Louis Barkan: Phoenix Rising (Arizona State University)
"My decision to pursue an MBA was not one about which I deliberated excessively when life demanded a call to action."
A fire burns in the desert, all day long and through the night. The city and I share a dream. Phoenix Rising.
Long before Bank One Ballpark installed its absurdly gratuitous eyesore, a spool (spa/pool) in deep right, the land of the city of Phoenix was inhabited by the Hohokam Indians, who had cultivated the area by creating an extensive series of canals to irrigate the desert. A drought wiped them out by the mid-1400s. But, about 400 years later, John Swilling was inspired to deliver once again life to the area of sun-baked rock that now is the sixth-largest city in the country, a golf/resort mecca, and an established manufacturing base for several multibillion-dollar global concerns. His friend, Darrell Duppa, suggested they name the place Phoenix, for as in the myth, in which a great firebird lives and dies amid flames only to ascend again from its ashes, so too would a great civilization arise where another had died. Since my life was thrown into upheaval three years ago, I have had the Phoenix myth in mind and envisioned myself, out of necessity, another of the great firebirds who must rise again.
My decision to pursue an MBA was not one about which I deliberated excessively when life demanded a call to action. In fact, after doing a thorough cost-benefit analysis of Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, it was a pretty easy decision to make and one made with a high degree of confidence. The funny thing is that I had spent much more energy and time ruminating and debating the value of law school vs. B-school, or for that matter any additional school, while working in the film business and planning contingency plans in and around the highs and lows of that industry. After 11 years in the film biz (the last exhilarating two spent attempting to produce my own films), all of the projects in which I personally invested so much and worked so hard to create were dead for many different reasons, and to make matters worse, I was flat broke and needed a job. I thought about working again as an assistant at an agency or production company, but the idea of that grind, a thankless one in many instances, offered very little appeal. Moreover, I was stung and embarrassed by the rejection, more than a little embittered with my failure and wanted a new opportunity in a new place. I thought very seriously then about going back to school, but I didn't want to take on any debt and felt I needed a grounded work experience to get back on my feet, develop new skills and spring a new career. The only problem was I really didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do, and I found myself at the proverbial crossroads, befuddled and straining mightily to see a sign. I finally got an answer when my father called.
Thirty-six years ago, my father and grandfather started a janitorial/industrial supply business. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, they were able to build a successful business that provided well for their families. My father, whom I love and respect deeply, is an expert businessman and salesman. Part of his formula for success in life and in business extends from the philosophy that a problem, or failure, really is just an opportunity for success. This was something that he drilled into the heads of me, my brothers (I have three ?Andrew, Alex and Ryan) and the employees who worked for him. As it turned out, he had a compelling business opportunity for me.
The majority of our family business was focused on government sales, in particular to the Department of Defense, for which we had designed and delivered a range of proprietary products. He had just teamed up with an "800-pound gorilla" office products/commodities retailer that was trying to enter the growing business of providing privatized supply/logistics solutions to the federal government. Our family business had extensive experience in this field, and together, my father and this "800-pound gorilla" successfully pitched and won a bid to provide goods and services to one of the largest military training facilities on the West Coast that served close to 60,000 soldiers and dependents. My dad wanted me to assume the critical role of managing our sales and marketing efforts associated with that contract. Additionally, I would serve a similar function in support of our responsibilities to a separate joint military-marketing agreement our company had with a major global paint manufacturer.
While I was at first a little daunted by the task at hand, I nonetheless remained confident in my general abilities and eagerly looked forward to the opportunity. I'd be able to stay in Southern California, earn a decent living, and apply the strong entrepreneurial ambitions I cultivated in the film business to a more traditional business sector. It also felt immensely good to be able to contribute positively to our family's good fortune by growing sales and providing an exceptional level of service to our clients. Uncommonly high quality service was a cornerstone of our company's success since day 1, and I was enraptured with assuming this role and continuing to serve as a beacon for the company values which my grandfather and father articulated when they first incorporated. In fact, I saw that superlative aspect as one of our fundamental and inimitable competitive advantages in a business and world that, to my eye, paid only cheap lip-service to such a standard. I soon moved from my small Beachwood Canyon apartment in the Hollywood Hills to an ocean-view condo on the Del Mar coast.
The business was good, and I began enjoying my life in ways that I had not experienced throughout my stay in Los Angeles. Not that one was better than the other; my new life was just satisfying in a different, steadier manner. I love Los Angeles (except for the traffic of course) and all of the cultural value it offers, but the life of an independent film producer was a giant continuum of speculative effort that offered little and infrequent positive feedback or measurable progress. If you haven't taken OB yet, you will learn that clear and constant feedback is essential for creating vital educational and motivational processes which are fundamental in enhancing performance. In my new life, I found that I relished daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly sales results, for they gave me a clear indication of my progress as well as pointed to areas of my work that needed attention and improvement. Further, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to end a long, hard day's work by reaping the intrinsic satisfaction of having helped customers who sincerely appreciated the expertise, support and very high levels of customer service that I and the company delivered. As I said, I was able to see our measurable progress, and we progressed very well, helping this "behemoth" build its most successful retail outlet in the country. As we looked toward the future, everyone in our company felt a swell of pride and accomplishment as we sensed a new positive evolution taking shape in our company.
