Fred Crosetto: Energy, Relationships and Latex Gloves

Fred Crosetto, the founder and Chief Energizing Officer of +Ammex Corporation ("the right protection right now"), gave an energetic and energizing presentation on "Bootstrapping: Creative Financing for Early Stage Companies" this week at a free (!) Northwest Entrepreneur Network seminar.  He shared all kinds of useful insights and experiences from his 17 years of entrepreneurship; I’ll highlight a few in this post (his full presentation can be downloaded here).

Fred emphasized the importance for a CEO to set the vision and the mission (which he defined as "a dream with a plan"), and then be positive and persistent in being a source of energy for the organization (and removing energy sinks as early as possible, for everyone’s greatest good — his biggest mistake in business has been in not terminating poor performers sooner).  His team-building motto: get the right people in the right seats headed in the right direction.

Fred is the sole owner of Ammex, and is explicitly unwilling to share any pieces of the pie, having had unfavorable experiences early on with the initial partners.  And yet he emphasized the importance for a CEO to identify his/her own passion core, and then build a team with others who are excellent and passionate about areas in which the CEO is not passionate, excellent or (especially) competent.  He also had some suggestions about how to deal with lawyers, accountants, consultants and advisors — essentially, to seek and listen to advice, but not to cede any decisions to them (and to report back to advisors on steps taken or not taken with respect to earlier advice).  He didn’t have much to say about investors, except that he didn’t have any and that "once you take money from people, they own you" (Fred is perhaps the only NWEN presenter I’ve encountered in the past several months who was not an investor, or someone seeking investment — that, in itself, is considerable food for thought).

A final, brief word about Ammex: they sell latex gloves, and other protective gear, to various businesses.  Surprisingly (to me), only a small fraction of those are sold to the medical establishment, the vast majority going to other industries (e.g., auto mechanics who want to keep their hands clean).  Fred suggested that it was hard to get anyone excited about latex gloves, but if he brings the kind of energy he brought to the seminar into all his business interactions, I expect that he regularly succeeds in creating that kind of energy and excitement.