I met a well-known businessman Thursday in the lobby of the Hotel Monaco.
He told me he has anger-control issues, that he’s hyperactive and dyslexic, that he has attention-deficit disorder, that he can’t read, write or even sit still in a meeting, and that he takes Prozac.
He has psychological issues going back to his childhood in Los Angeles. He was the youngest child in his family; his older brother and sister teased him incessantly. For years, they told him he was a monkey that their parents adopted from a zoo when their real brother died.
When he was 14, he was kidnapped and sexually molested by a neighbor.
“I take antidepressants now,” he said. “I love them.”
He flunked two grades. He was expelled from four schools. In third grade, he was directed to a school for the mentally retarded. He was removed when he scored 130 on an IQ test, indicating superior intelligence.
Eventually, he learned to maintain a solid D average and graduated eighth from the bottom of his high school class.
He went to college to avoid the Army, drink beer and flirt with women. He had kinky hair, so friends called him “Kinko.”
“I knew that I would never be able to hold down a job,” Kinko said.
So in 1970, he bought a copy machine.
Over the years, his business grew from a 100-square-foot shop near Santa Barbara, Calif., to an empire with more than 1,200 locations and about $2 billion in annual revenue. Along the way, Fortune magazine named Kinko’s one of the best places to work in America.
Kinko, a.k.a. Paul Orfalea, 57, sold his company to a venture-capital firm. He retired from the company in 2000. It’s now owned by Federal Express. And Orfalea doesn’t really like to talk about it.
“Have you ever had a woman break up with you, and then you find out she is doing really well without you?” he asked.
Orfalea, now a money manager in Ventura, Calif., flew into Denver to promote his book, “Copy This!”
His byline is on the cover, but it’s not really his book. “I can’t read or write,” he said. “How would I write a book?”
Ann Marsh, who once profiled Orfalea in Fortune magazine, wrote the book.
“I am really worried about falling in love with my ego over this thing,” Orfalea said. He detests big egos and doesn’t want his to get out of control. As did that of Jack Welch, the former General Electric chief, who also wrote a book.
“He’s a piece of (bleep),” said Orfalea. “He had a culture of ruthlessness. People would make numbers just to make numbers. Always fire the bottom 10 percent.
“(Then he) had the nerve after he retired to take all that money and fly around on the airplanes and all that?
“It’s a CEO-obsessed culture. They don’t do jack (bleep) except cover their (bleep). … They want sacrifices from labor, but then they want these exorbitant salaries?”
Orfalea was Kinko’s founder. Not its professional CEO. His guiding philosophy: “Anybody else can do it better.”
Since he couldn’t read or write, he didn’t keep files. Analysis about the past and future usually take written form. His learning disabilities forced him to be grounded in the moment. This keen focus on the present made him successful.
“I have more of a peddler-immigrant way of running my business,” said Orfalea. “What does a peddler do? He doesn’t say jack (bleep) to his competition. He complains all the time so the landlord doesn’t raise the rent. He keeps an eye on what everyone else is doing all the time. And he motivates workers by treating them like family.”
Orfalea said he regrets those times when he lost his temper. He said he wishes he would have tried Prozac earlier.
He said he once raged at managers who flew first-class while their employees flew coach. He said he once came unglued at store managers who hung signs threatening to fine customers for bounced checks. Orfalea had a rule: No negative signs in the stores. “The customer should never see the word ‘no,”‘ he said.
Orfalea said he usually apologized after bawling out an employee. “If I yell at you for an hour a day, it means I love you the other 23,” he says in the book.
Deal with your dark side, Orfalea advises. The first step for some business leaders would be admitting they have one.
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Lewis at , 303-820-1967, or alewis@denverpost.com.
