Inspiration at The Water Trough: Ed Drozda's Journey

Curious about the origins of The Water Trough? Join me as I revisit my journey from healthcare to helping small businesses thrive. Tune in to the podcast to learn how storytelling can unlock your business potential! 🎙️ #BusinessGrowth #TheWaterTrough 

Transcript

Ed Drozda: 0:00

It's the end of 2025 and is often the case we're looking forward to making our New Year's resolutions and planning on what we'll do different next year than we did this previous year. What I have today is my very first podcast. I'm republishing it in its entirety to do a couple things. One, as a reminder of the process that I've gone through in getting to where I'm at today. And number two, as a means of pointing out that while we look forward to our New Year's resolutions and such, in order to do so we have to reflect as well upon what brought us here in the first place. And so with that in mind I'm reflecting on my past and once again sharing the story of how Ed Drozda became The Small Business Doctor and what gave rise to this thing you're listening to today, The Water Trough. I hope my story will inspire you to think about the past as you craft your resolutions and ideas for the year to come. Happy New Year from The Water Trough. This is Ed Drozda The Small Business Doctor, and I hope you enjoy the story. Welcome to the Water Trough where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Draws to the Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've all. Always wanted. Hi, I'm Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor, and I'm your host here at The Water Trough. I'm new to this podcasting thing. And I gotta tell you, I'm not so sure how it's gonna go. I hope you'll bear with me and stay tuned. One of the things that I think is really important, something that matters to me a lot is storytelling. I truly believe that storytelling gives us an opportunity to appreciate others around us. Typically because we can see ourselves in them. So I'm gonna start by telling you a little bit of background information about how I came to be The Small Business Doctor and where in heaven's name did this water trough thing come from? From a very young age it was pretty clear to me that I was going to work in the medical field in some capacity or another. This was in large measure due to the fact that I spent a lot of time as a child undergoing various health care procedures. I suppose you might say I developed a morbid curiosity, which led to my interest in pursuing the medical professions. Which I did. I ultimately went into my undergraduate studies at Marquette University studying Medical Technology, which in this day and age is called Clinical Laboratory Science and we're not a bunch of vampires that suck blood. The science of medical technology is vastly more complex and critical in the execution of healthcare, both then and today as well. In fact, without it things wouldn't be quite the same as they are. I had the good fortune of having tremendous mentors and professors along the way, and thus when I came out of school, I was able to get involved in some incredible clinical consulting roles. In fact, those roles were highly unusual for people in my profession. The experience that I got allowed me to be directly involved in patient care and treatment. It was an amazing experience, so much so that at one point I had contemplated going back to medical school. But I concluded that probably wasn't the best idea for me, because I could see that if I were a physician or surgeon, it would be likely that I'd spend my entire life consumed by my profession. So I opted not to go that path. I continued down the clinical course for some time and the administrative course as well, ultimately moving along with the expectation that I would achieve a role as a senior executive in healthcare. I did so by virtue of getting my MBA in Healthcare Administration and had moved on to various administrative roles until the year 1996, when I, well, surprisingly or not so surprisingly, I was laid off from my position. It was this layoff that facilitated a major change in my life. My final day of outplacement, my former employer called me and said would you like to lead a national project for us, as a contractor. I was quite well versed in the topic of project management, but not so much versed in the world of business. I called up our accountant and I said, so Bernie what do I do now, and he said you're gonna start a business to which I responded okay. And we kept it quite simple. I had a DBA doing business as, very simple approach to forming a business, and I was very fortunate. I worked on this engagement for a period of 10 months. I had tremendous opportunity. I was working 40 to 60 hours a week, making more money than it ever made before. That's the nature of being a contractor. And so when the project ended, I had a fat wallet. Thankfully my wife had the benefits, so that wasn't a concern. I had a lot of experience under my belt. I'd been very busy, but a couple things came to mind. Number one, here I am self-employed and I don't have a full pipeline. Oh, for that matter, I don't even know what a pipeline is. And secondly, I don't like to sell. Imagine my horror when I realized I don't like to sell, but if I'm going to be working for myself, obviously I've gotta sell something. And at this point in the game, I was pretty much a project manager. And so I did the next best thing I could think of. I identified another firm that was engaged in healthcare project management and contracted to them. They'd go out, find the business. I would come in and execute the projects