Beginnings – How I Decided to Apply to HBS

By the time anyone reads this post it will be at least four months old. That is because I will not be posting anything about my intentions to get into the Harvard Business School until I know whether I have been accepted or not. Why? Because I’m a business owner, and I’m concerned about the effect it could have upon my employees and client base if people knew. I believe it could cause a certain amount of uncertainty around the office because I am currently quite involved in the day to day, although I have a plan of how to phase myself out if I get accepted that I will talk about in a later post.

And I’ve made the mistake of informing the business community about my personal plans for one activity or another before which turned out to not happen, but I’m still running into people who ask me “Now you’re not with MWI any more, right?” And so all of this will remain undisclosed to friends, family, employees, and others until such time as I find out what is going to happen.

When, where, and how did I decide that I wanted to attend HBS? It happened sometime during the first few months of 1997. I was a student at Ricks College, now called BYU-Idaho. I had just started my second year of college after returning from serving as a full-time missionary for the LDS Church in Brazil. During my mission I had decided that instead of being an art student and later an illustrator I wanted to switch my major to business. But Ricks only offered a two-year associate’s degree and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after that. I was pretty sure I would go to BYU in Provo, Utah, and I was pretty sure I would study business, but I didn’t know what my focus would be or what I would do after getting a bachelor’s degree.

I had a budding interest in technology and knew I needed to learn more if I was going to be successful in the business world. I went and talked to one of my professors, Kent Jackson, who was heading up the new information systems curriculum. Kent pulled out a green sheet of paper with boxes on it representing classes, and told me it represented the new master’s of information systems management program that BYU was offering. It was an integrated program wherein you skipped your senior year, went straight into a two year master’s program, and then graduated with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in information systems management. The MISM degree would be a sort of techno-MBA degree, since half of the courses would be business classes alongside MBA and master’s of accounting students, while the other half would be programming, database, and technology courses. Then he told me “If you got this MISM degree and then got an MBA, you could go anywhere and do anything.” He told me about the opportunities that I would have and the freedom it would give me.

I got goosebumps while he talked to me. Something inside of me felt excited and I was 100% sure this was what I was supposed to do.

That summer of ‘97 I joined 15 other students from Ricks and accompanied by a few business faculty members we travelled from Rexburg, Idaho across the country visiting various businesses including Cabela’s, Motorola, Kodak, Ford, and a dozen others. We also visited business and government sites like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, NASDAQ, Wall Street, and Washington D.C. At each of these spots we were treated exceptionally and given access to top-level management personnel, oftentimes including members of the CxO executive teams. All of this reinforced my desire to be somebody in the business world. I felt like someday I would leave my mark, I just needed the right resources and the right opportunities, which I was sure would come along if I did everything I could.

In Boston we visited the Harvard campus and were given a tour of HBS by Clayton Christensen, well-known author of The Innovator’s Dilemma and other business strategy books, an HBS professor, and a member of the LDS Church. As Clayton talked to us about HBS, its history, the case method of teaching, and the alumni, I started feeling like I did when Kent Jackson talked to me about the MISM at BYU. I knew I was going to go to HBS someday. I knew that was what I was meant to do. I seem to remember standing outside the classrooms on the grass under a tree while Clayton talked to us and telling one of the other students “I want to come here someday.” If I didn’t say it, I was certainly thinking it.

After that trip I went back to Ricks and graduated in 1997. I then went to BYU, got into the school, then the business school, then the information systems program, and then I was accepted into the MISM program and graduated with that degree in 2002. However, at the end of 1999 I had started my business which precluded me from immediately applying to HBS. I didn’t want to anyway because I knew I needed to get some work experience. However, as the years went by I realized it was going to be hard to go to HBS while I was running a business.

Because of my business there were times when I thought “What do I need an MBA for anyway? I own my own company, I’ve never interviewed for a career, and so what use is having an MBA on my resume? Sure, the networking would be great, but is it worth it?” Then there were other times when the interest would be renewed and I would think about how I could make it work. I repeatedly hired people who I thought might be able to run the business for me if I took off for two years, but things never worked out for one reason or another. Despite the years and my involvement with my firm the dream never disappeared entirely and I’ve always had something in the back of my mind telling me that one way or another I would end up at HBS someday. But for years I was in a holding pattern, waiting for something to happen. Then it did.

Just a few months ago (as of writing this) I had a most interesting experience. Someone had posted on this very blog, but rather than posting anonymously or openly they impersonated someone. And not just anyone, but they impersonated by old business partner. I’m rather gullible at times, and so while the quite negative comments left on my blog were out of character for my partner, I assumed they were from him.

