INTRO
TONY: Welcome back to the podcast. You know, a lot of people talk about leadership. Very few have lived it long enough to understand what actually matters. My guest today is Ray Zinn. He's one of the longest-serving CEOs in Silicon Valley history. Ray led Micrel for more than three decades, taking it from startup to a multibillion-dollar acquisition without chasing trends, hype, or shortcuts.
And what makes Ray's story especially relevant right now is this—he didn't build success by being the loudest voice in the room or the fastest mover. He built it through judgment, discipline, and an ability to make clear decisions when the pressure was highest and the answers weren't obvious.
In a world that celebrates speed, intelligence and disruption, Ray represents something rarer—earned wisdom. He's seen cycles come and go, mistakes repeated, and leaders rise and fall. Today, we're not talking about tactics or buzzwords. We're talking about what it actually takes to lead a business over the long term. How to think when things go wrong. How to decide when data is incomplete, and why intelligence alone isn't enough to build something that lasts.
If you're an entrepreneur or executive, or you're a business owner who wants to grow without losing your footing, this is a conversation worth listening to. Let's get into it. Let's bring him on. Hi, Ray. Welcome to The Tony D'Urso Show.
RAY: Well, thanks, Tony. So good to be with you.
TONY: I'm really looking forward to having this conversation. And I want to learn as well about how to deal with judgment when you're under pressure and what it takes to lead when everything is on the line. And while I mentioned a few little pieces of information about you, can you kind of give us an overview. How did it all start for you, Ray?

INTERVIEW – PART 1 (BACKSTORY: FROM ROCKETS TO SEMICONDUCTORS)
RAY: Well, it was interesting. I was engaged to a gal at school. I went to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. I got my degree in engineering, and she lived in the Bay Area, which is near San Francisco. And so it was that that brought me to the Bay Area, but we didn't get married. We broke up. And thank goodness, because I have my lovely wife that I found in San Jose, and we've been married sixty-five years. Got twenty-two grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. So we've had a very successful marriage.
And so when I came to the Bay Area, semiconductors were not the thing in those days. It was really, you know, astronauts and rocket motors and things like that. So I began working for United Technology, which is a rocket manufacturer. We made the SRB for the shuttle and I was a ballistics engineer for them.
And my wife's father was working for Fairchild. So a little back story on that—Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore, and some other folks that worked at Shockley left in nineteen fifty-seven and formed a semiconductor company under the name of Fairchild Camera & Instrument, which they ultimately renamed Fairchild Semiconductor. So he was working there as a technician, and he was so excited about this new technology, this new industry, that I decided to quit my job at United Technology making rocket motors and become a semiconductor guy. So that's how I got into semiconductors. That was in nineteen sixty-three. So the industry was just six years old when I joined it.
You know, for those who don't know who Bob Noyce is, he's the founder of Intel. And all of you should know who Intel is. So he and Gordon Moore and a few others—Andy Grove—founded Intel. And that was in sixty-seven, nineteen sixty-seven. So I was at Fairchild in sixty-three, and I sat just down the hallway, maybe one hundred feet from where Bob Noyce was. And I was enthralled with his knowledge of semiconductor technology. And I learned a lot from Bob. And Gordon and Andy were over in the research center, but I was on Whisman Road in Mountain View, right just within a few feet from Noyce.
And then a guy named Charlie Sporck who actually founded National Semiconductor. So I was surrounded with these new gurus in the semiconductor industry.

INTERVIEW – PART 2 (THE WAFER STEPPER & DECISION TO START A COMPANY)
RAY: So then after a while, I left Fairchild and I joined a couple of other semiconductor companies, but ultimately I ended up at Electromask, which is down in Van Nuys area—Woodland, actually Woodland Hills, California—making photographic equipment for the semiconductor industry.
And I had invented, or at least conceptualized, a piece of equipment called the wafer stepper. And the wafer stepper, of course, is now one of the most important pieces of equipment in making semiconductors. If you've heard of ASML, they're the ones now, the kingpin of making semiconductor photolithographic equipment for the industry.
