A Conversation with George
Part 1

Q

How did Success By Ten come about?

A

I think you have to go back to 1980. I hired Brian Barker for a summer job. Our family knew him as a teacher at Charles Wright Academy. I guess Brian was looking for a chance to do something different and try out his skills as an historian. He interviewed people at all levels of Frank Russell Company and then wrote up the results. After that he came to work at Russell full time doing public relations. Then, one of our senior sales people spotted Brian's latent talent. Brian went on to become one of our most successful institutional salespeople and later became national director of sales.

But he never lost his academic instincts. After I retired from Frank Russell Company, I asked Brian to interview as many people as he could that had an impact on the company's development. I think it took him a couple of years to complete the project. We gave him a room here at the Threshold Group and he interviewed more than 80 different people.

Brian suggested putting the archive to use in a book based loosely on the model of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. Our book had the working title, “Elements of Success.” The idea was to expand on a speech I had given on ten factors that were responsible for the success of Frank Russell Company.

Q

Can you tell us a little bit about the speech that was the starting point for Success by Ten?

A

Fortunately, we have a transcript so we can pin down the date and occasion. It was in November 1996, in Orlando, Florida. I was speaking at a conference for financial advisors sponsored by Charles Schwab. As it happened, that was the same weekend that we ran our first national advertisement, a two-page spread in The Wall Street Journal that used mountain climbing as our brand image. I liked that a lot and talked about it in the speech: how it takes teamwork to manage risk.

Q

Didn't you also speak quite a bit about salesmanship and, specifically, cold calls?

A

It was obviously a topic of interest to that particular audience. And cold calls play such a big part in the development of Frank Russell. I couldn't very well pass on an opportunity like that. So I started out by asking, “How many of you are entrepreneurs? Let me see a show of hands.” Everybody raised a hand. Then I asked, “How many of you like making cold calls?” Not very many hands stayed in the air at that point.

Q

I bet they were a bit surprised to hear you talk about basic sales techniques instead of business strategy or the latest investment innovation?

A

Well, historically, without cold calls I would never have gotten anywhere, no question about it. Coming from Tacoma, Washington and trying to be listened to was a challenge. And I like cold calls. I really do. All you have to do is get the person to listen.

In the book I talk about Dick Lothrop. He was a super salesman, who I hired in the early 60s. He taught me how to be an effective salesman. One of Dick's famous examples didn’t make it into the book, so I’ll tell it here. Dick described a sales call where he rang the front door bell. The man of the family came to the door, listened for about half a second and then slammed the door in Dick's face. Was he angry? A bit. Discouraged? Sure. But he didn't just leave with his tail between his legs. In Dick's world, you walked around to the back door and knocked again. Before the man could say anything, Dick would say, “I thought I'd try the back door since the guy at the front was so unfriendly…” That little bit of self-deprecating humor was often enough to break the ice. So that was what Dick taught me: To walk around to the back of the house and knock on the back door…and we always made progress that way. We got in through the back door lots of times.

Q

Humor is an important element in that speech but people don't often get to see that side of you…?

A

It's probably because we were so busy working, much of the time, when we were building the company. It wasn't until the mid-eighties, Jane and I realized we were overdue for a real vacation. That was how our trek in the Himalayas came about. We went with Bob and Gail Bates, and you can read all the details in Bob's book, The Love of Mountains Is Best. In the chapter that covers our trek, you'll learn about the practical joke Jane played on me. We had arrived in the Himalayans and were just starting to relax and enjoy our non-working routine. Then one night, a telegram arrived. It was from Tacoma, saying there was an emergency at work. I had to return immediately! Jane didn't let me suffer very long; she couldn't help bursting out in laughter. And Bob and Gail joined her. They were all in on the joke. I got the message: I really had been working too hard.

I love humor and think it is an important management tool and life skill. Careful observers have noticed that I keep a manila folder labeled “jokes.” When I have to give a speech I always look at my folder to see what might work. I find my jokes just where you'd expect: in magazine articles, newspaper articles, and sometimes in books. So I just copy them so I always have a supply handy and, sometimes, rarely, I can think of my own. It's always nice when you can grab some good spontaneous humor.

Q

Where did the elements themselves come from?

A

All of those existed prior to the speech. They were the tried and true elements of Russell culture. However, I'd never pulled them together and talked about them as a unified philosophy of management before the Schwab speech. After that, I gave versions of the speech with some frequency, and the elements were sometimes referred to as “George's top ten.” You can see an echo of that in the subtitle of the book.