I Solve Puzzles

Just before the pandemic we sold a majority interest in our company. I was left with a role on the Board and for the first time no day to day responsibilities. With no need to work and in pandemic isolation, my wife bought me a puzzle to put together. Pretty soon we had a rather large stack of puzzle boxes as I was spending a fair amount of time each day solving them.

What I came to realize was that throughout my career I solved puzzles.??Sometimes as a CFO it was solving financial puzzles – creative ways to help a cash poor company survive or managing through inflation and high interest rates in a highly leveraged company. Other times it was assembling technology pieces in novel ways to improve efficiencies. There was one occasion where I had to figure out how to minimize the loss while shutting down a division of a company – selling off product lines, inventory and even partially completed products. Many times I was the person chosen to select and build out new sites - a puzzle to get all of the pieces to fit and on time.

As I review my 40 plus years in business all of the above-mentioned puzzles prepared me well for the ultimate puzzle challenge – starting and building FCR from one tiny call center to a company with an international presence and $100M+ in revenue. Every step of the way there were unique challenges that required novel solutions.??It was a wild ride, my business partner, Matthew Ackak and I experienced “the great recession”, the birth of the gig economy and a massive change in how CX is delivered – IP telephony, email, chat, an ever-changing array to tools, etc.???Through it all we remained flexible, solved the puzzles and thrived.?

There are puzzles yet to solve…I just have to find the right one...