Jay Steinfeld founded and was the CEO of Blinds.com, the world’s number one online window covering retailer. Boot-strapped in 1996 for just $3,000 from his Bellaire, Texas, garage, Blinds.com was acquired by The Home Depot in 2014.
Jay remained as its CEO and later joined The Home Depot Online Leadership Team. After stepping away from these roles in early 2020, he teaches entrepreneurship at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and has increased his involvement on numerous private company boards and serves as a director of the public company Masonite (NYSE: DOOR). He also supports numerous charities.
Jay is an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and has earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Houston Technology Center. Active as an industry speaker on topics including corporate culture, core values, how to scale a start-up, and disruption, he has more than 100 published articles and writes a column for Inc.com.
He also sings in the same barbershop quartet of which he’s been a part of for nearly 50 years. He lives with his wife, Barbara, in Houston, Texas, and has five children and seven grandchildren whom he proudly refers to as his seven start-ups.
Jay’s book, “Lead from the Core: The 4 Principles for Profit and Prosperity” is a Wall Street Journal Best Seller. It was published on November 30, 2021 and is available for purchase now at all the usual places, including amazon.
Please tell us more about your book.
Against all odds, Steinfeld’s journey in business included failed acquisitions, partnerships gone wrong, perpetual self-doubt, deaths in his family, budget-limited guerrilla marketing, brutal market competition, and his complete disruption of industry leaders, including Amazon and big box retailers. To build something meaningful like Steinfeld, you need to do more than dream about it. You need to Lead from the Core. Learn Steinfeld’s “4 Es”: Evolve Continuously, Experiment Without Fear of Failure, Express Yourself, and Enjoy the Ride. And how bringing humanity back into the workplace will help you build a business far beyond anything you could have imagined.
What inspired you to write this book?
After more than 25 years building the business, I knew one day I’d leave. I wanted to ensure that all my current and future employees knew what made us successful and they could use those principles to help continue its dominance. So the book was part historical framework, but mostly it was the theories, strategies, tactics, and mindsets I used to create teams, manage stakeholders, and disrupt others before they disrupted us.
What are the main takeaways from the book?
Anyone can build a business and a life of consequence by following 4 principles. My 4 Es: 1. Evolve continuously 2. Experiment without fear of failure 3. Express yourself and 4. Enjoy the ride. When following these key concepts, the company will automatically get better every day ( autonomous excellence) compounding over time. They do this by taking small but furiously rapid calculated chances , getting input from everyone, and enjoying the results. You’ll be capable of helping everyone become better then they ever believed possible. Collaboration and synergy happens automatically, leaving you as the leader the freedom to spend less time and have less pressure to find all the solutions.
A lot more on all this in the attached workbook, which you are free to include in the article.
Who are some authors that you have been inspired by?
I have a list of the most influential authors in my book.
Here are my book game changers:
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl—Put life in perspective for me, providing equanimity.
• The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt—Helped me to understand key contributors of happiness and life satisfaction, with perspective on how your brain affects that.
• Built to Last by Jim Collins—First book to show how purpose foundationally affects success.
• Good to Great by Jim Collins—Inspired my BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and mission—and was the genesis for my thirst for nonfiction reading.
• Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson—Gave me the hope and optimism that I could market effectively with little money.
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni—Full of ideas to conquer a leadership team’s poor dynamics. • The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen—Gave me a better understanding of why the entrepreneur’s mindset to disrupt is antithetical to many corporate executives.
• Tell to Win by Peter Guber—Taught me how to pitch ideas and effectively raise money.
• You’re Not the Person I Hired! by Janet Boydell, Barry Deutsch, and Brad Remillard—A good discussion of how to hire objectively and ensure you’re considering the right hiring criteria.
A turning point in your life?
My wife’s death, right after I started the business full-time.
