To clarify a few things. . .
February 7, 2010
The Dallas Morning News ran a nice piece about me this morning, but while it was generally correct there were a few errors and omissions. I think my biggest problem with the article was that it failed to mention my current business partner Scott Ryan. Very few entrepreneurs have the ability to succeed without great partners - Richard Branson and Michael Dell may have been able to do it, but not me, I NEED the fellowship of other entrepreneurs to win. I wish I had been able to articulate this better to the reporter.
The biggest error worthy of correction was with the time line. My first venture backed company did fail and I did raise $4MM to buy it out of bankruptcy on September 12th 2001, it didn’t sell to Switch and Data until late 2003 early 2004. The deal to raise the money and buy the assets closed on September 12th 2001 (one day after 9-11). It took a few years to turn my failure into a success. There were a few other errors, but what the article missed was how my partnership with other entrepreneurs have been key, I have never been ’soley’ responsible for my success.
The article touched on my reliance on partners by suggesting, “I’m more effective being part of a leadership team than THE leader.” First and foremost most people don’t realize that my wife, Michele, is perhaps my most important partner (seen to the right). Without her I wouldn’t have had the guts to quit that first job years ago to start living my dream of being an entrepreneur. Michele has been at the heart of every major decision in my personal and business life. To forget to include her ‘partnership’ would be to miss most of the story.
When I put the deal together to turn around LayerOne I became business partners with my lawyer Brandon Freeman. Without his help I doubt I would have had the stomach to guide the company through Chapter 11 and out the other side. While Brandon and I weren’t perfect partners the work we did together built an amazing business in the end.
My partnership with Brandon ended in 2003 when I bought his interest in Architel. It was then when I became partners with Scott Ryan (as seen in the photo above). Brandon and I had invested in Architel along with Scott back in 2001, but it wasn’t until after we began working together on a daily basis that I figured out that Scott and I had a winning combination. We are very different. We share almost none of the same strengths or weaknesses. Our diversity is perhaps our strongest asset.
Over the last seven years Scott Ryan and I have operated Architel, produced a television series, bought a few businesses, invested in several failed startups, started perhaps a dozen companies including Fancast, ServiceGuy, WhiteBox, Big in Japan and ShopSavvy. I am 100% confident that without Scott’s partnership none of this would have been possible. For his name not to appear in the story is a pretty big omission.
