A Career on the Rise
Profiling Five O'Clock Clubber Tom Lewis
by David Madison, Ph.D.

Tom Lewis can tell you that 1975 was a bad year for college graduates. In the middle of a recession, he was one of many students left empty-handed when campus recruiting was over. With his BBA from Ohio University, he managed to land a job at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Retail outlet in Parkersburg, West Virginia, just across the river from his home town of Belpre, Ohio. He changed tires and helped service cars.

An Old Lead Pays Off
 Within a couple of months he came to the attention of Goodyear management; he was tapped for training to be a credit manager, and assigned to the office in Princeton, West Virginia. While he welcomed the chance to get onto a career track, Tom was reluctant to stay in Appalachia. "A lot of people in small towns max out early. My goal was to go much further; I wanted to be able to achieve all I could. And I wanted to see what the rest of the country was about."

"A lot of people in small towns max out early.
My goal was to go much further—and also
see what the rest of the country was like."

 Fortunately he got a call from a lead he had pursued months earlier, and it proved to be an opportunity he welcomed. He was hired by Kaufmanns department store in Pittsburgh for their management training program. He remained with Kaufmanns for five years as it built more stores, progressing through the ranks and learning all aspects of merchandising and store operations. He learned as well that he had a natural talent for sales. "I like dealing with people and helping them. I like the satisfaction of meeting people's needs."

The Move to Industrial Sales
       But while retail was a "hot trendy place to be"—Nieman Marcus was also on the rise at this time—Tom was looking for a way to increase his earning power. "I had always heard that the big money was in industrial sales." He was also looking for a way to get to see more of the country.

"I had always heard that the big money
was in industrial sales."

 Through a friend he was able to secure a position at a company that manufactured complex machinery for factories and steel mills, Mayfran International. Mayfran traditionally had hired degreed engineers, but was now was looking for sales and marketing talent. Tom was hired as District Sales Manager based out of Pittsburgh and serviced a clientele of steel mills in western and central Pennsylvania, developing an expertise in the sale of waste handling conveyor systems. He was also charged with the role of purchasing dealerships to sell the Mayfran product line, which required even more travel. Eventually transferred to Chicago, Tom was able to pursue his MBA at Keller  Graduate School of Management at night, and graduated in 1985.

 Tom's next career move came when one of the distributors he had worked with, Paul Riley, asked him to come on board, and help grow the business. "I found that my strength was in starting something, getting it going, taking a concept and putting it into reality—or taking an existing setup and altering it to fit changing market conditions." Tom leveraged his knowledge of conveyor systems, and for the next five years helped the new firm sell industrial shredders, bailers and compactors. More people were hired, and new products were offered.

"My strength was in starting something, getting it going, taking a concept and putting it into reality."

 In the search for new industrial products to promote, a European product that was virtually unknown in the U.S. came to Tom and Paul's attention: high speed doors. These fabric roll-up doors are used in very large plants that manufacture cars, tractors and planes; opening and closing very rapidly, these doors are used to protect environments that would be compromised by heat, humidity or dust. They launched a new company, Ritek, with the challenge of educating the American industrial marketplace—and manufacturing, marketing and selling the new product. Tom enjoyed this assignment, and was able to fulfill his dream of discovering the country.

 He traveled widely in the US, Canada and Mexico during the next several years promoting the high-speed doors, and helping to build Ritek to a $12 million company. But as much as anything else, he relished having his curiosity satisfied. "Industrial sales allowed travel and the opportunity to see many different plants. I got to see how cars and trucks are built." He also assumed the roles that he found rewarding: building something from scratch—starting with a concept and turning it into a reality, and at the same time helping to satisfy the needs of customers. "I'm a problem solver. I like to get something done, then move on."

 The next "move on" was prompted when Ritek was sold in 1994. The new owner didn't need Tom's "start-up" expertise, but another company did. Megadoor, headquartered in Sweden, had sold high-speed doors in Europe for some time, and was looking for someone to build its business from scratch on this side of the Atlantic. So Tom spent the next four years repeating the pattern of building a new company, growing the business and promoting it throughout North America. And Dynaco, USA, a high-speed door company based in Belgium, used Tom to build its business in 1998-1999. 

