The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 265: Clay Mathile - Self Made Billionaire Shares His Keys To Success

Episode Date: July 8, 2018

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Episode #265: Clay Mathile - Self Made Billionaire Shares His Keys To Success Former CEO and owner of The Iams Company, Clay is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Aileron. He believes strongly in free enterprise and has a high respect for business owners who risk their capital to employ others. Clay attributes professional management as one of the key reasons he was able to grow Iams to a $1 billion organization. In 1999, the Mathile family sold Iams to international conglomerate Procter & Gamble for the sum of $2.3 billion. The Learning Leader Show "I bought the business with borrowed money. I was scared to death. I didn't know how to run a business.  I had to learn." -- Clay Mathile describes his feelings after buying Iams Show Notes: Sustaining excellence: Vision of what they want to do and where they want to go A good idea of how to get there Committed to their vision and idea Clay's 4 things he wanted Own his own business Have that business be something that was excellent and stood for something To help entrepreneurs grow To use technology learned to help develop food for indigenous people Was hired at Iams in 1970 as the 7th employee It took five years to figure out the problems and five more years to fix it Convinced Paul Iams to sell Iams to him in 1975 (half) and the rest in 1981 Borrowed money to buy it Why Clay?  "Paul had seen me work and seen me make an impact on the business.  I spent a lot of time on the sales and marketing strategy." Focused on the breeders and vets. The people who influence the actual user.  Clay was ahead of his time. Went to President's Course in 1982 at American Management Association "I'm scared to death, I don't know how to run a business.  I needed to learn." The key was hiring a President and super charging their growth What went in the decision to sell the company? Sat down with his family to decide what each child wanted to do - "They all wanted to chase their own dreams, their own passions. They didn't want to own Iams." The CEO of Procter & Gamble called... Clay takes us inside the room to negotiate the deal: "We told them what our number was... And they exceeded it. It ended up with $2.3 billion." Starting the family office in anticipation of the sale of his business -- To build a new organization for the future. Aileron started as the center for entrepreneur organizations in 1994 Aileron - "We give lift and guidance to the business owner." "How can I possibly repay you?" -- Clay said to his mentors.  They said, "Don't pay me... Just pass it on to others." "People are looking for immediate help for a problem they are having right now.  And we've designed this place to help them solve those problems." Been married for 55 years, have raised a successful family... How? "When I was home, I was home. I was present. I wasn't playing golf or out with the boys." Keys: "Trust... You have to like the person too.  Like hanging out with them." Why everyone should have a board? "They see things that you don't see. A strategic overview. It's something you can't do yourself." "After you've been in business for 10 years, 75% of all problems are because of you." Having a "Personal Board of Advisors" "I recommend all senior executives have mentors.  All you have to do is ask. I've never had anyone turn me down when I've asked them." "Build trust and mutual respect." Culture "I built it so I could work in it." "I had strange things in my management style. I was promoting empowerment before it was popular." "Most people do the right things for the right reasons if you put them in the right environment." "The value of the individual is so important. Treat them with respect.  They feel important and special. I saw every single employee at least once per year all over the world." "People are inherently good." Bad leaders = "Big egos, not trusting of others, insecure people." "When you push people outside of their comfort zone, you can't beat on them when they fail. You have to let them make mistakes." Individual contributor to manager jump... Advice: "You have to accept the fact that management is a profession as anything else is a profession." "Just because you're the best sales person doesn't mean you'll be the best sales person." "As a manager, you're job is to develop others." "You need to manage spontaneity, responsiveness.  Don't react, be proactive." A good example of a proactive leader is a fire chief: They analyze the situation prior to making decisions. Manage in crisis "In 1984, we built Iams University to help people learn..." Most passionate about? "Teaching people, focus on the dreams of the people.  Read the book Dream Manager. That's what we're all about." Example of a typical day: "I do about anything I want to do." One dream for Aileron -- "It will survive forever." Learning Leader = You have to be a continuous learner How much of his success is luck? "60% luck. Be in the right place at the right time." "Your listeners need to think about passing it on. To help others." Use the "Get To Know You Document" "We give lift and guidance to the business owner." Social Media: Read: Run Your Business, Don't Let It Run You Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 More Learning: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 216: Jim Collins -- How To Go From Good To Great Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions Episode 234: Jocko Willink -- Why Discipline Equals Freedom

Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thanks so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 4-4-222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world to discuss the latest trends and topics and sustaining excellence as a leader. We'd love to have you text learners to 4-4-222. Now, on tonight's featured leader, the legislative, Legendary Clay Matill welcomed us to his office at Aileron to do this one in person. I will treasure it forever. It's one of those surreal moments. Such an enjoyable talk. Clay is a former CEO and owner of the IMS company. Also founder and chairman of the board at Aileron, he believes strongly in free enterprise and has a high respect for business owners who risk their capital to employ others.

