YouSaid · the spoken record

Paul Orfalea

lines on the record: 71
first: 2023-08-21
most recent: 2023-08-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“More luck. Luck has a lot more to do with life than we might think. And it also followed my strong suit, which was, I can't sit still. I'm extremely restless. That went to my strong suit. And it goes to my outlook of life. Dan Fredixen had a quote for me once that I really liked. No one goes to work to do a bad job. People go to work to do a good job. It's up to you as an owner to want that. I told you about our customers and our workers relationship and how fulfilling that was. So I attribute a lot of what I have to luck, to a business that went to my strong suit and my outlook of life. I think people are basically honorable and decent and trustworthy and the world is a wonderful place to live in. And you're not going to make money with the sinister view of humanity.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything goes to children. What I'm real proud of is orthodonship. You're a title, one child, you have a pathway to orthodoxy. We fixed over the years maybe 20, 30,000 Orthodox. I believe that society gets a compounded rate of return from a good smile. Self-esteem, better college graduation, I'm convinced of it, if my legacy would be that every child has a happy smile. Every child knows enough about nutrition to eat nutritiously. That would really delight me.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And liberated. I have two, you know, you have two children. One child has to be entertained by others, and the other one can entertain themselves. I've always been the kind of person that can entertain myself. Yeah. So I found a new purpose in my life. I like teaching school. I teach at Loyola now at USC. I love the philanthropy we're doing. I believe what Andrew Carnegie said is correct. He who dies with wealth dies in sin. I'm doing a pretty good job of giving all my money away.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was happy for the company because when I had the business, our customer service was something I was so proud of. Yeah. Our customer service went under their auspices wasn't as good. And I was really, I was just as happy to get FedEx so they could have their customer service there.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it made sense, and they took control, but I basically took six months off. When I came back. I think when you sell your business, they shouldn't keep the founder on. It's sort of like cutting the tail of an inch at a time. And everybody who was unhappy came to me and I didn't have any influence or power to do anything about it.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had to change the philosophy of the company that John Davis helped create. And as you could tell over a business with not a lot of formal agreements with various partners, a lot of independent thinking, I had to get buy-in to the central organization. We were talking to people that were very good with things. We needed them that reorient themselves to managing people. We needed well-rounded leaders. I needed to develop a company philosophy. Our first sentence in the philosophy is our primary objective is to take care of the customer. But some of our customers are so outlandishly rude, we had to have a mechanism in our values to fire a customer. So in the second paragraph, the co-workers of the foundation of our success. So a manager contemplating firing a customer”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The owners and executives What's in it? There's new technology that's obsolete in what we used to think about the world that's just coming after us. Also, when you're dealing with people that are 45 and 50, they got to foot in and a foot out. So I was dealing with that.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just transformed ourselves into having computer workstations. And we called it your branch office. But what always frustrated me about Kinko's is we were an operating company that sold and I wanted to transform us to a selling company that operated. You also have to remember at this time, I'm dealing with people that are 45 and 50.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Congress tried to codify what you can and can't copy in the 1974 copyright law. And in the law, they said it's a de minimis portion of the book. So we had all these professors signings. that they were in compliance with that. And we got annihilated. At that time, we were noticing that the commercial locations, the one in the middle of town, were taking off and more and more technology was coming in our direction. So almost outgrew that publishing program.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I have to actually comfort them and say, well, I'm okay, I'm okay. And that was the part that hurt the most. And what we did, which was really stupid, is we had a private funeral. And what's good about a funeral is everybody's there at once sharing the grief. What I had to do was I had to go through it one-on-one with just about every human being I met. And I had to comfort them, which is the best thing about a funeral is you get it all over with all the sadness and you can go on with your relationships. The coolest thing I've ever been called is dad.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, it's just hard He was a real special little boy. You know, my dad had a good quote, you know, when somebody loses someone they love. He would say, just because other people go through it doesn't make it easier. It's a miserable time and you're just going to have to go through your own period of hell. And the saddest part of losing a loved one. Is you have to comfort the people that are there to comfort you.