Michael Stafford got handed an oil company at twenty-eight years old. He hadn't really planned on it.
What Michael had planned on was golf. He played at Tulane, was genuinely good, and after graduation he spent a few years on the Nike Tour trying to earn his PGA card. He didn't quite get there, and Jim pulled him back to Baton Rouge and put him to work learning the family business. Two years later Jim was gone, and Michael was sitting in the CEO chair with a company that needed work and a team that needed replacing.
He knew he was in over his head. That's actually the part that impresses me about him — he knew it and he did something about it. He'd been around me enough at country club events and various golf things to think I might be useful. Erica vouched for me. He brought me in and he's leaned on me hard, which is not the instinct of a 28-year-old who's too proud to ask for help.
He's not a disaster as a CEO. He's impulsive, and there's a learning curve on the personnel side, but he works hard and he listens. What he's less likely to tell you is that he doesn't particularly want the job long-term. What Michael really wants to do is develop golf resort communities. He'll do this job, he'll do it well enough to make the company worth something serious, and then he'll sell it and go do what he actually wants to do.
I know all of this. We're on the same page. That's a productive place to be.
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