Paul Orfalea - It’s About the Money

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money.
Invest Like the Best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts, and you can access all our podcasts, including edited transcripts, show notes, and other resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:54)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:19)
My guest today is Paul Orfalea. Paul founded Kinkos, the popular copy chain, in 1970 He started with a single photocopy shop in California and grew the business into a $2 billion multinational operation over the course of his 30 years in charge. Paul is a non-traditional leader in the best sense and we discuss his philosophy of business building from why your subordinate should frustrate you, why you shouldn't love your business, and tips he learned on hiring well. Please enjoy this conversation with Paul Orfalea.
And if you want to learn more about Paul's story, listen to episode 181 of The Founder's Podcast, now a part of the Colossus Network of Podcasts.
We were chatting a bit before we hit record here and I was toying with interesting places to start our conversation. There's a line from a biography of yours that just made me laugh and I really enjoyed and so I thought I would start just there. You said something like, I graduated from high school eighth from the bottom of my class of 1200 students and then the next line was, frankly, I still have no idea how those seven kids managed to do worse than I did. So I'd love to begin by hearing about what it was like to be a very bad student in high school.

**Paul Orfalea** (3:26)
In their way, I was a bad student and I'll tell you a funny story. My brother was studying for a test at 9.3 at night, my older brother, and my dad walked in and said, what are you doing to my brother? And my brother said, well, I'm studying for a test. My dad said, well, Jennifer, you'll never remember it, so what's the good of learning it? I went to school to learn and I couldn't read, but I do remember what I learned. In every class, I remembered the lecture or the talk, and I put it in context. As far as pleasing others, getting a stupid grade, it never was high on my radar. An example would be, if your child comes home with a painting from school and they're five years old, what do you say to them? Most people say, that's really good. That's really a great painting.
Bullshit.
Tell me about the painting and why did you do this color? What is it? And what we have done, especially now in education, is we produce a bunch of people-pleasers, not pleasing themselves.