So anyway, I got in a little bit of a kerfuffle in nineteen seventy-six after we had developed that wafer stepper with the company because they weren't that enthralled with it. It was a little before its time. Back in that time, wafer sizes were like two or three inches. They were relatively small compared to the twelve and eighteen-inch silicon that we have now. But the concept of the wafer stepper was not to be limited by wafer size or feature—how small the geometry could be—but it was way before its time. It was like ten years or more before it actually really became an important factor in making semiconductors.
So then when I got in this little disagreement while I was down visiting the factory in nineteen seventy-six, I decided that I was done. I was upset with the fact that they just couldn't see the value in manufacturing this equipment or developing it, because as I said, it looked like ten years out. That's way too far. Most companies can look out maybe three to five years, but they can't look out ten years. It's just not something that's a factor of development.
So I went home, I flew back to San Jose, went upstairs to greet my wife, and she threw her arms around me and I looked her in the eye, grabbed her by the shoulder, looked her in the eye, and I said, "I'm done working for anybody. I'm never going to work for anybody ever again."
And she said, "Oh, okay." You know, so that started me off on a different trip as you would. I was like thirty-nine years old or something like that at the time. And you know how you are. You're young and you're full of vim and vinegar and you're ready to take on the world. And I'd already developed this wafer stepper. So I thought I was a pretty capable person.
And so she said, "Well, what are you going to do?" And I said, "I don't know, I'll figure it out." Literally, I said, Tony, I said, "I'm going to figure it out." So it took me a couple of years to really get my arms around what I wanted to do. Because when I walked upstairs to greet my wife in June of nineteen seventy-six, I had no idea what I was going to do. No idea.
It wasn't like I grabbed a group of guys and we went down to the bar and had a bunch of drinks and stuff. That wasn't it. I mean, I literally just made my mind up on the airplane trip back from Woodland Hills to San Jose that I was not going to work for anybody ever again for a specific reason. I just didn't like the way companies were run. I mean, just didn't like the way they viewed technology or even running a good company. And I don't want to get into the specifics on that.
But anyway, mid-seventy-seven, which is about a year later, I decided to get back into semiconductors again, but I needed a partner. I needed somebody. I'm not a semiconductor technologist. I'm just more of an idea guy. And so I needed to find me a good partner. And I had a friend that was working at Electronic Arrays at the time, and he was a very knowledgeable technologist. I mean, a good technologist. And I talked him into joining me and starting a semiconductor company, which we did. We started in like September of seventy-seven and we called it Microcell.
But I needed to launch a little bigger operation than he and I just doing some consulting as you would. So then in the middle of seventy-eight, we came up with the idea of actually getting a building and actually starting making semiconductors physically. We were at the time, back a year earlier, we were actually using other people's fabs like a fabless semiconductor company. And so it was hard to get services that way because we were having to actually work at night or early morning to use the equipment. And it just wasn't really viable.

INTERVIEW – PART 3 (LAUNCHING MICREL WITH $600K)
RAY: So November of seventy-eight, we launched Micrel. And Micrel, it's kind of close to Microcell, but that company was still ongoing. And so I couldn't call it Microcell, so I called it Micrel.
If anybody has the book by Jim Fixx, the second book on running, I'm in that book. I'm in his book—Microcell's in that actually in that book. So he was a marathoner. For those of you who knew him or knew of him in that time period.
In early or mid-seventy-eight, when we were going to start the company, we didn't want to be venture capital funded. And the reason was we wanted to own the company. And it's hard to own it if you're venture capital funded. So we had to come up with a different way of funding the company with our own money, bootstrapping, as they call it today.
And so the bank wanted more than just the two of us involved. And so we found another couple of guys who were willing to throw in some money, and we were able to raise three hundred thousand dollars and the bank matched it with another three hundred. So we were totally funded at six hundred thousand with a three hundred thousand dollar bank loan.
And we had to start a service company as opposed to making semiconductors because the bank wanted us to be profitable from day one. And so you can't consider yourself a semiconductor company to be profitable from day one unless you're venture capital funded. So in those days, a VC-funded semiconductor company is on the order of fifty million dollars.
