Business Advice

is your arsenal for developing and maintaining sound financial plans and business strategy.

Inside: Budgeting | Compensation | Valuation

Free Trial: Intuit QuickBooks

Simple Start Free Edition 2009 for Windows

Departments

The Morning Norm by Norm Brodsky

Want to hear more from Norm? Learn about his new book, The Knack, here.

Got a question for Norm?

Please send it to asknorm@inc.com

Street Smarts Archives

Inc.com Featured Blogs

Norm Brodsky

Norm Brodsky, coauthor of THE KNACK: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up, had already launched seven successful businesses-including a three-time Inc. 500 company-by the time he began writing the Street Smarts column in Inc. magazine with Bo Burlingham in 1995. The column has proved to be enormously popular with readers of the magazine and was twice a finalist for a National Magazine Award. In 2008, it received a gold Azbee award from the American Society of Business Publication Editors. With the success of the column came numerous speaking invitations. Brodsky now lectures widely and has become a frequent guest on MSNBC.

A graduate of Rider College and Brooklyn Law School, Brodsky began his professional career as a lawyer, but the slow pace of the courtroom led him to search for another vocation. In 1979, he started Perfect Courier, a messenger service based in Manhattan. Within a few years, it was a thriving enterprise with offices around the country, appearing on Inc.'s annual listing of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in America for three consecutive years. But as fax machines began appearing in more and more businesses, Brodsky realized that his company's prospects were limited, and he began looking for other opportunities. A request from a customer looking to store some boxes prompted him to call several records-storage facilities in the area. Their responses convinced him that the industry offered great promise. He proceeded to launch CitiStorage out of a rented warehouse in Long Island City, N.Y., later moving it to the Brooklyn waterfront where he began building warehouses of his own. Today those warehouses contain more than 3.5 million boxes. In 1999, Brodsky launched a secure document destruction business, U.S. Document Security, as an adjunct to CitiStorage. In December 2007, he sold both those companies, plus the delivery business, to Allied Capital for a reported $110 million. The combined entity is still run by the management team that Brodsky and his wife, Elaine, developed over the years, while he and his erstwhile partner Sam Kaplan work on acquisitions.

When he is not doing acquisitions, starting businesses, mentoring other entrepreneurs, developing real estate, traveling, or working on his column, Brodsky enjoys skiing with Elaine at their home in Telluride, CO. He learned to ski at the age of 57 and now skies black diamonds. The rest of the year, he and Elaine live in Brooklyn, NY; Long Beach, NY; and Aventura, FL. They have been married for more than 39 years. They have two daughters-Rachel and Beth-and a granddaughter, Ava Rose Luna.

The Web site for The Knack is www.TheKnack.info.

Try a RISK-FREE Issue of Inc. Today!

Renew | Contact Us | Current Issue