Ron Knauf

This is a story about my mentor, Ron Knauf, one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known.

During the early years I had some opportunities come my way that really changed the game for me and one of those was a chain of about 30 salons on Long Island. During one of our holiday dinners, my cousin Robin and I found out that we had a common interest in marketing. At that time, she was in the advertising business on Long Island and she had people she wanted me to meet. She had a significant amount of experience in the industry, given that she was well into her career at that point, and I knew she was truly trying to help me.

One of those people was a guy named Joe Secreti. Joe owned a chain of hair salons and a school called the Cactus Academy where aspiring stylists go to begin their careers. Up until that point in my career, my only experience in this space was my work with a few different salons and my own personal fascination with getting haircuts every week. At that time, I was actually still cutting my own hair (and some others), which was something I taught myself in high school. I never wanted to be a barber, but there has always been a fascination to work within the space. So this particular opportunity spoke to that interest of mine.

Our first meeting was at the corporate office. The goal was to meet and learn more about each other and how we may be able to work together. This was Robin’s meeting. Her relationship with Joe went back to the very beginning and I would soon learn how much she had helped him during a crucial time. This is where I learned how easily meetings like this could happen when you leverage relationships built on that kind of foundation.

Joe walked in, along with the CEO of Cactus Salon, Ron Knauf. I remember feeling that this was a big deal. It just felt different, but in a really good way. Robin set the tone for the meeting and we did what we set out to do. The plan was to think through some of the marketing challenges and come up with a strategy.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this plan and was really excited for the opportunity. After some time and some back and further with Robin, it was time to present to Joe and Ron. The next meeting was in Joe’s office. It was a conversational presentation and it seemed to have gone pretty well because he had agreed to pay me what I had asked for. The only thing was, he wanted me to come there and do what I said I would do.

Here was someone literally agreeing to pay me more money that I had made up to that point in exchange for going to the office and executing the plan. While the money felt good, having a job didn’t. That’s what that offer felt like. My gut told me to say no, so that’s what I did. I turned it down.

This is where my relationship with Ron Knauf really took shape. After that meeting, Ron invited me into his office and shared more about what he did and why he was there. Whenever I tell people about who Ron was, I tell them that he was a fixer, but I think his corporate profile on LinkedIn does a better job expanding on what that means:

Ron is an internationally recognized family business improvement expert, coach and mentor in the areas of change management, strategic re-positioning and outcome based leadership. His expertise is in diagnosing and mitigating those issues that prevent a business from maximizing it’s full potential. Ron worked primarily with clients in family owned firms. Clients have been generally in the NY-Metro area, New England, Europe and Asia.

Whether serving as a Business advisor, Transitional leader or CEO, he guides senior business leaders and emerging entrepreneurs in enhancing their leadership skills and actions to reach their personal and professional full potential. He works with clients to change their sense of what’s normal and what’s possible.

Ron’s most recent project based assignments are; serving as the Managing Director of Auer’s Moving and Rigging in Manhattan and Executive Producer of The Business Breakfast Series for NYC’s AM Radio Stations 570 & 970. He previously served as CEO/COO of Cactus Holding Corp, an 800 employee multi- faceted beauty industry business headquartered in Long Island, NY. President and COO of Dora International, whose world headquarters is located in Pinebrook, NJ and with manufacturing in Istanbul, Turkey. From 2003-2008 Ron was President of AME Corporation in Shanghai, China & Towaco NJ.

Early in his career Ron bought under-performing businesses, rehabilitated and resold them. For more than 18 years Ron and his team turned-around 16 businesses in the New York Metro area. During those years he was actively involved in community activities. Ron was a member, officer and President of several community organizations, including serving as an officer and for several years President of the Pelham NY Board of Education.

He has served on corporate boards in the USA, and Asia.

Towards the end of that meeting, he handed me a business card. It wasn’t the business card for the CEO of Cactus, he handed me his business card for his company, Safe Change. He told me that we should make plans to meet. He also gave me some homework to do, which was interesting. To think that I was just in a meeting where I presented a plan, got the potential client to agree to it under certain conditions, turned it down and was then given homework, which I was actually happy about. From the outside looking in, something would seem off, but for me it actually seemed right.

I wanted to meet with Ron separately, outside of how we had been meeting with regard to my marketing work for the company he was running. Not long after, we made plans to have breakfast at a diner in Tarrytown, NY where he had lived. He told me more about what Safe Change was about and had expressed his desire to help me. This is when Ron officially became my mentor.

He told me things about myself and my business that really helped shape my perspective and understanding of how things worked. He saw that there were things I could do for him that he needed help with, and things he could do that I needed help with. He outlined what it meant to have a mutually beneficial relationship. It was one of the most transparent and authentic business experiences I’ve ever had. I knew Ron actually cared.

In the months and years that followed, Ron and I would continue this work together. He would accompany me on different business meetings, and I would accompany him when he had speaking events that I could film. In this time we did plenty of filming together, as well as co-host events on college campuses, attend networking events, interview potential employees, and of course – meet for breakfast.