Who Is... Bob Lear?
Robert James (Bob or RJ) Lear was born in Bellingham, WA, in 1969. Bob’s father, Timothy Lear, worked at his father Wilbert’s family company in the lumber industry. Bob’s mother Klara was a stay at home mom. Bob has one brother, David, who is 5 years younger than him.
Bob attended public school in Bellingham while his brother David, who had assessed as having an extremely high IQ, was sent to a nearby private school. This meant that Bob and David spent very little time together as youngsters.
Bob led a relatively normal life up to his teens, when his rebellious attitude and affinity for truancy got to the point where his parents found they had no other alternative but to kick him out of the home at age 17. Bob vowed he would never come home or see his parents again, a promise he kept.
Bob made his way down to Seattle where he was temporarily homeless until he met a young woman who fell in love with him and offered to sneak him into her home every night after her parents went to sleep, an offer Bob readily accepted despite not having the same degree of feelings for the girl.
Bob quickly found work, odd retail jobs, and put himself through his last year of high school and then got into Washington State University and their business program. Bob lived on campus and had a roommate, Max Bayer, who was two years his senior despite being only one year ahead of him. Max and Bob would become extremely close friends and, being young idealists, spent many hours talking about making the world a better place.
Bob continued his studies and earned a Masters degree in Business Administration. Upon graduation Bob, unsure of what career path he wanted to pursue, was contacted by Max, who had been working for an investment firm called Maverick Investments LLC. Max helped Bob get into MavIn, and Bob quickly rose in the ranks and soon became Max’s boss, along with a team of 5 others.
Bob’s team’s role in the company was to both seek out sectors for MavIn to invest in, while also responding to some of the requests for funding that often came into MavIn unsolicited. Approximately 8 years into his time at MavIn (~2003), Bob’s team was approached by Norman Reid, CEO of a Utah-based company that had developed an encryption system for internet-based sales organizations. The internet tech bubble had burst just a couple years before and senior management at MavIn were extremely reluctant to invest in such a company, but Bob saw the potential of this specific product and pushed until he got approval. Norman never forgot what Bob did for him and treated him like a son.
Two years later, Bob was in the office when an unusual, somewhat eccentric man entered the offices demanding to speak with someone in Bob’s role. Told he couldn’t just barge in and that he had to follow proper channels (submit his product to the team and wait to be contacted), the man was growing more and more agitated and security was called. But Bob heard the man shouting and came to the reception area to speak to him, and Bob invited him into his office.
The man was Sam Tilford, a chemist, and he had developed a new type of technology, with a nano-technology component, that would protect wood from fire, mould, rot, and insect damage with a single, perfectly clear coating that couldn’t be seen, smelled, or felt after curing. It only took one coat, was completely non-toxic and eco-friendly, and best of all, was cheap.
Bob had grown up in the lumber industry (three generations before Bob had all worked in the wood industry) and he immediately saw the value in the product. He told Sam that there would very likely be an opportunity for funding his start up.
Bob faced two issues within MavIn however. First, senior management had always been adamant about investing only into certain industries, and chemicals was not one of them. Secondly, senior management, being based in Seattle, was familiar with the executives of some major wood manufacturers and distributors. Senior management came back to Bob and told him that the industry word they’d gotten back was, “It just sounds too good to be true.” They refused to fund.
But Bob wasn’t about to let this go as he knew that the environmental impact of traditional wood treatments was so negative that massive changes were bound to come and restrict their usage. Bob realized there would be no other option for companies to use – unless he got this new product into the market.
Bob approached Max to see if he had any funding ideas. Max suggested they go and visit Norman Reid, who’s company had grown exponentially since Bob got Norman the funding, and Norman still felt very much in debt to Bob. Bob called Norman and Norman invited Bob and Max to come skiing with him at his villa near Snowbird Ski Resort, half an hour’s drive from Salt Lake. They accepted and Norman sent his private plane to Seattle to pick them up.
Bob and Max spend the weekend with Norman and his family at Norman’s estate in the mountains. It’s during this weekend that Bob meets Angie Cortes, Norman’s nanny (Norman has young kids with his second, much younger wife), whom he will eventually marry.
Norman listens to Bob’s pitch on the wood coating and agrees to provide him with $2 million in unsecured funding (Bob was asking for $1.5 million but Norman actually talked him UP) because he believes in Bob and figures this is his payback for Bob’s help.
On the last day, Bob urges Max to go skiing. Max has never skied and is not in any way an athlete, but he acquiesces and reluctantly goes. Instead of going to an easy slope, Bob takes Max to one of the more dangerous runs. Max is not happy about this but he just wants to stop Bob’s mocking his uneasiness and they begin to descend the hill. About halfway down, Max is going to fast and has little idea of how to slow or stop, and he ends up crashing into a tree, his helmet splitting open. Bob races down to the bottom to get help and they do rescue Max, but he has forever been changed by the accident.
Max is airlifted to a hospital in Salt Lake where his condition is stabilized. Bob stays with him the entire time he’s there (3 weeks?) and gets regular visits from Angie as they begin to develop their relationship.
When Max is allowed to leave, he and Bob travel back to Seattle. Max is truly pissed with Bob, mad that he pushed him to ski but irate that he would take him down such a treacherous course. Bob feels incredibly guilty and tries to make things up to Max, but something has changed in Max; where he was once quiet and docile, he’s become aggressive and paranoid. He starts to randomly say odd things, and before long he ends up losing his job at MavIn. To add insult to injury, Bob was the one who ends up telling him he’s being let go.
