Steve Blue Transcript
Clint Betts
Steve, welcome to the show. Great to have you. You are the President and CEO of Miller Ingenuity. Tell us what Miller Ingenuity is and how you came to be the president and CEO. Let's start simple.
Steve Blue
Well, Miller Ingenuity is a global supplier of all kinds of products and systems, from very high technology to very low technology and everything in between. We're a little bit unique in that respect because most organizations are either high-tech, or they're low-tech, or there's something in the middle, but they're not all three of them, which we are. We've been in business in our 78th year. In fact, we just celebrated our 75th anniversary two or three years ago, and we sell in over 100 countries now.
I've been the CEO for 26 years now, so about a third of the life of the company I've been at the helm. I got this job a lot of people do. I was called by a headhunter one day, and I was a divisional general manager for a large industrial automation company with P&L responsibility, but I wasn't a CEO. And they said, "How would you like to come to this little company in a little town in Minnesota and be our CEO?" And I said, "Nah, I don't think so." So I turned him down. And as it turned out, they hired a guy. He didn't work out so well, so they fired him in three months.
And so then they called me back, and they said, "Well, the guy that we hired because you didn't want it didn't work out, would you be willing to consider it?" So I said, "Yeah," because, and you know this, Clint, when you get a shot at being a CEO, you take it. I don't care where it is; I don't care what it is; I don't care how complicated it is; it's something you just don't pass up because those opportunities, as I'm sure you know, don't come up very often. So I took the job. And the company, since I've been there, I've grown the EBITDA over seven times. So, the shareholders and the board are pretty happy with me. It's been a long and arduous journey because there were a lot of changes that had to be made. And I'm sure you've spoken with other guests about the complications of changing an organization, and so I had that in spade. So that was 26 years ago.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. I mean, seven times EBITDA, wow, that's unbelievable. That is-
Steve Blue
That's a pretty big number.
Clint Betts
That's wonderful. Congratulations on that. Give me a sense of what you've learned about leadership during that time and what it means to come into a company that's been established. I mean, now this is your company, 26 years, my word, but when you first come in, what does it mean to change the culture of a company and get them on a path where they can do seven times EBITDA over 26 years?
Steve Blue
The other thing I'll mention is we haven't used any outside capital to do that, so that makes that number even more extraordinary. We didn't have to borrow.
Clint Betts
Wait, before you go to answer the question, how has the business been funded?
Steve Blue
Well, with internally generated cash and two or three acquisitions along the way. I think we borrowed maybe 800,000 once to get a smaller acquisition many, many years ago. We didn't need to borrow the money because we had the cash, but we chose to. It was mostly internally generated cash, and you take a step at a time, and then you take another step, and then you generate the cash that you need to take the next step. One of the things I've learned in my career is cash is king. Cash is everything. If you work for a big multinational corporation, a Fortune 500 company, which I have, they play with Monopoly money. They don't have to worry about whether I am going to make the payroll this week and how to fund my CapEx purchases and that sort of thing. You grow not by leaps and bounds but by one step and then another step, and then you fund it, and you do another step. It took 26 years to get there, but the shareholder is pretty happy that that's how we did it. I'm sorry, what was your question again?
Clint Betts
No, it's my fault. Sorry. I was just so stunned by building a business the old-fashioned way that I wanted to stop there. I was talking about what you learned about leadership and what it means to come in, build a culture, and set a company on the right path.
Steve Blue
Culture is everything. You probably know this yourself. Ten years ago, maybe 15 years ago, if you stood in front of a bunch of CEOs and talked about the importance of culture, their eyes would glaze over, and they go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, culture schmalter. Tell me the marketing stuff and the engineering stuff and buying companies and all that." Now, they pay a little more attention to culture because everything in a company starts with the culture. I tell CEOs this all the time: the first thing you have to do is build your culture and build it right before you do anything else because if you have a killer culture, which we have, then you can do anything. If you don't have a killer culture, you really can't do anything. When I first came into the organization, and this is true of every organization that I've led. In the beginning, the culture wasn't that good. In some cases, it was a lot worse than others.
