Becoming a Disruptive Entrepreneur: Looking Back on What Led Us Here
Turning Passion into Capital
As Radio Design Group, Inc. celebrates its 30th year, I look back at all it took to get me to that starting line in 1992. Like Richard Branson, another disruptive entrepreneur says, “Entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you in life into capital so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.”
Even as a teen, I was entrepreneurial. I fixed radios and televisions for money, putting the bulk of my earnings back into test equipment. That experience taught me the satisfaction and value of doing something for others that they couldn’t do for themselves. I discovered that providing a service that others needed was fulfilling.
College, Engineering, and Practical Knowledge
During my first year in college, I found myself wondering why the instructors were going over such basic material, information I had learned years earlier. The explanation given to me by the teacher was simple: the curriculum was instead intended to turn those who had no background in electronics at all into engineers. Not guys like me, who already had a basic understanding of electronics.
As I helped senior engineering students with their capstone projects, I discovered that many of those soon-to-be graduate engineers were theory junkies, but had no practical smarts. I realized that having a college degree did not make you an engineer. I wanted to be better than that, I wanted to become so involved in radio that it would become part of me.
I spent the summer between my first and second years in college as an assistant broadcast engineer in Haiti, and then after two years of college, as chief engineer at a radio station in Nome, Alaska, gaining valuable RF experience from others. It was clear to me that practical experience was better than classroom learning. I wanted to be the guy that “had the street smarts” with radio.
Commitment to a Better Workplace
Upon returning to the “lower 48”, I got a job with a large component company that treated their employees like chattel. That’s when I decided that if I was ever in a supervisory position, things would be different for the folks I worked with. After a few months, I moved to a job at ABC in Hollywood. I expected working conditions to be better than the component company, being it was a union position. Turns out the union executives cared mostly about making members work as much as possible to maximize dues revenue. My determination grew even stronger to be in a position to make life better for the people I worked with.
After burn-out in the entertainment industry, I wound up working for a mobile telephone and two-way radio dealer in the San Fernando Valley. The owner’s reputation of providing excellent customer service set him above his competitors, and he wound up taking care of some of the most elite customers in Los Angeles, including many celebrities. Working for him was a pleasure, and the picture of well-treated employees working as a team to provide outstanding customer service was cemented into my thinking.
With the gas crunch of the late 70’s came the end of my job there, and we decided to move to the California central coast area. I had two successive jobs working in the two-way radio industry, and my less than ideal experience in both of those jobs convinced me that I could do it better. All my previous experience now became reasons to start my own two-way radio shop. Things went along at a bumpy up and down pace until I was asked to design a wireless solution for freeway emergency callboxes (yep, those big yellow things you see on the sides of California interstates). I made some early test units, filed for and was granted some patents, and eventually sold them to a callbox manufacturer. Turned out they wanted to bury my invention to save their aging product line. Lesson learned: keep your technology under your control in order to maximize its benefit to others.
30 Years of Wisdom in Engineering and Entrepreneurship
Not being able to maintain the high overhead of a two-way shop, I decided to do freelance design and engineering work, which led to the founding of Radio Design Group, Inc. All of those lessons became the foundation of the company, along with some new things learned along the way these past 30 years:
Never stop learning. Each experience, either good or bad, should benefit you and make you a better engineer.
Good people don’t necessarily have a degree. Find the folks who know what they are doing, no matter how they learned to do it.
Take care of the folks who work with you, and they will give you, and your customers, excellent service.
You are here to give the customer the best service you can, which is why he is paying you. If someone else does it better, you deserve to lose the customer to them.
Life is going to be tough from time to time. Sometimes it will force you to reevaluate what you are doing, and change direction.
Whenever possible, keep your technology a closely held secret. Be careful about giving away the farm.
Don’t always assume that newer is better. Several times the right technical answer is one that was used twenty years earlier.
Try to maintain a positive attitude.
Always be honest, and never give up. Perseverance is king!