On August 12, 2002, my wife, Naomi, died of breast cancer at the age of forty-seven. We’d been married for twenty-six years, and throughout that time had been partners in life as well as in business. Now, left to do it all alone with three children and a business still in its infancy, I faced a complete reevaluation of my life. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure how to define happiness, or even whether I could ever be happy again. I thought often about what success meant to me, what it was that made me tick. I’d made it that far in life without ever really considering—at least not deeply— what truly mattered. Essentially, it was only when I found myself on a precipice that I asked myself: What are my core values? Through intense introspection, what I discovered changed the trajectory of my life, and the trajectories of all the people in my life. In fact, it was only after understanding what these values were—the values that drive my behavior—that we were able to begin building a company of significance, a company that became the number one online retailer of blinds in the world.
Is there any particular philosophy you follow?
Also, my definition of success is not to have achieved something. Not and extrinsically motivated goal. Success to me is being in the process of getting better. And helping everyone around me get better. When you have that philosophy, you can be successful ever day. And even multiple times during the day. Isn’t that a terrific way to live?
How can the youth transform its own future today?
Understand that you do not need to have all the answers today. And that you don’t even need to “follow your passion”. Just start experimenting with everything. Look for ways to influence others. Be as generous as possible with your time, your attention, and your interest in learning about everything and everyone. Then if you stay alert, you will enjoy every day and then you’ll be able to choose from many things that excite you.
Current Economic Turmoil in Pakistan
Vidhi Bubna is a freelance journalist from Mumbai who covers international relations, defence, diplomacy and social issues. Her current focus is on India-China relations.
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Pakistan is facing one crisis after the other. There was a thorny political crisis faced by Imran Khan who was refusing to leave the prime minister’s office but somehow opposition alliance was successful in ousting the sitting prime minister with the vote of no confidence and Shahbaz Sharif was sworn to become the new prime minister of Pakistan. As a result, a huge economic crisis started looming over the country. The country is facing 6.4 billion dollars of debt, due over the next three years while the incumbent government is trying to meet the requirements to attain a bailout package by the International monetary fund organization. However, it’s not the first time that the country has been seeking a bailout package from IMF, rather it will be the 23rd time, but the real efforts at reform have been missing and the country is rolling back for the past five decades. The foreign currency reserves of the country are exhausting quickly. Pakistan has lost almost half of its reserves in the last few months. While the new fiscal year is on the way and Pakistan needs about 36 billion dollars of external assistance. According to a report published by Bloomberg, Pakistan’s currency is at its worst in all of Asia, currently devaluing at 8 percent in the last months. And this bail-out package from IMF and other countries has become imperative to the survival of the country. But to secure an IMF package is not simple as it comes with conditions when the country is already going through an economic crisis and these conditions of IMF are no less than a death wish for the new government. Some of these conditions include the legal reconstruction of the banking and tax system, decreasing the budget deficit, taking away electricity and energy subsidies along with less intervention of the state bank of Pakistan in the foreign exchange market.
There are several factors when we look at the causes behind the current economic backlash in the country. First and foremost is the large spending of the country on projects which are nonviable and contrary to growth in the country. It includes the metro bus project, orange train project, and several others. These projects are built on foreign loans but the irony is that these are not even self-sufficient projects, rather rely on huge subsidies from the government which is absolutely adding fuel to the fire of the economic crisis. Secondly, the relentless sinking of the Pakistani rupee against the dollar causes further troubles for the country as on one hand foreign debt is racing up while on the other hand, inflation is also increasing and the people are falling further below the poverty line.
Furthermore, the country needs to finalize the deal with IMF as other countries who have been lending money to Pakistan in past are also reluctant. These are the same countries that helped out Pakistan with its economic crisis back in 2018 when Prime Minister Imran khan asked for help. However, this time, as said by the current finance minister on 28th May, earlier China, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE were willing to give money to Pakistan but after this political turmoil and the delay in securing the IMF package, the same countries are reluctant now. Although the sitting government has taken very unpopular steps of heightening fuel prices in the country to meet the conditions given by IMF so that loans from IMF and other countries can be secured. Although these decisions have also put the ruling parties on the wrath of Imran khan who has claimed repeatedly his progress to secure cheap oil and gas from Russia and several other countries.