for them. And it worked out quite well for a period of about three years. Along the way I met a wonderful business coach, my dear friend Wil Calmus who passed away several years ago and Wil said to me one day, Ed you'd make a great coach. I knew that Wil was a coach, but I didn't really understand what a coach is, what a coach does, even though I worked with him, each of us in our own capacity, it wasn't very clear to me. We had a number of conversations about the coaching profession, and I decided best for me to go back to school, which I did. I had 180 virtual classroom hours achieved my certification as a coach through Coach University at which point of course I had to decide, what do I want my coaching practice to look like? Given the fact that I had become self-employed in a default fashion, as I like to say, I thought that it'd be best for me to work with small business and that I would consider three different groups of small business people. First of all those who are considering starting a small business, the second group are those that are new in small business, and finally those that are in a mature small business but they have unresolved challenges. Each of these three groups have a unique set of challenges. And quite frankly, I faced each of them myself. So what better opportunity for me to pursue than something I had done already. For example, those who were contemplating starting a small business. There's a lot of thought that has to go into what you're gonna do, how you're gonna do this. What kind of resources do you have available? What's my product mix? Do I have something viable and so on and so forth? The second group people in new business. These people typically are overwhelmed feeling that they can do everything themselves or should be able to, and are oftentimes underwater. They need an anchor to help them stabilize themselves so they can get through these tough times. And then finally, the people who are in mature businesses with unresolved challenges. We've all been there. The things you can't figure out, and usually the cause for that is because you don't understand the underlying cause, underlying illness, if you will. Thus, the people that I work with, each of them has their own set of circumstances to deal with. And I bring unique tools to the table to help with each of them. A lot of people get coaching and consulting confused. So let's just put that rumor to rest right now. When we talk about a consultant, we're talking about somebody that brings a particular technical expertise to the table. Let's say for example, someone who is gifted in financial aspects of business, and typically a business will hire somebody like this. They'll bring them on board with an expectation of a certain goal to be reached. There will be an expected deliverable, a timeframe, and a budget applied to it. Coaching is different than consulting. When we hire a coach, what we're trying to do is to work through perhaps a stall that we're in, perhaps a place where we are a bit confused as to how to go forward. It's not so much that we need technical support. We need more personal, perhaps emotional or collaborative support. That is what the coach is all about. In my practice I believe that the clients really have everything that they need at their fingertips, or I should say it resides within them somewhere, but they may not have access to it directly. So for example, the person who's new in small business who is consumed because they feel it's their responsibility to do everything themselves is doing the best that they can do. They figure I started this business. I have to know what I'm doing. If I don't do it myself, then people are gonna laugh at me. Think I'm incapable and so on and so forth. But people at that need someone to remind them of the fact that we have our limitations, that we have our strengths and our weaknesses and that there's others around us that can support us in our efforts to grow our business. So coaching is really more, a matter of inspiring of motivating and bringing people to their greatest potential. The potential that for all intent and purpose does exist, but they may not be able to evidence at that time. So now that you have an idea about The Small Business Doctor, who I am and what it is that I do, let's talk about The Water Trough. Where did I come up with the name, The Water Trough? Well, for those of us of a certain age there was a saying a adage that went around and it was basically this: you can lead a horse to water but you can't make'em drink. I thought that was pretty interesting so I adapted that adage and I say, we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. Needless to say, it's not my goal to tell you what to do or how to do it. It's my goal to get you to be thinking about what you can do, what your possibility is, where you can go, what you can accomplish. That's what The Water Trough is all about. When you come to The Water Trough, we're gonna put out thought provoking concepts. We're going to give you an opportunity to hear from other people as well in the business world, get ideas that you can take and incorporate into your daily business activities. So there you have it. Now you know a bit more about The Small Business Doctor and The Water Trough, and I'd like to invite you to come back and join me again. If you have an interest in participating in this podcast, if you'd like to contribute, I ask you to please reach out to me at ed@thesmallbizdoctor.com, that's Ed at the small BIZ doctor.com. Until next time, this is Ed Drozda, The Small Business Doctor and from The Water Trough. I wanna wish you a healthy business.