Marty Schaffel made one mistake that almost cost him his entire business. In that moment he had to reinvent himself and today, the company's sales are over $1.4 billion. Tune in to this week’s Million Dollar Monday as Schaffel shares his story and key advice about creating success through business, management and mentorship.
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Marty Schaffel made one mistake that almost cost him his entire business. In that moment he had to reinvent himself and today, the company's sales are over $1.4 billion. Tune in to this week’s Million Dollar Monday as Schaffel shares his story and key advice about creating success through business, management and mentorship.
Chapter Summaries:
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If you enjoyed this episode, click here to watch/listen to more from Million Dollar Monday.
Subscribe and receive updates when new episodes are available.
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After I finished the presentation, the new treasurer turns to me and says, that's all well and good. However, you owe us,$100,000 that's past due. So we're going to have you put on credit. This is a Friday afternoon and you won't get any product until you pay that down. And then he and everybody else got up and left the room and I thought, wow, I'm totally dependent on this company. They just fired a bullet at my head, and I got nowhere to go.
Greg Muzzillo :Hello and welcome to Million Dollar Monday. I'm your host, Greg Muzzillo bringing you real successful people with real useful advice for people with big dreams. I understand big dreams. I turned an investment of$200 and a lot of great advice from some really successful people into my big dream Proforma. That today is a half billion dollars. Hello and welcome. I am very excited for today because today is my first in person. Million- Dollar Monday, since we're hopefully on the down slide down end of this COVID experience, we've all been through, and I can't think of a better guest to have to inspire those of you who are thinking about becoming entrepreneurs and give great ideas to those of you who have big dreams. Then an entrepreneur's entrepreneur, a man who started a business with$2,000 and grew it to$1.4 billion, but not only had entrepreneurial success, but has turned that entrepreneurial success and learning to becoming a teacher of others today and a mentor to others today. I'm excited to welcome, and please join me in welcoming my good friend, Marty Schaffel, Marty.
Marty Schaffel:Great to be here. I love your enthusiasm and know that you inspire many people around the country and around the world.
Greg Muzzillo :Well, thank you for that. And so do you, so do you, I know that, so, you know, tell us a little about maybe your first bug or thought of owning your own business.
Marty Schaffel:I went and got a job in, retail, management with Montgomery Ward's department stores for$9,800 a year in 1977. That was my first job. And I was out in the workforce. I was there, I showed up in a coat and tie thinking I was going to be this junior executive and the store manager looked at me and said, you're a little overdressed today. I said, why is that? He said, well, your first two weeks are on the loading dock. And there's a tractor trailer full of 50 pound bags of fertilizer that just came in and we can't get a forklift on there. So you're going to unload them one at a time.
Greg Muzzillo :So you were a management trainee as they call them. Right. Got it.
Marty Schaffel:I worked in every department, eventually got my own department. And during six months I learned an amazing amount about, you know, the real world that isn't taught in the university environment, or it wasn't, then it is much more now. so, that was my first job and I knew after two days I'd be doing something else, but, for six months I stuck it out and got a broad, practical understanding of, how retail management works.
Greg Muzzillo :Yeah, probably more valuable going from department to department and everything that you learned, in growing your own books,
Marty Schaffel:it was all practical experience, it was the loading dock. It was shipping and receiving, it was human resources. It was, payables. It was receivables. It was, you know, my first department, I managed a lawn and garden center, then a kitchenware department. So I had unique experiences.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Almost like an entrepreneur training program. So get me to, how did you start the company?
