By Maria Korolov Trombly
Back before I opened my own company, even before I became a business journalist, I was a war correspondent. And there were a few harrowing moments. I got through the worst of them – like the time I spent under arrest in a cell in Afghanistan – by thinking of the story I would be able to tell when I got out.
And I did get out, and I did tell that story. Over and over again, in bars around the planet. And I tell other stories as well, stories about tense border checkpoints, about being shelled, about being forced to hike across front lines in the middle of wars, about losing friends, colleagues and lovers to death squads and torture.
Then, for about the last fifteen years, I've been worrying that I've been living in the past. Living, quite literally, off of old war stories.
The better things got for me here, in the present, with my company growing and new clients rushing in, the more I felt that my life was over. That I was coasting along whereas – back then – I was really living.
Well, that's all changed. I should have been more careful about what I wished for.
These days, I'm telling people brand new war stories. Of going to China this winter to lay off half my staff. Of moving everyone over to an office a quarter the size of our old space. Of losing 75% of the revenues of our most profitable division – overnight.
I didn't realize that I was making new war stories until I read this column by Jason Calacanis, an old serial entrepreneur who's lived through more than his share of business ups and downs.
In the column, he talks about failing with honor. When your company is on a steep downward slide, do you make the right decisions as quickly as necessary? Is there time to close everything down correctly? If you close down shop the right way, then you can pick yourself up and start over again. If not, you might as well go back to an office job.
Of course, I don't expect my company to fail. We're still making money – with our new, reduced cost base – and are even gaining new clients.
The question is, did we handle the slowdown well? Did we make the right decisions fast enough? We didn't. We could have done some of the layoffs in late 2008, which would have allowed us to pay for severance while we had more money in the bank – and would have reduced the amount of annual bonuses at New Year.
My business manager had warned me that the slowdown was deeper than our normal seasonal dip, but I thought she was being overly pessimistic. As it turned out, she was overly optimistic.
We should have also pushed harder to find new revenue sources. We've gotten used to getting new business from referrals, without any of that hard sales and marketing work. Our biggest problem was that we barely train people fast enough to keep up with new business. It was a great problem to have.
We still haven't started actively selling our core product, news reports from the emerging markets. And, with less staff, and shrinking editorial budgets in the United States, it will be even harder to pull off.
Today, we're a leaner, hungrier company. We rely less on employees and more on freelancers and contractors. We barter as much as we can for things we need and are reaching out to partners more than we ever did before.
In the book “Managing Humans,” Michael Lopp explains that you judge managers by how they behave during hard times, during spending cuts and layoffs. Do they communicate well or withdraw from their employees? Do they make hard decisions as they need to, or do they dither until its too late? Do they flail around, seemingly at random, grasping at straws? Do they second-guess themselves and agonize in public? Or do they make the best decisions possible given the information they've got and commit to a new course, changing direction only when hard new data arrives that there are new shoals ahead? And do they act like bastards or like stand-up guys?
I like to think of myself as a stand-up kind of person. I try to do the right thing. There have been a couple of times when I've been sorely tempted to do evil over these past couple of months. In one case, I wasn't competent enough to pull the evil off – good thing to note for the future: evil is hard. Other times, my conscience got the better of me.
And it's a good thing.
I admit that it will be hard to meet all our obligations, to tax authorities, to past and current employees, to business partners. But when we do, we will become a stronger company for it.
DESPAIR – AND HAPPINESS
I thought that I was going to be unhappy because of the collapse of the economy. And there is, in fact, quite a bit of pain.
But I think I'm actually happier than I was when things were going up-up-up. I've turned down a few buy-out or investment offers, for example, back in better times, the last one in the six digits. Back then, the offers made me briefly happy – they validated my business skills. But then I had to wait around for my next one, my next fix.
Today, I'm getting much more mileage out of them by telling people what I passed up, and then comically slapping myself on the head. “Oh, what a fool I was to turn down that money!”
In truth, the money wouldn't have made me happier. Not in the long run. But telling that story really cheers me up.
Don't believe me? Maybe it's sour raisins on my part? Not so! I've been reading “Happier” by Tal Ben-Shahar. The book is based on a class about happiness that he taught at Harvard. Apparently, more money doesn't make people happier. Sure, getting money feels good – but that fades quickly. Like a drug high. Or the afterglow of a successful shopping trip.
Apparently, what makes people permanently happy is doing fun work, having a purpose to your life, and having strong relationships.
I would add a fourth to that list – being able to tell good war stories, and continuing to make new ones.
I only really felt that I was a war correspondent after I heard the bullets whistling past me at the front. Before, I was just another poser in an unnecessary flak jacket.
Today, I am starting to feel that way about being an entrepreneur. I'm not fully there yet, but I'm feeling less like a swelled head with a few assistants, and more like a shell-shocked, world-weary business owner.
Maria Korolov Trombly is founder and president of Hong Kong-based Trombly Ltd., which runs editorial news bureaus around Asia. Trombly Ltd.'s BrainTrust Editorial division provides corporate communication services such as press releases and white papers. And the China Speakers Bureau is the largest speakers' agency in Greater China, representing over 300 speakers and experts on topics such as economics and business, culture, and technology.
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