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• Mr. Orfalea's official site
• Mr. Orfalea on learning disabilities
• Orfalea Family Foundation

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Tavis: We continue our 'Road to Wealth' series tonight with the remarkable story of one man's dream of entrepreneurship. Paul Orfalea was a 'D' student in high school, having been expelled from four of the eight schools he attended. The reason, he would later find out, is he suffered from dyslexia and - ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Easy for me to say. A few years later, he took out a $5,000 bank loan, and started a company you may have heard of, a little company called Kinko's.

The rest, as they say, is history. His truly inspiring story is told in the pages of his new memoir called 'Copy This: Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic who Turned a Bright Idea into one of America's Best Companies.' Paul Orfalea, nice to have you here.

Paul Orfalea: Oh, it's a pleasure to be here, thank you.

Tavis: Pleasure to meet you, man. Glad to have you here. What a remarkable journey this has been.

Orfalea: It's fun. The whole planet's interesting, isn't it?

Tavis: Yeah. So, four high schools you got kicked out of?

Orfalea: Yes.

Tavis: You - went to school here in LA.

Orfalea: I went to, yes.

Tavis: So - what all did you get kicked - for all the folks watching here in LA, what all did you get kicked out of here in LA before you became rich through Kinko's?

Orfalea: Well, I had a big, you know, I had a, well, some people only have one card at John Burroughs Junior High. I must have had about eight. And so I guess, it was cutting school that finally got me ousted.

Tavis: So John Burroughs.

Orfalea: - LA High.

Tavis: LA High.

Orfalea: Notre Dame in the Valley. And, I went to Bancroft for a little while.

Tavis: Yeah. You made your way around town.

Orfalea: It was like a hotel, check in, check out.

Tavis: Yeah. You made your way around. The problem was dyslexia and ADHD. When did you or somebody, some adult, figure this out?

Orfalea: Well, my parents were very understanding, and, my parents had me go to different tutors. I used to go up here in Hollywood to a lady's house. There were nine kids in her house. Two of them were 18 years old. I was nine. I kept wondering, now why am I in this school? And they - had really serious learning problems. I had to go to an eye doctor three days a week. I went to memory school over here in Crenshaw. My parents said every word I ever read cost them $50.

Tavis: How did you navigate your way through that process? I mean, we see the outward expression of the turmoil you were having internally, but how were you, how was Paul, how was little Paul navigating his way through all these troubles and travails?

Orfalea: Well, at the time, I was just numb. You know, in life, I was always in the moment. I don't remember ever having the idea of past, present, and future until I was 16, because it was a big blur - just doing what I wanted to do. And I remember I was expelled into Birmingham High School because we had moved to the Valley, and, I thought, you know, right now is the oldest I've ever been. If I can control myself now, I can prevent myself from getting in trouble. And it was like, epiphany. What a discovery. So I joined all these clubs at lunch, and I said, I'll wait one year and not get into any trouble.

Tavis: And you did that?

Orfalea: Well, I didn't get expelled.

Tavis: He didn't say, "I didn't get in trouble.' He said, "I didn't get expelled.' Two different things. I heard that, yeah. So tell me what - and it's all in this book, of course, but tell me, tell our audience, what happens after high school. So you navigate your way out of high school.

Orfalea: Well, you know, I knew I wasn't getting along with the organizational and authority figures 'cause I got - lost all my, I never had a job I could keep or anything. And so the Army kind of wanted me, and I didn't really like to backpack, I don't like mosquitoes, I don't like mud and bullets and bombs. I really thought, drinking beer, flirting with women, and going to college was a little bit better deal.

Tavis: Okay. So what happens next?

Orfalea: Well, I figured out, I went to junior college at Valley College, and I went and saw the admissions officer. And what I've learned in life is you don't have to be a Republican. Dress like a Republican.

Tavis: Okay. (laughs)

Orfalea: And so I went and saw the admissions officer. And, I said, "Okay, I'm really gonna try.' And so she said if you go to extension, we'll let you in. And I was accepted at SC, and I graduated finally from SC. It meant a lot to have a diploma for me.

Tavis: Oh, it had to.

Orfalea: Because I didn't have to talk up to anybody. For me, if I didn't have a diploma, I'd always have a chip on my shoulder, and I knew it.

Tavis: How big a day was that for your parents, though? From where you started to see you get a degree from USC.

Orfalea: Oh, that was pretty cool. I think they couldn't - my mom always knew it. No, I don't think it was that. Because I remember when I was expelled from John Burroughs, Mr. McNamara said to my mother, "Well, someday, maybe Paul could go to trade school and learn to lay carpet.' And my mom said, "I just know he can do more than lay carpet.' So I don't think my parents ever had any doubts in me.

