I’M Not a Taem Player: (A Book About Business—With Photographs)

By James Page

James Page shares an intimate look at his ownership of several small manufacturing companies in this guide for employees, managers, and aspiring entrepreneurs.

He takes a candid look at how he entered various businesses, the product lines he produced, and the ultimate dispensation of those product lines.

The book is a compilation of why this and why now thought processes and an explanation of how he navigated serving different industries over several decades.

His initial product line was agricultural equipment, which was a failure. It took years for him to jettison the cognitive baggage that he carried as a resultbut getting over it and moving forward served to be an important lesson.

Page also highlights the importance of hiring the right staff and argues that an annual employee review is almost a crime. Employees, he says, need constant feedbackand this needs to happen at every level of the company.

Filled with photos that illustrate concepts and products, this essential book to risk-taking and managing processes and people is a must-read for anyone focused on developing a top-performing manufacturing business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480864412

James Page

James Page shares a blunt and cautionary review of seven product lines he developed and marketed and their ultimate dispensation over four decades in im not a taem player.

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 James Page.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6439-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6440-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6441-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018907728

Archway Publishing rev. date: 7/2/2018

CONTENTS

Preface

Chronology of Product-Line Production

chapter 1     Why This? Why Now?

chapter 2     Western Brand Agricultural Tillage Implements

chapter 3     Patchman Asphalt Equipment

chapter 4     Portapungi Antiterrorist Vehicle Barriers

chapter 5     Maxigrind Grinder Shredders

chapter 6     Tromax Trommel Screens

chapter 7     Remax Pavement Milling Machines

chapter 8     Maximan Tracked Loaders

chapter 9     A Nine-Year Hiatus

chapter 10   General Observations

chapter 11   Solidifly Oil Well Drilling Waste Processing Equipment

epilogue     Short Stories That May Interest You

Addendum Photos

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PREFACE

IT WAS JUST THE PATH I took. Everyone has a story to tell. The following is my journey through the ownership of several small manufacturing companies, when and how we entered the businesses, the product lines we produced, and the ultimate dispensation of those product lines. It’s not a how-to manual or some visionary compendium. It’s a compilation of why this and why now thought processes and the inordinately rapid progression from one industry to another over a period of several decades. They’re paragraphs, not verses; it’s a picture book, not a manifesto.

The book is targeted primarily at those managers in their twenties and thirties and to a lesser extent the F&F crowd, forty and frustrated (seasoned, satisfied, and/or seething). The reading level is about Flesch-Kincaid grade ten. Read it twice. The product lines overlap. Nothing in here is an apology (or pleading). It’s not intended as some spiritual journey. It is more practical than profound and part product line, part unanswered questions, part cautionary tale, and part something else. Beware—the perspective switches from employer to employee and back without notice. The book’s intent is for both employer and employee to walk in each other’s sandals, even for a few steps; the hope is that both walk in the same ultimate direction.

The structure of this book is malleable and a literary misdemeanor, at best. It includes first- and third-person references, present and past tense, odd clichés, repetitious and twisted syntax, confusing analogies, run-on sentences, and rhetorical commentary with improper punctuation sometimes in the same paragraph. It keeps the book alive. This isn’t the kind of tome that will find me on the CNBC financial television program, nor will it be the basis for a Harvard case study or even a TED talk (the triad of legitimacy, maybe). The goal is to share experiences, anecdotes, and lessons learned. I am at times having a conversation with myself—most of the time, actually. It’s not a would have, should have piece of pulp, but there are some retrospectives. There is no shadow mentor. Hopefully you’ll find a comment or singular piece of wisdom that will justify your having bought the book. You may find some things humorous and others that pin you to your chair. The book is short, concise, and pointed, with many questions posited as statements.

I was a baby boomer, born at the peak, and grew up in a small Midwest college town. My parents were both educated at a state university in the 1940s, married after the war, and owned a John Deere farm machinery and Dodge/Chrysler auto dealership in a county seat town. Calvinist/capitalist Republican politics were the subject du jour. I was raised along with three brothers and a sister. My upbringing was unexceptional and I was scholastically indifferent; generally, I disliked organized activities. I’ve suffered severe migraines since I was a child, and it has been a physiological quirk, a paternal genetic malady, that has influenced virtually every aspect of my life, including my career and business pursuits. Postsecondary education included an off-and-on slog through a state university, ending with a business degree. I don’t hunt or golf; I’m more Clapton, less Springsteen; and I fly economy.

What this book isn’t is some off-white—that would be ivory—tower pontification about inner feelings, we as a culture morale building or generalized vanilla management platforms written by someone who has never wagered a dime of their own money. It is a view from atop a dirty gray pillar with the occasional campy flicker illuminating from near ground level. It is about extreme risk-taking—where vision and personal bank guarantees cross, leverage, and market discovery and building. It’s about betting your entire (speculative) net worth—repeatedly. It’s about picking the (mole)hill you may die on and broad worldviews wrapped around very narrow product lines. It’s standing on the razor blade of government fiat, whether you know it or not, every day. It’s where meta thoughts meet a number 2 pencil, which I personally describe as cash flow. I don’t have much to offer other than a choppy narrative played out over the years about seven decidedly low-tech—not the space shuttle, not a two-piece puzzle—product lines. It’s about firmly managed optimism. Long memories aren’t necessarily a virtue, but it really is just a memo to myself. There is no CD/DVD that goes with this book, but there is a binary, x/y linearity that sometimes becomes tedious. I refrain from using air quotes—like that.

