Page 153 - James Caan - The Real Deal

14 · Having Fun

I decided to take my family on holiday for a couple of weeks –
my first proper holiday in years – to think over my options. I knew
that if I spoke to any of my friends, they would tell me I was stupid
to walk away from that kind of income, so I wanted to go
somewhere where I wouldn’tbe influenced. One of the things I
have been very good at in my career is making uncluttered
decisions. Don’t listen to your friends; don’t read what the papers
say: just look at the facts and assess what you really want.
We went to Greece, and as I sat on a beach I considered all my
options. On the one hand Alexander Mann felt like a company in
the right place, at the right time, in the right market, and I started
to believe the business could grow. I started to believe in the
future. I could visualise it being a real player in British recruitment.
On the other hand it was a massive risk and if I got it wrong it
could be game, set and match. It felt like playing roulette, like
putting it all on red, and I don’t like that feeling. Although a lot
of entrepreneurs are very risk-tolerant, I’m actually not one of
them. I now see that a big part of my career has been about risk
management: I have always considered the odds and the options,
and it’s only when I’ve calculated that the risk is minor, or even
non-existent, that I’ve pushed forward for things. The risk here
was pretty big, however: once I stopped billing, within three to six
months my clients would find another agency and we would have
lost the business for good. Not only would I personally have to
take a huge drop in earnings, but it was even possible that the
company could get into serious cash-flow problems and go under.
Normally in these circumstances I ask myself, What’s the worst
that could happen? I suppose you might say that the worst was
that I would have to start from scratch again, but being successful
was now part of my identity, part of how I saw myself, and the
fear of losing everything was really quite palpable. I had just seen
Reid Trevena fall apart, and I desperately didn’t want the same
thing to happen to my company. Failing at that point would have

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