Beginning My Greatest Business Adventure

Beginning My Greatest Business Adventure

This adventure began with a phone call from a previous mentor Mike. If you recall Mike took a position as the assistant to the President of Diebold, Inc. in Canton, Ohio and I replaced Mike as the chief of staff for Owen at NCR. One day Mike called to ask me if I would consider a change in careers. He knew I was not totally happy with my position. I had been trying to find a position in the sales organization at NCR and every time I found an opportunity Owen gave me a lecture and a big salary increase. Mike caught me at just the right time. My frustration had begun to affect everyone around me and even my family.

I accepted an invitation for my wife and I to spend a weekend in Canton exploring an opportunity with Diebold in Canton, Ohio. Mike organized a day of interviews for me at the company and Mike’s wife spent the day showing Jan Canton, Ohio.

The position I was asked to consider, was the Remote Banking Product Manager. After spending about 30 minutes with Mike at breakfast, I was brought to the main office and introduced to Mike’s boss the President of the company, Raymond. At that time the company was relatively small and Raymond liked to be involved at all levels of the companies important decisions. Ray, as he preferred to be called, was an impressive and very formal figure upon initial introduction. As I got to know him he became very fatherly. In our initial introduction he expressed some of his philosophies of business and the vision he had for Diebold, Inc. He also expressed his description of the position I was being interviewed for. In his mind I would be the CEO of Remote Banking with the responsibility for all decisions and dotted line authority over all departments that would effect the marketing, sales, service, quality and costs related to this product line. At the conclusion of our discussion, he explained that the decision to hire me would rest entirely in the hands of the man I was to spend the rest of the day with. The man I would report to.

I was then introduced to Earl who became the most important mentor in my entire business career. He took great pains to spend the rest of the day showing me around the company from the offices to the labs and manufacturing facilities. I am not sure I even felt like I was being interviewed as much as sold the company and the opportunity that Earl envisioned. That evening Earl, Mike, and their wives took Jan and I to dinner. The next day we had a 4-hour drive back to Dayton to discuss what we might do if the job was offered. I liked the opportunity and Jan liked the community and its size (100,000 plus citizens) to raise our three girls.

The call came Monday the next day, I accepted and in two weeks we had found a new home and I started my new career. I had to commute every Friday and Sunday for about four weeks. That gave me uninterrupted time to earn my new team and as much as possible about my new company.

Lessons learned:

1. Never lose track of your mentors. You never know when you will need them or they will need you.

2. It is always a great benefit to have a partner who is willing to help make major life decisions.

3. Using the term CEO to describe a product manager is both enabling and motivating.

4. A great way to get a job candidate to open up and discuss what is important to them is to sell them your organization and show them around.

5. As you will see later, I learned the value of great customer relations.

The New Chief of Staff

The New Chief of Staff

As our family is beginning to settle into our new neighborhood in Kettering, Ohio, my business life gets very interesting. First, a word about the neighborhood. It is a very friendly and close group. The school our children attend is a block away and they can walk to school. The swim club we belong to be also a block away and the girls started to swim competitively there. Our neighbors were very friendly and helpful. In fact, it was our neighbor, Ron, an IBM employee, who took my wife Jan to the hospital the give birth to our third daughter Karen. We had some great times in this neighborhood.

As the new chief of staff, I was sort of on my own. My old mentor Bill was still around, but my newest mentor Mike and left the company. Non-the less he was able to help my by phone.

Let me first describe my new environment. I was now managing the Domestic Marketing Division planning, budgeting, and administrative staffs and acting as a liaison with the three major Division VPs that reported to my boss. They were the VP of Industry Marketing, the VP of Product Marketing, and The VP of Systems Development. This probably sounds fairly routine. What made it interesting and challenging for all of us was my boss’s work routine. A company limousine picked him up every Monday morning and delivered him to either the Dayton airport or the NCR airport hanger for his weekly trip to either LA, Washington, New York, or other locations he wanted to visit. To make it easier for him the company provided apartments in the major cities, which he kept supplied with clothes and toiletries. The only thing he needed to travel with was his brief case. He returned on Friday evenings and held a staff meeting for all is direct reports and myself every Saturday morning at 9:00AM. He and I met at 8:00 to brief him on significant issues that I felt he needed to deal with in person or issues that required my input prior to his meeting with the team.