He attributes professional management as one of the key reasons he was able to grow. Ims from a $13 million company when he bought it to a $1 billion organization, which led him to eventually sell it to Procter & Gamble for more than $2 billion. This one's incredible. A few of the topics that we touched on. Why it's important for leaders to have a board of advisors. Then how he built a world-class culture and made Ims and Aileron a place where people love to come to work.

And then his specific action steps and philosophy to grow his people and how you can do it to this one. Again, was fascinating. I loved it. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Clay Matill. All right, Clay, thank you so much for being here on the Learning Leader Show. And also welcoming us to Aileron. This is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever been in. Your campus is incredible.

So thank you so much for having us. Thanks for coming out. And I like to get started by understanding, especially from somebody like you who has met so many incredible people. You have sustained excellence in your own right. And I look at others in the world. And that's really what my podcast is about. The Learning Leader Show is about understanding the people who sustain excellence and how they do it and why they do it and what goes on behind it and the stories as well. So I'm curious, what have you found to be the commonalities among people who,

sustain excellence over an extended period of time? Well, I think they have a vision of what they want to do, where they want to go. And they have a fairly good idea of how to get there. Not totally, but for the most part. And they're committed to that. I think in my case, I had four things I wanted to do. Fortunately, the good Lord has given me the, the resources to do them all.

Now, not very well. A couple of them not very well. But I've had that opportunity. What are the four things? The four things was number one, I wanted to own my own business, which everybody thought I was crazy because I was born and raised on a farm in northern Ohio. And nobody ever ran a business.

You went to work in a factory or you became a farmer or whatever. And then once I had the opportunity to own my own business, then I wanted to have that business business. something that was excellent that stood for something. And so we build lines around those basic principles. I said to several people that if, in fact, I was successful and the business grew, I had resources then available to do this, which is to help entrepreneurs. Like I had been helped by a lot of times.

So you had the vision for Aileron at the beginning? I had the vision for having a program for entrepreneurs. so that I could share my knowledge with them as a lot of my mentors had done with me. And then the last one, which I haven't done very well, is to use our technology that we learn, the learnings we used at IMS to help develop food for indigenous people, people primarily in Guatemala, Honduras, and those parts of Central America. And we've done that, but we haven't done a very good job of getting it distributed yet. And so that's kind of what I'm working on.

Can you take me back to the beginning when you were working at IMS? I believe there was $13 million in sales at the time. And you were an employee and you purchased the business. Is that correct? Or walk me through that story. I'm curious. I love the beginnings of stories to figure out how things went from here to here. Well, I hired on with Ims in 1970.

What were you doing before that? I worked at Campbell Soup Company. Okay. I was an executive of Campbell Soup. Okay. And the operations side of the business. And so a friend of mine told me about Paul Imes. And so I beat my way down to Dayton one time and stopped in to see him.

And I hit it off pretty well. And I didn't realize he was looking for somebody to come into his business because his kids didn't want to be a part of it. the pet food business. And so one thing led to another. He hired me as a general manager, whatever you want to call it. I was a seventh employee. And I tell people that I had a dog food,

dogs wouldn't eat and a package consumers wouldn't buy. So it took me five years to figure that out. It took me another five years to fix it. Wow. So that takes us up to about 1980, 1980, 1981, where in 1975, he was thinking about selling the business, or closing the business. And I convinced him that he ought to sell part of it to me. And I bought half of it in 75.

And then I bought the rest of it in 1981. 1981, okay. And then so from. He retired. He wanted to retire. Yeah. He wanted to buy a home in Phoenix. Yeah.

He wanted enough money from the business to be able to do that. And we were able to put that deal together. This may not be a good question, but how did you have the money to buy it? I didn't. I borrowed it. Okay. Why you and not somebody else at that time? Well, because he'd seen me work and he'd seen me make a big impact on the business.

Yeah. And he, I think, wanted me to have it. What were some of the things you were doing that he saw you did that made him think Clay's the guy for this? Well, I think I had a different way of sale. our sales and marketing strategies changed. And I spent a lot of time working dog shows, visiting with veterinarians, not really focused on consumers. And the involvement with the breeders, for example, got us a lot of reputation. And we were able to grow the business based on the influencers.