The Decision to Start Career Planning
 By this time Tom was in his mid 40's and realized that it might not always be so easy to fall into the next job. One start-up after another had been a great challenge, but it might not look all that smart on the rÌsumÌ if this pattern kept repeating. And as his daughter was getting older, the heavy travel was beginning to be a concern as well. He had been traveling almost every other week, now to Europe as well as widely in North America.

"Opportunities always came my way.
But I'd never said, âWhat do I want to do
when I grow up?'"

 "Life had been very good. I'd been very fortunate—opportunities had been presented to me. But I'd never really sat down and said, âWhat do I want to do when I grow up? What do I really want to be and where do I want to go?' It wasn't a mid-life crisis, but I realized I'd better start to do a more formalized career search—a more formalized way to trying to stay employed."

 Tom heard a radio advertisement for Korn-Ferry, the national executive placement company, and went to their web site, FutureStep.com. He soon discovered the link to The Five O'Clock Club and was pleased to discover that there was a physical branch in Chicago. He called the branch manager, Joy Muench, and signed up for sessions.

Tom heard about The Five O'Clock Club through FutureStep.com, the website for Korn-Ferry, the national executive placement company.

For DuPont: Big Ticket Floor Sales an Opportunity
 Having had "no luck with headhunters," Tom decided to follow the Club's suggestion to use all four ways for getting interviews, and began networking aggressively. He soon was in touch with a friend who worked for DuPont, which was rethinking and retooling its approach to floor sales. DuPont was looking for entrepreneurs—people who could pursue new marketing techniques and sell directly to major accounts. After "many interviews, many people," Tom was brought on to service northern Illinois national accounts, and to go after multi-million dollar deals, including the flooring for Federal and State office buildings.

 Tom acknowledges that he landed the new position quickly, but credits The Five O'Clock Club with far more than teaching him the value of networking. "High school, college and graduate school really don't teach you how to take care of yourself career-wise. I was searching for a way to educate myself so that I could be in charge of my destiny, as opposed to be letting it be more of a random act. The Five O'Clock Club gave me the education I needed on how to do a proper search. It gave me a framework and a game-plan for managing my career."

"I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny.
The Five O'Clock Club gave me a game-plan
for managing my career."

 And he is confident that the Club helped get him ready for the lengthy interview process at DuPont. He admits that he balked initially at the assessment part of the methodology.  "I didn't want to do the Seven Stories Exercise and the Forty-Year Vision. But they were great; you have to start from scratch and do it right. I did everything. It's a formalized, structured way of doing it they way it should be done. After I finally gave in and decided that The Five O'Clock Club was right, I was spending 10-12 hours per day doing research, thinking, getting things lined up. Doing what the Club says allowed me to get focused and move in the right direction quickly. I was a much more powerful candidate when I went to DuPont for the interviews."

The Best is Yet to Come
 Looking back where he's been—as well as forward—Tom believes that his "most important accomplishment has not been made yet. I want to be successful on a much broader scale. I'm still aspiring and I have a plan. I'm working the Forty-Year Vision."
 He credits his success so far to determination and curiosity to see the world beyond the Appalachia where he grew up. Launching start-ups and selling have taught him the value of self-motivation. "When you're in sales, you're actually unemployed every day. When you get up in the morning, it's up to you—no one is going to hand it to you. That's the motivation: it's 100% up to you."

"When you're in sales, you're actually unemployed every day."

 Ten years out Tom sees himself "still working, growing, and moving, very much involved in sales with a major corporation—trying to do better things better ways." And retirement will be a high-energy affair for Tom: "I will still have a job. My idea of retirement is working at something I want to do. Perhaps a farm with gardens and horses requiring manual labor outside—and being about to play golf during the week."

"I have recommended the
Club to 20 or 30 people."

 Tom feels that The Five O'Clock Club has given him lessons for life. "I now have the toolbox. If I am ever in the job search situation again, I can get started much more quickly. I have recommended The Five O'Clock Club to 20 to 30 people. A lot of people like to moan, groan and complain about their lives. It startles them to find out that it's up to them. It's easy to complain—it's hard to move forward. Even if you're not really searching for a job, the Five O'Clock Club is great to go through to prepare yourself."