The Tale of Timothy (Part 1)

Some of my best lessons in business come from slaps on my face, cold wet towels, and wonton walks of shame. I'm sure to share more of those as we go. For now, I'll start with one of my favorites where prior lessons and preparation came out in our favor.

This has to be my favorite because this was someone who I actually feared and respected as a contender. I thought he was a prototypical CEO type. He checked most of the boxes.

• Male.
• White.
• Middle aged.
• Not too handsome, but not bad looking. He's the kind of man who somehow becomes handsome as he ages after never being considered that when younger (a health skin care regimen really helps).
• Good teeth.
• Smiling crow's feet wrinkles that are designed by God.
• Extremely well spoken, articulate. He can don a Madonna Mic with ease.
• Harvard MBA.
• A man of the outdoors, loves pets, and staged photos doing manly ranch work.
• Masculine, decisive.
• A wife of a few decades, his second wife.
• Has a mistress.
• A fantasy houseboat, with a heart shaped mattress in the master bedroom.
• Worked in sexy startups that built his resume, while sidestepping several C-level jobs as he bust his nuts to get his hard earned CEO pants.

When Timothy became the CEO of one of our largest competitors, I was on alert. I could see something in his eyes that I believed particularly devious. One of my close work peers came to the same inauspicious conclusion about him too, confirming my best:worst fears.

From my take, Timothy was probably about a 9.2/10 on the psychopathy scale.

People like that try to suck up all the air in the room when they first enter the market. Their relative inexperience grants a free pass for the first 100 days, but that veneer is a cover for audaciousness.

Draw the line early.

When Timothy's CEO-ship was officially announced, I could see he was a quick study. His public Amazon wishlist shifted from hifalutin books about Impactful Leadership and Management with an Edge, to books about the new product/market he was pitching in my industry, and even the new lapel pin he wore on his perfect suit. He connected with the who's who and became an overnight armchair expert.

Timothy needed a gut punch. On his first day of work, about 500 of his published partnerships received a carefully written email statement by my company, about our values, what we stand for, and what we reject. Okay, I'm really trying not to make it seem like we "threw down" some unprovoked aggressive action. This was like a statement that we are committed to things everyone can agree with – but those things were nonsense commitments to spotlight vulnerabilities to Timothy's company.

An unfortunate analogy

I'll use an analogy. Your competitor's product is a high resolution micro-DSLR camera that simultaneously uploads your videos and pictures to your cloud storage system.

I sell a simple video camera that's really easy to use.

I send out a press release statement/email to all of their 3rd party partners, noting our support for user's photo privacy. I state that we don't believe in selling or siphoning our customer's private picture and video data details when they manually upload videos to our server.

Making people ask the right -- or wrong -- questions.

When you outwardly state that you don't do something, the natural response people ask is "well then, who does?" And they need to have somewhere for them to point and question. You're not at fault for what dots they connect from a mere marketing statement about what you alone simply don't do.

Well, Timothy's day started well. The people I emailed responded with some questions, requesting more details about privacy, of which I gave none because I didn't have that unequivocal certain knowledge. The people I emailed forwarded my email to Timothy's company. Timothy's little minions replied to the firestorm stating that they have a secure product and follow their (verbose) terms and conditions to the letter. That didn't sound like a denial, did it?  My instincts may have been correct, though. The credit only goes to Occam.

And no I don't actually run a business that sells cameras.

Several recipients actually forwarded Timothy's responses and replies to ask me to fact check them – which of course I couldn't respond with anything real but only restate our position. This experience created an unexpected business opportunity where the people I emailed were asking if they could connect to our product because of our commitment to user privacy. Unfortunately we didn't have that capability but it was quite powerful.

Welcome to the Club, Timothy.

Lesson

When a qualified opponent is preparing to battle you, you can let them dictate the rules of their game, or you can have a transient person piss on their red carpet. The goal is to make their day does not go as planned.

Use covert virtual arson to disrupt their day and make them paranoid. It works well with a more cold and curious person.

Use subtle virtual arson (following all laws) to get in their head a little bit.

With Timothy, I saw a smiling smart sociopath with a clear goal. He was too quick of a study and his ego fueled his vision of success. His goal would negatively impact my company and make my days more difficult. Striking first ended up being a good move.

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