Making Hard Calls

Fog is dancing across the water, a pink light threading through the trunks of massive pines as it illuminates everything it touches. The lake is glass. Not a ripple. No boats making waves in at least 24 hours, and they’re always rare here. The silence takes getting used to. Occasionally, in the distance, a plane overhead or a chainsaw somewhere, then quiet again.

The spring greens are vibrating. I’m getting to live spring twice this year. First it was Florence, with blossoming trees and wisteria draped over stone walls. Now it’s the Adirondacks, where the lilacs are just opening and the pine-scented air feels medicinal. Loons are calling across the still water, their voices echoing off the distant shore. We are, for now, the only ones here.

The Weight of It

I come to this lake every year for peace, renewal, and the chance to slow down the machine. I take Fridays off when I can. I make frames. I paint. I breathe.

But I also carry something here with me, because I can’t put it down. The weight of running a company is not something you leave at the office, because a lot of families don’t eat if I screw up or get distracted.

I started this business almost four decades ago. Do the math if you want to feel old. The point is, I’ve been through enough now to recognize patterns most younger leaders can’t see yet, because they haven’t been through the storm enough times.

Businesses are like military obstacle courses. Just when you think you’ve got a clear path, something blows up, and you either survive it or you don’t.

What Experience Teaches

When I was a young CEO, everything bothered me. I wanted to control every detail, fix every problem, make everything perfect. Now I know that perfection is a mirage and that most problems either solve themselves, can’t be solved, or aren’t worth solving.

One of the hardest lessons I ever learned came after a phone call from my bookkeeper decades ago. He told me we had three weeks of cash left and needed to close the doors. He saw it as the only option. I wasn’t willing to take his advice. So to survive, I laid off 50 people and kept only four, myself included.

We ran a 50-person operation with four people for two years, and even with those cuts we barely survived. We needed business badly because the recession had dried up all of our advertising. So my one remaining salesperson and I spent 14 grueling weeks on the road, staying in cheap hotels and eating fast food, making about 200 sales calls.

I recall one moment from that trip, a memory that will last forever. A top client insisted we take them to dinner and picked the most expensive restaurant in Washington, D.C. We needed them badly, so we agreed. But first we each ate a burger before we went so we wouldn’t be tempted to order something expensive. Then the client immediately ordered a bottle of expensive wine and the most expensive thing on the menu. I was turning white as a sheet when I saw the $800 bill.

After I handed the waiter my credit card, he returned to the table and said quietly, “Mr. Rhoads, you have a phone call.” This was before cell phones. I was grateful he hadn’t embarrassed me in front of the clients. When I got to the back, they told me my card wouldn’t go through. It was my only card. I had no money. So I gave them my watch, a priceless heirloom my father had given me, and told them I’d send a check and they could mail it back. I returned to the table, pretended everything was fine, and made up some excuse about the call. I’m glad no one asked me the time.

The next day my office wired money to my card so we could continue the trip. And we got the contract. It made everything worthwhile.

Hope Is Not a Strategy

When the recession ended and money started to flow, the temptation was to rebuild quickly. But necessity had taught us how to survive lean. The trouble is, when times are good we tend to get comfortable, add overhead, stop watching the numbers. And when things turn, we kick the can down the road, thinking it’s about to get better when the right move is to act fast.

My friend and mentor Keith Cunningham says it plainly: You can’t take hope to the bank. You can’t cash a check that has “hope” written on it instead of an amount.

There are times to be an optimist. And there are times to be a realist, which is different from being a pessimist. The companies that fail most spectacularly are usually run by people who chose hope over reality and waited too long. Families get into trouble the same way, because things are always “about to get better.”

I’ve been through at least four recessions as a business owner. Each one was different. Some were brutal, some were manageable. But every time, the ones who got ahead of it survived. The ones who waited, hoping it would pass, usually didn’t.

Two friends of mine, one who runs a major ad agency with over a thousand clients and another who runs more than 180 companies, have both said the same thing recently: Business is soft, and the smart ones are trimming early. The signals matter. The timing matters more. No one wants to say the “R word” for fear it will come true, but things are soft everywhere right now, though that could turn quickly with a credible peace deal somewhere in the world.

The Geeks and the Geezers

My friend Richard Saul Wurman, who founded the TED conferences, once said that every company needs geeks and geezers. He was right. The geeks bring the new ideas, the speed, and the courage to try things that seem impossible. The geezers, those of us with the scar tissue, bring the pattern recognition. We’ve seen this before.

I never wanted to be told what to do. When I was in business with my father, I wanted to be right all the time. In reality, he was right more than I was, because of deep experience. During my first recession, it was his suggestion to cut deeply and cut fast. I made every excuse why I couldn’t live without every single person I thought I needed. I couldn’t see it clearly, but he could. He saw what was coming; I didn’t. And ultimately, it was his experience that saved my business.

Time brings wisdom, if you learned your lessons. Sometimes our kids don’t want to listen to our advice, even though we’re seeing things they can’t yet see. It would do all of us a lot of good, myself included, to put our egos aside and be willing to consider what others who’ve walked the road ahead of us have to offer. It might save a lot of heartache.

Make the Call

The thing nobody tells you about hard decisions is that the hardest part is rarely the decision itself. It’s the delay. Foolish hoping that things resolve on their own. The waiting for one more data point, one more month, one more sign that things are about to turn. That might happen. But if it doesn’t, the cost of waiting is almost always higher than the cost of acting, because you’ve dug a bigger hole.

Whatever you’re navigating right now, get ahead of it. Whatever you’re dreading, get it done. Don’t cash that hope check. Don’t put off what you know you need to do. It’s pain now or more pain later. 

It won’t be easy or fun, and you’ll feel things you’d rather not feel. But you’ll discover strength you didn’t know you had, and the next hard call won’t be quite as hard. Maybe it’s a business decision you’ve been circling. Maybe it’s a conversation you keep putting off because the thought of it makes your stomach drop. Perhaps a relationship discussion that needs to be had before things deteriorate further.

Life is truly short, and you’ll look back on today and it won’t hurt as much as it once did. But it will still hurt.

Eric Rhoads