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The Curly Haired Copy Entrepreneur: The Rise of Paul Orfalea
Article Overview: “If you’re going to enjoy the picnic that life really is, you’d better learn to like yourself,” says Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea, “not despite your flaws and so-called deficits, but because of them.”
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Free Download - Paul Orfalea Quotes By Paul Orfalea |
The Curly Haired Copy Entrepreneur: The Rise of Paul Orfalea
“If you’re going to enjoy the picnic that life really is, you’d better learn to like yourself,” says Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea, “not despite your flaws and so-called deficits, but because of them.”
Orfalea was a D-minus student who had already flunked two grades. He suffered from both dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), making it hard for him to sit still in a classroom. He had even been expelled from several schools as a result. Despite the obstacles, Orfalea would go on to turn a 100-square-foot store with a single photocopier into a multi-billion-dollar operation. Today, Orfalea’s Kinko’s is the most successful copy store chain in the U.S.
Paul J. Orfalea was born on November 28, 1947 in Los Angeles, California to parents of Lebanese descent. Early on, friends started calling him “Kinko” thanks to his curly red hair. But even his friends could not help Orfalea get through the next few years of school.
“In second grade, I was in a Catholic school with 40 or 50 kids in my class. We were supposed to learn to read prayers and match letter blocks to the letters in the prayers,” recalled Orfalea. “By April or May, I still didn't know the alphabet and couldn't read. I memorized the prayers so the nun thought I was reading. Finally, she figured out that I didn't even know my alphabet, and I can remember her expression of total shock that I had gotten all the way through the second grade without her knowing this.”
Orfalea suffered from both dyslexia and ADHD, making it impossible for him to concentrate in school. His parents offered Orfalea’s siblings $50 to teach him the alphabet but even that did not work. He failed second grade. Doctors assumed that he could not read because of poor eye muscles and his parents did not know any better.
“Every summer, I went to summer school, and during the school year I was in every little special group,” he says. “I was in the speech group, the corrective posture group, the purple reading group, the green reading group. In third grade, the only word I could read was ‘the’. I used to keep track of where the group was reading by following from one ‘the’ to the next.”
It was not until Orfalea was 15 years old that he could finally get by with reading in class, “but I could never spell,” he says. “I was a woodshop major in high school, and my typical report card was two C's, three D's, and an F. I just got used to it.” Orfalea graduated from high school with a 1.2 GPA. “I was eighth from the bottom of my class of 1,500 students,” he says. “To be honest, I don't even know how seven people got below me.”
Surprising even to himself, Orfalea was accepted into the University of Southern California, but he did not have high hopes. “Everyone in my family and all my parents' friends had their own businesses,” he says. “So, for me, college was just for fun because I knew I was going to have my own business. In college, I majored in business and ‘loopholes.’ I knew who all the easy teachers were.”
It was while he was a student at USC that Orfalea decided to start up his own business. For $100 a month, he rented a small garage near campus and began selling notebooks, pens, pencils, and the services of a copying machine. He was quickly making upwards of $1,000 a day. But it would be just the beginning for Orfalea.
Lesson #4: Turn a Learning Disability into a Learning Opportunity
Copying Success: How Orfalea Turned Paper into Power
Lesson #3: Know the Difference between Working Hard and Working Smart
One Copy at a Time: Kinko’s Takes Off
Lesson #1: Keep Your Workers Front of Mind
Related Forum Posts
Top 19 Copywriting books
- 1. Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy. Wiley.
2. Positioning: The Battle for your Mind. Al Ries and Jack Trout. Warner.
3. The New Positioning. Jack Trout. McGraw-Hill.
4. Tested Advertising Methods. John Caples. Prentice-Hall.
5. How to Make your Advertising Make Money. John Caples. Prentice-Hall.
6. Guerrilla Advertising. Jay Conrad Levinson. Houghton Mifflin.
7. Direct Mail Copy that Sells. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall.
8. Sales Letters that Sizzle. Herschell Gordon Lewis. NTC Business Books.
9. Herschell Gordon Lewis on the Art of Writing Copy. Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prentice-Hall.
10. Romancing the Brand. David Martin. American Management Association.
11. The Art of Writing Advertising: Conversations with William Bernbach, Leo Burnett, George Gribbin, David Ogilvy, Rosser Reeves. NTC Business Books.
12. Confessions of an Advertising Man. David Ogilvy. NTC Business Books.
13. My Life in Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books.
14. Scientific Advertising. Claude Hopkins. NTC Business Books.
15. How to Become an Advertising Man. James Webb Young. NTC Business Books.
16. The Lasker Story as He Told It. NTC Business Books.
17. Advertising Concept and Copy. George Felton. Prentice Hall.
18. The Copy WorkShop Workbook. Bruce Bendinger. The Copy Workshop.
19. Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads. Luke Sullivan. Wiley.
This should keep you busy for at least a year.
Enjoy!
Re: New Site Facelift
- Hi Zac - love the story about Paul Harvey - I have heard some of the "the rest of the story" broadcasts but didn't know it was him and didn't know the story about the advertising.
You might want to make that link clickable and tell readers about Paul Harvey and why you're modeling his philosophy - if they don't know much about him you can still educate them and build trust and credibility with your audience.
The Value of Mentoring
- Successful mentor pairings (in case there was any doubt as to the value of mentoring):
1. André Ouellet (President, Canada Post) mentor to Mark Whalen (Urban Organics and winner, Young Entrepreneur Award)
2. Marc Lefrançois (President, Via Rail Canada) mentor to Jeffrey Campbell (Core Networks, Inc. and winner, Young Entrepreneur Award)
3. Donald Kendall (former CEO of PepsiCo) mentor to John Scully (former CEO of Apple)
4. Harland Sanders (the Colonel) mentor to Dave Thomas (founder of Wendy's)
5. Stuart Friend (KMart manager) mentor to Wayne Sales (CEO of Canadian Tire)
6. Jim Rohn (author, motivational speaker) mentor to Anthony Robbins (author, motivational speaker)
7. Robert Patterson (CEO, National Cash Register) mentor to Thomas Watson (founder of IBM)
8. Henri-Paul Rosseau (President, Laurentian Bank of Canada) mentor to isabel Rodriquez and Yves Besner (i4design and winners, Young Entrepreneur Award)
Re: Hi to all
- Welcome to the forum Paul!
Paul Newman - Entrepreneur!
- I'd love to learn more about Paul Newman!
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