One of my early projects was the re- organization of the division. This new organization elevated the three VPs from their previous Director positions and organized the division into three disciplines. Each new VP including my boss was allowed to select their own office locations and decorate those offices any way they desired. In Owens case and one of the other VP’s their wives had a very strong hand in the decorations. I had the challenge of supervising the actual construction, redecorations, and control of the budgets.

While that was going on we were developing an new strategic plan for the Domestic operation. As we came closer to the finalization of that plan, Owen did spend a little more time in Dayton. He also curtailed his travels during the Holidays. He and I spoke at least once and many times two or three times a day by phone depending on the situation. He also felt free to call me frequently at home. Unfortunately or fortunately this was before cell phones and he had to send messengers to find me on the golf course and take me to a phone to talk to him. This happened twice when I was helping entertain company guests during the week.

As you can imagine, with Owen’s travel schedule, I became the liaison and confidant to both Owen and the VPs who reported to him. It was a great experience and I learned a great deal about high-level relationships and management from a corporate point of view.

From time to time I would also have the privilege of going to lunch in the famous NCR Horseshoe room in the main office building. These were usually times when a domestic or international retail customer wanted to learn more about our product or systems plans. I could represent the entire repertoire in Owens place. The Horseshoe room was a very special experience. By tradition the company’s Top executives ate lunch there everyday and the group often included the Chairman and or the CEO. There were often guest speakers and always a short movie on NCR history or current company activities. If you can imagine the seating was at a giant horseshoe table with a capacity of over 50.

There were also times that I traveled with him. If he was making speeches I was always on hand to write and revise those scripts. Once he called me at home at 11:30 PM to ask me to get on the company plane the next morning to fly to Montreal and rewrite a speech he was delivering the next evening. What a trip and what an experience these two years were. I often had to call Mike or go visit Bill to get advice.

Lessons learned:

1. Never lose track or contact with your mentors.

2. How to walk the line between the boss and his direct reports without losing your own credibility.

3. How to lead without a title.

4. How to understand the perspective of the overall company.

5. The value of spending quality time with your family whenever you can.

A New Career Path

I became so intrigued and involved with the Strategic Planning Process that the Staff Director of the Domestic Marketing Division recognized me. Bill asked me to join his staff and head up the planning efforts of the entire division. As you will see Bill played a role in several succeeding career positions. I agreed and became the Planning Guru.

There was one small detour about a moth later that lasted about two weeks. NCR experienced its first labor dispute in an organizing effort. The members of the company went on strike to be allowed to form an independent union. The company could live without our machine production but service parts had to be made. All able bodied non-union personnel were pressed into duty. Because tunnels connected all the buildings on the campus, we could arrive at our normal office locations, change into work clothes in the men’s room and travel to our production stations via the tunnels without being seen by the union members picketing outside. It took about a day and a half to learn how to operate a screw machine and the same productivity level as the union workers and we were able easily to satisfy our parts requirements. In fact we did so well we only had to work two to two and half days a week to accomplish the same level of output as the regular operators. Although this experience was satisfying from an accomplishment point of view, it left me with mixed emotions. I had just demonstrated to the manufacturing organization why costs were so high and the tactics that had brought us to this situation by the faulty attitudes of our workers. I did not understand these kinds of attitudes. I would later learn that they are very real and pervasive in our manufacturing environments. I thought it was a sad situation for our economy.

After that episode I spent the next six months coaching, reviewing, revising, and finalizing the first NCR Domestic Marketing Plan. The process significantly changed the thinking and direction of NCR in the US from a mechanical cash register company to a sophisticated systems provider. It helped integrate the Computer, Software, Electronic Cash Registers and Accounting Machines, Systems, and Service into a powerful market force in the US. We were also able to significantly change the sales philosophy and organization. Unfortunately I was not able go witness the implementation of the entire plan because I left NCR before it was completed.

At this time my boss and a lifetime mentor, Mike, left NCR to become the Assistant to the President of Diebold, Inc. The Vice President of the division, Owen, then asked me to take Mikes place as Director of the division staff. I agreed to do this on one condition. I wanted to get involved in line management. I felt too much time in staff positions would hamper my overall career goals.

Owen agreed to watch for appropriate opportunities for me if I did a good job for him. What I did not realize at the time was the tremendous exposure to the overall management of a company that I was about to experience. The next year as Owen’s Staff Director is worth a chapter of it’s own.

Lessons Learned:

1. Some mentors are with you for life.

2. Good strategic planning can influence amazing positive changes in behavior.

3. The importance of a well-communicated plan of attack.

4. The potential negative impact of misdirected union attitudes.

5. Good, conscientious, quality work gets recognized when you least expect it.

Learning the Systems World

Learning the Systems World

I started my in the systems world as a systems analyst in the Retail Marketing Department of the National Cash Register Co. The “Cash” as the locals referred to it. I spent the first month learning about the new Century Series computer that was just being introduced to the market. An interesting anecdote, this was 1965, and the first 16k Century delivered to our facility required a room 20 X 30 Ft. Just to give you a benchmark. My iphone has a memory capacity of 7.1 GB. . After my indoctrination, I began to design systems specs for the programmers focused on retail merchandising.

Soon a new product called an electronic cash register, the 280, was developed to replace the original mechanical cash register as a very sophisticated point of sale input device. These coupled with the Century computer provided a complete merchandising and inventory control system for the Retail Market place. I was asked to help design those systems and introduce the concept to major retailers. I was promoted to Account Manager a position developed to support our field sales personnel in their sales efforts. I was assigned to Marshal Fields and Sears in Chicago, Thalheimers, in Richmond VA, a large holding company in St. Louis.

We also made presentations and entertained visiting customers and prospects from around the world. The company owned two very impressive homes that were used to house our guests. Our international guests stayed in the Wright Brothers mansion. Our domestic guests stayed in the Kettering Estate. Both venues were maintained, as they were when the original owners lived there. For example the Wright Brothers library was as it was during their lifetime and the Kettering estate had a bowling alley and a skeet range on the property. We also had a world-renowned NCR country club at our disposal. If fact while I was a member we hosted the 1967 PGA Championship tournament. Talk about perks. This club was for employees only and the cost for membership including a locker and all greens fees was less than $200.00 a year.

It was also during this period that I assisted in the installation of the first computer in a department store at Thalheimers in Richmond. What an experience. The night before we were to go live with their accounts receivable and billing system the CRAM (Card Random Access Memory) crashed and we had to spend the entire night reconstructing files. We made the deadline.

I also remember the first presentation of the new 280 electronic cash register. The processor chip was not ready yet so the terminal was wired to the main computer in the next room. A bit of a sham but did demonstrate the capabilities of the terminal. The customer was Sears and we wanted to impress them. I could not stand the deception so I spilled the beans at dinner. They understood and became our first customer.

Near the end of 1967, I was asked by Bill our department manager and my latest mentor, to represent the retail marketing department at a training session on a new strategic planning process the company was implementing. I was so intrigued by the process; I asked to be the facilitator for our department. That started a whole new career path for me. Bill encouraged me to pursue this new path and stayed with me as an advisor for the rest of my NCR career.

Lessons learned:

1. The value of good systems design prior to coding a program.

2. The potential impact of computers and data processing on the business enterprise.

3. The skills and techniques necessary to successfully manage a major corporate account.

4. How a good mentor guides you through challenges and new learning experiences.

5. The value of honesty in everything we do.

My Government Service

My Government Service

Because of my age and family situation, I was never eligible for the military draft. However, my next promotion with Xerox to Government accounts manager in Dayton, Ohio did give me the opportunity to help the logistics group that supported our troops in Viet Nam from Wright Patterson Air Force Base. At that time, this base was responsible for all military logistics, new aircraft development management, was a SAC base, and housed the Foreign Technology Division. In addition my team was responsible for the nuclear research labs located near Dayton, Ohio. We all had to have top secret Federal government clearances.

We had literally hundreds of copiers and duplicators operating in these facilities. The usage was so huge that we shipped 1 to 3 boxcars of paper and toner to this base every quarter. I was most proud of how the team was able to help with both the efficiency and costs or copier and duplicator systems at these installations. At the same time we were able to grow our business substantially over the next 18 months that I was involved.

We implemented several programs to facilitate this process. First, we instituted a monthly update of both systems and costs for the base commander to ensure his constant support and develop a personal relationship that would allow us access to him and his staff. That took place every first Wednesday of the month at 3:00AM sharp. Due to the Viet Nam time zone his day started at 8:00 PM and finished at 5:00 AM. He was impressed and very appreciative of our recognition of his scheduling needs.

Second, we were able to help develop systems that made processing orders for shipment of goods and personnel much faster and efficient.

Third, we helped with the processing and distribution of Foreign Intelligence photographs. On key days like May day (Photos from the USSR parade), we provided both service and operations staff , on site, to assure 24/7 uninterrupted operations.

