HBS Occult Business Club

SCENE ONE: STILL-BORN!

Man in a navy-blue suit with a chart, on it a comically large green arrow pointing up and to the right. He presents to a group of one.

BIZ NESS: 110 billion! And that number keeps rising, babyyyyy.

TEM P. RORY: But boss, they are dead.

BIZ NESS: Don't you insult my clientele like that. You seem to forget our company's customer-centric vision.

He flips the chart to reveal, in bold letters: YOUR UNFINISHED BUSINESS IS OUR BUSINESS

BIZ NESS: And now that we have our new Chief of Client Onboarding, we'll be minting money. Won't we, Harry?

A nine year old child emerges from behind him.

HARRY: I can hear their cries, their wails from hell. I see their translucent silhouettes. They won't stop following me.

BIZ NESS: Harry here is very special. He's been haunted since he was born. An organization is of course only as good as the talent it recruits, and Harry is extremely haunted. Aren't you?

HARRY: Please help me.

TEM P. RORY: A great cultural fit too!

SCENE TWO: RISING DEAD

A conference room. VEN CHER has not looked up from his phone.

VEN CHER: Walk me through the TAM.

BIZ NESS: One hundred and ten billion.

VEN CHER: Users?

BIZ NESS: Dead. All of them. We add sixty million a year with zero marketing spend.

VEN CHER: Churn.

BIZ NESS: Not one customer has ever left us. Many of them have tried.

VEN CHER: CAC.

BIZ NESS: A candle.

TEM P. RORY: Twelve for nine dollars, bulk. Unscented. The scented ones confuse them.

VEN CHER: LTV.

BIZ NESS: Forever.

VEN CHER: Say that again.

BIZ NESS: Forever. That's the deck. I have thirty more slides but they all say forever.

VEN CHER: What's the moat?

BIZ NESS gestures. HARRY steps forward.

HARRY: They're in the walls. They're in the walls of this room.

VEN CHER: How old is he?

BIZ NESS: Nine.

VEN CHER: How old is the moat?

BIZ NESS: Nine.

VEN CHER: And the exit?

BIZ NESS: There isn't one. Nobody gets out. That's the value proposition.

VEN CHER signs.

VEN CHER: I'm in for four big ones. Also my mother passed in March, can he ask her where she put the deed?

BIZ NESS: That's the premium tier, but for you I'll get her to make a new one.

SCENE THREE: ONBOARDING

HARRY sits across from TEM P. RORY, who has a laptop. HARRY speaks in two registers: his own, and MARGARET's, flat and far away.

TEM P. RORY: Margaret, thank you for choosing Occult Consulting Services. I've scoped your unfinished business into three workstreams.

HARRY (as MARGARET): I want to tell my sister I forgave her.

TEM P. RORY: Love it. That's an outcome. Let's back into it. Phase one, discovery. Phase two, stakeholder alignment.

HARRY (as MARGARET): She is ninety four.

TEM P. RORY: Then we're on an aggressive timeline. I'll flag it fast-track. There is a surcharge.

HARRY (as MARGARET): I have no money. I am a ghost.

TEM P. RORY: Which is why we bill the living. Does the sister have assets?

HARRY (as MARGARET): I would like to hold her hand. Once.

TEM P. RORY: Physical contact is Poltergeist Plus. On your current tier you get flickering lights and one door.

HARRY (as MARGARET): One door?

TEM P. RORY: Opening or closing. Not both. Both is Plus.

HARRY (himself): Can I go home?

BIZ NESS: Harry, are you still on a call? I love that energy.

SCENE FOUR: ALDRICH 666

Blackboards. A SECTION. A PROFESSOR.

PROFESSOR: Announcements first. Occult Club séance tonight, nine o'clock, Swathz, RSVP on Campus Groups. Today's case: Occult Consulting Services: Monetizing the Afterlife. We're joined by our protagonist.

BIZ NESS waves. Applause.

PROFESSOR: Let's start with you. Should Occult Consulting Services raise prices?

STUDENT 1: I want to build on Margaret's point.

PROFESSOR: Margaret is dead.

STUDENT 1: I want to build on it anyway.

STUDENT 2: Can we talk about the fact that the Chief of Client Onboarding is nine years old?

PROFESSOR: Great. Let's park that.

STUDENT 3: The real question is whether this scales.

The section applauds.

STUDENT 2: Has the company considered that the child is suffering?

BIZ NESS: We considered it. It's the T in our SWOT.

In the sky deck, HARRY has had his hand raised the entire class.

PROFESSOR: Our second guest wants to comment, let's hear it, Harry.

HARRY (in a Ghostly Register): Hell is empty and all the evil is here.

PROFESSOR: Incredible! I have a dead sister you should talk to. Amazing woman, could really help you develop client hands.

SCENE FIVE: EXIT OPPORTUNITY

BIZ NESS mid-presentation, chart aloft, arrow soaring.

BIZ NESS: And the lifetime value of this customer is for—

He stops. He falls, clutching his heart. The chart lands face up.

Lights shift. Years pass in the way years pass onstage. TEM P. RORY is older, and is now CEO and goes by RORY. An INTERN sits where HARRY sat.

BIZ NESS (As a Ghost): Rory. Rory, it's me.

RORY (to the INTERN): Where's the eight o'clock.

INTERN: Pushed.

BIZ NESS (As a Ghost): RORY. Where's Harry? Get Harry.

RORY: Harry left at eighteen. Said he wanted a job where nobody needed him. He sells insurance now. He's very happy. It's disgusting.

BIZ NESS goes to the laptop, types with ghastly effort. An automated voice.

VOICE: Thank you for contacting Occult Consulting Services. Your unfinished business is our business. Current response time for the free tier is eleven to fourteen years.

BIZ NESS screams. The room gets cold. Behind him, the chart ticks over: 110,000,000,001.

INTERN: Is the AC on?

RORY: Ignore it. That's Ness's free tier.

Blackout.

The HBS Occult Club is recruiting. No prior experience necessary. Extremely haunted candidates encouraged to apply.

Nachiket Dev (MBA '28) is from Kochi, India. He graduated from IIT Madras, where he co-founded Eye in the Sky, a drone-based vision analytics project. Prior to HBS, he worked for four years in operations and digital transformation at ITC. Outside of work, he's always looking to pick up something new; current pursuits include live coding music, tarot card reading, board games, and pretending to be a Wall Facer from The Three-Body Problem.