Lessons on building and reviving brands from the co-founder of GameStop and Laura Mercier
Photo from Gary Kusin
What do GameStop, Laura Mercier, and Kinko’s have in common? They’ve all benefited from the leadership of Gary Kusin, an entrepreneur and investor known for building global brands and reviving struggling ones.
Born in a small town in East Texas and educated at Harvard Business School, Gary got his start working in department stores. His experience on the retail floor led him to a growing sector—video games—and he founded one of the first-ever software stores, now known as GameStop, in 1984.
In his decades-long career, Gary has never shied away from a challenge, from co-founding Laura Mercier Cosmetics (and discovering the Laura Mercier) to leading a $2.4 billion merger with Kinko’s and FedEx that revolutionized the shipping giant’s business model.
In his new memoir, “Always Learning,” Gary shares the strategies behind his biggest successes—as well as the lessons behind his failures. “You’ll learn just as much if not more from a disaster as you learn from a smashing success,” he told Behind the Review, Yelp & Entrepreneur Media’s weekly podcast.
Read on for more tips on leadership, performance, and ROI-driven growth from the founder of GameStop and Laura Mercier, or watch below.
1. Before you make any big moves, do your homework
“I’m a big fan of doing your homework… [Collecting data] is my modus operandi in almost everything I do.
“I have a very hard time just going: ‘We’re going to crush it. Let’s go open these stores.’ No, let’s not do that. Let’s have the answer to the questions the landlord might ask us. Let’s know going into a negotiation what percentage rent we can afford. So when a landlord tells us what deal they propose, if it’s that or less, we’re going to be good.”
2. A leader must rally their team behind a clear, shared vision
“[When Janet Gurwitch and] I became co-founders of what is today called Laura Mercier Cosmetics, we went on a search for makeup artists. We interviewed all sorts of makeup artists, and Laura stood alone as far as having a very clear view of what she was trying to accomplish with her makeup line. So we put her under a long-term license agreement, and it took off, and the rest is history.
“You have to, as the leader, be able to describe a flag on a distant hill and say: ‘We are going to take that hill. And we’re going to capture that flag.’ [You have] to be persuasive enough that the team rallies around that vision. If a leader is not good at describing that vision or not good at explaining why it is essential that we win in trying to take this hill, their culture will be dead before it starts.”
3. Not sure how to improve a struggling business? Go look on the front lines
“I have always quoted [a saying attributed to] Napoleon: ‘If you want to know what’s going on on the front lines, go look.’
[When I took over] at Kinko’s, I sent a memo to the whole company saying: ‘I am not going to be meeting with any of our senior leadership at the corporate headquarters. I’m going into every one of our 43 regions in the United States and will have town hall meetings on every shift, in every market. And I will ask the same thing at every town hall: What in the heck has happened to this company? How is it that we’ve lost money when we provide such an awesome service that customers need?’
“By the time I was done, I knew what the problem was. I knew what the solutions were… Three years later, we went from losing $11 million [in a year to making] $240 million. [And when former FedEx CEO Frederick Smith] walked into my office, we shook hands on a transaction that would sell Kinko’s to FedEx for $2.4 billion.”
4. If you decide to let someone go, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to them
“[Former General Electric CEO] Jack Welch did quarterly business reviews with me for a number of years. I learned this from him at the end of year one: When you have something bad happen, you have a conversation. You say: ‘Look, everyone’s plans roll up to me, and my plan rolls to the board. If you miss your numbers, I’m gonna miss my numbers. I need you to tell me what I can do to be helpful because this can’t happen again, and I’ll give you every bit of support you need to ensure that it doesn’t happen.’
“And then if it does, now you can—very nicely and politely—say: ‘I talked with you last year about this, and here we are again. As much as I like you, you can’t be here because it’s hurting the entire organization.’”
5. Ask for feedback on your leadership skills, and be willing to change
“I’m a huge fan of climate surveys, where you pay an outside firm and for every person in the company, they interview that person’s boss, half a dozen peers of that person, and everyone who reports to that person so they can get a 360-degree view of them.
“I have always gotten pretty darn good feedback on my various skill sets… but [one time I got a 30 out of 100]. The very next Monday morning, I go in and sit down in the meeting [with my direct reports] and say: ‘Hey guys, we’re all getting our 360-review numbers back. I got some tough feedback, and I want to share it with you because I’m just curious.’
“One of them finally raised their hand and said: ‘Gary, you are loved for the way you give feedback [to middle managers and entry-level employees]. But we don’t think one of us in this room has ever gotten a way to go from you or a congratulations.’ I was dumbfounded because… these are the top people in a multi-billion-dollar, global company. They’re very high-powered people. I didn’t think they needed [encouragement and mentorship], and I was wrong.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
These lessons come from an episode of Behind the Review, Yelp & Entrepreneur Media’s weekly podcast. Listen below to hear from Gary, or visit the show homepage to learn about the show and find more episodes.