Tough Things First podcast

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المحتوى المقدم من Ray Zinn. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة Ray Zinn أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.

<div class="span index">1</div> <span><a class="" data-remote="true" data-type="html" href="/series/peak-travel">Peak Travel</a></span>

1
Peak Travel

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منذ 9 أياممنذ 9d ago

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Travel can do amazing things: broaden horizons, build relationships, and rejuvenate the soul. But often, those experiences come at a cost. This is Peak Travel, a new podcast from WHYY about how travel shapes communities in hot-spots around the world. We’ll share the wonder that comes with exploring new places, as well as the harm that our worst travel habits can cause. And we’ll try to figure out how we can do it better. Each episode transports you to a new destination. You’ll meet the people who call that place home, hear their stories, and come to understand how tourism has changed their everyday lives. Supported by rich, on-location sound from around the world, Peak Travel unpacks the $1.9 trillion travel industry and its impact on people and the planet.

Tough Things First

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Discipline, servant leadership, entrepreneurial success

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#Marketing #Ray Zinn #Business #Entrepreneur

Tough Things First

302 subscribers

updated منذ 7 أيام

منزل السلاسل•Feed

Discipline, servant leadership, entrepreneurial success

84 حلقات

#Marketing #Ray Zinn #Business #Entrepreneur

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Tough Things First

1
Comparing Yourself to Others. 9:21

منذ 7 أيام9:21

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9:21

Do we live in a culture that promotes comparisons to others? Is it jealously, envy? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn says keeping up with trends may be healthy, but keeping up with the Jones’s may be a problem. Rob Artigo: I recently read a quote where the writer said he had not met a person on the planet who did not compare themselves to others. He pointed out that we live in a society that perpetuates comparison at every turn, from social media and magazines to commercial ads and perhaps even the car sitting in the driveway at the neighbor’s house. It’s almost impossible not to find a potential trigger of comparison right in front of your eyes. That was authored. Davin Salvagno wrote at length about it. So first, do you agree that we live in a society that perpetuates comparison at a return? Ray Zinn: Yes and no. We look at hairstyles, we look at clothing styles, we look at car styles, whatever. We do kind of follow along with the trend, and so that’s a comparison, as you would, because we’re looking at how others are dressing, how others are doing their homes. I remember we used to, when I was early, young, married, we had a shag carpet and no one has a shag carpet today or- Rob Artigo: Yeah, that’s true. I remember those. Ray Zinn: Yeah, or the kind of furniture that we have, we try to stay up-to-date with what’s trendy, as you would. Rob Artigo: That’s Keeping Up with the Joneses’ scenario. Ray Zinn: That’s the other part of the topic. Okay? Rob Artigo: Okay. Ray Zinn: So, we’re talking about now how we do a comparison other than Keeping Up with the Joneses. So it’s not necessarily Keeping Up with the Joneses in the sense of the word that we’re going to talk about next, let’s just talk about comparing ourselves with the trends. In other words- Rob Artigo: Gotcha. Ray Zinn: … we want to make sure we’re not wearing the wide tie if the narrow ties are in or we make sure we’re not doing a pompadour hairdo if more of the short hair or whatever kind of haircut. The big style right now is beards on men. I’ve never had a beard, and so when I do the comparison, I compare myself to myself, this is who I am. I don’t wear a beard, and so I am not a beard-type guy. I’m not mocking at people who do have beards, I’m just saying that’s not my thing, but that’s a comparison again. I’m not comparing me against them. I’m comparing myself against myself. That was my goal. My desire is to not have facial hair, and that gets us into the second part of our topic is how we compare ourselves against the Joneses. So if you’re trying to keep up with the Joneses, that’s a different part. That requires a different view. That’s called envy, E-N-V-Y. Envy that’s the part of it, and that’s the negative part of comparison. If we’re comparing ourselves against the Joneses, then we’re being envious because now we’re just trying to up one, be better than somebody else, the bigger car, the bigger house, the whatever, the fancier this, the fancier, oh, I got this, I got an airplane. You just drive around a little Volkswagen or whatever. Those are the bad kinds of comparisons where we are comparing ourselves against the Joneses. I’m opposed to that. I like to stay up-to-date, but I’m not comparing myself against the Joneses. I’m just looking at the trends and trying to stay within the trends. Now, some of them I like, some of them I don’t like, so I’m not a, what you would say is I’m not necessarily a full-blown trendy. I don’t go along with everything, all the trends that are. I do the ones that I want to go along with. Again, I’m comparing myself to myself. What do I want? What’s my goal? What do I like to be like or look like? So again, the comparison should not be against the Joneses. The comparison should be against who you are and who you want to be. That’s the main goal. Rob Artigo: The style thing is a perfect example, but also if you are one of those people who compares themselves to others’ levels of success, you can say, “Look, that’s what I would like to achieve,” that’s a good kind of comparison in the area that you were talking about versus, “I envy that person because they’re doing it, but yet I’m not doing anything to achieve that level of success.” Right? Ray Zinn: Yeah. If you’re out there trying to impress people and how great and how wonderful you are, how beautiful or handsome or whatever, that’s doing it for the wrong reason. The right reason is comparing yourself to what you want to be, not comparing yourself to others and trying to beat your chest and say how wonderful or great you are, “Oh, I went to Harvard,” or “I went to Stanford,” maybe you went to San Jose State, like I did. I don’t look down on that. I looked at it as great, but I know others, “Yeah, where’d you get your degree?” “Oh, I went to Harvard. I went to Stanford, or I went to Berkeley,” or whatever. That’s the wrong kind of approach. Again, you have to look at where you want to be compared to where you’re going and what you want to accomplish. Rob Artigo: You look at the titles on what people put on their walls behind their desks and that’s one thing that’s establishing your credit, if you will, your credibility and also displaying something that you’re proud of, but it’s a different thing to, in conversation, put somebody else’s degree down because it wasn’t an Ivy League degree or something like that. Just ends up being, it reflects poorly on you. Ray Zinn: Yeah. I think that’s the key is that if you’re hanging your shingle up just to impress others, then you’re doing it for the wrong reason. You were trying to impress yourself, not impressing others. Compare yourself to yourself, here I am, here’s where I want to be, and here’s where I’m going, as opposed to, “Oh, so-and-so is accomplishing this, so-and-so is accomplishing that. Look at this leader or that leader and what they managed to have accomplished” whether you’re the richest man in the world like Elon Musk or whether you’re the President of the United States like Donald Trump, don’t do that comparison. Look at where you are and where you’re going. Maybe you’re just a hairdresser or maybe you work as a clerk in a grocery store. If that’s where you want to be, if that’s where you’re headed, then great, but don’t compare yourself to Donald Trump or to Elon Musk. Try to be who you want to be, not be who you thought somebody else is. Rob Artigo: Yeah. Toughthingsfirst.com, that’s where the listeners need to go if they want to continue the conversation. Comments and questions are welcome there. Follow Ray on X and Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and as you’ve been told, the Zen of Zinn series is also available, and that’s one, two and three on sale now, The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn: 10 Skills, Attributes and fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.…

Tough Things First

1
Goals Need Plans or They’re Just Pipe-dreams 8:50

منذ 15 يومًا8:50

8:50

You may have heard that a failure to plan is nothing more than a plan to fail. Ray Zinn puts his hard earned life experience out there and proves what you get if you fail to plan is a pipe-dream and surefire disappointment. Rob Artigo: Good to be back. You have a series of books. You have Zen of Zinn one, two and three, and I picked up Zen of Zinn one and went to page 110, and I found this particular writing, which I thought was interesting. It was thought-provoking and I thought made a worthy podcast. You wrote, “The difference between a goal and a plan is that a goal is what we want to accomplish, and a plan is the way we accomplish the goal. Many of us have goals, but no plan to accomplish their goals. A goal without a plan is just wishful thinking.” And also you’ve said, and you wrote in your book, The Essential Leader, “That a goal without a plan is not a plan.” Ray Zinn: They call it a pipe dream, Rob. Rob Artigo: Yeah. Where does this come from? I mean, we’re in business and various leadership roles and throughout our lives we had to do different things, but the goal changes at times. The way to achieve the goal doesn’t change, right? Ray Zinn: That’s interesting. Let’s just go back to when I started my company. So my goal was to run my own company. That was my goal. I mean, I wanted to start a company to see if I could make it successful, and so that was my goal. But then I said, “Okay, so now what kind of company do I want to found, do I want to start?” And so I tried about three or four different things to start my company. So my plan was then to get it started and to come up with a product. So I did that. That one didn’t work out. So then I scrapped that one and I went to another one and that one didn’t work out. And I said, “Scrap that one.” As I said, I tried four different approaches before I got one that really was successful. You would say, “Well, wow, your goal was to start a company and you did that, but your plan evidently wasn’t all that successful because you had to do four different companies before you got one that worked.” Well, that’s the way sometimes things work. If I married the first girl I dated, I’d be a polygamist today. So we do things by trying. If you just have a goal without an effort to try to do something that becomes, like I said, a pipe dream. In other words, you’re just wishful thinking. Even though it may not be successful, you want to move forward, you want to set forth an effort that will result in you either learning that that’s not a good one or that is a good one, and so that you can build on it. When I started those four companies, I thought each one of them was going to be a success. Just like when I said dating again, I thought my first date, that’s the girl I’m going to marry kind of thing. But I’ve dated hundreds of girls, and so you find out that not necessarily the first girl you date is the one you’re going to marry. And so it’s the same thing with starting a company. You might find out that the first company you start is not necessarily the one you’re going to marry. I kept trying and trying and trying, and then I finally ended up with one that I could bring forth success. Rob Artigo: Well, yeah, you’re talking about in business, in jobs, in life, so in managing your life, goals are everything. And then having a plan, and you had a plan going into, as you were getting older, aging into your late teens and you’re thinking about dating, you’re planning on your future. You had an idea of what you were going to do. You were going to date and find your way, but you were not going to settle for anything but what you really, really wanted. And so your goal was established with your plan, which was to make sure that you didn’t make a mistake and marry the first person that you met. Ray Zinn: Well, I’ve been married for 64 years and so that took some effort to bring it together, but I finally found the right combination and that turned out to be successful. When I started Micrel, same thing. I didn’t know that we were going to last 37 years as a company, but I kept working at it and it became a success over time. Whereas the other three companies that I started, we could call them a divorce actually, as you would because I divorced myself from that idea and moved on to another one. So it doesn’t mean that just because you’re not successful in your first idea, your approach means you’re not going to be successful in the long run. The whole purpose of this podcast is to talk about turning your dreams into a reality. Turn your dreams into a reality, so that becomes a success, whether it’s your first marriage, your second marriage, hopefully not more than two. You want to turn that relationship into a long-lasting one. Thank goodness I only been married once and married for 64 years, so that turned out to be successful, but I wanted it to succeed. Did we have any bumps in the road and any times when we thought we were upside down? Yeah, sure. But we overcome them. We straighten them out and move forward because we’re human and we make mistakes and we have to recover from those mistakes. Rob Artigo: I think that attitude that you just described there is a good thing to have built into any plan, whether it’s for business or in life, is that be ready to expect ups and downs and the things that might help you survive those dips, if you will, right? Ray Zinn: Well, and have the ability, for example, if you started a company that was going to take more money than you had then you obviously didn’t plan very well because you have to look at what you can afford as you move forward, whether it be a wife or a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, you got to make sure you can afford what you’re going to do. And so taking off in a business venture without sufficient funds to see it to completion, that’s stupidity. So again, make sure you have the wherewithal to accomplish the goal that you’ve set for yourself. Rob Artigo: Thanks, Ray. Great conversation. And the listeners can join us at toughthingsfirst.com if they have questions or comments. Please follow Ray on X and on Facebook and also LinkedIn and check out Ray’s books, Tough Things First and the Zen of Zinn series one, two, and three, and on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader Thanks, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.…

