We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Phillip Woolfolk. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Phillip below.

Phillip, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. The more we talk about good leadership the more we think good leadership practices will spread and so we’d love for you to tell us a story about the best boss you’ve had and what they were like or what they did that was so great?

The individual I characterize as the best boss was one who I transitioned to and one who told me that I did not measure up to the rest of his team and he would not have hired me. From there I would receive a call every Friday a little before closing time with an assignment that was due Monday, which meant I had to work all weekend in order to complete the assignment. This went on for the better part of a year. Then one day we were in a managers’ meeting and the boss collected all of our reports. He looked at mine and said to his assistant, “make a copy of Phill’s report and share it with the rest of the team, this is how I want it.”
About a week later, I received my Friday call, but it was not to give me an assignment but to summon me to his office and when I walked in his assistant said to me, “Phill we are proud of you, we thought you were going to quit.” Truth is I thought about it, but I asked myself a question. What if I take the boss at his word that in his view I did not measure up and his objective was not to get me to quit, but to force me to become a better leader, a better communicator of ideas to c-suite executives. On the day I was summoned I was told, now that you have increased your skills, you should be compensated like the other managers, which resulted in a significant bump in compensation, which included base, override on my team, override on products I designed, and commission on the deals I did myself. By not taking it all personal, I experienced tremendous professional growth.

Phillip, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I spent about 25-years in the banking industry, while simultaneously building a real estate investment company. The real estate become the core foundation, affording me the opportunity have the freedom to choose my own path. I spent most of my banking career with an unsigned resignation letter in my briefcase. It served a couple of purposes. One was empowerment, knowing I had the freedom to leave at any time and secondly it minimized concerns of being laid off or terminated, as my lifestyle was not totally dependent on the job. This mindset would prove to be quite valuable on more than one occasion, throughout my career. For example, I once walked into my supervisor’s office and informed him my job had become obsolete and the people who reported to me could be transitioned into the mortgage banking division. His response was, so since you are firing yourself, what are you going to be doing? My response was, I am good at fixing things and your job is to figure out what you want me to fix next. When my supervisor spoke to senior management about it, he was informed not only did they agree, they further stated that some other roles had become obsolete, but the others were playing more golf, and he was instructed to find another role for the one who informed them that he was no longer needed. My supervisor did just that, resulting in me becoming the bank’s first, Vice President and Fair Lending Manager for their 7-state market area. The next time this mindset came into play, resulted in me deciding I wanted to spend more time with my family on the heels of being in Pentagon City on September 11, 2001, the day the terrorists attacked the country. And because, I built a successful business I was able to spend approximately 5-years at home golfing, camping, and traveling with my family. Fast forward to the present day, I am able to use these experiences and more to coach people on building wealth, facilitating funding for entrepreneurs to build profitable sustainable businesses.
My brands and expertise was built in the field doing what I talk about including being able to pivot. I have co-authored two of three planned anthologies, have my own book in the works, have launched a speaking business at 66-years old, and I work with people to facilitate their success.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

The autobiography of Lee Iacocca comes to mind and a commercial he did when he helped rebuild Chrysler. In a commercial, he said if you can find a better car, buy it. I take that mindset and attitude as I deal and work with people and companies. It is one of confidence without concern about whether or not my product or service is right for the client, it is recognizing that my clients and my audience will find me and want to business with me and it’s okay that there are those who will choose to go elsewhere.

The other is from a professional development tape from Tony Robins. He shares the story about FedEx when their main hub distribution center’s conveyors stopped working. This could cost them millions of dollars and none of the on-site technicians could figure out the problem. So the called an outside technician who came in, went straight to the column where the controls were, opened it up and turned one screw a quarter turn. The manager of the facility asked him, how much do we owe you and the technician said $10 thousand dollars. The manager said that is ridiculous , I’m going to need an itemized bill. The technician said, give me a piece of paper. On it he wrote, turning the screw $1.00, knowing which screw to turn, $9,999.00. This concept of knowing your worth along with the tens of thousands of dollars I have invested in my own development of skills and expertise, allows comfort in what I charge for services as an entrepreneur, as a landlord, as a coach.

Have you ever had to pivot?

One situation comes to mind and I will call it “preparation for the pivot”. In 1990, I had the concept of developing my own mini-bank in preparation for emergencies and investment opportunities. Fast forward to 2008, when I was in my final year of golfing, camping, traveling and hanging out with the family. We had a couple of properties in our real estate business that we had taken out of service for repair upgrades, then we had a couple of unexpected vacancies. Under normal circumstances, I would have refinanced a property or two to get the work done. Unfortunately during the 2008 economic downturn centering around real estate, funding was restricted as banked tightened access to capital. Fortunately, we were able to pivot from traditional funding to self funding by borrowing the funds from our own insurance policy, allowing us to complete the rehab work and put the properties back in service, restoring cash flow and increasing asset value.

Secondly during the pandemic, I was able to pivot offering access to capital expertise, through established relationships and scale my consulting practice, ultimately pivoting into a role as the Chief Operations Officer for the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey. This allowed me to engage in very impactful work across New Jersey for 3-years, prior to launching Phillip Speaks, LLC and pivoting into my next career as a semi-retired professional, serving as a Speaker, Author, Coach, and Alternative Lender.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.PhillipWoolfolk.com www.MainStreetAdvisoryLLC.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phillipw641/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MainStreetAdvisoryLLC
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/phillipwoolfolk
• Other: https://www.facebook.com/phillip.woolfolk.3/

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