Fourth, we were able to develop a very efficient method for the multitude of engineers working on the development of the C – 5A Transporter aircraft to communicate and document engineering changes. There were over 200 engineers working on this project.

Our team was recognized for this effort and I was invited to represent them at the initial fly in of the aircraft. What an experience just to see this huge aircraft fly. I will never forget the base commanders opening remarks.

He said, “This aircraft is so large that the Wright brothers could have flown the first flight inside the C- 5A. The aircraft is designed to transport a company of men, supporting equipment and vehicles to an unprepared field in the war zone.”

Although it was never used for that purpose, it did transport a lot of supplies into Viet Nam and a lot of refugees out of Viet Nam.

In Early May of 1967, was given the opportunity to attend a special seminar, again in Fort Lauderdale, to learn systems selling in large accounts. I was never able to finish the seminar because our third beautiful daughter Karen was born early the morning of May 4^th. You can imagine my emotions when receiving a phone call at 3:00AM from my wife and a neighbor who took her to the hospital. I was upset, elated, and very concerned that I was not there. Fortunately, the seminar director was very helpful and got me on an early morning flight and I was able to see her, my wife, and her sisters the very next day.

Shortly after that a new branch manager was assigned to Dayton. He had never had experience with the government market. His overall results were not to his liking and he challenged all of his team to significantly increase our order books. I tried valiantly to explain to him that this was mid year and government contracts were established at the beginning of each year and could not be increased until the next budgeting period, which was in 6 months. We were already working on it but would see no results until next year. He could not accept that fact and asked me to resign. My cheerleader helped me get through this challenge and the next phase of my career started about two weeks later.

Lesson learned,

1. Get involved with your customers business and become a valuable resource.

2. Work with your team and get involved with the day – to - day operations whenever possible.

3. The investment of additional resources to assist in critical situations is never forgotten by the customer.

4. Listen to your cheerleaders.

A New Career Path

A New Career Path

In January of 1964 we were blessed with a second beautiful daughter Patricia. Patti as she is known. This event set into motion some serious thought about work verses family. I came to realize that the last two years I was not there for the development of my children or the personal support I should be providing them and my wife. I began to start searching for a new career.

This led me to taking a position as sales trainee for Xerox Corporation. At this time in the history of Xerox they had only one desktop copier. In the brief two years that I worked for Xerox three new duplicator products were released. The first thirty days of my career with Xerox was spent in training. For the first week I learned product information and demonstration techniques. I then spent the next few weeks with a very interesting mentor in the field. My mentor and field trainer was the top salesman in the branch. Interestingly he was the son of the secretary of the original founder and developer of the Xerox copier company. He brought the Haloids photo coping process into the broad commercial market. Bill’s mother agreed to work for stock instead of salary for the first year of the company and of course became a millionaire.

Bill had great instinctive sales skills and I learned a lot. We would put the domo copier in our car and take it to prospective customers. The technique was the old dog food trick. We would wheel in the system and try to get an audience with the boss. In many cases we ended up dealing with the receptionist or the bosses secretary. In any case we would offer the leave the system for them to use for a day or two and then return to get their reaction. Our success rate with this approach was over 40%. Obviously the dogs loved the dog food. It was then fairly easy to justify the cost verses carbon paper or typing multiple copies.

I learned several valuable lessons from Bill about selling.

I was then given my own territory, which consisted of an area of small businesses in southwest Columbus and then two counties southeast of Columbus. It was relatively virgin territory so I had plenty of opportunity for success. I was able to achieve enough success to get the attention of our branch manager. I along with my mentor Bill were two of the first salespeople in our branch to be selected to go to a national training school in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for the companies new 2400 ‘copier/duplicator system. Here we learned professional selling techniques and office systems philosophies.

When we returned I was made Marketing Team Manager with 5 salespeople reporting to me. I held this position for 6 months. Bill helped me a lot with my new team, even though he was not part of my team. He was always interested in how it was going and had great advice. I recall one episode in particular. I had a new salesman who was fantastic in training and very polished but had not closed an order in the first month of his territory assignment. I asked Bill for his advice and he suggested traveling with my new salesman for a day or two and observing his sales technique. I called Bill after the first day and said he performed great but was still not able to close. Bill gave me another lesson in closing a sale.