And so our whole marketing programs were all designed around the influencers, not about the user, but about the person who impacts the user, which would be the breeder and the veterinarian. Wow. And so you were, it feels like ahead of your time in the way you thought about that. There were people doing it, but not the way we were doing it. Yeah. And there were people trying to build a product, but nobody really had the resources and the knowledge at that time to do it. They have it today, but not then. So you take the helm, and I know I'm shorting the story, but you supercharged the business

and to eventually where you guys are doing a billion dollars in revenue to an eventual sale. Well, I went to the president's course at American Management in 1982 right after I bought the business. My wife and I were talking one night about, you know, we got this business. One of your dreams has been, you know, fulfilled, blah, blah, blah. And I said, I know, but I'm scared to death. I don't know how to run a business. Been 20 years since I've been in school. And then I only took a couple of management courses.

So I needed to learn. She said, well, you need to learn how to run a business then. So that's the first thing I did is I went out and found up an organization that I felt could teach me how to run a business. And I came across this president's course at American Management Association. And that changed everything. That changed the whole game. Why is that? Because my vision or my threshold, if you will, was for about a $100 million business over my lifetime.

Yeah. Well, we did $100 million in four years. We did another $100 million in four years. And we doubled our business every year after that until 1991, 1999 when we sold the company. Wow. What went into the decision to sell the company here? Well, in 1990, I hired a president, which is a little unusual because I was 49. And again, we go back to the fact that I was really not a good operator.

I was more of a visionary. I could do strategy pretty well. But as far as operations, I wasn't very good. And my board, I put together an outside board in 86. In 1989, they were ready to fire me because they felt and they were right that I needed an operating head and I found the guy. He was at Sarah Lee, had been at PepsiCo, had been at Wilson's sporting goods, and he had been president since he was 49.

He had been a president of a company from the time he was 49 years old. Football player from Cornell. Okay. Yeah. You speak in my language? Yeah. And so we brought him in and he built the business from about $200 million to a billion in nine years.

Wow. And so after my last kid graduated from college, which was in 1980, 1990, 1995, we as a family sat down and said, okay, what do we want to do with this business? Anybody want to run it? And nobody wanted to. Really? Nobody wanted to. That's surprising. Well, I think they were intimidated.

Yeah. The business was quite big. We had 2,000 employees. and we're doing business in 70 countries. We're doing over a billion in sales. We had about 120 million EBITDA. And so that was a big operation. Yeah.

And they all wanted to chase their own dreams, their own passions. My son Michael had a dream of being a professional baseball player, but that didn't work out. So in my one son, Tim, he wanted to run his own business. And so he bought a company, and he's done well with it. So anyway, we decided then that, okay, nobody coming into business, what are we going to do? So we started looking at options, you know, going public, acquiring another business, selling.

About the time we're going through this process, we get a call from Dirk Yager, who was CEO, P&G. And unbeknownst to me, P&G was looking hard at the pet industry because pet food food. or pet supplies and food was a bigger category than soap and they were they started looking at this as a household item and this is a category of over 10 billion domestic and we're not in it and so he got him in the pet food business and we felt that was the best option for us to go because they didn't have a pet food business so therefore all the employees that I had they were going to need yeah and they

were a few that they didn't, but we had generous severances for everybody. And it was a good, it was a good deal. Do you, um, can you take us inside the negotiation? I, the reason I bring this up, I spoke with Todd Wagner and Todd started broadcast.com with Mark Cuban. And he, he took us inside the room when Yahoo bought him for, uh, $5.7 billion. And it was contentious at times, but they came to a good deal for everybody. Uh, what, what, was it like in the I'm just I don't even know what it would look like or who's in the room what are you talking about is there is a contentious is that you start high and then meet in the middle how does that work well in our case I mean we had an investment banker they had been talking to

other acquires and the merger opportunities a lot of different options so with P&G Dirk Yager called and said we'd like to come talk to you okay and I want to bring my top six C people, C level people. Sure. And we met with Mary and I and Tom McLeod, a couple people. And they presented their case of why we should sell to them. And everything that they proposed is what we had hoped for. So the negotiating was pretty simple.

We told them what our number was. They actually exceeded it. Wow. And I just told him I wanted a valuation with the 2B in front of it and ended up with 2.3. But it was very little hard negotiations going on at that point. What happens next? Because there's a lot in the news right now, unfortunately, about some of the tough things that happen to entrepreneurs when they sell, when they exit, depression, suicide, real challenges. is because the, I don't know if it's because the thrill of the build is not there anymore and

the money doesn't, doesn't fulfill any, they can buy boats and cars and houses, but it doesn't, that building stage is gone. And sometimes they try to build something else and it doesn't work. What was the, walk me through what happened next after you get this $2.3 billion for a sale. And now what? Well, in anticipation for a sale, we still. I started a family office because I knew that my family was going to need the expertise of legal, accounting, finance, investments. So we set up a family office. And once I sold a business, I just moved down the street. And I started running the family office, started building that organization for the future.