Tough Things First

1
The Essential Leader Book Launch! 16:29

منذ 23 يومًا16:29

16:29

A lifetime of leadership experience wrapped in an entertaining and informative read. Join Tough Things First for the official launch of The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn, 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up The Essential Leader. ( Watch the Video Podcast ) Rob Artigo: I’m Rob Artigo, former Bay Area Radio Personality and your host for this edition of The Tough Things First podcast. Here with me once again is Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley history. Today we understand the Essential Leader. This is a special podcast in more ways than one, it’s a video podcast. The link is at toughthingsfirst.com. Today is the day we announce Ray Zinn’s newest book, fresh Off the presses, The Essential Leader, 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up The Essential Leader. Congratulations, Ray. This book really turned out great. Ray Zinn: I think it’s one of the most important books that I’ve ever written. Rob Artigo: In this podcast I’ll read a couple of excerpts from it. We’ll talk about Greg who did the forward and just sort of discuss the book. But today we understand that this book is available at all retailers. It is available in digital and print form, and we’re happy to have you read it and we hope you will. So what inspired you to write about leadership in this way? I mean, The Essential Leader, that’s promising a lot and it delivers. Ray Zinn: Well, the whole subject of leadership has been written about forever. I mean, going all the way back to the time of Christ. I mean, who is my mind the greatest of all leaders. Unfortunately, leaders are looked upon as being not so good. Other words, they’re looked upon in a negative way. Whether you’re a corporate leader, or a political leader, or international leader, whatever your role is as a leader it’s not necessarily viewed in a positive light. So I decided to write about the essential leader, being not just leading, but what are the essential aspects and attributes of a good leader? So I worked on that. I have spent months looking at and thinking and reading about what is essential to be a good leader. So that’s what prompted me to write the book. Rob Artigo: Also it was a while back, it was a few years ago, but what we did a podcast series a little bit shorter than what’s in this book on being the essential leader. A lot of those ideas came from that. I mean, we culled it from various aspects of things that we’d covered in podcasts and said, why don’t we take one of these and make a chapter out of it? You came up with some really good ideas. I’m just going to flip through to, let’s see, where the chapters are and I’ll just give you a couple of them. So you talk about sound judgment, which I’ll have a quote from here shortly. But you talk about the concept of try, try again and you have a twist on that. How you carry yourself, what you wear is really important and valuable as far as people deciding whether or not they want to follow you. You had some really cool ideas. One of them was on re-thinking micromanagement because that has been something that, like people in leadership not being viewed in high esteem, you have people who have varying attitudes or opinions about micromanagement and you say, hey, look, it’s really about managing by walking around. That’s micromanaging in a way where you’re there but you’re not really micromanaging. Ray Zinn: Well, this whole concept of micromanagement has a negative connotation, it doesn’t need to be. Micromanagement, if you don’t look at the small things, at the details, the large things are going to become a problem. So micro means small. Okay? That’s what micro means, or tiny. So you want to look out for the tiny things because the tiny things are the ones that kill you. Those are the ones we tend to overlook. The things that we tend to not really reflect on or try to do anything about because we’ll say, “Oh, it’s such a small thing, it’ll take care of itself,” but they don’t. Small things become big things. It’s like a leak in your radiator, it’ll become a big thing ultimately. Micro, being small, and managing being managing the small things as well as the large things, it’s often viewed that leaders are looking at the big picture. Well, you got to look at the small picture too, not just the big picture. That keeps you focused on the objectives of the company, what you’re trying to accomplish to become a successful company. I turned the negative aspects of micromanaging into a positive and that was the purpose of that chapter. Rob Artigo: Yeah, I mean you’re really saying when you walk around and find out what are the small things that are happening to the people who are on your staff, you understand what they’re going through and their experiences and you can help them address those things so that they’re more productive and more creative or they’re better sales people or whatever the case may be. You also have here, fortunately, and I want to remind people, this is the book launch video for The Essential Leader and it’s Ray Zinn’s new book out today, everywhere in print and digital if you’d like to grab it. Greg McCown- Ray Zinn: McEwen. Rob Artigo: McEwen, I mispronounce his name all the time. Terrific endorsement from him, “Participating in this is really cool.” He’s written some books himself and widely regarded as a pretty smart guy. That must have been pretty interesting to get him on. Ray Zinn: Oh yeah. I mean, Greg’s a friend of mine, but he’s also a Stanford grad and very knowledgeable in business. Also he’s done podcasts and written extensively. He actually has a book called Essentialism, which is kind of interesting because essentially the same thing as what I’m talking about, the essential, what are the essential aspects of leadership. He talks about what’s the essential aspects of living your life, focusing on the key aspects of existence as opposed just to just let come what may as you would, or reacting to everything rather than only reacting to the things which are essential. That’s kind of where he was headed, and when I wrote about the Essential Leader and doing the same thing, what are the essential aspects of being a good leader? When I became listed as Silicon Valley’s longest serving CEO, I reflected on that. I didn’t know I was going to get that honor. Then when it was put out and published, I reflected on it. I says, that’s interesting. Why am I the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley? Because Silicon Valley is one of the most well-known places on earth. I mean, I don’t know of anyone in a civilized nation that doesn’t know where Silicon Valley is or what Silicon Valley is. So here I am living and being a CEO in probably the hotbed of technology and probably one of the best known places on earth, and here I am the longest serving CEO. It really boils down to my style of leadership. That’s what we cover in the book is, how do you become a long serving CEO? Most CEOs don’t serve for more than five years, that’s the average. So I’ve served nearly 40, and so that’s like eight times what the average CEO serves. So I said, okay, how do I do that? What allows me then to become the longest serving CEO? That’s what’s covered in the book is my experience and what it takes to be able to have longevity, to be able to have that tenure as a CEO. Rob Artigo: Yeah, you have a way in this book about conveying some stories where you talk about historical figures and how they play into the idea of how people view leadership and there’s good leadership and bad leadership, and you also attribute your success not to just your own ability to get things done, but that you place so much emphasis on the people who work for you, the teams that are there. You have one whole chapter called Inspiring Passion, and it says, “If you do not have passion, you have a hole in your leadership, and that’s specific to the essential leadership of the essential leader. If the essential leader doesn’t have passion, certainly not essential.” You said, “I used to say, if that was the case, you might as well just roll over and bury yourself. That means you can just hang things up right there in business or anywhere else for that matter. If you don’t have passion and you can’t inspire that in your teams, then you might as well forget it.” Ray Zinn: Absolutely. It’s our passion that bleeds over to others that inspires them to want to be the best of the best, of the best. They talk about good, better, best. I mean, to do that you need to be passionate about what you’re doing because that becomes the hallmark of a successful company is the passion of that company. If I look at Intel Semiconductor, who was formed in 1967, I think it was, and I started my company in 1978, Intel was considered the greatest on earth. I mean Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore, and those folks that started Intel were my idols at Fairchild, when I worked at Fairchild. So they put together a very wonderful team of people and a passion like you wouldn’t believe, it was a real passion with the people that worked at Intel. But over the years, Intel has kind of lost their way. I think they’ve lost their passion, honestly, Rob. I mean that passion has disappeared. I saw it happening in the early ’80s is where I saw Intel’s passion kind of drift, and they became less and less of a factor in the semiconductor industry. I’m hoping they’ll find their passion back because that says who they are. We often talk about Steve Jobs and Apple, and I remember how that company started out and it was a nobody. I mean, they had difficulty even getting underway. Then once they got themselves going and Steve Jobs was able to inculcate that passion in Apple, it began to flourish. Then in about 1995, Steve left Apple and Apple began to lose their passion because the passion was Steve Jobs, and then he went off and did something else, and then Apple’s passion drifted and it lost its purpose. It wasn’t until Steve came back several years later that that passion came back to Apple. Now look Apple’s one of the most highest rated companies in the world. So passion has to be from the leader. So that’s why we talk about in that chapter of Essential Leader, of how important passion is, because without passion, you’re nothing. Rob Artigo: Yeah. You talk at length about when we knew that Steve Jobs was going to pass away he created a secession plan so that he could pass things off. He found the right guy and the right guy …. Every step of the way the right guy follows him because he’s inspired passion in them and he knows that they have the ability to inspire passion in others. This book, which again is The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn, terrific book about these aspects of leadership, also areas of knowledge that you need to get your hands on in order to be the essential leader. I mean, everybody wants a good leader. People hope to get a great leader, but the essential leader is he/she is in the realm of a needle in a haystack. I mean, you also talk about women in leadership in this book, and you say sometimes they’re even better and more qualified than their male counterparts to do things. That’s really cool too. We expect women will want … Young women too. I mean people in college age who are in business want to get MBAs or whatever the case may be, or just be entrepreneurs and start businesses. This is a terrific book. There’s no other place where you’re going to get this. Also, it’s not like it’s a big 300, 400, 500 page book. It cuts to the chase. It has really succinct messaging in it and it’s very clear. Ray, is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up our special podcast here on the book launch? Ray Zinn: Well, I think if you want to become an essential leader, and I mean that sincerely from the bottom of my heart, you need to get this book. It will help you understand what it takes to be the longest serving CEO. Rob Artigo: Great way of ending it right there, Ray. So that’s The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn available on all major book platforms. It’s in paperback, but also digital if you want to get it. Check it out on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other platforms, we hope you will. Ray, you’re fond of telling people to make sure, at each one of these platform, wherever they buy the book, they should rate the book so that we understand how their reaction to it and we can gauge what to do in the future. Ray Zinn: Exactly. Thank you very much, Rob.…