You have to decide what kind of values, which are the underpinnings of all cultures, and what kind of values you want. And then you have to put in all of the organization processes and procedures to support that and sustain it. That's not what a lot of companies do. When they're trying to build a culture, they go... I'll give you an example. "We love teamwork. Everybody's going to have teamwork." And yet, they will individually assess people's performance. They won't assess a team's performance; they'll assess an individual's performance. And yet they will say to the manufacturing guy, as an example, "If you get that product out the back door, you've done your job, and we're happy." No, no, that's not right. It has to be out the back door with quality and so forth. So you have to build your culture one plank at a time.
And it's tough stuff. It's really tough stuff because no organization, I don't care whose it is, no organization wants to change. They just don't. They usually don't think they need to. They don't want to. All the inertia is built up in a certain direction, and they don't want to change that. You can't even a lot of times figure out what that culture is. So the first step you have to do is, what kind of culture do I have here? Well, how do you do that? One, by observation, obviously. I walk into the factory, and I see people just not doing much, not being very energetic, and not moving around much. I've been in so many factories in my career that I can smell a bad factory. I just can.
The other way you assess the culture is to get some professional help. I had an industrial psychologist that I've used for many, many, many years, and he designed a survey, and then you send the survey out to every single person in the organization. You ask questions about the culture. It has to be anonymous now because you don't want them guessing what the right answer is. And then once you get all that done, they go, "This culture values this. This culture doesn't value that; it values this and not other things." And so then you have to align what you want the culture to be with the organization. You got to start that. Say you're a CEO; you have to start with your first direct reports. I can't, and I don't want to reach down to the bottom of the organization and start changing things there. If my first line of leadership is in tune with the culture, in agreement with the culture, and they know what to do, they'll do it.
If they're not, you have one choice. You try to convince them of why we have to do this, what's the good that'll happen when we do it, what's the bad that will happen if we don't do it. And then, if they don't want to do it, you got to take them out one at a time, one level at a time. That's the nasty stuff. I'll give you an example. This takes a long time. Most CEOs go, "Okay, boom, boom. As long as I can get it done in six months, I'm fine." You're talking years to change a culture and build a culture.
We have very high technology factoring in terms of people and processes. We don't have any supervisors per se in the factory. Our people know what they have to do, they decide what they're going to do, they go do it, they have access to the inventory, they pull the inventory that they need, they know what products have to be built today, and they do it, and nobody tells them how to do it. Now, you dial back 26 years, and they could care less. I mean, if you didn't tell them exactly what to do, they wouldn't do it. And so you have to have a culture that I call by design, not default. You need to make sure you build the blocks that you want, and then the people who aren't going to go along with it, and there will be some; you just have to take them out.
Clint Betts
Basically, what you're saying is that every employee is a supervisor. How do you instill that? You brought in the industrial psychologist; how do you instill employees caring to that level to where they're going to do the right thing for the company, for themselves every single time?
Steve Blue
Well, that's a good question. It starts with the hiring process. Let's say you've already called out the ones that don't want to do this. Sometimes, people in a company don't want to do what's right because they aren't treated right, and so you can't blame them. And so one of the first things I did for people in the factory is I raised all their wages because they were below market, but then I said with the raise in wages, there's a raise in expectations. Couldn't do one without the other. We turned over the entire factory within five years, every single one, because not one of them wanted to do and be what we wanted them to do and be. And then it starts with the hiring process, as an example. Once you have your culture set, don't ever let anybody in the front door that can wreck it or that spoils it or doesn't agree with it.
As an example, again, in the factoring, since we have no supervisors, the coworkers that this person will work with interview this person. The lawyer is going to say, "Oh no, I can't do that because of legal responsibility." Fine, fine, fine, I understand all that. They decide whether they're going to hire this person or not because only they know if that person will fit in the culture or not. Once you've established what those values are and the people that surround them, because as another example, everybody gets paid, there's only one metric in a business that means a thing. Now, I know the quality guys are going to go, "Yeah, you got to have the best quality. The engineering guys' going to have this." Only one metric means a thing in a for-profit company, and that's profit; that's it. So, we align the entire organization on one goal, that goal of meeting the operating profit budget for the year.
