Exit Stage Right

“Eric, join us in the conference room with the other directors please”, asked my CMO at the now defunct company Impower out of Princeton NJ. This meeting was how the company was having cash flow issues and the CEO wanted all of the directors to take a 20% across the board pay-cut.

Well, my mom didn’t raise a complete fool and I neglected to volunteer for the pay cut, but the company was in such dire straits that they cut my salary anyway. “Of course it was by accident”, the CFO explained to me as he reversed the problem.

“Enough is enough and my time with this .com is over”, as I confessed to one of my employees Angela E. So, like any good job hunter with no severance and a need to move fast, I went to Monster.com and submitted my resume on a job. It was a lark, but the job description went like this:

VP Online Advertising
DLJdirect
Weehawken, NJ
Pay: Big salary+bonus
(you didn’t think I’d actually reveal my comp, did you?)

You know what, I got the job after our HR director Lauren T. pulled my resume out of the scrap heap and walked it into the then current CMO, Debra Isenberg. Debra picked up the phone and asked me “What the hell are you doing at Impower?” and my answer was trying to get out.

Well, a few interviews later I landed a job with CSFBdirect, which was rebranded from DLJdirect the day I walked in the door. I couldn’t tell the difference between a money market and a mutual fund, but I knew how the Internet works and I sure as hell could bring in online sales. Unfortunately, the first major problem went like this:

About two weeks into the new job, I was wandering the halls in Jersey City trying to find the men’s room, when Debra stops me and says “Meeting in my office in 5 minutes. There is something wrong with the AOL Personal Finance Deal and you need to fix it!”

DLJdirect signed the AOL deal with the assumption that AOL would bring in accounts just liked it did earlier when the company basically was built on AOL and Prodigy. Well, I couldn’t turn the numbers around because we were up against three other brokers, but I did increase the sales by bending up the conversion into sales from clicks. In the end, we renegotiated the deal and extracted some value from the contract before it was ultimately cancelled over a lunch meeting at a lovely Greek restaurant in lower Manhattan.

In January 2002, having survived a few rounds of layoffs, the Bank of Montreal acquires CSFBdirect and begins the rebranding process to Harrisdirect. I am happy to report at this time, that I do now know the difference between a money market and a mutual fund because I passed my Series 7. We launched an ad campaign in May 2002 around the glorious Elsie Lee online ads (that’s a blog for another day).



Growth was moving along, but by fall 2004 we had an executive management change and over the years lost valuable ground in the share grab game. What was once the leader/inventor of online brokerage was now far behind others. Finally, when it looked like the business finally changed for the better, Harrisdirect was acquired by another online brokerage firm.

What went wrong you ask? I guess as an online advertising person you would say, “sure it was a lack of spending in advertising to generate the accounts”, but that’s not the correct read on the situation.

Nothing went wrong at all.

First, the product that was built was best in class. Even at the end we won #1 Discount Brokerage Firm from SmartMoney in August 2005. You know what else was built, a great customer service team that not only spanned the actual client services team, but also permeated through marketing, product, trading, compliance, legal, and operations. Finally, it had an unbelievably great team of people, people that I will truly miss who really tried to make a difference.

In the end, why do you go to work each day for a corporation? Is it to change the world for the better? How about, promote a product you are very proud of? How about just something simple as, I need to do something and I may as well get paid.

You see, 15 years in the corporate world taught me a few things. One of them is, you need to get high enough up the food chain to protect yourself and really make a difference. Even a Managing Director at Harrisdirect wasn’t high enough (not bad for a 10 year veteran of the telecom world huh?) because you can be let go in the end.

So, you know what you are left with if you can’t get high enough in the corporate world? Friends, family, memories, hopefully some cash, and integrity. Nothing wrong with that.

Nothing went wrong at all. In the end, consolidation will continue just like it has in the telecom world where SBC can swallow up my former company AT&T.

As you might have guess by now, today was my last day at Harrisdirect after 5 years of hoofing it into Jersey City NJ. The one thing I won’t miss is that awful commute. You know it is not so weird, not being employed by corporate America. In fact, it is a relief.

Thanks for the memories everyone. Thanks to Scott A, Lauren T, John C, Charlotte F and the rest of the crew that spent this afternoon drinking with me in Baja.

If you want to find me, you should know by now where I’ll be. I’ll be right where I’ve always belonged; here on the Internet.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric