Wilkes University grad Jay S. Sidhu writes some basic business success advice during a presentation at his Alma Mater on Thursday. The namesake of the university’s School of Business and Leadership came to his alma mater to launch a tour for his new book, ‘Never Ever, Ever Give Up.’
Mark Guydish | Times Leader
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Jay S. Sidhu, CEO of Customers Bancorp, Inc, talks to Wilkes University students Thursday morning.
Mark Guydish | Times Leader
WILKES-BARRE — He may head a Fortune 500 company, have a Wilkes University business school named after him, be the author of a new memoir, but Jay S. Sidhu admitted he wasn’t above a little partying while attending Wilkes.
Speaking to some clearly engaged students during a visit to the Henry Student Center Thursday, Sidhu conceded Wilkes “wasn’t a bad party school,” and confessed “I had a keg in my room, even though it wasn’t allowed.”
Kidding or not, he clearly did not let any early indiscretions interfere with his own success. The CEO of Customers Bancorp, Inc., spoke and fielded questions for more than an hour before autographing his book, “Never Ever, Ever Give Up,” published this year by Waheguru Press.
Sidhu preferred to boil his success story down to some very basic ideas, offering four important musts: Clarity of vision and alignment of effort, Mastery of your own internal environment within a company, external mastery of the things you can control outside your immediate business, and being “passionate about it all.”
He dove briefly into the specifics of running a banking business, but pointed out each quality within his business readily applies to any enterprise, including “making sure you have a positive operating revenue.” In banking that relates to interest paid and earned, but in any work it is “making sure you earn revenue faster than you pay expenses.”
“It’s common sense, right?” Sidhu said with a smile, “but common sense is not so common.”
Asked the difference between a successful business and one that fails, he again kept it simple. The company needs to know what it wants to accomplish, hire staff with the right skills to accomplish those goals, and keep everyone using those skills moving in the same direction.
Oh, and “you have to execute better than anyone else.”
Companies that fail often lack one of those components, perhaps more. “They may have the right structure but the wrong execution,” he said. “You must have shared values.”
While his formula for success is relatively simple, Sidhu warned it is not enough to follow the steps without keeping the intent.
“It’s easy to copy. It’s not so easy to execute.”
Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish