Published in the San Diego Union-Tribune, June 12, 2023
by Neil Senturia
From time to time, I do some “CEO coaching.” I think coaching can be a bit squishy in that it is hard to measure your value. Did your brilliant insight really find the key that unlocked the revenue, or did you mostly just try to keep the client from doing something incredibly stupid? After all, I have been talking to my psychoanalyst for almost 30 years, and to my way of thinking, the jury is still out.
Periodically, I get emails later in the process, most of them thanking me. After all, the ones telling me I am a jerk seem to end up in spam.
So I have permission to tell a story from one of my favorite clients. Joe came to see me several years ago. He was the CEO of a large company, $100 million in revenue, 125 employees, serving in the veteran health space. They had a couple of divisions, there were essentially three other partners, and my guy owned just over 50 percent.
As I have mentioned before, the key reason clients come to see me is that they have issues — usually with other people, employees, managers, partners, customers. I will point out at this juncture a lesson I learned from a famous Harvard Business School professor, Bill Sahlman.
He asks first-year students, “What is the best business model?” The future titans of industry and masters of the universe fire up their hands and offer brilliant commentaries on the capitalist conundrum. After the roar of the crowd dies down, Sahlman bends their eager minds with this.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the best business is one that only has a P.O. box to which people send checks. No people, no product, no returns, no customer service, etc.” Of course, the point that Sahlman is making is that it is “people” who are the singular challenge in business.
So, my guy sets out his lament and we begin. After a few months, I ask him the seminal questions: what do you want, how do you want this adventure to end, and what is the outcome that will make you happy? If the answers were easy, I would have fired my shrink years ago.
Then I give him the gut punch. What is your “number”? Ah, the question that haunts the halls of greed, despair, self-worth, parental acceptance, filial devotion and how much is enough.
Ten million after tax.
I write this on a piece of paper, and I give it to him. I think it is always valuable to have a “reminder.” We spend the next four years working together. One day, after a long bike ride, I find the solution to his puzzle.
At our next meeting, I put it on the whiteboard, and yes, truly, within six months, he is able to sell his interest for just a bit over $10 million all in, after tax, real cash money.
Over those years, we had become friends, I knew his kids, his wife, the whole range of issues. Often, it is that messy stuff that sometimes gets in the way of what you think are only business issues.
As a bonus, now that he is pleasantly retired, I nudged him into fly-fishing, and he is working summers in Montana at a friend of mine’s lodge.
Here is the killer. He calls me recently and shares that he thinks he “negotiated against himself,” and that perhaps he undersold himself and his value in the company, as well as the value of the company itself.
Nota bene: The company that he left has prospered, and yes, it is worth more now. Is that seller’s regret, or is that a win-win? Remember, the other guys who bought him out had to borrow and take risk; there was no guarantee.
What moved me was his awareness that our dance over those years was me being the advocate for him, while he was the naysayer.
I tell the story to shine a light on all of us who negotiate against ourselves. There are no tears and no recriminations. He has plenty of dough. But what haunts us all is a bit of the impostor syndrome, with a healthy dollop of fear and self-loathing.
That is why I still see the shrink.
Rule No. 764:
I need a post office box.