It’s been an interesting year. Last October (2009) I took a job with a company that acquired one of my corporate clients. I was very excited about this for several reasons.
- Cash flow. The market events of 2008 decimated my firm. We lost 3 of our largest clients almost overnight because they were going through various stages of financial distress. I’d been working to keep the doors open and meet payroll for myself and my last employee. But I was pretty exhausted and the idea of rebuilding Zephyr simply overwhelmed me. So the offer of a full time job, paid holidays, benefits and (most important) no more concern about meeting payroll every two weeks was very attractive.
- Authority. The life of a consultant boils down to having responsibility without authority. I’d been getting more and more frustrated with finding myself in a situation where I was responsible for developing a successful marketing strategy for a company when I didn’t have the authority to actually MAKE the client follow my recommendations. Sometimes it was a recipe for disaster.
- Application. I was excited about the opportunity to take everything I’ve learned over the seven years I’d run my own firm and apply it to one technology company. I knew I could make a substantial contribution to the firm and was anxious to get started.
Unfortunately, one thing I didn’t do is double check my new employers’ financial situation. After all, they’d just finished acquiring my client so they must be doing well, right? Well, not quite. Four months into my new job I learned that we were in dire financial straits. In fact, we were living “pay check to pay check” as a company – every two weeks was an adventure on how we’d make payroll. And although I wasn’t responsible for the cash flow any longer, I still had eight employees working under me and was part of the management team struggling to keep this $40 million train wreck afloat.
The months of June and July were particularly difficult. I had creditors calling me 2-3 times a week, demanding payment on their outstanding invoices. I had sales people going out trying to close deals and get deposit checks which I knew were going to be used to make payroll, not order equipment. I had customers calling and demanding to know where their equipment was, why was the installation delayed, and why weren’t the installers showing up to finish the work?
As awful as all that sounds, it wasn’t anywhere near as stressful as what many of my colleagues in senior management roles at the company were going through. We were all wondering where the miracle was going to come from. Fortunately, it came in the form of an acquisition. One of our largest competitors decided to purchase the assets of our firm and offer the remaining staff employment (at least temporarily) while they figured out how to integrate us into the company. It couldn’t have at a better time since our bank had foreclosed on us and we were essentially bankrupt.
The acquisition was finalized on August 6th and I started my employment with Carousel Industries on August 8th. I came into this 
job with a somewhat different attitude. I told my new boss that I didn’t want a job title and I didn’t want an office. I just wanted to be given a big, juicy marketing project that I could focus on for the next few months while I worked from home. And then at the end of the year we’d sit down and revisit my role at the company and decide if it made sense for me to stay. And he agreed.
So I’m pretty excited about my big, juicy marketing assignment – which is to rebrand the company. As a $250 million technology integrator, until now Carousel has been promoting itself as a leading business partner for Avaya, Juniper, Meru, and many other telecom/datacom manufacturers. To grow from $250 million to $500 million, we’re going to have to look at that positioning with a critical eye. We want to move from the VAR world into the Systems Integration world. Our competition isn’t really the other business partners, its companies like HP, SAIC, Unisys, AT&T and Orange. How do we play against those companies? That’s my assignment. And this time I’ve got both responsibility and authority. A steady pay check. And a chance to apply everything I’ve learned to date. So stay tuned as I blog about this project in the upcoming months.
introduction for my colleague. If it makes sense, I act as a referral, talking about the great service, wonderful products, or great network my colleague has. I get the card of the person I’m talking to and give him one of mine and one from my colleague. I point her out (if possible) and if it is a very hot lead, I walk him over and make introductions.
corporate brochure. You couldn’t modify or add new content to the site without going to your webmaster who went around proudly announcing he was a purist and preferred to “hand code” everything. Of course, you had no idea what that meant, except that your website was always out of date and you were pissed off at how much money you were spending on something you couldn’t even prove was bringing you business.
