Merlo indicated that Rounds was a “very humble man.” When Rounds needed to come from Rockport to Cloverdale, he would hitch a ride on a lumber truck and always stop at Boonville on the way to pick up some apples for himself from the local orchards—and three or four for Merlo as well. However, Rounds, in Merlo’s estimation, did not know the redwood market; he was a retail lumberman from Kansas. Working at Rounds and Kilpatrick, Merlo came to know the redwood market very well.

In 1949, Merlo took his B.S. in Business Administration from U.C. Berkeley and transitioned to “the real world” of corporate America. He quickly soaked up every aspect of the business at Rounds and Kilpatrick, becoming familiar, he recalled, with every sales order, every shop machine, every mill-hand, and every stack of lumber. Instinctively, Merlo believed you could not manage or lead from behind a desk. “You have to be in the plant, not behind a desk,” he advised. “My nose and ears could tell me when a plant was not running right.” As one might expect from a business major, Merlo invariably looked at the timber industry from the product side, emphasizing that “you had to be smart about processing and SELLING.”

Merlo started out as the hotshot salesman for Ralph Rounds and remained, even as a CEO of LP, the quintessential salesman. David Ogilvy, who, for good or ill, is sometimes called the father of modern advertizing, probably described the corporate role of sales as well as anybody. “In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create,” Oglivy insisted. “Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.” In a consumer society where everything has a sticker price, the salesman is king.