The business year is ending on a high note. Got in a bunch of money, most of which was long overdue. All in all, the year was a disaster, but mostly because it was a nasty ride down. Our gross volume literally fell by 50%.
Next year, we're in good shape. Paid off a few notes. So, our monthly cash flow should be a lot better. We also downsized to the bone. We don't even have an office administrator right now. I'm filling that role. Though, if things get better, like I think they should, we'll be hiring one first part of next year.
We've got work on the board, too. Some pretty good stuff. All in all, we may have turned the corner. Even though volume was bitterly disappointing (far worse than anything I could have imagined at this time last year), if we did the same volume next year, the company would be very profitable again. The weather seems to be getting a little more harsh.
It's amazing that I surivived this past year. It was the first real hard bump in the road since I opened my doors. The lesson to take away from all this is that you can't count on a straight 40% growth trajectory, or even for volume to remain consistent from year to year.
I'm looking to make some changes next year. I want to diversify my revenue streams so that a down year in one particular business unit won't necessarily mean pain. Will have to see how it goes.
I am living in the cabin pretty much all the time these days. I call it the cabin because the back yard overlooks a nice wooded ravine. Also, because it's pretty much only 35% or so remodelled at this point. It's like living in a house that's being remodelled.
Half the house looks trashed. One of the bedrooms is 100% done. It's the first room in the house I can say that about, other than the downstairs half-bath. Another two are about 90% there. So far, so good.
Structurally, I feel good about the house, though. We had to fix a problem with some sagging load-bearing beams and everything is 100% right now. It's finally got good bones, though it took a lot of work. My goal is to have this house ready to sell by the time Logan graduates from High School. I figure I'm in Sylvania until then. After that? Who the heck knows.
Logan continues to be an absolute joy. We went skiing twice during his Christmas break and he loves it. Granted, it's not that odd to love skiing. It's about like saying you like amusement parks. It's just something that's generally enjoyable for most folks.
We drove a couple of hours away to a ski slope that's supposed to be a lot nicer than the one we went to last year. It really was better. However, it's all of a 2 hour drive. The other place is less than an hour. So, for day-trips, it makes sense to go to the closer place.
If possible, I may see if I can get Logan for a few days and use the time to visit his grandma in Akron, and then drive up to Peek n Peak in upstate New York. That's a pretty big logistical committment. Peek 'n Peak is almost 3 hours away. However, the skiing there is worlds better than what we've got within driving distance, here.
I wish there were a way to fly out for a skiing vacation. I really wish Logan had year-round school with the breaks interspersed throughout the year. I don't know what the resistance to that is, but it would make things so much nicer for us as far as any activities that involve travel, like visiting the relatives in Arizona.
As for the coming of the new year, here are my resolutions:
1. Guide my business back to high profitability.
2. Embark on a new skill set / career.
3. Make strong progress on all my financial goals, especially debt reduction.
4. Continue to spend quality time with my son. Make the most of these next 9 years with him.
5. Get the house closer and closer to being in a "finished" state. Pretty much anybody who has ever done a major restoration/remodel can tell you that things take a lot more time and money than folks thought they would. So, "progress" is as much as I'll commit to on this goal.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
The Great Moment in TARP
There were lots of horrendous moments in TARP and the crafting of the bills that bailed out Wall Street for their criminal incompetence.
One example is when Chris Dodd's staff (at the behest of an un-named official, probably Tim Geithner) stripped out compensation limits from the legislation.
There was one great moment, though. It was the type of victory for the little guy that almost never happens.
To understand this moment, it is illustrative to look at the two TARP bill votes.
The first vote was to have the government buy up all the toxic assets the banks had acquired. Basically, give us the toxic stuff, and leave the banks to continue raking it in. This vote actually failed due to popular outrage at the possibility that the American people would be stuck with the bad stuff in the banks' portfolios.
The second vote was for the taxpayer to basically give the banks billions of dollars. Now, whether we wanted it to happen or not, it was going to happen and it is happening today. That's why, for instance, the government continues to lend money to the banks at 0% interest, and then sell them T-bills that allow the banks to make 3% interest.
The government wants to use their power to make banks rich.
In the code that was written in the bill, some sneaky congressional staffer added these lines:
(c) Direct purchases
"If the Secretary determines that use of a market mechanism under subsection (b) is not feasible or appropriate, and the purposes of the chapter are best met through direct purchases from an individual financial institution, the Secretary shall pursue additional measures to ensure that prices paid for assets are reasonable and reflect the underlying value of the asset."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/usc_sec_12_00005223----000-.html
What does this mean? Well, the bill, without these lines, would have meant that the government would have given the banks loans, or would have simply given them money.
However, they would not have been able to buy the stock of the companies.
It is because we bought stock that people are now saying that TARP may turn a profit. (It probably won't, but it won't cost as much as we thought at first.)
If not for that sneaky staffer, taxpayer losses from TARP would have been much, much greater.
It is ONLY because of that sneaky staffer that the American people had a chance to benefit from the banks (and auto-makers) recovering.
TARP was, in my opinion (as I've mentioned at length) a disgusting series of anti-capitalist measures, taken with no regard for the taxpayer, and which handsomely rewarded Wall Street banks for reckless and criminal behavior.
These lines of code, inserted in the bill, are the only bright spot of the entire debacle. If we had enacted compensation limits, haircuts for counterparties, and wiping out of shareholder equity, along with a nationalization and the US as the sole shareholder to be reimbursed at an IPO sometime down the road when the banks were healthy, I doubt there'd be the outrage about TARP that there is.
Instead, TARP was written in such a way as to maximize the benefit Wall Street received. That's why we're mad.
Thanks to one ballsy congressional staffer, though, we actually derived some benefit from TARP. It's these lines of the bill that are the only part that didn't completely screw over America.
One example is when Chris Dodd's staff (at the behest of an un-named official, probably Tim Geithner) stripped out compensation limits from the legislation.
There was one great moment, though. It was the type of victory for the little guy that almost never happens.
To understand this moment, it is illustrative to look at the two TARP bill votes.
The first vote was to have the government buy up all the toxic assets the banks had acquired. Basically, give us the toxic stuff, and leave the banks to continue raking it in. This vote actually failed due to popular outrage at the possibility that the American people would be stuck with the bad stuff in the banks' portfolios.
The second vote was for the taxpayer to basically give the banks billions of dollars. Now, whether we wanted it to happen or not, it was going to happen and it is happening today. That's why, for instance, the government continues to lend money to the banks at 0% interest, and then sell them T-bills that allow the banks to make 3% interest.
The government wants to use their power to make banks rich.
In the code that was written in the bill, some sneaky congressional staffer added these lines:
(c) Direct purchases
"If the Secretary determines that use of a market mechanism under subsection (b) is not feasible or appropriate, and the purposes of the chapter are best met through direct purchases from an individual financial institution, the Secretary shall pursue additional measures to ensure that prices paid for assets are reasonable and reflect the underlying value of the asset."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/12/usc_sec_12_00005223----000-.html
What does this mean? Well, the bill, without these lines, would have meant that the government would have given the banks loans, or would have simply given them money.
However, they would not have been able to buy the stock of the companies.
It is because we bought stock that people are now saying that TARP may turn a profit. (It probably won't, but it won't cost as much as we thought at first.)
If not for that sneaky staffer, taxpayer losses from TARP would have been much, much greater.
It is ONLY because of that sneaky staffer that the American people had a chance to benefit from the banks (and auto-makers) recovering.
TARP was, in my opinion (as I've mentioned at length) a disgusting series of anti-capitalist measures, taken with no regard for the taxpayer, and which handsomely rewarded Wall Street banks for reckless and criminal behavior.
These lines of code, inserted in the bill, are the only bright spot of the entire debacle. If we had enacted compensation limits, haircuts for counterparties, and wiping out of shareholder equity, along with a nationalization and the US as the sole shareholder to be reimbursed at an IPO sometime down the road when the banks were healthy, I doubt there'd be the outrage about TARP that there is.
Instead, TARP was written in such a way as to maximize the benefit Wall Street received. That's why we're mad.
Thanks to one ballsy congressional staffer, though, we actually derived some benefit from TARP. It's these lines of the bill that are the only part that didn't completely screw over America.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
It wasn't Obama's fault... It really was Bush's fault... But can Obama recover?