Now, sub-departments will have sub-goals, but if we don't hit that profit number, nobody gets an incentive. Not a single person. Not me, not anybody else in the organization. And if we hit that profit, everybody gets an incentive. [inaudible 00:11:33] simplest, but it aligns the whole organization on the one number that makes sense. The manufacturing guy goes, "Well, I'm just going to ship it up the back door. I don't care if it's profitable or not," we don't have any of that. Or the quality guy who might step in and say, "Little problem with the quality here, can't let that get out the back door." He'll take care of that upstream because they're all engaged in the same metric of profit. I've got all kinds of arguments. I've heard every last one of them. "That's a dumb idea. It never works. I've tried, but it doesn't work." It does if you allow it to work, but you have to let people know where you are every month on the number.
Every month, everybody in the company knows. Actually, every day, everybody gets an order report, including me. And every month, everyone knows where we are in relation to our operating income budget. Give you a perfect example of how powerful that is, Clint. One time, many years ago, it was December. We're on a calendar year. It was December, and we were in danger of not hitting the budget. I was walking through the factory, and a guy in factory came up to me and said, "I'm a little worried about not making the budget this year. Is there anything that you can think of that I could do to make that happen?" Now, imagine that a guy in the factory cares about profit.
Well, it's not because of philanthropy. It's because he's got money getting in his pocket if we hit the member, and he doesn't if we don't. It's a powerful way to give people a reason to care about your company. The second thing is that you have to have really terrific leaders who care about the people that they're leading, care about. In my company, we are family-oriented, and everybody knows if you talk to anybody in my organization, they'll tell you that I will always say your family comes first. If you have a conflict between family and work, family comes first. Now, if you're hiring the wrong people who might want to take advantage of that, that's a different situation. You put all that together, and people feel like they're working for a caring organization that has their interests at heart. And the other thing we do, we're being into philanthropy in the community, and that attracts a certain kind of person. We have a committee of employees that decides how to distribute charitable funds every year, and it all hangs together.
Clint Betts
Why is that important to you? Why is being engaged in the community outside of your business important?
Steve Blue
Well, that's a good question. It's important to me because I think we owe the community that we earn our living in to pay them back. Now, I know all the arguments about shareholders don't care about that. You just distribute the profit, and the shareholders can decide on that, but my shareholders agree with me that the company should do that. It's a twofold benefit. One is that we're viewed as a super spectacular company in the community. Everybody knows who we are. I have no trouble recruiting people because we're always in the media about this philanthropy, that philanthropy, this award, that whatever, and the competitive environment that we've been in labor environment for the last, as I'm sure you know, the last two or three or four years, everybody else in the community has to pay extra and they still can't get the kind of recruitment success that we get. We don't have any trouble at all. I don't pay the highest in the world. You're not supposed to. That's not necessarily the smart thing to do, but I have no trouble recruiting people.
Clint Betts
They like coming to work for that reason, right? It doesn't have to be the highest in the world because there's more meaning to their job than just the paycheck. That's what you've accomplished here. You've accomplished meaning.
Steve Blue
That's exactly right. I can't remember the author of the book called Meaning at Work, but it gives them a reason to be at work besides just making the widgets and doing the widgets. That attracts a certain kind of person. Because of our philanthropy, that attracts a certain kind of person. Now, if you ask me to define exactly what that kind of person is, I'm not sure I could tell you, but it's the kind of person who cares about the community and about his coworkers.
I'll give you an example. Years and years and years and years ago, there was a massive flood in our area, and one of my employees lost his whole house in the flood. We were getting ready to have the annual company golf outing where people get the day off, re-golf, liquor, hamburgers, and all that kind of stuff. They came up to me, and they said, "If we would be willing to forgo the golf outing this year, would you put the money that you would've spent toward Jesse so he can rebuild his house?" Now, that's the kind of teamwork and camaraderie that money can't buy. And we did because if I'd have said, "No, I'll just do it anyway." It was the principle of it because of the camaraderie and the teamwork everybody has.
Clint Betts
That's remarkable.
Steve Blue
It's a remarkable culture.
Clint Betts
That culture that you have built is unbelievable. Give me a sense of what a typical day looks like for you, then.
