Page 172 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

My accountant also suggested that we should move to bigger
offices. I still had this fear of incurring overheads, but his
comments did make me think that maybe it was at least time to
redecorate the offices. I remember the day the decorators came in
and took the sales charts off the wall, leaving big white rectangles.
We had smoked so much that the walls had gone yellow. That we
smoked in the office seems so outdated now, but in those days
pretty much everyone smoked and I’d pity the one or two who
didn’t.
What was interesting was that when new people joined, within
a couple of weeks they had started smoking Rothman’s, which was
my brand, and my packet of cigarettes was deemed a communal
packet. It’s an example of how – despite my efforts to grow the
company – it was still a classic owner-manager business and my
personality ran right through every layer of the business. Although
Alexander Mann had doubled in size since I’d stopped billing, I
was still struggling with my ambition to make it a corporate entity.
It was now just a bigger boutique, and its success was still heavily
reliant on me being there.
The thriving economy encouraged a few of the team to think
that they could set up on their own, and every so often one of the
really able consultants would not only resign and set themselves
up in competition, but they would take several members of staff
with them, not to mention a few clients. Emotionally, I found that
very hard to deal with – it was impossible not to take it personally.
Although the admin side of things was now computerised, the
recruitment side of the business was still reliant on boxes of file
cards. Of course, this made it very easy for members of staff to
take their clients with them when they left, and because having
Alexander Mann on your CV was considered prestigious we had
quite a high turnover. Some people – like Sam Collins – were loyal
both to the company and to me, but a big part of my job was still
hiring and training new staff.

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