Marty Schaffel:Well, I then got recruited to go into sales. Okay. Which I thought was the worst idea in my life. But I, got solicited, for a job in sales for, with linear business products. I had to move to Lakeland, Florida, and I would be selling, kind of a fairly simple audio, visual type products, like overhead projectors and slide projectors and so on, to schools, churches, businesses, and so on. But I also, since it was my territory was mostly orange trees and cows. I also had the opportunity to sell copy machines, to schools and churches, and nothing will teach you sales, and give you a sales experience better than that style of selling
Greg Muzzillo :Door to door and knocking on doors calling. Yeah. A lost art, I think, but
Marty Schaffel:Yeah. Right. And, that got me trained in, selling. So then I left and helped start a part of a business for somebody who was in the business. I was constantly in a battle with my district manager linear. So we eventually got into a fight. He fired me. I went to work with this other guy who used to work there started a competitive company, but he wasn't paying the bills so I was unable to get the products that I was money on. And that's when I saw this one really cool new product that came into the marketplace and went straight to the manufacturer and said, I want to start my own company selling this product.
Greg Muzzillo :Tell us about that product. Even though some of our younger folks might not be able to relate to it.
Marty Schaffel:They're very difficult to relate to because it doesn't exist anymore. And this was in 1979 when there were no PCs, there was only huge IBM computers that would take up now a building, but the PC hadn't come out yet. And, it was, a machine that was about 18 inches by 18 inches by about 12 inches. And it literally gave you an opportunity to dial a number or a letter or a or a punctuation. And it would imprint black letters on a scotch tape like material. Okay. And you would take that strip and you would peel it away and you would put it on either an engineering drawing or a way to create a flyer or a newsletter or a, presentation. Cause none of that technology had come about yet. Now all that's done on a PC, but we didn't have PCs back then. So brilliant idea, great concept, a good market for it. And I was just thrilled with the idea, but I only had$2,000 left in my name and I called the company and I said, I want to buy 10 of these machines COD. And they said, well, do you have any credit? And I said, I was hoping to get a line of credit from you. And they said, well, no they said, can you get a letter of credit? And I said, no. And they said, how are you gonna pay for it? And I said, well, if you send it to COD, I got to pay for it. COD doesn't exist anymore now because we pay everything in advance, but I got them to send me 10 machines, COD wrote a$10,000 check-out that had about$2,000 behind it and gave myself 48 hours to get them all sold, which I did and, made$4,000 in those two days. And now I had$6,000. I bought another 10 machines. Did it again, check was about$4,000 light, but I got them all sold in 48 hours, made another$4,000 and then I bought another 10 machines. I'm like, that check was good. And then I bought another 10 machines. That check was good. And then I bought 20 machines. Then I bought 50 machines. And after selling a few thousand of these, I became one of the biggest in the country doing it. And it used a proprietary supply cartridge that had about a 43% profit margin. So anybody who buys the machines would want to buy these cartridges. So I had about a million dollar renewable, clientele of business, buying these supply cartridges. So that gave me a chance to then move the business under other areas, got into the early years of video equipment used for commercial applications, VCRs cam quarters, editing equipment, all that, which, you know, we don't really use anymore, but, it was, It was, it was hot. It was hot for several years. I was flying out the door and we did well with it. Then in 1988 guy came by then we were out of my apartment in Lakeland, opened an office in Tampa by the airport, where a guy came walking in the door with a very, very early Apple PC, a plastic picture frame with a piece of glass inside and the cable hanging out of it. And he said, if you have an overhead projector, which is, you know, the old technology he said I want to show you something. And I said, okay. So I went and got an overhead projector, we went in t he conference room, he took this plastic picture frame with the glass and put it on the overhead projector. He plugged the cable hanging out of it into this Apple PC, which was one of the very early Apple, portable computers, plugged everything in, turned everything on. And the light coming out of the overhead projector, went through the glass in this picture frame, which then projected up on the wall and there coming out of the computer projected onto the, onto the wall was black and white text. And I thought, wow, that's the way the world's going to communicate in the future. And I just said, we're going to shift our entire focus to display technology. And we became the world's biggest integrator and reseller of display technology for classrooms, conference rooms, boardrooms war rooms. An this year the company will do$1.4 billion in revenue.
Greg Muzzillo :You know, I heard a great story that you told about a lesson that you learned about being one supplier dependent. I think there is a great lesson there.
Marty Schaffel:My rule, my rule is, and I had to learn it the hard way, no single customer and no single supplier.
