After ruling out delegating, only one real solution remained: move his company off the fast-growth track. Scale back his business. He called in his accountant and presented him with all his clients -- minus their names. "Are any of these completely worthless?" Weiss asked. Three bit the dust. A couple more, behind on their payments, he jettisoned as well. Rather quickly, he had 5 clients instead of 14. Less quickly, his staff shrank from seven to three. Uneasy with firings, Weiss let attrition do the job for him.
"It was scary at first, shrinking the size of the business. And it was risky. I was much more vulnerable," he says. Or he thought he was more vulnerable. The next 12 months painted a surprising picture: his company was stronger than ever. Net income rose 25%. "I was working less and making more," he says.
Only then did Weiss understand the extent of his earlier management failings. He had clung to a lot of accounts that consumed most of his working day but didn't make him any money. And he had been so disorganized that much of his time had gone unbilled.
Now he started steering clear of companies he calls "flares," those start-ups that burn brightly for a time and then disappear -- taking with them his up-front investment in time. Weiss sought stability over glamour, and he started attending to details. He installed a computerized bookkeeping system, and soon saw that clients presumably billed at $75 an hour were, because of untabulated efforts, actually getting his services for more like $35 an hour. For the first time, he chased after past-due accounts. A client 60 days late gets a letter from his lawyer. "I went from spending nothing on lawyers the first few years, to $4,000 or $5,000 a year," he says, openly defending his new hard-line stance. "Clients chase me to get their brochures and advertising done. I chase them to get them to pay. It seems only equitable.
"Let's face it, a business that's half the size and twice as well run is the same business -- probably better," he says. Weiss's company is running better for him personally, thanks to a few more changes. He moved his office from Denver proper to a suburb and now commutes 8 easy minutes, instead of 35 minutes bumper-to-bumper on Interstate 70. These days, nobody's got his home phone number. And, for the past three years, he's taken off nearly every Wednesday afternoon to be with his wife. "My largest client could go bankrupt at noon on a Wednesday; I might return the call," he says.
"Balance, the word is balance. I'm much prouder of myself now, and happier. My life makes more sense now."
The corner of 33rd Street and 7th Avenue in midtown Manhattan is one of the busiest, noisiest intersections in the city. Across the street stands Madison Square Garden. All around lies the hectic garment district. The sidewalks overflow with pedestrians. Sirens wail. Delivery trucks grind their gears. Taxis honk -- on and on.
One floor off the street, in a corner office with floor-to-ceiling windows, sits Norman Brodsky, chairman and president of CitiPostal Corp. About the only way of getting any closer to the heartbeat of New York City would be to get behind the wheel of one of his company's trucks, which zip around the city collecting and consolidating packages for next-day delivery via the likes of Federal Express. Clearly, the sounds of the street are Brodsky's entrepreneurial metronome. "I've got a view on the world," he says. "I love this corner."
Until recently, he was that corner. The rigors of his business, which he started in 1979, routinely had him leaving his Long Island home around 7:00 a.m. "By the time you look up, it's 6:30 already. I'd make it home by 8:00, 8:30, and the kids would be in bed," he recalls. And that was before things got really busy. When they did, Brodsky often didn't make it home until 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. And even then, he was on a beeper -- always connected to the office. Vacations? When he got away at all, it was generally to Miami, where the company has an office -- and where he invariably popped in and out.
On Brodsky's desk is a hint that things have changed. Amidst the clutter sits a travel guide. An office away, the evidence is incontrovertible. There, hanging on the wall near the desk of head administrator Louis Weiner, on the calendar inked with all executive vacations, you can see dark arrows slicing through entire work-weeks, from January through December. Above these arrows appear the initials NAB and one enviable destination after another: Israel, Paris, San Francisco, England, the Bahamas. Brodsky has made it his policy to take off with his wife for at least a week, and sometimes even two weeks, every time a new month appears on the calendar. Often the children come along, too. When Brodsky announced the plan in September 1985, Weiner was not alone in smugly predicting that it wouldn't last. But, to date, Brodsky has canceled only one of the trips.
As with other CEOs who awaken to the dark side of excellence, several factors precipitated this dramatic change in Brodsky's lifestyle. He was, he admits, "getting pressure from home." The missed dinners and children's bedtimes were weighing on him, too. And the birth of his second daughter also affected him -- made him "realize I'd missed a lot of my first daughter's childhood." About this time, Brodsky had his gall bladder removed, and prior to the operation, his thoughts, inevitably, turned to his own mortality and a reassessment of his values.
And there was also a fateful trip to a century-old inn on the coast of Maine. His wife twisted his arm, and Brodsky agreed that they would check into a quiet inn for a few days on the way back from visiting their daughter at camp.
Brodsky cursed himself for that moment of weakness. No sooner had he stepped into their room when he fairly shouted: "Where's the telephone? Where's the TV set?" This was a torture chamber. No way to call the office. No way to keep up with the news. Brodsky, a news junkie, a reader of five newspapers a day, was physically shaking at the prospect of relaxing in a comfortable room in a peaceful inn on a tranquil coast. "We've got to check out of here. We can't possibly stay here," he told his wife. Standing firm, she told him to make the best of it. Looking back now, he believes that weekend was when he finally realized "there were other ways of life."
