TAKING IT ONE DAY AT A TIME

The mid-1980s were not a happy time for Brian O'Brien. Recently divorced, and with $300 to his name, "I was at the bottom of my life and had nothing to lose." To complicate matters further, O'Brien decided to quit his job as a senior training supervisor at a Virginia nuclear power plant. "I didn't view myself as a particularly good employee," he recalls. There was nothing left to do but go into business for himself. Fortunately, there was great demand at the time for training experts in the nuclear industry. O'Brien put out resumes on a Friday, and by the following Wednesday, he had his first contract. The rest, as they say, is history -- entrepreneurial history.

O'Brien quickly realized that while there were many business opportunities out there for him, he "didn't have a clue what it meant to run a business." So he surrounded himself with accountants, lawyers, and administrators, and began the laborious task of figuring out what to sell, and to whom.

In just four years, Myriad Performance Systems has grown into a $2-million company with nine full-time employees. The company's core business now is instructional systems design, which entails teaching organizations how to train their own employees in an effective, systematic fashion. Some of Myriad's biggest clients include governments in the Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Russia (for nuclear power plant training) and the IRS in Philadelphia.

O'Brien attributes his success so far to a highly targeted sales strategy (though he says he doesn't view himself as a sales person). Basically, he and his colleagues select which companies or agencies they wish to recruit as clients, then go after them aggressively -- and they won't take "no" for an answer. Potential clients are targeted on the basis of their size (they must be large) and volatility (whether they've gone through significant growth or downsizing). "We are absolutely relentless about analyzing the needs of a client," says O'Brien. He adds, "there is no such thing as an obstacle. It's more a matter of trying to make it clear to my potential client how we can help them."

O'Brien is a maverick when it comes to business planning. He has neither a five-year plan, nor even a six-month plan. His field, he says, "is so dynamic and changes so outrageously fast that I think it's presumptuous [to plan]." Instead of planning, he just keeps innovating. A new product, called Distributed Learning & Communication, is a computer-based training module that companies can distribute to employees through internal e-mail. Pilot versions have proven enormously successful.

To the extent that O'Brien does have a goal, it's to ramp up his newest training product, flesh out a book on his unique selling techniques, and then sell the company. And after that? Become a do-gooder through a company he calls ReHabitat, which retrofits homes occupied by the elderly, so they may stay at home longer before moving to an assisted living arrangement.

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