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I told everybody that story and I'm saying I'm into it for the money. I'm not a xeroxing monk. I don't even like to read. This is a money making enterprise. But we did have people that I reconvince them. It's about making money here. And my very best stores had that most happy workers. Most satisfied customers, they were the most profitable.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it did. It did It drove me. I liked money, and it was a good game. To tell people I worked with, you know, I didn't get married until I was 36 years old. And I'd go to my mother's house and she'd say, you know, honey, when are you going to get married? When are you going to get married? When are you going to have your children? And I'd say, you know, mom, I'm tired of asking me when I'm going to get married. So she said, okay, Paul, I'll never ask you when you're going to get married. But when I look at you, you'll know what I'm thinking.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Arrogant people, yeah, I realize there are arrogant people. And I believe that there's an arrogance of education. I was always with the normal people. Look at the student, they go to their special little reading group, they go to their special math group, they're always separated from people like me, the Woodshot majors. And they always look at me like in school like, well, they're stupid, they're not like me. If they go to their elitist universities, they go to their elitist colleges. And there's an arrogance in that, an arrogance in education that they don't trust the average person. I was always with the average person, and I always felt they were smarter than the executives.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But that's what employees are. Employees like the sense of security of somebody else. I'm the owner. You're an owner of a business. It isn't your job to be cocky and arrogant. You've got to know every little weakness and pitfalls in that business. And I'll tell you something that bothers me is when a business person says, I love my business. That's absolute bullshit. You love your family. You can enjoy your business. But once that becomes a love affair, you lose your objectivity. I never loved my business. I could enjoy it, but man, your business is an instrument to make you happy and you own it. It doesn't own you. And so I had a real detached few of that business.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, what I saw my relatives, I had an uncle, he had his own business and lost it. And he basically lost his will to live. So I took it very seriously. And with my background, I didn't have that many accolades. So I never was able to take myself seriously. And I freely still, to this day, don't take myself seriously. I mean, here I had a headquarters with five 600 people, I had 30,000 workers. And everybody thinks, well, because he's big, I'm sure that that's going to be a safe job. I'm the only one there thinking, I don't think we got a future. I'm really insecure here.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I kept thinking, why do you need to take a piece of paper to a copier? It can collate for you better, the laser printer. I could put spot color on it. What do they need us for?”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's say you wanted to put a little bit of red on your document, a little bit of blue. It would cost you a dollar a copy for our color copies. I saw that laser pinner is the biggest threat to my business.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why would you ever go to a piece of paper and take it to a copier when it could just come out the end of the laser printer?”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You start to see those places, okay? And I kept thinking, well, they have a strategic advantage because they got the stationery, which I don't. And the laser printer was coming after me. I could see it coming after me at left field.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm always fantasizing what my competition will do to me. So we have these office superstores, Office Max's, the Office Depots. And I kept thinking they are going to get hip and open a copy shop 24 hours a day.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's say somebody came in at 8 o'clock at night and they're closing at 9 and the person doesn't want to work on a job after 9. That work, I didn't get that job. But by opening 24 hours a day, they could rely on us doing it all night long for them. And people were generally in my business, our customers were angry subconsciously at themselves for not doing their own work yesterday.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I'm pressing. It takes me about a year. I finally get a guy out of Chicago. He tried it. And he got up in a meeting and said, this 24-hour thing works. His daytime business doubled. It just kicked ass.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because people can always rely on you. So I went back to the organization and I tried to get people to go 24 hours. What do you think they said?”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“50%. And I go to sleep two days later. I wake up like a bat out of hell and I go, what did he tell me? If you go 24 hours a day, your daytime business doubles, which is absolutely correct.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He said something that they would close their convenience market from midnight to six in the morning because they would only do $30 in business. During the daytime, they would do $6,000 in business. He said for some strange reason, my daytime business dropped 50%. When we closed from midnight to 6 in the morning.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“8182 We had a big battle with the field in this one. And I talked to this guy. He owned these convenience markets called Sheets' Market in Pennsylvania.