Lessons for an entrepreneur from the Movie : The Firm

Authors - Ajayya Kumar, Mohamad Abou-Zaki & Ghassan Khoury

Do you run a firm? Then The Firm is a must-watch

The Tom Cruise-starrer is an action-packed thriller that will not only leave you biting your nails, it is also one that holds important lessons for budding entrepreneurs

The 1993 movie The Firm is the story of a young ambitious Harvard law graduate who gets a too-good-to-resist offer from a firm. Mitchell McDeere, played by Tom Cruise, jumps at the offer in spite of his wife’s scepticism. She points out that the offer seems too good to be true and that there is something odd about the firm, its working and the language of its people. Mitch nevertheless goes ahead and takes the job. But just as he starts savouring his luxurious life, things go topsy turvy. 

The rollercoaster ride he goes through is an exciting watch that makes us sit on the edge of our seats all along. 

The young lawyer learns a few harsh lessons before he could return to his normal life. What’s interesting about the movie is that it doesn’t talk about the ‘do’s, it rather talks about the ‘don’t’s. And yes, that applies to entrepreneurs too. Let’s take a look at those. 

1. Don’t ignore signs

Mitch’s job offer looked too good to be true because that was indeed the case. Just out of law school and he is offered a outrangeous salary, a big house, a Benz and his education loan paid off. During a company get-together a few weeks before he joins, his wife notices that there is something weird, or to put it more accurately, shady about the firm. It’s an all-white, all-male firm. Nobody is divorced. The spouse of a colleague even tells her that the firm encourages its staff to have children because it promotes stability! How weird is that, right? Well, she feels that, but not him, as he blinded by the temptation of fortune offered by the firm. He goes ahead and takes the job, and before he knows it, his life as he knew it starts coming undone. 

This is an instance as entrepreneurs we are very likely to come across. A partnership offer that sounds fabulous or an investor who seems to come straight from the heavens - it’s hard to resist the lure, right? Well, in business it's important to trust people, but it is equally important  remain sceptical and healthily paranoid. Especially when the warning signs are right in front of you, you should know better than to ignore them entirely.

2. Do not make money your sole objective

Mitch, who grew up in a poor family, is desperate to get out of that state. He is brilliant and hardworking but worn down by poverty. Money is his sole motive at the beginning of the movie. So, without having second thought, he takes the job offered by the same firm which tells his wife she isn’t ‘forbidden’ from working. Money clouds his judgement. 

There is no denying that as entrepreneurs we all chase money and financial success. Our bottom lines are important to us as well as to the wellbeing of those who depend on us. However, money alone shouldn’t be our objective. Remember the values that guided you when you started out, your vision and your mission. Have you adhered to them? If not, it's important that you candidly revisit them, and assess whether you should go back to them. Have a higher purpose in life and hold your focus steady, because if you do, the rest will follow.

3. Don’t compromise on your ethics

Within days of his job at the firm, Mitch comes to know of the tragic death of two of his colleagues. They were not the first ones from the firm to meet a tragic end. It seemed strange that, at barely 45, they all seem to have died when they were making plans to leave the firm. Mitch comes to know that the firm works for the mob sooner than the company intended for him to learn it. The firm’s strategy has been to let people know what's going on only after having given them the taste of a fabulous life: they would be so accustomed to all the luxuries, the private schools and golf courses by then that a different life would have become unthinkable. So, they would compromise on their ethics even if that leaves them unhappy. Even Mitch’s mentor Avery, who was a nice guy at heart, couldn’t let go of the fortunes showered upon, even when he saw that it ruining his personal life and finally resulted in his death. 

Be it the staff of the firm like Avery or the firm itself, the undoing of both was a result of their greed and the compromises they made. Probably in your view, you might only be bending the law and not breaking it, but eventually, your actions will catch up to you and will have consequences that are more far-reaching what you could have imagined. In the firm’s case, it was shut down by the FBI. Treading the right path might sometimes seem hard, but clearing the mess of your misdeeds could be harder. 

4. Don’t wait around till things get worse

Mitch learns about the death of his two colleagues when he and his wife reach the house of Lamar Quinn and find him in his backyard in a preoccupied mood, unmindful of the water from the garden hose drenching his pants. As Lamar tells them about the dead colleague’s children who are only a month older than his, he seems worried. That’s not just grief. He is scared, worried that the same fate awaits him one day. But he lets life take its course instead of acting upon it. 

Mitch, on the other hand, decides to take his life in his own hands. He is approached by the FBI which tells him about the firm and asks him to be an insider. They ask him to pass on details about the mafia client of the company. Since revealing confidential information about a client would get Mitch debarred, he is caught between the sea and the devil - on one side is the company which would finish him off if they ever got a hint of what he was up to, on the other is an option which would end his career even before it could bloom. 

But Mitch doesn’t give up. He finds out about the company’s overbilling practice. He realises that it is a way to shut down the firm without confidentiality agreements being breached and his career getting compromised. He doesn’t act in haste, Instead, he plays smart. Before passing on the documents about the fraud to the FBI, he ensures his brother is released from prison and a huge sum is transferred to his account. He secures his life and then turns in the files. 

Lesson? Never think all doors have been closed. It is important that you have good knowledge about the industry you work in. Put it to use, act smart and act in a timely manner. Take control of your life, do not lease it to others.

Now if you are ready for a spoiler alert, go ahead. Else stop right here.

Curious, aren’t you? Okay, guess what happens at the end of the movie? The firm is shut, his brother is free and Mitch packs his bags and leaves to start a law firm on his own. Yes, Mitch becomes one of us, an entrepreneur indeed!