Tough Things First

1
Immigration and Robotics 10:50

منذ 6 weeks10:50

10:50

The question often heard is who will pick our produce under tighter immigration enforcement? Maybe the question that aught to be asked is when will humanoid robots be doing that job? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn tells us the one constant is change. Ray Zinn: Hi, Rob. Rob Artigo: Well, I’ve heard this repeated frequently, and maybe you have as well, the often heard quote, “Who will pick our crops if migrants are sent home?” Now, we’re not anti-immigrant or migrant here at Tough Things First. That’s not the point here. The point is, now the replacement of those workers has already been going on for many years, and that’s bound to accelerate, don’t you think? Ray Zinn: Yes. Back in the ’50s when I was working for my father, we had a cattle ranch and a feedlot, I should say cattle feedlot, and we would feed the cattle with hay and grain and so forth. Back in the day, we would hire these migrants. They would come over the border, but they would go home at night, but they would come over and work during the daytime to help take care of the cattle, to clean the corrals and to walk and clean their drinkers and also to feed them. And we used to feed them with pitchforks and bags of grain. That’s the way we used to feed them. But then we wanted to improve the growth of the animal so it would fatten up faster. And so we built a mill and we used to grind the hay and then a mix of feed with the grain with the hay and mix it with a little molasses, which was very tasty for the cattle. And then it would be delivered in a truck with an auger that would dispense the feed into the troughs. And that concerned our migrants because they used to do that by hand. In other words, that was what they did. They would kind of chop up the hay and mix the grain with the hay and so forth. But it was very inefficient and it wasn’t very productive, and the animals didn’t do as well as it did when we improved the automation. And my dad reassured them that, “Oh, we used to love the job. There’s still things to be done.” And we found other ways that we could help employ their efforts rather than feeding the animals. And it was very effective in getting them to understand because to make the feed, we had to have people loading onto the conveyor. We had to have them cut the strings on the bales, and then they had to operate the batcher, which is the weighing device that weighed the hay and then dispenses the grain and somebody had to load the bins. And I said, “So you didn’t lose your job. Your job changed. So it’s a job change rather than losing it.” And so when we talk about the who’s going to pick our fruit, if it is automated, somebody’s going to have to operate those automated systems. Granted, they’re going to have to change. The migrants that were working at my dad’s feedlot, they had to learn how to run the hay grinder or chopper and how to operate the mixers and so forth. They had to learn how to do that. And they didn’t have that skill set before, but they had to be taught. So when you talk about who’s going to pick our crops, if it’s automated, somebody’s going to have to manage that. You’re not going to get rid of humans just because you automate. Rob Artigo: That’s a fascinating story because we had talked about how much automation is going on with running cattle in Mexico right now. Very large cattle organizations that are being almost entirely run by some kind of machine. So harvest automation has been going on for a long time. In the Central Valley of California, for example, they have machines that run up and down and pick grapes and nuts off of trees and fruit and all kinds of things now, which is something that used to be done by hand. But now we have humanoid robots that are coming online, and so they’re working in warehouses and they’re doing other things. These are, I’m sure, very expensive. Maybe one day they’ll be less expensive. The headline that caught my attention this week, China Launches center to train 100 plus humanoid robots simultaneously. And it says, “Training its future workforce one robot at a time.” And that caught my attention because I thought, “Well, wait a minute, if you have to… I don’t know if you’d ever get to where if a robot does the work of 10 people because it never needs to take a break. Does that cost end up being the replacement of somebody who is a low skilled sort of manual labor type of position?” Ray Zinn: Well, China is the most populous nation, either that or India is the most populous nation in the world. And most of those people are doing manual type labor and not operating sophisticated computers and so forth. Just like in the case of my father’s place, it costs a fortune to put in that mill that ground the hay and the batchers and the mixtures and all that stuff we had to put in. And that was to help reduce the cost of fattening up an animal. There’s no way a human could do that task. And so we had to use machinery to do it, but then there are half the people operate the machinery. And the same thing in the case of when we go from people doing it manually to humanoids robots. Back in the day, Adam Smith was a well-known author. He talked about the differentiation of labor. I don’t know if that’s the exact title, but it’s something like that. Divisional labor, that’s what it’s called. Divisional labor. And that was back in the 1700s when the locomotive became into being. And we had other things that were automated back in the 1700s. And that was a big concern that Adam Smith talked about was the division of labor. And you can read about that. This has been a concern of humans since the beginning of time is having humanoids or robotic or mechanical ways of accomplishing tasks. And as I said, you can read about that. You can pick up the book. It’s been written… It’s been one of the most read books in history is The Wealth of Nations, I guess that’s the title of it. And so this is nothing new. We’ve been talking about this in our country since the 1600s. We just have to live with the fact that automation is to improve our lives. It’s not to take away jobs or to eliminate labor. It is to help us improve. We improve through automation. And so I look at this as being a godsend to the average employee and not something where they’re going to cause them to lose their job. They may change the way they do their work. In other words, they’ll have to be taught as China does with somebody’s got to teach those humanoid robots. But it’s to make it more efficient. It’s not to eliminate people’s jobs. It’s to make the process more efficient and make it more available to more people. Rob Artigo: You’re talking about China’s workforce is because of the one child policy in China, you have a shrinking… You have an aging workforce and no replacement for them. And that’s happening in a lot of places like in the US where you’re going to need those extra workers to get things done because you’re not having people have a lot of kids unfortunately. I think that’s really unfortunate that we’re not replacing ourselves. But that’s a story for another day. Ray Zinn: But again, manual labor. Manual labor is a misnomer. It’s kind of like in computers, manual labor, I used to write my emails with my hand and a pen and a piece of paper, but now I type on a keyboard, so that’s still manual. Granted, I’m not long handing my emails and I’m not sending them out through the postal service. And now I typing them on a keyboard and then getting them sent out via the internet, but that’s still manual. I’m still having to do something manually. And so you’re not going to get rid of manual labor. There’s going to be manual… There’s no such a thing as total elimination of manual effort. So manual effort, you may change the way you do it, but it’s still manual. Rob Artigo: Interesting topic, Ray. Very, very interesting topic. I’d invite the listeners to go to toughthingsfirst.com to check out more podcasts. You can also offer your questions there. If you have comments, those are welcome as well. Follow Ray on X and on Facebook and LinkedIn and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, the original, and as you heard, Zen of Zinn I, II, and III. On sale now, the Essential Leader by Ray Zen, 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.…

Tough Things First

1
Fear of Competition or Just Lazy? 9:45

منذ 7 weeks9:45

9:45

Competition is a wonderful and important aspect of success, but some people recoil in horror over how it forces them to be proactive. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explores the reasons why we need to embrace our competitive nature. ( Video Podcast ) Rob Artigo: Good to be back. This is a special edition of the podcast. It’s on video, so if you are listening to it and you want to watch it, you can go to toughthingsfirst.com, find the link to this podcast and then right next to you it’ll say, “Click here if you want to watch the video,” and you can do that. And vice versa. If you happen to be watching it or you found us on YouTube, you can switch back and find the audio-only version. So you can listen or watch. It’s up to you. So Ray, one thing that came up recently was something that you wrote and you’d sent me in an email and it basically laments the idea that competition is a wonderful and important thing. This musing is fantastic because some people are afraid of competition and some people aren’t. So this is what you wrote. “Competition is a wonderful and important aspect of success. The main reason some hate competition is because they have to improve and this takes extra effort.” So you also make the point, “To embrace competition like it… You got to embrace competition,” I’m misreading this, “to embrace competition like it was a loved one.” So if you do that, you’ll be the better for it. So tell me a little bit about why competition helps drive you to success. Ray Zinn: It really is the hallmark of what causes us to become better people is competition. I know that it sounds like a dirty word because we have to compete against someone and that takes effort, but we look at all the sports events that happened, football, basketball, baseball, hockey, whatever, and those are all competitions and we enjoy watching competitions. But how many of us like to participate in it? It’s because it’s tough. I mean, a professional athlete, it’s difficult. They have to prepare, they have to work at it. I remember Jerry Rice when he was a neighbor of mine and played for the 49ers, I mean, he would practice twice as long as other people, other athletes. Because to become the best, you really have to put forth a lot of effort. And I guess basically we’re lazy and we don’t want to have to put out that much effort to become better. We like it to be handed to us. But you can’t refine yourself by accident. I mean, refining takes work. It’s like hardening steel. It’s a process. I mean, when we talk about hardening, you harden steel to strengthen it. So to harden ourselves is to strengthen ourselves, but we have to have a purpose. A competition has to be there to drive us to do that. And that’s why I said you got to love competition, love it like a loved one, and embrace it so that it becomes the hallmark of who you are. You invite competition, you want it. It’s endearing. You just can’t stand to be without it. That’s the way you should look at competition. Rob Artigo: Well, you’ve always recognized the importance of competition here. And in your decades with Micrel as CEO, you seem to always have this policy that if you’re producing a product, it’s being manufactured and it’s going to go to market, it’s on its way, well, you’re already products ahead in development because you know that if you don’t do it, the competition is going to do it and you’ll be behind. Right? Ray Zinn: Well, staying ahead of the competition is, I don’t care what sport you’re in, you don’t want to wait till the fourth quarter to score all your points. You want to get off to a good start. And so you got to look ahead. Don’t be complacent about your competition. I mean, they’re there, they’re real, and they’re going to eat your lunch if you don’t get ready for them. So having that forward-looking view of competition and how if you don’t take care of your customer, somebody else will. You got to be out there. Don’t be complacent about your competition and where you see your product or service. Rob Artigo: Yeah, it’s like the corporate level or the big level there in business is that the best offense is a good offense. It’s different than the thinking in sports. Going back to the individual, the micro level, and you’d see that the status quo is not progress. I mean, if you really want to look at yourself as an individual, if you aren’t performing to compete, you’re going to leave yourself behind and eventually everything will just pass you up. Ray Zinn: It’s called performing at the highest level. I don’t care what you’re doing, whether you’re washing dishes or whether you’re vacuuming the floor or out there designing another product, you want to be at the top of your game. Do everything you do at the highest level with the way you dress, the way you talk, the way you eat, the way you interact with others. You want to be at the highest level and that keeps you at your peak performance. Rob Artigo: And if you’re at your peak performance, we’ll wrap it up with this, if you do all the work, like you were talking about Jerry Rice, he worked twice as hard as everybody else and he was twice as good as most people. So it just stands to reason that you get that result. But Jerry Rice dropped passes. The team lost games sometimes. I believe he was on multiple Super Bowl teams, including when they went to the championship, the 49ers that is, went to the championship game and didn’t make it to the Super Bowl that year. You win some, you lose some, but being the best and accepting the good with the bad, hey, you’re golden right there, right? Ray Zinn: Well, losing is not a loser. Some people say if you lose, you’re a loser. That’s not true. Losing is not necessarily being a loser. Losing is learning. They both start with L. And so I like to learn through losing because I overcome, I change things, I mix things up and so that I learn from my losing. So don’t think of losing as a loser. Losing is part of competition. It’s part of becoming better at what you’re doing. So just because you lose doesn’t mean you’re a loser. Rob Artigo: Thanks, Ray. You can join the conversation, folks, at toughthingsfirst.com. This has been a special edition of the Tough Things First Podcast, which you can find there at toughthingsfirst.com and also on Ray’s YouTube channel. Your questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray Zinn on X-Twit, as I like to call it, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and as you know, the Zen of Zinn 1, 2, and 3 and on sale now is The Essential Leader, this one right here behind me, 10 Essential Attributes and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.…

Tough Things First

1
Unhappy Workers. It’s not them it’s YOU. 11:52

منذ 8 weeks11:52

11:52

What makes a good employee bury their face in their hands and under-perform? Ray Zinn says it’s not a mystery. Not to them. But to the leadership? Crickets. Rob Artigo: Ray, got this message from you the other day, I love this story you told, about recently going to get some medical tests. And you met some medical techs who left you thinking about job satisfaction. So, tell us about this experience, and then we’ll break out from that and talk a little bit about some of the likely causes. Every business person really needs to understand this stuff. This is a competitive job market. Ray Zinn: Well, this was an interesting one. In fact, I didn’t know we were going to do this podcast, and so it surprised me. But I was in getting some tests run, some blood work, some CT scans, some x-rays and stuff, and just the typical… Not typical, but things you do when you’re having a medical problem and you want to understand what’s going on. So, I just thought I’d ask when I was getting my CT scan, I’d ask, these are very young, but very professional techs that were running the CT scan lab. And I thought I would just ask him how… Typical, the way Ray Zinn [inaudible 00:01:21], I’m very passionate about people, employees, and work, and how companies manage their people. And so I just said, “Hey, how do you like your job?” And I thought they would come back, “Oh, I love my job. It’s wonderful. I just can’t wait to come to work.” But that’s not what happened. They wouldn’t even engage in the discussion. They were actually frankly ignoring me and didn’t even respond. Just telling me to put my clothes back on and get ready to depart to the next procedure. And so, that caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting that, actually. So then, I went into a chest x-ray. So I said, “Well, I’m going to ask this young lady.” Again, she’s a young woman. I thought I’d ask her how she likes her job. And at first she was very reluctant to even discuss it. She just says, “Ah.” Like that. And I was taken back by that comment, “Ah.” So then she went on to say, “Well, it’s a job.” And I said, “Well, you don’t sound very happy.” She says, “Well, I have to work. I need to provide for my family and it’s a job.” And so she says, “I guess I should be happy about that, but I’m not necessarily happy about my boss.” I said, “Oh.” Okay. So, I’ve known for years when I were running Micrel that 75% of the reasons that employees resign or leave the company is because of their boss or their boss’s boss. So, it’s their first or second level management is why they resign. So, that shows you how important it is to have good managers or supervisors running your organization, because they’re the ones that are going to be at most, to have an influence on whether a person stays or not. That caused me to reflect. I actually wrote… Amusing, in fact, I might write another chapter on my book about what the primary role of a manager or a supervisor is, and that is to overcome the frustrations of their employees. Because every employee, I don’t care who you are, whether you’re CEO or a person mopping the floor, you’re going to be frustrated. There are frustrations. And good managers are there not to drive the employee. Drive. Not to drive them to success or to do their job, but to lead them, to help them, to support them. I remember the purpose of a shepherd as a sheep herder. He leads a sheep, he doesn’t drive them. But most of all, the purpose of a shepherd is to protect his flock. Protect his flock. And that’s what a good leader does, is they protect those individuals that work for them, protect them. Protect them from being frustrated, protect them from being harmed, to protect them from just the frustrations of their job. And so the purpose, like again the shepherd, is not to drive his flock, is to lead his flock. The shepherd is not necessarily back there behind him, pounding away on their behinds with a staff. He’s out there leading. They want to. So, a herd of sheep that loves their shepherd, they will follow. You don’t have to drive them. They will follow. They become the mother, the leader of the herd. The leader of the band, as you would. And so, if you have to drive your employees, you’re not a good leader. Trust me. When you do this walking around management that I’ve talked about in other forms, you’re really finding out what you can do to help them, not to drive them. So, a good shepherd leads his flock, he doesn’t drive his flock. Rob Artigo: And this is a company culture thing. It’s something that you need to build into the company culture, that you need to have happy employees. I know that you’ve said before, that certain people might assume that the job satisfaction problems they have in their company is because of wages. Ray Zinn: It’s not, no. The job satisfaction is loving your boss, loving what you do. I’ve asked thousands of leaders over the years, what do they think of their boss? In fact, when I’ve interviewed people, one of the first questions I ask is, “How do you like your last job?” If they said they hated their job, that’s a no-no, that’s a black mark against the interview. And so I ask them, “How do you like your job,” that they respond, “Oh, I loved it.” “How’d you like your boss?” “Oh, I loved my boss.” That’s a plus. And so, then the interview proceeds. So, when you’re interviewing someone, ask them how they liked their previous job, their company, the boss, and so forth. What culture did they have? Because you want to make sure you’re hiring the people that match the culture of your company. If you like to be beaten and driven and harassed, then maybe you got to look for a company that beats and harasses their employees. Rob Artigo: Or join the Army Rangers. Ray Zinn: Yeah, there you go. If you love your job, you love your boss. If you love what they did, then you go on to say, “Then, why are you leaving?” Because that’s the follow-up question, why are you leaving? If they say they hate their boss, they hate the company. Well, you don’t have to ask them why they’re leaving, that’s obvious. But if they are leaving, say why. If you love the company, love your boss, why are you leaving? That’s a good question. The reason people stay at their job is because they love their job or they love their boss. And so, it is a concern to me when we do recruit people because they had to leave somewhere, they had to leave from something. And so, the fact that they’re leaving because they hate their job, they hate their company, they’re going to find the same thing there at your company. And the story is told about this elderly man who lived on the edge of town and he was the town spokesman as you would, that if anybody wanted the history of the town, they would come and visit with that man. And so, there was a couple that came through considering moving into the town, and they were at the store and they said, “Well, who really knows this town?” And they talked about this elderly man that lived on the edge of town. So, they went out to visit with him and they found him rocking in his chair on the front porch. And they said, “Sir, can we talk to you about this town?” And he said, “Sure. What would you like to know?” And he said, “Well, what town did you come from?” And they told him the town. [inaudible 00:09:02] said, “Well, how’d you like your town?” And they said, “Oh, we hated our town. It was terrible. The people were backbiting. They were not friendly,” and so forth. And he says, “Yep, you’ll find the same thing in this town.” So then, of course, they went off quite disgruntled. And so then, another couple of would come into town. Again, looking for somebody that knows about the town. And they talked to this elderly gentleman and they said, “Sir, how do you like this town? Can you give us a history of this town?” And he said, “Well, let me ask you a question, how did you like the town you came from?” “Oh, we loved it. We thought the people were wonderful. They were just the happiest and most helpful people you’d ever want to meet.” And he says, “You’re going to find the same thing with our town. It’s a wonderful town. And they love people, they love you. You’re going to fit in really well here.” That summarizes what I’m talking about. Rob Artigo: Yeah. Well, I think the bottom line with the discussion is that job satisfaction, the happiness among your employees, that’s what drives success and results, not the get out the whip or make people get the oars going faster. So, let’s join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Our listeners are welcome there. Questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray Zinn on Twitter. Access, also known as X, Facebook and LinkedIn. And of course Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zinn series, one, two, and three. And on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.…

Tough Things First

1
The Right Time to Start? 8:52

منذ 10 weeks8:52

8:52

Would be entrepreneurs often fret over, “is this the right time to start my business?” Maybe the real question gets ignore in the process. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explains the bigger question you must ask yourself and why “when” is hardly what matters most. Rob Artigo: Would-be entrepreneurs can often find themselves stuck before they even get started. They might say to themselves, “Hey, it’s just not the right time to start my business.” And Ray, we always seem to be in a state of flux, and lately we’ve been mentioning a lot of politics because we had a presidential election, we had a change of presidents. So looking at this, we’ve always been in this state of flux economically, politically as well as in other areas. So how do entrepreneurs know when the right time to start a business is? Ray Zinn: Your first question is, is that, “Am I the right person to start the business?” And so again, you don’t want to go into a business if you don’t have the financial wherewithal or the experience or even the passion. And so defining when the right time is, is looking at yourself. “Am I the right person to do this particular undertaking?” And I think that’s the key, and that’s a lot of soul-searching, talking to your friends, your significant other, whoever, your family, just say, “Am I the right person to do this?” Now remember this though, when you are communicating with others about, “Am I the right person or is this the right time?” They’re looking for a negative. In other words, they’re most likely going to give you negative feedback because that’s what they think you want. You’re looking for pros, and they’re going to give you the cons. You just have to realize that just because they’re throwing all the negative at you, it doesn’t mean this is not the right time. It’s more of, “Who am I? Am I the right person?” As opposed to, “Is this the right time?” Rob Artigo: I think it’s worth mentioning that you wrote a book called The Essential Leader, which is ten skills, attributes, and fundamentals that make up the essential leader and soul-searching self-assessment like that is a key part of becoming the essential leader. It’s like you have to be honest. You do want to take the negative with the positive, and you have to decide, be able to discern, “Hey, if you’re going to be the leader, you’re going to have to make some decisions like that. What stuff is okay, I understand that, but I’m still going to do it. Okay, I understand that. Maybe I’m not going to do it exactly the way that I had originally planned.” But you’ve got to be willing to pivot a little bit when you get that feedback. Right? Ray Zinn: Well, it’s that self-assessment thing. Rob, I know that the subject you’re wanting to talk about today, is this the right time? And I’m saying it’s more important to say, “Am I the right individual? Do I have the right skills? Do I have the right attributes?” The right time is not as important as am I the right person. So in this podcast, what we want the listener to really understand and do that self-assessment is, “Am I the right person? Do I have what it takes to do it?” And that’s to have an honest assessment that right from your gut, and then you can talk to your family, your friends, your associates, and you can ask them if you’re the right, is this the right timing? If you are the right person to take on this particular opportunity? And then that to me is the key that we want the listener to take away from this podcast is the self-assessment about, “Am I the right person?” Rob Artigo: I remember you telling me a story once, and we talked about it on the podcast, I believe. Somebody that you had met who had opened McDonald’s franchises. Part of this was in his, he had business acumen, he was a smart guy but didn’t know anything about running McDonald’s. It turned out his wife did because she worked her whole career there. And then he took the time to say, “All right, what are my weaknesses?” Again, like I said, you’d mentioned this guy, he’s being a talented business guy, and he did this. He looked at what his weaknesses might be in that area, and he went through all the schooling before he got involved with it. I mean, I guess they have a McDonald’s franchise college or something that you go through to get training, but that’s the kind of thing you’re talking about there is doing the hard work because you could get ready to start a business, do the self-evaluation you were just talking about, and realize that you don’t have the tools. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get the tools. It just means that you have to do the work first. Ray Zinn: Exactly. Another interesting point is I have a friend who’s a pediatric dentist and then another one is an adult dentist, and one, more of a general practice as you would. A pediatric dentist requires a different skill set than a regular dentist even though they both go to dental school and both learn the techniques and aspects of doing dental work, but your patient is different. In other words, if you’re doing children versus the adults, that requires a different skill set even though you’re basically still doing dental work as you would. So again, you have to really look at who’s the recipient? Who’s my patient? Who’s my audience? Who’s my customer? And that defines what extra level of knowledge you have to have to perform your particular occupation. Rob Artigo: Yeah, I think it’s worth reiterating that we started out talking about is this the right time to start a business or how do you know when it’s the right time to start a business? The answer is that the right time to start a business is when you are ready to do it because are you the right person? If not, maybe you can become the right person for it, and that’s how, but it’s a non-starter if you’re not the right person to start the business. Ray Zinn: Exactly, and that’s the key is defining who you are and what are your skills, what is your interest? And obviously if you don’t like working with children, don’t become a pediatric dentist, and if you don’t like working with adults, don’t become an adult dentist as you would, or whether you’re a barber or if you’re selling toys or something, you got to be more of a kid person than an adult. So again, look at, “Am I the right person? Do I have the right mentality? Do I have the right skill set to address the market that I want to penetrate?” Rob Artigo: Great, Ray. As always, you can reach out to Ray Zinn with your questions at toughthingsfirst.com. Continue your education in the conversation with all of the podcasts, blogs, and links to information about Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zinn Series 1, 2, and 3, and also now on sale, The Essential Leader: Ten Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader.…