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We said, get his, I'd say, you know, this binding machine really works. I had a guy in Colorado that if I said to get these machines, he would never buy the machine. He would just so reluctant to do anything new where the guy, Brad, in Northern California, I tell him to buy a machine, hit by 20 of them. So I had to manage them differently. I'd have to pull back. The other one I'd have to push. And your arsenal of leadership, you have the velvet glove and the steel fist. And I had to use the steel fist sometimes. Maybe I did it too much.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, blue, the logo in blue. At that point, we did go toward standardization. And for them to give up the independent power, say in Texas A&M for being green in whatever color they were, to go to company and put color blue, I had a real battle with the field to get company color blue. But some of them wouldn't do what we wanted him to do. Let's say”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and remove the obstacles As we enlarged, as we got the trademark bigger and bigger, they understood the But in this evolution, the company color blue, making that decision was the first move we had towards centralization.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's exactly the problem I had. The reason I didn't choose franchise Een is if they viewed me as a parasite from the top, they would easily go across the street and do it I shared in the prophets and they got a good salary. They had a car. We had a pension plan for the partners.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, all the time. I had a guy in Lincoln, Nebraska. He went down to Florida to start opening his own stores. I had a woman in Virginia that went down to Florida once again and opened their own shops.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meaning of the work is there is a lost little girl in Spokane, Washington. The family went to the police office first and they came to us second to do the posters. Those are powerful connections that you're contributing to. You're helping somebody get a job, somebody communicate an idea. I saw that relationship was so perfect. All I had to do was get the hell out of the way of that relationship. Was it easy to motivate people if you realize it was a self-motivated business? They enjoy it and they got fulfillment from their customers. When I noticed that, it was easy for me to get back away from that business. Secondly, I had to keep our people loyal. And I had a real problem. I recognize loyalty was a real problem for me.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In 1980, I had a business that anybody could come and compete with me on. Any of my workers, any of my customers, et cetera. I had to motivate, say, the person at Fort Collins, Colorado to want to go to work every day and do a good job. And everybody understands the meaning of the work.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Their bid would be a damn good reason for somebody to call me. And I noticed at the phone, I couldn't get anything accomplished by being so available for phone calls.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And in my entire career, if I went to my office four straight days, I'm talking when I go to an office, I'd have a nice breakfast, I'd be in there, and I'd leave at four o'clock in the afternoon. If I went four straight days by the fourth day, I'm nervous. My hands are shaking. I'm nervous. I don't have the temperament to be in an office and do all that or take interruptions. Funny thing happened along the way. I had seven stores and a manager called me up and he said, you know, Paul, I got a balanced check in the mail. What do I do? I thought, what do you mean? What do you do? You go after the guy with the check. And I thought, now, who's stupid me or him? I shouldn't be available for those kind of phone calls. So I became inaccessible.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no. I got to be honest, there's not too many things I already did for myself. My motto has always been anybody else can do it better. And in my case, they can. I supervised. Every job in that business I had at one time, but I knew how to get out of. Most people will brag about how hard they work, this, that, and the other. What I think hard work is what keeps you up all night long when you're worrying. That's hard work.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I put a generally 60% of the money, they would put up 40% of the money. I could easily go to the corporation say in Virginia, if I didn't like the partner, I'd have a special shareholders meeting and fire the manager. So I did have control. And you have to remember, just like myself, I'm in line seeing how much money was being made. I have all my workers know how much money I'm taking in. All my customers see the customers in line. And it's easy to get a copy machine. What baffled me. Why I didn't have more competition.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't really do a good job of that. And I didn't realize I had a brand. But I'll tell you the key to a field-based organization with partnerships. Is the bank statement? The fact that I was reconciling the bank statement under my auspices, I was in charge of the payroll for the locations. I was in charge of, ultimately we became charge of all their accounts receivable. You only do three things in business, and it's really simple. Motivate your workers, understand your customers, and balance your checkbook. The best definition of management is management is to remove obstacles. And I wanted every obstacle for my partners and those store managers so they could be loving the customer. So I took, I tried to take every impediment away from the easy flow of that relationship.