And here we are doing one with six hundred thousand dollars. And there's not one single person, a friend or foe that thought I'd ever be successful starting a semiconductor company with six hundred thousand dollars. So think about that. Fifty million is the average, and I'm doing it with six hundred thousand.
TONY: This is raised—we're talking about judgment under pressure, what it takes to lead when everything is on the line. And you can find out about him. He's got a book—toughthingsfirst.com. That's three words. Tough Things First dot com. Did I get that right, Ray?
RAY: Well, that's the website. The book is called Tough Things First, right?
TONY: And the website is toughthingsfirst.com where people can find out more and they can get the book from there. Then go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and any place where books are sold. Correct.
RAY: Great.

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Now let's come back to something important he just said, because this is where most people hesitate.

INTERVIEW – PART 4 (INTELLIGENCE VS. WISDOM)
TONY: Now I want to pick this back up because one thing that's come to mind—okay, I got that you didn't want to work for anyone, and I understand why. I've been through that exact thing. I think we went through a carbon copy on that. But one thing you've said in the past or somewhere, you've said intelligence alone doesn't create real business success. So I'm curious, where do smart leaders most often get in their own way? And, you know, we're entrepreneurs, we're business people. We want to understand how can we wind up getting in our own way? You know, we think we're so smart. We started the company or whatever, yet here we are creating issues and barriers. How can that be addressed?
RAY: Intelligence is really not wisdom. So, you know, it takes knowledge and experience to develop wisdom. And so I had the knowledge, but I lacked experience because I was only thirty-nine or forty at the time. And so the intelligence is kind of the combination of your knowledge and experience. That's what your intelligence does, that's how you get there from that education and just experience in whatever your field of study is.
So I got my master's in sixty-eight in business because I wanted to have business background. So I know that education is crucial and there's no way I could have run my company without having that business background. So a lot of guys start a company because they've got this real cute or specific idea, but they don't know how to run it. They need that. They're just there educationally—they're more of, as they say, a kind of a guru in a particular field of study. And they come up with this technical idea like Gordon Moore did—I mean, excuse me, Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore did with doing planar technology. So that's a technology.
So I didn't start my company with a particular technology. We started with a concept of running a successful business, which can apply to anybody listening on this podcast. So, you know, first of all, you have to be able to run a business. The idea is okay, but you have to be able to run it.
A company doesn't run on intelligence. It's run on, as I say, the combination of education or knowledge and experience and that's wisdom. And so, you know, to be wise as you would, you need both. You need both knowledge and experience. And so what I did not want to do was start a company just based on an idea like a technology. Now, I'm not saying anything wrong with it, but I want to start a company based on the concept of people in a particular field, which was semiconductors.
So I focused on hiring the best people and then having the knowledge base to run a successful company. So that was the purpose of me starting my company in nineteen seventy-eight. So is that kind of fit what you're where you're going with this concept of intelligence?
TONY: Yes. In a way, yes. Because I'll tell you my own personal experience. I've worked for many, many people. I've worked in the corporate world for three decades. I've worked for a lot of bosses, a lot of CEOs, done a lot of things. And usually the founder or the CEO there—they've helped, usually helped form and start the company. So they have their own way of doing it. They built the company, but because of that, they don't usually—they're not open to new ideas or different ideas because they're so dead set. Hey, they built the company. It could have been twenty years ago with different tools and different technologies back then, but they're very, very draconian in how things have to be done.
And as a result, even though they're smart and hey, they've got the million-dollar company, not me, but they get in their own way, they stumble over their own feet. It's like my way or the highway. I've run into that so many times. So there's a point where that smart leader has got—hey, you've hired other people. Why? Because they're an expert in marketing or HR or technology, not you. So you have to be open to let these other people do their job, that you're hiring them and paying them the big bucks for without trying to tell them how to do it, because they're the expert. So I wind up seeing leaders who think they're so smart, but they get in their own way.
RAY: Well, you know, that reminds me of when I wrote my book, Tough Things First, so I needed a writer to help me because I didn't have that background. I mean, I had the education and the experience of running a semiconductor company, but I had never written a book. And so when I went to hire my writer to help me write the book, the first thing he asked me, he says, "Well, are you willing to let me help you? Are you willing to take my advice as we write the book?" If I said no, then he didn't want to do it. He only wanted to do it if I was willing to let him be involved in the writing of the book.
