{"id":327,"date":"2012-02-17T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/?p=327"},"modified":"2012-02-01T07:05:10","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T12:05:10","slug":"interview-with-tom-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/interview-with-tom-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Tom First"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tom<\/a>

Tom First co-founded Nantucket Nectars in 1989 and sold to Ocean Spray in 1997. In 2004, he founded another beverage company, OWater, now a Polar brand. He is still chairman of the OWater board, and also helps to run a fund that invests in entrepreneurial businesses in the beverage sector. Tom and his wife Kristan have three children, 12, 9, and 7.<\/p><\/div>\n

Tom First on doing deals just before his rehearsal dinner; on crying when he first fired someone; and on why he wouldn\u2019t change much in his past.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 What was it like, building a company and a family at the same time?<\/p>\n

A: \u00a0It wasn\u2019t really at the same time. I was really young\u201422\u2014when we started Nantucket Nectars.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get married until I was 29, and I was 35 when we sold the company.\u00a0 During those years I was traveling like a maniac\u2014forgot what city I was in, that kind of thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 The company was growing fast at that point.\u00a0 How did Kristan feel about your work mania?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 Kristan was in architecture school.\u00a0 It was an odd time in our lives.\u00a0 She was as obsessed with work as I was.\u00a0 But even so, my preoccupation with work took some getting used to.\u00a0 She grew up in LA, and we got married out there. \u00a0At that time, Nantucket Nectars was not doing well in LA, so I saw our wedding as a great opportunity to go out and meet with distributors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She saw me for the first time at 4 pm the day the rehearsal dinner.\u00a0 She said, You\u2019ve got to be kidding me!\u00a0 At the time, I didn\u2019t get it.\u00a0 I feel bad about it now.\u00a0 I thought I was doing the right thing for everybody.\u00a0 It bothered her, but there was an<\/strong> understanding that this is what I\u2019m like.\u00a0 At that point it was still a matter of survival. The company was growing exponentially, out of control.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 Did having a child change things?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 Definitely.\u00a0 It put the business in perspective. I was the most compulsive obsessive worker that I knew.\u00a0 For the first time it became ridiculous to work 7 days a week.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 And yet you started a couple more businesses.<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 We lived in Cambridge for eight years before we moved to Concord, Massachusetts.\u00a0 We had become dependent on the Cambridge Fresh Pond Market..\u00a0 So I said to Kristan that we should open our own market in Concord.\u00a0 She said, we don\u2019t need to be opening more businesses!\u00a0 But I got obsessed.\u00a0 I wanted to understand retail.\u00a0 I found a building, negotiated the whole deal, and got the liquor license, before I told her. We open a grocery store, Concord Provisions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 How did Kristan react?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 She rolled her eyes. She ended up being excited about it. \u00a0After the store was open, she looked at me one night and said, \u201cYou\u2019re bored stiff, aren\u2019t you.\u201d\u00a0 I had finished opening the store, but wasn\u2019t running it.\u00a0 She could tell that I was thinking about the next thing I was going to do.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 She sounds like a saint.<\/p>\n