Tough Things First

1
Business Self-Assessment 15:19

منذ 12 weeks15:19

15:19

In business self-assessment, few components are more important than identifying your customer. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the elements of identifying your target customer and the obstacles to obtaining and retaining them. Rob Artigo: I caught a piece on a website called entrepreneur.com. It caught my attention for a couple of reasons, but I picked one little piece out that I thought would be interesting for us to talk about. In part, this is what it says. “For small to medium-sized businesses, it’s particularly important to perform a self-assessment. Are your revenue streams diversified and if possible, reoccurring? Do you have enough flexibility in your supply chain? Are you prepared to respond to new regulations?” That sounds like a good one. “What would happen to your business if sales completely stopped and how long would you be able to survive?” So let’s talk specifically about market analysis as a way of doing this self-assessment. This is part of as self-assessment, and I thought focusing just on one part of it would be a good way to look at this and what our listeners would be interested in. For market analysis, there are four bullet points here and one of them is, who’s your target customer? When I’m doing that assessment and looking at it, how do I narrow down who the target customer is? Ray Zinn: Well, it’s an interesting question because if you look at who your target customer is, then you’ll have identified your market. I mean, years and years ago, I don’t know how many, maybe 35, 40 years ago, there was a product that came out called the Pet Rock. And if you can just think of that… I think you can still get them, as a matter of fact. I think I saw them online. You can still buy Pet Rocks. But to me it was a dumb idea, even though they sold like crazy, but it was very short-lived. The product went away, as you would. That product’s got to be 55 years old now, because I remember my daughter who was in kindergarten, she made a pet rock for me for Father’s Day. It looked like a ladybug, and I still have it actually. So anyway, yeah, it’s in fact it’s just sitting probably 10 feet from me here. But it was an idea that somebody had that, I mean, it was just a fad. Okay, so when you want to start a company, don’t think of it being a fad, and that’s the problem. Recently we’ve undergone this switch from one administration to another, and the other prior administration was focusing on the Green Deal, as you would, and trying to live off of non-fossil type products. And then the new administration says they’re going to focus on fossil because we have an abundance of it and it’s cheaper and so forth and so on. And so, looking at regulations, looking at the administrations, local and national and global are important when you come up with your product. So who is your target market? There’s a company called Ulta, which is a women’s products company selling cosmetics and other products for women. So the target market for Ulta is women, not children. As soon as I guess a child is old enough to start using makeup and using older women products, that’s your target market. Say 12 on up and maybe it tapers off when they get to be in their 60s or 70s. You got to look at the time period. What’s the lifespan of your product, and do you have multiple items that you can sell, not just one? For example, going back to Ulta, are you just going to sell hairspray or are you going to also do facial cosmetics, and other other lotions and so forth to try to expand your customer base when they walk in the door to buy the product. So again, you have to look at the legal, at the legislative aspects. Also, whether it’s a local or national or global type market, and that’s how you identify the individuals that you’re trying to target. Rob Artigo: Number two on here is what are their pain points and needs when talking about your target customer? The pain point in particular is interesting because if you really don’t know what pain point means, then you can’t really address it. And I think a lot of people who are new entrepreneurs that haven’t had a lot of training in business might miss what a pain point is. So I’ll just mention that definition I found says, “That’s a problem or frustration a customer experiences when interacting with a company.” It’s the product or its services. So pain points can negatively impact the customer’s experience and can be a key factor in customer satisfaction, loyalty, and decision making, right? Ray Zinn: When you look at your customer base and identifying the pain points, in other words, if customer returns, I know that Amazon makes it easier for you to return products, within 30 days, that is. And also free shipping because a lot of people don’t want to pay for shipping. Say, if I got to pay for shipping, I’ll just go down to the store and buy it. So Amazon said, “Hey, we don’t want you to worry about the shipping costs, so we will cover that in the product that you buy from us online.” And so what they did is they looked at all the pain points associated…. Amazon, I’m speaking now, looked at all the pain points associated with their online marketing business. They spent a lot of time analyzing what it would take. For example, if it’s going to take a month or two to get the product, that’s a pain point. So they said, “Okay, we want to make sure it’s less than a week,” and maybe preferably two or three days because otherwise the customer’s just going to go downtown to pick up the product. So they worked very hard, diligently at figuring out how to make it easy to return the product and then also how quickly they can deliver it. So I think they’re in a good example of what we’re talking about, about these pain points. Rob Artigo: Going on to who are the competitors and what are their strengths and weaknesses. So you have to really, let’s say you’re the Pet Rock guy. Well, you didn’t have any competitors, I’m sure at first, and then people started making their own pet rocks and trying to sell those. Even though that guy made some money on it, it was an easy product to copy. But it is important to know who your competitors are because almost in anything, you’re going to have some form of competitor out there, right? Ray Zinn: Well, again, we’ll go back to this Amazon thing. I mean, they had to overcome some of the obstacles. Customers don’t like driving downtown, getting in traffic, shopping with a bunch of other people, waiting to pay for the product. So they’ve overcome a lot of the pain points associated with shopping. And with AI coming online, it’s even easier now to do shopping because there are so many competitors out there that are providing the same product because almost anybody can be an online marketer, and so there’s no pain points associated with developing a marketing strategy for online. Whereas in a store, you’re going to have to stock the store, you have to keep the product rotating, you got to pay pay for rent, for other things that associated with having a physical store versus an online. So the more technology we have available to us, the more you’re going to find online taking over. A lot of stores are closing up because of that. So you have to look at, is the business I want to get into, can it be taken over by an online marketer? If it can, you want to be careful, then what are you going to offer, if you’re going to set up your own store, what are you going to offer the customer that you can’t get online? I tried it the other day. I was saying, I’m going to see if I can find something that can’t be purchased online. I was going through the store called Murdoch’s, which is kind of a farm store, and I was trying to find things you couldn’t really get online. And so like tractors, like a 20-ton tractor, you don’t find very many of those online. I don’t know how many people want a 20-ton tractor as you would, but again, this is examples of what we’re talking about. You have to look at if you’re going to do an online versus a store, then you have to look at, okay, what’s going to entice your customer to come to you online versus going down and just buying it at the store. So again, I use that 20-ton tractor as an example. I didn’t find very many of those that were available online. You could get locations. In other words, it would come up and tell you how far you are from the nearest 20-ton tractor store, but certainly you’d be hard-pressed to buy one off Amazon as you would. Rob Artigo: Yeah, and it works the other way too. If you are competing with online and you are a brick and mortar place, then you have to figure out how to get people into your store instead of looking online for it. The market size and a potential for growth, let’s talk a little bit about that. Ray Zinn: We kind of talked about that to begin with. So you have to look at what’s your longevity, as you would, how long is your business able to survive? What’s your runway? What do you have in the way of resources to survive? Just online of course, don’t need a whole lot of inventory. At least you don’t have to store it if you’ve got a good access to inventory from your supplier, as you would. Because if you’re just a marketer and you don’t have any inventory, you’re going to have to rely on your distributor to get that product out to you. This is all a matter of whether or not you can sustain your growth and whether or not you have the wherewithal to do that. For example, if your product has a short shelf life, like milk is an example. I don’t buy milk online. I go down to the store to get it because the shelf life. Or I don’t buy eggs online, and even though eggs have a lot longer longevity. I guess you can buy them online, but there are certain grocery items that I prefer to go to the store, especially produce and things like that. Even though I was amazed at some of these companies that supply ready meals, as you would, I’m surprised how they pack that and how fresh that stuff is when you get it, even though it takes two or three days to ship it. Even products like milk, they do supply things that have a shelf life, but they do get it to you pretty quickly, like within a day or two when they put the product in delivery, as you would, they have to look at who can get that product to that customer within a day or two at the most, and they put these ice packs and other things like that to protect it. But again, you got to look at where’s the market headed? Which direction are they going? I’ll go back to the electric car versus the fossil fuel car. What’s the direction? I think electric is going to improve, battery life and so forth, the other environmental aspects of electric cars. I think there’s a future for them. I think it’ll grow. I don’t know that it’ll totally supplant the fossil fuel vehicle, but certainly there’s I think a growing opportunity for products that supplant fossil fuel. So again, which way is the market headed? I don’t think anybody would go into making buggy whips because we no longer have wagons pulled by horses. And so I don’t think anybody would go into making wagons as you would for horse-drawn unless you’re competing or just doing it for a novelty. So you got to look at where’s the market headed? What’s the opportunity for growth? And that that’s the key for establishing a long-term business. If you’re just short-term, in and out, then of course you don’t worry about that. But if you’re looking for a five to 10 year business, then you have to look at where’s the market headed? Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, the listeners can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. They can get questions to you if they choose, they can make some comments. Always welcome at toughthingsfirst.com. Follow Ray Zinn on Twitter or X, Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things first, the Zen of Zen Series, that’s one, two, and three. Ray Zinn: Pick up our new book, the Essential Leader.…

Tough Things First

1
Self-Reliance 9:03

منذ 13 weeks9:03

9:03

Sometimes we need to check with ourselves to see if we are positioned well for unforeseen troubles. In this Tough Things First podcast with Ray Zinn, has the keys to self-reliance. Rob Artigo: Good to be back. And I’ve got a copy of Zen of Zinn Two, one of your books here in front of me, and I flipped over to page 160 and I found something you wrote up on self-reliance, and what I’ll do is I’ll just mention the setup here to this and then we’ll go through, there’s seven steps, great list of things to think about, but basically it says, “Self-reliance should be the goal and objective of all of us. This means to have the following.” So I’ll go with number one, “A viable source of providing the needs of ourselves and family.” What do you mean by that? Ray Zinn: Well, you have to have a way to assess who you are and that assessment, if you’re listening to those around you. They’re telling you, people are communicating with you all the time and you’ll get that self-assessment as to who you are. Rob Artigo: Okay, how about number two, “A sufficient savings to sustain us through difficult times.” I mean, this is just about being prepared for downturns. Ray Zinn: Yeah, that’s your life insurance. Not necessarily death insurance, but life meaning that that’s your insurance of a profitable life. If you have a significant savings to take you through the bad times because we’re all going to have bad times. In fact, statistically they say that 50% of our times in life are going to be bad, meaning they’re difficult. And so we have to be prepared for that. If there’s a 50/50 chance, obviously you got to be prepared for that, and that’s having that runway to be able to sustain yourself through a bad time. Rob Artigo: There have been some pretty good advice out there from people about how much savings you should have having an emergency fund as part of that where you just have some money set aside for an emergency. I remember one commentator was saying, having a thousand dollars cash that will keep the lights on if for some reason, keep the lights on and food on the table long enough to recover from something. That could be a natural disaster or just the sudden loss of employment. You have to sustain yourself. And that of course depends on how large is your family, how young or old are your kids, and that kind of thing. It seems like sound advice to be diversified to the point where you do have some cash on hand just in case. Ray Zinn: Well, I have a rule of thumb that you should have at least nine months of savings, meaning that you can sustain yourself for nine months, not living high on the hog like you were while things were running good, but maybe when in your cutback mode when you have to really cut back that you should have nine months of cutback savings in place, nine months minimum. Rob Artigo: And you say also along with that, you’re going to have to have some savings of some real food. So you have number three is sufficient food storage to sustain during a crisis. Ray Zinn: That’s that cutback thing I was talking about. So part of your cutback to minimize how much cash you need to have if you have a food storage, if you have an ability, maybe you’ve got to live off beans for a while, beans are still nutritious and while they’re maybe not the best thing that you want day in and day out, at least they’ll sustain you. So having wheat beans, flour, other things that you can fall back on in your storage that you’ve already saved up for as opposed to just hard cash will help sustain you through difficult times. Rob Artigo: I know you exercise every day, it’s the first thing you do every day, but having a regular exercise routine. Ray Zinn: That’s so true. In fact, I was thinking about that this morning as I was getting up and getting going as you and I. I exercise the very first thing, the very first thing I do other than say my prayers is I start exercising. And so that’s a very valuable aspect of my daily survival as you would is getting in that at least one hour of exercise. And it has really helped me at my advanced age. I look at my classmates around me and a lot of them are passing away, but I can just know who they are. I can see they really didn’t take care of themselves all that well, so they basically have shortened their lifespan. Rob Artigo: Yeah, you’re showing some really energetic longevity, which is proof that what you’re saying is true. Also, just like you said, taking care of yourself is eating nourishing meals, eating healthy. Ray Zinn: Well, that’s part of what I talked about and just having a well-rounded life is other than having the food storage, you got to be able to eat it. So whatever you store up, make sure it’s nutritional food storage and that it will sustain you. And so there are a lot of things online you can go to find about having what’s a good food storage type product, both that’ll store well as well as being nutritious. In fact, I’ve known people who had hard times, but they had a good food storage and they actually became healthier while they were living on their food stores than they were when they were just eating regular. Rob Artigo: Yeah, I can imagine that. This is a big one for me is a good night’s rest, usually about eight hours a night. Ray Zinn: We’re not preaching anything new here. We do need to rest. We do need to be able to take that time off and just get that natural rest during the day. I say seven to eight hours, nine hours is what we would consider a good restful habit. So again, to be healthy, you need to rest your body and that means to be able to shut down, close your eyes and get that nice rest. Rob Artigo: The last one here, number seven, “Self-improvement, like a good education.” I know that you try to learn something new every day. That’s another part of your philosophy, so I can see why this would be a priority for you in self-reliance. Ray Zinn: Well, we’ve talked about this, but it’s part of loving the things you hate. In other words, if you don’t like something, go after it. Find out what it takes to like it. And of course, if you persist in doing something, you will be more likely to succeed at it. Discipline, as I define it and is defined in our book, Tough Things First, is doing things you don’t like doing and doing it well. That’s discipline. So doing what you don’t like doing and doing it well is loving the things you hate. Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, our listeners can go to ToughThingsFirst.com if they have questions or comments and also they can follow you on X and Facebook and LinkedIn and of course your books are available. Tough Things First and the Zen of Zinn series, that’s Zen of Zinn 1, 2, and 3.…

