28 November 2006
In late 1998 I was given a choice between my gut, and a million pounds plus salary and benefits. It was a surreal meeting. This is how it happened.I was standing beneath the umbrella of a grubby street cafe, coffee in hand, watching as the torrential rain washed people past me down the street. Next to me stood a client, John, and he was talking big money.
''Work with me for a couple of years and I'll make you a millionaire'', he said.
I believed him. Money was not John's problem. He was the CEO of a very serious group of companies backed by some even more serious offshore investment. In the months since I had started working with them the group had invested aggressively in internet startups, floated one of them on the US stockmarket, and gone looking for more. They were riding the dot-com boom hard and fast. Even peripherally it was a dizzying display of capitalism.
I was twenty-seven at the time, eighteen months into my consultancy business and loving the freedom it gave me... but a million quid is hard to ignore. I listened.
''You'll have a proper job with a bloody good salary and the stock options in your back pocket'', he said. ''All you have to do is sign-up for three years, then you can go back to poncin' around.'' John was old school, he had a direct way with words.
''And you'll get a decent bloody car'', he said, waving a donut at me. He was a big man, and he'd never been impressed with my sporty hatchback.
''I don't need a new car''.
''Bollocks you don't''.
We lapsed into a strange silence. We weren't friends really, although we had spent a fair amount of time together over the previous couple of months. John had inherited my services from his predecesor, and after a period of extreme suspicion he'd decided that I was pretty useful to have around.
''You're a lazy bugger,'' he said, ''that's your problem. You don't like hard work''.
I didn't argue. It wasn't about how hard I worked. John was unimpressed with my freelance status and missed no opportunity to remind me that I wasn't a team player. He was wrong of course, but the the fact that he couldn't order me around as an employee gnawed at him. It was one of the reasons he'd made such a ridiculous offer in the first place.
Not that I was about to reject it out of hand. Those were ridiculous times and I had no problem with earning ridiculous amounts of money... lots of other people were, including him. Maybe it was now or never. I knew I could do the work, and I wasn't afraid of long hours. All I had to do was say 'yes', knuckle down for a couple of years and watch the money to roll in.
That... and ignore the uneasiness I was feeling in my gut*.
I looked at John. He wasn't a fool. If you offer someone a million pounds and they don't bite your hand-off you know something is up. He could sense it. In that way we were similar people, we both took more notice of our own gut-feeling than we did of other people.
''Bloody hell", he said. "I'm asking for help here''.
''I'll think about it.'' I said, but we both heard the lie. I wasn't thinking about it. My gut feeling had decided it for me. I wasn't going to be weighing the pros and cons, or discussing it with my mates. It didn't smell right. That was that.
As readers you will now be dividing into two groups. Many of you will be think me a fool, or worse, for turning down the opportunity. But others of you may be nodding. You'll recognise that feeling that can neither be explained or ignored... and you'll understand why I declined John's offer and walked happily out into the rain.
And never regretted it. Although I continued to work with John and the group for a few more weeks there was a storm brewing. As months went by he came under massive pressure from the off-shore 'partners'. More hours, more work, more acquisitions, more share offerings... and more and more and more. By the time the stock market crashed in early 2000 John had already been discarded... and when the crash did come the company that owned that group of businesses lost more than 95% of it's value in three months.
Of course I had no idea about what would happen... all I had was a feeling that I trusted, and the freedom to act on what it was telling me.
Eight years later, at Semantic, we still have that freedom... and it's the single best thing about our business. I've talked elsewhere about why small businesses beat big ones... but right at the top of that list is the ability to turn down opportunities that don't smell right... even when the numbers disagree. Over the past few years we've declined several projects, including a couple of major ones, for just that reason... and walked happily out into the rain.
*Malcom Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point) calls this instinctive response 'thin-slicing'... and pulls together evidence for it from all over the place in his most recent book Blink.)
Posted by Nick Warren at 8:11 AM
