When Edelmiro “Ed” Muñiz
had a heart attack in 2004, his employees began to
doubt not only the health of
their founder, chairman and
CEO but the health of the company, as well.
While he was recovering,
Muñiz decided he needed to shift
the focus of MEI Technologies
Inc.’s employees from worries
about him to a more positive
concern, so he challenged
them to double the size of the
$30 million company in two
years.
Redirecting their attention
worked, and in two years, the
company’s revenue had tripled.
And in 2007, MEI posted revenue of $115 million.
“This problem that I had earlier just kind of went away, and I
was very surprised that I was
able to survive this from the
company standpoint,” Muñiz
says.
The next challenge became
absorbing the company’s rapid
growth. To do that, he relied on
his three keys to growth —
trustworthiness, listening to
your customers and building a
relationship with your banker.
Smart Business spoke with
Muñiz about how to grow your
company.
Assemble a team of trustworthy
and honest employees. You’ve
got a set of values that you
decide you’re going to have as
a company, and you start with
hiring people with those same
values. I’ve always valued
integrity, honesty and ethics.
I try to hire people that have
those characteristics very, very
visible. It’s part of what makes
a business grow.
I don’t have a problem with
those who don’t know everything when they come here
because they will learn what
they need to know after they
get here most of the time. But
you have to be honest.
I read the resume first, and I
try to look for inconsistencies. If
something doesn’t make sense,
I’ll flag that, and that will be the
object of questions in the interview. Why do you say this here,
and that doesn’t seem to jibe
with what you said here?
If it’s a good response, I’ll take
it for face value. If I suspect
that somebody has kind of
stretched it a little bit, I generally just write those people off.
If they’re not honest when
they start with us, they can’t
become honest later.
When I look at the keys to
growth, trustworthiness I think
it’s No. 1. If you don’t have trust
and you’re not trustworthy as a
business — and that means
every employee that you have
also needs to be trustworthy —
then you can’t sustain a business. Your customers don’t
trust you, your employees don’t
trust you, your competition
doesn’t trust you.
This is what allows you to
get new customers, but, more
important, allows you to keep
the ones you’ve already got.
You can’t grow without keeping what you’ve already got
under your belt.
