A client came to me after surviving a recent crisis. He wanted to move his business in a different direction. He felt reasonable uncertainty about it, and he’d been attending seminars and consulting a psychotherapist, but it wasn’t clicking with him. He sought me out to find an integrative approach to consider personal aspects with business and employee context. That’s not an unusual case.
As an aside, I’d like to point out that people with success under their belt are often the most reticent to effect changes. Logically, it tracks; if your previous methods have proven successful, why alter them? Frequently, there’s an almost mystic belief that changing anything is the fast track to calamity. On the other hand, middle managers and aspiring entrepreneurs are typically more malleable and open, even eager.
Psychotherapy has a marked disadvantage as a service. It’s treated more like car troubles than medicine; nobody comes for their annual psychotherapy checkup. They show up when something is broken and nothing they’ve tried fixed it. That said, it’s something we all do even though it laughs in the face of common sense. I can’t be too judgmental about it.
So this client hails from the restaurant world, dealing in popular frozen products. Their production facility was cozy but had well-established logistics. Their teams were focused on the right tasks, really emphasizing customer relations and networks. Confidentiality demands my intentional vagueness, but there’s a fair chance you’ve seen their products in large retail chains and dining establishments.
It was a remarkable accomplishment! Many of us would happily consider this the capstone to a perfect career. However, while this was his achievement, it wasn’t his dream.
That dream? Opening his own restaurant.
The story is so ideally American that it seems scripted: A Ukrainian immigrated to this country as a teen, integrated with our culture while sharing a bit of his own, and used the capital from his enterprise to open a solid eatery in New York. Not just one, but three eateries. He’s not chasing Michelin Stars, he just wants to serve good, wholesome food. And by no coincidence, he had an array of frozen products, ice cream, and restaurant supplies at the ready. The synergy was kismet.
The CEO was skeptical. Fairly, at that. Costs were higher than savings could cover. Calculations were not precise enough. Funds needed to shift from the old business to the new business. His CEO discouraged him by proposing an alternative strategy. It’s complicated, but it meant a little more investment and a lot less restaurants in the immediate future.
He wasn’t convinced. Between personal events in his life and a drive for novelty from dopamine sensitivity, his enthusiasm wasn’t going to be quelled. Not by his CEO or his partner. These appeals only entrenched him further, with stubbornness pushing the restaurant project straight ahead.
For context, you should know this was taking place on the cusp of the oncoming pandemic. You’ll understand why later.
Money’s borrowed and spent on rent, renovations, permits, approvals, and every other restaurant expense you’d expect. He pulled staff from the old company to the new one and then distanced himself from it. The time, money, and love he’d invested in that previous business felt like an afterthought and alienated those workers into silent protest. Then he spent more money finding the right chef and hired the appropriate staff to fit that new menu.
Ultimately, he’d accrued about a million dollars of additional expenses.
Things became more dire by the day. Open employee resistance became silent resistance. On the surface that sounds better, but it’s much, much worse. Loud resistance is passionate and charged with desire for change and agency. Silent resistance becomes low embers stoked by repeated subjugation in ashes of contempt. His mistook this as employee incompetence. They lacked the vision of brand integration. Things looked grim before, but Covid’s arrival closed these restaurant doors before they had a chance to open.
Could his strategy have succeeded under different circumstances? It’s impossible to say. What’s indisputable was his obsessive pursuit of novelty in the form of this restaurant.
How did this happen?
Through our work together, he told me about a lively kindergarten boy, bullied relentlessly by the slug children from wealthy families. They teased him, cornered him, and beat him. But instead of taking it, he fought back. True, he caught quite the beatdown, but he held his own. He didn’t cry and he didn’t quit. His family praised him for it. A lesson was learned that day; a lesson establishing a foundational problem solving pattern pervading to the present day.
Anxiety from family issues made him hyper-focused on pursuing that dream of his, and the choir of dissenting voices felt just like being cornered by those bullies again. He wouldn’t surrender to them before, and he wouldn’t surrender now. That manifested with a raised voice, dug-in heels, and dogged determination.
But these objectors weren’t the monsters from his kindergarten. They were his associates, partners, and close friends. A captive of his developmental pattern, he did what he’s always done. Frequently, it worked! There’s a great deal of success attributed to that mentality. Not this time, though.
It was a costly error. He’s still doing well, albeit recoiled to his original business functioning at about 60% capacity, but there’s no restaurants in his life. Earlier, I’d mentioned the difficulty of working with clients with a history of success, and he and I would both like you to learn from his example. Stimulus elicits response, and your automatic patterns are going to spring into action. That’s partly biological, partly environmental. It’s not destiny, and your response is not a foregone conclusion. You don’t have to lose your beautiful dream to learn this lesson.
I want to hear your story, your friend’s story, and your family’s story. Share those right here in the comments section. We’ve seen these tragedies happen too often, and I want every testimonial I can on this page so people can learn from them. We don’t have to repeat each other’s mistakes. You know someone who needs to see this page, so share it with them.
Likewise, if some of this story rings true for you and you can’t figure out how to fix it, talk to me. I do this for a living. I’d like to help if I can.