NOVEMBER 13, 1992 Mary Z. buys pizza, and I buy champagne. Everyone wears jeans. Lunch is in the conference room, and we stop work at one o'clock to celebrate the past month. Bills are all paid, receivables are at their highest point in the year, and we have two new contracts that could mean more than $250,000 of work next year if the initial tests go well. Molly P. has brought in three small contracts from existing clients for direct mail and has more than $250,000 in pending proposals.
* * *
It is time to pat each other on the back. I do not do this enough -- let people know how much they are appreciated. We all go home early. I still take work to do over the weekend, but willingly. These are the times when I cannot stop smiling. I feel so lucky to own my own business.
* * *
NOVEMBER 15, 1992 Finish Joline Godfrey's book, Our Wildest Dreams. She touched on a subject that has been disturbing me ever since I started working with the board. I keep wanting to talk about running a good company, and they keep talking about money. I keep talking about empowering employees, and they keep talking about profits. It is a little as if they are speaking Italian and I know only a few words and have to use hand signals. Joline's research among other women in business tells me I am not alone. That is a comfort.
NOVEMBER 17, 1992 Mike P. has invited me to my second CEO Club meeting at the Duquesne Club. The guest speaker talks about negotiating skills. I am sitting next to Cathy R., the Inc. 500 business owner I had lunch with this summer. She joined the CEO Club last year and urges me to join. The dues are $1,700, and I have to think about it. I have new chairs, desks, and phones on order. I want to computerize my accounting, which may take up to $2,000 in consulting expenses.
The four negotiating styles the speaker talks about are familiar to me. I wonder if men negotiate differently with women than they do with other men, but in this room of mostly gray suits, I do not bring it up.
One of the business owners asks me to sit at his table for lunch. He may need our services and wants to talk further. Perhaps I can squeeze the $1,700 out of the bank before year-end after all.
NOVEMBER 19, 1992 Received a note of apology from Steve M., board member and marketing manager for a local cultural organization. He had been immersed in a tough work schedule but wanted to get caught up on the board. We agreed to meet this morning at his office. In reviewing the past four months, I find myself telling him about the lack of focus I have been accused of by the board. It is something I have been wrestling with on paper. If nothing else, I have come to one conclusion in my personal business plan.
To me, the most important thing is to create a growth company that is exhilarating to work for. Growth means I can afford to pay employees better, I can be more generous with benefits, I can provide a career track. I feel that if I can recruit great employees and keep them, we can do absolutely anything! I feel we have that kind of culture now. And I am furiously working on my goal of getting the turnover below 10%. [Note: I have continually seen the effects of turnover: systems abandoned when an employee leaves, clients having to be reintroduced, projects having to be relearned, mistakes repeated by a new person.]
Steve listens. I can see he finds this interesting, and he agrees with me on one major point -- the board doesn't need to be told the entire rationale for my wanting to grow. All they need to know about and help with is the growth itself. I can do the rest within the company.
NOVEMBER 28, 1992 It is two days after Thanksgiving, and Bill and I are visiting my family in Philadelphia. Of the four kids, three of us own our own businesses. We've never really talked about why that happened, but we often use the time together to compare notes. Tonight my brother Ed and I went to visit a family friend who started his consulting firm in 1985, a year after I founded Direct Response Marketing.
Tom S.'s progress interests me, but I do not want to pry. So instead I find myself talking about my own company. We sit talking far into the night about how hard it can be to make decisions about so many things when you are alone. Tom and Ed ask me about the board. It is still difficult for me to explain this arrangement. No, I don't do everything they tell me. Actually, if I were keeping score (which I'm not), I would say I have followed their advice less than half the time. But what I have overcome is the urge to keep absolutely everything to myself. I no longer consider it a sign of weakness to ask for help.
DECEMBER 15, 1992 At three o'clock today the heart of our computer network goes down. The technician I had hired full-time only a month ago tells me he has called in our equipment supplier but that it doesn't look good.
DECEMBER 16, 1992 I find out that the hard drive on our file server is defective and that we don't have adequate backup to replace the data. Our part-time technician had been assigned to do backup the previous four weekends, I am told, but never got around to it. Another Wal-Mart moment. One of those times when I feel for a split second like walking out the door and applying for a cashier's job.
We are sitting in the conference room. The full-time tech, John D.; our operations director, Diane N., and her assistant, Mary Z.; our computer supplier, Bill G.; and me.
As I have felt many times in the past, I hold all the cards. There is no question about who is running the meeting or who will pay the bills when it is all over. If I appear furious or distraught, no one will be able to think clearly.
* * *
"So what are our options?" I ask. Bill says there is a company in California that can probably retrieve 99% of the data. The hard drive is under warranty and can be replaced. He apologizes for not reminding us to do backups daily after receiving a memo I had sent him a month before on that very subject. John apologizes for not taking the backup more seriously. He knew it had not been done the previous weekend and had just been too busy to do anything about it. Diane and Mary are quiet. They know that they too are responsible.