A: \u00a0I\u2019m not that bad.\u00a0 It\u2019s tough because there\u2019s always something going on.\u00a0 I always have something I\u2019m excited about, obsessed about.\u00a0 Most of my friends do things like market research.\u00a0 That\u2019s not me.\u00a0 Kristen knows I\u2019m crazy and she lives with it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a personality type.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 Has this mode of being worked well for your personal life?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 For the most part.\u00a0 One of my personality disorders is a high level of distraction.\u00a0 Sometimes Kristan will tell me a long story that\u2019s important to her, but other stuff comes into my head, and I get distracted.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t care.\u00a0 But I am a multi-tasker.\u00a0 At work I\u2019m a juggler.\u00a0 That kind of personality is not always so good at home.\u00a0 I have trouble sometimes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 What advice would you give other young entrepreneurs with families?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 The biggest piece of advice is that any would-be entrepreneur should make sure the family is up for it.\u00a0 I wonder if I could have started a business if I launched it as a married guy with kids.\u00a0 I have started other businesses when I had kids but they weren\u2019t complete start-ups. Kristan has always been a great cheerleader, making me feel good about what I was doing at a difficult time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 Looking back on your own life and business, what do you wish you\u2019d known earlier on?\u00a0 What do you wish had been different?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t have changed anything.\u00a0 For me, there\u2019s been an experiential evolution that is necessary.\u00a0 Your view of the world through the life of your family is dynamic and changes over time.\u00a0 The same thing happens in a business.\u00a0 So my vision, my fears, my level of understanding and my degree of patience evolved over time.\u00a0 I fired someone for the first time when I was 25\u2014I cried in front of them.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t say to someone new to business, \u201cdon\u2019t\u2019 have that emotion.\u201d\u00a0 It made me understand the situation so much better the second time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t tell someone, the first time the truck doesn\u2019t show up, or that people steal stuff from you, you shouldn\u2019t feel that the world is falling apart around you, because that\u2019s how it feels the first time.\u00a0 Those experiences changed the way I dealt with that stuff when it happened again.\u00a0 I have perspective on business and life and family and relationship, more than I used to, because of what I\u2019ve gone through.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 Any advice?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 I would advise any entrepreneur to not neglect the personal side of their life.\u00a0 I make time for my family, and I make time to work out.\u00a0 I cook and do the dishes. I love being involved with everything.\u00a0 But I\u2019m never going to come home at five and turn off.\u00a0 I\u2019m incapable of that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But there are times in a company\u2019s life when there\u2019s no way around the fact that you have to work all the time.\u00a0 Kristan was lonely for long stretches during our early years together. But my partner Tom and I were on the label.\u00a0 We had 150 distributors that wanted to be seen twice a year.\u00a0 That makes 300 visits.\u00a0 The only solution for the family is for the entrepreneur to be open with them and as present as he can be when he\u2019s around.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Q:\u00a0 How do you look back on those early years at Nantucket Nectars?<\/p>\n

A:\u00a0 We were so na\u00efve.\u00a0 Some of the stuff that happened\u2014the chaos, always being on the precipice, the edge of a cliff, the lawsuits\u2026. you\u2019re a young guy and you think it\u2019s over.\u00a0 How do you say, I\u2019m going home now because it\u2019s 7:30 at night?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that I have kids, I feel bad about some of the things I thought back then, like laughing at people for commuting home all at the same time and dealing with horrendous traffic. Now I have much more sensitivity for the fact that people have families to get home to.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom First on doing deals just before his rehearsal dinner; on crying when he first fired someone; and on why he wouldn\u2019t change much in his past.\u00a0 Q:\u00a0 What was it like, building a company and a family at the same time? A: \u00a0It wasn\u2019t really at the same time. I was really young\u201422\u2014when we started Nantucket Nectars.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get married until I was 29, and I was 35 when we sold the company.\u00a0 During those years I was traveling like a maniac\u2014forgot what city I was in, that kind of thing. Q:\u00a0 The company was growing fast at that point.\u00a0 How did Kristan feel about your work mania? A:\u00a0 Kristan was in architecture school.\u00a0 It was an odd time in our lives.\u00a0 She was as obsessed with work as I was.\u00a0 But even so, my preoccupation with work took some getting used to.\u00a0 She grew up in LA, and we got married out there. \u00a0At that time, Nantucket Nectars was not doing well in LA, so I saw our wedding as a great opportunity to go out and meet with distributors. She saw me for the first time at 4 pm the day the rehearsal dinner.\u00a0 She said, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,10,25,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creating-work-life-boundaries","category-interviews","category-the-entrepreneurial-personality","category-the-spouses-concerns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions\/502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meghirshberg.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}