Diet for success: you are what you eat ... or perhaps what you don't eat.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: On management

THERE'S A NEW DONUT SHOP IN GUNNISON.

It's the "Daylight Donuts" shop and my bet is that it'll be quite successful.

Daylight Donuts is owned by Kevin Ludlum and his wife Connie. Kevin gets up about 2:30 every morning to begin making his donuts so that when his wife arrives and they open at 4:30 a.m. for the truckers lined up outside for a delicious breakfast of hot donuts and coffee, everybody will be happy. And they are.

One of the interesting facts here is that Kevin is an assistant professor at Western State College; he has a Ph.D. in kinesiology and he teaches a full schedule at the college.

A full-time job on top of a full-time business is quite a load. I was talking to Kevin about this and asked him about his sleep requirement. He told me about his theory that involves REM cycles and how some people could get along on fewer REM cycles per night--himself, for example. He told me this with such conviction and enthusiasm that I'm sure that even if the science isn't perfect, his body is convinced that it works for him.

Then I told him, "I don't think I could do what you are doing. Not just because of the sleep thing but because if I worked in a donut factory I think I would gain a hundred pounds sampling the product from time to time."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

He laughed and replied, "I don't have any problem at all when it comes to eating my donuts! When I look at them, no matter how hungry I might be, I think, 'I don't want to eat them. I can sell them!'"

Businesses large and small need leaders who set the tone, establish the cultures and lay down the template ... establish the "diet" for the company and its efforts.

If the president of a Fortune 500 company (that has an 8 a.m. start time) gets to the office regularly at 10 a.m., you can bet more than half of his direct reports will wander in around 9:30 in the morning, and the whole company will have an effective start time of about 9:15. When top...