Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 91: Keeping Watch for Icebergs
Tuesday, February 4, 1986
With Darla taking the week off, I made a date with Amy for Friday night. We had no specific plan, but being alone for a while was definitely included. She was fairly certain she could get Meg out of the way if her dorm room turned out to be the best option. Jas would likely step aside for us, too, or I could use the spare apartment. We’d been working on making that more comfortable for assignations, since there were more as time went on.
I didn’t mention the potential change in schedule with Darla. Until it happened, it wasn’t necessarily real. It would be a good idea to back off, but we didn’t always follow every good idea that came along.
Still, it might be incumbent upon me to do so. Darla herself had said dating every week wasn’t good for her, and it was a rule that I keep from doing things that were bad for the people I was dating.
The phone rang around seven. I picked it up and heard Michael’s voice. Once we’d exchanged pleasantries, he got to the meat of the call.
“Quarterlies are in. These are ... mostly cleaned up. Not 100% — that’ll be the paper copy — but I’d rather give you the picture earlier. If anything’s off, it’s maybe a tenth of a percent.”
“Which isn’t an issue unless things are seriously dire over there. And, judging from the weeklies, nothing seems to be out of order.”
He laughed loudly and said, “Definitely not! I’d say ‘anything but dire,’ but that would jinx us. And ... well. You’ll hear.”
“I will!” I said.
“So ... all the big picture news is good. I’ll start with some good and bad, mixed together. Obviously, you’ve seen some of this, but not added up. Our quarterly profit hit $8 million, which is a big jump. As before, I really think we could have done better if we hadn’t had so much trouble getting loans, but ... eh. What you said is bouncing around my head and won’t stop. Maybe it is the banks panicking over the downturn. That thing’s real and it has me both nervous and excited. If Texas goes down, we hurt. We’re very much national now, but Texas is still a disproportionate share of our sales. On the other hand, if Texas goes down a little, real estate drops, cost of housing drops, maybe inflation slows. Costs go down, we do better. Maybe we expand! Stop renting! I think that’s a pipe dream for a while, but owning land and buildings is on my radar. Tell me that two years ago and I would think you were seriously into some illegal stuff.”
I chuckled at that and said, “Tell me about it! Your baby is vastly exceeding expectations. And, honestly ... I had some pretty high expectations.”
“Tell me about it! I keep saying it — you put that IPO stuff in there. I thought it was nuts! Now ... yeah. Not so nuts at all. Not within the next year, but ... it’s seriously on the radar, too.”
“Has to be, I think. That totally changes your funding situation.”
“At the cost of some of my equity! But ... yeah. That’s also a conversation topic. So! Back to profit. Add it all up, and we’re over $19.5 million in yearly profit. That’s ... crazy numbers. Profit this year is comparable to sales last year. That’s partly my thing with the banks. We haven’t had a bad quarter. Not even an iffy quarter by rational standards, even if sometimes I shake my head and lament lost opportunities. We’re a cash machine, we pay our bills on time, and our growth curve is off the charts. If you ignore the whole ‘twenty-year-old CEO’ thing, we’re a terrific credit risk. That does matter, but ... eh. I probably feel differently because this thing is already ten percent of my entire life.”
“Probably!” I said, chuckling a bit.
“Back to the numbers. Ten percent of that $19.5 million goes into profit sharing. The fifty or so people we had for the whole year are fully vested. Otherwise, it’s quarterly. If I make it quarterly equivalents, we had a hair under one thousand employee-quarters. Obviously, most people make either a fair bit more or less than the average, but the average is almost $1,000 per employee per quarter. Now, some production tech making minimum for under a quarter is nowhere near that. The goal is maybe ten percent of salary, though we did better. Anyway, long story a tiny bit shorter, everyone’s thrilled. Full disclosure: my share is $100,000. That’s a ten-percent jump for me on about the same increase in the profit sharing pool. Yours is $60,000, which is a smaller multiplier, but...”
“Oh, I’m blown away,” I said.
“Jasmine, Angie, and Paige each receive $10,000.”
“They will be blown away, too,” I said, very much meaning it.
