Friday, September 19, 2014YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The man who founded OfficeMax and led it 16 years, Michael Feuer, repeated the eternal verities on how to succeed in business Thursday afternoon to 100 students at Youngstown State University. But he did so in a way those students found fresh and entertaining as they listened in rapt attention.
Since stepping down as CEO in 2004, Feuer has set up Max-Ventures, a private investment retail and insurance firm, taken to the lecture circuit and written a book, The Benevolent Dictator: Empower Your Employees, Build Your Business and Outwit the Competition -- the basis of his lecture -- and is about to come out with a second.
Introduced as “a shameless self-promoter,” Feuer pleaded guilty and also admitted, “I’m a plagiarist.”
He was guilty only of hyperbole. Copycat is a better word than plagiarist. Feuer’s analysis of what it takes to succeed in business -- when he sold his interest in OfficeMax, he and his fellow investors walked away with $1.5 billion -- was information the students won’t find in their textbooks.
Not bad, he suggested, for someone who invested $20,000 of his own -- because that’s all he had -- to open one store and watch it grow within three years to $5 billion in revenues. In truth, he attracted another $3 million from investors, mostly doctors and lawyers, to get underway and grow. But he kept 51% of the voting stock.
By the time he left OfficeMax, it had grown to more than 1,000 stores with 50,000 employees in 49 states and three continents and delivered through its stores, on the Web and direct sales. (Only Vermont lacked an OfficeMax and that was only because management couldn’t find a suitable location.)
Business mythology tells of the young entrepreneurs -- mostly men, it seems -- who started a business in their family garage. “You don’t have to start in a garage to think like an entrepreneur,” Feuer advised.
Success is always the result of hard work and requires long hours. Feuer often worked 14-hour days, seven days a week at OfficeMax. But, he loved his job and the people he worked with. So lesson No. 2 is ”If you don’t love what you do, you should be doing something else.”
Lesson No. 1 is “OPM,” Use Other People’s Money; find investors to help you realize your dream. When you approach investors, “Tell the good, the bad and the ugly,” that is, while you expect to succeed and provide a healthy return on their investment, explain the factors that might work against you.
Hard work isn’t enough, Feuer said. The successful entrepreneur doesn’t give up. “Persistence + Perspiration = Performance.”
Equally important is being aware of your competition. “Don’t allow your products or services to be commoditized,” he advised. “You must position yourself to distinguish what you do from your competition.”
A corollary is: Be a superior communicator. “If you can’t communicate with people, you’ll get nowhere,” he said, whether those people are employees, customers or other stakeholders. And the effective CEO “must provide employees with the opportunity to do more if they want to do more.” Some will be content to simply put in their time and perform their jobs competently.
For a company to get ahead, however, the effective leader allows them to display initiative and he rewards them.
Effective communication involves “head, heart and gut,” Feuer said.
As you grow, “Find people [managers] smarter than you.”
Another lesson: Realize that you’re going to make mistakes but don’t be discouraged. “We made mistakes and corrected them as we went along,” he said. Which was another way of saying, “Have a Plan A and a Plan B, even a Plan C,” because circumstances change and the entrepreneur must be prepared to revise his plans as he runs his business. “Start with a plan and be prepared to change your plan,” he said, as events dictate.
The successful entrepreneur is an innovator and welcomes disruption. If disruption does not happen on its own, “Stir the pot,” Feuer said. My No. 1 job at OfficeMax was, ‘Stir the pot.’ … Remove the caps. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And after it’s fixed, break it again and again.”
One of the biggest impediments to success, for that matter, to getting started, is “analysis paralysis.” There comes a time when the entrepreneurial leader must stop examining a situation and act. “When the time for talking is done, somebody has to make the decision,” he said.
With these admonitions, someone with an entrepreneurial bent might feel prepared to at least explore setting out on his own. But one is never prepared, Feuer confided. Had he known at the outset just before he opened the first OfficeMax what he knew 16 years later, “I never would’ve started,” he said. “I’d have been too scared.”
Regardless, he urged his listeners to “Stop dreaming and start doing. I knew if I was going to be successful, I had to do it,” that is, take that first step.
Feuer’s book, The Benevolent Dictator, 254 pp., $24.95, was published by John Wiley & Sons Inc, in 2011.
He spoke as part of YSU's Williamson Symposium.
Pictured: Michael Feuer.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
CLICK HERE to subscribe to our twice-monthly print edition and to our free daily email headlines.