Sure, I will give you a complete description.
First, I have never been anywhere near bankruptcy, any more then a typical newlywed that did not grow up with money is. My Dad retired and made less in a year then I do in a week. I was not raised with privilege.
I got married 25 years ago, and am still married to the same amazing woman. She was a CSR for the phone company completing a marketing degree, and I worked for another Utility in their ware house and sorting bolts. After we had been married a year, we had our first baby. As a couple we decided that she should stay home with him. She could make more money, but we both feel very strongly that there is a huge difference in a kids life if Mom stays home. She is not stupid, she graduated Magna Cum Laude from ASU which is one of the top business schools in the world. In order for that to happen, I needed to bring in extra income, so I started detailing part time. I freely admit that I am not a very good detailer, though most would consider it passable. I also did not have time to market and generate business, because I had a full time job, and a wife and baby that I wanted to spend time with. Basically, my priority was not my business.
After a while, figuring out that the phone would just not ring because I was in business, I figured out that recurring income was the way to go. My wife liked it better, and so did I. I took a voluntary severance from the Utility, because they gave me a bit of money, which was enough to support us for a year, and tried to build the fleetwashing part of my business. It was a bad economy, and I am not a natural salesman, because I am a pretty reserved, if not shy person. I have gotten over a lot of that, but it is a tough thing for me. So, I was off a year, and had to go find a job when the money was running out. I literally found a job the day we spent our last dollar.
That job was as a milkman, delivering to convenience stores. Basically, I was a full service route driver that drove a semi to 15 convenience stores a day. I did that for five years, and along the way received promotions that put me over 60 employees handling all of their customer service issues, payroll, etc in the Phoenix area. Unfortunately, my direct superior was short sighted and would not allow us to hire additional people and the company had a very liberal absence policy. That meant that I would often have to run a route when someone called in sick. The final straw was when I worked a 60 hour week when I came back from vacation, with no overtime or commission, and then worked a 120 hour week the next week. At the end of that week I went to pick up my baby boy #3 and he cried because he did not know me. I was devastated. A friend called the next week looking for a truck driver, because he knew I interviewed a lot of people, and I took the job. The premise was that they wanted to build the trucking side of their business. The day I started, I was told that my direct superior didn't want to do that, so he thwarted me at every turn. I had committed to a full year with the company, and I quit exactly one year later.
In that year, I got much better at selling, and actually got my business to where it would sustain me and my family.
so, now some nutcase is going to come on here and use what I said against me. Since I went full time 17 years ago, I have never worked for a pay check for someone else. You will also note that I have never had a loan from a family member, nor have I ever had a loan that I have defaulted on.
It is really kind of funny, because when we were going through our past recently in order to secure a contract, there was only one thing that we could come up with that we had done illegally. Our dog, David, (yes, that really is his name) did not have a current license. It bothered my wife and I enough that we went out and got him his license, so now he can bark with a permit.
