The 10 Secrets of Success - Jim Estill, BASc ‘80 (SYDE), CEO of Synnex Canada

I just came back from a presentation by Jim Estill the CEO of Synnex Canada.  He was a graduate of the Systems Design Engineering program at Waterloo in 1980 and became the CEO of Synnex Canada managing $3 billion of annual sales after his computer distribution company was acquired by them. 

What I liked most about Jim and his presentation was his causal and down to earth persona.  He didn’t try to impress anybody on stage nor did he respond to questions asked by the audience in an arrogant manner. 

He started his presentation with a very short PowerPoint presentation on the “10 Secrets of Success”.  Being a strong advocate of time management and having created programs and literature on the subject you can tell he hadn’t bothered spending much time on his PowerPoint slides.  He simply stated his 10 points on 10 slides (which did contain simple grammatical errors) and allowed the reminder of the time for us to ask questions. 

He was moving too fast to write down the 10 points he mentioned but they were all trivial and intuitive.  The two most important things from the presentation that I walked away with were:

1. “Worst thing, first thing”.  Meaning that by accomplishing what he least wanted to do during the day first thing in the morning he has tremendously increased his productivity and sense of accomplishment.
2. Invest time in a speed reading program.  He believes that taking a speed reading class has greatly increased his efficiency and productivity.  This reminded me of the comment Bill Gates made when asked if he was a superhero which super power would he most want, to which he replied “the abililty to read faster”.  Warren Buffet (who reads thousands of annual reports a year agreed with him)

P.S. For University of Waterloo students this event was actually pretty interesting and I encourage you to attend other ones.  There was plenty of food, BEER, wine, soft drinks to go around.  Plus my friend and many other won a book and some other things.  This specific event was sponsored by the Laurel Centre (www.laurelcentre.ca) (Hmm… they use the American spelling of “center” but with a .ca domain :P)

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Management Advice from Donald Trump

I apologize for not blogging frequently the last week. I was in the midst of midterms and working on a few larger projects.

One of the most fundamental aspects of starting a business I was introduced to was having the right people sit around the business table. You don’t want anyone around the table that doesn’t belong and whoever is there needs to be the best you can find. Donald Trump is a strong believer in this as well, and here’s what he says in his book The Art of the Deal:

“Very simple rule when it comes to management: hire the best people from your competitors, pay them more than they were earning, and give them bonuses and incentives based on their performance. That’s how you build a first class operation.”

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