Jacob Wren - Rich and Poor

Redhead interrupts: “Are you saying we should fight with our customers?”

Me: “Maybe not fight them. But we should feel confident enough to occasionally give them a little shove.”

Scam-guy: “We know who our customers are. They’re definitely not us. We have boxes of statistics about who they are, what they like, how they like to be spoken to.”

I have no idea if it’s working, but there is no choice but to charge ahead: “Would you like someone to address you, make decisions about your life, based on statistics? But we don’t tell them that part. We hide it, and they can sense that something is hidden. When I say ‘we are the consumers’ I’m talking about honesty, truth in advertising. People need to eat, need to get around — in cars, on bicycles, buses, whatever. We’re all here in this room and need to win the approval of this jerk in order to get ahead.” I gesture towards the target and he smiles. I don’t think anyone can believe I just called our boss a jerk. I can barely believe it myself. “We need to win his approval in order to further our careers. There are basic needs that we all share, that have nothing to do with statistics.”

“That’s the worst bullshit I’ve ever heard,” our boss interrupts, silencing me, silencing the room, but still beaming, “but at least it’s not boring. And I like this guy,” he points at me like I was on display, as if I could be bought and sold like everything else in this world. “The problem is I fucking like this guy. He makes me laugh.” He was really smiling now, almost laughing. The others look at each other like he’s lost his fucking mind, but they’re used to it, as I look at my feet, smiling sheepishly. A plan is little more than one step after the next.

1.

I often wonder what exactly happened in that conference room, what happened as I aimlessly drove to nowhere. I know the facts but miss the nuance. That was the moment when everything might have been lost, but instead was so spontaneously, miraculously won. There was no reason for me to phone Emmett, no reason for him to answer, no reason for him to attempt such an audacious, improbable scam. Except that we were desperate, willing to try anything. Why did the heart attack happen at that precise moment, at the moment we needed it most?

Knowing what will happen next is a kind of death, while days when surprise strikes like a tsunami are the ones that genuinely count. Yet still my thoughts of that night, as I tread back over it, again and again, from time to time, fall short of elation. I was at the wheel of my car, ready to drive forever. Back in the boardroom they were deciding my fate. In some ways, for the first time, I had lost my nerve. I had momentarily lost confidence we would prevail. Often I wonder if I’ve fully recovered, fully returned to my former energized self. The battle for the company dragged on another three years. They sued us for insider trading and we counter-sued with everything we had. There were so many tedious legal arguments. The fight for the inheritance also became increasingly vicious, especially after the first year, when they finally realized there were no legitimate claims involved, but still could not prove it. I am sure they wanted to kill me, but you don’t go to war against masters then complain they are too skilled. All of that was more than exhausting, three years of utter devastation.

There is at least one other book written about the battle for my company — a book that, to my taste, portrays me in an unnecessarily harsh light (of course I’m no angel), in fact a book that I now see almost as slander against me. One particular episode it portrays has always felt inaccurate, claiming I was not well within my rights to begin selling off divisions when I did, since at that moment the future ownership of the organization remained in dispute. For me this accusation raises more questions than it answers. I was fighting for my life, and therefore, as I’ve already made clear, dirty tricks (legal ones) were certainly not out of the question. But what must be understood is that those divisions would have been shed no matter what, regardless of who ended up holding my position. What difference did it make if I sold or they did? Either way a leaner company was required in response to the new, battle-informed situation. But you can’t expect factual accuracy on such intricate legal matters from second-rate, now-divorced, hack-slanderers. (There are two names on the spine of that book and, I believe, at the time they wrote it, they were still married.)

The objection might be raised that in order to pay off their leverage, the first thing the new owners would need to do, upon taking control, is sell off the very divisions I had already sold. So, yes, I made their lives more difficult. What was I supposed to do? Make their lives easier. All is fair in love and hostile takeovers. But for the overall fiscal health of the organization, as well as from a legal standpoint, I did nothing that would not have occurred naturally in all potential scenarios.

There are other lies those now-divorced hacks told about me, fanciful ones, a few that were rather dull. (Perhaps my original impulse for writing this book was to set the record straight, give a more accurate impression of my character.) But I also have to admit that, while from time to time I was offended, I thoroughly enjoyed their version of events, every last page, enjoyed it more than I had any right to. The character they present is certainly not me, though my name appears on virtually every page, but a fictional version that is so in control, so calculating, so able to see ten moves ahead of everyone else in the game. If I actually had been as prescient as they claim, the takeover bid would have never been a threat in the first place (and to read their account there was little chance of it ever actually succeeding). There is pleasure in reading a version of myself I know in my heart could never exist, since mine is not an iron mind coldly calculating every possible option and outcome. Instead I am a businessman who loves excitement, loves tension, loves risk and the unexpected, and just happens to possess an extraordinary, on occasion even miraculous, degree of good luck.

I am also a good judge of character. I hire the best, promote the best of the best, and make sure they are doing their jobs. Emmett had the idea to speak to me on the phone not as if I were myself, but as if I were chairman of the board. But I had the idea to hire Emmett, to promote him and promote him again until he was second only to me. I did not leave him alone in that bargaining-session on purpose. It was no brilliantly calculated move on my part. I am sad to admit I panicked, fled a scene I no longer knew how to handle or control. However, if Emmett had been a less capable individual, perhaps I would have been less inclined to leave him in charge.

That other hack-slander book about the war for my company was a bestseller, and if you are reading this now it is perhaps because you have already read it, and it piqued your curiosity. The battle it recounts was only one chapter in the never-ending saga of my life. If it remains the most known episode, I am the last person able to explain why. A soap opera makes a good headline. And to watch Goliath almost felled by a committee of twenty-odd Davids, almost but not quite, a Goliath who almost loses everything and is saved only by a little guile and a great deal of happenstance — these are the reasons why people still read the Bible for entertainment to this day.

I imagine A, B and C reading these pages. I imagine the chief and second-in-command reading them as well. How angry they will be. How savage and unfair they will find each of my recollections. Of course, our lawyers have read through all of this with infinite patience and diligence, and strongly advised against many of my disclosures, so who knows what style or quantity of lawsuits are still to come. I no longer care. Before my retirement I want to set the record straight. We have lawyers and money to handle litigation. But only the truth — or at least the truth as I see it — can cut through the haze of my still-undecided legacy.