And I said, "Absolutely. Hey, listen, I'll be the one that sits back and takes advice from you and I'll fill in the blanks." And so that's how we wrote the book, Tough Things First, because he interviewed me and he said, "Well, how about let's focus it this way. Let's look at it this other way." And that's why Tough Things First is such a good book and a well-known book is because I was willing to listen to the writer and not just saying, "Oh, no, you're going to write exactly what I tell you to do." He wasn't interested in doing it that way.
So I got one of the best writers in the country to help me write Tough Things First, because, as I said, I'm not a writer. I mean, I had the background, I had the experience, I had the idea for the book, but I needed somebody who could put it together in the right format. So it kind of goes along with what you're saying.
TONY: Exactly.

INTERVIEW – PART 5 (HIRING & BUILDING A PEOPLE-FIRST CULTURE)
TONY: Now, as part of that, as the leader, as the CEO, you know, you have times where you have to make very important decisions and you don't always have all the right information. Some information could be incomplete or it could be conflicting. You could have different people that are giving information, both trustworthy, both been with the company or have good references, but you've got to make your decisions. So I'm curious, do you have a criteria of how do you decide who to trust and where to go when you've got these high-stakes decisions to make?
RAY: That goes back to when I hire people or interview them. I asked them some questions that let me find out how they are as a person. I asked them, "How do you like your previous company? Or what problems did you have when you worked there? And how did you deal with it?" And if they said, "Oh, I hated my company. I didn't like my boss," then that was a red flag. I didn't want to hire them. If they said, "Oh, I love my job. I love my boss," then I knew that we had a chance of getting along.
And so it was important for me to hire people who really loved where they worked. They didn't badmouth their previous employer. And so the next thing I did after the conclusion of the interview, I said, "When you come here and work, if you come to work for our company, I'm not going to make you rich. That's your job. Your job is to make yourself rich. What I will help you do is I'll help you become a better person, a better husband, a better wife, a better father, a better mother, a better citizen. I will help you do that. I'm not going to help you become rich."
And I said, "How much is it worth to you to be a better person?" And they said, "That's a strange way of doing the interview," they thought, but I'm the one doing the interview and I want to have a certain way. I want to focus my interview. So I watched if they're leaning back or they're leaning forward. If they're leaning back, that's a red flag. If they're leaning forward, that means they're listening and they're interested in actually responding in a thoughtful way about, "Yeah, how much is it worth to become a better person?"
And I said, "I'll promise you that within three years, you'll come back to me and tell me you've become a better person." And that was the goal of our company. Our company wasn't there to make ourselves rich or to have a fantastic company or build a big, well-known name company. Our goal was to have happy employees, to have people who enjoyed working together, people who loved one another, who were considerate.
We didn't allow any vulgarity, no swearing at all. You couldn't use vulgar language or use condescending language. You couldn't yell or scream, you know. You had to keep your voice down. And we trained our people how to manage. We didn't just say, "Here, go to work." We held a meeting once a week on Friday from one to two-thirty every Friday. And we talked about issues we were having at the company. There were about thirty of us in the room and we talked about how can we improve. If any of you in the room were having in your department having issues, let's talk about it. Let's talk about what we can do.
And then I taught them how to do motivational talks because we rotated around the room performing, giving a motivational talk once a week. That helped them also be able to motivate their people. So we were big on training. We were big on helping them become better people and more loving and kind toward their people.
We had the lowest turnover in the entire industry. I mean, a fraction of what the rest of the industry was experiencing. Boomerang employees—that was another thing we had. We had half our employees wanted to come back. They could find when they went out and worked for somebody else, they found that company was not near as people-centric as our company, the one they left. And so we had half our people that left come back. And that was a big milestone for us too, was to have high returns, high boomerang employees and have very low turnover.
And that was the key to the success of our company because better employees make better companies. Better companies keep their customers happy. And because the quality of the work is better and just the whole way they relate to the customer is better.
TONY: Absolutely amazing.