So I really didn't, and it was right down the street, and I had access to the people. people and a lot of people would still call me and ask for my advice and all that and it was just a really good feeling all the way around and I had plenty to do so there wasn't that feeling yeah and I've stayed busy ever since yeah and I what that year was 97 97 wow so then aileron has created when well I mean aileron started as the Center for Entrepreneur Education in 1994 okay we opened this facility about 10 years. Yeah. 2008.

Going on 11 years, 10 years. Gotcha. Yeah. And Aileron, so I saw this on your sign, a movable flap on the trailing edge of an airplane wing that gives lift and guidance to the airplane. And I assume that name's chosen for a reason. That makes sense. That's what we're doing. That's what we're trying to do.

Yeah. Give the lift and guidance to the business owner. Yeah. What made you want to start a place like this? because you could easily retire and have 50 houses and fly all over and travel and you decide to invest a lot of time here. I know you just mentioned that you're here a couple times a week in certain months that you also travel, but why?

Why do this? Well, as I said, I had debt to pay to a lot of my mentors who gave me a lot back in the days when I was struggling. And many of these guys, I used to say, you know, hey, how could I possibly repay you? And they all said, don't, you don't have to repay me, just pass it on. And so that's the whole philosophy of, I knew, too, that business owners needed education more than anything else. And we did a lot of surveys. I talked to a lot of business owners.

I talked to universities. That's the last place I would want to put this place, is that a university. city. Because that's not what they're looking for. They're looking for immediate help to a problem that they have right now. And most business owners that come to us come because they have some kind of a problem. And we have designed this place to be available and to be ready and to be prepared for their telling us of their problem. And most of these problems that we see here are problems we've seen before. Not the same problem, but very similar in many ways. And you're teaching, right? You teach presence? I do some lecturing at the presence course. I do some mentoring with some of the entrepreneurs who have some specific issues that they need some help with, primarily succession.

Okay. From one generation to the next. Yeah. Are those the common issues? What are some of the other common issues? Well, they're all, you know, it's very interesting. We watch businesses come through here, exceed. succeed.

They get, most of the entrepreneurs are in their 50s. Okay. They're making a lot of money. They look around what happened to time or what happened

to the little league baseball games and all the other things that we gave up. I've got kids that are turned off the business primarily because they never saw a dad for 15 years or 20 years. And so

what we can do is we can guide them a little bit into some with some consultants or some people who can help them think through this issue is really traumatic in many ways and we have the answers here if we don't have the answers here we will find them yeah it's funny i or interesting i talked to mike at this event mike and your son mike we did an event and i found it to be this this great combination of kind, confident, and very humble, which you never know what to expect the son of a billionaire. He could be the opposite of all of those things. And so it led me to believe that you guys have to have some sort of process for how you

parent. As a dad, I'm always interested in learning about this as well because I think there are a lot of similarities in parenting from a leadership perspective for your kids as there is in running a business. And you mentioned how some of these entrepreneurs are in their 50s. They have a lot of money, but then they never saw their kids. How did you? I was one of those. You were one of those? Absolutely. Really? I mean, I saw my kids, but not as much as I should have. So how, how did your kids turn out so good? They had a great mother. Yeah. So you made a wise choice and a spouse. Unbelievable. Yeah. The most important decision we all make, I think. I was, we've known each other.

for 60 years. Okay. He'd been married for 55 years. Wow. So I got lucky the first time. Wow. Yeah. Now, I, obviously, I mean, when I was home, though, I was home.

I wasn't out playing golf. I wasn't off playing tennis with my buddies. When I was home. Yeah. And that was important, too. You're present. Yeah. I was present.

You were present. But I traveled a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That's just part of the job. Part of the job. What are the keys to a great marriage? Trust.

How do you, how do you, you gotta like the person too? You gotta like the person. You gotta have trust, but like and trust. You gotta like hanging out with him. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I just, I felt that from, from Mike. So I think at any time I know, like raised in a faithful household too is important. Yeah. We had faith and our kids of all.

I think for the most part, they all go to church. Yeah. What do you think about sports? What do you think about sports for kids? I know Mike was a professional baseball player. I think it's great. Yeah.

I play sports, you know, all through high school. That's all I really cared about doing. Really? When I went to college, it was because I wanted to play basketball, not because I wanted to get an education. Yeah. But that soon taught me I better get an education because I wasn't going to make any money playing basketball. Yeah.

One of the things that you, you guys stress here I know at Aileron and you you Mike famously or Mike quoted you saying if if I had a hot dog stand I would have a board can you talk to me about the importance of why there's everyone should have a board well board sees things you don't see and especially if you have experienced board members they've probably been through a lot of the trials and tribulations that you're experiencing now. So that's, so, and having that, that overview and that strategic overview is, just something that you can't do yourself.

Yeah. You know, after you've been on that job for 10 years, 75% of all the problems that you're having in your business is because of you. And if you aren't willing to accept that, you can't move forward. And that's hard for business. owners, especially business owners that have made a lot of money. Some of the worst clients we have are the ones that need us the most. But they've made a lot of money and it's just like, who I need this for.

I can buy and sell this place out of my front pocket. It's just not about dollars and cents. Right. There's a lot of people listening who are individual contributors at a company, who are mid-level managers. And one of the one of the things I've learned after doing more than 260 of these conversations from from from really incredible leaders is the importance of a personal board of advisors. And you you already mentioned that you wanted to pay pay it forward based on the great mentorship that you had. How how how how what advice do you get to somebody who is in that

position not a business owner but then interviews or contributor maybe they have ambitions of starting their own business at some point. or they want to just progress within the business they're in as far as having mentors or any type of career advice for people in that space? Well, as far as having a personal board, I mean, all of my boards were private were actually, they're not formal boards. They were informal boards. Okay. Because look at it this way. You own all the stock.

You can do anything you want. Right. and there's no sense in having a vote. I never had a vote. And all the years I had a board, I never had a vote. Because if it came down to 5'4, I got to convince those other four, or at least two of those other four before I'm comfortable. And during that exercise, going through that exercise was tremendously valuable.

As far as senior executives, I just recommend mentors. You find them all over the place. business, a lot of corporate guys think that there aren't mentors out there, both privately owned and public guys, that would be willing to spend a little time with me, but that's not true. They would. All you've got to do is ask them. I have never, ever had anybody turn me down if I asked them to help me. Even when you were younger and earlier in your career?

Yeah, even when I do you handle it as a mentor yourself now? Because I would imagine you get. I anticipate questions. Okay. Start the conversation. You've got to start the conversation. You've got to build trust and mutual respect. Yeah.

And that's, then you go from there. Yeah. And is that, is that, is that, uh, make up a big portion of your days now? Are you mentoring a lot of people? How does that work? I don't know. I say make up. I, I, I would say that I probably spend two days a month.

Okay. With business owners. but you know some days it's some months it's more some months it's less yeah and you know I turn them over because if you know they're tired of hearing me talk we'll find somebody else for you you know and I find a lot of a lot of networking I help network from my data you know from my contact list I can help a person over here who happens to be in the trucking business for somebody's interested in logistics, put those two people together. Yeah.

And let them go. Yeah. You know. So what about culture? I know that was big. I was reading through your book, run your business. Don't let it run you. And about the importance of growing people and the importance of building your culture and being

very deliberate. Because I've learned the course of doing this as well that culture is just what is, what is real within your business. It's, it's there no matter what you. That's right. Or no matter what you do. Right. And so you have to be cognizant of that and think about that. So what was your approach to building the kind of culture as a place where people would want to go to work?

I build it so I could work in it. I had certain strange things about my management style. Strange things? Strange. What's strange? Well, I was probably involved with, I was probably promoting empowerment before it was popular. I just believe that most people do the right things for the right reasons if you put them in the right environment. And that's what we were trying to do is we were trying to do the right things for the right reasons.

If we were doing those things, even though we're making mistakes, we're making progress. The other thing that we build is the value of the individual. So important that you think highly of the individual. They treat them with respect, and they feel important. And every employee, I think, at a Heinz company, felt they were special, that they were important. And one of the reasons they did is because I got to see them at least once a year. Every single employee, no matter where it was in the world, I got to see them and shake hands with them once a year. And preferably with their families, with their spouses.

Really? Yes. So it just, I get this sense that you feel. that people are inherently good and just. They're inherently good and they're, they're productive. Yeah. I think of the bad bosses. Yeah, the bad bosses I've had and they are, they don't trust people.

They over the top micro management. The opposite of the people. Huge egos. Usually really insecure. Yeah. And I don't understand that, I guess. Because I think in the short term, there's a chance it could work. But long term, there's no chance that works.

And there's no, and you have probably high turnover as well. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. And it's not rocket science. Was this, was that rampant though when you were getting this empowerment movement going at IMS early? Or what was this, what was the landscape like at that time? Well, you know, when we first, we had the seven employees, it was based, it was based on the west side of Dayton over here.

