From Lechmere to the Ranch: Paul Spitale on a Life of Leaving It Better [010]

Episode Description

Paul Spitale spent 25 years at Sony Electronics and nine years at Colt, where he walked into a company headed for bankruptcy court and rebuilt the consumer business from the branding out. He cut the catalog from roughly eighty models to thirty, took the distributor list from twenty-eight down to eight, grew the dealer base to four or five thousand, and brought back the Python by borrowing an idea from Ford's Mustang team. He also left, on purpose, while he was good at it. He now teaches shooting, hunting, and building things on a YouTube channel with more than 62,000 subscribers, and he is happier doing that than he was in the boardroom.

Ron and Paul met more than thirty years ago in a Sony branch office in Newton, Massachusetts, on the day Ron dropped the policies and procedures manual into a trash can and told the room the new policy was to do what's right for the customer and Sony. Paul was a sales trainee in the back row, and he was the only person who raised a hand. His question was how you do both at once. This episode is the answer, thirty years later, from a man who has now tested it in consumer electronics, in recycled paperboard, and in firearms, and found that it travels.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube.