I wasn’t sure who I was or what I had become.
I was tired.
I was in pain.
Those were the only two certainties in my life at age 45.
I wasn’t in a combat sport, but it certainly felt like it. The sheer intensity of my work and lifestyle had taken a brutal toll on me.
Two molars had just been pulled from my mouth. My dentist wondered openly why I had so much stress in my life. Like others, he tried to counsel me on how to relax. And, like others, he was just an apparition to me. I could barely hear what he was saying. We then discussed treating the other four teeth I had apparently crushed from the constant gnawing and grinding.
Each night, the strain of looking at thousands of numbers throughout the day stressed the muscles around my eyes to the point where they were swollen. On most days, it felt as if someone had been repeatedly punching me in the head. I routinely packed a bag with ice and covered my face with it just to stop the throbbing.
I barely slept but when I did manage to sleep, I slept on the floor. Initially, I would try to sleep on a bed however, after 15 minutes of lying on the bed, a searing hot bolt of pain would shoot through my lower back. I knew it was coming each time, but I still wanted 15 minutes on a bed so I could feel some semblance of not being lost and homeless. If I stayed one minute longer, the pain would shoot up to my head. Frustrated and not wanting any more shock therapy, I’d gather the sheets and spread them out on the floor and pass out. I would wake up, usually four or five hours later, in the middle of the night; the first thing I did was smell my hands. I was exhausted and disoriented. The smell of soap on my hands would tell me what hotel I was in. I travelled so much, I would often forget where I was. In the dark, on a cold cement floor, the scent of soap was the only reliable compass: floral=Westin, pine=Marriott, slight musk=Hilton. Today, it was Hilton.
Once a week, in search of more energy, I would visit a naturopathic doctor, implausibly named Dr. Nirvana. She was petite, stunning, and eternally blissful. Every week she would give me an intravenous injection filled with a cocktail of vitamins, and every week she would look at me quizzically and ask, “Why do you work so hard? I don’t understand why anyone would want to do your job. Do you not like yourself?”
I actually wasn’t sure of the answer. I knew that I used to like myself. I used to like a lot of things, but now I wasn’t sure. I was in the 15th month of an assignment that was only supposed to have lasted six months. This project was on the West Coast and I lived on the East Coast. I was too tired from work and flying to other cities to make the flight home every weekend, so, often, I just stayed at the hotel. After more than eight months of doing this, I decided to move out of my apartment in New York City. I put everything into storage and made the hotel my official address. At the same time, I decided to leave my consulting firm. I gave up my partnership and was now employed as an independent contractor. I made up my mind that I was done with the business world. This would be my last client. I would finish up here and then I would go somewhere else. I wasn’t sure where, but I knew it would be somewhere far away from human beings. I had spent decades learning to salvage and repair many things. I knew very well that there were limits to everything, including time, energy, and emotions. I also knew that things break, including people and souls, and I knew that I was broken—probably for longer than I cared to admit.
But at this moment, none of that mattered—I still had responsibilities. As a consultant, a little more than a year earlier, I was appointed interim COO of this client’s company, a struggling, $135M multi-national apparel manufacturer. I knew that I had to finish turning this company around. I knew that if I failed, this company would eventually fall, and with it, a cascade of people would be affected. Four hundred employees within the actual company could lose their jobs. Suppliers that didn’t get paid by us would certainly have to fire some of their own employees. The bank that extended $30 million of credit would also incur a loss. So, at this moment in time, my pain and fatigue were irrelevant when I thought about all of those people and their families. It was my job to never lose hope, to always find a way out of trouble, and to bring clarity and certainty, regardless of the level of crisis.
When my partner and I first started at the company, it was burning more than a million a month in cash. Now, it was break-even. By most standards it was a successful turnaround, but by my standards it still needed to improve or it would eventually be back in financial trouble. It still did not have all of the proper pieces or strategy in place. We knew what needed to be put in place to ensure its future success, but our client, the owner, refused to make those final, important changes. Despite more than a year of kindly, cautiously, respectfully, and even rudely telling him that he was the biggest problem with the business, he refused to change his managerial style or his views on strategy.
