When he could, Tom did take a moment or two to point his son in the right direction. All John needed, he instructed, was simply to apply himself more. There was no surer route to success than hard work. What better proof did he need than his own dad's company? By its fifth year, 1992, HCIT was pulling in profits of around $300,000 on revenues of $20 million, and the company was debt-free. "He'd lecture John, telling him he could do anything if he'd work for it," Margo recalls. But, she explains, "John's problems were about being lost and scared, not about his ability to work."
For her part, Margo worked to convince her husband that their son was deeply troubled. Sometimes she'd go to his office, close the door, and begin. John had missed 40 days of school. He was sleeping through classes. He was dropping out of soccer. And in the previous six months, she'd attended three funerals, all friends of John's who'd died in car crashes caused by drugs or drinking -- including one accident that occurred at the foot of their driveway.
"I was sure John's turn was next," Margo says.
By the end of the monologue, Margo couldn't help crying, which just left Tom frustrated to the point of speechlessness. "Halfway into it I'd get so upset about what was happening to John I'd burst into tears, and Tom would tune out," she says.
As John's troubles mounted, Tom repeatedly assured his wife everything would be OK. "It's a stage," he'd tell her. "He'll grow out of it." But Margo didn't think so. Furthermore, she couldn't help wondering if her husband was any kind of judge. "He's the kind of guy who hitchhikes across the country, who loves fast cars and isn't happy unless his heart is pumping 100 miles per hour," she explains. While Tom's comfort with risk made him ideal for managing the ups and downs of his business, it was blinding him to the unhealthful risks building in his family.
One night in March 1992, while Tom was working into the night, a friend of Margo's called him. "Your wife doesn't sound good," she said. "Maybe you'd better check up on her." Tom raced home to find his wife curled up in a corner, shaking. The doctors needed only a brief exam to make their diagnosis: she had suffered a nervous breakdown. It was brought on, they theorized, by a difficult family history coupled with "severe stress": the stress of having a son in trouble, the stress of parenting alone, and the stress of having her family, her husband, and her future tied to a business.
Margo spent the next five weeks in the hospital, recuperating. Now Tom had no choice but to come home every night -- and early enough to have dinner with his son. Sitting across the table from his father, John swung from stony silence to enraged outbursts. "I'd ask John how his day had gone and he'd walk out and go to his room," Tom says. Other times, he'd shout at Tom, accusing him of deserting the family. "There were tons of fights," John admits. "I couldn't forgive him." But instead of walking away -- Tom's typical response -- he had no choice but to stay put. It was hard. Especially in June, when John, then a sophomore, was asked to leave high school. "We just thought, 'What do we do now?" Tom confesses.
As the weeks went by Tom and his son trudged toward common ground. Tom left work earlier, bringing work home. Slowly, he came to a surprising awareness: some of the traits that had enabled him to build a strong business were preventing him from building a strong family. "In building a business you get hooked on accomplishment -- what client did you pull in, can you double sales this year," Tom reasons. "Family life has little to do with accomplishing and more to do with being there. It's hard to make the switch."
After Margo came home from the hospital, the family began seeing a therapist together. John decided to go to boarding school. "I wanted a fresh start -- a chance to begin again, free of the past," he says.
For his part, Tom began sifting through some of his most basic assumptions. "I thought I was present for my family, but then I realized that I was really in my own world," he says. "A world that included my business but excluded them."
* * *
Back in his office, Tom Reisinger reflects on a couple of memories.
One is of his father, who worked for 35 years at the same company -- only to be fired after it was acquired. The other: his own difficult childhood in leg braces. Both events, he says, planted within him a desire to be independent and in control.
In building HCIT, Tom thought he was fulfilling that desire. As he faces his eighth year in business, HCIT's revenues are around $24 million, with comfortable profits of more than $300,000. The company also earned the 391st slot on the 1994 Inc. 500, a ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. And yet, Tom can't help feeling duped. His very success in business has bred his son's fear of failure. Tom says his son is scared to visit him at work. "He says, 'I've got long hair; I don't want to embarrass you," explains Tom.
And the setbacks have continued. Six months after starting at his new school in 1993, John got expelled for drinking and smoking pot. And then last June, he nearly lost his life in the car accident. Miraculously, he suffered little long-term damage from the crash, aside from severe bruising to one lung, a kidney, and his spleen. After six months, doctors now say they expect a full recovery.
Staring at the paperweight on his desk -- a gift from his father -- Tom thinks of the inscription as a grim reminder that things aren't as simple as he and Margo thought when they embarked on the adventure of starting a company. "Be a Believer," the inscription reads. "I'm not sure believing is enough anymore," Tom says sadly. He believed in the business; he believed it would help his family; he believed he was making a better future.
"Now all I believe is that we've been through hell," he says, adding, "I think we're coming out." Ever the optimist, Tom ticks off their recent accomplishments: Margo is happier; John, recovered from his accident, attended an Outward Bound-type program, finished junior year in home schooling, and won his way back to the boarding school that expelled him. He's pulling in good grades and playing soccer competitively. "We hug more," Tom adds. But he knows that deep scars remain.