Ask for the order and shut up!!! I light went off in my head and I realized that my new salesman could not stop talking. The next day I instructed him to do his sales presentation, ask for the order, and not say another word until I spoke. On the first call after about a minute of silence, the prospect said no because he was going on vacation and did not want to start anything new until he returned. We waited for about 3 minutes in silence while the prospect carried out his own internal conversation and finally said yes. It seemed like an eternity. With great joy I said thank you, told him we would deliver the equipment and train his staff in the next 48 hours and we left. After that experience my new salesman became a star and eventually ended up on the national Xerox training staff.

This first 7 months led to another great opportunity and a challenge, both of which I will talk about in the next chapter. I should also mention that Bill continued to be interested in my career progress even after I left Xerox.

Lessons learned,

1. Become an expert in your products or systems as soon as possible.

2. The principles of good selling work. Get their attention, solve a problem, describe your products benefits in the customer’s terms, help make it the prospects decision, and ask for the order. Then shut up.

3. A negative answer to a question is an opportunity to develop a better understanding of your products benefits.

4. The cold calling process helps you learn what works and what does not work in developing real opportunities.

5. How to identify and find the real decision maker.

6. How to motivate sales people.

7. The value of having a cheerleader at home when things are not going well.

My introduction to the Fashion World

My introduction to the Fashion World

This was a very exciting time in my life. I was now immersed into the very basics of the fashion world. In order to be successful we had to know not only fashion design but also the fabrics used to make the fashions. Of course a good part of the excitement was traveling to New York every three weeks. I remember staying in a hotel that is now closed but was located about a block from Time Square and only a few blocks from the majority of my market and the Associated Merchandising Corporation Buying offices. AMC was a buying group that negotiated prices based on the total needs of all of its members. Most of these products were of a staple verses fashion nature. They also assisted us in making appointments, hotel reservations, printed a fashion update, and published a list of all buyers who were in the market each week. They were also our contact point for incoming calls and assistance on anything from travel plans to doctors if necessary. I also served on their fabric buying committee because we were one of the top two volume purchasers of staple fabrics like cotton broadcloth and basic woolens.

Now the nature of my mentors was quite different. The people I mentioned in the previous chapter helped me learn how to manage a retail business. The people who helped me understand the fashion world were not part of my organization but part of the fabric markets. They were a native New Yorker, Abe, who taught me how to work the markets. He owned a cotton fabric manufacturing company. He showed me where to go and how to buy. It was Abe who introduced me to the downtown fabric market. There were three or four merchants on lower Broadway who seemed to be able to get inventories of very popular brand name fabrics for about 20% of the normal wholesale price. I would spend one day each week in market shopping this market and about ever other trip would find some fantastic bargains. This would allow me to mix this inventory with my full priced inventory and when I had sales I was able to mark the fabrics down significantly without impacting my margins.

Frequently other buyers and myself would end our day in Abe’s bar at the back of his showroom and discuss the day’s successes and failures. Abe had never been West of the Hudson River and never had a driver’s license or owned a car. We became so close, that Abe wanted to see my store and he took his first trip, by train to Ohio, to see me. I was very excited to see him in my store.

I also remember another experience, with another New York mentor. The owner of a world-renowned woolen fabric house. When you were in the market you were expected to visit his establishment and have lunch with him and other buyers at Shakespeare’s Tavern, which was across the street from his showrooms. Here you had the opportunity to mingle with buyers from all over the world and trade ideas and experiences. Mostly I listened and learned a lot.

Part of the fun of the market was the time I would spend in the high fashion show rooms. After abut three months in the business I began to hear the seamstresses who used our department for their clients talk about wanting more high fashion fabrics. My lunches at Shakespeare’s tavern lead me to several very expensive high fashion fabric houses. In visits to these show rooms fabrics were not just on display but were made into garments and modeled for our viewing. This not only showed the fabric well but also gave us ideas to pass on to our customers. This also led me to using real models at least once a week instead of just mannequins. We also began to participate in the stores fashion shows.

One of the most successful fabric houses specialized in very stylish cotton print. It was a French Company Bouclé Fabrics. They had an annual contest to select the models they would use for their world tour. Because of the volume we did with them we were selected as one of the tour stops in the US. What a great event for us. The show was on a Saturday and the models and their entourage arrived on Wednesday. They modeled on our floor twice a day and then had a two-hour fashion show on Saturday morning. This event not only sold a lot of Bouclé fabrics but also boosted the sales of all our fabrics.

