found a tech startup to the tune of millions of dollars ring in the collective ears of our newspapers and magazines, but for many of us, that is not the reality.  We are fighting in that dirty arena day after day to win out our battles and eke out an existence on our own terms, while those critics up high try to drag you down. 

We know in our heart of hearts that it should be better, that it CAN be better, and we are where we are not for a lack of trying, of working hard, but because something is missing, and for all we try we can’t figure it out.  It eludes us.  It exists in the realm of the unknown unknowns.  We don’t know who to ask or what to ask, because we don’t know what we don’t know.  If this is you; if you can smell the delicious aroma of your business working for you versus you slaving away for your business, but don’t know yet how to get there, then it is you for whom I built this site.

You can read more about our services and resources here, but, maybe you first want to hear my own story.  I warn you, I am still on my journey to independence.  While I WAS “living the dream” for a good 15 years of my life, like all dreams, it ended, and when reality crept in I realized that I still was not where I needed to be to achieve MY Thrival.  And while I, and others had considered myself a success, I had only been surviving.  I had not yet been thriving.  I had to shed the Veil of Illusion before I could realize that and embark on that next journey.  This is my story.

I am currently running my fourth business.  The shortest run I had lasted a couple of years, and the longest was just about 15.  Each one has taught me new things about business, life, and people.  My passion is solving problems and it is great when I can figure out how to make money while doing so.

It took me a while to learn that a good idea does not always make a great product, and a great product does not always make a great business.  It took me even longer to learn that working for your business is vastly different than your business working for you…but all that is for later.  This is my story and here you’ll learn how this site and I can become an asset to your business. 

My first business, at age 11, was shoveling sidewalks in NYC.

Now the rules of business market were simple, when it stopped snowing, it was a free-for-all.  You walked the streets ringing doorbells and asking if people wanted their walks shoveled.  It was easy, immediate, fun, and short-lived.  There was also a lot of wasted time and lost opportunity.

In NYC, the plows push to the right, and those who have a driveway and live on the right of a one-way street have more snow to shovel; it is compacted and icy.  Forget houses on either side of a two-way street.  Further, a trick to shoveling snow is like the adage about voting, get out there early and often. 

The business model is subject to the weather, there is no guarantee of revenue, you could easily be pushed out of your primary market, and one must wait until the snow has stopped.  Further, shoveling is a tactical business: it solves a single problem of the client.  I saw an opportunity for a strategic business. 

Now I had realized all this in my first year of shoveling snow as a freelancer in the gig economy of the 80’s.  I decided to get ahead of the competition and, on each and every snow day, have my competition completely locked out from my ideal customers before I even stepped out the door. 

These were the people who paid the most and lived on the left-side of a one-way street.  They paid me a fixed contract fee to hold their place as my customer plus accumulation-based fees.  I also offered other services throughout the rest of the year, thereby increasing my total revenue for each client.

I would smile each time a “competitor” went to one of my customers or lost time negotiating on the right-side of the street, and trying to hustle their jobs to move onto the next customer to make as much as they could in the time they had–all with time wasting away and the worst jobs left to be done. 

Before I even walked out the door, I knew how much I had made, with the best possible clients, and for the maximum amount of money.  The deal had been sealed months before.

Knowing what I know now, I could have made so much more money than I did, but I made the mistake that most small business owners make.  I was so focused on working for the business–I was shoveling the snow–that I failed to have the business work for me. 

With a half-century of life-experience, most running my own business or advising others, I know now what I could have done to take this small lifestyle business to a million-dollar business. 

How could I have achieved that? 

Very easily, once you know the few simple steps that one takes to properly position a business.  This site will help you learn those tactics and strategies.  But first, back to the story.

All my businesses have focused on service delivery.  For the one I ran the longest, my success, but also my failure, was dictated by my life goals at the time.  I was NOT intent on getting rich.  I was NOT intent on retiring early.  I was NOT intent on building something for the future.  I thought I was achieving independence, but I was just achieving freedom; and, this is exactly what I have defined for myself. 

