Meet Michael Delman | CEO, Beyond BookSmart, WorkSmart Coaching, and BrainTracks

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Delman and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Everything has risks, even playing it safe. If you’re overly cautious, you stagnate and cannot achieve your potential. I’ve had many scares and outright failures in my career, but I have no regrets about the endeavors I’ve undertaken. I started a school with zero management experience or training. The entire staff loved the vision, and it seemed that about half the staff found my style to be helpful, even inspiring at times. I inspired the other half, on the other hand, to pick up pitchforks and try to get me out as soon as I stepped down from the top position to have more time with my young family. (I was offered a position to stay but on terms that were unacceptable.) For a while, I wondered if the experience had been an unmitigated disaster, and I was a failure. It was the same feeling I’d had when realizing that I couldn’t hack working in a residential, therapeutic wilderness program for adjudicated adolescents. It’s easy to overgeneralize at those times to “I’ll never be a good leader” or “I’m lousy at working with kids.” However, if you frame the risk period as part of a dialectic in which you’ll almost certainly encounter lots of failures before you find a sweet spot, you can get comfortable in that stretch zone. The other key – and I’ve found this to be particularly true in building Beyond BookSmart’s 1:1 coaching and BrainTracks’ school training division over the past 18 years – is knowing that that sweet spot is always changing. You have to pay attention to it personally (“Now that my knees are so darn old, I should shift from running a lot in Ultimate Frisbee to being more strategic”), in relationships (“Although I want my kids to do what I think is best, it’s more important for them to take some risks and for me to be a consultant at their command, not a sage on the stage who micromanages them”), as well as at work (“Now that we’re not a startup, we know it’s worth it to risk losing business by screening out prospective customers who are looking for a quick fix. We know that we do well with customers who are educated on the change process and realize that improvement is going to take an investment of time and practice.”) This kind of growth and acceptance is part of what you gain when you take risks and see what the world serves up, not from thinking about it.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I started my company as a way to help a small number of people deal effectively with the problem that we often don’t know how to get ourselves to do the things we really want to do. We lack the skills and/or knowledge, so we get frustrated and, eventually, give up on a lot of the things we want to do. Nothing is more satisfying for me than helping people figure out how to achieve the things they care about. I’m not really sure why I’m like that, but I did know from personal experience that failure is almost inevitable without the right tools and insights.

The success of the company has surpassed my original goals thousands of times over. I never expected to hire hundreds of coaches nationwide and for Beyond BookSmart to be the largest executive function skills company in the world. I didn’t know that we’d be able to start BrainTracks, a division to train schools and, WorkSmart Coaching, our division to support adults either individually or through corporations. I didn’t know I could write a book, although these essays are starting to turn into another one!

I also did not know how hard it would be. I wish I’d known to begin overcapitalized; to hire a part-time CFO to develop strong financial guardrails; to purchase off-the-shelf software instead of trying to build our own platform; and to adopt agile decision-making processes that ensure prioritization, transparency, and accountability.

The learning process, of course, has made my team and me genuinely able to share the lessons we’ve learned firsthand, rather than simply preach what we’ve read in coursework. We’ve learned for ourselves and with the hundreds of thousands of hours we’ve collectively coached how to help people grow, even when they’re filled with self-doubt; how to find the right tool to address the obstacle at hand; and how to shift the locus of control from us to them so that they become increasingly capable of doing the work independently.

I want people to know that our company truly understands the frustration they feel. Even though I lead a company that does this work, nary a day goes by that I am not massively challenged and have to consciously employ the tools we have built, remember the insights, slow down the reactions, and choose the better habits. It gets easier … but then you choose bigger challenges which means the level of difficulty doesn’t really change. At this point, I have enough wins to enjoy the challenges I choose, but then along comes COVID, or shift in the marketplace, or any number of variables that aren’t within my control.

What makes Beyond BookSmart special is that our approach applies to whatever challenge comes up. I think that’s what I’m most proud about, the fact that we’ve figured out the right questions to ask, the right order to ask them, and the easiest path to address them. We’re still learning, and that’s why we’re likely to keep leading.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We’re snowbirds, so we only get LA for a month a year. The place to begin is BeaBea’s for breakfast. Every meal is startlingly good. We’ve gotten turned onto the excellent day hikes in the Laguna area using the Alltrails app, and we’re huge fans of Torrey Pines State Park. The San Diego Wildlife Park is a must-see, and, if you’re there at the right time of the year, the Pageant of the Master’s in Laguna, Of course, you’re also not far from Santa Barbara, another great city to visit. Really, though, talk to the locals. If they’re not on the 5, they’re friendly:)

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The late Jim Prochaska and his wife, Janice, believed in our vision early on when we decided to incorporate the change process into our executive function coaching program (think ADHD+ / life skills support). They were so enthusiastic, and their endorsement of applying their brilliant insights to our work as a “home run” was incredibly encouraging in those early days. Thank you to them and to the numerous brilliant experts – neuropsychologists, school leaders, therapists, and so forth – who have entrusted Beyond BookSmart and BrainTracks to provide meaningful support to their patients and students.

Website: https://www.beyondbooksmart.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldelman1/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BeyondBooksmart

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondbooksmart

Image Credits
Michael Delman