Crash Test

Three weeks later, to the disbelief of doctors and his family alike, Randy showed up at his office. "I really love what I do, and I had treated the [financial planning] business I was working in (as a branch manager) as my own," he explains.

In the weeks following the crash, and long before e-mail was widespread, Randy would write out what he needed to say in notes to his assistant, Renee Singer, who would then call clients to relay the messages. And during his tour of duty in the hospital, it had been even more surreal: Randy would write notes to Mindy, who would relay the messages to Singer, who would later, if need be, forward the information to the client.

"We can laugh about it now," says Mindy.

But Singer wasn't chuckling. "I had only worked for Randy for two weeks before he crashed his plane," she says. "I had a bachelor's degree in interior design. I didn't know what I was doing."

Randy, however, now credits Singer for his success: "I wouldn't have a business without her," he says.

Indeed, Singer was there to help Randy get his own venture off the ground when he became disillusioned with the firm the two had been working for. A year and a half after the crash, in December 1990, after being told he couldn't expand his staff or offer the high pay rates he needed to in order to attract top-quality employees, Randy decided to start his own company.

Starting any business is tough enough, but Randy was hampered by his shaky speech ("a very shallow, gravelly voice," says Singer). Yet his clients, many of whom had been with him when he was a branch manager, were understanding, says Singer. They'd grown accustomed to his voice, and many of them attended in-person meetings at his employer's offices so that Randy, with his mangled leg, wouldn't have to travel. By the time he started Carver Financial, Randy's leg was mostly healed--the result, he says, "of heavy, heavy workouts at the gym."

Dealing with his extremely weak vocal chords was an obstacle, but in the long run, it was probably an advantage, and per Randy's philosophy, there was a lesson to be learned. He says, "[The experience] reinforced what I already knew: If you can't talk, if you can only whisper a few words, your sales ability becomes much more concentrated. You focus on what's really important."

And he learned to do something with his clients, something he had trouble with as a child: He learned to listen to them.

This article was originally published in the October 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Crash Test.