Mike Gauthier wants his employees
to set high goals for themselves,
even if their aim is so high it means they will leave his company.
Gauthier, founder and president of SAVE
On Everything, explores the goals of his
estimated 150 employees by asking direct
questions.
“I believe in the walk-around theory, but
not just walking around and saying, ‘How
are you doing today?’ But to ask specific
questions directed toward their
division and what is working and
not working, and get some opinions from them,” says the leader of
the direct-mail coupon magazine
company, which posted 2006 revenue of about $30 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Gauthier about how he makes
employees comfortable with
change at a growing company
and why you shouldn’t get into
an unrelated business just for the
sake of growth.
Q: What are the keys to being a
good leader?
One of the things we struggle
with as I continue to grow the
company is for (employees) not
to forget that their job is the second most important thing in their
life, and family comes first. We
try to make time for them to do
family stuff.
What that shows is that we
care as a company. We take
vacations, like the Fourth of
July, we give extra days off,
paid. Between Christmas and New Year’s,
we always take that time off, and give it to
them paid and not a vacation. Making sure
they understand we care about what happens to them.
Q: How do you make employees comfortable with change?
The biggest thing you can have is clear
communication. I used to think clear communication was verbalizing it, but that is
not communication at all.
You need to have that person that can
communicate, all the way around the ranks, the purpose of the change — a clear
definition of what the change is and how it
is going to affect them. If you can show
what the advantages are and how it’s going
to affect them and what they need to actually change in the day-to-day world, and it’s
clearly outlined, they will do the best they
can with change.
Most people resist change. One of the
things I tell people when they are hired is if
you don’t like change, then this isn’t a good
company for you. My belief system is you
have to grow and stay in front of the competition.
Q: How do you handle failure?
I don’t look at failure as failure. As a salesperson, failure and rejection is part of your
daily life, and that’s really where I came
from. Someone said, ‘You only have to be
right 51 percent of the time to be a success,’ and I think that is probably true.
I see failure more as a learning experience. I see failure as an opportunity to practice what I do and perfect my performances. It’s sort of like the Babe Ruth story.
People don’t think of him as the strike-out king but the home-run king.
You aren’t judged by the number of
times you fail, but you are judged by the
number of times you succeed. That’s
sort of in direct proportion to the number of times you actually fail and can
keep trying.
People ask me what is the key to success,
and I say perseverance. If you can keep
going and learning, you can probably get there.
Q: What advice would you give
business leaders trying to grow their
companies?
Stay with your core competency.
One of the worst things, and I see
this, and I’ve done it, is a company —
their core competency is advertising
and they want to get into another
unrelated type of business just
because what we like to do is grow.
I have a friend who has a window
film company, for example, and he
starts a company that replaces glass.
You might think, ‘Jeez, he puts window film on glass, and he’s got glass;
it’s the same thing.’
But, it’s another whole set of rules.
It’s another whole set of customers. It’s
something totally different. What happens is, it’s not that he couldn’t be successful with that, but he diverts his
attention away from what he is supposed to be doing.
For example, we opened a magazine,
and we have a direct-mail product. And
we opened a magazine with editorial,
and I said, ‘It’s still advertisers; it’s printing
and subscriptions.’ A $2.5 million loss later,
I said, ‘Maybe I don’t know what I am doing
here so much.’
Not only did I lose the money there, but I
lost the opportunity; I should have had
another city open. The city we started in,
Detroit, it hurt that whole market because
our attention was diverted away.
So stay with the core competency. Figure
out what you are the best at, and do that.
HOW TO REACH: SAVE On Everything, (248) 362-9119 or
www.saveoneverything.com