Greg Muzzillo :Why tell the why what happened with that single supplier.
Marty Schaffel:Supplier can dictate your business or you will be forced into making bad decisions or no decisions that you can possibly like. I had really committed so much of my revenue to this one and I would attribute a key part of my success to the credit manager of this company, Croix industries. She was smart enough to say, Hey, this guy is keeping his promise. Now he's building his business like so many of our customers, but he doesn't have the capital to, you know, to handle this volume. So if we cut them some Slack, our sales will be greater as long as he keeps his promise. So what would happen is I was falling behind, but a hundred thousand dollars. And she agreed to take that a hundred thousand dollars and treated as a past due, almost like a loan. I would keep paying that down, but I was continually able to get product. So when I couldn't get a hundred thousand dollars loan from a bank, but I was selling a ton of their product, she was allowing this hundred thousand dollars to kind of roll And everybody Was happy in the deal. I was buying a lot of product. I was keeping my promises. They were selling me a lot of product and that hundred thousand dollars wasn't at risk, but it was allowing me to grow. Well, one day a private equity group took over the company, bought the company, had a new management, new board of directors and the salesman who was calling on me at the time, this was, early to mid eighties, said, listen I need you to come to Arizona to visit the company that since moved to Arizona to visit with the new ownership and in the room was the new president of the company, the new treasurer of the company, the new chairman of the board and the woman who was extending me, this credit, the credit manager, and a few of the sales people. And I thought, Hmm, good thing. I planned a presentation here. This is, I had a lot of people in here. So I had stood up and did a presentation about, Hey, I started my business around your product. Here's the growth. Here's how much I'm generating. Here's what it means to all of us. Here's the role you play, how critical that is. And here's my go forward projections and why our partnership is so valuable for both of us. I thought, well, it's a home run presentation. After I finished the presentation, the new treasurer turns to me and says, that's all well and good. However, you owe us a hundred thousand dollars that's past due. So we're going to have you put on credit hold this is a Friday afternoon, and you won't get any product until you pay that down. And then he and everybody else got up and left the room and I thought, wow, I'm totally dependent on this company. They just fired a bullet at my head. And I got nowhere to go. Anyway, drops me off at the hotel. I walk in the hotel room and I just collapsed on the floor of the hotel. I started hyperventilating here I am 30 years old and I think I'm having a heart attack. And I thought, yeah, that's it. I'm going to lose the company. I'm going to lose everything. I have no solution to this problem. I don't have the hundred thousand dollars, but got back to town. I had two uncles who were very helpful. I, I said, I need 90,000. I need$50,000 each from you for 90 days. So I co uld g et the money in the bank to then borrow a hundred thousand dollars to then, you know, pay this amount of money. And then I would use that, i ndebtedness also to get you paid. And it took a lot of maneuvering, but I was able to pull it off. I thought that I had lost the company and I just thought all these people who are working for me, they were dependent on me for their livelihood, where it was all about to blow up, but we made it through. And, you know, it's interesting because you have to keep reinventing yourself along the way. And the thing that I learned at that moment was I had to reinvent myself as a business that would not be singularly dependent on a single customer or a single supplier.
Greg Muzzillo :The other key thing here is that you didn't give up. There was I'm hearing and reading through the lines. There was no way you were going to give up. You were going to find a solution, no matter what it took, you were going to get through the panic. You are going to get through the problem and you were going to get to the other end of it. I think as I talk with different entrepreneurs and different people with dreams, I think that's what really differentiates people is the ability to run into a mountain, but to say, you know what? I don't know if I have to dig a tunnel, I don't have to go around it. I don't have to go over it, but somehow I'm getting through it. And, and, that's a, it's a tremendous attribute that I think separates the very successful from those that might not make it. Now, you, and I has also talked about when we were getting ready about when, at what point, or did you ever reach a point that you, had an u nshakable confidence that you would be successful no matter what?
