Mark Medley and CTI

Last Monday our class had the pleasure of going to CTI and meeting their CEO Mark Medley. CTI builds electronic circuit boards for logic controls in manufacturing plants. His company is different from the previous two companies we saw, Protein Discovery and Micro Types, in that CTI has been around since 1972 when he went into business with a few of his friends. Mark actually spun off CTI later on as its own entity, separate from the original business he and his friends started.

The entrepreneurial spirit developed in Mark in a different way from our previous two contacts. Mark’s dad was a brilliant mining engineering but was afraid to take a gamble and pursue his own business. His dad never regretted any of his decisions but always had a mentality of I wish I had done that and so Mark decided he never wanted to be like that. When the opportunity presented itself for Mark to run his own business, he took it.

As a manufacturing manager at Proctor and Gamble, Mark learned a lot about the business a manufacturing which helped him run CTI. One of the most important this he told us was to let machines do what machines are good at and let humans do what humans are good at. In other words, let machines do repetitive work and let humans make the decisions in a manufacturing line. Another point of advice he gave us, which is consistent with previous talks, is to have good judgment when selecting the people you go into business with. A large part of his success was due to the fact that he trusted all of his business partners and they in turn trusted him to do their jobs.

Financing a start up business has been a topic of our class and Marks advice to us was that it is extremely important to look at the length of financing and arrange your financing to meet the life of your business. Too many people these days are financing short term when they should be financing long term and are unable to make their payments. Mark was lucky to have friends who were bankers that trusted him when he was first starting his business and exclaimed that it was probably not possible to finance a business the way he had done it.

Finally, Mark finished by leaving us with a few bits of advice to take with us into our business endeavors. First was that it is very important to do what you say you are going to do and that credibility is everything. You must always try to keep your customers and employees informed so that there are no surprises and generally you will keep everyone’s trust. Another was to govern your business by policies instead of rules. Lastly was that it is very important to find a balance in your life. Time management is critical for both your personal and business life. It is ok to be out of balance for a short period of time but in the long run, you will not make it if all you do is business and neglect your family and spiritual life.