As I watch the slow motion train-wreck that the Obama presidency is turning out to be, I can't help but feel sorry for the guy.
He got beaten up a bit for going to the "it's Bush's fault" well one too many times. I think people knew he was right... they just didn't want a president who was going to whine about the past. They wanted one who would lead us into a brighter future.
The economic crisis? I think that was largely Clinton's fault, actually. He's the one who led the repeal of Glass-Steagall. In fact, the biggest villains in all that are probably the Republican congress. They're the one constant when we talk about a continuum of legislative actions that were way too friendly to banking interests, and way too neglectful, or downright hostile, to average citizens.
I want to be frank when I say: if we had not repealed Glass Steagall, we wouldn't have had to respond to the economic crisis the way we did.
Obama bears a lot of the blame too, but mostly, he bears it for badly misplaying a bad hand that he was dealt by Bush.
The Wall Street bailouts? They're huge. Maybe not as huge with most people as they are with me, but they're enough to get vast swaths of the population furious.
Obama, Geithner, Paulson and an army of economists have said, rightly so, that the bailouts were necessary.
Well... I think some form of bailout was necessary. However, there are two things the American people simply cannot forgive, even though years have now passed.
The first is that they told their legislators, flat-out, do not bail out the banks. Make them suffer the consequences of their recklessness. If people on Main Street need to feel the pain that capitalism frequently brings, then the folks on Wall Street should be no different.
We all know the history, there. The congress voted down the TARP, but the Wall Street lobbying machine went into high gear, bought more politicians, Pelosi and Bush twisted more arms, and TARP passed on the second vote.
The voters have absolutely taken it out on the hide of people who voted for TARP. That was a toxic vote. It cost congresspeople their careers, and it should have.
You simply can't tell the population of a democracy that you don't care what they want and expect to get away with it every time.
Eventually, you're really going to piss them off.
The second problem? The second problem is that no effort was made to curb executive compensation during the birth of TARP.
It wasn't that the idea wasn't brought up. Nancy Pelosi mentioned it. Harry Reid was in the room when she did.
Hank Paulson said, basically, no, no, no. If we put any strings on this, the bankers won't go along with it. And if they won't go along with it, we'll be burning library books to keep warm and eating squirrels because we will be cast back into the stone age if we don't do something about the impending financial crisis. (Not a direct quote, but you get the idea.)
So, they didn't. The problems that resulted were predictable and people were furious. In some instances, in some cities, people literally took to the streets.
Obama did what he could to impose compensation limits after the fact, but he really couldn't do much. It was too little, too late.
Those Wall Street banker bonuses were a hidden time bomb that the Bush administration left for Obama.
I honestly feel that once the news of banker bonuses hit the press, Obama was doomed. The public simply didn't trust the government to do anything, for any reason, at any time. The government completely lost any moral authority they may have had when it was laid naked that Wall Street was going to profit immensely for destroying the economy.
Now, Obama also badly misplayed his hand, too. It was a bad one, but he made a critical error of focusing on health care for a year, rather than focusing on Wall Street reform.
The people? Were rightly angry and wanted to see the modern equivalent of Pecora hearings. Pecora was the guy who hauled all the idiots who caused the great depression in front of congress and grilled them.
Instead, Obama was very conciliatory. He was almost Lincolnesque in his handling of Wall Street after the crisis. It was as if his motto for handling Wall Street was "with malice towards none, with charity for all".
The problem is that Lincoln held that attitude about the reconstruction confederacy. They were already decimated. Trying to exact punishment on them would have been pointless.
Obama held that attitude towards the very bankers who caused our problems, and who were cashing multimillion (and in some cases multibillion) dollar checks while the nation got to experience 10% unemployment.
It made things doubly worse that the health-care reform bill he created was nothing short of astoundingly assinine.
His claims that he had implemented new, tough Wall Street reforms were ridiculous to the point of being difficult to claim with a straight face.
Right now, nobody is listening to Obama anymore. He booted Wall Street reform. He went easy on Wall Street in every imagineable way. He booted health care reform.
The public's mistrust of government is higher than at any time since Vietnam. They simply don't trust congress to get anything right, right now.