Marty Schaffel:I think that you always believe you will be successful when you are absolutely convinced that if you get up every day and do the things, you know, are the right things to do that you will not fail. And as long as you're focused on those right things and those right things are not the accumulation of wealth, the accumulation of wealth is a by-product of getting up every day and doing the right things. But when you become focused on the money, you will have lost your ability to lead and to be an effective and successful entrepreneur. The money is the reward for getting up every day and being focused on doing the right things and the ability to communicate to your employees that you lead or manage, what are those right things that need to be done everyday. And that is when you eventually aspire to a place. I call management Nirvana. And by definition, that is nobody was allowed to report to me that needed to be managed, what I wanted to do. And it took me 25 years to get there. As I wanted to be able to sit in a conference room with all of the key people that report to me and say, here's our objectives. Here's, they're all consistent with our, vision and mission from our objectives comes our action plan from our action plan, from our objectives, come, our strategy from our strategy comes our action plan. And when we get up, everybody knows what they own, what they're going to do when they're going to do it. And I don't have to walk behind them and ask them. And when you're at that point, you have reached what I believe to me, management, Nirvana. You can spend your time strategizing and leading rather than parenting.
Greg Muzzillo :I call that owning a lifestyle business. So many people, I try to talk to them. We talk with our franchise owners all the time about the goal, if you want it to be, I don't like"should-ing" on people, but the goal could be building a business to the point that you're not the most important person in the business anymore. I think you're kind of saying the same thing, but you're making money because you own the business. Not because you're the most important worker in the business. And I think for a lot of smaller entrepreneurs, they don't necessarily see that. I think they see that I either need to work really hard and keep making money, or I need to sell the business. And there's like nothing in between. And yet you found that sweet spot where you didn't have to be the most important in many ways you were, of course the most important, but you didn't have to be the most important person in the business. You could go travel and turn on your computer and live the life you wanted. And yet still own the business and be involved in the business. I call that a lifestyle business. I like the word Nirvana much better, though.
Marty Schaffel:Your goal has to be, to motivate, inspire, and impassion people to execute on a dream and a vision that's, that's your goal. That's your job description. That's what you have to get up and do every day. And to the extent that you can create a mutual, loyalty between yourself and your employees, that each k nows, take a bullet for the other and the employee is not just a, e xpendable or disposable artifact, w hich way too many businesses fail because they have that mentality. If you can make it very clear that your goal is to inspire and passion an d e mpower employees, you will have a very dynamic organization. Now, how do you impassion or inspire employees? Well, they have to feel significant if you can cause your employees to feel important and significant, an d y ou empower them to make a decision. Most entrepreneurs fail because they can't get to that point where they can delegate where they can empower.
Greg Muzzillo :Interesting, big step you're right. If you don't
Marty Schaffel:A dynamic organization, has people making decisions, a, paralyzed organization has people afraid to make a decision. So I would tell our employees, you cannot be fired from this company for any decision you make, and we need you to make decisions. As long as when you made the decision, you truly believed it was right for the customer, the company, or fellow employees, and not out of greed, self-aggrandizement ego or something else, then no matter what the outcome we will not be a dynamic organization. If you don't make decisions right now, the entrepreneur has to buy into this i n the entrepreneur has to say, you know what? I'm willing to let that person make a decision that may only generate 80% of the effectiveness that maybe my decision would make, because I can get a lot more decisions made. And if the e ntrepreneur i s willing to do that, they're g oing t o, a nd the l eaders are willing to do that. They're going to find more often, not the person executed at 110 or 120% of the way they would have executed if they had to try to do it themselves
Greg Muzzillo :Wise advice and a great culture. What you're talking about really is building a great culture. Alright, congratulations on the great success. Talk to us just a little bit about when did you reach the decision to sell the business? How did you get there and what did you do?
