Do You Really Have To Be The First In And The Last Out to Succeed?

The following is adapted from Sharper Image Success by Richard Thalheimer.

As the founder, owner, and CEO of The Sharper Image, I made it a point to be the first one at the office and the last to leave the office. This was my regular practice for years.

I followed the old adage: the boss should be the first one to arrive, and the last one to go home.

Then, about 15 years after starting The Sharper Image, we had a terribly difficult year. It was the first year in our history we ever had a financial loss. To be honest, we deserved it.

We had started to become inefficient and wasteful because we were spoiled from the preceding 15 progressively successful years in a row. We had not prepared to cope with adversity or to develop discipline.

For us as a management team, however, the painful experience was constructive.

I thought hard about how we had gotten where we were and what we were doing wrong. As it turned out, we survived and became a stronger company. We learned to cope with adversity, and we became much better managers. Along with the first layoffs in our history, we created a new strategy for our merchandising.

If we had not had to learn new disciplines, we would never have seen our best years of revenues and earnings after that.

During the worst of that time, one of our board members said something that really inspired me to work through our problems: “Richard, getting to this point took really good merchandising, which is pretty easy for you. Now you’re going to prove that you can learn to be a good business manager as well.”

Part of that process to become a better manager got me thinking about what was most likely to make us survive and how I wanted to spend my time every day. I had to rethink both my practices and my long-held beliefs.

One of those beliefs was that the boss should be the first to arrive and the last to go home as I did for 15 years. At some point during our financial crisis, I imagined The Sharper Image in bankruptcy court.

In this vision, I was standing before the judge to plead: “Your Honor, be lenient with me because, you see, I showed up early every single day!”

Thinking about how silly that would sound brought me to this conclusion: I needed to do what’s best for my business even if what’s best is not to come into the office every day at 8 a.m.

I realized that sometimes I do my best thinking by taking a walk in the morning or daydreaming at home on my computer or talking to people on the telephone.

Now, I come in only as often as necessary without feeling guilty, but it took me a long time to get there. (At least I didn’t have to tell it to the judge!) Many days I work at home in the morning, maybe writing and answering emails, or I head into the office at 10 a.m.

It makes a huge difference that I have a fantastic right-hand person and an accomplished management team to run the day-to-day operation and supervise all different aspects of our business, and our entire management team is really solid and accomplished.

Obviously, that makes a huge difference. It’s taken me a long time to get comfortable with this approach. It works for me, and (thank goodness) I didn’t have to tell that to a judge in bankruptcy court.

For more advice on business and entrepreneurship, you can find Sharper Image Success on Amazon.

Richard Thalheimer led The Sharper Image to its peak as CEO with annual revenues of $750 million, 200 stores, catalogs, an online store, and 4,000 employees. The company became a public corporation in 1987 when its stock was listed on NASDAQ. Thalheimer now runs The Sharper Fund, a successful private fund, and shares his wisdom at SharperInvesting.com. He is a Stock Guru and Investing Expert, sought after by journalists and their readers for his trendsetting observations about products, companies, and market movements. His experience talking to analysts for 20 years as the CEO of The Sharper Image has given him great insight into how Wall Street analysts think, and consequently, when and why investors should confidently follow their judgments.