Welcome To Business Blog Tour Stop #4!

On 10 hours of flights this week, I had a chance to read Wayne McVicker’s book, Starting Something. It kept me uncomfortable at 32,000 feet. While this is nothing new to me since I hate to fly, this time I loved every minute of reading the book.

Wayne tells of the journey of his dot com start up Neoforma from 1996 to 2002. But unlike other boom to bust types of tales, he was 10 years older than most of his peers during this time and secondly, while its stock crashed like all others, it did survive and makes a profit today.

I especially liked the format of the book. Each short chapter starts with a graph that shows over time the number of employees and the valuation of the company. It also, has press quotes of the day which gives the reader a great perspective.

Wayne writes a heck of an honest and personal book. Having written one myself, I know how difficult this is to do and I admire him for this.

Wayne stops by my blog today to discuss the book!

Q1. A few parts I especially liked. Under the category that you can’t pick the time you start a business he says:

“I can’t say how thoroughly I had evaluated the risks of this new venture prior to writing that first check. I had children to raise and educate. Mortgage to pay, marriage to nurture. I do know that I dismissed the risks quickly as I embraced this new challenge”.

Wayne, this is exactly how it happens to all of us. What made you jump?

I had been working as a middle manager in a large corporation for nearly ten years. While I enjoyed my role there as an innovator, incessantly improving every process I could reach, I was quite tired of fighting the status quo. When I and my partner saw the opportunity to turn some our internal customer services into external products, we quickly became entranced with the concept of endless possibilities. We were both ready and, frankly, got caught in the spell of customer enthusiasm.

Q2. From the book you write: “The moments we felt strongest always seemed to coincide with the moments we were most vulnerable”. How did you manage to transition through these times?

"As I write in the book, I didn’t always manage the transition from calm to crisis well. Or, perhaps more accurately, I tended to manage the transition through denial. Whether the crisis was to the company or to my personal finances, I became quite skilled at separating the nearly overwhelming sense of dread from my daily interactions. The psychological price was very high. I was several years into the process before I called upon the help of an executive coach (read… emotional coach) who helped give me the tools to better cope with the stress of emotional partitioning."

Q3. In the book you write :“In time, we would become known for what we had accomplished. For now, we were known for what others imagined us to be.” During these times, did it feel like your business was a lie?

"No… not for a moment. We simply became frustrated at times by the tendency for our investors and advisors to want us to look just like other companies currently enjoying success. We knew we were unique and were much more comfortable embracing and expressing that uniqueness than our investors."

Q4. I Ioved the story of the Baxter lawsuit that influenced your business. Can you discuss the role of luck and timing in your business life?

"Luck, good and bad, plays a huge role in any growing enterprise. It doesn’t take much to knock a young company off course. We certainly had more than our share of both kinds of luck.

That we rode the company up to a $3 billion market cap had a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time. But there were many other companies similarly placed that hardly grew at all. That we rode the company down to the very bottom had a lot to do with being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we survived, where more than a hundred competitors didn’t.

In the end, a strong focus on building a quality corporate culture mattered far more than luck… though I wouldn’t have minded a bit more of the good. "

Q5. You talk about somewhere along the line, you and your partner, Jeff stopped communicating or “venting your emotions”. What was the reason behind this and did the two of you ever get it back?

"Due to the intensity of our growth in 1998 through 2000, Jeff and I were swept apart by an influx of investors with strong personalities, intent upon vaulting Neoforma into the big leagues. Burdened by grueling family debt and an intense, daily barrage of small and large crises, we retracted from personal interaction with each other. This was particularly damaging, because we had always been very good at getting our feelings out without damaging our friendship. It took several years of focused, awkward interaction, but we are back to normal in our current venture, Attainia."

Q6. I find it interesting that in January 2001, you demoted yourself. Why?
"There were three primary reasons why I felt that it was important to take a less visible role in Neoforma at that time. First, for many reasons the bulk of the company had moved in a direction that was foreign to my domain expertise. I simply didn’t have my original passion for the direction the company was taking.
Second, even though I was no longer a critical thought leader in the company, I still had a loyal following among the employees. I believed that it was in the best interest of the company to transfer as much of that loyalty as possible to the executives we had hired to run the company.
And third, I knew that I would be leaving soon to write Starting Something and to spin off Attainia. The less disruption this would cause the company, the better. "

Q7. You says the book is about 3 things, one of which is control. This fascinated me because I talk in my speeches that having control in an entrepreneurial adventure is an illusion. You struggle with how much control to exert at Neoforma. Could you control it or after a while did you have to go along for the ride?
"You are very correct in your assertion that the control wielded by the entrepreneur is far from absolute. By definition, each new hire acquires some level of control of the new company. Especially in the early stages of an enterprise, it is essential that the employees are able to function with a certain degree of independence.

At first this works fine, because it is easy for everyone to communicate with everyone. But when the company grows to fifteen or twenty people, this is no longer possible. Hierarchy and procedures get hastily erected, usually without much enforcement or monitoring. This is the stage that an entrepreneur must take a step away from the inevitable distraction that is the product and the customer and focus for a time on the growing corporate culture.

As you noted, I certainly faced many situations where I was exercising too much or too little control. This has been the case with every successful entrepreneur I have known."