Marty Schaffel:I never wanted to sell the company wasn't trying to sell the company. Matter of fact, one of my quirks was I was so concerned about how we sounded to the public. Most people didn't come to see us. We did business to business, but my office was always closest to the receptionist b ecause I wanted to hear how we sounded to the public. It was just always one of my quirks. And, I was getting so frustrated back in 2003, b ecause I was having people constantly call saying, I have a buyer for your business. I'm a business broker. I want to sell y our b usiness, on and on and on and on. So finally, and I never would tell the receptionist to screen calls, but I said, yo u g ot to s creen these calls. Th ey're k illing me. And one day I c a ll g ot through. And, t he voice said, I have so mebody w ho wants to buy your company. And I said, how'd you get through? I said, I have stopped these calls. Okay. And she said, no, no. I really have somebody who wants to buy your company. Okay. I said, great. Who is it? She said, well, you have to sign an NDA. I said, I'm going to hang up in 30 seconds. If you don't tell me who it is. And she said, no, no, no, no. If I could just send you the NDA, I said 10 seconds finally, as we're counting down to zero. Okay. Okay. I'll tell you. It's circuit city. Oh, I said, Hmm. That's interesting. A public company. She said they have hired us to find acquisitions for them. And we're most interested in your company, biggest in the space you're in. And I said, that's very interesting. I said, tell me more. They said, well you have to sign an NDA. I said, all right, right. In the middle of the discussion, they had a jet full of eight of their senior procurement people crash into a mountain in Colorado. Everybody was killed. Oh no. And it was Pueblo Colorado. And I called the CEO, offered my condolences and said, I can only imagine the panic and confusion and challenges you got. He said, yep. We're going to have to stop this discussion. I got mess on my hands. And, right after that, the, investment banking group that had, introduced us said, we've decided to cancel our relationship with, circuit city and just represent you in the sale of your company. I said, number one, I said, I'm not for sale. It just so happened. There was an interesting story here, but I'm not for sale. And the guy said, or asked the most important question that I've ever heard posed to me in my career in terms of timing. He said, well, let me ask you this. He said, will you just promise me if I have a similar, interesting story, like the circuit city story we brought to you, will you take my call? Good question. And I said, of course, I'll take your call. I said, I would be a fool. I said, it just has to be as compelling a story as you just brought to me. And six months later, he calls me and says, I got the compelling story. You want to hear it? And I said, what is that? He said that we would merge. You're the biggest in the world. We would merge the second biggest in the world together. That would be a seven times bigger than the largest in the world. You would have a overwhelming dominance in the marketplace. And, we would, you know, market that combined company to either a private equity group or a strategic buyer that would pay a premium to have that a dvanced that's a great story. And he said, we will go into the marketplace with that story. And it'll command a huge premium. I said, you got my attention. And I said, I'm willing to listen. He said, well, everybody wants to meet up in Baltimore. You know, the private equity group that is involved in this other company. And, you know, people from our team, h e said, you know, we've got people from San Francisco and Boston and Baltimore, and they all want to know whether you'll fly to any one of those cities. I said, quite frankly, I said, if you think the s tory i s good enough, you can fly to Tampa. That's where I'll be. And I'm not flying anywhere else. Call me when they can come. They s aid, O h, they're not. I said, call me when everybody wants to fly to Tampa and I'll hold the meeting, calls me back and said, okay, they all want to come. October 31st, 2005. I said, that's Halloween. I said, I have an eight year old daughter. I take her t rick o r t reating. They said, this is a critical meeting. Hundreds of millions of dollars at stake here. I said, it's Halloween. I said, arrive at three o'clock. W e'll sit on my terrace at my home. W e'll have a good Cuban cigar w e'll drink. Good scotch. But at six o'clock I'm taking my daughter trick or treating. Got it. A ll r ight. Everybody shows up at three o'clock. We start the discussions. I t's six o'clock tap, tap, tap. You look at the glass French doors on my patio. There's my eight year old daughter in a squirrel outfit with a plastic orange pumpkin going knocking on the glass saying, it's time to go trick or treating. So I turned everybody and said, guys, h elp yourself to another cigar, more scotch. I'll be back in an hour or two. I g ot t o t ake my daughter trick or treating. And they said, you're nuts. I said, I got my priorities,
Greg Muzzillo :of all the stories you've told by the way, Marty. I didn't know that story and we've been friends for some time. It, I think that story tells me the most about who you are as a man. I love that story we've obviously got know each other through the entrepreneurship program at the university of Florida, you give your heart and soul to that place. As a teacher, as a mentor, to many other, you've sold your business for a lot of money, starting with a$2,000 investment now you're very successful. You've achieved probably beyond your wildest dreams. What are the big dreams or dreams that you have for the rest of your life?