Tavis: I wonder if Mr. McNamara is still around.

Orfalea: I don't know. But now, Mr. Hunt was before him. He had us paddled. He paddled the hell out of me.

Tavis: Yeah. Wouldn't that be fascinating to see what Mr. McNamara thinks of Mr. Paul Orfalea now?

Orfalea: Yeah.

Tavis: Yeah. Kinko's. We all know Kinko's. We all spend money at Kinko's. You sold your interest back in 2000. We all know now it's FedEx Kinko's. Where, how the idea - we know the $5,000 bank loan. Where the idea?

Orfalea: I knew I'd never be able - I'm Lebanese, and it's a big, extended family. And I candidly, of the 200-300 relatives we have, I never knew a soul that ever had a job. You were gonna have your own business. My whole life, "Honey, you're gonna save your money and have your own business.' My parents never looked at my report card. It was, "Honey, are you saving your money?' So I'd always knew I'd have my own business.

And I was at SC, and I saw a lot of folks making copies. So I figured if they're at SC making copies, why wouldn't they be at Santa Barbara making copies? So I opened a little store. The picture's in the book. 100 square feet, and - there it is right there.

Tavis: There it is right there.

Orfalea: And then the front is the main artery of the campus at Santa Barbara. I put my notebooks and pens on the sidewalk, and I sold $2,000 a day worth of notebooks and pens the first day of school.

Tavis: The first day?

Orfalea: Yeah. Everybody needs a notebook and pen. It was cool. And this is 35 years ago.

Tavis: My favorite story has to be, though, how you came up with the name Kinko's.

Orfalea: Oh, 'cause I had kinky hair. And it was - prior to being 'Kinko,' I was 'carpet head' and, I shouldn't tell you this, but my nickname was 'pube head' for a while, 'cause I guess my hair looked like pubic hairs.

Tavis: Yeah. So you had kinky hair, so you say, "Well, I might as well call my place Kinko's.'

Orfalea: Well, it was a great name. Because when you think of it, babies always remember strong consonants. Goo-goo, ga-ga. But you'll remember Kodak. You'll remember Xerox. You'll remember Google. And so names with strong consonants, you'll always remember.

Tavis: There's a piece of advice right there. Name your business something with a strong consonant.

Orfalea: Yes.

Tavis: Yeah. How did you grow this thing to be as big as it was? It's one thing to hear the story of how it got started, but a lot of folks start businesses, and they either go bankrupt or they start them and they grow to a certain level. But yours started and, whoosh. Now it's FedEx Kinko's. How did it grow so fast?

Orfalea: Well, I personally was very lucky not to be a very competent person. I can't read well. I really don't know how to run the machines in Kinko's. At least for the last 33 years, I haven't known how to run a machine. But I was always looking at what came out of the machine, and I knew I could sell it. And so my job was really leaving the store. By leaving the store, I told people I trusted them. And I was always the guy across the street looking in my business.

Tavis: That's your philosophy. You got a lot of good business advice in this book. And one of your philosophies is to stay on top of your business, stay on your business, not necessarily in your business.

Orfalea: Yes.

Tavis: Is that where that came from?

Orfalea: Yeah - and, my father manufactured women's clothes in the Cooper Building. And he was always busy, busy, busy. And he told me in the latter part of his career, "Mundane is like a cancer. If you don't control your time, people will control it for you.' And I always was aware of that, and so I was a pretty good time manager. And I'm lucky not to be competent enough to be able to write letters or do machines. My job was really being in the moment, looking at opportunity.

Tavis: Is that your gift? I mean, 'cause you can downplay all the stuff that you are not, but there had to be something you were really good at to grow this into a billion-dollar business. So what was your core competency?

Orfalea: Well, first of all, my secret to marriage and my secret to managing people is "Work with competent people and get the hell out of their way.' So I work with very capable people. Jim Warren, Dan Fredrickson, just a lot of very capable people. And they ran the business beautifully. And my job was wandering, going store to store to store and looking for what people were doing right.

I could make a lot more money being in the moment. Every store, there was a nugget of opportunity. For an example, in La Jolla, the Stanzaks invented these calendars where you take 12 little pictures, and you put them on a calendar. You might have had one, a customized calendar.

Tavis: Absolutely.

Orfalea: Well, that little discovery was worth a lot of money. And - you can make a lot of money with 24 hours a day with your savings and your ideas. Really, wasn't that my business? Kinko's was an idea, and it was managing my savings account.

Tavis: Talk to me about, you said something a moment ago that I don't want to let go here. You said to me that you grew up - you're Lebanese, and you grew up in a family where your parents said to you, the expectation all along was that you would own a business. Nobody, none of your two or 300 relatives, you said, worked. Everybody had their own business.

How important was that notion of being an entrepreneur, as opposed to an employee? It's something in black America we talk about all the time. That so many people expect that they will be employees. Nobody thinks about entrepreneurship. But you were raised in a culture, in a family, in a community that nurtured the notion of your being an entrepreneur. How important was that?

Orfalea: Oh, I think - first of all, I think the African Americans are innate entrepreneurs. - You go to the football game, they're hustling. They know rejection; they know inventory; they know the time value of money. I think a lot of times they have more business moxie than the MBAs over there at USC. If you could harness the activities into a conventional business, you could make a fortune. Those are the skills you need.

Tavis: But that's the trick, though. How do you take - two things here. One, how do you take a simple idea, with all due respect, even by your own admission, the idea for Kinko's wasn't a brilliant idea. It was a simple idea. You've got a simple idea that you turned into brilliance. But you've got a simple idea. The trick is, it seems to me, to your point, is to take the simple idea and to turn it into a conventional process where you make money. So, one, how do you do that?

Orfalea: Ok, I'm gonna give you a complicated way of answering it. Have you ever taken an English course, and it's all this, like, "I didn't get the water was sex in that story.' All the symbolism. And you go, "I must be an idiot. I didn't get any of that symbolism.' And it's like the teacher has a little symbolism code book. It's designed to make you feel like an idiot, isn't it, a lot of times?

Tavis: It worked with me. I felt like an idiot.

Orfalea: Everybody does in English. I mean, a lot of people do. But same thing in business. We make it so complicated. It's basically very simple. The most successful book ever written is the Yellow Pages. They wouldn't be in the Yellow Pages if they weren't providing this service. Every page, every ad is a success story. Read it and understand their competitive advantages. We are surrounded by commercial success.

The mere fact that somebody bought one thing from somebody else, that's success. So we are surrounded by success. And we're taught to feel - like idiots about finance. And it's simple stuff. I'm sure if you can go, and you can relatively know the price of lettuce. A head is, like, a buck, maybe? A buck and a quarter? If I said $10.00, you'd say, "You're out of your mind.' Simple things in finance should be the same way. If somebody's gonna offer you 20% interest, you'll say to yourself, "That's too good to be true.' I mean, it's common sense.

Tavis: Could an idea as simple as Kinko's get off the ground today, become a billion-dollar business? And I raise that because there are a lot of young people, a lot of folk in my generation, certainly people younger than I am, who think that all the good stuff has been done. That there ain't nothing' else left to do to become a billionaire, that everybody has done everything. So now they go out and try to buy a Lotto ticket 'cause there ain't no more simple ideas like Kinko's that'll make you rich.

Orfalea: Well, just read the Yellow Pages. Keep your eyes open. You know, a lot of times people are busy, and they don't try to see what's around them. If you're in the moment, you're gonna see a lot of things. You walk down the street, you say, 'How did that business - do its lighting?' You say, 'Well God, they're in line there. - Why are they there and not at the place next door?' Start thinking that way. Always keep your - I mean, what's their margins? What is their food cost? What are their - if you start thinking that way, it's a big puzzle, all these little businesses. It's really an intriguing little puzzle to be out there thinking about.

Tavis: How has, 'cause I'm fascinated by this. I mean, for a guy who started with all these issues as a youngster, in part because - being dyslexic and the ADHD. There are so many people today who suffer from these same complications. Dyslexia still an issue, obviously. And, my God, the articles that we read all the time about these kids today who suffer from ADD and ADHD. How - I don't want to ask how it hampered you, but give me some sense of how those things - let me flip it on you. How did those things help you?

Orfalea: Oh, they're great. It didn't get me bogged down on the details. In other words, if I couldn't write my own letters, I worked with a lady named CeCe (ph). When I first would dictate letters, she'd have a little scribble pad and she'd think I'm uttering something important. I'd say, 'Look, drop your little scribble pad. Read this letter. Now, this is my problem. You figure out how to put it on a piece of paper.' She has so much initiative. I worked with her for 25 years. She writes everything for me. I don't even have to touch it. But she's emancipated. She's empowered. Look at that guy Brown yesterday on the FEMA thing.

Tavis: The FEMA guy this week, yeah.