“The thing is, I love that I can do that. You were there for me when it mattered. Even more, you’re still there for me, and I need that. You’ve given me some great advice. The best of which is probably, ‘Get out of the office!’”
We both chuckled at that.
“I’m taking two weeks off ... sometime. But this year, I promise! And I mean, not total, but a two-week chunk where I’m gone. Can’t be before we get a president and he’s up and running. I’m taking five days off late this month, though, just to recharge before finding my guy.”
“That really sounds good,” I said, meaning it. “I think — I hope! — you’ll come back fired up and with great ideas.”
“That’s the goal,” he said, and I could nearly hear him nodding along. “That’s definitely the goal.”
“If you go somewhere we’ve been, I’ll happily pass along travel tips.”
“That’s an expanding list, too!” he said. “Okay. Back to the news. Quarterly sales topped $75 million, which maybe I should have led with. That’s a huge number. Ridiculous! I’m not sure Dad has found his jaw yet, it hit the floor so hard!”
I laughed at that.
He continued, saying, “We added forty people this quarter. That means more space. Cash flow was better. Everything went out on time this time. We’re having some quality concerns, but I’ve got people on it and they’re not bad right now. It’s more ... one machine in fifty, or one hundred, or whatever goes belly up. We don’t know why, and finding out why can be a pain. It’s another task for the president, honestly. In the meantime, I’ve got two teams on it and we have mitigation plans.”
“Sounds like a pain, I agree, but also like you’re attacking it head-on.”
“Have to! We have a reputation for being a quality supplier. I want to compete on price, and I will compete on price, but not at the cost of machines that fail at an unacceptable rate.”
“Definitely,” I said.
“So ... the president search. Two informal interviews so far. Both... eh. Not my guy. I have three leads right now. None of them might be the guy, either. Oh — they’re all guys. I have no problem with hiring a woman, but no one’s pointed me to a woman who can do it.”
“I know a few, but they need a few years yet.”
He laughed loudly.
“I do not want to compete with any of them! But, also, yes. I wouldn’t hire me for this job, and I’ve been doing it for two years. This needs to be someone with a couple decades’ experience at least. Steady, sharp, flexible, all of that. Age discrimination, but ... eh.”
“No, I agree. On the other hand, you don’t need a forty-year pro who’s run a Fortune 500 outfit — yet!”
He laughed loudly at that.
I continued, saying, “And I don’t know if you need a guy who’s run something the size you’ll be next year. You haven’t, after all. You need an entrepreneur. Like you said: steady, sharp, flexible. Old enough to look the part, young enough to go with the changes. You don’t need a tech guy, but he’s gotta be able to understand it enough and be comfortable speaking to nerds and business guys on equal terms.”
“I ... like that. I like that a lot,” he said. “It agrees with what I’ve been thinking, but you nailed it in a minute.”
“Not like I haven’t been thinking about it for a while.”
I did not add, ‘Since before the company was even an idea in your head,’ but that would be factually correct.
“And this is why I want you in the March interviews. Whoever they’re with. We’re hiring the guy. Much more me than you, but if you balk at someone, I need to know why. I might overrule you...”
“And you should! It’s your baby. Godparents make suggestions, not decisions.”
He chuckled.
“Still like that metaphor. But you’ll be one-third of the board, so you’re a pretty active godparent.”
“That ... makes sense,” I said.
It did, no matter how much we just kept pounding nails into the coffin of ‘silent partner.’
“If he’s a president, he should be on the board. I’m on the board. We need a third. Two can overrule one, but if it’s two to one, we need to sit down and figure out why the one isn’t on the same page. If it was just me and him, and we differed, we would have to find consensus, obviously. But it could be the case that both of us are gung-ho because we’re in the trenches here, while you would’ve seen the iceberg from over there.”
“I’ll stay up here in my crow’s nest and watch for icebergs.”
He laughed again.
“I’ll make you come down, sometimes. No reason to blow up your classes — you should get your degree — but...”
“I just nearly made more than my dad makes, mostly from my crow’s nest. I’ll be there when you need it.”
“We’re really going to make a heck of a team on this. And that’s what we’re both saying, I think — whoever the guy is, he’s gotta fit on the team. I need someone we can both talk to more than I need the hottest hotshot. Getting over being on a three-person board with two people who combined are younger than he is — probably — is going to be tricky for a lot of people. Neither of us come off as our age, I think, but ... we are.”