Even within our family dynamic, inspiring changes occurred. The fact that we worked so closely together inherently brought our relationship closer, and therefore another very positive attribute of the job was that I was able to re-establish a closer bond with him and the rest of my family. My mother and two of my three brothers also were involved in the business though they were based in Norfolk, Va., at the company headquarters.
Things progressed smoothly for about a year and a half as my education in this business grew, and I honed my skills. It also was a great honor to serve respectfully the needs of the military as it ramped up for an Iraq deployment. Everyone contributed admirably, and a general feeling of singular and selfless purpose permeated our tasks and activities.
To maintain our position and properly service the contract which we helped design and win, our company was faced with having to spend heavily in transaction-specific investments which made us vulnerable in the event that our retailing partner decided to exploit the opportunity. Despite the advice of others who knew of the perils inherent in partnerships between large companies and small, we decided the benefit was worth it, and we accepted the risk and proceeded forward. The aforementioned goodwill cracked when I discovered certain threatening and opportunistic actions that this particular "gorilla" company was taking against ours, their partner. Intense conflict emerged, and things heated up pretty quickly. Though it would be inappropriate to go into detail here, suffice to say, this discovery quickly brought our relationship to an end.
As misfortune would have it, our company experienced a few other critical downturns over the next two years, and we soon found ourselves vulnerable and, like the Hohokam, struggling for our very lives. Business troubles aside, my mother was then diagnosed with carcinoid syndrome, a very rare form of cancer, and the disease took its toll on her and us during this very tough time.
However, under the exceptional leadership and courage offered by my father, who acted in a manner that I imagine a Hohokam chief might have embodied, our family and company fought valiantly for the next year, with integrity, and to exhaustion, in order to survive. We weren't just fighting for jobs, we were fighting for a tradition, a certain way of living, a legacy. The company offered the kind of life that was worth fighting for. People developed long-standing relationships and shared lives there. I had known some of the people who worked there my entire life, people who were at my bris and had held me when I was in diapers, people who celebrated my bar mitzvah, and who loved my grandfather and stood with me at his funeral. But in the end, no act of will or amount of prayer would provoke a miracle. We had to close the doors, and like the Hohokam, whose name means "vanished ones" in the Pima dialect, we found ourselves fumbling through the dust looking for things that once were ours but disappeared.
I went home to Virginia, and the next three months were grueling physically and mentally as we closed the business and cleared out the buildings. Toward the end one day, after hauling out the collected debris and breaking down the last of the metal storage bins in the warehouse, my brothers and I came across one of our old company signs that had the original company logo and motto emblazoned on it.
That sign must have been over 20 years old. It's very likely that shortly after that sign was first painted and hung, my father would have walked into the building on a Saturday morning to wrap up some business from the previous week. He would have walked in through the warehouse, and the building would have been quiet and dark. He would have been carrying my youngest brother in his arms, and he would have flipped on the lights, looked proudly up at the sign and thought optimistically about the future. My brother wouldn't have known what it meant then. As we stood there huddled around that yellowed and cracked sign, the irony struck all of us as we read, "Quality Service is Our Business."
The Phoenix metaphor aside, the survival instinct is a strong one, and in the aftermath of all of this, I needed to reinvent myself. The fact is that despite the tragedy, I learned many invaluable lessons, and though I was a little beaten up, I realized that I had a great amount of strength and wasn't licked. The old maxim "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is indeed a vital perspective. Indeed, as my father suggests, what is a mistake or failure but an opportunity to create something good?
A few months after we closed our business, my girlfriend, who works as an H.R. executive for a global manufacturer, was offered a new job in the Phoenix area. It was a great opportunity for her to work in a new business unit, learn a new skill set and move her career forward. The move also afforded me the opportunity to look seriously at business school as the best way to acquire the necessary tools to fully utilize the lessons I learned and harness my talents in order to create a new life and fulfilling career. As I said earlier, when life demanded a call to action, the decision was an easy one to make. Originally I focused my inquiry mainly on Arizona State University and Thunderbird, and found that both schools had compelling and well-regarded programs. However, after many interviews with staff and alumni from both schools who graciously gave of their time, I confidently decided upon ASU's W.P. Carey School of Business. The decision had little to do with the fact that William Polk Carey and my great-grandfather, Edward Polk Merritt, shared the same middle name. Rather, I felt that the W.P. Carey program, which is home to Edward Prescott (2004 Nobel Prize winner), would best be able to deliver to me a solid business education and foundation on which to build. Further, I felt very strongly about taking advantage of the opportunity to pursue a dual concentration, coupling the expertise and renown of its nationally recognized supply-chain program with a strong strategic marketing education in order to expand my skill set.
And, like John Swilling, I too find myself in Phoenix and inspired to restore life and deliver prosperity. When I finally made the decision to embark on this path, I realized that the desert is as good a place as any (if not the best place) for the journey to begin.
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