In his checkered flannel shirt and unpressed corduroy pants, along with his easy going self-depreciating manner, Paul Orfalea seemed more like a Midwest farmer than the co-founder of Kinko's at the USC Catholic Center on a recent February evening.
But there was the folksy, 59-year-old native Angeleno, walking up and down the center aisle, explaining to some 150 students that he had four "very good" qualities that served him well in the business world.
First, he was a horrible reader, who flunked Sister Sheila's second grade class at Cathedral Chapel School because he hadn't learned the alphabet.
Second, he had no mechanical abilities, so he couldn't fix a machine if his life depended on it. Third, he never could sit still, and, as a result, enjoyed most of all leaving his office to visit Kinko's stores, where he was able to see first-hand what worked and what didn't.
Finally, Orfalea, the father of two who lives in Santa Barbara, said he had good parents who didn't pay much attention to report cards, but encouraged him to attend USC by saying, "Now, doesn't it look like fun?"
'I'm basically incompetent'
The unlikely businessman, the son of a clothing retailer, built up Kinko's - which was ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the "top ten companies to work for" - to more than 1,000 stores. In 1996, he sold his interest in the company, now owned by FedEx. The philanthropist, whose favorite cause today is helping single mothers, had some decidedly non-business advice for the students.
"I'm basically incompetent," he said. "I can't write a letter. I can't fix things. My motto was anybody else can do it better. By doing that, I had to set up a world where there was trust - I trusted people.
"Do you think I would have survived very long if I didn't trust people? Do you think I would have survived very long if I didn't have a frame of reference that people were trustworthy?"
"So I had to establish a world where I trusted people," he continued. "And, believe it or not, people rose to the level of trust that I gave them. And it always surprised me how competent they were, and how they didn't value themselves as much as I valued them."
Orfalea lamented the fact that the "bond" between owners and workers doesn't exist in giant public companies today. This is not only immoral, but bad business. "If you treat workers poorly, they're going to rip you off," he said. "Now, what I want them to do is ringing the cash register happy."
His last piece of advice to students, many of whom were business majors and members of USC's Entrepreneur Club, was probably the most unorthodox. He said if they weren't getting enough sleep and putting aside time to be "stupid" every day, they were making a major mistake.
"If you're not allowing yourself to be stupid an hour a day, you're doing something wrong," Orfalea stressed. "That means going outside and taking a walk, just having clear thoughts. You need it as a human being."
He warned them about over-studying for tests, because in 17 minutes all that crammed knowledge would be flushed out of their heads anyway. The problem was that contemporary teenagers and young adults just didn't know how to be idle.
In addition, he said sooner or later college kids needed to confront anxiety head on - and it was much better to come to terms with life's uncertainties before they graduated and marched innocently into a cold cruel world.
"During that hour a day, you might speculate why God isn't in my life," he mused. "What's the value of having virtue? What's the value of my integrity? What's the value of all of these things?"
After a moment he got more practical, adding "I guarantee you will make a lot more money in life if you realize the powers of uncertainty, the powers of anxiety - and learn to realize that life is innately full of questions."
Developing relationships
Father Lawrence Seyer, religious director of the USC Catholic Center, was taken by the businessman's iconoclastic counsel to set aside time for idle thinking - or contemplation - to sharpen one's business skills.
"In terms of the spiritual side, he recognizes the value of his employees," Father Seyer said. "I think so often a big business could care less about the employees, which is one of the great travesties of the American economy. Paul really valued the dignity of his workers."
Eddie Medino, a junior from Orange County and member of the Entrepreneur Club, thought Orfalea's message came across loud and clear. "What I got out of it was mostly the way he did business," said the 20-year-old. "He was simple, and he had a goal in mind: the relationship of trust and the way he treated his people. And he set it all up to accomplish his goal.
"So I really liked that dynamic of how he used, basically, what we come to church for to be successful in business - to develop relationships and treat people well." |