Letting Go

 

On this day, 30 years ago, I let go of the product and the company I worked to build over the previous 7 years. The stress was killing me, and I decided that I would either sell the company or walk away from it. Fortunately, a buyer appeared and the rest, as they say, is history. So, for the last 30 years I have been relatively stress free, a condition I recommend wholeheartedly.

While the first several years after the sale of the company was a period of spending money on toys (Ferraris, airplanes, etc) and travel and parties and homes, that lifestyle was simply not me, although I gave it a good try.

Now my life is minimalist and sustainable, and I feel much more comfortable with who I have become. More importantly, I am truly at my best when I am helping others become their best. That typically involves helping first time entrepreneurs, founder/CEOs, succeed with their business adventures.

TeleMagic was the product I invented in 1985. It was the first of a new class of software the would eventually be called "Contact Management" and currently called "Customer Relationship Management" (CRM). There are a ton of products and companies in this industry, which today accounts for hundreds of billions in value. My company Remote Control International, was the first to enter the industry, we were also the first to exit the industry. This happened in 1992, several years before the Internet, which really exploded the CRM software industry.

I look back in wonder at how it was possible to build such a product and company, starting with zero cash, zero investors, no co founders, no loans, and not even a credit card. It was bootstrapped the whole way… I was dead broke the day I started out, and dead broke the day before the sale, having put every dime of profit back into the company. If the sale had not gone through, I would have just walked away from it all just to survive.

I'm glad things turned out the way they did. It has been a most extraordinary adventure!

I was lucky, and I had help from some good people who I remember with an enormous sense of gratitude.