↓
 
  • Home
  • About SSM
    • Guy Smith – Chief Strategist
    • Vision and Values at Silicon Strategies Marketing
    • Your size company
      • Start-ups – Setting a Good Foundation
      • Mid-sized Companies
      • Enterprises – Aligning Teams and Leading Marketing Initiatives
  • Services
    • Market Research
    • Marketing Strategy Development
    • Marketing Communication and Materials
    • Marketing Operations/Execution
    • Mentoring and Coaching
    • Seminars & Sessions
      • Marketing Strategy Seminars
      • Mentored, One-day Strategy Development for Startups
    • Interim Marketing Executives
  • Clients
    • Selected Silicon Strategies Clients
    • Client Case Studies
      • SuSE/Novell
      • DeviceAnywhere
      • Private Social Networks
      • VA Software
      • Foreign Exchange Translations
      • FundNET
      • Rubric
      • Telamon
  • Contact

  • Technology Marketing
    • Market Definition
    • Market Segmentation
    • Buyer Genotypes/Personae
    • Whole Product Definition
    • Positioning
    • Branding
    • Market Messages
  • White Papers

Post navigation

← Brand Belief
Escalated Advertising Warfare →

Learning From Experience

Posted on 2015/08/13 by Guy Smith2015/10/26

My father once said “Always try to learn from other people’s mistakes. It saves you a bunch of time.”

But he could have also said “Learn from other people’s success. It saves you a bunch of pain.”

zinn-cover-front_v6When looking for mentorship, finding someone who has proven themselves and whose advice goes against conventional thinking is a good tactic.

My friend Ray Zinn is that mentor.

It is hard to understate what Ray has accomplished in business … and in life.

  • He founded a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley without venture capital.
  • He ran that company as the visionary founder for 37 years.
  • He was profitable the very first year, and for every year thereafter (except for one year during the dot-com era meltdown, and the one “unprofitable” year was due largely to a write-down for shuttering an extra fabrication facility).
  • His company had the lowest employee turn-over rate in his industry, and likely in all of Silicon Valley.
  • His rate of boomerang employees (ones who left and came back) was off-the-charts.

Now that Ray has sold off Micrel, the company he founded and took public, he is actively mentoring startups. He started the process a bit differently, by writing a book titled Tough Things First, which you can now order. I read the manuscript before it was bought by McGraw Hill and can attest that the wisdom Ray imparts in this book will save many entrepreneurs from self-inflicted failure.

What will shock many people is that the core of this 77 year old’s management philosophy will be welcome by millennial entrepreneurs. Ray is a people person, which makes him a great leader of people. He ran Micrel on humanist principles that included:

  • Assuring the dignity of every employee
  • Helping everyone find and understand the value they possessed
  • Practicing servant management, whereby managers and executives served their employees

Perhaps this is another case of old school style coming back into vogue. Or perhaps Ray practiced enduring truths that Silicon Valley forgot in the dot-com gold rush. Either way, executives struggling to be great leaders, entrepreneurs struggling to build lasting teams, anyone trying to create enduring businesses will learn from a true master when they read Tough Things First.

Posted in Management Tagged entrepreneurs, executives, leadership permalink

Post navigation

← Brand Belief
Escalated Advertising Warfare →

Sidebar Area

  • Add Some Widgets!
    This theme has been designed to be used with sidebars. This message will no longer be displayed after you add at least one widget to one of the Sidebar Widget Areas using the Appearance → Widgets control panel.
    You can also change the sidebar layout for this page using theme options.
    Note: If you have added widgets, be sure you've not hidden all sidebars on the Per Page options. You could switch this page to One Column.
  • Log in
Copyright © 2001-2025 Silicon Strategies Marketing — Marketing Consulting | Silicon Valley, Asheville NC
The infamous Facebook Non-Support Saga
↑