Steve Blue
Well, that's a really good question. My typical day, and this would not be so unusual for other CEOs you talk to, is, well, tell me what time you want me to start. Tell me what time you want me to stop. I mean, the last thing I do before I go to bed at night is get on my email. Immediately after the orders report comes out, I plunge into that. Sometimes, that's at 6:00 at night; sometimes, it's 7:00 in the morning. The first thing I do in the morning when I get up is check my emails and check the orders report. We're a global business, so things come at all times of the day and night. And then I spend most of my day thinking about the future. I've got a killer leadership team. My sales and marketing guy knows exactly what he's doing. Very seldom does he ever have to ask me about something.
My engineering and operations guys know exactly what they're doing. I gather them together once a month for a complete business review, everything from the top to the bottom. Sales, orders, new product developments, margins, this, that, you name it, and we go over it. We take a deep dive. It takes most of the day. Rest of the month, I let those guys do their thing. If they need to talk to me, they will. And every now and again, of course, I'll just talk to them. So I spend most of my time on, "Okay, what is in the future?" Especially in the last two or three years, that's been really tough. What is in the future? How do we prepare for it?
And then, one of the biggest components of my job is to manage the board. I'm not the chairman, but I'm sort of like the de facto chairman because I've been leading the board forever. Suppose I don't prep them if I don't get things in line so they can understand them... because that's a very uninvolved board. They come together once every quarter. If we have a meeting, it's an hour, hour and a half, and we're done. It's important to have them have enough communications and enough involvement, but not too much involvement because then things go sideways.
Clint Betts
Board management is a very interesting topic. How have you learned that over the years, that interesting and important balance between "Here's everything that's happening that you need to know" and keeping them at arm's length on the day-to-day operations?
Steve Blue
That was tough. I'd never managed the board before I came here. I didn't have to when I was with the Fortune 500 company. First of all, I'm a control freak. I'm not about to let anybody get their fingers in my opera... this is me. Well, that's how I started out. I made some mistakes in the beginning with the board, and the board has turned over a few times since then. Not completely, but in segments of it, where I didn't think they had the right, nor did I want them to have any particular piece of information or decision-making. So, a couple of times, I got my knuckles slapped over that, and that's fine. Then I started to understand, "Here's the hallway the board wants me to be in like this. Here's the hallway way out here that I want to be in." And sorry, neither one can have it that way, so you come in and meet in the middle.
And then, of course, the more successes you have, the more hallway the board gives you and the more confidence they have in you and say, "Okay, Blue says this, it must be right. Look at what he's done in the last 26 years." And so I think success is probably the biggest reason the board lets me. You have to have codified limits of authority. I know, even though it's not codified, that I can't buy a company without getting the board's approval, I know that. I know I can't sell a major product line without getting the board's approval. I know that. That seems sensible to me.
And I know as long as I stay within an approved operating budget, I can do anything I want within that. And that's what was most important to establish with the board. You just approved a budget in aggregate. Sales, margins, income, and all that kind of stuff, then you got to leave me alone. You don't get your fingers in the cloud because it's complicated, Clint, as I'm sure you know. There are so many moving parts, and someone who's not engaged with the business would really screw it up if you gave him the chance.
Clint Betts
I love how obvious it is when I talk to somebody like you who's a CEO and how complicated other CEOs make it. You know what I mean? It really is as simple as you're laying it out, but you have this ability, it seems to me, to be very clear and direct and get buy-in from folks, so you don't have to deal with everything that would come from doing this without telling anybody or going... Do you know what I mean? On your own way. It seems like you figured out the communication patterns pretty well.
Steve Blue
That's really important because if a CEO can't manage the board, he or she will be a failure, an absolute failure. They'll either get fired because they did something stupid that they shouldn't have done. I say this to CEOs all the time, if the board gets their fingers in your pie and they screw something up big time, they're not going to blame themselves; they're going to blame you, Mr. CEO, so don't let them ever do that.
Clint Betts
How has all of this tariff stuff affected you? I mean, you're obviously doing business globally and shipping and all that kind of stuff. How have you thought about it?
Steve Blue
Well, that's a good question. I've been around such a long time; I don't overreact to anything, and I don't react to most things. I got a few calls from my board, I don't know, whenever it started, whenever that was, and whenever the threat was there, "What are you going to do? What are you going to do?" I said, "I'm not doing a thing until there's something to do something about."