INTERVIEW – PART 6 (LEADING FOR 37 YEARS: CULTURE & VALUES)
TONY: As you mentioned, you've led Micrel for more than three decades, thirty years. I've worked at a couple companies during that time period, you ran one company and you are one of Silicon Valley's longest-running leaders that we've mentioned earlier. And I'm curious. You mentioned some of this, but I want to focus on one part that helped you. Unless you've already talked about it, that helped you as a leader to remain effective over this long time period without, again, being outdated, rigid. There's new procedures. The news keeps changing. The world keeps changing. Things keep changing. Yet you continue to manage and lead very successfully. So what do you think helped you weather the storm? If you want to put it in those types of words?
RAY: Okay, so I want to correct one thing. Almost four decades, thirty-seven years, not thirty years. So we're almost four decades. As I mentioned earlier, I've been married for sixty-five years. So, you know, with marriages divorcing and fifty percent end up in divorce, that's an indicator then of what kind of relationship you're going to have with your people.
So I didn't believe in layoffs. I believed in trying to make things work. And so the whole concept of running a company is how you treat your employees. We don't answer the phone "Hello?" We answer it "How can I help you?"
I did a lot of walking around, talking to our people, looking at what makes a strong department, and we praised people who had good departments, low turnover, and we used them as examples. So, you know, the concept of Micrel, even from the very day we opened the doors, was to have a loving, caring company, empathetic, sympathetic. And that's not necessarily the goals of a startup or a company today. There are a few. Jack Welch of GE is an example of a good CEO. And there's not that many great CEOs in my industry.
So let me tell you the culture that we had at the company because that's important. Every company needs a culture. So our culture was as follows.
Number one was honesty, which is always being truthful.
Number two was integrity, always doing what's right when no one's watching.
Number three was having respect and dignity for every individual irrespective of their position. No swearing, no vulgar language.
And the last was doing whatever it takes, no excuses. Which means you're willing to correct your mistakes. You're willing to not put it on the company, not make the company punished because of your mistake, but you're going to fix them. And that's what it means by doing whatever it takes, no excuses.
And that idea, "no excuses," it sounds simple, but in real life it's where most people fall off.
TONY: Let's take a quick moment here before we continue. I just want to thank you for being here. Your time matters, and I appreciate you spending part of your day with me on The Tony D'Urso Show. If this episode is giving you something to think about, you can follow the show so you don't miss what's coming next. And if someone comes to mind who could benefit from this, feel free to share it with them.
Also, if you're not already receiving my Elite Entrepreneurs newsletter, you're always welcome to join us. You'll find it at TonyDUrso.com. That's Tony D-U-R-S-O dot com. I appreciate you being here. All right. Let's get back into this because what comes next builds directly on that idea of discipline.

INTERVIEW – PART 7 (NO REGRETS & SURVIVING DOWNTURNS)
RAY: And we have no regrets. I can say that in the almost forty years that I ran Micrel, I can say I had no regrets. There's nothing I would have changed or done differently. Not that we didn't go through downturns. We went through eight of them, but it's how we went through downturns. You know, my employees were very supportive because we didn't immediately do a layoff. We didn't immediately shrink, even though in two thousand and two we lost half our customers, half of them because of the dot-com implosion.
And if you think about losing half your customers, most companies go out of business. In fact, if you look at what happened during the dot-com implosion, probably eighty percent of the companies went away. They blew up. But we survived and we survived well. We came out of it actually stronger than when we went into that downturn.
And we've only lost money one year out of thirty-seven. So I've been profitable thirty-six out of thirty-seven years. That's unheard of. That's a record that no one has been able to match. And I didn't do that on the backs of my employees. I did that with the help of my employees, and that's the difference. Did I do it on their back or did I do it with their help? And I did it with their help.
They were so supportive. They were willing to jump in and really face the music with me. And I took the biggest cut. When we had a salary reduction, I took three times the cut of anybody else so they could see that, and they were appreciative of it. So that's another way we garnered their support.
Layoffs—we had just a few, not very many. Maybe over the whole time that I ran the company, for the almost forty years, I don't think we had more than two or three. And they were small. They were small cutbacks, nothing major. So we just worked shorter hours. We cut people's pay a little bit. I took the biggest cut and that helped us survive the downturns.
