[#2 of 2]

After leaving the PhD program, I muddled along for another couple of years, but was getting nowhere fast. I was frustrated by my lack of direction, and that made me unhappy. I decided to redo an unusual project that I'd been required to do for a class in graduate school. It sounds morbid, but I wrote two obituaries: one that would be appropriate if I got hit by a beer wagon that very day, the other that I’d like to have written for me if I lived another 40 or 50 years. The focus of each obit was fourfold: (a) affiliations (family, friends, volunteer work, church, etc.); (b) personal value; (c) career; and (d) personal fulfillment (often from outside-work activities).

This time I took the 'two-obits project' seriously. By the end of an emotionally draining process that consumed 12-hour days on a Saturday and Sunday, I had learned some things about myself. The biggest takeaway was my discovery that I had a subconscious hankering to write the biography of the founding editor of Esquire magazine, Arnold Gingrich (1903-1976). Without independent sources of income, a non-academic can't write serious biography working for someone else—biography requires enormous blocks of research time in various places—so I was going to have to be self-employed. (My interest in Gingrich is a subject for another time, but it started with fly-fishing.)

I then wrote another document – "Warren Miller's Ideal Job Description," I called it. It focused on the attributes that are my essence—asking good questions, telling a story in writing, wide-ranging curiosity, creative problem-solving, and a dogged work ethic—along with work aspects that I like (freedom to do complex work in creative ways, working at night, having lots of natural light, a generous budget for books) and that I don't like ('routine' tasks in my work, working 8-5, all-politics-all-the-time on the job, being criticized for doing a job faster and better, autocrats, bigots, 'we've-always-done-it-this-way' people, and 'because-I-said-so' bosses).

In hopes of looking like a serious business guy, I sublet a cubbyhole office in the back of a local CPA firm, got a phone, and had some business cards printed. I hung out my shingle as a 'strategy consultant' and waited for something to happen. Not much did. (Marketing obviously wasn't my strong suit. . .then.)

I also played chess over lunch several times a week with one of the staff CPAs there. One day I asked him what he was working on "since it's not tax season." He said he was doing a business valuation of a tony restaurant in another city about 100 miles away.

I asked what that entailed. When I was a CFO, I'd done a few back-of-the-envelope 'valuation' analyses, but nothing serious. He said that the CPA firm would pay me a few bucks if I would do an industry analysis for him. I agreed, and we executed an NDA. Even though I didn't know it, I was starting a new career in a line of work that was going to be a whole lot more interesting and fulfilling than anything I'd done to date.

Well, my colleague had never seen an industry analysis like the one I did. I used Porter's Five-Forces Framework (which is now six forces), along with the concept of 'strategic groups'. The upscale restaurant had only local competitors, so it made no sense to garbage up the analysis with something at the industry level. Analyzing a strategic group is just like analyzing an industry, but with a narrower focus. Information, though, is harder to come by because few local restaurants are publicly held.

[Segue: In trying to guesstimate market share, I used headcount as a proxy for sales. Within an industry or strategic group, there has to be, at some level, a correlation between revenues and full-time-equivalent employees [FTEs]. It will vary from firm to firm because of their view of substituting capital for labor, but the correlation remains.) The strategic-group perspective also uncovers a lot of local and regional oligopolies, which makes competitive analysis even more interesting: The antitrust people at the Department of Justice and at the Federal Trade Commission have largely succeeded in their decades-long competition to try to stomp out oligopolies at the national level: we don't have three car companies any more, nor do we have four TV networks or a limited number of brewers. Anyone who doubts the power of a working oligopoly should pick up a sealed box of dry cereal sometime. Look at the price, and then open the box and ask yourself how they can charge that stratospheric price for a box that's only about half-full and doesn't weigh much more than a clump of feathers.]

Back to my story: My colleague also invited me to accompany him on a 'site visit' where he interviewed each of the key people running the restaurant—head waiter, head chef, sous chef, personnel woman, financial guy, and owner. I was the note-taker. It turned out that the bistro did a good job of identifying and cultivating its best customers. It tracked their visits, the number of people at the table(s) each time, and how much was sold in food and in beverages. In a very tough environment like the restaurant space, this company was doing a ton of things right and turning a hefty profit doing them. I wrote-up the interviews, too. My colleague later printed out an overview of the valuation process for me, so I could get a handle on the workflow.

That was the beginning, nearly 25 years ago. The time has flown by because I love what I do. Even though the 'process' is recurring, I get to play with my 'strategy toys,' so to speak, as well as with those from some other disciplines that I've added to my valuation perspective over the years. Those include industrial organization, evolutionary economics, and organization design. I'm now doing a lot of reading about game theory—and talking to knowledgeable scholars about it, too—to see if and how it might fit in to the work I do. That, in turn, has led me to 'real options', which adds real-world wrinkles to capital budgeting and, by extension, business valuation.

Along the way, I've become a CPA and a CFA charterholder. I'm also an Accredited Senior Appraiser in business valuation (from the American Society of Appraisers). I've had two case studies published in Harvard Business Review, have two books in print, have given invited guest lectures at universities on four continents about the nexus of strategy, evolutionary economics, and finance, and have made almost three dozen presentations at professional conferences. I've also taught Chartered Accountants in Canada and Germany and CPAs in 33 of the United States.

The book on Gingrich? Not yet. I did write a 6,000-word cover story for the American Fly Fisher magazine in 1994 (link: http://bit.ly/AmericasEsquire). I've made several visits to do weeks-long research at the the University of Michigan's Bentley Library where his papers reside. I'll get the book done one of these days. It's Item #1 on my Bucket List.

Takeaways from my experience:
1. It may take a while to find a line of work for which one has true passion.
2. It's good to have experience doing not-fun work for not-fun people.
3. Be prepared for a steep learning curve.
4. Be willing to invest in yourself to enhance your knowledge and skill-sets.
5. Work for which one has passion offers choices in where one can live.
6. One often goes to bed wanting to wake up so one can play some more.
7. If you love what you do, stay committed. Income will take care of itself.

My model for aging is my late grandmother (Cal Berkeley – Class of 1912). Grandmother Miller worked until she was 99 and lived to be 106. Her motto was "Never look back." She didn't. With luck, I'll live at least as long as she did and continue to have great fun doing what I do. I didn't find this calling until I was in my 40s, but at least I found it. Too many people never do. As Thoreau said, most people "live lives of quiet desperation." I used to be one of those and count myself as immensely fortunate that I no longer am.

I hope I haven't anesthetized everyone. Mine has been a circuitous path, but it's led to a level of professional satisfaction and personal happiness that I never thought possible. When I stop to think about it, I'm dumbfounded at my good fortune.

I'm also enormously fortunate to live in a country that allows me to do work for which I have real passion and to be decently paid for doing it. God bless America.