So, what's Obama to do? I'm not sure there's anything he can do. He is our nation's Jimmy Carter. A guy too nice for the job. Weak and ineffectual at a time when we needed a tough crisis leader.
A person can claim (with valid arguments to support the position) that Bush led the country in the wrong direction in the days after 9/11. However, at the time, he inspired confidence. He gave folks the impression he was in charge.
But the Taliban no longer controls Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein is dead. He did some good things... just probably not the good things that he should have been doing.
Obama? It's hard to name a single thing he's done that's good. Really.
I had a lot of misgivings about Obama the candidate. Some of them were profoundly wrong, such as my fear that he was actually a far-left radical.
However, one of my misgivings was right on the money: this guy has never been a success at any job he's ever held. Not ever. His entire resume consists of getting his ticket punched at various junctures, but he hasn't really had a single notable accomplishment, and the few minor accomplishments he's racked up smack of a thumb being put on the scale to help him gain gravitas that he hasn't quite earned.
He's out of his league. This is his first real job and he's blowing it, badly.
Bill Clinton lost his friends on the left when he moved away from them and started co-opting agenda items from the right like welfare reform.
Obama has lost his friends on the left because they're moving away from him because he's so badly botched his attempts at agenda items from the left.
Right now, we don't need a conciliator in chief. Right now, we need freakin' Harry Truman. We need somebody to rip the throats out of Wall Street Executives and make sure that as many of them as possible finish their lives unemployed and penniless.
(Sound harsh? That's the fate of a whole lot of honest, hard-working people who DIDN'T create this crisis. I feel no need to go softer on the very folks who caused it.)
He needs to take on congress. Reagan didn't work WITH congress. He made congress his enemy. Then he rolled up a newspaper and smacked the crap out of it until it sat up and begged and did what he wanted it to do.
Just as Obama was the right man, in the right place, at the right time, during his campaign. He's the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time as president.
I just don't see how he can turn this around. However, the first thing I'd do is fire Giethner and replace him with Elizabeth Warren or Brooksley Born.
Then, I'd declare war on Wall Street. I'd declare war on the Fed and get the banks off of welfare. I'd force them to mark their assets to market and they'd be insolvent overnight.
I'd let another couple of Wall Street firms fail and when the rest came crying for another bailout, I'd tell them the terms the bailout would come with.
#1, the shareholders will be wiped out.
#2, the board of directors will be fired.
#3, the executives would be fired.
Any director or executive would be barred from ever working for an FDIC insured institution ever again.
Then, I'd re-institute Glass Steagall.
Harsh? Crazy? Maybe. But nothing short of this will rebuild Obama's moral authority. Right now, he has none.
He got beaten up a bit for going to the "it's Bush's fault" well one too many times. I think people knew he was right... they just didn't want a president who was going to whine about the past. They wanted one who would lead us into a brighter future.
The economic crisis? I think that was largely Clinton's fault, actually. He's the one who led the repeal of Glass-Steagall. In fact, the biggest villains in all that are probably the Republican congress. They're the one constant when we talk about a continuum of legislative actions that were way too friendly to banking interests, and way too neglectful, or downright hostile, to average citizens.
I want to be frank when I say: if we had not repealed Glass Steagall, we wouldn't have had to respond to the economic crisis the way we did.
Obama bears a lot of the blame too, but mostly, he bears it for badly misplaying a bad hand that he was dealt by Bush.
The Wall Street bailouts? They're huge. Maybe not as huge with most people as they are with me, but they're enough to get vast swaths of the population furious.
Obama, Geithner, Paulson and an army of economists have said, rightly so, that the bailouts were necessary.
Well... I think some form of bailout was necessary. However, there are two things the American people simply cannot forgive, even though years have now passed.
The first is that they told their legislators, flat-out, do not bail out the banks. Make them suffer the consequences of their recklessness. If people on Main Street need to feel the pain that capitalism frequently brings, then the folks on Wall Street should be no different.
We all know the history, there. The congress voted down the TARP, but the Wall Street lobbying machine went into high gear, bought more politicians, Pelosi and Bush twisted more arms, and TARP passed on the second vote.
The voters have absolutely taken it out on the hide of people who voted for TARP. That was a toxic vote. It cost congresspeople their careers, and it should have.
