Michael Blumenfeld has reached his idea of success — he can leave the office to play golf every day without anybody knowing he’s gone. The CEO of Collegiate Pacific Inc. is able to hit balls daily two blocks from his office because he’s learned how to hire driven, talented people and let them do their jobs, without getting in the way. His direct style is reflected in his 900 employees as they work as a team to grow the sporting goods company, hitting $106 million in revenue last year — a 168 percent increase over 2004. Smart Business spoke with Blumenfeld about how he hires employees and manages his business.
Look for street-fighters.
(I hire) people who don’t mind getting dirty, don’t mind rolling up their sleeves, have faced challenges before, that know what it means to fail but don’t want to fail again.
Watch how they handle themselves around the group. You may take them out to play golf, or you may have lunch with them to see if they spill food all over themselves. You just watch.
If you take them out to play golf and they just wander off, you can tell that their mind’s not very good, their focus isn’t very good, they can’t carry a general conversation about anything other than the name of their dog and where they ate last night.
Really get to know a potential employee.
Golf is an interesting spectrum because it gives you four to five hours of just one-on-one time that you wouldn’t get in a normal office interview. You learn a lot about a person in that environment versus someone walking in with a resume in hand and telling you all the things you want to hear.
You get into an office environment, and you feel somewhat restrictive about all the rules and regulations about talking about family and background. We want to know about family and background.
We want to know about a financial history of what we consider to be a partner coming into our business, who’s going to work at that level. You can get involved with a lot of questions about personal life — where they came from, what they did, did they marry their high school sweetheart.
Have they been married 10 times? Are they Jack the Ripper?
Hire people who can produce from Day One.
They generally need to hit the street running. Either they bring skills with them for a specific job function, or we don’t have time to fool with them. When they come in, they know that.
There’s not a lot of warm and fuzzy, ‘Let me show you around the building, where the coffee is.’ It’s, ‘Here’s your desk. Here’s your phone. Let’s go to work and make something happen.’ Talented people don’t have any problem with that.
You can see the fear in the eyes of those who ask you about the six-week training period and you say, ‘No, we have a six-minute training period.’ It goes back to street fighting. If (you) can’t handle that challenge and don’t want that challenge, don’t show up.
We hire fast, we negotiate fast. We don’t have time, because of our growth rate and execution times, to sit around and do a lot of the warm and fuzzies that you would get at a much larger company that wants to do all the tap dance.
Go with your gut.
It’s more instinctive than it is factual. People say they do a lot of studies on the industries and all that kind of crap, but that’s not the way it works.
Generally speaking, things are brought to you or you see them. You see competitors that fail, and pieces of them become available to you, or you see people being successful, and you see why they’re successful, and you react to that quickly.
It’s not an overthought process. You just watch an industry, and you watch the movement up and down and you react to it.
Hire amazing people.
We overpay for the industry. You overpay because you work them harder.
When you pay someone at the top end of the scale and say, ‘Look, we’re different from any job you’ve ever had in your life. We’re not going to tell you what to do.
You’ve got to figure it all out by yourself, and if that means you’re here on Saturdays and Sundays, so be it. Be here on Saturdays and Sundays. Just get the job done.’
People react well to that.
Hire often.
Hire great people whenever you get a chance, even if you have to over hire. Hire people that have been in places where you’ve never been before in terms of management capabilities or size of company.
We constantly are on the lookout for people that have been operating a $500 million or $1 billion company because it’s two, three, four times as large as we are. They’ve already been through that warfare and seen the things that happened.
Hiring good people, even when you don’t need them, is absolutely critical if you’re going to be growing – and growing at a rate that’s abnormal. We try to stay one ring ahead in terms of managerial needs.
Get your ego out of the way.
People think they can micromanage every element of the business, regardless of size. It’s not physically or mentally possible.
The vast majority of companies that failed fail because some CEO thought he was a really smart guy and he was going to manage how many pencils got into the pencil sharpener on Thursday. And he got his ass handed to him because you can’t do that. You’ve got to trust your people and get out of the way.
Know when to push and when to stop.
Understand your people’s capabilities, both the downside and the upside. You can’t stretch the rubber band so tight that it breaks, but you’ve got to give them enough challenge that they really enjoy it. You’ve got to know that very fine balance of when to push and when not to push.
That is the sheer ingredient to success. Always understand your people’s capabilities.
Identify a market that works.
A lot of people like to identify a market that they like, and there’s a huge difference. Find those that work and understand why they work.
The first key element is step back. Don’t look at what you know, but find out what works and what you think you can be successful in. Once you understand that, then do a lot of study behind that, and then you attack it.
HOW TO REACH: Collegiate Pacific Inc., www.cpacsports.com