The next thing is I knew and my people knew and I preached this—every three to five years you're going to have a downturn. So I said, "You know, you got to prepare for it. You have to know that in a certain period of time, there's going to be a downturn." And then, you know, you got to say, "Okay, how long is that going to reverse?" Typically, a reversal takes a year and a half to two years to come out of a downturn. And we can see that today even in our economy. It's called Newton's First Law of Economics. You know, for every action you have one direction equal and opposite to the other. So you will come out of the downturn. It doesn't happen by accident. You have to actually build for it. You have to plan for it. And so we were able to do that.
So out of eight downturns, we only had one year in two thousand and two that we lost money and we lost fifty thousand dollars out of the hundreds of millions that we did in revenue. So, you know, that's another focus that they liked was our ability to be profitable on an ongoing basis.
TONY: Absolutely astounding.

INTERVIEW – PART 8 (MISTAKES: IF YOU FIX IT, IT'S NOT A MISTAKE)
TONY: As you're saying this, Ray, I'm thinking of you ran almost four decades and profitable for all but one year. It's absolutely astounding. And I'm thinking you've run into mistakes. You've run into some leadership mistakes. You've run into some operating mistakes. I'm just curious if you can share with us, what do you think were some of the biggest mistakes and what have you learned from it?
RAY: Okay, so let's talk about mistakes. We all make mistakes, you know, even though in terms of financial, some of them are small, they're still big. Any mistake has to be realized as a big mistake. Okay? You can't just say, "Well, we made a small mistake," because small mistakes, if not corrected, end up being big mistakes. So we looked at every mistake that we made as a big mistake or we wouldn't fix it. You can't just sweep it under the rug because it's small, it's going to come back to bite you. So we looked at even small mistakes as big mistakes.
Remember that fourth culture was doing whatever it takes, no excuses. That means when we make a mistake, we fix it. So there's no regrets. And I can tell you that in the thirty-seven years I ran the company, I didn't have any regrets. I can't tell you of a single regret because I fixed it, I repaired it, I didn't let it continue. And if you fix a mistake, as they say in the law, no harm, and no foul. In other words, if you fix the mistake, then it's not a mistake, right? Because you've repaired it.
And so we had that philosophy of no harm, no foul. If you fix your mistake, we all make mistakes. If you fix them, then they're not harmful. So looking at the downturn that was in two thousand and two from the dot-com implosion, what mistake did we make? None. We didn't make a mistake. We actually were prepared for it. So if you're prepared for it, you can't call it a mistake even though you lost half your customers and you had to do some cutbacks and reduce salaries. That's not a mistake. You're just dealing with a difficult situation. And that's what we did.
So I can't think of what you would refer to as a classic mistake if I really focus on fixing it so that it doesn't remain a mistake. You know, a mistake is only one you let go, you let continue. It's called procrastination. And I can tell you in your audience that I have learned to love the things I hated. Okay? And I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but if there's something I don't want to do, I will keep doing it until I love to do it.
As Emerson says in his poem about that which we persist in doing becomes easier. Not the nature of the task changes, but our ability to perform. It becomes easier. So we keep working at something and persist in doing it so that we become better at it. And that's how we grow. You grow by being persistent, by being disciplined.
Discipline is doing what you don't like doing and doing it well. So that means loving the things you hate to do. And I can tell you that there's nothing that I hate to do that I haven't fixed, that I haven't overcome and even loved. Because I'll keep doing it until I like it. And if you look at great athletes or whether it be our recent win in the Olympics with our women and men's hockey win, gold medal, they all talked about the love of country. They talked about the perseverance, the fact that they were considered the underdogs as you would against Canada. Be humble, be willing to listen, be willing to work your tail off.
And so if you look at a great athlete, it's not how good he is on the floor when he's actually in a game. It's how he works on the floor when he's practicing. So it's practice that makes perfect. Okay. And that's the key to being successful as a leader is by practicing—practice, practice, practice. If I have to deal with an employee who is having difficulty, I practice first what I'm going to say and how I'm going to say it before I do it. I'm ready. I'm prepared. When I sit down with that person or with a customer or with a vendor or with my wife or my children, I practice first. I don't just let it rip, as they say. I actually think about and go through in my mind how I'm going to say it, where I'm going to say it, and then I'm prepared. I'm not going to just blurt it out. I'm not going to lose my cool. Okay? Because I want to be prepared, as I said.
Discipline is doing what you don't like doing and doing it well. Look up the word. That's the definition. And so I persist and persist and persist until I get it right, whether it be playing the piano or singing or running a company or whatever. I'm not going to wing it. I'm not going to just let it fly. I'm going to keep at it until I'm good at it. Okay? And that's the key is loving the things you hate. Can you believe that, Tony? Learning to love what you don't like to do.
TONY: That right there. Learning to love what you don't want to do. That's where most people separate from the outcome they say they want. Let me pause here for just a moment. If you're building something or thinking about it, tools matter. Shopify gives you everything in one place—your store, your marketing, your payments, your analytics. No confusion, no patchwork systems, just one platform built to help you grow. You can get started today at Shopify.com/Tony. That's Shopify.com/Tony.
Now this next part, this is where it becomes real, because eighty percent of what you do as a leader is not fun.
RAY: Eighty percent. Only twenty percent is fun. So if you're not used to liking eighty percent of your job, you're going to burn out. And that's why you see so many CEOs end up leaving within three to five years is because they don't like their job. Remember I said when I interviewed people, I asked them how they liked their job. If they said they didn't like their job, which was a red flag. I wouldn't hire them. Okay.
TONY: Absolutely astounding. You've given so many nuggets. I just absolutely love everything that you've been saying. I think my most favorite, if I had to pick one is if you fix it, it's not a mistake. I really like that. That is so good. This is—I'm really getting a lot out of this interview, learning from your experience. And I really want to say I do appreciate you sharing that.

INTERVIEW – PART 9 (SCALING WITHOUT LOSING CHARACTER)
TONY: And I'm thinking of as leaders come in, they're trying to scale. It's all about scaling whatever it is, whether you're selling peanuts or software or technology or anything. You always want to scale, scale, and scale. Well, leaders—and we've talked about a few of these—they tend to do things that cost them a lot. And I wanted to just get your take on perhaps it's a character matter, of sticking firm to your goals, to your virtues, to your vision and not letting go because some leaders, they just let it all go. And as you say, after a couple years, they want out.
RAY: Yeah. Because that's exactly. You're right, Tony, because they don't like their job. They can't stomach doing the eighty percent of things that that job consists of. As I said, eighty percent of what we do, we don't like to do. Okay. And to me, that's a terrible way to live life. I want to be happy. You can't be happy hating eighty percent of what you do. You can't be happy. You got to be happy at least half the time or fifty percent, you know, maybe you're not happy eighty percent of the time, but you got to work toward it.
And so that was the key—I was happy. I looked forward to coming to work every day. I enjoyed being the CEO of Micrel. I enjoyed working with my people. There wasn't eighty percent of what I did I didn't want to do because I learned to love the things I hated, and that helped me deal with adversity and challenges.
As you said, a mistake is not a mistake if you fix it. You know, think about all the things that you've done that you can say, "Well, I didn't really like that." If you didn't fix it, it's still a mistake. If you fixed it, you can say, "I just learned." I mean, that wasn't a mistake. I just learned something and that's the key to learning is called humility. Humility is the key to learning because it's you're not looking inward. You're looking outward. That which you persist in doing becomes easier if you persist in doing it.
And so you learn to love the things you don't like doing. And that's the key. You know, if I find even today—I'm retired—even today if I find something I don't want to do, I'll do it first. That's why I called the book Tough Things First. I'll get it out of the way. And I'll keep working at it until I fix it. So that's the problem. We don't fix our mistakes and so they become mistakes.
TONY: I like that, and we didn't really focus too much on what's in the book. You just brought up something. Well, we have time for perhaps one better question here. So perhaps let's pick something from your book. What do you want people to take away from your book? What lesson do you think is the most important that they should learn? Was it what you just said right there?
