Some challenges are financial, others are personal, and some are life changing where only you can decide if you still want success badly enough. Ray Zinn discusses how to persevere through worst kinds of challenges. (Watch on YouTube)
Ray Zinn: Hello, Rob. Good to be with you today.
Rob Artigo: You may not, and others may not, immediately know the name Richard Allen, and you may know the name of his rock band, Def Leppard. He’s famous for not only being a legendary drummer in Def Leppard, but he has one arm. He faced this unique challenge. His left arm was amputated, and you imagine a drummer, you always see these drummers waving their arms around and they’ve got all these drums set up around them and all kinds of things going on. They’ve got to hit all those cymbals and whatnot. And I’m not a drummer, but I know that it looks like it’s a hard thing to do.
Imagine doing that with just one arm. And then he got his arm amputated after being with the band for quite a while, but the band hadn’t reached the pinnacle of success. It was only after he lost his arm that they went on to have their greatest period of commercial success and really make the band a Hall of Fame type of band.
I know that you’ve had your own personal and professional challenges, including we’ve talked about your eyesight situation, you’re legally blind, but also you wanted to launch Micrel Semiconductor back in the day, I think it was, was it ’76?
Ray Zinn: ’78.
Rob Artigo: ’78. So 1978, you go and you decide, “I’m going to found Micrel Semiconductor.” A microchip company, and you faced a $50 million challenge right there, right off the top.
Ray Zinn: Right. So, I’ll need you to understand that in context. See, the average semiconductor company startup at that time in the seventies and eighties was around $50 million, and I didn’t have that kind of money. And to think about trying to start a semiconductor company without $50 million was a gargantuan task, because I would’ve had to use venture capital, and I did not want to use venture capital for all of reasons that why they call it bolster capital, actually was kind of the nickname for it. And that’s the reason I didn’t want to use bolster capital, or venture capital. So, I had to figure out another way of starting the company with my own money, basically.
Rob Artigo: And you could have given up, but you set out on a mission to get it done even when people said you were crazy. Many people,-
Ray Zinn: Everybody said I was crazy. Not one single… The only person that was supporting me was my wife.
Rob Artigo: And you needed-
Ray Zinn: And she’s not a semiconductor expert either.
Rob Artigo: Right. They said that you needed 50 million to get there. You did it with 600,000, roughly, and that did the trick, turned it into a massively successful semiconductor company. And stayed in business the whole time you were a CEO and profitable all but I guess two cycles, or two periods or something.
Ray Zinn: Well, just one year.
Rob Artigo: One year.
Ray Zinn: Yeah, one year. So, that was right at the end of the dot-com implosion, and it was in 2002. We had lost over half our customers because of that dot-com implosion. And so, we had to reinvent ourselves to try to stabilize the company and last that cycle, that dot-com implosion cycle.
Rob Artigo: Again, another one of those periods where all of a sudden you’re sinking, but you were prepared for downturns at Micrel. And that preparation made it possible for you to do something that a lot of people didn’t do in Silicon Valley during that period, which was stay in business and stay on track. But again, this is a thing where a company CEO faces a challenge and could just say, “All right, look, I’m done. I can retire now or I can quit.” Or whatever, or leave it to somebody else to deal with it. But you didn’t, you persevered.
Ray Zinn: Well, it goes to the concept that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And we were prepared, as you mentioned, we were prepared for a downturn. We always hope for the best, but we expect the worst. And so, with that mentality, with that thought in mind that you hope for the best, but expect the worst, that means you’re prepared. You don’t just ignore reality. And reality is you’re going to have bad times. What goes up has to come back down.
And so, we knew it would happen, we were prepared for it. I had predicted it in May of 1999. I actually predicted the downturn that occurred in 2001, as a result of the dot-com implosion. And so, we were ready, because we had forecasted it or we had foreseen it, and that allowed us then to get ready so that when it did happen, we didn’t go under. We were able to continue on. It was a struggle. We had to do some very difficult things, cut back headcount, reduce salaries.
We had to do a lot of things to stem the red, as you would, when the implosion happened, but we came out the other side even stronger. So it’s like breaking a bone. If you break your leg, actually your bone grows stronger. It’s painful at first, and you have to be in a cast and on crutches and stuff, and we were, we were on crutches and we had a cast on, so to speak, but by just knowing that we’d come out the other side stronger gave us that confidence that we would come out the other side even better.
The story is told about this Olympic marksman. He was from Germany, and this is back in the Olympics, he’d won the Olympics, this is many years ago. I don’t remember the exact year, but he was a German marksman, pistol shot, pistol marksman, and he had won it with his right hand. But then he had an automobile accident and he lost his right hand, and so the next Olympics, four years later, when it came around, he actually won it again, but with his left hand. Now that’s extremely hard, especially if you’re right-handed and right-eyed, to come back and win with your left hand. But he did, he came back and won the Olympics with his left hand.
Just because you have a setback… I lost my vision in 1994, and at first I was in a state of depression, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to move on from here?” But then I said, “Well, it’s like if you get thrown from your horse, you get back on again and keep riding.” So I just said, “Okay, I’ll have to deal with it. I lost my vision, so I still got to deal with it.” And I did. I built a company even stronger after I had lost my vision, because you become resolute. If the challenge doesn’t knock you down, if it doesn’t put you under, as they say, then you can come out the other side even stronger, because what you do is you compensate. You develop that ability to build, make weak things become strong. And that’s what I did, I made a weakness become a strength.
And so, I lost my vision, I became better. My memory improved 10 times over what it was, because I wasn’t relying on my eyesight to memorize or to record information in my head. So, actually my memory improved, and that was one of the best things that happened was my memory got better, and that was an advantage to have my memory better. We do compensate, just like this fellow, this one-armed drummer, you compensate for that lack of shoulder or arm, and you become actually better. He was a better drummer than he was before when he had two hands.
So, just because you have a deficit, or because you have some kind of handicap that comes along, doesn’t mean you can’t succeed. Success comes from desire, from that ability to pick up the pieces and move on. And so, anytime you have a challenge or a deficit, a problem that crops up, rather than looking at it as, “Oh, woe is me.” Then you become the victim. You look at it as, “Okay, I’m going to make this a strength. I’m going to take this challenge and make it a gain.” In fact, that’s what we do really when we run businesses. All we’re doing is taking difficulties, problems and challenges and using them to our advantage. That’s how you become successful.
Look at an artist. They start off with a blank sheet, and then they have to create the image that they want to project on the piece of paper. We all start with a blank slate sometime. We didn’t all start as CEOs when we were born.
Rob Artigo: Right. Well, turning a challenge into a triumph inspires others around you, and then they feel like they can do it too, they see how much you’ve done, and so that’s why you’re an inspiration to so many people. So thank you, Ray.
The listeners can join the conversation at Toughthingsfirst.com. If they have comments, they can leave them there. You can follow Ray on X, Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course his books are out there, Tough Things First and the Zen of Zinn series. It’s Zen of Zinn 1, 2, and 3. And on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills and Attributes and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Thanks, Ray.
Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.