Marty Schaffel:Well, there is a philanthropist in town that has a quote that I share with, all my classes. I make sure every semester I tell my students this quote and the gentleman's name is Les Muma. And I heard him say, you spend the first, third of your life learning. You spend the second third of your life earning and you spend the last third of your life returning. I am now in that third phase of my life where I still want to continue to learn, but I'm most concerned about returning and I made my business successful because not because of what specifically we did, because it didn't matter to me. It could have been toilets for all. I was concerned, plumbing, supplies. It wasn't what we did that enamored me. It was the ability to hire great people and motivate and impassion them and enthuse them to be successful. And I knew if I could help enough other people be successful, I would be successful. Well, the challenge comes in. Once you sell your company. Once I sold my company, I wasn't causing people to be successful anymore. I'd handed that over to other people. And there is a concept that is really important for all of us to understand. And that concept is what is our relevancy. We all need to feel relevant. And we find our relevancy in different ways. Sometimes it's as a parent, sometimes it's as a spouse or a significant other. Sometimes it is as a teacher mentor, motivator or leader. And that's where we derive our feeling of accomplishment. So my relevancy was helping people be successful. Once I was no longer doing that at Avi SPL, I then found that I could do that at the university of Florida, joining the faculty and teaching. And that is now my relevancy, helping students be successful and be ready to get out in the world and make a difference. And I make it very clear to them that they have to commit to me that they will let me know how they're doing over the next 10 years. And that they will know that they have two more thirds of their life left to execute on. And that never forget to say thank you. One of the things that I did when I got that first check for 80% of my shareholdings, I took$10 million, carved it up into small checks and called in employees. One by one who had helped me get to where I got to and handed them a check and said, thank you. We got here together. I couldn't have done it without you. And this is a thank you for me to you. And we hugged and we cried. And I said, now when you leave my office, please don't cry because everybody knows that, you know, that transaction happened yesterday. And I don't want them seeing, I don't want them seeing you leave my office crying to think I'm firing everybody. I won't be able to get anybody in here to give them a check! I said, so when a student raised their hand in class one time and said, what was the greatest day in your career? Was it the day you got all that money? I said, nah, I said, that was a good day. May have been the second best day of my career, but it wasn't the best day of my career. The best day of my career was that next day when I handed out checks and thank people, cause I took 10% of my, net earnings and wrote a check to everybody.
Greg Muzzillo :Well, good for you. And it is a great story. I think somehow the word Nirvana continues to ring in my head about you and your life. You talked about achieving management Nirvana, but now I just think you've reached a life time Nirvana. And you're just, you're living a life of wonderful dreams because you were brave enough to pursue yours and yet continue to stay in touch with helping others now pursue their dreams. So I really appreciate your joining me. I hope each of you enjoyed listening to Marty. I hope you got a lot of rich lessons out of it. One of the lessons I think that I would encourage you to hear is that Marty was a great listener and I hope you heard him say about putting his office closest to the receptionist and tie that together with the opportunities that walked in his door, that machine one day that he was willing to take a look at that turned the future and the fortunes of his company. He always was Great listener and listening rather than closing your mind and being too important for the next person that has something to say. It isn't careful listening to prospective vendors perspective, our current employees and all of the folks in our life that the best lessons and maybe sometimes the best opportunities come our way. Anyhow, thank you all for joining me. I hope this million dollar Monday with great for you. And once again, thank you again. Marty.
:loved being with you as always.