GUEST SPEAKER

I had the good fortune of listening to a special guest speaker in my Global Management class the other night. His name was Dan Perella, the COO of Ideastream Consumer Products LLC. We have all been through guest lectures and presentations. Some are good, some make you really drowsy, some go unheard because you drew something in your notebook in the first ten minutes, and that single illustration takes over your mind for the next hour and you draw the same thing for the whole lecture, or continue to improve upon your initial doodle through shading and filling in. This wasn't one of those lecture. This guy had my attention the whole time. Even after a long day of work. If it was a regular class I would have mailed it in completely. But this guy had a great message and was very inspiring.

Dan graduated from John Carroll in the early 90's. He was a really smart guy, motivated to get his life going and find some success. Through some hard work and luck, he put himself in a nice position in a very good company. Some odd years later, he had the opportunity to take a position of power in which he would have been set pretty much. It was a great position and he would have had a lot of success and made a lot of money. Instead, he quit and started a company with him and his two friends. So came Ideastream Consumer Products LLC.

So what these guys do is they create simple products through all different types of brainstorming and innovation. They try to keep it as simple as possible and work their asses off. They listen to consumers, they listen to their distributors, they listen to the big heads they are trying to market their products to. They are constantly doing their homework, tying up loose ends, and continually doing everything they can to improve their business.

They have 4 main product offerings right now. You wouldn't even believe me if I told you what they were. They are incredibly stupid and incredibly simple. Yet, they are easy to make, are practical and most importantly people buy them. He stressed the importance of not falling in love with your products or your ideas, but rather just focus on the mind of the consumer and whether the consumer will buy them. It doesn't matter if you like it, it matters if your consumers will like it.

Throughout his presentation, he emphasized how strong their culture is. They have 12 employees, and they believe the chemistry and bond they have created has led to their exponential growth over the last eight years (started in 2001).

Instead of just trying to re-hash the hour presentation, I am just going to leave you with a couple of the notes/quotes I wrote down during the speech, and comment on them a little bit.

"Your pedigree only counts ONCE!" ---Yea, you have your MBA/JD/PH.d--that's great--thanks for sharing. That only gets your resume thrown into a "read" pile, and it might get you a job. On day 1 of that job, your resume doesn't mean shit. All that matters is how hard you work, how well you communicate with your peers and how you carry yourself day to day. Especially in the business culture--it's a dog eat dog world out there.

"Hunger, hustle, Humility." ---He said this 20 times.

"You don't get paid more, until you do more, than you get paid to do."

"Be PASSIONATE about what you do."---"If you have a job, and you hate your job--QUIT. Have no job rather than a job you hate going to."

"Careers are made before 8am and after 5pm"---I smiled and chuckled at this cause I am a little more than two months into a job in which I get up at 6am , and get home at about 6:30pm everyday. I said to myself, O yea, well I'm there at 7 and gone at 6--MAN'S GAME BITCH! It's a long day folks, especially for a spoiled kid like me. There's a lot of truth to the quote though. It rings true for him and his two partners, because this is their career. This is their baby. I think the challenge for all of us is finding something we are truly passionate about and making it a career. That way, it's not that much of a chore to be up before anyone else and leave after everyone else.

"Hire people who are faster, better and smarter than you." ---Humility

"RESULTS count, not EFFORT"---This is tough guys. But this is life. Ari Gold said once in an episode one time, "there are no asterisks in this life babe, only scoreboards. And my scoreboard is currently reading FUCKED" This is a reality that we are gonna face everyday. And its hard.

"You will become, WHAT YOU WILL TO BECOME."

I think if you take away anything that I have just talked about its this: hunger, hustle, humility, integrity, passion, sweat, tears. Use your imaginiation and creativity. TAKE RISKS. DO YOUR HOMEWORK. PREPARE, PREPARE, PREPARE.