When the company received a local business award, I was thrilled. I thought it would be a chance for Bill to slow down and realize that he had created a big success. For one night he--we--could revel in his accomplishments and accept a few accolades. I got a sitter and picked out my dress, but the day before the party Bill canceled. He had to be in Chicago to meet with a potential investor. I was disappointed, but by now I was used to it.
Where's Daddy?
By this point I was raising Lily alone, going solo to her concerts and swim meets. I was making the decisions about her education, health, and social life with little input from her father. One night she and I were sitting at the dinner table and the meal was over before I realized that I had forgotten to tell her that Daddy was out of town. She had quit asking where he was.
In the spring of 2003 Lily's school decided to send a few teachers to Spain for a month of language immersion at summer school. Lily loved Spanish, and at one point I had been fluent. I found myself wishing we could do something similar. I brought it up casually with Bill, figuring he would say I was crazy. Secretly I was hoping he would say, "Great, let's all go!" Instead, he looked relieved. "I'm going to be really busy this summer," he said. "It's probably best if you guys are out of here." So Lily and I spent July in Mexico, taking classes in the morning and swimming each afternoon. Bill was home three days that month.
I worried about his health. He was gaining weight and had started smoking. I also worried about his moodiness. The man I married 15 years earlier had been a social powerhouse, cracking jokes and cooking gourmet meals for large dinner parties. This new Bill was a short-tempered monosyllabic hermit. When I did occasionally drag him to a party full of my friends, I was shocked at how many he had never even met.
I had originally thought of this as his company, his work, his life. But now Lily and I were also paying a price. With Bill rarely home, I soon lost the time and energy to focus on my work. Left with no profession, and essentially no husband, I became frustrated and resentful. I found myself thinking that it might be easier if Lily and I lived alone, with no illusions about being able to depend on Bill. Fortunately we found a good therapist and held our marriage together, but it became clear that Bill just didn't have the mental or physical energy to maintain much of a personal relationship. I knew he wanted me to be happy, but I couldn't stop picking fights about his lack of time at home. I wanted him to succeed, but I hadn't expected the company to so deeply invade our personal lives.
In January 2004, we sold our airplane. A private plane may sound like a rich person's luxury, but Bill and I had been pilots for years, depending on our single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza the way most families use a second car. We flew to visit relatives and take vacations; it was often cheaper than buying three commercial tickets. When Bill started The Switch, we joked that when it came time to sell the plane, that's when he would bail on this whole start-up thing. We laughed about it, but I was serious. For me flying was a stress outlet, a quick way to visit my family, and a source of income. (I wrote frequently about aviation.) My father, who had died 10 years earlier, taught me to fly and left us the money to buy this plane. It was a huge part of my identity.
And yet, when it came time to sell, the decision was easy. Neither of us had time anymore to stay current with our flight training. And the plane cost nearly as much to maintain when it sat in the hangar as when we were flying it. Money was tight because I was essentially not working and Bill didn't have a big corporate CEO salary. Even though I knew selling was the right thing to do, I couldn't bring myself to go to the hangar and say goodbye. I let Bill fly it to the broker.
Sell, Sell, Sell...Stop Selling
Up to that point, the company had been through ups and downs, but what happened at the office affected me only indirectly. There were moments when Bill landed a big new account, like 7-Eleven, Target, or Costco, and we went out to dinner to celebrate. And also times when he warned me that it might all collapse, and I frantically created an emergency budget for the household. But the company's next problem hit me even harder than it hit Bill.
In the spring of 2004, Bill hired a friend of ours to handle operations. Of course, I had heard from countless CEOs in interviews about the risks of hiring friends, but I wasn't worried. Doug was himself an entrepreneur, having helped start a software company. We lived in the same neighborhood and I saw either him or his wife, Claire, nearly every day. We baby-sat for each other and volunteered together at the school, where we had children in the same third-grade class. Doug and I talked frequently on the playground; he was one of the few people I felt comfortable being completely honest with about the company-caused stresses in my personal life.
I was thrilled when he joined The Switch. I hoped that in Doug, Bill would find a supportive and entrepreneurial partner, someone to share the load so that Bill could spend more time at home, or at least be more relaxed. But that didn't happen.
Before long, Bill decided that Doug didn't have enough industry experience for the job. They talked about it, and Bill hoped the situation would somehow resolve itself, but he warned me that it might not. I worried over the ramifications a bad outcome would have in our small community. Bill reassured me that it was just business, but it sure didn't feel that way to me.
The members of the board finally insisted that Bill fire Doug. This time, Bill was able to think of it as simply a company event, but for me it was worse. Doug was angry and the accusations he made were ugly. I felt terrible that it hadn't worked out, but I also felt betrayed by a friend.
