"Being the best at what one does—what makes an entrepreneur and her company different in the marketplace"
Ray Zinn is an inventor, entrepreneur, investor, angel, bestselling author, and the longest-serving CEO of a publicly-traded company in Silicon Valley. He is the founder of a nationally launched ZinnStarter program at colleges, providing financial and mentoring support for students. In 2015, Ray published his first book, Tough Things First, with McGraw Hill. The book covers Zinn’s 40 years at the helm of Micrel, along with the critical factors that entrepreneurs and seasoned executives alike need to know. This was followed by Zen of Zinn and Zen of Zinn 2, inspirational musings in 21st-century bites.
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Table of Contents
Thank you so much for giving us your time! Before we begin, could you introduce yourself to our readers and take us through what exactly your company does and what your vision is for its future?
Ray Zinn: I ran Micrel Semiconductor for 37 years where we were a global supplier of semiconductors. Now I run Tough Things First, a motivational think tank and non-profit organization that supplies funding and mentorship to the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders via ZinnStarter. ZinnStarter’s mission and our vision for the future are:
- To inculcate the next generation of entrepreneurs to create enduring businesses
- To provide seed money for promising business plans
- To provide students with the leadership, management, and entrepreneurship knowledge of Ray Zinn
NO child ever says I want to be a CEO/entrepreneur when I grow up. What did you want to be and how did you get where you are today?
Ray Zinn: I was invited to leave a job where I had gotten creative and unconventional concerning securing the interest in a much-coveted customer. The strategy worked but it rattled the cages of a key established customer to the point that I was invited to, as they say, ‘pursue new interests. During that process, my manager at the time told me that I should never work for anyone else, that I did not fit within the confines of the traditional corporate culture. It was a wake-up call wherein I realized I needed to run my own company and steer my ship. Micrel Semiconductor was born at that pivotal time.
Tell us something about yourself that others in your organization might be surprised to know.
Ray Zinn: Even though I was diagnosed as legally blind decades ago, I still pursue my passion for piloting. I have a pilot that helps me but I am still flying a plane despite my vision issues.
Many readers may wonder how to become an entrepreneur but what is an entrepreneur? How would you define it?
Ray Zinn:
In every entrepreneur, we see the following:
- Focus: Distractions are antithetic to entrepreneurs. They know
in their hearts and minds what they want to create, and they find a way to create it. Stopping a focused entrepreneur is like trying to halt plate tectonics.
- Short time frames: Entrepreneurs are impatient by nature,
but they also understand the value of timely innovation: what they fail to bring to market today will be brought to market by someone else tomorrow. Entrepreneurs move quickly to excite their customers while hamstringing their competitors.
- Frugality: Excesses of the dot-com era aside, great
entrepreneurs build frugal organizations. Cash is king, and spending their cash is less expensive than using investor money or bank loans. “Making do” is an entrepreneur’s creed.
- Being the best: Second place is never where entrepreneurs
Envision themselves. For them, doing their personal best is a natural mode of operation, and they encourage everyone in the organization to live for the same standard of quality. This last element may be the most important for entrepreneurs. Being the best at what one does—what makes an entrepreneur and her company different in the marketplace—becomes the source of corporate missions as well as operations. Someone in a commodity business may focus intently on cost minimization, and by being the best at cost controls she becomes the most profitable commodity vendor in that industry. Being the best creates value, and businesspeople who are not willing to be their best never become true entrepreneurs.
What is the importance of having a supportive and inclusive culture?
Ray Zinn: A supportive and inclusive culture will make a company. Without it, it can break a company. At Micrel, our culture was based on integrity, respect for every individual regardless of job, and doing whatever it took. As a result, we did not even allow swearing which was unheard of in trash-talking, tough culture Silicon Valley but it made all the difference. Micrel enjoyed one of the lowest attrition rates in high tech which enabled us to retain and develop talent over many years. Very few people left and those few who did often asked to return giving us a very high boomerang rate. In a ruthlessly competitive market for talent where engineers were and are known to leave for a few dollars, Micrel never had this issue; people stayed because they felt valued and supported so it was key to our longevity and success.
How can a leader be disruptive in the post covid world?
Ray Zinn: The answer is the same as a pre-COVID world; by offering a product or service that nobody else provides. This world-class service that no other company can touch is key to disrupting any given market.
If a 5-year-old asked you to describe your job, what would you tell them?
Ray Zinn: My job is to make other people successful and better people. For adults, this is called servant leadership but it works for children as well.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Ray Zinn: We were enjoying some real success in the consumer sector but were also struggling with diminishing margins and never-ending product revs that are so reflective of consumer products such as cell phones and other consumer goods. Everyone loved the profits when the product was brand new but the revisions and upgrades were killing our margins so we made the very difficult decision to withdraw from this market and instead focused on the industrial segment where product lifetimes were much longer and profits much more stable. It was difficult to give up the allure of the fast-paced consumer business but the right decision for Micrel. In 37 years, we had only one year that was not profitable.
Leaders are usually asked about their most useful qualities but let’s change things up a bit. What is your most useless talent?
Ray Zinn: Like most leaders, I honestly would never think to develop a useless talent. This is because I believe no competent CEO would ever develop useless talents in running a company. Doing so would go against all of my knowledge, wisdom, and learning.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. If you wrote a book about your life until today, what would the title be?
Ray Zinn: I think I already wrote it! It is called “Tough Things First” and it talks at length about my journey as a CEO, my company, and lessons learned.
Mike Weiss, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Ray Zinn for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Ray Zinn or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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