In the beginning, we were withholding shipments from China. We did a lot of raw materials in certain parts of our product, and we just left it there in the port. Don't take it because I don't know what my cost is going to be until I release that shipment. We had, and still have, oh, I don't know, probably a year's worth of inventory at current costs, so I have some room to maneuver. Well, sure enough, it was up, it was down, it was this, it was that. It was China; it was this.
If you run around with your hair on fire, you go crazy. So I just waited. About now, at least, we're at the point where... I have a 90-day window where my costs are certain. Just to use China as an example, my costs are certain out of China, and so then my guys will make a decision, "Do we want to expedite some shipments? Do we want to expedite some manufacturing? Where do we have a wiggle room to raise the price?" Some places you do, some places you don't.
And so they will very likely conclude, "Let's get a bunch of stuff in here in the next three months because it's certain, and we don't know what'll happen after that." I don't know what's going to happen. Nobody does. It's always a mistake, especially for a CEO, to react to something when he doesn't know what's going to happen. In my career and in my time in leadership, I've learned to just... I wasn't always that way. I mean, you could probably figure I'm a get it done right now guy, but I just sat back and waited until now there's a window open, and we'll probably take advantage of it. I don't know what happens in 90 days.
Clint Betts
That's really interesting too. Again, it seems simple, but it does seem like a lot of CEOs overreact to news and markets and things of that nature. Maybe some CEOs obviously should overreact to those things, but for the most part, it does seem like you should wait and figure out where things are going to land before jumping into sweeping changes, right?
Steve Blue
Right. You have to know, "If this happens, I'll do this. If this happens, I'll do that," so we know exactly based on different cost scenarios and different contractual relationships we have on the sales and with our customers, we know exactly what would be in A, B, C, D, E, F, G. There's nothing to do until we get to A, B, C.
But when it's time to do something, as a CEO, you have to have clarity on what it is you're going to do and what it is going to cost you. Too many CEOs go, "Oh yeah, let's go get those sales." What's it going to cost to get those sales? They're obsessed with bigger, bigger, top line bigger, top line bigger, top line bigger when they should be obsessed with the bottom line bigger. As you know, a bigger top line doesn't necessarily bring a bigger bottom line.
Clint Betts
Yeah, for sure. Because the more you spend from that top line, you can have a much worse bottom line because of it.
Steve Blue
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You might ask me about this. One of the reasons I'm so obsessed with cash is I spent seven years in a turnaround. I would highly recommend that for anybody early in their career. It was one of the most terrifying seven years I ever spent. We had to make choices between paying the utility bill or making payroll. That's how critical it was. I was a divisional general manager. I worked for a president who wanted to spend his time talking about strategy and the future. He would bring in consultants; he'd take us all off-site to talk about the strategic plan for the next five. And I'm thinking, "Are you flipping kidding me?" But you know why, Clint? They do that because, in that situation, the present is ugly, and they don't want to face the present.
Did you ever see anybody have a strategy that says, "We're going to fail in five years; we'll be broken out of business." They don't make them like that. That's not how you make a strategy, but it's a happy, happy, happy place. So that's where people spend time that they shouldn't. I'm not saying you shouldn't do strategic planning, but let's face it: strategic planning beyond a year or two years, you can't know what's going to happen in three years. So what do they do? They make a big book, big book, and this is our strategic plan for the next five years, and the shareholders will go, "Yeah, yeah. Stock prices will go up because that's a really good plan. Stick it on the shelf." Nobody pays any attention to it until the next time for strategic planning. I don't mean to bleed all over strategic planning, but you have to make payroll today, no matter who you are and no matter what your plan is.
Clint Betts
I think, again, it seems like common sense, but for some reason, so many CEOs get lost in it. You coauthored a book called Unlocking Success alongside Jack Canfield. Tell us about Jack and why you decided to publish this book. It looks like it was published at the beginning of this year.
Steve Blue
It's the second book I published with Jack. Have you ever met Jack?
Clint Betts
No, I haven't.
