Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene

Author:Joshua M. Greene [Greene, Joshua M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15 Cookin’ with Gas

He may have known nothing about sports, but Siggi’s knowledge of business was encyclopedic and new TCNJ customers benefited from his guidance. He visited their places of business, analyzed their work habits, found ways they could be improved, and delivered his opinion.

“I see all your employees run out at noon for lunch,” he told the owner of a printing and binding plant. “Do you know what happens then? Half your people are going to wait in line for a table, then eat, then spend more time paying the check and maybe make a call to a girlfriend or boyfriend—all excuses for coming back to work late. Now, look at this empty room you have over here. If you made it into a lunchroom, you’d have your employees under your eye. You could sell them a cheaper and better lunch, and they’d be back to work on time.

“Now here’s the next thing you should do,” Siggi said. “I saw you have one person folding, a second person stapling, and a third person gluing. One guy can do all three of those tasks. You just have to reorganize the production line.”

Six months later, the customer called. “I did everything you told me to do, Siggi, and now I’m producing 20 percent more than before. You’re a genius!”

Siggi could advise on a wide range of subjects because he had job experiences that other bankers lacked. He had worked in both leather goods and bowtie sweatshops, sold neckties and loose-leaf binders door to door, manufactured change purses, revamped a furniture business, managed a cemetery headstone company, bought and sold a tire company and an electronics distribution company, revitalized an oil- and gas-producing company—he’d done it all and retained every detail in the database of his extraordinary memory.

For someone whose formal education ended with grade school, Siggi had an uncanny ability to understand complex financial formulas and translate them into action. He was a self-made man with a laser focus who could study obstacles from unusual angles and find innovative, unexpected ways around them. Then he reached out to the people he trusted most—those who had the formal training he lacked—to get his plan implemented.

“I’m dumbfounded just thinking about how he ever learned, on the job, every type of investment vehicle the bank had,” commented daughter Sherry. “Someone who hasn’t attempted to earn a business degree might not grasp how extraordinary that is, to be self-taught in so many complex areas and become—not just reliable as a fiduciary for other people’s money and investments, but brilliant at it. Think about all the courses you have to take in business school: finance, accounting, real estate investments, risk management, information technology, operations—this is a man who never took high school math. How did he manage to run three major companies: an oil-producing company, a commercial bank, and an electronics distribution company? It’s like someone becoming a surgeon without attending medical school, or going to the moon without ever studying physics.”

Siggi understood the commodities

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