Orfalea: He - didn't empower anybody to make a decision. They were all a bunch of chickens. You empower people to make decisions. Now, for me, I was lucky. I couldn't read well. I figured out - I'm really good at getting out of work. I'm not capable of doing too many things. And I can't sit still, so my business went to my strong suit.

And as far as ADD, think about a hundred years ago. Was it normal to sit still and be quiet? And now we have executives that try to sit still and drink coffee at their desk. Come on, they're ampedout to try to sit still. It doesn't make any sense.

Tavis: I love this guy. (laughs) I don't even know where to go after that. I had to catch my breath for a second here to figure out where, (laughs) where I wanna go next. All right, so, I'm watching right now, and I got a simple idea that everybody else keeps telling me is so simple that it's stupid. What do you say to me?

Orfalea: God hates a coward. What do you got to lose? And especially a young person. What's the worst that can happen to you when you're young? You don't have kids. You don't have a lot of responsibility. So you go back and live with your parents. What's the downside? Everybody says you have to have experience and all this. Then we get married and have all those little Rolex watches and all that nonsense, those payments. You can't stick your neck out.

You're - hate to say it, you're a slave. You're a slave to your payments. And the society wants to make you a financial slave. They give you those stupid credit cards too young in life. You graduate with those loans. They don't teach you about savings. And they wanna get you all - I hate to say it, financial slavery. So you can't stick your neck out.

You can't say screw - you can't say, "I'm not taking it, Mr. Boss," and leave. It's tough. And you got your wife home, and a couple kids. The best time to do it is when you're young, stick your neck out. "God hates a coward," my mom would always say.

Tavis: I started this conversation by saying that you took out a $5,000 loan. I talked to you about the difficulty that certainly exists in my community, the African American community, getting people to understand that you can be entrepreneurs and not employees. Your brilliant response was you think that these people are really the best entrepreneurs. They really got what it takes.

Somebody watching right now, I know is no doubt saying, but there was something that allowed you, family connections, color of your skin, something that allowed Mr. Paul to get a $5,000 bank loan. So often as a person of color, I've said many times, the only thing wrong with capitalism is that they get the capital and we get the "ism.'

The racism, the sexism, the cronyism, the good old boy-ism. So I'm watching you right now. And I'm, like, okay, I got a simple idea. My idea is as simple as yours. You made money off people making copies and stuff. I could do that, but I can't get no $5,000 loan.

Orfalea: I would've had my own $5,000, but I lost it in the stock market about four months earlier. I was always a saver. If you wanna have your dreams, you gotta have some savings. So, first of all, save your money. Delay gratification. Savings is freedom. If you have savings, you can do so many wonderful things in life. Could you imagine going down a birth canal and having a wonderful fortune? I mean, that's not too difficult. Look at the Queen of England. She goes down the birth canal and they make - the only journey she ever did was go down a birth canal.

Look it, they make a big deal out of her. So, what I'm trying to say is savings, you can do a lot of things with savings. I'd start right now instilling in my children, it's important to save. Get them a bank account, from five and six years old. Ask them about their savings account, because sooner or later, that money will multiply, and they'll have a lot of freedom with it. Teach them to not be in credit card debt. Teach them not to take so many loans out. Delay the hedonism.

Tavis: You've talked about what you did at Kinko's. Assess for me what you think, and - I'll give you a chance to answer both sides of this. But assess for me initially, Paul, what you think is most wrong with big business today. Kinko's started out small, became a big business, as I mentioned earlier, and now it's FedEx Kinko's. I ask this question because every day we're reading about executives like you, not you, but these big time executives who are being marched to jail, marched to court. What's wrong with big business these days?

Orfalea: Do you remember Godfather I and Godfather II?

Tavis: Every one of them.

Orfalea: Godfather I, the man cared about achieving organization. He didn't care what you were, as long as you were constructive. He had a modicum of values. He didn't wanna do drugs. What was Godfather II all about? Loyalty. And so it starts, these big businesses, they achieve, then they get the second in command, the second generation, and they only want people that are loyal to them. They don't care about the productivity of these people.

And it goes on to these generations of these corporate types. They manage their career. They don't manage the business. They don't stick their neck out an iota. And it's not how much joy they'll get from making the right decision. They'll get their butt kicked for making the wrong decision. There's a good old boy network with their board of directors. These board of directors don't do diddly squat. They sit in there, and they get their PowerPoint presentations, and occasionally they might make a decision.

It's just a big country club, these CEOs have the nerve to take the salary they do. And I know in business how much gimmickry you can do in that GAAP accounting. They do a lot of baloney in the GAAP accounting. So I have no empathy for these big shots. Now, first of all, you know your personal finances on the back of an envelope. You know what your income's gonna be for the next year, don't you?