Pakistan is going through economic uncertainty and the country’s stock market is downsizing day by day. Further delays in securing an IMF deal will worsen the economic condition and in no time, Pakistan will be the next Sri Lanka. But the question arises what is the solution in these desperate times? The answer is not easy. Because the path to survival is not easy and further recovery is more difficult. One thing is certain, Pakistan do need this IMF deal and the help of other countries for its survival. To secure this deal the government has no other way to implement the conditions of IMF in letter and spirit. The government will have to sacrifice its vote in order to save the country from economic breakdown. But this is not the question as the country will have the IMF package and support of other countries sooner or later. But the real question is, whether the government will be able to lead the country to sustainable economic growth? Will the government be able to pass and enact necessary legislation and policies in the tax sector, especially for the rich and capitalist class of the country? Will the government be able to uphold good governance and make necessary reforms in the public institutions? Will the government is able to do the necessary evil acts of privatization of public-owned enterprises like PIA, and the steel mill that has been a grave burden on the public exchequer? These are very daunting tasks for any political party since Pakistan is being run through a coalition government with no public mandate. Therefore, it is the need of hour to take necessary steps in order to achieve economic stability, like increasing the export production and rebate tax on export industries, controlling the current and fiscal deficit of this budget, and huge tax collection especially from the people who have been out of tax net in the past, and reduction in imports to save rupee from crashing against the dollar, and then the government must hold general elections to get a fresh mandate. Because this coalition government is very weak to enforce any large-scale long-term economic policies.
Authors: Armida Alisjahbana, Woochong Um and Kanni Wignaraja*
The start of the “Decade of Action” to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has also marked the start of an unprecedented period of overlapping crises.
The Covid-19 pandemic and crises of conflict, hunger, climate change and environmental degradation are mutually compounding, pushing millions into acute poverty, health, and food insecurity. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has further disrupted supply chains and brought spikes in food and fuel prices.
The devastation caused by efforts to control the spread of Covid-19 across the Asia-Pacific region is now well documented. At least 90 million people have likely fallen into extreme poverty, and more than 150 million and 170 million people are under the poverty lines of US$3.20 and $5.50 a day, respectively.
The pandemic drove home the consequences of uneven progress on the SDGs and exposed glaring gaps in social protection and health-care systems. The dynamics of recovery in Asia and the Pacific have been shaped by access to vaccination and diagnostics, as well as by the structure and efficacy of national economies and public health systems.
Yet for all the economic contraction, greenhouse gas emissions in the Asia-Pacific region continued largely unabated, and the long-burning climate crisis continues to rage.
The positive effects of producing less waste and air pollution, for example, have been short-lived. Action lags, even as many countries in Asia and the Pacific have committed to scale up the ambition of their climate action and pursue a just energy transition. The political and economic drive to move away from fossil fuels remains weak, even with soaring prices of oil and gas across the region.
As the Ukraine conflict drives greater uncertainty and exacerbates food and fuel shortages, leading to surging prices, security is increasingly at the center of economic and political priorities.
This confluence of issues is adding to the shocks already dealt with by the pandemic and triggering crises of governance in some parts of our region. Again, the poorest and most vulnerable groups are the most affected.
Price pressures on everyday necessities like food and fuel are straining household budgets, yet governments will find it more difficult to step in this time. Government responses to the previous succession of shocks have reduced fiscal space while leaving heightened national debt burdens in their wake.
It has never been more important to ensure that the integrated aspects of economic, social, and environmental sustainability are built into our approaches to recovery.
As our joint ESCAP-ADB-UNDP 2022 report on Building Forward Together for the SDGs highlighted, despite important pockets of good practice, countries of Asia and the Pacific need to act much more decisively – and faster and at scale – on this imperative. This redefines what progress means and how it is measured, as development that promotes the well-being of the whole – people and planet.
