Welcome to The Business Couch with Dr. Yishai. Where we delve into the minds and mistakes of entrepreneurs and business leaders so you can learn from them 3 days a week!

This episode follows entrepreneur Michael Coles, his story and his Struggle and the Road to Success.

What You’ll Learn

With host Dr. Yishai Barkhordari, awe-inspiring psychologist and adaptability coach to entrepreneurs, business executives, and leaders. It is my mission to unlock the minds, thought processes, strategies, and hard-earned lessons from industry leaders, founders, and entrepreneurs. Through a conversation, we extract and share core ideas, principles, skills, and strategies so that you can learn and apply them in your life and business.

In casual yet thoughtful conversations, The Business Couch with Dr. Yishai contains insightful interviews with industry and thought leaders, business founders, and CEOs. Plus, you’ll hear scientific research, my personal reflections, and thought-provoking questions. You’ll hear origin stories that inspire and educate.

Uncover and Unlock

You’ll uncover success secrets to overcoming obstacles, setbacks, and mistakes. Unlock lessons learned by giants who came before you as well as relatable, humble journeys of evolution and adaptation… with all the disruption, stumbling, and struggling that meets us on the road to greatness.

We deep dive into relevant topics from habits, mindset, productivity, and high performance to navigating online business, marketing, and scaling to team management, work-life, culture, and leadership.

You’ll get access to new ideas, perspectives, strategies, and tactics to grow your business and yourself as leader-in-chief at the helm. Whether you are beginning your journey, have some experience under your belt, or a seasoned entrepreneur or business leader there is so much you can gain by subscribing and learning from the experience and wisdom of others to grow yourself and your company at any stage.

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How cookies, coffee, and a devastating crash led to success in the cookie industry

Michael Coles, former CEO Caribou Coffee Company, Co-Founder Great American Cookie Company speaks with host David Cogan.

Today, Michael is a keynote speaker and author of Time to Get Tough: How Cookies, Coffee, and a Crash Led To Success in Business and Life.

Cogan is host of the Eliances Heroes show broadcast on am and fm network channels, internet radio, and online syndication.

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Michael J. Coles is a co-founder of the Great American Cookie Company and former CEO of Caribou Coffee. He joined The Building Business Podcast with host Matt Thiry to discuss business and focus.

Each episode focuses on a separate business leader.  The conversation covers what sets them apart, what makes them tick, and what they would share with their former selves to help tackle the inevitable challenges all businesses face.

During this interview, Michael shares many entrepreneurial tips:

1. You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room
2. Surround yourself with good people — you’ll be surprised at how good they will make you look.

Learn more about Michael:

Website: michaelcoles.com / Kennesaw State University

LinkedIn: Michael Coles

Book: Amazon / Barnes & Noble

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Michael J. Coles, the co-founder of the Great American Cookie Company and the former CEO of Caribou Coffee, did not follow a conventional path into business. He does not have an Ivy League pedigree or an MBA from a top-ten business school. He grew up poor, starting work at the age of thirteen. He had many false starts and painful defeats, but Coles has a habit of defying expectations. His life and career have been about transformation. Transforming obstacles into opportunities, tragedies into triumphs, and poverty into philanthropy.

On this Episode:

•  Learn how the importance of listening turned into Michael’s power in communication and sales
• Hear how Michael was able to drive buy-in for a new strategy or vision
• Learn about the importance of teamwork
• Hear Michael talk about not having to be the smartest guy in the room

Key Takeaways:

• Fully engage with every individual you speak to
• Execution triangle- skill set, tool set, and mindset to execute well
• Your team needs to understand why you are doing what you are doing so they can rally behind you.
• Transformation

Tweetable Quotes:

• “The good is what holds you back.”
• “People always told me what my limits where, and it always gave me incentive to prove them wrong.”
• “You can disagree, but you don’t have to be disagreeable”

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On This Episode of Build Your Network:

• Michael explains why he began a career at 13 years old.
• Learn how to overcome the limits others place on you.
• Hear about the horrific motorcycle accident that helped him focus in on his business.
• Discover the secret that led Michael to a 9 figure exit.
• Find out how to prioritize as a CEO.

Key Takeaways:

1. Take opportunities to mentor others.
2. It doesn’t matter how many miles you ride, if you don’t finish the last five miles you won’t finish the next few miles.
3. All of us learn more from things that don’t go right.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “Know what you don’t know – that’s what makes great leaders.” – Michael Coles

Michael Coles

• http://michaelcoles.com/

Resources Mentioned:

• Visit Travis’ website at travischappell.com
• Join the Build Your Network Facebook group travischappell.com/group

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“I don’t want to give you all the details because I really want you to buy the book.” Thus began author Michael Coles’ talk at the Book Festival of the MJCCA on Nov. 15. The Atlanta entrepreneur was promoting his memoir, “Time to Get Tough: How Cookies, Coffee, and a Crash Led to Success in Business and Life.”