Since the fabric business was primarily a Spring, Summer and Fall business, my boss asked me to take on the Trim-A-Tree business which required one trip to New York to find new and unique Holiday items and then open five shops in the store from November to January with a final sale in January. My last two holiday seasons in retailing, I was at the store from 8:00AM until 7:00PM five days a week and 10:00 PM two days a week.

In addition to this experience during my last year we opened the first branch in our history. We were all frightened that this new branch idea would erode our volumes and the main store. It did not while I was there but probably did as more and more branches were added.

Lessons learned:

1. Mentors are not always obvious, be alert to anyone who is interested in you.

2. The best mentors are not assigned.

3. The people who are on the front lines dong the work and facing the customer always know more than you about your business.

4. Listen to your customer with an open mind.

5. Try new approaches to old processes often.

6. Seek out and learn from peers and suppliers.

7. Don’t forget your family. (More about that later)

My First Business Management Experience

My First Business Management Experience

Before I get into my first management experience, there is a life experience that was both an important lesson and helped me put a better perspective on family verses career.

It was the event of the birth of our first child. Janet was two months early and gave birth to twins. Mark and Michelle. Mark only lived for 4 days. Michelle was in an incubator for 40 days. Needless to say this was a difficult time for us. Not only was it a sad and very tense, it presented us with a huge financial obligation.

To this day I do not know how Mr. Lazarus learned about our situation, but one day, I was summoned to his office. He asked me about my family and how we were doing. By then we had Michelle home and were learning to become parents and getting past the tragedy of losing a son. So, I said we were doing fine. He told me he knew all about the situation and understood our stress and wanted to help. He told me the Lazarus Employee Trust Fund was paying all my hospital bills and I would have no further obligation to the company or the hospital. Please just go home and take care of your family was his parting comment. I am tearing up a bit just writing about this meeting. What a blessing!

Not long after that meeting, I was promoted to Department Manager of the Fashion Fabrics Department. Wow, at the ripe age of 23, I was responsible for managing a $1.3 million a year business producing a net profit of about $150,000. Over the next four years we were able to grow it to almost $2 million and over $300,000 in net profit. In addition, I after the first year, I was given responsibility for the management of the 5 “Trim – A –Tree” shops in our store. This was a seasonal business that operated from October through December with clearance sales in January. My responsibility in both of these departments was merchandising, display, advertising, buying, sales management, hiring & firing, inventory control and the bottom line.

Thankfully, I inherited a very experienced staff of sales clerks and a very capable assistant manager, Barry. He went on to become the CEO of a national chain of Fabric Stores.

There were three women who were very helpful to me. One was an elderly lady, who was a holocaust survivor. Sophie taught me how to deal with the private seamstresses who came in looking for fabrics for their clients. She often called in sick because of the aftereffects of experimental surgeries performed on her in the concentration camps. She was 70 plus years old and we were just grateful to have her when we could. She was also not afraid to tell me when I was making mistakes.

The second woman was the most experienced salesperson in our department and became a very valuable advisor to me in the area of customer service, basic fabric selections and seemed to know what our customers wanted.

Finally there was our seamstress. She made clothes for our mannequins and live models. She also helped our live models dress and prepare for shows.

Lessons learned:

1. The importance of family.

2. The value of taking care of your employees.

3. The value of listening to the experience of fellow workers.

4. How to have the courage to tell the boss he or she is wrong.

5. The value of listening to customers.

6. How to manage a business to achieve real financial results.

Graduate School

Graduate School

My year in graduate school was invaluable. This experience provided me with not only an advanced education but also exposure to real business managers and a great lead for my first job after graduation.

There were four reasons this experience was so valuable.

First, 90% of our classes were based on the discussion of cases relating to reading assignments. Not, lectures.

Second, over 50% of my fellow students were either active in business or on leave from a business that was paying for their education.

Third, most of our professors were business consultants.

Fourth, I met a lifetime friend who was always there when I needed a friend to talk to and always gave me great advice.

It was one of those professors who suggested I interview with the F & R Lazarus Company in Columbus, Ohio. I got an attractive offer and started my business career as a retailer.

Interestingly Bill, one of my wife’s associates at her work, also went to work for F & R Lazarus and became a great lifetime friend of ours. Even though Bill was in the school for correspondence, he made a lifetime career in Retailing. As he married, had children, moved from Columbus to Dallas, to Alabama, Cleveland, Long Island and eventually Delaware, we never lost track of each other, our families and our careers.

