Paul Orfalea's Copy This! is available from the PrintAction bookshelf in both large print and audio book formats.

By Chris Fraser

Given the demands and daily frustrations of surviving in the printing industry, I know most people in it ask themselves an all-important, potentially life-altering question. Even if they never have time to process a proper answer, I also find myself asking if I am too busy in my life to get the important things done. Sometimes I rephrase it, hoping to come up with a quicker answer: Do I spend enough time working on my life?

I often find it hard to keep up with those running in the printing race, to keep ahead of my own everyday busywork. Trying to manage client expectations already forces the most tiring stability out of your yesterday-delivery mindset and the printing business shows no signs of slowing down. So I assume many people of our great profession are not finding much – or any – daily enjoyment. Most work in their businesses without any time or inclination to work on themselves, even if this will help in the long run.

Some people turn to the Bible for hope and clarity, while some printers turn to things like International Paper’s Pocket Pal. Printers are used to working with tasks and being print-process fulfilled. Books that fall under the Pocket Pal genre are a great resource for clients and, no doubt, for you to quickly understand the changes in the printing business. What about your business specifically? When it comes to balancing your sanity with your insane printing schedule, it is best reach beyond the pocket-sized how-to.  

The hamburger rule

There are a number of books that any printer would find great value in to bring stability to both themselves and their business. Books like The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman brings incredible clarity to issues like globalization and your place within, while a book like Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal explains how to analyze tasks and get the “most out of any process.” She does this by focusing on the weakest link and building. Just last month, I have found a new bible, one I strongly recommend you read if you are like me and have little extra time and so want to congruently work on your life and business.

The book is the story of Kinko’s, as told by its founder Paul Orfalea. It is called Copy This!: Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic Who Turned a Bright Idea Into One of America's Best Companies. To create and run one of America’s best companies, you need to develop a set of rules to live by and to constantly work on. Jack Welch, past chairman and CEO of General Electric, follows a number of rules and believes that an essential rule in life is to “control your destiny or someone else will.” 

Paul Orfalea follows Welch’s rule. He is a prime example of someone who learns to control his own destiny out of necessity. In Copy This!, Orfalea speaks about how he succeeded in turning a California copy shop, which he began to run out of a street-vending hamburger stand, into a US$2-billion global business. He shows how looking beyond his dyslexia and not worrying about standard ways of doing business can, with the help of other people’s talents, create something great.

Imagine someone who has great difficulty reading and writing, but who also accepts these challenges as opportunities, and finds the people needed to create one of North America’s best-known companies. In Copy This!, you quickly learn that instead of focusing on his difficulties in reading and writing, Orfalea finds ways to “develop an unorthodox, people centred, big-picture business model” that is based in part on the concept that “anybody can do it better than I can.” What a concept for a founder and CEO of a corporation to embrace and promote.  My talents plus the talents of others can make something great – like Kinko’s.
One of the key points that Orfalea raises in Copy This! is from his first day in business he knew that he had to work “on his business and not in his business.” His father had provided him with needed advice saying that the “mundane is the cancer of life or everyday living.” This point of “working on” versus “working within” really caught my attention as an important qualifier in answering the question of what am I really trying to achieve in my business and/or personal life.

Anxiety and ambition

I know as printers, we are constantly busy working on meeting our yesterday-delivery dates and rarely do we have the time or energy to work on our businesses to find better ways to provide our services more effectively and more profitably. I am sure you feel the same way I do at the end of the day – tired from all the busywork that’s gone on during the day, satisfied with what you’ve done but worried more about what you have not done.  How do you reduce that worry factor? Do you get more addicted to technology as a way to get more through the presses and into clients’ hands? Or subscribe to some of Orfalea’s wisdom in Copy This! and allow other people do what you cannot or do not want to do?

One of the intriguing results that Orfalea chronicles in his autobiography is how he turns a copy shop into a retail company focused on the printed “business communication needs” of corporate America. By being a peddlar, by being “out of the office” constantly checking Kinko’s partner stores, looking at them from a customer perspective, and by being in the marketplace constantly checking out what his competition is doing “right,” Orfalea recognizes that his customers use his services to assuage their anxiety and tackle their ambitions. 

This particular concept of a Kinko’s store as a place where anxiety meets ambition caught my attention because that is what my company Moveable Inc. – as I am sure your printing company – is built on.  It is natural. Yes, we are all in the ink- or toner-on-paper business. But, really we are in the business of helping others, our customers, achieve their ambitions. The simple business card is an ambition card, something to have and to give people to remind them or your special talents and those around you and to call you when your service is needed. 

The best nickname

At the other end of the spectrum, an annual report shows how a group of talented people have worked on a business in the last twelve months to grow it and show how their forecasts or ambitions have met with success or failure. Paul Orfalea controlled his destiny out of necessity and created a company around a nickname people used to describe his wild, red, early-day hairstyle – Kinko’s. 

Paul Orfalea’s book Copy This! is an easy read and contains a great deal of wisdom and moving ideas on how to change your focus in life to on versus in. And Orfalea’s is not asking us to swim with the sharks as Tony Robbins does – he is challenging us to copy him and take up the challenge of working with other people, giving them a  “fraction of the action”, so you can achieve what you want to. What a great concept.  A footnote: For those time-starved people reading this column, may I suggest that you buy the audio book version of Copy This!. And if you want to be continually inspired with wisdom and ideas from other people who have succeeded, please subscribe to www.dearreader.com – that’s where I found Copy This!

Chris Fraser, Director of New Business Development at Moveable Inc. is a finder of clients with ambition. If you have any thoughts about how you’ve succeeded in working on versus in your business please e-mail them to chris@moveable.com.