You simply can't tell the population of a democracy that you don't care what they want and expect to get away with it every time.
Eventually, you're really going to piss them off.
The second problem? The second problem is that no effort was made to curb executive compensation during the birth of TARP.
It wasn't that the idea wasn't brought up. Nancy Pelosi mentioned it. Harry Reid was in the room when she did.
Hank Paulson said, basically, no, no, no. If we put any strings on this, the bankers won't go along with it. And if they won't go along with it, we'll be burning library books to keep warm and eating squirrels because we will be cast back into the stone age if we don't do something about the impending financial crisis. (Not a direct quote, but you get the idea.)
So, they didn't. The problems that resulted were predictable and people were furious. In some instances, in some cities, people literally took to the streets.
Obama did what he could to impose compensation limits after the fact, but he really couldn't do much. It was too little, too late.
Those Wall Street banker bonuses were a hidden time bomb that the Bush administration left for Obama.
I honestly feel that once the news of banker bonuses hit the press, Obama was doomed. The public simply didn't trust the government to do anything, for any reason, at any time. The government completely lost any moral authority they may have had when it was laid naked that Wall Street was going to profit immensely for destroying the economy.
Now, Obama also badly misplayed his hand, too. It was a bad one, but he made a critical error of focusing on health care for a year, rather than focusing on Wall Street reform.
The people? Were rightly angry and wanted to see the modern equivalent of Pecora hearings. Pecora was the guy who hauled all the idiots who caused the great depression in front of congress and grilled them.
Instead, Obama was very conciliatory. He was almost Lincolnesque in his handling of Wall Street after the crisis. It was as if his motto for handling Wall Street was "with malice towards none, with charity for all".
The problem is that Lincoln held that attitude about the reconstruction confederacy. They were already decimated. Trying to exact punishment on them would have been pointless.
Obama held that attitude towards the very bankers who caused our problems, and who were cashing multimillion (and in some cases multibillion) dollar checks while the nation got to experience 10% unemployment.
It made things doubly worse that the health-care reform bill he created was nothing short of astoundingly assinine.
His claims that he had implemented new, tough Wall Street reforms were ridiculous to the point of being difficult to claim with a straight face.
Right now, nobody is listening to Obama anymore. He booted Wall Street reform. He went easy on Wall Street in every imagineable way. He booted health care reform.
The public's mistrust of government is higher than at any time since Vietnam. They simply don't trust congress to get anything right, right now.
So, what's Obama to do? I'm not sure there's anything he can do. He is our nation's Jimmy Carter. A guy too nice for the job. Weak and ineffectual at a time when we needed a tough crisis leader.
A person can claim (with valid arguments to support the position) that Bush led the country in the wrong direction in the days after 9/11. However, at the time, he inspired confidence. He gave folks the impression he was in charge.
But the Taliban no longer controls Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein is dead. He did some good things... just probably not the good things that he should have been doing.
Obama? It's hard to name a single thing he's done that's good. Really.
I had a lot of misgivings about Obama the candidate. Some of them were profoundly wrong, such as my fear that he was actually a far-left radical.
However, one of my misgivings was right on the money: this guy has never been a success at any job he's ever held. Not ever. His entire resume consists of getting his ticket punched at various junctures, but he hasn't really had a single notable accomplishment, and the few minor accomplishments he's racked up smack of a thumb being put on the scale to help him gain gravitas that he hasn't quite earned.
He's out of his league. This is his first real job and he's blowing it, badly.
Bill Clinton lost his friends on the left when he moved away from them and started co-opting agenda items from the right like welfare reform.
Obama has lost his friends on the left because they're moving away from him because he's so badly botched his attempts at agenda items from the left.
Right now, we don't need a conciliator in chief. Right now, we need freakin' Harry Truman. We need somebody to rip the throats out of Wall Street Executives and make sure that as many of them as possible finish their lives unemployed and penniless.
(Sound harsh? That's the fate of a whole lot of honest, hard-working people who DIDN'T create this crisis. I feel no need to go softer on the very folks who caused it.)
He needs to take on congress. Reagan didn't work WITH congress. He made congress his enemy. Then he rolled up a newspaper and smacked the crap out of it until it sat up and begged and did what he wanted it to do.