The book, co-written with Kennesaw State University history professor Catherine Lewis, tells the story of Coles at the helm of Great American Cookies and Caribou Coffee; his time as a record-breaking cyclist and as a candidate for U.S. Congress; and the trials and tribulations he encountered along the way.

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Today you meet Michael Coles, Entrepreneur, Author, former CEO of Caribou Coffee, and cofounder of the Great American Cookie Company. He teaches us where to start on How to Get A Raise:  

1. Get to a place you’re respected and appreciated
2. There will be headwinds in your fight (and in life) but never quit the race
3. Take risks, especially when you’re young
4. Get paid what you’re worth or leave
5. The difference between success and failure is dealing with the unexpected

Michael said …

If you’re not feeling appreciated and it’s not about money necessarily, you probably need to go someplace where you will be appreciated. That’s the bottom line.

I became a risk-taker pretty early on. And in Irving’s words, I wanted to make sure that I was being paid what I was worth. That’s what people have to believe. If you’re in a position where you’re not feeling appreciated, and not getting the kind of compensation that you think you’re deserving, go to your boss. If you go to someone, state your case and they don’t agree, then I think it’s time to move on to something else. And again, it goes back to that whole risk thing. Yeah. It’s a risk to take another position. But on the other hand, you can’t stay where you’re unhappy, you just can’t do it.

Maybe a better question …

I’ve had a number of situations as a leader where someone did come to me and felt like they needed more compensation. And we worked through it.   

But I’ve always thought – a question they might have asked — a better question — might be: 

“Michael, can we sit down and figure out what it is that I’m doing or not doing which has caused you to not want to give you a raise yet?”

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About this episode of The Startup Story

This week’s featured founder is Michael Coles, founder of The Great American Cookie Company. Michael will share his journey through family hardship and financial ruin, his bankruptcy, and a motorcycle crash that almost destroyed his life. He then takes us through how he started a cookie business, one which would go on to be one of the most successful cookie brands in the country.

Due to the Coronavirus, Michael and I recorded this episode remotely, but I felt like I was sitting right there with him as he walked me through all the various challenges he had to overcome to get to where he is today. We are all fortunate to learn from someone that has (for decades) continued to step up to adversity and push against it. This is Michael Coles’ startup story.

In this episode, you’ll hear

• How at the age of 10, his family lost their home and watched his dad recover from bankruptcy.
• His first venture was raking leaves. He shared how this experience taught him about monopolies and franchising.
• He shared fondly about his first mentor, Irving Settler, who owned a department store where Michael worked.
• Why and how, in his Senior year, he moved to Massachusetts to live with his brother and focus on school.
• After high school, Michael got a job as a sales representative for a clothing company instead of going the traditional route of college.
• Grappling with the desire to start his own business, he decided to start a retail company that eventually went bankrupt. He went back to work as a sales rep for a clothing manufacturer. And ultimately, he would go on to launch a clothing company of his own.
• A trip to the mall to buy snacks for clients introduced Michael to the concept of ‘single-food’ stores. He immediately bought ingredients to make cookies, and a scale, so he could try to figure out the cost ratio.
• How a call to a friend to buy out his share of the clothing company would lead to the start of the Great American Cookie Company.
• Due to lack of oven mitts, their opening day ended with a fire and no cookies to hand out to customers.
• Six weeks after starting the cookie company, a motorcycle accident nearly took Michael’s life. Michael shared his journey openly and how his rehabilitation led him to set three world records for coast-to-coast bike rides.
• Michael credits his experience with manufacturing and sales to his success. He leaves listeners and entrepreneurs with some sound advice.

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After more than 19 years in the clothing business, Michael J. Coles founded the Great American Cookie Company in Atlanta in 1977 with his partner, Arthur Karp. They took an $8,000 investment and grew it into the largest cookie store franchise in the United States. In 2003, he took the helm at Caribou Coffee Company and more than doubled the size of the company, opened a commercial sales division and an international market, and took it public on NASDAQ under the symbol CBOU in 2005. Today, he serves as chairman of Brand Holding Company and Brand Bank.

The post Michael J Coles – Navigating the Shutdown appeared first on Michael Coles.

https://bizcommunicationguy.com takes you to my Web site, where you will learn about my services for corporations and leaders. In this very timely video, acclaimed business leader Michael Coles draws from his own personal and professional experience to give us a worldwide winning strategy as we encounter coronavirus.

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