Steve Blue
Have you ever seen him on TV, whatever? When he is doing his commercials or whatever, and he is doing his seminars, he just seems like a really nice, genuine earth guy, and he really, really is. When I first met him, he was so gracious, so kind, and so accommodating. I couldn't believe I was talking to Chicken Soup for the Soul guy. I just couldn't believe it. In fact, I'll be out in LA with my wife for, I don't know, the premiere of the book in, I think, September. And Jack will be there, and he will spend lots of time with me and my wife and other people that are there for the same reason. You know somebody who knows somebody. I know a guy by the name of Nick Nanton. He owns, I think it's called Celebrity Branding. They're based out of Orlando.
He's a filmmaker. He does all kinds of films. He writes all kinds of books. A really cool guy. He started as an entertainment lawyer in Hollywood. That's probably how he ended up knowing Jack. And he said once to me, "Would you like to do a co-authorship with Jack?" I said, "You kidding me, right? It's a joke." He said, "Well, I don't hook him up with just anybody," but I've been doing business with Nick for many, many years. He's published a couple of my other books. And he said, "Yeah, Jack likes you and likes what you do and likes what you've done. He will agree to it." And so that's kind of how it happened.
Clint Betts
That's incredible. So tell us about-
Steve Blue
Simple and easy.
Clint Betts
That's super simple. Give us a sense of what Unlocking Success is about.
Steve Blue
Well, there are three or four stages to unlock massive success in a company, like nine times, seven, eight times, EBITDA success. One of them is you have to transform the culture. That's easier said than done, as we just talked. Then, you've got to unleash creativity in your organization. That sounds easy, too, but it's not. If you're Apple, you get all kinds of creativity in your organization, but a lot of manufacturing companies don't have that. And then third, once you've got that and you've got a suite of killer creative products unleashed, you've got to do some really creative marketing. That's basically what the whole book is about. I'll give an example. Most manufacturers, only high-tech ones, might be a little different. Most manufacturers, how do they go to market? Well, they have a website, good. They go to trade shows, okay?
And then they send the sales force out with the message, "Go sell this." The trade shows are a perfect example. I hate trade shows because nobody can show me the ROI of a trade show. I don't know any salesmen, even mine, that could show me the, "Oh, you got to be there. [inaudible 00:30:51]" Trade shows are generally for the old boys and the sales network to get together with their buddies, other sales guys, and their customers and drink and eat on the company. I'm sorry. That's what it is. So you have to take a different approach to the trade shows than would normally be done. I'll give you a perfect example. When we go to a trade show, and we have something new to sell, we don't just wait for the customer to walk in the booth; we have the most attractive girl you will ever find. I'm not kidding. She goes out and gets them. Would you like to see who's going to say no to an attractive woman? Brings him in, sits them down on a director's chair, offers him a cool glass of water, gives him an iPad, and gives him a three-minute process on what it is worth. And then she brings over the sales guy, and he does his thing. And then, after this guy is ready to go, we get him on video. Some of them are comfortable with this, a lot of them are, and say, "What did you think about that product?" And so we have a whole completely different way of marketing and selling our products than our competitors do. So if you're going to act just like your competitor and your marketing and sales, you might as well... you got to find a different way that your competitor is not using, an effective way. And there are a million of them there. Don't just do what everybody else does because then you'll get what everybody else gets.
Clint Betts
How are you thinking about AI? How is it changing your business so far? How are you integrating it?
Steve Blue
That's a really good question. I've said before, it's not a new thought that if you don't get on the AI train, your toast point in time. We've already integrated the easier stuff in customer service and predictability of incoming orders and inquiries and all that kind of stuff. That's the easy stuff. The hardest, I think, for a manufacturer will be the new product development piece. As you know, new product development is very tough. I mean, 90% of all new product developments fail. That's a lot of money that goes down the drain. The competitor that finds a way to do that, probably through AI that is more cost-effective than you or has more success rate than you do, then you're going to be out of business. And that's the area that we're looking at right now. Very, very difficult to figure that out, but I think every manufacturer has to do that.
Clint Betts
And how you integrate it internally and all that type of stuff. I mean, man, and it changes all the time. So that's a big one that I think a lot of CEOs are going to be focused on. Sounds like you've got a good handle on that.
Steve Blue
It's tough stuff because people are afraid of it. The robots are going to rule the world and kill us.
