A long time ago in a land not so far away, I was working in a asset recovery yard for a large utility. Think Salvage yard. I was a warehouseman, a bolt sorter, and the environmental guy, all in one. The work only sucked a little bit, but the people were a pain. I didn't fit in, and knew that there had to be something better. I was fairly newly married, about a year and a half, or so, and really wanted my wife to be able to stay home with my 5 month old son.
As luck would have it, we needed to do a car shuffle. One of our cars was too expensive, and the other needed to be cleaned up. I priced out a detailer and thought, that is just too much money for something that I can do myself. So, since I was of the opinion that I needed a small side business in order to support my family, I thought detailing sounded just dandy...Boy, I am a lousy detailer. Some people have a talent for that, I am not one of those people. I am pretty good, but to get the money I wanted to make, I was no where nearly talented enough.
So, my 7 month old turns a year old, and we move into our first home. We lived in a town house before, but when the baby moved in, there just was not enough room. The day we moved in, was my wifes last day at her job managing a $40 million dollar budget. We were fat, but knew we were going to be skinny.
6 months later, layoffs came around. It was the second round of layoffs, and I should have been in the first round. That being the case, I had a choice, I could take my chances and try to ride it out, hoping there were enough volunteers, or I could take the golden handshake, and walk out with about $30k. What would you do? I took the money and ran. I went out and got a couple of accounts, and they tided us over but were nothing fantastic, we were in a down economy, and I just had not figured out how to grow my business. After a year, my wife came to me and said, "we have $500 left". I went and got a part time job. Within two days, they begged me to go full time. I did, and it lasted 4 years. In that time, I was promoted to management, and had about 60 drivers working for me. Since I was on salary, I also had a couple of weeks where I worked 120 hours. That was bad enough, but when my baby son #3 cried when I picked him up, I took a pay cut and foud another gig. It was perfect, to build a business.
I took the skills I learned and really started to sell, while working on my other job. I was the truck driver, and as long as there were no deliveries, I could do what ever I wanted to do. I worked on business expansion on their dime, using their phones, and they didn't care. It was something just sort of insane. I did end up with a couple of really good accounts. After a year I quit that job and went full time washing. I have been full time ever since.
Since then, things worked out that I got a couple of contracts that showed me the direction I should take my business. I may not be the richest guy out there, or the most experienced, I may even be one of the biggest knuckleheads but, I am happy and my employees like working for me.
