Jeanne Coughlin

Company Name: The Coughlin Group, Inc.

Website: www.cgroupinc.com

Elevator speech: Since 1993, Jeanne Coughlin has been president of The Coughlin Group, Inc. Her company provides Employee Assessments, Sales & Strategy Consulting and Board of Advisors Facilitation. Ms. Coughlin has worked with hundreds of individuals from companies in a variety of industries including manufacturing, distribution, professional service, health care and technology.

Date Founded: October 1993

COSE member since: The first day I went into business in 1993. 12 ½ years ago!

Published Works: Author of the book, The Rise of Women Entrepreneurs: People, Processes and Global Trends (Greenwood Publishing, October 2002), which received the “Featured Book Recommendation” from the Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge Group. She has also authored several articles for the Plain Dealer, is a contributing author to the “Building Your Business Handbook” and was interviewed in the book, "Secrets of Successful Negotiating for Women".

What do you like most about being a business owner? The opportunity to work with a variety of companies in many different industries, and a diverse mix of individuals. Over the years I have worked with all kinds of companies from a small microbrewery to a large health care institution. There is never a dull moment!

Least? Every day you’re on the line for making it happen—you can’t just coast if you’re going through a difficult time (death or illness in your personal life). Sometimes I think how nice it must be to have a “job!”

What do you like most about having a home office? The flexibility in terms of when and how I work. I define my business more as virtual than home-based since I’m not in my office all that much!

Least? It is harder to “get away from it” when it’s in your home—the positive can quickly become the negative! It’s important to create boundaries for yourself.

Advice to anyone considering starting a home-based business: Plan on investing enough in the beginning to create a comfortable, professional office within your home and don’t under estimate your cost of doing business. A common misperception is that a home office has no overhead—the only overhead missing is rent. A home office has every other expense that an “out of home office” has including payroll taxes, utilities, web hosting and development, marketing, transportation, professional services including accounting and legal, upgrading and maintaining office equipment—you get the picture!

What do you like most about being a COSE member? The opportunity to be a part of something “bigger,” which gives me access to products, services and resources that I wouldn’t otherwise have access to. And of course the relationships with other crazy small business people!

Have you been active with COSE? In what capacity? I have been an active COSE volunteer since joining in 1993 and most recently completed my two-year term as Chairman of COSE. The relationships I have been fortunate to develop over the years as a COSE member have been the key to my business success.

What two or three personal characteristics are most critical to your success?

1) Ability to learn from my mistakes

2) Ability to communicate with others

3) Ability to take large amounts of information and focus in on the important issues

Advice that you try to live by: Staying focused on what is really important in life—“who I am” is more important to me than “what I have or do.”

What is one thing that is on your “to-do” list that you would really like to check off? I would really like to become fluent in a foreign language—I had four years of German, but about all I remember how to say is “guten tag”, “auf weidersehen” and “zwei bier bitte!” (which means "good day," "good-bye" and "two beers please!")

We want to hear about you!

Would you like to submit a Home-Based Business Network member profile, to be considered for placement on cosehome.org? Please click here and answer the member profile questions.

After you have completed the form and clicked “submit,” you will also need to send an e-mail with a personal photo (professional quality head shot preferred and in photo format – a “gif” or “jpeg”) and your contact information (name, e-mail and phone) for your profile to be considered for inclusion in the COSE Home-Based Business e-newsletter and cosehome.org

Send this information to: cbeard@gcpartnership.com and sprocter@gcpartnership.com. Make sure that you include your name and “COSE Member Profile” in the subject line of the e-mail. There is no guarantee that your profile will be published, but if it is chosen, you will be contacted ahead of time. Thank you so much for your time!

If you should have any questions on this process, do not hesitate to contact:

Colleen Beard
cbeard@gcpartnership.com
216-592-2281