I was simply intent on living the easiest and most pleasant lifestyle that I could.  You often encounter these businesses out there.  It might be a hobby business, or a business where the owner is about to retire and is already half checked-out.  Many a client said to me, “Hey Roy, you know you can do so much more!”  And they were right, but you know I didn’t want much more.  I was happy.  I was satisfied.  Life was good.  My mantra was “no worries.”  In fact, your own business may be one of these. 

You see, at that time in my life, I was happy with surviving from one day to the next.  I was a business bum.  My only goal was to raise enough money to live my life the way I wanted to: today; not tomorrow; not next year; and not concerned with what might happen ten years down the road. 

In the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, I was the grasshopper.  As far as I was concerned, I HAD ALREADY ACHIEVED THE DREAM.  I saw people fighting in the rat race.  I saw business owners trying to keep their necks above water—working for their business—I saw all the ants building up for the future.

Unlike all them, I already had my business working for me; I did what I wanted, when I wanted to do it, and with whom.  I wanted to go sailing; I sailed.  I wanted to eat out; I ate out.  I wanted to travel; I travelled.  I wanted to shut down for the day; I did it.  

I built my business around convenience and whims.  I realize now that I was lucky enough to do that.  I could have continued in that Whirlpool of Acceptability.  My complacency was a veil that kept me blind to my reality: that while I was happy to support my lifestyle, it was not enough to allow me to do more than survive.  Any pressure on my business would shatter that freedom that I valued so much.

I realized that ANY business where the focus is on simply maintaining a status quo, rather than focusing on growth and independence is a lifestyle business.  Most businesses operate at this level: regardless of whether they feel stressed or successful.  The ones with the thickest veil are the ones that feel successful, but they too, are just lucky and will start to crack under the weight of stressors.

I modified my vision of business at this point: the key is to not only support freedom today, but also tomorrow, and that’s when I started thinking about Abundance and Independence.  A vision I ultimately started to call “Thrival.”  A Thrival business is one that not only thrives in great weather, but also bad.

I may have been living the dream: I had achieved freedom, but I was not independent of my business.  I was the hero of many other lifestyle focused business folks like me.  I was successful by a very specific definition, but that definition did not work for me once change hit the air, and my business needed to grow.  I had to switch gears to achieve abundance.  I had to push the business into a new frontier and expand as well as change the way I did things.  I bent myself to the task.  Newly married and with a child, I had longer-term needs in front of me. 

I had to transform from the grasshopper into the ant.

I had started my business almost a decade earlier fixing computers for residential clients.  I grew it to managing networks for businesses and governments and then by building custom software.  I became a trusted resource, stepping outside my role as their computer guy into the role of business strategy, marketing, and advertising; when I was in their offices, I was considered an executive of their business. 

I had become a greater resource to them than hardware or software.  I had gone from tactical to strategic.  I would work with their clients and learn the nuances of what made the business work, or not.  I was listening, learning, and providing external insight and knowledge.  I loved it.  I was working with these business owners for years on end and I became a trusted.  I was identifying a new kind of success.

I hired a couple of employees and a salesperson.  I started advertising.  I invested in new technology and assets to become more competitive and efficient.  I experimented with new revenue models.  I created new products and offerings to bring to market and even looked at mergers and acquisitions to grow my business.  I partnered with other similar vendors to create new revenue sources, and yet, I was still only surviving. 

This time, though, I knew it: I had shed the Veil of Illusion at this point.  I had set higher and larger goals for myself.  I had redefined what success could look like for me, what it meant to be, what I wanted to achieve, and I was putting everything I had into it.  As I expanded my business, I had made a strategic error and created an unnecessary risk.  I had not realized it, but as clear as I thought I had become about my business situation, I was still not aware of my own tunnel vision.  And, I failed. 

As a volunteer EMT and Ski Patrol I was trained to be aware of tunnel vision: of being so focused on the patient that I lost the larger vision of what was happening around me.  And, yet, I fell victim to that very situation with my business–no one told me I needed to be aware of it here, too.  I made a simple mistake; I put too many eggs in one basket. 

One day, I lost my anchor client which then crippled my business.  I had a decision to make as to how I wanted to rebuild my business.  I knew that I could, but I decided that I was being presented with an opportunity that I did not have before the setback: try it out as an employee.  I had been trapped by my own “success” in the existing business and I was now being offered the opportunity to change without fear of regret.  This can be difficult for any business owner—call it the “Lesson of the Golden Handcuffs”—I was going to really learn this lesson, though, as an employee.

I had built something which was strong, but not strong enough.  With my more than decade-long run with over 150 residential and business clients I could have fought my way out, but maybe it was time to try something with less risk, to try something where I could study an enterprise from the inside out, to own only a specific portion of an enterprise as opposed to all of it.    

I embarked on a new journey as an employee.   I can tell you that my life as an employee was not wonderful.  After working for 10 years at a start-up, a $100M non-profit, and a large global consulting firm, I started this business after being summarily fired for not being good enough.   I had failed again.  I had erred and, again, my face was marred by the proverbial dust, sweat and blood of the arena.  But I had learned many things; and they only made me stronger.

I had nothing prepared for that eventuality.  I was happily (maybe not so happily) employed when the rug was pulled from under my feet.  Yes, I had a small parachute, but my real opportunity came from my experience and knowledge from having run my own business for all those years.  The day I opened my business I had already secured two clients.  I grew both into multi-year projects.

I had over 20 years of experience running my own business, a decade working for other businesses large and small and my goals for this business are much different than any of my previous businesses. I am no longer focused on trying to build a lifestyle business, but rather a business that will be sustainable in the long-term producing what I now think of as Independence and Abundance, what I like to call Thrival.  

I have seen how the smallest, the most stable, the frailest and the largest companies do it from the inside and have figured out how to do it better.  I have taken my failures and turned them into new lessons.  I have taken my successes (and there have been many over those decades of business) and have them also to teach.  I have many examples, from my own experiences and the experiences of my clients, my business partners, and even my employers.

I am now even more focused on my passion to help business owners.  I am still focused on making the world a better place.  I am still focused on learning as much as I can to teach other business owners how to be better, to avoid the mistakes that I made and the mistakes I see others make.  I am working to achieve not only my own Thrival, but that of each and every one of my customers.  I like to think of every business with which I work as an extension of my own; their success is MY success. 

When I work with a business owner, it is no longer just their business, it has become my own.  I sit down and read an article at 3 o’ clock in the morning, and I am thinking about how it can help them.  How they can use the information it provides, the ideas that it has generated in my brain for their own business.  When I am sitting in the café, the bar, the diner, and I overhear a conversation, I turn around and introduce myself and make a connection, not for my own business, but for that of my customer. 

As a client of mine, you get my brain, my knowledge, and my heart and soul merged with your business’.  You gain a partner, an advocate, someone who cares about your success as much as you do.  Someone who will ensure that all the opportunities to open doors and uncover opportunities are there.

If I am your perfect partner, you will understand me at this point.  You will understand why I started The-Business-Toolbox.  You may not yet fully understand what we do and how we do it, nor the value we can provide you, there are other pages on this site that will give that to you.  No, you will not have found that here, but now you will understand my own journey of how I got here, and what your business means to me.  I have failed; I have succeeded; sometimes at the exact same time.  Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses.  I can help you because I have been where you are. 

I am not a Michael Bloomberg starting out with millions when building my business.  I have started this business on a shoestring, bootstrapping it one project, one client, one deal at time.  I am a student of guerilla business, where we get it done against all odds using grit and smarts in a worthy cause daring greatly.  To be laser focused to achieve one’s goals and driving the business to gain your Independence and Abundance.  I may never make it to $100M myself, but if I do it will only because I helped you do it.

And I won’t stop trying!