“Don’t be afraid to do something others would think is the most stupid decision of your life.” Charming and sharp-witted business consultant and Kottio Consulting partner Michael Reis made a fortune because of his inability to do one thing — back down from a challenge.
Even if he knows shit all about an industry, when Reis sets his sights on something, he’ll do whatever he thinks it’ll take. The thing is, it’s not always what other people are expecting.
This is the story of how Michael Reis got into (and out of) pharmaceuticals.
At the time, Reis was on the lookout for new clients. He noticed that a company was selling rare medications for an affordable price, a God-send to many sick people in the area. He wanted to get involved. The issue? He knew next to nothing about the industry.
That didn’t matter. “I approachedthecompany’s owner,” explains Reis, “and essentially said, ‘I don’t know shit about pharmaceuticals. I don’t know anything about the space. But I guarantee that you’ve never met somebody as hungry as me. I love your business because you’re not taking advantage of patients. I want to be involved!’”
The owner was impressed by Reis’s attitude and gave him an entry-level position. That’s all Reis needed since this wasn’t a job he needed. It was one he wanted. He was already making over $100,000 per month from Kottio Productions.
“I would’ve done it for free. I did everything I could to make sure that that business was operating as good as it possibly could,” says Michael Reis. “I kept telling my supervisor that he was doing things wrong, ‘like you need to leave, let me handle this. I’ve got this. Go the fuck home.’”
Reis got written up for insubordination time and time again, but he was putting in 12-hour days while clocking out after only eight. “If a kid like was going to miss a shipment, I was calling screaming at FedEx,” he explains. “But that supervisor kept trying to fire me, and our boss just kept laughing. Eventually, my supervisor was the one who was fired.”
Then one fateful day, Reis’s boss called him into his office for a chat. He thought he was about to be fired, but instead, his boss told him that he was planning to sell the company. However, he was going to keep part of it and he wanted Reis to run it. “But I convinced him to keep the whole thing, and it paid off. I was like, ‘Let’s just fucking try to do the business. Let’s just try to make something great.’”
Reis dove in. But, as time went on, it became clear he wasn’t the right guy for the job. Reis’s screaming approach didn’t seem to work as well as another guy there who’d show up daily with a pressed shirt, skinny jeans, and the perfect haircut. “The guy was on top of it. He was a really good general manager. The way the other guy was handling things — calmly, coolly, calculated — was like a square, but that was getting our patients the best outcomes.”
So, he did what not everyone would do. Reis told the guy he was a better fit for the job. He gave him his title, his role, and a majority of his equity. “I could have blown it up in the pharmaceutical space, or I would have died trying,” explains Reis. “I gave up something that I was passionate about because I realized that I wasn’t the best person for it. At the end of the day, it’s all about the outcomes.”
