The Lyin' King — by Dan Lynn

By Dan Lynn

When I started my career at ADP, I was a Director of Marketing. This was 1997 — and back then, AOL was one of the most powerful companies on the planet.

One day, a group of us flew down to AOL. It wasn't a junior crew. My boss, the VP of Marketing, was there. His boss, the President of ADP's small business division, was there. A couple of my colleagues, too. Senior people.

We were led into a conference room where a team from AOL was waiting. But they told us we couldn't begin — not yet. We had to wait for their boss. I don't remember his name, but the way they talked about him, he was clearly the king. And even though we'd brought some of the most senior people at ADP, we sat there and waited for him. It felt like forever.

Then a Porsche pulled into the parking lot. We could see it through the windows. His team lit up — the king had arrived.

Out steps this guy. All black. Cowboy boots. Tan as could be. His team was practically running in circles now that "he" was here. And when he walked through that door, I swear it was like the sea parted.

He got to the point fast. I'm paraphrasing — this was a long time ago — but it went something like this:

"Listen. Look out that window. See that building over there?" He named a Fortune 500 company you'd recognize instantly. "We call that their building, because they paid us millions of dollars to advertise on the AOL CD we mail out. See that other one?" He named another, just as big. "Same story. And right now, your competitor, Paychex, is sitting in the other conference room. So if you want a spot on our CD, you'll pay us millions — or they will."

Wow. Now that is a cocky pitch.

We declined the "offer," and flew back to New Jersey.

Here's the part that stuck with me. Years later, I opened the Wall Street Journal — and there he was. The king. His name was David Colburn, AOL's head of Business Affairs and its chief dealmaker. The SEC had charged him and seven other AOL executives in a roughly one-billion-dollar scheme to inflate the company's advertising revenue. Colburn settled without admitting wrongdoing — millions in penalties, and a ten-year ban from ever running a public company again.

When the article laid out how the high-pressure deals worked, it was almost word for word what we'd sat through:

Aggressive timelines — artificial deadlines, sign now or the opportunity vanishes forever. The FOMO play — telling you your direct competitor is standing by, checkbook open, ready to take your slot. Manufactured scarcity — the illusion that this was finite, elite, once-in-a-lifetime real estate, and losing it would break your business. And here's the detail that made my jaw drop. Some of those deals — the ones "everyone was paying millions for" — were round-trips. AOL would quietly hand a company money, and that company would turn around and spend it on AOL ads, so AOL could book it as revenue. Which means the scarcity we'd been pressured with wasn't just exaggerated. In some cases, the demand itself was fake.

The Porsche, the all-black outfit, the king who kept us waiting — none of that was ego. It was staging. And the pressure wasn't hiding a great deal. It was hiding the absence of one.

When someone builds a wall of urgency, scarcity, and FOMO around a deal, that's not leverage — it's theater. Real value doesn't need you scared. And the best move is almost always the one that feels hardest in the moment: slow down, and be willing to leave the room.