A good place to start, he decided, was software. Infosurv had been licensing its customer survey software for years. But the package was inflexible and cost $45,000 a year to license. Fusco decided the company needed an experienced IT head to develop a proprietary software system for its customer survey work. Heyman had generally resisted using headhunters, because he hated the expense and preferred to hire young, hungry employees at bargain salaries, but Fusco wanted a professional recruiter to get the right IT pro. Unlike Heyman, he was willing to pay top dollar for his new IT guy.
In the short term, at least, all these changes would make it harder for the company to reach its goals, which were ambitious. Heyman had told Fusco that in his absence, he expected the management team to realize a 13 percent growth in profit. That would be possible, he told the team, with the launch of a new product that he had developed. The product, dubbed iCE (for Infosurv Concept Exchange), is a sort of stock market for ideas that companies want to test with consumers. Participants are given $1,000 in electronic "iCE dollars" to buy shares in the concepts being tested. As participants invest in the concepts they believe will succeed in the marketplace, the prices on those ideas get bid up. The pricing helps give companies a sense of consumers' preferences. It had been Heyman's pet project, and now it was up to Fusco and his team to make iCE a success.
Heyman and Goldstein said goodbye to me in Santa Monica, off for destinations and adventures unknown. As the summer wore on, they visited the Grand Canyon, then flew to Italy. They chronicled their voyage on their blog, ChasingSummer.net. In Italy, the couple woke up in a new city every few days and filled their blog with photos of gondoliers and plates of pasta.
While their if-it's-Tuesday-this-must-be-Verona dream trip took form, Fusco and his team in Atlanta were settling into their new roles, making ever bigger decisions—and ever more expensive investments—with increasing confidence. "I'm just enjoying the role and the challenge," Fusco told me when we spoke by phone in October. Kyle Burnam, the marketing director, observed that he and the other managers were more outspoken in meetings with Heyman away. "In the past, I would often have discussed something with Jared first before bringing it up to the group," said Burnam. When, in mid-September, Heyman checked in with each member of the team for the first time, John Barrett noted that his former boss sounded surprised to hear that everything was going so smoothly. "I think there was a bit of ego coming into play," Barrett later reflected. Dropping by Fusco's office to update him on his conversation, Barrett recalled, "I looked at Carl and said, 'If I were Jared, I'd be wondering what I'm going to do next.'"
In fact, Heyman had no such concerns. As long as the weekly e-mails kept coming in, he could give them a quick read and then check out for another seven days. After touring and blogging all across Italy at a breakneck pace, he and Goldstein moved on to Greece, where Heyman brushed up on his windsurfing technique on the isle of Ios. The couple took to blogging travel advice. On September 23, Heyman wrote the following tweet: "After much soul searching, I've decided to sell my iPad and buy a Kindle instead. For RTW [round-the-world] travel I think the Kindle is better. Sorry Apple!" A few days later, the couple posted their must-have around-the-world packing lists, complete with links to where to buy stuff: "One pair of nice jeans for going out (I like 7 For All ManKind); two white ExOfficio T-shirts (for working out or the beach)" and so on.
As the months rolled by, a constant stream of tweets, blog entries, and Vimeo videos of Jared and Lauren letting the good times roll in exotic lands inevitably made their way onto the screens of the Infosurv staff back home. Barrett noticed some grumbling among the ranks. "There are folks on the floor—the younger staff—who resent that he is raking in the money and sitting on the beach," he said. "But he built this thing and made it profitable. He earned it."
Not that all was perfect in paradise. Before the couple returned from Europe, via a lavish 16-day transatlantic crossing from Italy to Florida, Heyman told Goldstein that he wanted to continue without her. "We spent so much time planning this trip—one year," she told me later. "But after three months, he decided to travel alone. I felt misled." Goldstein headed to Peru to do volunteer teaching and later hike Machu Picchu. (From there, she traveled to Panama for a brief time, before heading back to the States. She and Heyman traveled together again later in Argentina, then split for good. Goldstein now lives in Los Angeles.) Heyman opted for Rio de Janeiro. "We remained friends the whole time," Heyman later told me about the breakup. "But we are at different stages of our lives. Lauren wants to start a family and settle down, and I'm not at that stage yet."
Heyman found an apartment in Rio with a bunch of twentysomething international travelers and slipped easily into the singles beach and party scene. When we spoke by phone in mid-November, he confided that his old life at Infosurv seemed a distant memory. "Going back there is not Plan A," he said. "It's very possible that that part of my life is behind me." His biggest frustration: Because he was spending so much time with non-Brazilians, he wasn't picking up Portuguese as quickly as he would have liked. So he moved after a month or so. By December, he was on the island of Florianópolis, in southern Brazil. His days consisted of riding a rented motorcycle to the beach, practicing his kite surfing, and then working out—mainly yoga and a regimen called P90X. His Portuguese was improving, thanks to a widening circle of Brazilian friends. "I have the vocabulary of a 5-year-old, but I can get my point across," Heyman said. "The biggest thing I've learned so far is that I have a gear I didn't know existed. I look back on my life, and I've always been a very go-go person. I have been very achievement oriented all my life. And it is surprising to me that I can get into this gear where it is not about achievement. Maybe I was due for a break."
