The Corporateneur Plan: Your Roadmap From Mid-Career Professional to Entrepreneur

by Greg Rohl, Ken Rohl, Pamela N. Danziger

Overview

The Corporateneur Plan shares stories and teachings from the business journey of Ken Rohl over a lifetime building an extraordinarily successful presence in the “white space” he identified within the luxury home market. Grounded in research and enlivened with personal anecdotes, The Corporateneur Plan is a guidebook for every aspiring entrepreneur to read before cutting the cord from their corporate careers and setting out on their own journey.

These are the “rules of the road” that Ken’s son Greg adopted, trademarking his consulting company “The Rohl Model.” Its value proposition is rooted in 40 years of proven processes developed over Ken’s lifetime of learning, teaching, leading, and building relationships—with employees, customers, suppliers, and the myriad of associations that together contributed to his successes. This book is a roadmap for others who, like Ken, Pam, and Greg, stepped out of a corporate career to start a business of their own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642258356
Publisher:	Advantage Media Group, Inc.
Publication date:	06/06/2023
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.87(d)

About the Author

Greg Rohl is a writer, speaker and consultant sharing the lessons learned from over 30 years successfully marketing luxury solutions in a commodity market. He is the founder of The Rohl Model, a learning and guidance service he shares with his brother Lou.

Ken Rohl is a corporateneur whose 60-year business career is founded in Midwest roots, a liberal arts education, and strong family ties, and has included corporate management, building a family business, co-founding an omnichannel healthcare start-up, and nonprofit leadership positions with a local university and performing arts theater.

Speaker, author, and market researcher Pamela N. Danziger is internationally recognized for her expertise on the world’s most influential consumers: the American Affluent. She founded research firm Unity Marketing in 1992 and is a principal in The American Marketing Group consultancy.

She received the Global Luxury Award for top luxury industry achievers presented at the Global Luxury Forum in 2007 and was named to Luxury Daily’s Luxury Women to Watch in 2013. She is a contributing columnist to The Robin Report and a senior contributor on Forbes.com.

Prolific writer and blogger, she’s authored eleven books, including Meet the HENRYs: The Millennials that Matter Most to Luxury Brands and Shops That P.O.P.! 7 Steps To Extraordianry Retail Success.

Pam holds a B.A. in English Literature from Pennsylvania State University and an M.L.S. from the University of Maryland.

Table of Contents

Ken’s Acknowledgments
Pam’s Acknowledgments
Greg’s Acknowledgments
Starting Plan
Introduction

Part One
Ken’s Story
Chapter 1
Working Capital
Chapter 2
Getting In Gear
Chapter 3
Day One And Beyond

Part Two
Getting Down To Business
Chapter 4
Path Forward
Chapter 5
Big Picture First
Chapter 6
Make A Plan
Chapter 7
Managing Growth
Chapter 8
Mentor Leadership
Chapter 9
Marketing And Sales Intersect

Part Three
The Art And Science Of The Corporateneur
Chapter 10
Mapping Corporateneur Success
Chapter 11
The Organized Corporateneur
Chapter 12
The Intuitive Corporateneur
Chapter 13
The Process-Driven Corporateneur
Chapter 14
The Flexible Corporateneur
Chapter 15
The Strategic Corporateneur
Chapter 16
The Innovative Corporateneur
Chapter 17
The Disciplined Corporateneur
Chapter 18
The Humane Leader
Chapter 19
The Corporateneur Leader
Conclusion
Leaning Into Your Corporateneur Strengths

Bibliography
About The Authors

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A brilliant masterpiece—a seminal piece of work. Rohl and Danziger provide a clear, step-by-step path to entrepreneurial success. It’s specially designed for midcareer professionals who, for reasons laid out in the book, desire to create and run their own business. Appropriately named “Corporateneurs,” they start their new journey with knowledge already learned, but need to fill the gaps to launch a new business. And, for the increasing number of young people, eager to create their own dream career, this book is a must-read as well. If a “how to” book could be a page-turner, this is it.
—ROBIN LEWIS
CEO of The Robin Report, professor at the Graduate School of Professional Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and co-author of The New Rules of Retail

