Was that guy really the mayor?

A girlfriend of mine is an executive with an international company. Last week, she showed me a memo from their president and asked for my thoughts on it.

It announced that the corporation was shifting its performance measurement paradigm to (insert an acronym – doesn’t really matter what). I smiled and said it was great marketing. Invent some “new” management tool that is little more than common sense, construct some pitch as to why all others are now obsolete and make this appear to create instant success with little effort or pain, except for a big pricetag. Her president had taken the bait.

Everyone wants the instant success, whether it’s miracle diet pills, no-investment real estate scams or whatever. People want it so badly that they’re willing to overlook the obvious disconnects in the logic. Like, if you can make millions and millions with your real estate system, why are you selling courses for a few hundred bucks? Because I just want to share my success. Right.

Humorist/musician Henry Phillips is a very accomplished guitarist. He always gets questions about his “secret,” from people who hope it’s something short of have having to practice hours on end, day after day. So, he wrote a song about how there should be pills that make you a guitarist. The lyrics are hilarious, tying different color pills to what kind of music you want to play. Great tongue-in-cheek humor.

Everybody has their own benchmarks. This brought Mark to mind, the principal investor in my first business venture. I had already pounded the pavement, business plan in hand, seeing a number of capitalists. I had sat in offices larger than my living room, on chairs that cost more than my car. So, I was totally unprepared to meet Mark.

I flew to the city where he was located, rented a car and followed the directions to an aging warehouse district. Had I misunderstood or taken a wrong turn? I opened the door under the proper address number and entered a small, spartan waiting room. A woman led me down some long hallways into an old warehouse.

In the middle of the empty floor were a battered wooden table & chair, trash can and a two-drawer file cabinet. And, Mark.

After a skein of carefully coifed executive types in Saville Row suits, Mark looked like the guy who came to fix your furnace. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt. I noticed his watch band was repaired with a dirty strip of adhesive tape. This guy had a net worth exceeding $60 million and interests in dozens of companies?

I introduced myself and spread my plans, charts and financial projections on the table, launching into my presentation. Mark listened maybe eight seconds and swept his hand in a dismissive motion. “Tell me about yourself.”

I started reeling off academic degrees, employment history, etc. Again, the hand. “Start at the very beginning and make it a narrative. I don’t want baseball card stats.”

So, I started at the beginning. He stopped me a number of times for elaboration on reasons, feelings and other gut level things, and fast forwarded me past statistics, accomplishments and other hard facts. It took almost two hours.

Then, I reverted to the business plan, but got the hand again. This was getting tiresome. “I don’t invest in numbers and paper. I invest in people.”

“Then we’re done?”

“No, one more thing.” He reached into the trash can and pulled out a basketball. “Shoot me for lunch.”

There was no basket. Just a rusty pipe running across the high ceiling. The object was to shoot the ball over the pipe, through the opening created by the two beams the pipe was strapped to. Mark obviously practiced this a lot and I bought lunch. The first of many lunches I would buy during our association. Mark never carried a wallet. Probably explained why he had $60 million.

Before we left for lunch, I stacked up the paperwork and tried to hand it to him. “Don’t need that.” Probably explained why he needed only a two-drawer cabinet.

Over lunch, I asked him how he would measure how we were doing if he didn’t have the plan to compare against results. “I’ll know. I have my own ways of measuring.”

“Such as?”

“You’ll see.”

Six months after I got the company going, Mark called. “I’ll be in Cincinnati in a month. I want you to introduce me to the president of the largest bank in town, the CEO of the largest company and the mayor.”

By this time, not much about Mark surprised me. I figured this was one of his measurements of progress. Not just if I had established myself enough to set up the meetings, but he would be reading their perceptions of me and my company.

It presented no problems. I knew from the conception that contacts within the power base were a key to success and had networked well. I had already had my knees under the lunch table with each of these men several times.

The meeting with the mayor would be a breakfast at an informal downtown restaurant. I met Mark at his hotel and we walked to it, arriving before the mayor. We chatted a bit, until the mayor arrived.

The mayor was a fairly young man, who looked even younger. The bowtie, pastel shirt and home-cut hairstyle reinforced the youthful image. He came over to the table and introduced himself. Mark looked him up and down and arched an eyebrow at me. I ignored it.

We talked until the waitress arrived. The mayor asked her if she had any sweetened cereals. “Like what?”

“Frosted Flakes, Fruit Loops; something like that.” Mark arched an eyebrow at me. This was getting as old as the hand gesture.

“I’ll check.”

We talked some more and the mayor excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he was out of range, Mark leaned across the table. “Fruit Loops?”

“Hey, what can I say? The guy likes sugar.”

“Level with me. Is this guy really the mayor?”

A few days later, I picked up the phone in my office. “Was that guy really the mayor?” No, “Hello.” No, “This is Mark.” Just, “Was that guy really the mayor?” I would get this phone call on virtually a monthly basis for the next five years. But, this measurement milepost had gone very well, and that’s what counted.

Yes, he really was the mayor. One of the better ones we’ve had, I might add. But that was about twenty years ago, when the best and brightest still ran for public office. Today, he’s a very successful real estate developer, as distanced from the muck and mire of politics as one of them can be. And, he doesn’t sell real estate courses, as far as I know.

Today, I answered the phone in my office. “Was that guy really the mayor?” Mark was calling to offer the greetings of the season. Or maybe to see if I’d change my story. We sold the business a long time ago and I hadn’t heard from him in a few years. It was good to hear his voice and be reminded that there are many ways to measure things.

This was a lesson that was to serve me well in business and other pursuits. The bare statistics don’t always tell the story. And, of course, good people generate good results.