Inside the Mind of a Runaway CEO
...and the adventures of the staff he left behind
Miller Mobley
I Wonder How Things Are Going... Jared Heyman, founder of Infosurv, takes his world tour to Mole Beach, in Florianópolis, Brazil.
...Back in Atlanta Managing director Carl Fusco, center, talks strategy with CFO Kevin Wilensky.
Andre Vieira
His Own Motorcycle Diaries Heyman on his way to a kite-surfing lesson, along a stretch of the Brazilian coast.
Miller Mobley
It's not as if Jared Heyman had never before thought of escaping his life. Ever since a summer romance in Costa Rica on a trip after high school, Heyman had fantasized about life on the road, spinning dreams of his own Che Guevara—like Motorcycle Diaries. The problem was that in the real world, Heyman had more than succeeded as a driven businessman—an entrepreneur with a myriad of fires to put out and responsibilities to live up to at Infosurv, the Atlanta-based market research company he had founded in 1998. It was exciting in its way, but Heyman was aching for a change. In 2010, at 32, Jared finally decided he wanted a break—a really big break.
After months of planning his escape and prepping his staff, Heyman left his entire world behind in July. The plan: travel for a year, spend a lot of time on a lot of beaches, pick up a language or two, and learn to kite surf. The only vestige of his former life he brought along when he boarded a plane bound for the West Coast and beyond was his girlfriend of two and a half years, Lauren Goldstein. But she would fade out of the picture in a matter of months. "Being free and unencumbered is probably the biggest thing that motivates me," Heyman would later tell me.
Rather than push ahead with Infosurv, which he launched at the tender age of 20 and had built into a $2.1 million company, he was leaving it behind in the hands of a few trusted employees. So what if he had just developed a product he hoped would propel his company to the next level? Heyman decided there would never be a better time—there would always be a reason not to go—and that his staff could manage the business without him. In fact, he promised to bow out of running Infosurv completely during his sabbatical, with the exception of reading a weekly e-mail update and checking in with a phone call every now and then.
When I caught up with Heyman and Goldstein on the beach in Santa Monica, California, they had been traveling for a couple of weeks and had just finished an idyllic road trip along the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles. While Goldstein hung out patiently in the shade, Heyman, shirtless in baggy burgundy shorts, was deep into an exercise routine. He concluded by shimmying up a two-story-high rope, then slowly executing four handstand pushups on a set of parallel bars on the beach. When he finished his routine, Heyman trotted over to greet me. His excitement was palpable—he couldn't wait to tell me his plans and dreams for the year ahead. He and Goldstein would soon be off to Europe, where he would work on his windsurfing; then the couple expected to hit South Africa, South America, and, finally, Southeast Asia. "We are trying to make it a very flexible, spontaneous itinerary," Heyman said. "We have a rough idea of what continents we want to be on in what seasons, but that's about it. I'm Type A. So not knowing all the details is like therapy." Even so, Jared had created a spreadsheet to forecast the cost of the trip: $68,000 for the year, to be financed from the portion of the company's profits he collects every two weeks.
The Grand Tour
In the summer of 2010, Jared Heyman set out on a take-it-as-it-comes trip around the globe. When last spotted, Heyman was in Hawaii, Asia bound.
BACK IN ATLANTA, Carl Fusco, Infosurv's 56-year-old second in command, was busy putting his stamp on the company. Upon leaving, Heyman had given Fusco the title of managing director, a raise, and free rein. Fusco had long wanted an opportunity like this. But now that he finally had gotten what he wanted, he couldn't help feeling anxious. "I had been in charge of research departments before, but not an entire company," he later said. "I was concerned: Would I get the support of the staff? How would everyone react to Jared leaving and me being in charge?"
Fusco's first thought was to do something to restore morale among the company's 15 salaried employees. In 2008, when the economy tanked, the company had cut back its contribution to the employee retirement plan and the percentage of the premiums it paid for employee health insurance. Now, Fusco decided the company would kick up the retirement contribution and pay 100 percent of employees' insurance premiums, giving most employees an effective raise of thousands of dollars a year. His three-man management team wondered whether Fusco should get Heyman's OK before making such a big move. After all, he had split only a few weeks earlier. "I said, 'Look, we've made the decision,'" Fusco told me. "'Let's tell him, and if he doesn't like it, he can come back and run the company.'" Heyman, it turned out, put up no resistance when he got the news. "He was gone," said John Barrett, Infosurv's vice president of sales. "Elvis has left the building."
No one seemed to be shedding any tears over Heyman's departure. Although recognized as a talented guy with a knack for coming up with ideas for new products, he wasn't a particularly outgoing or engaged leader. "His mode of management was to come in his office, close the door, and work—think up new applications," Fusco said. "The question a lot of employees had was, What was he doing in there?"
Fusco's style was more open, more walk around and talk to the troops. He needed their support, too. Although the company had been profitable for years, there hadn't been much recent investment in new technology or emphasis on processes. Fusco's plan was to turn Infosurv into a more professional company, with procedures and processes more like those of larger companies, such as Turner Broadcasting and Cox Communications, where he had developed his management skills.
Fusco's first serious test came soon enough, in August, when the company's Internet servers crashed. "We ceased to exist online," Fusco said. It was a crippling event, because Infosurv conducts all its market research surveys on the Web and also does most of its client communication online. It took days to get the system back online, and Fusco saw the episode as a sign that the company needed to do better.