Yeah. But we had, we had just average folks that came to work every day with a positive attitude. and what was interesting about that plant, we never closed that plant. We just made some changes in what we produced in that plant. But every year when we did our Attitude survey, Delphus Avenue plant, West Side of Dayton,

had the highest rating of any of the facilities we had around the world in terms of values. And it came from the founder, and I think myself being there on the ground every day, and we could demonstrate our values you had a front line obsession where you were you there in the meaning you're a part of it from for your whole career you felt like that yeah yeah yeah yeah uh I feel like that's a big deal when it comes to culture as I see their leader

who's with them well it's a big buzzword now culture you know oh yeah it's huge everybody's ever talking about culture but and it's not rocket science it's very difficult to shift your culture to the culture you want, and it's very difficult to maintain it on a day-to-day basis. Why? Because people come from different directions. Yeah. And you think they're clear about what you want,

but when you really bore down, they're really not sure. And they're not, in many cases, they're afraid to ask, or they're afraid to move outside their comfort zone. And see, you've got to make sure that if you let them move outside their comfort zone, you don't, you don't beat them to death if they make a mistake. See, that was the other thing, the right to fail. That was one of our values. Everyone should have the right to fail. That's easier said than done.

Yeah. Yeah. You've got to be able to live with the failures and learn. Well, is the owner or the leader willing to accept the failures? The employees will accept it if you'll accept it. Yeah. What about, so when you were in six or seven employees, I would imagine you're doing a bit of everything. Everybody probably is.

At some point, you shift to being a manager of people, right? And so there are a lot of people as well listening who I remember vividly when I made this jump from individual. I was in sales, an individual contributor to a manager. And I think I probably made hundreds of mistakes most are my fault from not seeking enough advice and just, you know, it was bad for a while. And I learned and got better eventually. But I'm curious for the person listening who's in the midst of making that jump, they desire to make that jump, maybe they've already made that jump a year ago, but they haven't had any guidance. What advice would you give to that person who's going from? individual contributor to now a boss, a manager.

Because leaders, anyone can lead. I don't think you need a title to be a leader, but a manager and a boss is different. It is part of a title of leading people. Well, I think the first thing you have to do is you have to accept the fact that management is a profession, as engineering is a profession, as medicine is a profession, as sales is a profession. But just because you're the best salesman doesn't mean that you're going to be the best sales manager. Many cases, it's not the best salesman that's the best sales manager. You know that from your sports experience. How many quarterbacks do you know, how many quarterbacks you know

that are professional or become NFL coaches. Yeah, it's usually the backup or the third stringer because they really need to understand everything just to hang on. Exactly. The star is more Jordan-esque where it comes a little bit more naturally and they're not a good coach. Right. Yeah. So it's the same thing. So you have to think about it.

All right, I'm going to become a manager now. Now the leader has got to understand that too. And we got to give you the skills. We just don't go ahead and go out there and cover the territory. No. No, you got to sit back and you got to think about strategically. what do I do first? What do I do second?

How do I build controls in place? All of those things. That's professional management. And we just don't train our people to go from hourly employee to supervisor or from salesman to sales manager or from an engineering department to a manager. Those are the tough ones. The first jump, I think, is it seems like the hardest. But when you go from an individual to now, you're managing people even harder than some of the other

Well, especially if you're managing your peers, your former peers. Which most people do. Sure. It's tough. Really tough. Yeah. Yeah. Do you, are those types of people as a part of your network that you're helping out? Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. What are some of the things that you tell them, like come to Aileron, take a class, find other mentors who've done it before you? Well, take the management course for presidents. That's the first one. And then your senior managers, we have a course for senior managers, very similar to the president's course.

we just call it senior management course, senior managers. And that's a two-day course. And the CEO course is a two-and-a-half-day course. Yeah, it takes the president's 40% longer to get it. Really? Why is that? I'm just kidding. What are some of the biggest mistakes those first-time managers make? Well, if they've never managed before,

And I like to think it's the supervisor first, then the manager. Okay. So the supervisor is the first line. The manager is managing through two or three levels. So what are the skills that a supervisor needs? And then what are the skills a manager needs? And we kind of skip over the supervisor. But that's the one where your competency needs to be developing others.

and your job is to develop others. That's your job. Not to continue to ring up sales and not to produce more stuff, but to manage through and develop others. And then the other thing you need to have as a supervisor is you need to manage spontaneity, responsiveness. You don't react. You proact.

And too many people when they become the supervisor, oh, this happened. Oh, my God. Put out fires. Yeah. And they hit the, he hit the, you know. How do you, how do you become a proactive leader? We have to learn that. Yeah.

You have to learn that. A good example of a proactive leader is a fire chief. You know, the fire chief, when the bell rings, he doesn't just get in the truck, right? What does he do? or she do. They look at where's the fire? What's the source of the fire? Why?

So I know what kind of trucks to send or so many people to go. Do I need a rescue squad or not? All that kind of stuff. That is management. So he's managing crisis. So I mentioned your book and I found it interesting

because you really focus on growing your people and you mentioned that before. and I think that seems to be the key. And we talk about that at Brickstein-Meyer. That's one of the values of taking care of our team members, growing each other. And I know my previous role as a VP of Sales at a big company in North America, and I tried to spend a lot of time doing skip-level meetings with individual contributors on their career development.

However, I was hit with resistance from leadership because of the fact of maybe disagreements in what your job really is. And I feel like as a leader of people, that is absolutely my job versus just worrying about the sales forecast or worrying about the next month. It's worrying about, right? I mean, so I feel like I love that aspect of your belief system. And I was talking with that before that, whether it's Joni or Cole or everybody here, that that's a true. You live that out at Aileron just like you did at IMS. And it seems just a life principle of yours. Well, in 84, we built the Ims University.

Yeah. And one of the reasons I built it is because my plants are becoming automated. And I wanted to automate my plants, but I didn't want to displace my people. Yeah. So we built IMS University to help them learn how to do, how to use a company. computer, how to run a computer in the operating floor, and also to help implement automation and every single one of those people that help basically eliminate their job. We found another job for them.

And in 1984, our productivity per employee, our sales dollars per employee was 150,000 in 1984. 1994. 1999, when we sold the business, our productivity for employee was 500,000. Wow. Through training and development of people. That's how we got there. Not by driving them, not by squeezing the budget, by teaching them. And the thing about it is, teach them the things that they want to know.

We had a fellow who ran our distribution operation in Kansas City, who all of a sudden one day said, I want to become a minister. Okay. We're going to help you become a minister. So we put our plans in place for him to exit after he had the opportunity, go to seminary, go to ministry school. And to this day, I think, he is still a minister in Kansas City, Missouri. And that, I mean, put people in a position that they're passionate about.

And they'll do great things. And I sense that what you're most passionate about are taking care of people and serving them. Teaching them, developing them, not necessarily taken care of them. I mean, that could be misconstrued. What do you mean? Well, you can't take care. You don't want to be totally in service. Okay.

Okay. But you certainly want to focus on what it is that they want to do. What is their dream? Matthew Kelly, we talked about Matthew Kelly. He wrote a book called Dream Manager. If you haven't read it, I recommend you read it. It's a terrific book about managing people's dreams. And that's really what we were all about, is managing your dreams.

And if your dreams do not include working the Einds company, we'll find something for you and get somebody in here who really loves the company, loves what they do. Yeah. There were some people that didn't like dogs and cats. How the heck do we hire those people? I don't know. Yeah. What the, let's fast forward to the day.

What's your day to day like now? What are some of the challenges you go through or is it how much work, how much family, how much fun or is it all together? How does it work? I do about anything I want to do. That's awesome. I am fortunate to have the resources to do just about anything I want to do. and some days it's nothing and some days it's a lot.

Yeah. And a lot of times in the morning, I don't know what I'm going to do, but by noon or afternoon I've got somebody who wants to have lunch or wants to have a cup of coffee or, you know, yeah, come over here and walk around and go down the cafe and see he's down there. Well, this, uh, and I think it's important. I think it's important that, you know, I'm walk around this place. Uh, at least my staff tells me that, It's important.

I enjoy meeting with the staff and talking to them about their business, about their future. And even though Nicole's going to get married next year, I try to talk her out of it. That's great. I wish I had a grandson that was of that age. That's great. Well, Clay, this place is beautiful. I again, I'm just so appreciative of you welcoming us here

Great to have you. Yeah, it's so nice that you have built this place for people to make things happen, to make an impact on the lives of leaders. And I know that you enjoy people who are willing to put up their own capital to create jobs for other people. I heard you say that many times.

That's an admirable thing that you're here to help those people make that happen. Well, we're happy. One dream for this, place yeah it will survive forever yeah that's my dream yeah I love it I I don't see how building it for building it forger's forever well I appreciate it one one more question I had so the the title of my show is the learning leader show and I I love that phrase because I think about the greatest leaders I've ever been

around and they have an intellectual curiosity about getting better about growing about improvement and you have to be a constant learner to be doing that and I'm curious when you heard that a guy reached out to you who runs a show called the learning leader show what was your thought on that specific phrase initially when you heard that yeah I like it um there aren't a lot of leaders that are not continuous learners yeah and over time they won't be good leaders yeah you've got to be continuous learners yeah um who are some of your favorite leaders My dad is probably, I would say, the first person that comes to mind, both as a husband,

a dad, and he was a business leader. He led a thousand person sales force for many years and just retired, but still active and giving talks and helping people consulting and doing a lot of things for people where I know that we don't even know about. But he's the first one that comes to mine, I would say, when it comes to a good model. And that's just a pure luck thing. Mike and I talked a little bit about that when we were talking about that. sometimes you just get lucky. And when you do, as I told him, I try not to mess that up. You know, you want to do the best with what you're given because we didn't really do anything to deserve that. And I'd rather be lucky than good. Really? Any day. What about both?

Sure. I'll take that. Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel, how much of your success do you feel is luck? Oh, how much is effort? 60%. 60% luck? Why? being at the right place at the right time. I mean, a simple example, Paul Einz told me about 10 years after I had been with him that if I hadn't had called him when we were in the interviewing process, if I hadn't called him, he'd never hired me. And I was lamenting about him not calling me when my wife told me. She said, well, call him.

Take up the phone call him. Yeah. Duh. Be proactive. I called him, he hired me over the phone. Wow. If I wouldn't have called him, he'd never hired me. And then what happens?

So then, yeah. So, I mean, how do you... The ripple effect of the people, it's incredible. I don't know many people who were non-family that ever ended up owning a company like this. I mean, it just doesn't happen. I was the hired gun You know

And how I ended up owning this thing was just Pure luck Wow So you know Don't get too carried away with You know how smart you are Good looking you are what a great You know this you are

It's about I don't know what you're what do you attribute your success How much of it is luck Well Like I said I was born into an incredibly lucky situation So that Without that, I just, my school district had great football coaches, which taught me how to work. So I had the luck of parents, the luck of coaches. Without that, I'm not a talented enough athlete to get a college scholarship, but I was able to because I had good coaches.

We were lucky at the time. So I would say a high, high percentage of it is based on a lot of good fortune. That's why I said, now it's on me not to mess it up and to try to build upon that and build on that. And realized, too, it helps me with perspective too. Like I talked to, I think of Maurice Claret. He got a lot of trouble after he played with my younger brother, Ohio State. And he's a good guy, but he made some terrible choices. But when I talked to him on this show, it gave me good perspective because his upbringing was the opposite of mine.

And there are a lot of people like that. And not that you should use that as an excuse, but I do understand perspective a lot better now after having talked to people like that. And it makes me not take it for granted. So I think that's a big part of it, too. do. So, well, thank you so much. One of the things that in your readers or your listeners, yeah, they need to think about the development, but they also need to think about how they're going to pass it on.

Yeah. Everybody is ultimately going to have to pass on something, right? I mean, your favorite watch, my favorite watch is going on my oldest grand dog, son. Okay, that's, that's, that's passing it on. Yeah. And a lot of your folks are middle line managers don't think about passing it on, but they need to start thinking about passing it on. And especially if you want to become a senior manager and you want to develop people

passing it on as part of that building the culture. Yeah. You know. And I think the true mark of a great, great leader is what happens when they're gone. Yeah. Well, how does a team perform when you're not there anymore? set it up properly when you were there for success, even more success when you're on. And I think the insecure one might say, oh, well, they're not going to be anything without me

there where the true excellent leaders are the ones that have a lot of pride and something you just said that like some Aileron will be, will go on forever and how the success of a team, of a place of whatever it is after they're not there anymore. They moved on to something else. They're not, they're not a part of it. So I love that. You brought that up. Yeah.

Thank you, Clay, so much for being here. Where would you send the people listening to learn more about Aileron? Learn more about you online. My website and aileron.org. And love to have you come out. Just come out and take a look. Yep. You have to sign up for a course.

But for the audio people, we have this on video too, but for the audio people, just the, it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life, truly. And I really give you massive credit for being so detailed in the thought. even the winding way that you drive in here. I know there's that's that's all for a reason. Journey. The journey to get in here and it seems nondescript until you're here and then you look in here and you think this place is incredible. Yeah. So it's really neat that you've done. Well, thanks for being here. I appreciate it. Thanks for having. Good luck with your your company. Thank you. Appreciate that good. All right. Thanks Clay. You're welcome. That was another one of those

surreal moments to have an hour long conversation with Clay and then we spoke for another 10, 15 minutes afterwards just to go even deeper on leading people. I just feel so lucky to get the opportunity to do this. And I thank you for giving me that opportunity. I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, I'd love it if you would write a review. Subscribe and rate the show in iTunes, Apple Podcasts.

That's write a review. Subscribe and rate the show, hopefully five stars in iTunes Apple Podcast. As you know, it helps spread the message to people all over the world. And that's what we're trying to do. Thanks again for giving me the show. opportunity continue to do what I love on a daily basis it's so much fun I love it all right see you guys next week can't wait