Tough Things First

1
American Chip Manufacturing: New President New Plan? 10:44

منذ 15 weeks10:44

10:44

The reemerging American semiconductor industry is a little nervous about what President Trump will do regarding the CHIPS and Science Act, but CNBC reports Trump is unlikely to roll it back . In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn says only a robust American chip sector can thwart Chinese power grab through chip dominance. Rob Artigo:… you ran Micrel as CEO, a semiconductor company, for 37 years. So you have some knowledge of how- Ray Zinn: In Silicon Valley. Rob Artigo: In Silicon Valley for 37 years. So this is right in your wheelhouse as far as your interest factor here. But, if you remember it was two years ago, a little bit over two years ago that President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, which was $53 billion in funding to bring semiconductor supply chains back to the US and create jobs to support American innovation and protect our national security. One of those issues was that China made it a goal to have 90-plus percent. I can’t remember what you said the other day, but it was 90 something percent of the chip manufacturing would be on mainland China. 2025, and that apparently hasn’t happened. Ray Zinn: Well, that’s the reason we were talking about this is because this is the first of the year, we’re into 2025. And it was actually 20 years ago, it was in 2005 China came out with a policy that they would fabricate 95% of all of their chips that they need for their business within China. And at the time in 2005 when they made that comment I remember discussing that with some of my cohorts and I said, the only way that they could do that is if they took over Taiwan. And that shocked me, I mean that they would say that because they’re basically saying we’re going to take Taiwan. Probably within the last five years, that’s all we’ve heard about is China wanting to take over Taiwan. Now they don’t say it’s because of chips, but that’s my understanding and my feeling is that that was the reasoning behind that policy. If you look at how important semiconductors are, it goes to that CHIP Act that Biden signed, that 53 billion to encourage semiconductor companies to move their manufacturing back into the US. If we look at what prompted that, it is because of China’s view of, even though they haven’t come out and physically said it, taking over Taiwan. One of the most important countries in the world for semiconductor technology and manufacturing is Taiwan. And they produce, I think, somewhere around 20% of all semiconductors are produced in Taiwan. So let’s look at the importance of semiconductors. Semiconductors are at the heart of electronics, and electronics are at the heart of the consumer economy. They’re in everything, refrigerators, washing machines, things that we’d never thought would need them, even hand mixers and microwaves, almost everything in your home now has electronics and they’re only going to become more important. So go semiconductors, so go electronics. So go electronics so go the world as you would. So the most important item in my mind of GDP growth around the world is semiconductors. And so this is an extremely important item and topic. That’s why Biden pushed this CHIP Act is recognized the importance of semiconductor technology. Now, our country, the US never dreamed that countries like China would become so dominant in electronics at the time because… When that happened, by the way, let’s look at the time period, we’re talking about the ’90s. So it wasn’t until about 30 or something years ago that China really started eyeballing semiconductor technology. And they bought all the old used equipment, obsolete equipment, and they started putting together and encouraging through financial aid, China encouraged semiconductor manufacturing in China. And so China has been trying to become a Taiwan type country for semiconductors for the past 40 years. And so that’s why we’re talking about this is to talk about this commitment that China made that by 2025 they would be a dominant player in semiconductor manufacturing. There’s a company in China, mainland China called SMIC, that’s Serum, Mary, India, C for China. I call that semiconductor manufacturing in China, that’s how I denote that acronym of SMIC. So SMIC semiconductors made in China as part probably the most important semiconductor manufacturing company in China, but they haven’t been successful as Taiwan, even though they’ve had access to the same equipment, they’ve had access to the engineering and so forth. They’ve hired a lot of engineers out of the US to go and set up that semiconductor manufacturing company in China. And so China is having a very difficult time succeeding. So where they wanted 95% production by 2025, they’re only doing about maybe 30 or 40% of their chips that they need are manufactured in China. So they’re way off their goal. And so, that leads me to believe that semiconductor… I mean, that Taiwan is going to be a very important aspect of China’s policy to be more 95% in China, as you would, if they did acquire Taiwan. So that’s just something for us to note here at the beginning of 2025 and to keep our eye on to understand why I believe China is so persistent in wanting to take over Taiwan is because of chips. So I hope that the Trump administration continues to support chip manufacturing in the US in some way, somehow. We need to make sure that we protect Taiwan and that we also protect semiconductor manufacturing in the US. Rob Artigo: Yeah. And we could wrap this up just by noting that the story that I’m looking at here, where I got the update on the $53 billion is that, this story from August was saying that 30 billion had been sent to 23 projects in 15 states, which is a lot, and they projected 115,000 manufacturing and construction jobs. But that the rest of the funds would be allocated by the end of 2024. Do you think that with… There’s going to be some DOGE related cost-cutting and things like that in the government, but is this likely to be an area that Trump will see as continuing the opportunity? Because they’re projecting in this story that by 2032 the US would have 30% of the world’s leading-edge chips manufactured here in the US. Ray Zinn: We want 95% actually here in the US. I’m hoping that somebody in the Trump administration listens to our podcast and understands the importance of supporting the semiconductor technology in the US because the US claims to be the most important economy, the most powerful country in the world, and we’re not going to be if we don’t stay as the most powerful semiconductor company in the world. So any of you out there listening, make sure you get to your legislative leaders and promote making sure that the US is the dominant player in semiconductor technology in the world. If we do, God willing, we will continue to progress, our GDP will continue to grow. But if we don’t, God help us. Rob Artigo: Yeah, yeah. I agree. That’s important for people to act and make sure that we financially support these industries because we can create a lot of opportunity that way. Thanks, Ray. I’m looking at toughthingsfirst.com, that’s the place to go if you want to ask questions of Ray. You want to make some comments there, you can do that. And you can get more information there and you can also comment if you’d like, leave questions, give some feedback for the book, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zinn series, 1, 2, and 3. You won’t regret it. Thanks, Ray. Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.…

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