Extraordinary agenda for extraordinary times
All this is a sobering backdrop for achieving the ambitious agenda of the SDGs. But these interlocking shocks are also a result of a failure to advance on the SDGs as an integrated agenda.
We need unconventional responses and investments that fundamentally change what determines sustainable development outcomes. Rather than treating our current looming crises of energy, food and human security as distinct, we must address their interlinkages.
To illustrate, a determined focus on fiscal reforms that deliver environmental and social benefits can generate big wins. Asia and the Pacific can lead with action on long-standing commitments to eliminate costly environmentally harmful subsidies, including for fossil fuels.
Some countries took advantage of reduced fossil-fuel consumption during the Covid-19 lockdowns and mobility restrictions to increase taxes on fuel to raise funds for recovery programs and provide health insurance and social protection for those least protected.
There are also opportunities to repurpose the estimated US$540 billion spent each year on global agricultural subsidies to promote more inclusive agriculture, and healthier and more sustainable systems of food production.
Better targeting smallholder farmers and rewarding good practices such as promoting shifts to regenerative agriculture can help transform food systems, restore ecosystems, and protect biodiversity.
For our part, as UN agencies and multilateral organizations, we are committed to supporting countries to pursue just transitions to rapid decarbonization and climate resilience. Scaling up the deployment of greener renewables will be key to meeting energy security needs.
Similarly, the current food crisis must be a catalyst for an urgent transition to more sustainable, locally secure food production and markets. Agricultural practices that foster local resilience, adopt nature-based solutions while increasing efficiencies, and support climate mitigation practices can strengthen long-term food security.
The SDGs test resolves and require us to address the difficult trade-offs of recovery. To emerge from interlinked crises of energy, food and fiscal space, we must accelerate the transformations needed to end poverty and protect the planet.
We must ensure that by 2030 all people, not just a few, enjoy a greater level of peace and prosperity.
The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Asian Development Bank and the UN Development Program will host a side event at the High-Level Political Forum for Sustainable Development on July 12, 2022, that will explore these themes further.
*Armida Alisjahbana is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
Kanni Wignaraja is Assistant Administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Woochong Um is Managing Director General of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has recently announced the changes in inflation in June. The CPI index continued to rise moderately in the month, being an increase of 2.5% year-on-year, 0.4 percentage points higher than in May. Meanwhile, the PPI index rose 6.1% year-on-year in June, 0.3 percentage points lower than that in May. If the figures are counted together with the changes in the official PMI index in June, researchers at ANBOUND believe that this would reflect China’s economy in June is gradually freeing itself from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the overall situation is in a slow recovery. However, judging from the structure of domestic inflation, the country’s economy still has many hidden worries when demand is gradually recovering. All these indicate the complexity of China’s current situation.
Figure: Changes in China’s CPI, PPI, and PMI
Source: National Bureau of Statistics, plotted by ANBOUND
In terms of changes in consumer prices, the core CPI, excluding the impact of food and energy prices, rose year-on-year in June. According to estimates, the core CPI in June rose by 1.0% year-on-year, an increase of 0.1 percentage points from the previous month. This reflects that real demand is continuing to improve as the COVID-19 outbreak is brought under control. However, in the structural changes of consumer prices, the influence of cyclical changes in pigs and fluctuations in international energy prices are gradually being felt. The price of pork has affected the CPI by dragging down the 0.34 percentage point in May to 0.08 in June.
This round of pig cycle changes means that its impact on food and overall prices is likely to become certain, which may make the overall CPI continue to rise, driven by rising food prices. On the other hand, the rise in non-food prices in June was still the main reason for the year-on-year increase in the CPI. Senior NBS statistician Dong Lijuan said that non-food prices rose by 2.5%, an increase of 0.4 percentage points from the previous month, affecting the CPI rise of about 2.01 percentage points. Among non-food items, gasoline and diesel prices rose by 33.4% and 36.3% respectively, and air ticket prices rose by 28.1%. Transportation and communication had the largest year-on-year driving effect on CPI. The recovery of the service industry, the recovery of related fields, and the rise in energy prices will further influence the overall domestic demand and supply. In the short term, in the third and fourth quarters, China’s CPI may continue to rise, but there are both positive factors for demand recovery, as well as supply distortions including changes in the pig cycle and changes in international energy prices. All these will further complicate the situation of inflation in the country.