Lessons learned:

1. Business management in the real world.

2. Advanced marketing techniques.

3. Business economics in application.

4. Business law.

5. How to interact with business executives.

6. The application of logistics principles to the business world.

Later College Years

In my senior year of college I decided to move out of the fraternity house into an apartment with an old high school buddy and one other fraternity brother. After about six months, I decided to propose to Jan, who I had been dating since I was a sophomore. We got married just before my last semester of college. Jan is not only great support throughout my entire career, but was mother of our daughters. That was also when I decided to go to graduate school. I applied and was accepted at the Indiana University. I promised Jan, if she would work to support me during graduate school, she would never have to work again. Fortunately, I was able to keep my promise.

It was also at about that time my old fraternity roommate, a good friend, Ted, had a great suggestion. He had been working for his father's company two days a week, and was about to go on to graduate school, also at Indiana University. His father's company was the Gibson guitar company. He introduced me to his father as an applicant for his position, which was an internal company truck driver. I got the job. Because it was only two days a week, I could schedule classes the other three days and the pay was more than my pay as a full time night janitor.

It was through this work experience that I learned a different type of mentoring from a union steward who was my partner on the truck. Our responsibility was to deliver parts from warehouses to factory locations and then finally at the end of the day take the ashes from the incinerators to the local dump. My partner taught me how to get along with other workers at the company and in and in particular how to follow the rules of the Steelworkers union culture. I learned a lot about how the hourly worker thinks, what concerns them, and most important how to motivate them. Probably the most important thing I learned was how important good communications, listening skills, and empathy are to the morale of workers.

Lessons learned:

1. The importance of good communications.

2. How to really listen.

3. How to empathize with all types of people in a variety of circumstances.

4. The importance of good morale in an organization.

College Years

The Initial Independent Years

In my sophomore year in college after a very difficult freshman year my dad came to my rescue again. The company he worked for, The Upjohn company, had a program for the sons of employees who were willing to work nights as a janitor. It was a form of scholarship. They offered us a full-time job, accommodated our studying needs and paid us well, as long as our grades were a B. average or better. I held this job for about a year and a half and although I had to go to work every day 5:30 PM and didn’t finish 12:30 AM, but it was worth it. We really only had about two hours of work to do, and the ability to use all the office facilities and equipment for our homework and we had weekends off to enjoy college life with everyone else.

This job helped in several ways. It probably kept me out of trouble. But more importantly it provided me with enough income to join a fraternity, and move into the fraternity house I was a TKE. Now, I was beginning to become an independent adult.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that even though I moved out of the house mom insisted that I bring my dirty clothes home to let her wash them and I spent most Sundays at home with mom and dad and we always visited Grandma and Grandpa with all the other children, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandchildren every Sunday. These experiences always kept me centered and recognizing the value of family and everything that we do. As I recall the experiences with our large family there were several mentors who in their own way helped me realize my successes and failures in life.

Joining the fraternity provided me with another experience that would be valuable in later life. When I joined the fraternity we were living in a very old wood frame home that was condemned. Fortunately the fraternity had paid off its mortgage and had enough money saved for a down payment on a beautiful historical Mansion. When we moved into that beautiful I was elected House manager and pledge trainer. Now I was beginning to understand the value of becoming a good mentor. I not only had to make sure that our house will was kept financially sound but also was responsible for making sure the property was maintained properly, and all of our brothers had adequate housing and food. In addition, I had the responsibility, to our brotherhood, to develop the new pledges that were invited to join our organization.

Lessons learned:

1.The importance of family.

2. How to manage a household.

3. How to mentor young men.

4. How to recognize the many mentors that came from family and friends.

More of the Early Days

While I was still a teenager but a little older I was able to get a job as a bus boy and a very large upscale cafeteria in our town. During my high school years, I was able to work at this job on the weekends and in the off-season was when I was not playing football or basketball I could work during the week. Here I began to learn the value of individual and team performance. My first job was that of just a busboy and there I learned to clear a table of four in one minute or less. I also began to develop a system that would allow me to clear that table and closer to 30 seconds. This was important because during busy times there was a customer with a full tray of food leaving the cafeteria line looking for a clean table every 30 seconds. Our goal was to be able to accommodate all of those customers immediately.

Here again a good mentor was introduced to me, it was the manager of this restaurant, Joe. He not only noticed what I had achieved as a bus boy but also began to sense that I had some leadership skills and started to encourage them.

