The Price of Success

I was dying to find out what he was thinking. You couldn’t blame me. Craig should have been ecstatic. I know I would have been. He had made it: he had conceived and built one of the largest e-tailers on the planet, from scratch. Craig had finished building his grand home on a knoll overlooking the Blue Ridge. With his beautiful wife and two great boys, his life seemed perfect. What’s more, the monkey was off his back: he had retired as CEO and had taken our company public. He had raised more money than any ten companies should be able to spend. Yet he wasn’t celebrating. Craig saw it in my eyes and motioned for me to sit down. As I walked into his office, the phone rang. His speakerphone was a modern octopuslooking contraption that sat in the middle of an antique table. The table itself wasn’t very big, maybe four feet across. It had belonged to his children’s one-hundred-year-old great grandfather. He walked over and pushed a button. “Hello, this is Craig.” “Howdy, pardner!” the voice boomed out of the conference phone. “Hi, Bill.” Craig brightened, recognizing his friend’s voice. “How are ya and where are ya?” “Just leaving the 18th green at Hilton Head,” Hunt said sheepishly. “Although I’d rather be there with you.” Even with the crackle of Bill’s cell phone, we could detect a twinge of emotion in his voice. “You’re here in spirit, Bill,” Craig grinned. “We’re a team. This would never have happened without all five of us.” “You’re right,” Bill responded. “We built it together.” Craig leaned forward in his chair. “You and I go back a long way, Bill. We’ve done some pretty spectacular stuff together.” “That’s for sure. As I played these last few holes, I kept thinking about that. Remember flying down to the Price Club? It all started there.” “We’ve got our roots in retail. We owe a lot to Sol Price. We copied the things that worked for him, and improved the things that didn’t. Tell you what, if the folks driving our stock up today knew half of what you and I know about retail, we’d be in fine shape.” “So tell ’em, Craig,” Bill said. “And don’t give Sol all the credit. Most of what makes Value America great we brewed up ourselves. Remember that trip to San Diego with Scott Chrisman when you told him how you learned to sell? It was on that same trip that you explained how we were gonna change retail. You called it a retail revolution. Remember?” “Yeah. Like it was yesterday,” Craig said, drifting off....