same time, he was intimidated by rapid change. Pete thought Costas’s volcanic temper tantrums were quite humorous. They reminded him of his past behavior, which he had eventually conquered. “Managing Jeremy is a piece of cake. When he gets nervous, he explodes. I tell him to take the rest of the day off. The next morning, he’s cool as a cucumber. We never discuss the day before.”
As the AFA head of operations guy, Costas started from the point of view that every office expense, every salary, every commission structure was too much, and that every employee wanted to cheat, lie, and steal.
The irony was that the buttoned-up Costas had had a second bankruptcy. He got talked into becoming a lobster boat captain near Prince Edward Island in Canada. After some initial success, he bought a shit load of boats about the time the price of lobster plummeted.
Like Craft, he was not exactly God’s gift to women. At some point, a hot number named Joanne something-or-other had gotten him to invest in a group of five-star restaurants. Within two years, she had embezzled millions, leaving him holding the bag.
~
The business consultants were like a company within the company. They tended to be forty-five and older with significant sales management backgrounds, which gave them credibility with the independent financial advisors they were trying to license. The average consultant made four or five times any other employee.
~
There were ten on-staff consultants, eight men and two women. The men were sarcastic, know-it-all types who were income-complacent and change-resistant, but tolerated by the other departments because they knew Pete, the salesman, was the consultants’ guardian protector.
The two ladies were as dissimilar to each other as the men were similar. They worked hard to know everything possible about their product lines. Give either of them a specific customer portfolio and they could spout product options in their sleep. When they didn’t know the answer to a product question, they went and got the answer.
Barbara Brag, having never been married and in her mid-forties, believed most business people were empty suits, and thought every man wanted to get into her pants. Her strategy: tease them till their tongues hung out and their private parts were about to explode, then push them to sell more and more AFA products. Her “insurance policy” was strategically revealing blouses designed to expose her well-endowed figure tastefully. Despite the book cover, Barbara was extremely stingy with her actual sexual favors. They were reserved strictly for absolutely, positively necessary situations. She was self-confident enough to project a what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude.
Despite strong ties to Pete’s second wife, Jolene, Brag eventually self-destructed. She decided she was so influential with AFA field advisors that she would start her own firm to compete with Pete, and the advisors would follow in droves. The evening after she resigned, she slipped back into the building and was caught stealing the company’s advisor database. Charges were never brought, but there was no severance package and no competitive company.
The second female consultant was forty-six-year-old Alexandria Plummet. Her persona was the direct opposite of Brag. She was a well-groomed, conservative Midwesterner with two grown daughters. She looked at least ten years younger than she actually was, and preferred to date men of that age. She always said she never mixed business with pleasure. Business was business; pleasure was personal.
Once an advisor was assigned to her group, she built strong relationships based primarily on frequent contact and sheer personal charm, secondarily on the actual business advice she provided. At the time of my arrival, she was one of the highest-paid managers, earning about $350,000 a year.
The story was that Craft and Plummet did business at one of his stops along the way, and he recruited her to work at AFA. Supposedly they slept together on a semi-regular basis. However, evidence of such activity was highly circumstantial at best—most employees said they had a funny way of looking at each other whenever they were in meetings.
Despite her bright smiles, perky demeanor, and solid listening skills, Alexandria never bought into Pete’s added-value mission. She believed that salespeople merely wanted product options so that they could make a quick trade and a big commission. She was stubborn as a rock. Interestingly, she quickly noticed that I could be equally stubborn when I wanted to make a point, so we operated at arms-length – at least initially.
~
My bottom line: AFA was populated by a bunch of business lightweights who were in the right place at the right time. I decided I’d take a pass; the company felt like a glorified Ponzi scheme filled with potholes.
A few days later, Marge called again. She wouldn’t get off the phone until I confirmed a follow-up meeting with Pete. (Later, I discovered the source of Marge’s intense loyalty. Pete learned from his wife that Marge’s husband had beaten the shit out of her in a drunken rage and took their two kids with him. Pete hired lawyers, got the kids back, and had an injunction placed against the husband. Then he hired Marge as his administrative assistant and paid her $80,000 per year, which was more money than she had ever made.)
“So?” said Pete.
“Not sure,” I replied.
“Name the amount. I’ll pay you whatever makes you happy — within reason.”
“Why are you so hot to hire me?”
Pete became candid. “I’m just a kid from the streets who wants to turn AFA into a Harvard Business School success story. I want Wall Street to love us so we can go public or sell to the highest bidder for an obscene amount of money. You’ve been there and done that. I want you to be my exit strategy coach.”
I smelled blood! “Tell you what. I’ll come on board as a full-time consultant for sixty days at absolutely no cost to you?”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Pete. “What’s the catch?”
“If you like what I do, and I like what I'm doing, my compensation package kicks in. But — cards on the table — there must be a significant equity kicker in the deal. I’m not here for cash flow. That’s just to keep you honest. I want at least five percent of the company on a fully-diluted basis.”
Pete smiled. “And you have the audacity to tell me it’s not about the money. How about $30,000 a month salary plus all expenses, five percent of the annual profits distributions, and a five percent equity stake after twelve months?”
The next day, Pete told his partners he had made the hire of the decade and sent a note to the office announcing my arrival. He never mentioned my equity ownership agreement to anybody.
Pete placed me in the office next to his. This pissed off Dawson, Eddie, and Jeremy, who had smaller offices on a lower floor.
2.
My sixty-day trial went by in the blink of an eye.
On day sixty-one, Pete, his three partners, and I had an off-campus session at the Greenwich Inn on Long Island Sound. As the sailboats passed by, I explained my impressions and findings and laid out a no-holds-barred, three-year plan: step-by-step, year by year, department by department.
“To begin with, the data suggests you’re spending far too much per head to recruit licensed financial advisors.” Pete and Craft immediately became defensive, since this was one of their primary purviews.
“Buddy,” smiled
