Jim Glidewell is the founder and president of Glidewell Dental, the world’s largest privately-owned provider of restorative dental solutions. Jim opened his first dental lab in January 1970 as a one-man operation and built it into a global leader in dental restorations, digital dentistry and education. Today, the Glidewell team designs and manufactures crowns, bridges, dentures, and implants for dentists across the globe.
“There are no extraordinary men, only men with extraordinary reactions to ordinary circumstances.” Jim Glidewell
Jim’s book Constant Change, Adventures in Business and Life is full of practical wisdom. Written as a motivational business memoir, it is centered on the idea that adaptation is the key to long-term success. In other words, growth is not a one-time achievement but a mindset wherein leaders must stay uncomfortable, curious and willing to reinvent their organizations to survive and thrive. Below are excerpts from the book.
Life
- Successful people see the perfection in all things, while unsuccessful people only see the imperfections.
- We alone are in charge of out future. Focus only on the things you can change, not things you cannot. Jim’s advice is to adopt the approach of the serenity prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
- Real success comes when you do the right thing when no one is watching.
- Self-confidence without arrogance is a trait that breeds success. A person must maintain humility to advance in life.
- Have realistic goals in life. Once you reach a certain point, look ahead a little further and ask yourself “Well, now that I am here, what else can I do?”
- Leave no footprint. Take responsibility for the impact your actions have on everyone else.
- Don’t ever keep people waiting i.e., steal people’s time. Our time is the most precious commodity we have. Nobody will follow a leader if they are late.
- Find a partner that supports you. Your significant other/your spouse, should get behind your business plan, and vice versa.
- Treat people with respect. They won’t remember what you said or remember what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
- If you want people to perceive you as the authority you are, don’t tell everybody why you’re so smart. Just tell them what you know and walk away.
- “As you seek your path to success and discover how you might contribute to our changing world, seek and navigate according to your own true north.”
Business
- Our work should impact and improve the lives of those we serve. Our team is the foundation of our success.
- To grow a large business, you must provide your employees with the promise of continued career growth. Employees need to find ways to engage their efforts with meaningful tasks which accomplish the company’s growth objectives.
- Build a business that truly respects and honors its employees. Hire smart, train smart and retain smart people. Never pass an opportunity to smile at them, speak with them and let them know they’re important.
- When selecting the next superstars of the Glidewell team, Jim seeks out two things: “a sharp, quick mind and a go-getter attitude.”
- If you are a manager, do not micro manage those you lead. “The big trick to management is: don’t manage people.”
- The most meaningful words a manager or company leader can say is “I believe in you.”
- If you are the sole owner of the business, see yourself as a caretaker of the money that comes into the door.
- Spend at least 8% of your sales on advertising and marketing. If you are the sole owner, reinvest all extra money back into your company. Investing in equities will never match the return you can make in managing your own business. Invest in yourself.
- But, if you want to invest the proceeds from your business, do it in real estate which historically doubles in value every 17 years. Own your own buildings and rent it back to yourself.
- Your company is like a living, growing organism. A corporation has to continue to shed its skin by adopting to change. Methods, focus and values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.
- Each department in your company is like an organ of the body. Each organ has to function efficiently in order for the whole to thrive and succeed.
- To thrive as a company, you simply cannot stop growing.
- Be faster, better and less expensive than your competition. Glidewell’s company motto is: “Do things faster, better, and less expensive than the competition.”
- Approach every challenge in your business with the mindset: have no fear – either the sun will rise tomorrow, or it will not. Fear is a debilitating emotion.
- A company offered for sale is typically sold at 10 times its earnings. If you were making $100,000, you would sell your business for $1,000,000.
- Do not collect any kind of salary from your company. Reinvest all pretax dollars back into the company.
- The secret to expanding a business successfully is to avoid growing it too fast.
- Create standard operating procedures (SOPs) for your employees. They create clear, consistent operating instructions to follow. Establish strict SOPs which are written down in the finest detail.
- When your company reaches about 50 employees, start a professional HR department. Build a vertically integrated company.
- “A great business aims to make things better by improving the quality of their customer’s lives and thus raising everybody’s standard of living.”
- What ever your line of business is, build a company of the future. Change the way you do things. If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you;ll have what you’ve always had.
- As a business, always ask “How can we improve? In what ways can we beter serve our customers’ needs?”
- You must advertise. If done in print advertising, ensure your ads are only placed on right facing pages not on the left-hand page where readers are less likely to see it. 70% of readers will make a decision to buy based on the headline, the photograph, and the caption under the photo.
- If you see an advertisement that strikes you as great, copy the style.
- Your company logo should always appear on the bottom-right corner of the page, so the readers are left with that branded impression of who you are.
- What ever industry you may be in, do not let the jostling nature of competition deter you from your goals. If you build a company large enough to make an impact in the marketplace, you’ll be targeted with lawsuits and other challenges. Let your challenges fuel your desire to achieve, rather than your desire to beat others.
- Accelerate your company’s growth by constantly asking yourself questions like: how can I compress the timeline of projects to ensure they happen faster?
- Like Amazon who started as an online bookseller, expand your business model at every opportunity. That is one of the keys to success.
“When you see a roadblock or challenge as an opportunity, it is amazing how you are already halfway there.” Frances Hesselbein
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