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the people working in the stores knew how much money I was taking in. And so they would approach me about going in business. Like Jim Warren, a good example. He was a great guy, one of my very first partners. He would take a Volkswagen van and drive around the country signing leases. Finally, Jimmy decided to take the south to Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina area. So we became partners.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't like the model. Franchise Ors are two people flipping each other off all the time. In other words, if I told a franchisee to do something, they would say, well, his motivation isn't cure. He just wants more 6% from the top. I like the idea of sharing in the bottom line with the people.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“See, I started with my partner Brad Krause up in Northern California. He put up $2,500. I put up $2,500, it would start a store. He was in charge of the store. And my responsibility was a bookkeeping in the back office to reconcile the bank statement, doing the general ledger. And so that's how I expanded. I'd find people I liked and how I could determine how I liked them is if they had acquired the ability to save some money. And so if they could write a check for $2,500, I had a feeling they were good business people.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely And in the company owned stores, we also had profit sharing. I believed in profit sharing. Going to digress or change a little bit. I own a bowling alley up here. And so I was insisting as the owner, I want profit sharing in that bowling alley. So I just went in there and I announced profit sharing. That next month our sales went up 7%. Profit sharing does pay off. So I had profit sharing in every one of our locations.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, a lesson I had learned with employees is I had gone to the Irvine store at 11.30 in the afternoon and it just wasn't open. You can't rely on minimum wage people that have motivation. And so I always figured if I take in a partner, the fact that they have equity in that individual location would make a big difference in the outcome, which is true. So if I had a good store, say in downtown LA, I took my cousin Denny in as a partner, and he was there. He did a great job and ran the store. So I started with partners with equity in those individual locations.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I like to wander. So I was wandering in the reserve bookroom at the university. In the reserve bookroom in those days, the professor would say, I'm going to give you an exam. I'd like you to read this. It's too expensive. I'll put it on reserve for you. So when do you think the students went to the reserve bookroom the night before the test? So I put out a flyer saying from now on, Professor, leave things on file with Kinkos as well as a reserve bookroom. These professors went crazy for the program. I'll give you an example to jump forward. Say at Ohio State, we were doing 6% of the textbook sales by photocopying. These professors love the program that could teach with original material, etc. That program really built our business on the college campuses.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it's sort of like when you go sailing. You notice you don't have any wind, but the guy over there has all the wind. But all my competitors are doing printing, and incidentally they did copying. So I wanted to join their strategy, which was really wrong. I should have stayed with copying and not done the printing. And so I think sometimes we spend our time on the hardest thing, which was the print shop with the easy money, the low-hanging fruit was in the coffee shops.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, what happened was I bought offset printing equipment and cameras and I figured and I bought a blueprinting machine. And that business, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't know how to run the printing presses. The printing press would break. I'd call the printing press repair person. He would say, no, it's not the printing press. It's the camera. I call the camera guy. He would say it's not the camera. It's the ammonia from the blueprinting machine that's screwing up the plates for the printing press. Business, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I have no mechanical ability whatsoever. And it was bleeding me dry. So I was fortunate enough around 1973 to sell the print shop and focus on the copy shops”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every summer, you don't realize when you're working around college campuses, students aren't there very often. Summer vacation. Every summer I was broken I had it ranged lines of credit You have to also remember Xerox was so screwed up in their billing that I'd never get an invoice. So I could open a store from the day one I would be cash flowing. I got to bank two weeks for the payroll. I got to bank my paper bill for 30 days. From day one, I would actually cash flow in a new location.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About a year Then we went to Cal State Fullerton. Then I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I gradually just hit all the college campuses.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I kept looking, and I'd say, Well, there's two Save-on drugstores, there's two Chevron gas stations. Somebody figured out how to go from one to two. And after I was in business three months, I hired a manager. So I was totally free to start conceptualizing how to do other things. So then we did a store in Irvine, California. It was a garbage room of a restaurant. It was about 80 square feet.”
2023-08-21 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Kinko’s: Paul Orfalea · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT