When Mike Dendo meets with clients, he wants to meet everyone at that company who is pertinent to the success of Mad Dog Multimedia, regardless of their title. For example, he once invited a woman who replenished Mad Dog’s products to a meeting, even though her position was lower than that of the person Dendo was supposed to meet with. Although the woman wasn’t a big shot at the company, Dendo felt she was crucial to the success of Mad Dog, and he wanted her input. That kind of respect for everyone involved in getting out Mad Dog’s computer-related peripheral products has helped Dendo grow the business, which he expects to hit $40 million in revenue this year. Smart Business spoke with the CEO of Mad Dog about how he puts customers first and why he hires team players.
Engage customers. We listen to our customers closely. We get them engaged in our strategy. We let them poke holes in our strategy. If customers are part of a strategy, they buy in and support you more.
We’ll sit down with them and show them a product launch strategy and what it consists of; engage them to see what they believe they could sell. Through that process, they’ll talk and they’ll get engaged because you were smart enough to come to them — not with the answer but, ‘Here’s the situation. What’s your honest thoughts?’
There’s a creative side to everybody. If you try to engage that with the customer, then they’ll talk to you.
Understand customers. The head of the company needs to understand the customer, needs to communicate to the customer.
If you decide to build widget C, and in two years they don’t think they’re going to be in the widget C business, that’s probably a bad strategy. Until you talk to them and understand what their directions are, you could make a lot of mistakes.
Check your attitude. The Sonys of the world don’t always have the best product, and Mad Dog Multimedia isn’t always the best product out there every single day of the week. What makes retailers want to sell your product or what makes consumers want to buy your product is your attitude. It’s how you do business.
Don’t constantly change. Be honest with yourself in running a company or starting a company. Don’t change yourself unless you have a lot of shortcomings that could affect the business.
Have the business be what you want it to be. Don’t try to be a chameleon. Be honest with yourself, be honest with your customers and be honest with your employees.
Don’t make the same mistake twice. I’m an old-school guy. I still cherish all the foundations that my father taught me in my personal life, and that’s if you make a mistake, great. Why’d you make it? Why aren’t you going to make it again?
Don’t make it again. If you make it a second time, then we have some problems.
Have high standards. I’ve not made any bones about who I am, what my goals are, what type of person I am. Everybody in the company knows what I am.
I’m impatient. I’m exacting. I want excellence. Mediocrity is just not something I deal with too well. Mediocrity is what companies with lots of money can afford. Companies that start with $85,000 and have never had any capitalization can’t afford mediocrity.
Hire team players. They have to cover for, help and support. There isn’t any part of this business that stands alone. One of the things that you see in business that slows them down and makes them unprofitable are silos.
These stupid little business silos inside a company where, ‘Oh, this is my area. You don’t come in, and I only have to do my area.’ That doesn’t work. You have your job to do, but you’re a team player because everything you do supports somebody else.
At the end of the day, ain’t no bones about it — everything we do supports sales, and if you’re not selling, or you’re causing sales not to grow, you got a problem.
Enjoy your business. The thing I always ask is, ‘Do you enjoy your company?’ That sounds silly, but there have been times when I haven’t. There have been many times when people running companies our size, larger or smaller, they come to work and flat out don’t enjoy it. That’s the No. 1 barometer.
I picked that up from a successful guy in Texas. I was sitting with him in Arizona at a show, and he says, ‘Mike, I just don’t like it.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you like it? You’re running a very successful business.’
He said, ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like how this is happening, and boom, boom, boom.’ I said, ‘You ought to sit down with your partners.’
I never imagined that happening, but it happened to me not too far along after that. I sat down with some of the key people in the company and just told them how I felt. One of the things is, ‘Are you happy with your company and what it is?’ I didn’t say, ‘Are you happy with your stock price?’ I didn’t say, ‘Are you happy with the equity in the company?’ I didn’t say profitability. I said, ‘Are you happy coming to work every day?’ That’s the No. 1 thing that is a great test in terms of looking at your company.
Get into the details. Get into the minutia. There are many places where there’s money to be made. I look at people that are turnaround experts, and they come into companies and start cutting this, slashing that and getting rid of this person and these jobs. That may be the right thing to do, but did you go to all the other parts of the (profit and loss) before you put someone on the street in the name of cost cutting?
Whatever business you’re running, go to your highest cost points in the business. Typically, you see that your highest cost points are not people. Your highest cost points are other items, from freight to logistics to marketing to all of those things.
Drill down to the smallest numbers. My CFO said, ‘I’ve never seen any person fight for 10 cents like you fight for 10 cents.’ Ten cents in our market might be three margin points.
I fight real hard and look at those details because you add up the pennies, they equal dollars, and dollars equal the profitability.
HOW TO REACH: Mad Dog Multimedia, www.mdmm.com