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Fame

Profiles of celebrity CEOs and the repercussions of recognition and publicity.

What happens when you and your company become stars

It's the morning after the night before, and your company has been "discovered." Every reporter, book author, business professor, and CEO around has finally realized you've found the road to Truth -- not to mention triple-digit compound annual growth rates. So what happens next? Business as usual, maybe?

Not a chance. -- P.B.B.

* * *

The man on the phone from GM was looking for an after-dinner speaker to inspire this year's assembly of Pontiac and Oldsmobile dealers.

"I can't find anybody I like," he was saying. "Money isn't a problem, but I want somebody smart, entertaining, and well known. Somebody -- you know -- entrepreneurial."

"Well -- "

"Look, you guys know people at small companies," he continued. "What about one of them? Jobs, maybe? Or that kid in Cambridge, Kapor, the former disc jockey. What's he doing? Or that woman with the cookies, Mrs. Fields? And how about the guy in Texas who sells Cadillacs . . . "

What he wanted were the prized Rolodex listings on the growth-company beat, the people Claude Rains in Casablanca might have called the "usual suspects."

You remember the scene. Humphrey Bogart has just killed the Nazi who is trying to prevent Ingrid Bergman from leaving French Morocco, and Rains (police prefect Louis Renault) is the only witness.

"Major Strasser has been shot," Rains explains to the policemen who have rushed to the scene.

He pauses. He looks at Bogart. You wonder whether he'll squeal.

"Round up the usual suspects."

With that, Bergman escapes. So does Bogart, Rains going with him. ("Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.") The screen fades to black.

But what happens to the usual suspects?

Presumably, in Casablanca, they are interrogated briefly and released.

But is real life the same as reel life? That's what we began to wonder as we listened to the man from GM rattle off the names of the usual suspects.

What happens when the heads of growing companies -- people like Debbi Fields, Stew Leonard, Carl Sewell, and Jack Stack -- find themselves rounded up by the likes of the man from GM?

Is it fun? Annoying? Frustrating? What's it like to wake up one morning and find yourself a celebrity?

Strange, say those who have been discovered. "I'm a shot-and-beer type of guy, and all of a sudden people are listening to me like my opinion is worth more than theirs," says Jack Stack, president of Springfield Remanufacturing Center Corp. and the subject of a long, flattering profile in a national business magazine. "That's scary."

It's also proof he's arrived. After all, being profiled in print and consulted on issues of the day is something all of the usual suspects dreamed about when they started their companies.

But the constant scrutiny that comes with all this attention is enough to recall the ancient proverb, "Be careful what you wish for; it might come true."

Celebrityhood, some have found, is a full-time deal -- and one that makes it very hard to do the job that brought fame in the first place. When you're talking to reporters, you're not minding the store.

Instead you get to sign autographs, pose for pictures ("which is incredibly flattering"), and meet your idols -- who, not surprisingly, turn out to be other businesspeople. Somewhere along the way you become expert at dealing with the press.

The usual suspects, no matter where they are, return reporters' phone calls quickly. They've learned to speak in quotes. And they now almost intuitively provide the sort of wonderful anecdote or telling detail that brings any story about them to life.

They work at this. They study articles about themselves, trying to determine what it is that reporters need to write a good story. (Indeed, Carl Sewell is one of the owners of D, a city magazine that covers Dallas.) The work pays off -- and not just in continued good press. It boosts sales (after all, publicity is great advertising), and increases their clout. Thanks to all this attention, the usual suspects can now influence, however slightly, the thinking of the Fortune 500.

Sewell, who owns three car dealerships in Dallas and one in New Orleans, is now a member of the dealer council that is helping GM design the Saturn, GM's car of the future. Executives representing companies ranging from Citibank to Procter & Gamble have trooped through Stew Leonard's dairy store in Connecticut to learn his secrets of customer service. And Debbi Fields has had the chance to talk, at $10,000 a pop, to the corporate elite -- folks who might not otherwise have cared what a bright mother of four had to say about the importance of team spirit and a positive attitude.

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