Page 50 - Free the Idea Monkey

In June of 2004, my good friend and fellow business owner,
Marc, called and said, “Mike, we’ve known each other for years, and
you don’t seem well. You’re clearly under a lot of stress and you’re
not yourself. I don’t know if it’s me who can help you, but maybe I
can. Just name the time and I’ll be there for you. Even if you don’t
want to meet, I think it’s time you got some outside perspective.”

I knew Marc was right. I was a mess. Six months earlier, we’d
lost 37 percent of our business when two of our largest clients left
us inside of 30 days because of a sale and change in strategy. (One
was Verizon. We were helping them put new phone technology in
airplanes, but 9/11 helped push them out of that game.) While most
people would view losing 37 percent of their revenue as a signal to
dramatically cut costs, yours truly saw it as a signal to rally the
troops. “We can overcome this! We will sell our way out of this hole!”

Six months later, this unfortunate spasm of inspired leader-
ship had led us to burn through about $1.3 million in cash. I was
exhausted, defeated and felt absolutely trapped by the circum-
stances that I’d helped orchestrate. And for the very first time in my
life, I was completely out of ideas. I had lost my Monkeyness.

If that wasn’t bad enough, there were personnel issues. As a
company, we’d reached the point where we needed to fully embrace
innovation as our future, moving dramatically away from our mar-
keting roots. Unfortunately, only about half of the company was
committed to this vision or were a talent fit for the model, which
meant we needed new leadership from the top down. People were
going to lose their jobs. The prospect of saying goodbye to my friends
was tearing me up.

I thought I was handling it well, but obviously I wasn’t. One day
I came home and there was a letter—a prayer actually—from my
7-year-old son. He was asking God to help me stop worrying. My
wife begged me to go see a doctor because I couldn’t sleep for more
than three hours without waking up in a panic. What happened to
the happy-go-lucky, anything-is-possible Idea Monkey?

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