Just as Obama was the right man, in the right place, at the right time, during his campaign. He's the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time as president.
I just don't see how he can turn this around. However, the first thing I'd do is fire Giethner and replace him with Elizabeth Warren or Brooksley Born.
Then, I'd declare war on Wall Street. I'd declare war on the Fed and get the banks off of welfare. I'd force them to mark their assets to market and they'd be insolvent overnight.
I'd let another couple of Wall Street firms fail and when the rest came crying for another bailout, I'd tell them the terms the bailout would come with.
#1, the shareholders will be wiped out.
#2, the board of directors will be fired.
#3, the executives would be fired.
Any director or executive would be barred from ever working for an FDIC insured institution ever again.
Then, I'd re-institute Glass Steagall.
Harsh? Crazy? Maybe. But nothing short of this will rebuild Obama's moral authority. Right now, he has none.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
2010: it was the best of times, it was... you know the rest...
It's December already. Middle of December is looming large. I've gotten pretty used to sweating bullets at payroll time, but the first part of the month is when royalties, notes and rent all hit, too.
We showed a few signs of life on Monday, picking up a couple of smallish jobs and a request to bid on a 3rd. With any luck, that's a sign of the busy season starting. Usually, it starts in mid-December.
In an economy like this, with so many people going under, it's hard to feel sorry for yourself. I think I'd be genuinely bummed if not for the knowledge that so many other people have it much worse.
Every day, I seem to hear a new account of somebody in their late 50s who lost a job after a lifetime of work. Say what you want about baby boomers, but it was a workaholic generation. No 9 to 5 for most of them. I can't even imagine what it might be like to be 58 years old, exhausted unemployment benefits, and eating through what you thought was going to be your retirement savings.
So, yeah, things could be worse. A lot of folks are struggling in this economy.
It shows every indication of being a cold Winter, and that's generally good for business. Last year's Winter was mild, and it really hurt. Frozen pipes and thunderstorms are the two main events that can bump up our volume. Without those, things can get really slow.
I have resigned myself to the fact that I need to update my skill set and prepare myself for Jimmy 4.0.
I consider Jimmy 1.0 to be the time from High School graduation until I finished my BBA and got my first long-term, real job with Parker back in 1993. It was a great time, and I experimented a lot. Tried a lot of things that didn't really work. Stuck with a few things that did. Eventually, I got myself graduated from college and employable.
Jimmy 2.0 would be all those years at Parker: 1993 to 2004. Those were good years, too. I always thought that Parker was exceptionally good to me. They paid for a pretty expensive MBA, and I had a great career with them all the way until I decided to hang out my shingle.
Jimmy 3.0 is my time with Servpro. Basically 2005 to present. Even with the recent year o' crappiness, my time as an entrepreneur has been the most professionally satisfying and happiest time of my life.
The plans I'm looking at will probably involve another few years of school. So, 3.0 will be about a decade-long chunk just like the previous versions.
I think it really is true what they say: you need to constantly adapt and update yourself to the environment. My generation knows that we can't be like the ones before: where you might land a job with one employer and work there until you die.
You can try to homestead yourself in one position with one employer, but wow, that makes you vulnerable. That's probably what all those 58 year olds who are dreading their lives were trying to do.
Sometimes I wish I had stuck with Parker. I loved the company, but really, really hated my job.
With Servpro, I've been doing this about 6 years, now.
Year one sucked.
Year two rocked.
Year three, four and five rocked harder.
Year six has been even worse than year one.
I figure that's probably how this will go. You get a few good years, and a few bad years. You have to react quickly when the tide turns out. It's not just a question of making lots of money when there's money to be made. You also have to try not to lose money when there's no money to be made
I've been really good at the former, not so hot at the latter.
In the long run, I will need to make a change. I think Servpro will be viable for another 5 or 10 years. After that, nobody can predict the business environment, but I see a few things coming along that are very positive, but a few that are very negative. It could break either way.
I do wonder what's going to be next. In a lot of ways, I sort of appreciate the way my life has unfolded. I've gotten to experience a lot of things and see a lot of sides of a lot of different ways to make a living.
I've been a paratrooper on an Army Special Operations Team with a Top Secret Clearance.