The owner saw himself as prodigy of business, so he dragged out decision-making on all of our plans. He dug in his heels, complained, winced, pounded the table, yelled, and even shed tears whenever we suggested major changes to his company. He claimed that he had a vision of greatness and world domination that needed to happen. He had been a great success. He had multiple homes and boats and his face had graced the cover of magazines. He had built a library for his accomplishments in apparel. He firmly believed that he was a genius in the design of clothing. He also saw himself as a revolutionary. He planted trees for the community and gave eloquent speeches on conservation and saving the planet. He was certain that he was right. He was a dragon slayer. A mythical god in the making. In his mind he was all of these things; however, he just couldn’t accept the fact that his company had lost more than 40% market share and had not made a profit in more than four years. He also seemed oblivious to the fact that he had personally lost more than $30M in the past six years financing the losses of this company. In his mind, he was always right. Gods never make mistakes. And to prove it, he had three public relations firms on retainer telling the world that he was a genius, so how could he be wrong? When he finally did concede to a change, it was because he had rationalized a way to blame someone else for the shortcoming.
When we started on this project, we found countless “yes” men and women at the company. In one of the operational files, there was a memo from the previous COO that read, “The CEO doesn’t like to hear the word ‘no’. He also doesn’t like confrontation. So, please avoid these two things with him at all costs.” It was an absolute Never Never Land, staffed with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys and Girls.
Dozens of employees were on the payroll who didn’t actually do any constructive work. They were busy but they weren’t helpful to the company. They surfed, got high, and hung out. Many of their bosses weren’t much better. Some meant well but they too were misfits and curious wanderers. There were a lot of people filling desks and offices but nothing ever seemed to change or improve. They tried but they had little guidance from above. Most of the executive management had no formal business education or outside managerial experience. They had risen through the ranks, with many starting in sales or the warehouse. Some worked hard, but much of the management style was ad hoc and from “the gut.” However, even when someone had good experience and skills, they weren’t able to do their jobs effectively because of the obstacles put in front of them by the owner. It was a company filled with indifference and denial.
The owner refused to show anyone complete financial statements; instead, he showed them sales and gross margins. He never revealed the true picture. People knew that sales were sliding but as far as they knew, the company was profitable. In a desperate attempt to keep up appearances, the owner paid out $800k in bonuses a month before we started. No one knew of the actual debt levels, burning cash, and mounting losses.
Additionally, despite failing for several years, no one ever got fired. Peter Pan had never fired one person in his entire business career. Why should he? Life in Never Never Land was fun. Rooms were filled with ping-pong tables and pinball games, there were constant parties all around the world, and there even was an entire building with a skateboard park. While everyone was having fun, product quality dropped, on-time deliveries suffered, margins evaporated, cash burned, and competition rose quickly.
As the company got smaller, budgets shrank. Salespeople only knew how to have fun; they were not held responsible for contribution margins or net margins, so they sold products at a loss. Product lines lost their edge and became stale in the marketplace. The cool people and cool stores waned on these tired designs. By the time we got there, seven of the top 10 customers were discount retailers. They had a young customer base but little investment in modern technology. They had virtually no sales by ecommerce; they didn’t understand it. The list of weaknesses was never-ending.
It seemed as though every single department needed to be fixed, from merchandising to logistics, finance to sales. But the biggest and most menacing problem was with their strategy. They had five brands that were all competing for the same customer. They thought that they had five strategies, but they barely had one. Finally, there were legal issues, which was not surprising, since the Lost Boys and Girls had been sloppy in all of their business dealings. There were stacks of litigation against them that had piled up from around the world with potential damages amounting to tens of millions. Despite all of these issues and despite the chaos and obvious crisis, we still felt like we could save this company. We just had to get the owner to agree with changing the things that had gotten them into trouble.
In situations like these, generally, you start with the big issues, change the strategy, and then align the operation from there. But in this case, we had to do the opposite. The owner refused to make any major significant strategic changes. We could make minor changes but not the big ones that would actually have a long-term benefit. Being Peter Pan, he viewed his brands as his “babies.” When I suggested getting rid of several brands, quizzically and with grand indignation, he asked, “Would you kill your baby?” Plainly, I stared at him and answered, “If my baby was losing millions of dollars each year, I would. And if, for some reason, I couldn’t kill it, I would give it up for adoption.” He laughed and said, “You’re so funny.” He never could comprehend that I wasn’t trying to be funny.