Don’t miss The Corporateneur Plan. It’s your opportunity to at once gain clarity and hold the road map to your next professional journey into entrepreneurship. Combining powerful stories, important research, and handy anecdotes, this book will help you achieve new clarity in starting a business. But there’s more: authors Rohl and Danziger also deliver the tools and rules you’ll need if/when you leave the corporate moth - ership and work without a net as a business owner. At first, you’ll see The Corporateneur Plan as a powerful chronicle of PRAISE FOR THE CORPORATENEUR PLAN the current disruptive forces impacting both the workplace and marketplace. And then it will become a personal GPS to the address of your new professional quest.
—JIM BLASINGAME
“The Small Business Advocate” and award-winning Main Street thought- leader, columnist, futurist, and author of The 3rd Ingredient and The Age of the Customer

The Corporateneur Plan is a personally curated list of research, books, and tools for entrepreneurs. I became an entrepreneur after twenty years with Starbucks and five years as CEO of Lululemon, and I found a lot of kinship with the values, discipline, structure, and tools laid out in The Cor - porateneur Plan. The benefit of being a “Corporateneur” is that we set out to fulfill a mission with the skills to build a strong business model and organization. The danger is not managing risks and only focusing on growth or the purpose of the product, not how it relates to business models and customers. Ken’s lessons provide a clear warning to those ex-corporate leaders who may over-hire, sign up expensive consultants and contracts, and overload their SG&A because that is how they are used to working. It takes a lot of grit and humility to go back to doing whatever is needed, including having no assistants, traveling economy, and doing spreadsheets and books one minute and then presentations to raise capital the next. You have to earn your staff and perks as you grow revenue. This book will set you on the right path.
—CHRISTINE DAY
Founding partner of the House of LR&C with Russell and Ciara Wilson

Editorial Reviews

A brilliant masterpiece—a seminal piece of work. Rohl and Danziger provide a clear, step-by-step path to entrepreneurial success. It’s specially designed for midcareer professionals who, for reasons laid out in the book, desire to create and run their own business. Appropriately named “Corporateneurs,” they start their new journey with knowledge already learned, but need to fill the gaps to launch a new business. And, for the increasing number of young people, eager to create their own dream career, this book is a must-read as well. If a “how to” book could be a page-turner, this is it.
—ROBIN LEWIS
CEO of The Robin Report, professor at the Graduate School of Professional Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and co-author of The New Rules of Retail

Don’t miss The Corporateneur Plan. It’s your opportunity to at once gain clarity and hold the road map to your next professional journey into entrepreneurship. Combining powerful stories, important research, and handy anecdotes, this book will help you achieve new clarity in starting a business. But there’s more: authors Rohl and Danziger also deliver the tools and rules you’ll need if/when you leave the corporate moth - ership and work without a net as a business owner. At first, you’ll see The Corporateneur Plan as a powerful chronicle of PRAISE FOR THE CORPORATENEUR PLAN the current disruptive forces impacting both the workplace and marketplace. And then it will become a personal GPS to the address of your new professional quest.
—JIM BLASINGAME
“The Small Business Advocate” and award-winning Main Street thought- leader, columnist, futurist, and author of The 3rd Ingredient and The Age of the Customer

The Corporateneur Plan is a personally curated list of research, books, and tools for entrepreneurs. I became an entrepreneur after twenty years with Starbucks and five years as CEO of Lululemon, and I found a lot of kinship with the values, discipline, structure, and tools laid out in The Cor - porateneur Plan. The benefit of being a “Corporateneur” is that we set out to fulfill a mission with the skills to build a strong business model and organization. The danger is not managing risks and only focusing on growth or the purpose of the product, not how it relates to business models and customers. Ken’s lessons provide a clear warning to those ex-corporate leaders who may over-hire, sign up expensive consultants and contracts, and overload their SGA because that is how they are used to working. It takes a lot of grit and humility to go back to doing whatever is needed, including having no assistants, traveling economy, and doing spreadsheets and books one minute and then presentations to raise capital the next. You have to earn your staff and perks as you grow revenue. This book will set you on the right path.
—CHRISTINE DAY
Founding partner of the House of LRC with Russell and Ciara Wilson

From the Publisher