In the meantime, Bob informs Sam Tilford that he has the funding to get the company going. Sam is excited but isn’t much of a businessman. He let’s Bob right up all the agreements without even sending them to a lawyer for review. Bob realizes this (and also discovers the reason for this is that Sam has no money to hire a lawyer) and begins to send over documents that provide him with greater control and eventually full ownership of the Intellectual Property. Before long, Sam has become not only unnecessary, but a liability to Bob due to his irrational behavior.
At the same time Bob is doing what he can to help Max and offers to bring him into the new company, Global Wood Tech, as a full partner. Max accepts and the two men begin to repair their relationship. However, since the accident, Max has become more and more dependent on pain killers, and Bob can see it’s starting to take a toll on Max’s health.
After taking full control from Sam, Norman contacts Bob and offers him a favourable lease on some commercial property he owns in Salt Lake where Bob can really start to get his company going. Bob starts doing some research and sees that there are a number of tax benefits to his relocating there, not the least of which is that Sam is nowhere near there. It would also allow him to continue his relationship with Angie.
So in the fall of 2006, Bob Lear moves to the affluent Salt Lake suburb of Draper. He and Angie soon move in together and within a couple of years are married at their local Mormon church which Bob has joined as Angie has been a member of it since she was young and Bob joining was important to her – though Bob is in no way a believer and only sees it as a way to network and also increase his standing in the community. In fact, a neighbouring Mormon church had recently burned down, and Bob immediately uses company funds to rebuild that church, with his company’s product being used of course to ensure another fire won’t happen, and Bob was hailed as a local hero to all church goers.
For their honeymoon, Bob and Angie go to Costa Rica where they fall in love with the place. While down there, Bob mixes some business with pleasure. Bob realizes that the cost of labour, coupled with the fact that Costa Rica has free trade agreements with most of the countries GWT sells into, makes Costa Rica a great place to set up a manufacturing plant. He actually signs a lease for a facility before leaving and gets the groundwork started for this new operation. He even thinks it might be ideal to send Max down to oversee it as the relaxed atmosphere and warm weather might help set him right.
Max however has continued to spiral downward due to his opiate addition. He can no longer keep up his responsibilities at GWT (and has become an Alex Jones-like character, seeing conspiracies and dangerous cabals around every corner) and less than two weeks after standing as best man at Bob’s wedding, while Bob and Angie are still on their honeymoon, he overdoses and dies.
This hits Bob hard. He feels responsible – which he is to a great extent. This is the beginning of his hatred of all things opiate.
Three years later, Norman’s company has fallen on tougher times and he’s looking to get his investment money back from Bob. Bob has been lying to Norman about sales and how great things have been progressing to keep him happy, not thinking Norman was going to demand his money back after just a couple years. Now that Norman needs it and is pushing Bob, Bob starts to ignore his calls and won’t respond to his messages. Norman tries to call Angie, but Bob has actually gone into her phone and secretly blocked his numbers so he can’t contact her directly.
Norman gets a legal team together and they start to go after Bob. Norman sues Bob for $10 million in losses and damages, and Bob at this point is running on empty financially, making it difficult for him to get a good legal team to defend himself.
But as always, Bob is all about Bob. Once the money came in from Norman, he did all the things he told Norman he was going to do – testing, R&D, marketing, trade shows, freebies of product for high-profile projects – but he also took a large chunk of the cash to buy an nice house, do up the offices with expensive décor and all the cool tech he could get his hands on.
And in many ways this was working. Bob was getting some headlines on the projects GWT was winning, including some of the most famous building projects in the world. The problem was that Bob’s margins on the product were just too small.
And this is the real contradiction in Bob: He is a classical narcissist who needs to be adored and admired, but he is also someone who desperately wants to make the world a better place. It is the latter trait that led him to keep the product at a much lower price point than it should otherwise have been at. This altruistic characteristic is what is making the company struggle. And Bob realizes this but is helpless to change it.
So he pushes forward, simultaneously putting forth the appearance of incredible success (big house, Mercedes SUV, nice watch, clothes, etc.) and no one, NO ONE, not his wife or any of his employees, understand this is a castle built on quicksand.
Every day Bob goes into his office with the sword of Damocles hanging over him. The slightest wrong move and the thread holding the sword in place would be severed – as, subsequently, so would his head. He will do anything to protect the image he has built for himself and his company.
But now he has made a powerful enemy in Norman, has been unable to defend himself in the lawsuit and thus a judgement for the $10 million has been awarded against him and the company, and he has to keep the world, but most importantly, Angie and his kids, from knowing that this judgement exists, that everything he has built is a mirage…
And thanks to the “speed” of the legal system in the US, this has all been dragging on for years now. Bob is exhausted. He has so much positive feedback coming into the company regarding the product yet he can’t seem to find the passion anymore to move the company forward and work to solve all the problems he has. He starts to think of ways he might make a huge deal and use the funds to pay off the lawsuit, to broker a deal that will allow him to save face both at home and in the public arena.
But such deals are hard to make. Any number of potential suitors, some huge multi-national companies, make entreaties only for Bob and GWT to have nothing to show for it at the end of the day.
So the crunch day has approached; on the same day Bob is awarded the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce’s Entrepreneur of the Year award, his lawyer comes in to meet with him to tell him, point blank, he’s fucked. The lawsuit from Norman is now likely going to involve Angie due to the way Bob has collected his “pay” from the company. This is Bob’s pressure point: If Angie finds out about the lawsuit, and about how everything he’s built is about to collapse, well, this just can not happen.
Season One Begins At This Point In Time