I've been a bouncer in a country and western bar. (The world's smallest and least effective bouncer, but that's another topic for another day.)
I've been a guitar teacher.
I've been a technical writer. A computer programmer. An I.T. Manager.
I've been an entrepreneur, both now and when I was in college and ran a small sound-reinforcement business that ended up doing almost weekly gigs with a local Ethiopian party band. (The Mekonnens. They were some of the most awesome people I've ever had the pleasure to meet.)
Then, there's the part-time stuff, like pumping gas, working in a halfway house for mentally retarded criminals and being an officer in the Navy Reserve.
Next? I am considering options from enrolling in a Ph.D. program to getting a JD to whatever.
So, yeah, I do truly, truly curse the fact that our government broke some pretty fundamental tenants of capitalism and human decency by bailing out Wall Street and leaving the rest of us to rot.
My personal situation isn't exactly in great shape. We're trying to sell off equipment and business still hasn't really recovered.
However, even at my age, I have a world of opportunity available to me. America is so awesome, even the politicians can't TOTALLY screw it up.
Even in your mid 40s, you can be anything you want to be in this great land.
So, I'm feeling a bit battered and bruised, but in the end, there's no place that I'd rather be. I also know that there are folks much less fortunate than I am who are sufferring far more than I am right now.
In the long run, everything will be okay. The short run? It's a little hairy. That's life, though, isn't it? It's meant to be a struggle. All our attempts to make it entirely painless almost always fail in the end.
I once heard somebody say that if you knew that, for instance, you would face 5 major challenges and 14 minor challenges in your life, but that in the end, you would be just fine, you would look at life differently.
You'd face each challenge and almost welcome it because you already know the outcome: in the end, you do just fine. Every challenge you face would be one less on the list that you have to endure.
Really? That's how most of our lives will go. We just don't know the exact number of challenges we'll face. In the end, though, the vast, vast, vast majority of us are going to do just fine. We'll retire comfortably. We'll have family to love. If we're lucky we will look back on all the challenges of our lives with a sense of pride in what we've overcome.
I remember once when I was in college in Texas. I was broke, my grades sucked, and I was nowhere near graduation. However, I used to remind myself that in America, every day, an immigrant lands on our shores. Probably once every day we get an immigrant who is brilliant and resourceful and who will be a millionaire within a couple of years.
That's the type of opportunity we have, here. That thought used to keep me going: the knowledge that it's out there, and even folks with less than I have will be able to get it through hard work and perseverance.
So, all the pieces are there for a hugely prosperous 2011. I'm better poised than most. I just need to hang on and watch it play itself out. You buy your ticket, you wait in line, and when it's time to ride, you ride. You won't know until you try it
We showed a few signs of life on Monday, picking up a couple of smallish jobs and a request to bid on a 3rd. With any luck, that's a sign of the busy season starting. Usually, it starts in mid-December.
In an economy like this, with so many people going under, it's hard to feel sorry for yourself. I think I'd be genuinely bummed if not for the knowledge that so many other people have it much worse.
Every day, I seem to hear a new account of somebody in their late 50s who lost a job after a lifetime of work. Say what you want about baby boomers, but it was a workaholic generation. No 9 to 5 for most of them. I can't even imagine what it might be like to be 58 years old, exhausted unemployment benefits, and eating through what you thought was going to be your retirement savings.
So, yeah, things could be worse. A lot of folks are struggling in this economy.
It shows every indication of being a cold Winter, and that's generally good for business. Last year's Winter was mild, and it really hurt. Frozen pipes and thunderstorms are the two main events that can bump up our volume. Without those, things can get really slow.
I have resigned myself to the fact that I need to update my skill set and prepare myself for Jimmy 4.0.
I consider Jimmy 1.0 to be the time from High School graduation until I finished my BBA and got my first long-term, real job with Parker back in 1993. It was a great time, and I experimented a lot. Tried a lot of things that didn't really work. Stuck with a few things that did. Eventually, I got myself graduated from college and employable.
Jimmy 2.0 would be all those years at Parker: 1993 to 2004. Those were good years, too. I always thought that Parker was exceptionally good to me. They paid for a pretty expensive MBA, and I had a great career with them all the way until I decided to hang out my shingle.