Clint Betts
Particularly manufacturing, right? Robots will be able to do all this.
Steve Blue
We've got a bunch of robots already. We've been using them for years. Here's the key to using robots. You've got to make sure that you're comfortable with promising and delivering; no one is going to get laid off because of the robot, and they have to believe you. I don't know how many robots we've got out there. We've been putting them out there for three or four years. Nobody got laid off. Now, if there's a massive recession, I may have to go back on that, but in the meantime, it's like, "Okay, you were going to hire two more people; now that you got the robot, you're not going to hire two more people." And then once you get them comfortable that they're not going to lose their job over a robot because they have to work with the robots. Robots don't work in a vacuum, and so you want them to be not threatened by the robots. And then when you put in the AI mix, oh my God, they're going to make this guy AI, and it'll kill me on my lunch break. I don't know.
Clint Betts
What do you read, and what reading recommendations would you [inaudible 00:34:43] CEOs?
Steve Blue
I would say my all-time favorite book and some of your CEOs may not have ever heard of this, is Unleash the Power Within by Anthony Robbins. And that I think the original publication was maybe 35, 40 years. I'm a nut for Anthony Robbins. I've fire-walked three times. I've bought everything that the guy sells. That fundamental book formed the basis in terms of getting fired up, getting energized, believing, and then working a really, really, really well-thought-out comprehensive plan. Well, that's the key to success in any CEO. That is definitely my all-time favorite book.
Clint Betts
That's interesting. Tony is such a fascinating character. We actually had him come to speak at one of our events here in Utah a couple of years ago. That guy can speak and stand on a stage for eight to 10 hours. The energy is just unbelievable.
Steve Blue
He's incredible. One of his latest books, maybe a year or two, I don't remember the title of it, but it's about how you can drill down on every part of your body and get healthier and increase longevity and all that. I can't remember what it was. He does a lot of things that he talks about in the book in terms of blood transfusions and all kinds of stuff. If you listen to everything in the book, you'd know everything about your body, everything about your ancestry, and then you'd want to go kill yourself. You know what I mean?
I've done all that. After I read that book, because most CEOs, and certainly me, I want to keep at it. I want longevity, and so does everyone, but once I started drilling down on every test known to man, everything, and then I'm going to these docs, not primary care docs, these specialized medicine docs, I was taking 25 supplements a day for this and that and the other thing, and it's like, "Oh my God." So you can take that a bit too far, but I would highly recommend Tony Robbins to anybody. He's got some mastering of business, very expensive ones that he takes people to Haiti and all that. I've been to those. They're pretty valuable. I think his enterprise is, I don't know, a couple of hundred million in just revenue, so when he speaks business, he knows what he's talking about.
Clint Betts
He's got a lot of businesses. Finally, just out of respect for your time, we end every interview with the same question, and that is, at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives are just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Steve Blue
Oh, that's an easy one. The guy that I complained about, who was spending time on strategy when we couldn't even pay our bills, he's the guy. That's a very quick story, so I'll tell it. I was working for Alan Bradley, which is now Rockwell International. It's an industrial automation company. And I'd had some quasi-operating roles but in support facilities telecommunications. My primary responsibility, now we're going back 30 years, was in human resources. Well, I didn't like the line guys because I always had to tell them how to manage their people. I had to bail them on. I just hated that, so I just said, "I don't want to spend my life on that."
And so when I got interviewed for an HR job with the company that I eventually became the president of before this one, I said to him, "Stu..." The HR job was a mess. I mean, they had a hostile union. It was just an absolute mess. I had to negotiate a new agreement all of a sudden. "Once I do this, that, and the other thing, and I'm successful, I want you to give me a shot at a line job." And he did. That was the biggest single break of my career.
Clint Betts
That's incredible.
Steve Blue
And a turnaround, no less.
Clint Betts
Yeah, seriously. Steve, thank you so much for coming on. We got to have you back because you and I could talk for hours about all sorts of things. Really, what an honor to have you. Thank you. Congratulations on everything you've done in your career, and let's talk again.
Steve Blue
Yeah, let's do that. I enjoyed it.
Clint Betts
Appreciate it. Thanks, Steve.
Edited for readability.