Kevin Tawil

If it's just you, then it's easy to push off or allow somebody to stay in a spot thinking here she may improve over time a little bit faster.

And it's always great just to have, in this case, we were partners, effectively operators, partners.

So being able to hold each other accountable for our team was really helpful.

If you don't have that person, then having a board member or an executive coach or a mentor really is helpful in prompting you to see clearly what's happening.

Did you and Brett, as you were sorting through that, ever disagree?

We rarely disagreed.

One of the things I liked about our relationship was we didn't get stuck in a specific point of view or position.

I think both of us were pretty good about allowing the data or the information or new information to change our lives.

We may have had differences in small areas now and then.

We would allow the person who really had key authority over that domain to make the decision.

I think only once...

There was a tie, it was about a specific individual where we disagreed on whether to keep this person or not.

That went on for six months.

It was a situation where I thought this person needed to exit the company and Brett wasn't quite there yet.

How we managed that was really more us continuing to converse about it.

It took, I think, six months longer than it should have.

And eventually that person did exit the company.

The way we ran the company, if one of us really believed that somebody needed to exit, it had to happen because when a person has lost the confidence of one of us, then it is ultimately not going to work out.

We worked our way through that, I'd say, slowly and carefully because...

You want to be careful because you're protecting an important relationship.