Jay Steinfeld founded and was the CEO of Blinds.com, the world’s number one online window covering retailer. Boot-strapped in 1996 for just $3,000 from his Bellaire, Texas, garage, Blinds.com was acquired by The Home Depot in 2014.
Jay remained as its CEO and later joined The Home Depot Online Leadership Team. After stepping away from these roles in early 2020, he teaches entrepreneurship at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and has increased his involvement on numerous private company boards and serves as a director of the public company Masonite (NYSE: DOOR). He also supports numerous charities.
Jay is an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and has earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Houston Technology Center. Active as an industry speaker on topics including corporate culture, core values, how to scale a start-up, and disruption, he has more than 100 published articles and writes a column for Inc.com.
He also sings in the same barbershop quartet of which he’s been a part of for nearly 50 years. He lives with his wife, Barbara, in Houston, Texas, and has five children and seven grandchildren whom he proudly refers to as his seven start-ups.
Jay’s book, “Lead from the Core: The 4 Principles for Profit and Prosperity” is a Wall Street Journal Best Seller. It was published on November 30, 2021 and is available for purchase now at all the usual places, including amazon.
Please tell us more about your book.
Against all odds, Steinfeld’s journey in business included failed acquisitions, partnerships gone wrong, perpetual self-doubt, deaths in his family, budget-limited guerrilla marketing, brutal market competition, and his complete disruption of industry leaders, including Amazon and big box retailers. To build something meaningful like Steinfeld, you need to do more than dream about it. You need to Lead from the Core. Learn Steinfeld’s “4 Es”: Evolve Continuously, Experiment Without Fear of Failure, Express Yourself, and Enjoy the Ride. And how bringing humanity back into the workplace will help you build a business far beyond anything you could have imagined.
What inspired you to write this book?
After more than 25 years building the business, I knew one day I’d leave. I wanted to ensure that all my current and future employees knew what made us successful and they could use those principles to help continue its dominance. So the book was part historical framework, but mostly it was the theories, strategies, tactics, and mindsets I used to create teams, manage stakeholders, and disrupt others before they disrupted us.
What are the main takeaways from the book?
Anyone can build a business and a life of consequence by following 4 principles. My 4 Es: 1. Evolve continuously 2. Experiment without fear of failure 3. Express yourself and 4. Enjoy the ride. When following these key concepts, the company will automatically get better every day ( autonomous excellence) compounding over time. They do this by taking small but furiously rapid calculated chances , getting input from everyone, and enjoying the results. You’ll be capable of helping everyone become better then they ever believed possible. Collaboration and synergy happens automatically, leaving you as the leader the freedom to spend less time and have less pressure to find all the solutions.
A lot more on all this in the attached workbook, which you are free to include in the article.
Who are some authors that you have been inspired by?
I have a list of the most influential authors in my book.
Here are my book game changers:
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl—Put life in perspective for me, providing equanimity.
• The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt—Helped me to understand key contributors of happiness and life satisfaction, with perspective on how your brain affects that.
• Built to Last by Jim Collins—First book to show how purpose foundationally affects success.
• Good to Great by Jim Collins—Inspired my BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and mission—and was the genesis for my thirst for nonfiction reading.
• Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson—Gave me the hope and optimism that I could market effectively with little money.
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni—Full of ideas to conquer a leadership team’s poor dynamics. • The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen—Gave me a better understanding of why the entrepreneur’s mindset to disrupt is antithetical to many corporate executives.
• Tell to Win by Peter Guber—Taught me how to pitch ideas and effectively raise money.
• You’re Not the Person I Hired! by Janet Boydell, Barry Deutsch, and Brad Remillard—A good discussion of how to hire objectively and ensure you’re considering the right hiring criteria.
A turning point in your life?
My wife’s death, right after I started the business full-time.
On August 12, 2002, my wife, Naomi, died of breast cancer at the age of forty-seven. We’d been married for twenty-six years, and throughout that time had been partners in life as well as in business. Now, left to do it all alone with three children and a business still in its infancy, I faced a complete reevaluation of my life. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure how to define happiness, or even whether I could ever be happy again. I thought often about what success meant to me, what it was that made me tick. I’d made it that far in life without ever really considering—at least not deeply— what truly mattered. Essentially, it was only when I found myself on a precipice that I asked myself: What are my core values? Through intense introspection, what I discovered changed the trajectory of my life, and the trajectories of all the people in my life. In fact, it was only after understanding what these values were—the values that drive my behavior—that we were able to begin building a company of significance, a company that became the number one online retailer of blinds in the world.
Is there any particular philosophy you follow?
The 4 Es.
Also, my definition of success is not to have achieved something. Not and extrinsically motivated goal. Success to me is being in the process of getting better. And helping everyone around me get better. When you have that philosophy, you can be successful ever day. And even multiple times during the day. Isn’t that a terrific way to live?
How can the youth transform its own future today?
Understand that you do not need to have all the answers today. And that you don’t even need to “follow your passion”. Just start experimenting with everything. Look for ways to influence others. Be as generous as possible with your time, your attention, and your interest in learning about everything and everyone. Then if you stay alert, you will enjoy every day and then you’ll be able to choose from many things that excite you.
