At The Crossroads

After 10 years, Bill Wilson has discovered that the very traits that fed his early success no longer seem to work. He can no longer control every event in the company's life, nor can he toss off decisions with his usual flair. Like so many successful founders Bill Wilson finds his achievements have left him.

Tweet

WILLIAM H. WILSON INVENTED "shineology" when he was 27 years old. And not long after that he built a company around it. He called his company Pioneer/Eclipse Corp. -- "pioneer" because he was a zealous Jehovah's Witness and when the Witnesses make their rounds evangelizing the Bible they say they are "pioneering"; and "eclipse" because he thought his products were so good they would eclipse anything else on the market. Wilson also thought the name made his company sound like a big conglomerate. He liked that too.

Before Wilson did any of this, he was a janitor.

Today, at 36, he isn't exactly sure that he is.

. . . Which is a problem and which, since touching one's roots often helps, is also one of the reasons why Wilson is sitting in an employees' lunchroom at People's Drug in Galax, Va. For the first time in years, he has returned to the wellspring of his grand idea. Assisting in this nostalgic pilgrimage is Edward Barker, the store manager, who well remembers how it all began and who also, judging by the look on his face, has already sensed the tension in Wilson's transformation.

Barker is scanning Wilson's most recent brochure, a high-class selling manifesto announcing shineology as a revolutionary "integrated system" that weds a high-speed commercial floor buffer to a series of proprietary floor strippers, waxes, and finishes. From this felicitous arrangement, the copy advises, will flow all manner of cost savings as well as the "perfect shine every time." And to capture the wonder of it all, the brochure's cover features a striking visual extravaganza. Against the black expanse of the universe speckled here and there with tiny pinpricks of starlight, the flagship of Pioneer's line, the propane-powered 2100 SuperBuffer, is shown zooming in from outer space aboard a brightly colored rainbow.

Barker sighs incredulously. "Good Lord, Bill," he says, at the same time surveying Wilson's double-breasted blue blazer with gold buttons, light gray slacks, and glossy Bally shoes, "things sure have changed." Time was, he continues, oh about 1974, when he hired Wilson himself to shine the floors. Yup, Wilson was all alone back then, and would pull up to the store once a week and unload a floor buffer from his used Volvo station wagon. There were no blue blazers back then, no slick brochures, just good ole Bill and his buffing machine. "After a while, though," says Barker, "life really started getting interesting."

Wilson, it seems, had selected Barker's store as a testing ground for certain improvements he had in mind both in the design of the floor buffer and in the formulation of the floor finish. Goaded by his own self-interest to finish jobs more quickly so he could take on more work, Wilson tinkered relentlessly and often to Barker's utter amazement.

"What can I say?" Barker says. "His first buffers were ugly things, real contraptions, infernal machines. He had a lawn-mower engine bolted to this rectangular box, and then I think he even stuck a propane tank from a barbecue grill on the back. Loud? I want to tell you. And stink, I mean the thing belched blue smoke and we had to keep the doors open. Once it even threw a cleaning pad halfway across the store. I thought somebody was going to get killed. For a while I didn't know what the hell was going on."

Barker pauses to once again consider Pioneer's current state-of-the-art equipment -- five kinds of buffers, six types of finishes, and manifold accessories.

"You know, Bill," he says, "as I remember it you said you were going to keep the business on a smaller scale. I guess it didn't quite turn out that way."

Not even close.

In the past seven years, the only other thing in the universe that may have traveled faster than Wilson's intergalactic buffing machine is Pioneer itself. During that time, the company's revenues rose from $300,000 to $19 million. For four years in a row, it has appeared on Inc.'s annual list of the country's 500 fastest-growing private companies. Today, Pioneer sells an average of 5,500 buffers and some 1.4 million gallons of floor finish a year. In the process, Wilson has significantly altered, if not transformed, the practices of an entire industry. Not only has this accomplishment made Wilson a multimillionaire, but it has also won for him the recognition of his peers, including a citation in 1987 as North Carolina's small-business man of the year.

Paradoxically, this performance has left Wilson with distinctly mixed emotions. "For the past year or so," he says, "there's been a giant-tug-of-war going on inside me. I'm at a crossroads in my life. If I stay as frustrated as I've been, it could hurt the company. I know I would be a very bad leader if I wasn't enjoying what I was doing. Frankly, I'm a little burned out and a little gun-shy, too."

Bill Wilson, seeming so secure in the full amplitude of an extraordinary achievement, has an identity crisis. In the aftermath of a near disaster that might have ruined the company, Wilson discovered that the very traits that fed his early success no longer seemed to work. He could not personally control every event in the company's life as he once had; nor could he toss off decisions with his usual entrepreneurial flair; and where was the hectic uncertainty of the start-up that he crafted; and worst of all, could it be that he was falling away from his God? Although many of its features are well known among successful entrepreneurs, the crisis overtook Wilson with unusual speed and intensity, and it was all the more perplexing because in the past his style had worked very well indeed.

 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7  NEXT 

Read more:

Sign-up for our Small Business Success Newsletter

Email Address: