Love to all.

Sitting here, on the bus to Westhampton, I’m trying to think of a way to explain the last few days. I’m having a hard time.

Yesterday morning, I was choking back tears while on the phone with Maggie. It was the second time in 24 hours that I had started crying in frustration and anger and from the sheer pressure of it all. Not since I had quit drinking had I felt so off… so run down and on the edge. Not since I had last dealt with my father had I felt like reality had been twisted so rapidly and repeatedly that it took pretty much everything I had not to fall apart.

Duplicity. Dishonesty. Threats and drama. The thing is, I’m not used to dealing with people who purposefully ask for utterly irrational shit JUST as a bargaining tactic. Several times my lawyer had to say “Richard, calm down. What they’re saying is preposterous. It’s impossible.” My problem is that even if I know this intellectually, it still freaks me out emotionally. I was also unprepared for their response to a counteroffer: they hyper-dramatically threatened to throw my employees out immediately and lock the doors…. which would have killed us, obviously. Even though I knew the theatrics were just that (the final agremeent was about half-way between their initial request and my counteroffer), I couldn’t separate my emotional response from the situation.

I didn’t sleep for three days.

What bothered me the most, though, was the duplicity. The documented reversal of prior statements over almost a dozen different things. I couldn’t understand how they could do this. Sitting in my attorney’s office, though, I had it explained to me very clearly.

He said to me: “You need to understand that emails aren’t contracts.” If we got into litigation, emails would be very valuable in terms of intent, but they aren’t in and of themselves contractual obligations. Interestingly, a big percentage of my tension melted away when I heard him say that. The reason? Because now it wasn’t something I could choose to fight about… they lied, and that’s that. Without my misperceived notion that when a person emails you to say “We will let you have your phone numbers if you move out,” that this means something.

It means nothing. It means about as much as:

1. We understand that we, being 10x your size, will fund the change from your company to our partnership.
2. We understand that the changeover might take 2 years to be as successful as your company was.
3. We understand that it might take three years for the person we brought over from another company to rebuild her business.

All of this stuff, and so very much more, was written to me over and over. And Master of Clarification that I am, I made sure that, WELL before the 9/30 separation deadline, I specifically clarified what happened if we decided to go separate ways.

It meant nothing.

What frustrated me, too, was my lack of experience dealing with people were ALWAYS on the lookout for little ways to put stupidly little amounts of money in their pockets. We’re dealing with a seven-figure business, but you had to be careful every time you discussed anything that involved money. It was consistently oppositional, and you had to be constantly checking to make sure that, say, your employees didn’t lose their health insurance because your partner wanted to wait until the very last second to pay the bill.. because somehow, the 14 days of interest that money earned would MAKE OR BREAK THE COMPANY.

Argh.

But don’t try and place a value on YOUR services. Then you violate their sense of community and partnership: When I mentioned one day that, perhaps, my rebranding all of their divisions, rewriting their websites and collateral, and unifying the design across each business practice was of a value that should partially offset some of the claims they were making, they said, I shit you not: “But Rich, sometimes partners just DO THINGS for each other.”

But that, apparently, was not a two-way street. (And no, I didn’t do any of the branding work they were hoping I’d do, since it’s what I’m known for in the staffing industry.)

In the end, I gave them tens of thousands of dollars in cash and took over the company. I bought out the other partners for much more money than I have, but for less than I have available to borrow. It’s my own ship to run, the way it’s been, for the most part, for the last 11 years.

I have really good people working for me, and it’s a team I believe in. So, I put my money where my mouth is.

When I signed the agreement and handed over the cashier’s check, two things happened:

1. I got really calm.
2. I got really sick.

I got calm because, even though I just spent a lot of money for this company, we’re gonig to live or die by our own hard work. THAT kind of pressure I can live with. I got sick because I’d been running nonstop for days, and my immune system just shut down a bit.Over the last three days, I have sourced space for my people, spent panicked hours on the phone with my attorney, signed a lease, and physically moved the office. My body is spent: I’m getting way too old for this shit. I have set up temporary redirects for our external databases, so people don’t realize they are being served from the basement of our house while we provision new static IPs in our crazy new space in Cooper Square, NYC. I’ve set up multiple call-forwarding orders so when people dial our numbers they reach us, and so that, eventually, we will have control over our own phone numbers.

About two hours ago, I finished. Two hours later, I got on the bus for Westhampton, to go to my Mother-in-Law’s. Maggie and the kids miss me. We were supposed to be at the beach together this weekend… but this craziness superceded everything.

Not anymore. I’m going to be arriving in Westhampton in about five minutes. I’m going to play with my kids, go to the beach, smooch with my wife, and chill until Monday morning, when we’ll make the stupid-long, holiday-traffic drive back to the Westchester. But that’s cool: I’ve been able to keep in mind how blessed I am to have a wife and kids who actually miss me. And although it might be better for me to stay home, drink orange juice, and try and sleep in, I’m a pretty happy clam right now.

I haven’t fully processed all the shit that just went down, but holy crap, what lessons there are to be learned, here. But I’m back where I should be: downtown, fully in control of my firm, and ready to rock and roll.

The spirit is quick to recover, baby. Especially with the fantastic realization that I have a Girl Army at my disposal. Rock ON.

Love to all. Even you, the two guys who held up the bus so they could finish their big-ass joint.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 7:11 pm and is filed under Family, Work.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.