“I agree. Someone who will listen will figure that out. Someone who won’t ... isn’t the guy,” I said.
“We’ll make it happen. Hopefully, by April!”
“That’s the goal!”
“Checks are in the mail,” he said, chuckling. “You should have them in the next few days.”
“Big blowout party on the way!”
He laughed loudly.
“I know you! Ninety percent or more will be invested, and you’ll maybe have another big vacation.”
“Much more us, I agree.”
“We’ll talk within the month. Your Spring Break is...?”
“The week of the 17th to the 21st.”
“I’ll aim for that, unless you’re going somewhere.”
“You figure it out, we’ll make it happen. We’d love to go somewhere, but Austin’s a pretty good destination.”
He laughed and said, “It won’t be the whole week. I’ll make sure it works. Any weeknights good for you, if it’s not that week?”
“Honestly, if I go for it, I can be at your office or a restaurant in Austin by seven any day of the week. Earlier most days, since I have quite a few friends in my classes. If I have to skip my last one, I’ll get three people’s notes the next day.”
“Must be nice! I would’ve done better as a student if I was as organized.”
“That was never you, Michael. This is you.”
Instead of laughing, he paused, then said, “Yeah. It ... really is. One day, I want to spend time at a good MBA program or the like. Learn the theory. But ... I mean, it’s obvious. An undergrad degree was never going to do nearly as much for me as just doing this.”
“I’m not sure what my degree is getting me, but I think ... contacts, networking, a foundation...”
“Those are in the right order,” he said. “I’ll struggle with those for a while. Can’t see either of us ever working for anyone else, though. Or not for long.”
“Pretty sure you’re right about that,” I said.
“Okay! It’s late and I’m not sleeping in my office, so I’ll let you go for now. Unless something just blows up out of nowhere, I’ll give you two weeks at least before I need you here.”
“I appreciate it! But, if it blows up, give me three hours and I’ll be there.”
“Thanks!”
I headed out, shaking my head.
“Bad news?” Angie said.
“Good news. Just ... thought-provoking news.”
“That was Michael Dell?” Cammie said.
“It was.”
She and Mel exchanged a look.
“We’re going upstairs for ... half an hour?”
“Won’t take that long,” I said. “And you don’t have to.”
“This one’s yours,” she said. “We were out of the loop, and we’re good with being mostly still out of the loop. Before you say it, I know you’ll figure out a way for Camel to benefit from it, but that’s MNMS business — or whatever you rename it — and not Dell stuff. We’re more than good.”
Mel said, “Seriously! Three houses! Four, if you count this one. We’re so much more than good, it’s silly!”
“We’ll be back,” Cammie said.
“Thanks, Arnold!” Angie said. Cammie shot her the finger, but was giggling at the same time.
They hugged us all, then headed up the stairs.
“So ... spill!” Jas said.
I went through everything, saving the profit sharing for the last. There were a lot of nods. A few gasps, too. Even Angie confessed that she hadn’t imagined a $75 million sales quarter in the first two years.
“I can’t say for sure that it’s more of a rocket than in my first life,” she said, “But I’m nearly certain it is. This is nuts. The funny thing is, I probably know more about Dell short-term — like, until 1996 or so — but Steve knew the one key thing.”
“That he was at Memorial,” I said.
“Well, that, and the Apple Users Group. Memorial wasn’t the key. It helped,” she said.
“True. Memorial really helped. HAAUG was huge, though,” I said.
“Anyway, it all sounds good,” Paige said.
“You haven’t heard one piece of news yet,” I said.
Three slightly confused faces looked at me.
“The profit-sharing thing is fully established now.”
“Oh!” Angie said. “I totally support that. Makes people happy.”
“Yeah,” Jas said.
“It’s going to make some people in this room really happy,” I said.
They looked at each other.
“It was nice getting something last time,” Paige said.
“We need to go to Jose’s!” Jas said. “It’s been forever.”
“We’re doing as well, then?” Angie said.
“Um. So.”
Jas looked at me and said, “We’re doing better.”
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