My personality does not lend itself to groups generally and I dislike being harnessed in any way. There is nothing standardized when it comes to what passes for a team—other than two core factors: hard cash financial commitment and triumph/failure career trajectory; beyond that, it’s a group. Are they—these so called teams— just forced associations or high-priced personnel wrapped around some ball of clarity? I understood that I didn’t truly understand these managerial concepts early in life, and for better or worse, I’m not a follower. I’m not a team player either notwithstanding the two above noted caveats—no matter what the makeup. A team leader is almost an oxymoron. I’m uncomfortable at a round table. That said, my skill set does include deciphering, quickly, those I think are team players or group players. What I really want is a group leader and followers. Sometimes those decisions are unpleasant to make, the only upside being I do it rather quickly. In companies like mine, there simply was no room for a bad fit. Some people are team players, some people are not team players, and—the forewarning factor—some think they are team players but actually are not. Companies like mine have very little time to ferret out someone’s true character; the revelations have to come quickly. It’s best to leave positions unfilled if I’m not sure. The kind of low-voltage wouldn’t-go-if-you-gave-them-the-ticket personality just suffocates companies big or small—and those types tend to congregate in teams. The reality is that the question of leader or follower or team player needs to be answered definitively and early in one’s life and not necessarily by some potential employer. Teams all to quickly morph in to managerial contraptions—nonresponsive to the marketplace. You need to ask the question of yourself—team type or group type; ciphering the distinction is necessary. Do you fit in? Do you want to fit in? Somewhere within this question stack, you will have to identify where you are. It’s like being on the inside of a rubics cube, twisting and turning and not knowing what is up or down. Businesses, employers, managers, employees are just a massive number of intersections, and someplace in there, someplace in that cube, it is mandatory that you find your place—and the quicker the better. I can’t honestly provide you with any hard specifics of what will make a team player or group player. There are, in this book, a few generalizations about what won’t. A key component of one’s own skill set is the ability to know what someone else’s skill set is, down the hall or down the street.

Broadly speaking, self-doubt wasn’t high on my menu. There is no app that can substitute for just getting up early every day and basically giving the world a Bronx good morning—this is my plan, this is what I’m going to do today. Don’t be surprised if the world responds in kind. Mis-un-ill-informed decision-making can drag on one’s enthusiasm and cause episodic questioning of one’s business model. That’s different from self-doubt. That big-issue questioning is best done, for me, between the hours of one and three in the morning. Daylight is for doing. Always have a five-point plan for the day when you wake up. Waxing philosophical at eleven in the morning will only get you run over by a forklift (so to speak)—and should. Charge through the day, recharge at night, be physically fit. Put your contemplative fingertips together at some other time than the middle of lunch.

While there were many, this book isn’t about successes necessarily. It’s about survival, and the mind-set is different. There are base parameters that have to be in place and shouldn’t be ignored. I ignored some. Broadly, what fixed costs do I (dare) put in place to grow a product / product line at what growth rate? Where is that marker that is the point of no return? In most of my product-line entries, the marker was fairly close, markers denoted by cash. There is absolutely no substitute in this world for an accurate, candor-ridden, future cash flow analysis. None. Unfortunately, it is often the most abused equation. I distrusted most of the markets I was in, and it was due in large part to the dog-breath experience I’d had in my initial product line, agricultural equipment. Market share itself isn’t a survival metric, I can assure you. The failure in ag was not just financial but created a lifelong emotional sandbag, a sort of iron albatross. Admittedly, it took years to jettison just some of that cognitive baggage, and at times that baggage was evidenced by quick movement into or out of a product or product line. I never intended to allow myself to be cornered as I was in the ag equipment business a second time. That is a common theme in this arrangement of movable letters called a book.

Competencies, world-class, bandwidth, retailer, passion, symmetrical, solution provider, axiomatic, cathartic, macro, disruptor, algorithm, synthesis—I thought I would place these words here since I’m not sure where they apply to my businesses.

I want you to quit reading this book now. Just put it down and walk away; revisit it in a couple of days. When you pick it up again, I want you to know, down and dirty, what your reason was for buying this piece of tree bark to begin with. I want you to know—hard and fast—what your motivations are for doing what you do. Why did you even get up this morning? Seriously, why do you do what you do? Are you out to bring about world peace, or cure something, or brighten another person’s day, or put nuts on bolts faster, all for the company, none for the company? Or is your motivation to simply make next month’s minivan payment? You have to come to grips with what your true motivation(s) is. I had to do that early on, and it wasn’t particularly edifying. There is a correlation with motivation, and I’ll get to that in a few paragraphs.

There were plenty of times when second-guessing started to creep in. That second-guessing needs, instantly, to be circumvented by substituting it with think backs, not look backs. Think backs are just lessons learned, applied to the right now; look backs will take you there. Look backs are woulda-coulda-shoulda events that need to be mentally dumped forever. It’s difficult enough being the cheerleader every day for everyone, and look backs just suck the life out of you. Admittedly, I didn’t, or couldn’t, always follow this rule. If you’re going to point fingers, point them at the rising sun. New day—a rising sun. Ride that sucker like a hot horse. Business is hard, business is difficult, and there is a fine line between discouragement and