Typically, when you have conversations like this, a rational person would leave the engagement. Just shut down your laptop and leave. An experienced crisis manager knows that a person like this owner is delusional, controlling, and destructive. We’ve seen enough in the crisis world to know that this is not going to end well. We should have quit right at the beginning when we knew he wouldn’t commit to the bigger changes. But we didn’t; we stayed. It’s our job to stay. It’s our job to work around and beyond the ignorance and obstruction of owners and leaders of troubled companies. That’s what we do. We’re generally the last option before a company shuts down. If the company shuts down, hundreds of people are hurt, so despite having to deal with this massive narcissist, we kept moving forward. If we left a job every time we faced an impossible situation, we’d never have work.
So, without the ability to actually make big strategic decisions, we devised a plan to fix everything internally and buy time. We figured that we could cut losses dramatically and perhaps earn the owner’s trust so that he’d eventually let us make the bigger changes.
The owner reluctantly agreed to the plan and then proceeded to challenge it every step of the way. Why? Because it wasn’t his plan. He wanted the company to improve, but if WE fixed it, it meant that HE had actually done things wrong in the past. Peter Pan was never wrong. So, he insisted on hearing about every decision that we made and every direction we gave to every manager throughout the entire company. He would bellyache and annoy us incessantly. He sent a steady stream of emails to us. There were emails first thing in the morning, emails throughout the day, and emails in the evening and on weekends. At one point through the course of the year, my mother became severely ill, contracted sepsis, and had to be put in a medically induced coma. Upon hearing this news, I immediately flew to my parents’ hometown in the Midwest. I told the owner that I needed to be with my mother and father because she was in intensive care and the doctors were uncertain if she would survive this infection. How did he respond? “Okay, but when will you be back? The company needs you.” I said nothing.
I was gone two weeks. While I sat with my mother, as she lay in a coma, in intensive care, Peter Pan sent me no less than 10 emails a day, every day, asking for updates on different areas of the company. It was a very conflicting, frustrating time. Every day, I prayed to God to save my mother. And every day, I prayed to the same God to take my life or the life of my man-child client. God is far nicer than I could ever be. He spared all of us. Thankfully, my mother survived. I, however, would have to return to the certain virtual death of dealing with the megalomaniacal narcissist of the clothing world.
The obsessive controlling didn’t end at emails. There were also, in person, three-hour “update” meetings twice per week. Over and over and over he would ask, “What is happening?” Line by line, we would tell him and then he would question every decision. He was constantly asking, “Are you sure? Are you sure?” He’d leave our meetings and go tell others what we were thinking of doing; then he’d come back and tell us that everyone disagreed. He kept soliciting advice from the very people who had driven the company into failure. When we tried to fire someone, he insisted on having a discussion with that person about how they might feel if they were to be fired. People became angry and frustrated and worked even less. For months, we couldn’t fire anyone. Three months passed, and all we were doing was rearranging departments and desks. It took us four months to convince him to show managers the contribution and net margins for the products they were making and selling. It took us six months before we could dismantle the skateboard park and sell the building it was in to generate cash to operate the business. And it was nine months before we could talk him into getting rid of non-profitable customers. Overall, it was sheer and utter madness encased in a slow, melting grind.
As crisis managers, we are hired because of our ability to move quickly; but there we were, stuck in a swamp of vanity and ineptness. Yet, out of loyalty and a sense of responsibility to the firm, friends, countless creditors, and hundreds of employees, we stayed.
Despite the obstacles and resistance, as the months continued to pass, we muscled through, dragging and persuading him and others to come along with the changes. We fired weak employees and replaced them with truly talented people. We found many bright spots within the company and gave promotions to those who had been outshined by “yes” men and women. Product quality improved dramatically. On-time shipping was nearly perfect, margins improved on every item, product offering narrowed and sharpened, and e-commerce was put into high gear. We shed useless customers and weak salespeople and settled countless outstanding litigation. Millions in losses were now nonexistent. The company was out of crisis and close to returning to a path of success. The company still had to improve its long-term strategic direction, but for now, it was relatively stable.