My partner and I didn’t communicate much, but every few months he would contact me and act as though everything were fine and dandy. I would sit there thinking “Man, how could you have said those things you did and now act like you never said them?” It seems funny to me now, but it just never occurred to me that someone would impersonate him, plus I didn’t think anyone else would know some of the details that were referenced in the blog post.

To set the stage a bit more, let me introduce Ben Smith. Ben, my partner, and myself were the management team at my previous company. When we sold the business Ben and my partner went to work with the company that had acquired us and I started over with MWI. I hadn’t had much communication with Ben, and due to a number of things that had happened as a result of selling our company I wasn’t that interested in talking to him. I certainly wasn’t interested in working with him again. I just wanted to get away from anyone and anything associated with my old business or the business that had bought it and then proceeded to make my life quite difficult.

To explain what happened earlier in this year of 2006 I can only imagine God sitting up there thinking “Ok, I need to get Ben back working with Josh, and it’s probably not good for Josh to be thinking his ex-partner is a bad guy said those things when he really didn’t, so let’s see if we can take care of this all at once.”

One day I received an email from my partner asking if he could use our conference room for a meeting he was going to have. He also invited me to lunch. I distinctly remember hitting Ctrl-F in my email client and typing in my wife’s email address before I typed out the words “How do I say ‘No, I don’t want to let you use my conference room and no, I don’t want to go to lunch with you.” I then sent the message.

I was schocked when five minutes later I recieved an email back from my ex-partner saying “What are you talking about? What’s up dude?” Oh great, I thought. Well, it’s all out in the open now, I might as well just have it out. I sent him an email back telling him that I didn’t think the comments he left on my blog were the type of comments someone would leave if they wanted to maintain any sort of positive relationship, and as far as I was concerned I wasn’t interested in communicating more.

He responded saying that he had not posted those comments on my blog, and in fact he had never even visited my blog. He had no clue what I was talking about. I knew he wasn’t lying because he wouldn’t and he had no reason to. I realized someone had impersonated him, and I had a pretty good idea of who it was–one of the former owners of the company that had bought my company. I hadn’t had much interaction with him, but I had said some negative things about his company, so he had the motive. He also had access to the same details my business partner did, so that part made sense too.

My partner called Ben Smith to see if he had done it, since it could have been him. Ben then called me to tell me it wasn’t him. By this time it was obvious to the three of us who it was. Ben and I started talking, and after over three years of almost no communication we decided to go to lunch. During lunch I realized Ben was exactly the person I had been looking for. Not specifically so I could go to Harvard, but I’ve also been long looking for someone who could run things so that I could start other businesses, go to school, be incapacitated, or maybe even take a week-long vacation (which my wife and I did a few weeks ago for the first time since we got married seven years ago).

And it seemed to be an opportune time because Ben was looking for a job. Avalon, the company that had bought me out and where Ben had been working the past three years, had finally gone under and Ben had to find something. I asked him what he was going to do for work and he said “Why, are you hiring?” Well, maybe. Then I told him I was looking for someone, and he was honestly the perfect fit. But we had to work some things out. What happened next was for me a bit like the scene in Zoolander when Hansel and Derek have it out when Derek goes to Hansel’s place to hide. I told Ben the problems I had with him, and he explained his perspective, and within ten minutes any animosity or suspicion I had felt was gone. I had gone from “I would never hire this guy again” to “This guy is the perfect fit for this position, I’ve got to make this work out somehow.”

Ben came on board in April/May, and has done exactly what I hired him to do. As of me writing this I can see him easily being able to handle things were I to take off for two years.

But Harvard wasn’t on my radar at this point. It was in the back of my mind, but I wasn’t thinking about applying yet. It was still on hold mentally, and probably would have remained on hold for a while but for a chance conversation I had at a family reunion this summer. My wife and I were talking with my wife’s dad’s cousin who lives in Boston and has associates at Harvard. We were chatting casually and then we started talking about his new house outside Boston, his work, Boston, Mitt Romney, Boston, real estate, Boston, his family, and Boston. As we kept talking I started getting that old excitement again. “What do you think of moving to Boston?” I asked my wife. She’s used to me asking her spontaneous questions like that. Most of them aren’t serious, but she knew this one was a real possibility because we’ve talked about it a lot over the years. “Fine with me, let’s go” was her response.

Within a few weeks I had looked through the HBS website, started my application, checked out GMAT study books from the library, and contacted recommenders. It was finally happening. It is finally happening. Heck, this was just a few weeks ago as of the writing of this post.

During the past several years I’ve considered other schools. Wharton, MIT, Stanford, Northwestern, etc. But when I start looking at them I don’t feel the same excitement. For me, I don’t feel there’s any other place for me. That’s why I’m applying to HBS and nowhere else. I don’t want to be too cocky but I think I have a decent chance. Hopefully when I finally publish this post on the blog it will be along with a more recent post containing the news that I was accepted for Fall 2007.