Tavis: Absolutely.

Orfalea: You can do it on the back of an envelope. This man at Enron's gonna try to say, "I didn't know what's coming and going out of my big corporation.' He had more finance types than Carter had liver pills. How could he not know what was coming and going out on the back of an envelope? That's a bunch of baloney. They're trying to hide their - I have no empathy whatsoever.

They should be fried. They should - you know what's sad about folks in the ghetto? They need it to survive, that are possibly doing bad - arbitrary things. These folks, they had enough money. They didn't even need the money, and they're doing mean things. These are the people that should be punished in society, these white collar criminals. I have no empathy whatsoever for them.

Tavis: You know what fascinates me as I sit and listen to you talk is, to your example of the guy that ran Enron. He runs a major company and says he doesn't know what's going on every single day. I can't imagine, I've read enough about him to at least know that he didn't have ADHD, he didn't have dyslexia.

I raise that only because if one legitimately running a billion-dollar business doesn't know it - let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt for a second. Let's say you're running a billion-dollar enterprise - multi-billion-dollar enterprise. You really can't know every single thing happening in the company every day. If you have dyslexia and ADHD, then you really can be taken, so how did you not get taken?

Orfalea: No, that's baloney.

Tavis: How'd you not get taken?

Orfalea: That's baloney.

Tavis: You can't even - read good.

Orfalea: No, I know my numbers. I know my bank statement. I know how to - I know what's coming in and going out. I loved accounting, and I knew my numbers. Do you think you're gonna drive home and not look at your gas tank? How do you not know as a business owner what's in the checkbook? That doesn't make sense to me at all. There's no excuse for a big shot to not know their checkbook balance.

None, none, none, none, none. And what the sin was, these bozos on Wall Street were - they said, "I couldn't understand the numbers. I couldn't understand the numbers, but I understood they were doing very well.' They were recommending it from their ears. They didn't know jack. One man looked at the cash flow statement and said, "I don't know where they're getting their cash.'

They finally figured out the company was hemorrhaging five million dollars a year with monkey business. I'm sorry. You know what's coming in and going out in your personal finances, and you can't BS people. They did. That's the sin of it.

Tavis: Here's the flipside then. You've been really tough on them and legitimately so, I suspect. What's right with American enterprise these days? Why are we still this big engine called 'American enterprise?'

Orfalea: We have a very consumer-based business. We've done a lot - I mean, we're very obsessed with doing things right for customers. The Yellow Pages, entrepreneurship. You know why these businesses are failing in this country? Do you know what a dinosaur is? It'll take, if you chop their tail off, it takes two - hours to hit the head. Two hours for it to register in the dinosaur. Two minutes for the pain to register in the head of the dinosaur. Entrepreneurs are out there flexible, looking for opportunity.

Bill Gates, they had more MBAs than Carter had liver pills. The MBAs let Bill Gates, they said, "Bill, you can have the operating system. It's too much of a hassle.' I mean, come on. These big businesses are just waiting for you to compete with them and kick their butts. They don't know what they're doing. They're dinosaurs. I mean, it's unbelievable, the amount of opportunity that was out there. Now, I look at colleges. There's so many ways to make money there. First thing I would do if I wanted to hustle...

Tavis: Listen up. Listen up. Listen up right quick. Go ahead. You got 30 seconds, give it to me.

Orfalea: Get a shoeshine kit.

Tavis: Shoeshine kit.

Orfalea: And go in front of Starbucks.

Tavis: I can do that. Shoeshine kit in front of Starbucks.

Orfalea: I tried to give the homeless shelter the shoeshine kits to the folks and they wouldn't - I don't know, they pooh-poohed the idea. First day of college, have a little sign up: "I'll help move your daughter into school, help move the boxes.' Every father would do that.

Tavis: Moving business.

Orfalea: And you - go to the father and say, "I'm gonna leave it up to you. You're a fair person.' You'll get so much money in tips, you'll (inaudible).

Tavis: Stop. You can tell me the rest off camera 'cause I got some friends I want to give the hook-up to with some good ideas to get rich. As a matter of fact, you may see PBS show host Tavis Smiley out on college campuses making some money myself on the weekends shining - I can shine shoes. The new book 'Copy This.' From the founder of Kinko's, also out on - audio, because he wants to make sure that those who don't read so well can hear all the good stuff you need to hear. 'Copy This.' An honor to have you on the program.

Orfalea: Oh, my pleasure.

Tavis: Man, please, I love this.