It was legitimately satisfying to have made these significant improvements after the long slog. And, it was fun when we actually found light underneath the piles of bad managers. It was now exciting to finally be working with a talented, conscientious, and kind group of people around the world. But, it was as if it all happened too late. Now, seemingly at the end of the climb, at the part when you’re on top and get to enjoy the view, I couldn’t. I was worn out and in pain. Not just from this client but from all of my clients. I was worn out by more than 20 years of living through perpetual crises. Years of nonstop arguing and fighting and countless hours of absorbing fear and anger. I became even more weary when I tried to figure why I had done all of this. Why had I chosen this path? Why did I try so hard? Wasn’t there an easier way?
Then, one day, Dr. Nirvana called me to review my most recent bloodwork. She was not her normal spritely and optimistic self. Apparently, my lab results looked very bad—worse than usual. My blood pressure was sky high and my cholesterol and glucose were even higher. My hormone levels were all wrong and my kidneys were failing. Worst of all was my liver; the liver enzymes were 17 times what they are supposed to be. She consulted with three other doctors and they all agreed that I should be admitted to a hospital immediately.
I’m a crisis manager for a living, so I don’t panic in a crisis. This was a crisis—MY crisis—but it wasn’t my first. This just seemed like another day in my life. It wasn’t the news I had hoped for, but I wasn’t alarmed. I simply said, “Okay, thank you. I’m okay. I’ll be fine once I stop working. I’m not going to go to the hospital. I just need a little sleep.”
It seems ridiculous, but in my mind my health didn’t matter. Quite frankly, I was surprised that I had lived that long. I never thought I would reach the age of 45. For the past 20 years my death always seemed to be looming. Despite all of this lousy news, my only thought was to continue working. I put my health concerns aside and carried on.
We couldn’t fix the strategy because of the owner, so the last big piece was to refinance the senior debt. The existing bank wanted out of the loan much earlier in the engagement but it wasn’t possible because of the previous cash burn. However, now that the company improved and seemed to be on stable ground, obtaining a new lender was very achievable. If I could finish this one last thing, I would have a sense of completion of a job well done and then I could fade into the sunset. I could retire from this work and this project knowing that we did everything possible to save this company. Once the refinancing was complete, the burden of the long-term strategies was up to the owner. I just needed to hang on for another three or four months.
The owner hired his own investment bankers without consulting me or my team. That action alone was very suspicious. The so-called “legitimate” investment bankers took on a client without looking at financial statements from the CFO or operational statements from the COO. Then, the owner, with his personal financial advisor, decided to also hire a new attorney for the company—again, without consulting with us. Together, in the coming weeks, this new team of mysterious characters put together a refinance prospectus. Throughout the process, we provided them with as much comprehensive detail and support as was available.
As a matter of practice, everyone who goes through a process like this generally shows optimistic projections. But in this instance, they were beyond optimism. They took the numbers we had given them and inflated them beyond recognition. They showed current projections that exceeded the amount of inventory we had or could buy. It was physically impossible to sell product that we didn’t have or could have made. Therefore, their numbers were fictional; also known as fraud.
Round and round we went debating the legitimacy of their projections. They needed the COO and CFO to sign off on these numbers to have credibility in the marketplace, but we refused. There was no way we were going to send out numbers to the finance community that were knowingly false and designed to induce a transaction. It was then I realized that they had a separate quest. They were not just trying to refinance the company; they were looking for potential buyers or investors. They had convinced themselves that the company was worth $300M. Therefore, they needed numbers that would substantiate that claim. In my experience, unless there was a significant change in strategy, the company was worth no more than $75M. Unquestionably, there was a big disparity. I was willing to construct a legitimate plan that demonstrated continued change, but I was not willing to commit fraud. To the new deal team, it wasn’t a crime; it was just hopeful projections. Their rationalization was that everyone knows projections aren’t accurate. To me it was nonsensical bullshit.
We went on like this for a couple weeks. I tried to persuade them to change their position and then, finally, out of desperation, I asked the owner to fire me. I just couldn’t do it any longer. But, at the same time, I couldn’t quit either. Which was ridiculous. In the past, in the face of a crime, I would walk out in an instant. I don’t know what happened to me. I’m not sure if it was just utter fatigue, confusion, or pain, but, either way, I felt stuck. I wanted things to be proper and right but I was out of steam to make anything happen.
Then one day, the owner scheduled a 7 a.m. conference call that included his personal financial advisor, his lawyer, the CFO, and me. Within seconds of joining the call, he began to read a prepared letter. I had asked him to fire me so, now, he honored my request. By 7:01 a.m. I was terminated. I was booted out of Never Never Land.
I was upset that they had chosen to remove me instead of using proper projections. However, I was strangely happy. My career as a crisis manager was finally over. I could be free of all of this consternation. Within 10 minutes, however, the ugliness of working in a troubled environment with highly dysfunctional people would come back to haunt me.
I tried to email a few managers to let them know what had happened, but my email account was locked, so I texted a few people but received no response. Within minutes I received a text from the owner’s lawyer threatening to sue me if I contacted any employees, suppliers, or customers. Hours passed, and I heard from only a couple people. Brief messages of shock and wishing me well. However, it was strangely silent.
One manager did eventually connect with me. He called me and told me that the owner and his team gave explicit instructions to all employees that no one was to contact me in any manner. The implied message was “If you do, you’re the next one to be fired.” So, they managed to silence the entire staff with fear.
Then, before the end of the day, a courier arrived at the door with a formal cease and desist letter in which they threatened to sue me for all damages that might arise if a refinancing or divesture did not happen. It was swift and well planned—shut him up, put him in a box, and threaten to take everything from him. It was very persuasive but it wasn’t enough for Pan and his team. They went one step further. Discredit him.
Within a couple of days, word came back to me that the owner had told everyone he fired me because I was trying to devalue the company so that I could buy it on the cheap. He claimed that I was trying to steal the company from him and that when I did, many people would lose their jobs. He, his lawyer, his personal financial advisor, and his investment bankers told this story over and over to as many as they could; to the majority of employees, the managers, friends, bankers, and everyone on their refinance list, private equity firms and their lawyers. They kept me locked out and gagged with threats of lawsuits, so they could spin their story. All of this for what? So that they could shop around their fictitious financial projections, artificially pump up the value of the company, make the owner wealthier, and get more money for everyone involved. Bigger fees, bigger bonuses, and even bigger egos by bragging about the giant deal they were brokering. Of course, it didn’t matter if it was a lie. It didn’t matter that it all could fall apart in less than a year when the projections didn’t manifest. It just mattered that anyone who didn’t go along with the plan was removed from the process so a deal could be closed.
I had spent more than a year giving everything I had trying to save this company. I worked 80-hour weeks. I lived in a hotel. I sacrificed my body, my relationship with my family, and my friends. I put up with an endless barrage of insults, threats, ineptitude, and manipulation. Through all of this, with my team, we succeeded in turning the company around, saving hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars, and what did I get for it? Ousted and sullied. Just another shining example of a spoiled and privileged country club from a group of businessmen and women who saw me as a threat because I wouldn’t go along with their deception. Welcome to the world of business.
A year earlier, everyone was ready to march this company into bankruptcy court; it was busted and broke and no one saw the light of day. But now that it was shiny and new, greed would prevail. After a year of injecting good will and good process into this company it didn’t matter. In the end it was all thrown out in exchange for dirty money.
I started my life in business in a cataclysmic trial by fire. And now, two decades later, it was just as it began; surrounded by liars, cheats, and thieves. They had won. I was beaten, disheartened, and broken.
I know that I chose this life. I chose the most difficult and oftentimes riskiest environments to work in, but something in me hoped for more. Hoped for better. At a minimum, some decency. However, it never came. Once again, I had been betrayed. I couldn’t take any more of it. I was empty. I had spent my entire business life living amongst the dead and dying, and now I had become one of them.
I was done. I couldn’t live one more day in this perpetual world of corporate death and destruction. This was my last client. I called the colleagues on my team and told them that I was going to disappear for a very long time. They asked, “Where are you going?”
I said, “I don’t know. I think I’m just going to go lay down in the sand by the ocean or maybe in a wheat field on a giant, tranquil farm. I just need to sleep because right now, I’m not sure if I’m dead or alive.” I hung up and went to bed. I just needed to think about how I actually had gotten here.