I went into counseling because I wanted to help people. Even in high school I'd been the friend and confidant to many in my class that wanted a friendly ear that could keep a confidence. I thrived on how my reputation grew. I did a school project on psychological counseling, setting the tone for my college career and now my actual practice after all these years. It took me ten years to get the Ph.D. and credentials to move forward in the counseling arena. I apprenticed under a mentor from Harvard, my alma mater, and five years after that went independent. I'd been that way for over twenty-five years. Even in my early sixties I found satisfaction in helping an individual or couple improve their lives in some way.
Of course, being independent in the counseling work also allowed me to work part time on a doctorate of divinity at the Andover Theological Seminary. I'd been raised a Methodist, and I'd also carried the secret desire to also be a minister in addition to my counseling work since I'd been a teenager. I saw the church work as a second avenue to work with people in need, as well as to communicate with people in need. I had a vision of what my ministry would be like – not pious and theoretical, not full of irrelevant readings from a two thousand year old book, but rather contemporary, action oriented, problem specific, and experiential. It would take me another ten years to begin to bring that vision to fruition.
Coming out of seminary I obtained a part-time minister's post running the youth program in Dillon, Massachusetts, only ten miles away from home. The pay was miniscule, something I intended to rectify as time went by. In the mean time I had some income from my counseling work as well as the occasional wedding or funeral that got passed to me.
I'd met and wooed Margaret Millbury late in my undergraduate days at Harvard. She was the same age, smart – an 'A' student at Radcliffe, and wanted to make a difference in the world in some way and also have our family. I married her after my first year in graduate school. She got a job doing legal research for a law firm that specialized in environmental activism, this at a time when the world was just waking up to the deleterious impact that over three billion people were having on the planet. I got her pregnant with our first child within the year. We were a happy couple – then a happy family – and somehow she was able to help keep us afloat as I did my graduate school and seminary work.
Margaret humored my divinity degree, confessing one time her willingness to be a minister's wife providing we were making an impact on our congregation and the local community. As I got into the Dillon Free Church's youth program, Margaret was at my side, eager and well liked as we built an enviable program that attracted children and teens from across the valley. We became the cool place to be on Saturdays for the teens.
While Margaret could put up a good front, when I met her she was an introvert. She worshipped my gregarious personality, and allowed me to take the social lead for the two of us. One result of this is that early in our relationship as a couple we had 'my' friends and 'our' friends. After she'd been out of college a couple of years, she seemed to lose touch with the classmates she'd been friends with.
One of the side benefits of the part-time minister's post was that I often got to work with the parents of the teens in the program. We did parent-teen retreats as part of the program, and the events were heralded as winning ways to bridge between teens in the midst of tumultuous change in their lives and in the world, and their more staid and conservative parents.
Dean Meyers, a classmate of mine from Harvard and a member of the congregation, had a child in the youth program. Dean hadn't gone to graduate school, instead going to work for his father in an entrepreneurial start-up writing custom software. We started having coffee together once a week, a ritual that we managed to maintain for the next thirty years whenever we were both in town. Sometimes Dean sought input on the ethics of business in the cutthroat high tech world, and I found myself increasingly drawn in to the issues and complexities of corporate life.
I knew I needed stellar public speaking skills if I was to deliver the kind of sermons and have the kind of impact on the church's congregation that I hoped to achieve. Moreover, I knew that public speaking was a hallmark of the high earners in both the ministerial and business world. You couldn't be shy and retiring or get easily flapped on the podium in the corporate world. I had little opportunity to speak in the business world early in my career, but I did speak occasionally in connection with my job as Assistant Minister. At least once a quarter I delivered the Sunday sermon. Remarkably I was good – actually better than good, I was great. I studied public speaking when I knew I'd have to preach, particularly finding opportunities to go and watch great religious leaders speak at various gatherings: Billy Graham, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Oral Roberts, and Joel Goldsmith, to name a few. I was a fast study, and translated their gestures, pace of delivery, speaking style, and appeal to be my own. Moreover, I'd name drop during my modest sermons. I loved saying things like, "Billy Graham told me only a week ago," or "Norman, er that's Dr. Normal Vincent Peale recently recommended to me that I ..." The congregation loved it and felt they'd tapped into someone connected with greatness.
Soon I had my own following in the Dillon church. When the full-time minister retired, the post was ultimately offered to me. I took the job contingent that I could continue my counseling work a minimum of two days a week and also get paid a percentage of any increase in church revenues. I expected to improve attendance at our modest church and wanted a cut of the action. Dean had coached me through the salary and terms negotiation process with the church trustees. A week after I signed the agreement, Margaret, our three children by that time, and I moved into the large parsonage adjacent to the church.
A few years into my tenure as the senior minister Dean Meyers offered me a position on the board of his fledgling company. He planned on taking the firm public in a few years. His sales skills were superb and he got me to agree to serve for no salary; my pay would be in stock and deferred options that would increase in value dramatically if the firm succeeded as he hoped. I had to work for free until that time, but by then I knew Dean well and his company and trusted in the future success he was driven to make happen. The trustees of the church had no issue with my accepting the post. They loved me, and one of the trustees, a member of the search committee that had eventually offered me the minister's job, had confided in me that I was a bright light in an otherwise drab world of boring people they'd briefly considered for the minister's post.
Dean involved me deeply in his corporate activities, insisting that I be an active director and not someone that only showed up for the quarterly board meetings. The company, Triax Systems, moved aggressively in the software and custom system applications area in the U.S., South America, Europe, and Africa – wherever there were sophisticated software users or development firms. The firm was growing and Dean was putting every penny he made back into the business.
My family and Dean's socialized together on a regular basis, even spending time at the Meyer's family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. Our lives became entwined together for business, play, and our spiritual needs. Margaret got along well with Patty Meyers, Dean's wife, and I was personally glad to see her have a friendship relatively independent of me.
Initially, I was embarrassed by the board position in Dean's company because I knew so little about the high tech business he was in. Dean would wave his hand dismissively in the air: "You don't need to know how to program; I've got hundreds of kids that do that. What I want you to do is help run the company, to make sure we're positioned strategically in our markets, to ask us all hard questions and help us answer them, and to make sure we do what we do ethically – that's where your minister stuff comes into play."
So early in my career I found I had three part-time jobs: minister, individual and family therapy, and board member of Triax. While I pursued these three careers I also found time to take flying lessons. I liked the sense of risk it engendered, plus Dean encouraged me in this pursuit so that I could fly one of his company planes around the world when need be. Of course, at the time there were no company planes. Nonetheless, Dean had a vision, and he had Triax pay for my lessons. I felt blessed.
A few years after I'd gotten my sea legs as a board member at Triax, Ray Gibbons, another member of the Dillon church, asked me to be on the board of his company. The church trustees also blessed that chunk of outside work, praising my efforts in the corporate world at the same time. Thus, I also became a paid director of Menthen Oil Supply Company, or MOSC as Ray called it.
Six months after I went on his board, OPEC proclaimed an oil embargo in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military during the Yom Kippur war. MOSC's stock initially took a nosedive about the time I became eligible for my first round of stock options. I put every cent I could into buying the options and also buying other stock; I had faith the embargo would end within a year. I was right. Ultimately, my stock went through the roof, rising more than a hundredfold within two years.
