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
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