Jimmy 3.0 is my time with Servpro. Basically 2005 to present. Even with the recent year o' crappiness, my time as an entrepreneur has been the most professionally satisfying and happiest time of my life.
The plans I'm looking at will probably involve another few years of school. So, 3.0 will be about a decade-long chunk just like the previous versions.
I think it really is true what they say: you need to constantly adapt and update yourself to the environment. My generation knows that we can't be like the ones before: where you might land a job with one employer and work there until you die.
You can try to homestead yourself in one position with one employer, but wow, that makes you vulnerable. That's probably what all those 58 year olds who are dreading their lives were trying to do.
Sometimes I wish I had stuck with Parker. I loved the company, but really, really hated my job.
With Servpro, I've been doing this about 6 years, now.
Year one sucked.
Year two rocked.
Year three, four and five rocked harder.
Year six has been even worse than year one.
I figure that's probably how this will go. You get a few good years, and a few bad years. You have to react quickly when the tide turns out. It's not just a question of making lots of money when there's money to be made. You also have to try not to lose money when there's no money to be made
I've been really good at the former, not so hot at the latter.
In the long run, I will need to make a change. I think Servpro will be viable for another 5 or 10 years. After that, nobody can predict the business environment, but I see a few things coming along that are very positive, but a few that are very negative. It could break either way.
I do wonder what's going to be next. In a lot of ways, I sort of appreciate the way my life has unfolded. I've gotten to experience a lot of things and see a lot of sides of a lot of different ways to make a living.
I've been a paratrooper on an Army Special Operations Team with a Top Secret Clearance.
I've been a bouncer in a country and western bar. (The world's smallest and least effective bouncer, but that's another topic for another day.)
I've been a guitar teacher.
I've been a technical writer. A computer programmer. An I.T. Manager.
I've been an entrepreneur, both now and when I was in college and ran a small sound-reinforcement business that ended up doing almost weekly gigs with a local Ethiopian party band. (The Mekonnens. They were some of the most awesome people I've ever had the pleasure to meet.)
Then, there's the part-time stuff, like pumping gas, working in a halfway house for mentally retarded criminals and being an officer in the Navy Reserve.
Next? I am considering options from enrolling in a Ph.D. program to getting a JD to whatever.
So, yeah, I do truly, truly curse the fact that our government broke some pretty fundamental tenants of capitalism and human decency by bailing out Wall Street and leaving the rest of us to rot.
My personal situation isn't exactly in great shape. We're trying to sell off equipment and business still hasn't really recovered.
However, even at my age, I have a world of opportunity available to me. America is so awesome, even the politicians can't TOTALLY screw it up.
Even in your mid 40s, you can be anything you want to be in this great land.
So, I'm feeling a bit battered and bruised, but in the end, there's no place that I'd rather be. I also know that there are folks much less fortunate than I am who are sufferring far more than I am right now.
In the long run, everything will be okay. The short run? It's a little hairy. That's life, though, isn't it? It's meant to be a struggle. All our attempts to make it entirely painless almost always fail in the end.
I once heard somebody say that if you knew that, for instance, you would face 5 major challenges and 14 minor challenges in your life, but that in the end, you would be just fine, you would look at life differently.
You'd face each challenge and almost welcome it because you already know the outcome: in the end, you do just fine. Every challenge you face would be one less on the list that you have to endure.
Really? That's how most of our lives will go. We just don't know the exact number of challenges we'll face. In the end, though, the vast, vast, vast majority of us are going to do just fine. We'll retire comfortably. We'll have family to love. If we're lucky we will look back on all the challenges of our lives with a sense of pride in what we've overcome.
I remember once when I was in college in Texas. I was broke, my grades sucked, and I was nowhere near graduation. However, I used to remind myself that in America, every day, an immigrant lands on our shores. Probably once every day we get an immigrant who is brilliant and resourceful and who will be a millionaire within a couple of years.
That's the type of opportunity we have, here. That thought used to keep me going: the knowledge that it's out there, and even folks with less than I have will be able to get it through hard work and perseverance.
So, all the pieces are there for a hugely prosperous 2011. I'm better poised than most. I just need to hang on and watch it play itself out. You buy your ticket, you wait in line, and when it's time to ride, you ride. You won't know until you try it
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