Michael Siegal

I started literally right out of college. My mother liked my résumé, so my father hired me.

I came into a business where there were a number of family members. If the phone rang, you picked up the phone; you did whatever was necessary.

I learned to keep my mouth shut and wait my turn.

At a particular point, there’s a transition: Doing what’s right for the family may or may not take precedent over doing what is right for the business. The business issues were paramount to the family rather than the other way around.

If the company doesn’t grow on a fundamental basis, then the company stagnates.

Without the growth, you’re going to lose your best people. They want more money, and without growth there is no money, and you’ve basically trained your best people for other companies. It’s hard to make more if you’re staying the same.

You shouldn’t grow beyond your capacity to repay your obligations. A lot of companies are learning today that growth for growth’s sake is not enough. You grow with leverage, but you grow appropriately so that when the downturns come, you’re not necessarily ruining the business.

What you learn from growth is that it’s necessary, and it’s got to be affordable.

Steel? It sinks in water, and it rusts.

Steel is a recyclable product. In a world going green, it’s terrific.

There is a perpetual need for steel, but it is a very competitive market all the time, no matter what. It takes very committed individuals to do well in this industry, to do well in the long term over a career. We were prepared for the collapse of the markets in 2009 due to our experiences in 2001-2002.

Essentially, steel consumption has not grown in the United States in my career. I had to do something better for my customers than whoever was their current supplier. And nobody’s happy when you’re moving into their sandbox.

There has to be something that Olympic Steel delivered that people wanted.

To have just stayed rooted in the Cleveland market would have been destructive. You have to grow beyond the expectations. If I look back to 1975, all of my top customers are no longer in this area. If I were just rooted in Cleveland, clearly I would be in trouble. But nobody promotes your success other than yourself.

We have heavy investment here. We still have a market that we serve here. It’s still a very affordable place to live. From a certain quality of lifestyle, Cleveland is a terrific place to raise a family. I like being here; believe me. It is my home. I’m very comfortable, and I think the quality of the services you get in Cleveland are world-class. It’s just nobody knows it.

You can’t play every position on the ball field.

My job is to create strategy and give people the tools to succeed. There’s no big secret in hiring really good, smart people around you and letting them be successful.

You can worry about all aspects of the business; you just can’t do them all.

I’m not a typical CEO.

Your prism is completely different than the prism of the person looking at you. To some degree, it gives you a great sense of humility. You can respectfully disagree, and quite often I do. But, in that regard, you have to be able to listen to someone else’s opinion without making them feel invisible.

People will stay with you as long as they trust you. And you can’t earn trust by demanding it. You have to earn it. People will work exceedingly well if they trust you.

We do not prepare young men to go beyond anything other than college. We’re asking 18-year-old boys to either go into the military or go to college, and not everybody is college-bound. They should come out of high school as welders and pipefitters. They should come out with something that can earn them an income without saying you have to further your education. It’s terrible that we’re not preparing less-than-A students for something other than troublemaking.

At 31, I knew I lot. At 57, I know a lot less. And I mean that sincerely. I have some experience and some knowledge, but I certainly don’t have all the answers.

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TIMELINE
1952
Michael Siegal is born in Cleveland to Sol and Molly Siegal.

1954
Michael Siegal’s father and his uncles, Morris Siegal and Sam Siegel, establish Olympic Steel. As a “tremendously undercapitalized” company, Siegal says, Olympic specialized in “survival” during its early years of distributing steel.

1974
Michael Siegal graduates from Miami University with a degree in education. Shortly afterward, Siegal says, “My father threatened and convinced me to come to work right away.”

1984
During a transition of ownership and management from the family’s first generation to the second, Michael Siegal becomes Olympic’s president.

1986
Olympic begins a series of acquisitions and expansions that will last for more than 20 years and expand the company’s products and locations.

1994
Siegal becomes CEO as Olympic goes public on NASDAQ under the symbol ZEUS.

- Business Hall of Fame

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