June 5, 2005 – Making up Lost Time

June 5, 2005 – Making up Lost Time

I mentioned LA in my previous entry and stated that he was a Greenwich Village Bohemian. After closing his bar in the village and getting a nine-to-five job at Electronics magazine, he converted to capitalism with a vengeance, as if he were trying to make up for lost time—he was in his forties then, ten years ahead of me in chronological age, ten years behind his peers in attaining material wealth and position in the world. I suspect that was what drove him once he joined the world of big business and saw the proliferation of wealth being generated in the high-tech world of Silicon Valley. There was a gold rush going on and he had missed it as he contemplated the meaning of life. The time for reflection and contemplation was over. It was time to make some money, a name for himself, and enjoy the spoils of commercial power in that order before he had to retire.

When LA took the chief editor position at Design magazine in New Jersey, he began to recruit editors from Electronics magazine. SK followed him over as did LM, a wonderful Italian woman, an engineer—the one (if not only) woman editor at Electronics back then. Another technical editor at Electronics, MR also came over as did others over time, but this was the core group. SK and LM became managing editors and MR became one of the technology editors at Design. With this group from Electronics, familiar with his working style and what he was trying to accomplished, LA could leave the business of producing competent, credible editorial to an experienced staff and he could go off and begin to wrench market share from the magazine that had brought him into the business and created the reputation that enabled him to snatch the top editorial position at Design. After all, it would take forever to move up the ranks at Electronic to the top position—too many others with more seniority standing in his way.

But the top spot in editorial was not the position LA was after. That would make his reputation. What he wanted was to be the publisher of Design. That’s where the money was. That’s where he could enjoy the spoils of power. Moreover, while an editor he had observed the publishers of both Electronics and Design. His observations told him that neither was terribly competent: neither understood the technology that was covered in the publications they managed and neither understood how to use that editorial to garner increased advertising dollars. It would only be a matter of time before he would usurp the publisher of Design. One bad year and the old boy would be gone.

An Irishman I’ll call Mul owned the publishing company that produced Design when LA joined. Besides Design, Mul owned two other magazines; both published monthly, one covering radio communications and the other personal computers. Both were prospering: the former supported by the military aerospace industry and the latter funded by the proliferating number of new companies entering the personal computer market—one sales lady BG who started as a lowly telemarketer, became, within a matter of months, the top sales person inside of Mul’s company all by finding the next new start-up, getting their business, and servicing them as they grew and placed even bigger orders. I mention the personal computer publication because LA overlooked the great growth potential of this emerging market segment, opting to stay with Design, then considered Mul’s cash cow, rather than attempting to either expand Design to catch the PC wave or create a spin out publication that would do so—forgive the Monday morning quarterbacking.

LA’s patience paid off. Within a year of joining Design, the old publisher resigned or was fired and Mul promoted LA to the position, in the process, boosting his salary considerably and creating a lucrative incentive program based on expanding the magazine advertising pages. His departure left a hole in the editor position that offered LA his first tough decision: picking his replacement. Wisely he chose LM, thus making her the first woman editor of any publication at the time. It was inspired for a number of reasons. One was that most media buyers were women and Design’s sales force could use her gender as yet another reason to consider Design—a progressive publication, in tune with the time—over its rivals. A second was she was the best qualified among all those LA brought over from Electronics. She understood the realities of publishing—advertising paid the cost of editorial, while knowing the propriety of publishing content that provided value to the reader rather than serving the interest of advertisers. Knowing how much to grant the latter while preserving the value to the former, took someone who understood the unspoken rules of trade publishing. LA knew LM understood the game and could be counted on to aid the sales process not impede it as the editors at Electronics were inclined to do.

LA had no experience driving a sales force but he knew how to position and market the magazine to advertisers. What he needed was a right hand man who had such experience and was willing to use him as his Sancho Panza. He found it in BL, a consummate salesman who had a record of success that went back over three decades if not longer. BL had no heart for the top job and he had an aversion for Mul. He was a man looking to sell his highly appreciated home in Los Alto, California and retire to Pacific Grove in the outskirts of Monterey. However, before his last bow he wanted to top off his next egg and LA was the means to that end. Tall and willowy, for such a big man—slightly over six foot with long legs a long distance runner would envy, BL was the sort of person who easily ingratiated himself with acquaintances as well as strangers he met. With those he knew he was a very physical man, a firm handshake with the right hand, while the left hand clasped the shoulder or elbow of the one he was greeting. He knew who would welcome such physical contact and who wouldn’t and he never got the two confused. Once beyond the greeting BL immediately took his cohort into his confidence looking into their eyes and telling them something he was sure they would want to hear, a new joke, a juicy piece of gossip about someone of interest to the person, news of a competitor or rival. BL knew each of his prospects likes and dislikes, their strengths and weaknesses, and very often their darkest secrets—who was sleeping with who, who had a drug problem, who was having marital problems… information indispensable to successfully closing a piece of business. He had a deep voice that self-assuredly boomed when he spoke, but could be moderated to a whisper for conveying a message intended only for the listener.

LA lacked this wealth of knowledge about the various buyers and relied heavily on BL. However, LA was no novice in the ways of influencing others. He had many of the same attributes. He would use physical contact as a way of building bonds. In nearly every meeting I attended with LA, he would at some point lay a hand on the shoulder of someone—man or woman—seated or standing in the meeting. The gesture had no other significance than the display of familiarity between LA and whomever he was touching. Like BL, he knew who among those around him welcomed the touch and those who would have been repelled by it.

In stature, LA was a bit shorter, perhaps half a foot shorter, than BL. The two of them, heads together in conversation, for all the world looked like father and son. The gray-haired older man talking earnestly to the younger LA, always showing the deference of employee to boss, though LA would never had demanded such a display—he was a New York liberal who eschewed all such trapping of power. When I first met LA he had the beginnings of a paunch that comes with middle age. When he spoke he would absent-mindedly run his hands through his salt and pepper dark hair, always worn longer than anyone on Wall Street would deem appropriate, but his bohemian friends would view it as conservative. He had a stutter; though I never got the sense of tension one usually gets when listening to someone speak with a stutter. When a stutter was about to affect a word he was about to utter, he would will himself to suppress it and complete the word a moment or two later as if he had deliberately paused for effect. Over time, the stutter nearly went away; certainly the number of times it occurred during public speaking lessened.

LA had a hedonistic appetite for life and he indulged it entertaining customers. One of BL’s biggest challenges was to keep LA’s appetite in check so that it never became apparent to Mul, a feat he accomplished with finesse. A recovering alcoholic BL shunned all alcohol and drugs and managed to overcome the constant temptations around him, that could have caused him to backslide. He won my undying admiration for his strength of character. Their partnership would end two years after it had begun. BL had reached his retirement age and in the process had help LA exceed his sales goals each year. He could hang up his salesman’s suit and head off into a succession of fog-obscured sunsets in Pacific Grove and interrupted by days of golf and volunteer docent duty at the Monterey Aquarium. LA would find BL’s equal shortly afterwards in another man who rightfully fit the label of Sancho Panza.