Judging from the changes in the PPI index, the ex-factory price index continued to fall in June. However, among the producer prices of industrial producers, the price of means of production rose by 7.5%, affecting the overall level of producer prices for industrial producers to rise by about 5.74 percentage points. Among them, the price of the mining industry increased by 27.3%, the price of the raw material industry increased by 15.2%, and the price of the processing industry increased by 2.4%.
The price of living materials rose by 1.7%, affecting the overall level of producer prices for industrial producers to rise by about 0.39 percentage points. Among them, the price of food increased by 3.2%, the price of clothing increased by 2.3%, the price of general daily necessities increased by 1.9%, and the price of durable consumer goods decreased by 0.2%. Among the purchasing prices of industrial producers, the price of fuel and power rose by 29.4%, the price of chemical raw materials increased by 11.2%, the price of non-ferrous metal materials and wires up 7.6%, and the price of ferrous metal materials fell by 3.2%. This shows that the pressure of price increases on the production and supply side is still huge, especially the rising prices of energy and raw materials. These are the main means of production, and the hike has a structural impact on industrial enterprises and downstream end consumption. However, the scissors gap between CPI and PPI continues to shrink. In the core inflation trend, this means that the pressure on future end-consumer prices will continue to weaken. At the same time, this also reflects that the industrial manufacturing industry is still facing huge pressure to digest costs and excess production capacity and will continue to adjust to it, as China’s economy is still weak.
The current moderate upward trend in China’s inflation is basically in line with the previous expectations of ANBOUND. This suggests that insufficient domestic effective demand is still the main factor restraining inflation in the country. While the moderate rise in final consumer prices has a positive effect on the gradual recovery of demand, in terms of the problems exhibited by the inflation structure, the internal problems and external influences on the economy are still very prominent. Therefore, in the short term, the improvement of the industrial chain, the stabilization of the supply system, and restrained monetary policy will play an important role in alleviating inflation in China. That being said, in the medium and long term, under the intensification of the international energy crisis and the surge in global inflationary pressure, the Chinese market still needs to be alert to the risk of high inflation caused by the imbalance between supply and demand.
The complex situation reflected by changes in inflation has brought more and more challenges and impacts to the implementation of China’s macroeconomic policies. Under such a circumstance, the Chinese authority’s implementation of macro policies should prioritize stability. Its monetary policy will need to promote the further recovery of effective demand, though the method and scale of policy implementation will have to be controlled. This means that there should not be massive quantitative easing to promote the resurgence of inflation, nor should tightening be imposed to suppress inflation.
Since the recovery of economic demand is continuous and slow, if there is a policy shift, this will have a deflationary effect, causing the economy to decline again. As pointed out by ANBOUND, China’s macro policies will need to focus on improving supply, thereby ensuring the stability of the food, energy, and supply chains. This requires coordination and cooperation in fiscal policy, industrial policy, and market supervision, so as to avoid the resonance effect caused by both external shocks and the recovery of domestic demand that could impact the balance of the country’s supply and demand.
The inflation situation in China for June has seen some changes. This not only reflects positive factors for the recovery of domestic demand, but also aggravates the potential risks of supply and demand imbalances. Inflation levels may continue to rise in the future, and at the same time, under the complex situations both within China itself and around the globe, there will still be unbalanced pressures. This carries the significance that, in terms of macro policy, not only a loose monetary environment is needed to promote demand recovery, but also policy coordination will be indispensable to ensure a balance between supply and demand. This is to avoid the resonance between demand recovery and external shocks that may drive inflation out of control.
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