Eventually I became good enough that I was asked to supervise and train other busboys. Now I was beginning to learn how to manage and motivate and develop other people. I also began to understand the concept of teamwork. Eventually I became the head floor manager and was asked to come in early to help set up the food system and make sure all was ready in the restaurant prior to opening the doors. I held this job and a great relationship with the owner and his son until I began my college years.

Lessons learned;

1. Doing more than the job requires.

2. Recognizing the need to support the entire enterprise, not just my own job.

3. The value of developing a good team.

4. The ability to see all the parts of an enterprise.

5. How to work with a good mentor.

6. How and why it is important to become a good mentor.

The Early Years

The Early Years

I am not sure where to start this journey, but I will begin somewhere early in my life at around age 14. I was an only child. As I recall at that age, although my parents both worked and were able to send me to a private Catholic school, I decided to work at the school doing minor janitorial services to help offset some of the tuition. I think that's where I began to understand the value of education, work and mentors and what it could provide in the way of benefits both to my family and me.

From that point on I always had some form of a job to help defray expenses like books and the in-style clothing that all we teenagers needed to have. I never complained because I enjoy it many of the jobs I had and it provided a lot of the things that I wanted to have the mom and dad could not afford.

It was during this period in high school that I experienced my first attempt at being in the sales and distribution business. I was able to arrange a job with the local news agency that allowed me to sell all the out-of-town Sunday papers at the main corners of our small community, deliver the papers on Sunday to the regular subscribers, and then sell the papers in front of our church on Sunday morning’s after I completed the delivery route.

Dad was a great help in establishing this job, as he knew the previous holder of that position. He introduced us and I was then introduced to the news agency. Dad also helped when the weather was inclement by driving me to and from the street corner and the news agencies picked up by delivery route. However most of the time I used my bicycle to get back and forth and the agency provided a special bicycle for me to deliver the papers. Dad was also my first and perhaps my best mentor.

The way I made money in this job was to buy the papers from the news agency and the difference between what I paid them in what I sold the papers for was for me to keep. The leftover newspapers were taken back by the news agency to be resold in various stores and locations.

Now I was beginning to learn how to sell and how to provide good service to customers and how to make profit. I grant you this is a small business but it taught me lessons that I could take with me for the rest of my life.

Lessons learned:

1. The value of understanding customer needs and desires.

2. The importance of providing good service.

3. Asking for the order.

4. Providing services tailored to the customer’s desires.

Developing a Mission Statement

This is the second in a series of blogs I will be posting. These are to get you thinking about the direction you want to take your life or your company. Then I will begin to tell the story of my career and the importance of mentors in my journey.

Developing a Mission Statement

Your mission statement is developed only after you have developed your vision and values and looked at your external and internal appraisals through the lens of your vision. Your vision statement and values provide the intrinsic value of your institution and the reason for its existence. They also provide the parameters or framework for the mission. Your mission represents the next logical step in answering what needs to be done to achieve the vision. Together, the vision and the mission provide the purpose and direction that will ensure that you are focused.

Your mission statement is the description of how you will achieve your vision ( or move closer to achieving it ) during a specific time frame. It provides direction to you, and as you grow, to your people. It will help everyone know where the organization is going and what you are trying to achieve in a given time frame.

It has a shorter focus than your vision, usually twelve to thirty-six months and will change based on the socio-economic environment. Whether it is twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six months is not important. What is important is having a specific time frame and target date. The mission statement serves as the basis for the development of business and peronal goals and plans, and should provide an overall sense of direction and the parameters which will guide decisions. It should address employees, customers, stakeholders, your friends and family and the qualities that make you and your organization unique.

The time frame used in the mission will be dependent upon the situation and overall socio-economic conditions. Care must be taken that the period of time is neither too short, nor too long. Considering the rate of change we are experiencing in the world today, two or three years might be used or you could use a budget cycle. Mission may change with time. As mission are accomplished and new opportunities present themselves, you may find that you need to redefine your mission.

A mission statement should meet the following criteria:

Clear

Involving

Memorable

Aligned with values

Directed at Your vision

Linked to employee, customer and your own needs

Seen as stretch – difficult, but not impossible

Measurable

Before you begin developing your mission statement, review your vision and values. What must you do within the next twelve to thirty-six months to move you closer to realizing your vision while adhering to your values?