RAY: Yeah. Doing the tough things first. In other words, don't procrastinate. If anything causes us not to fix a mistake, it's procrastination. We put it off. And if you keep putting it off, you're not going to fix it. And so, you know, fix it now. Do it now. You know, that's the key. The key is to do it now and fix it now. Not wait until it becomes something you say, "Oh darn, I forgot to do that. Or oh, I should have remembered that. Or oh, well, it'll fix itself."
See, sometimes what we do is we think, "Well, if we don't deal with it, it'll kind of go away." Well, it might, but eighty or ninety percent of the time it doesn't go away, Tony. It's still there. We just ignore it. We just let it fester. And, you know, it's like if you're ill, maybe you've got cancer and you don't fix it immediately. It comes to stage four, and then they have a hard time fixing it. So you don't let it get to stage four. You fix it when it happens, right in stage one, not in stage four. Okay, so keep that in mind that you need to focus on solving the problem, not letting it fester. And so that's the key to Tough Things First is do it now.
TONY: I like that. So when we have a company and we need to scale and we need to grow and all sorts of things happen, if we can find what's the hardest part of that job, that task, that rollout, that new product, whatever, if we could tackle the hardest part, the rest becomes a lot easier to deal with.
RAY: That's right. It's really good advice. Really, really good advice.

INTERVIEW – PART 10 (FINAL WISDOM: LOVE YOUR PEOPLE)
TONY: If you're leading a company today, what do you think people need to focus on? For sure, they've got to read your book. But what concerns you the most about leadership today?
RAY: Loving your people, being kind and gentle and understanding. Being compassionate. Being empathetic, all the things which are Christ-like. That's what they need to focus on. Okay. Is being a better person, just having your people love you.
As I said, I've been married sixty-five years and my wife tells me and I tell her the same every single day. I said, "I love you. Thank you for accepting me as a person." And I do that with my people. Julie is probably listening. She's my PR person. She'll tell you that one thing we do even now is we thank each other. We show gratitude. We have the attitude of gratitude. And we want to be grateful every day for what we have—for our health, our families, our understanding. Being able to be in the world but not of the world. Okay.
And so to make a difference, you have to focus on others. You got to focus outward, not inward, you know. And if you're moaning and groaning about your problems, you're not thinking outward, you're thinking inward. One thing I don't want to do is have people think somehow that I'm focusing on myself. That's called selfish. Selfish people never win. They only lose. There's no I in team. Okay? You have to be a full-blooded team if you're going to succeed.
And so if you look at your company as just somebody supplying products, then you're not focusing on the right thing. You have a bunch of people work for you and you want to focus on them. And that's what we did. We focused on people, not on products.
TONY: Absolutely amazing. Absolutely love it.

OUTRO
TONY: Once again, this is Ray Zinn. We talked about judgment under pressure, what it takes to lead when everything is on the line. You can find out more about him and his book—ToughThingsFirst.com. Ray, I just want to thank you so much. So much good advice, so much wisdom. I'm going to listen to this again, this is great for whether we work for someone or we have a career or we're starting off, or we're an entrepreneur or solo entrepreneur, businessman, whatever—CEO, corporate, this is great. Thank you so much for coming on the show and talking to us. I really, really appreciated it.
RAY: Well, thank you, Tony, for inviting me. I sincerely enjoyed this.
TONY: Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Wow, that was so good guys. I just absolutely love it. I'm sure you love it too. And if you like this, please share this with your friends. Tell them about Ray. Tell them about his life, nearly forty years as the CEO and some of these core values that you just don't even hear about anymore. I didn't hear about them in corporate America when I was around. Absolutely amazing. And tell him what he's been through and what he's accomplished. Absolutely astounding stuff.
And guys, wherever you're getting this, please follow the show. It helps to bring in more amazing guests to you. All right. Again, check out Ray, get his book and let's use this and let's help you move on your journey to success. Thanks. Remember, just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Just like what we talked about. Sow good seeds, do good deeds. And I'll see you on the next episode.
And before we close, just a quick thank you for being here. If you found value in this episode, follow the show and share it with someone who could use it. And if you want more insights like this, you can join my newsletter at TonyDUrso.com. I'll see you next time.