Bill Wydra is the consummate starter. When I asked him to identify the entrepreneur’s greatest fear, he shot back with one word, "boredom."
Like most starters, Bill thrives on getting a venture off the ground and rolling. As president of Ash/Tec, Inc., he’s done that and more. Bill has led the company into the Inc. 5000 for the past four years. He’s humble, innovative and demanding; he’s also as close to Level 5 Leadership as it gets. Bill is all about getting things done by getting the right people in the right positions.
Boredom: An Entrepreneur's Greatest Fear
"I try to surround myself with people who can give me differing opinions from every angle; how to do things better, faster, cheaper. I also look for customers that give us feedback and challenge us to create a new future in manufacturing."
Bill loves to get his people engaged in the growth process. "We moved to a new facility in November 2007, from 10,000 sf to 45,000 square feet. We always claimed that space was our limitation to growth, so now was our time to grow. We set the goal to double in 2008 and offered employees $5000 bonuses if we hit this goal. It took us until 10:30am on 12/31/2008, but we actually did it!"
Bill is the kind of leader and entrepreneur that thrives on mountains to climb. Like other successful entrepreneurs, he’s genetically endowed with an indomitable perspective,"We firmly believe that the set backs we’ve faced actually were, in retrospect, some of the best things that happened to us. They refocused the organization, pulled us together to accomplish critical goals that were easier to prioritize."
It’s not hard to believe that Bill fears boredom more than any other specter. Many of his peers share the same anxiety. Doug Tatum describes this phenomenon in his best selling book No Man’s Land, when Growing Companies Fail:
As entrepreneurs struggle with the firm’s identity, they tend to curl up and become internally focused. One of the most dangerous reactions I have witnessed is the tendency for entrepreneurs to fall back almost exclusively on new product development as a way to re-create the growth experience they encountered before the company entered No Man’s Land. “Now, wait a minute,” you say, “I thought this whole growth process is about new product development and innovation.” It surely is, but there is a huge difference between capturing, institutionalizing, and evolving the firm’s core value proposition as a customer base changes and trying to solve all the company’s problems with a new idea created from scratch. Remember, boredom with the hard work of systematizing the core business has killed a whole lot of companies.
Bill Wydra is far from killing his company with new ideas, but he also knows himself well enough to make sure he stays focused on what’s important until it’s time for another mountain to climb. Until then, he’ll quell his fear with human interaction, "Most of the time I’m working at Starbucks to be around people and energy."
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