| Introduction
Before anyone new can read anything I write, you need to know that I am
living proof that God has a since of humor...He made me. He gave me great
intellect. Then made me functionally dyslexic. That's like a big
engine in you car....no steering wheel. I know God looks down at me and
laughs at my efforts. I'm glad I can bring Him humor.
I am a Christian. But before I can say anything else about being a
Christian, I must look towards the Heavens and ask, "God, is it my time to
judge? Or is that still up to You?" So far, the answer has always
been the same. Sometimes I add, "And God, if it ever becomes my turn to
judge, will You give me the wisdom first?"
I say those things because if you are looking for normal, top-to-bottom,
left-to-right logic in anything I do or say, you will be confused. I am
dyslexic. It is my greatest attribute. It allows me to assimilate
information from many diverse points of view and recombine it into a new
"whole". It is also my greatest detriment. Because I don't think
linearly, I can't communicate linearly. I found that most people flow
thought in an orderly manner. Don't expect that from me. And if
spelling errors bother you, well I even confuse the spell checker.
I'm not really that smart...I just learn fast. One of the things I know
is that there are two kinds of people; problem identifiers and problem solvers.
It is easy to find fault, complain and criticize. At times I think our
culture has decided that being a good fault finder is a sign of leadership.
It's not. Finding fault only requires looking backward. Leadership
requires looking forward...it requires creating.
As Henry Ford said in 1917, "Don't find fault. Find a remedy.
Anyone can complain."
Knowing that, those involved must stay focused on the many solutions.
Here's a little know secret that's been around for thousands of years, "You
don't get what you want in life. You get what you think about."
Think about the goal. Think about the little success along the way.
A SHORT STORY
Southern California
I grew up in Southern California, went to High School at Western High
(Recently I found out that Tiger Woods went there quite a few years later.),
undergraduate school at University of California, Irvine and graduate school at
Cal. State Fullerton.
I look back at how much I complained about my life and now wonder how to get
any pity at all. My majors in college were adolescent sociology and
psychology because I was needed the help. You see, my parents were
workaholics. Mom was head of the Mentally Gifted Minors Program for a
couple of school districts and Dad taught high school math and night school.
Dad even did some programming on the first computers back when they were the
size of a room and had 64 bits of memory. Then, before I was a teenager,
my parents started a sailplane airport. I had to go out to the airport
every weekend and school holiday. It was really ruff. Flying those
sailplanes all the time and working a little. Being around great men who
had the flying hobby. I keep looking for my violin hoping it will help
sell my sorrow, but I must have sat on it years ago.
I did fry my brains in grad school, so right out of grad school I went into
furniture manufacturing. My grandpa taught woodshop and always said, "If
you work with your hand, they'll never let you down." I was hired to
develop a line of ultra-modern, high-gloss, cubistic furniture. Production
was under way and two things happened. One, the chemicals used in
production were affecting my health and two, the job requirements grew faster
than I did. I almost died and the company did.
I took off a couple of months to get healthy and traveled the perimeter of
North America in a VW Bus...north to Alaska, turn right to New York, turn right
to Florida, turn right back to California. It was an adventure.
Things that go Crash in the Day
When I got back to Southern California, I went out to the airport wondering
what was next in my life. Flying a sailplane is a good place to think.
I said "hi" to my folks, and pulled a sailplane out on the flight line. A
paying customer showed up and the justified rule was money went first. As
the customer was taking off, he went through "pilot induced oscillations".
That's where a pilot pulls back on the controls, the plane or, in this case
sailplane, goes up. But it goes up too much so the pilot pushes forward on
the controls, and it goes down too much. Up again, down again, each time
the oscillations get worse until the ground gets in the way. I had been
running a lot for two months, so I was the first one to the crash scene. I
learned a three things. I never want to be the first to a crash again,
worse than finding someone dead is finding someone badly hurt and maybe God
didn't want me working for my dad at the airport. (It wasn't a bad
conclusion. I was so immature that I would not have been much of an asset
to my dad.)
Seattle - Summer was on a Tuesday
I moved to Seattle and worked at an amazing custom furniture manufacturing
company. They had equipment and abilities that I still admire. The
first summer I was there was on a Tuesday and I missed it. Some of my
friends said they had a swell time. I was ready for the next summer, but
headed south before winter could return.
San Francisco Bay Area
I went back to school in Seattle to learn how to be a salesman. I took
those new skills to San Francisco and worked as a manufacture's rep in the old
Ice House building. It was a great learning experience. I learned
that if you outperform projections my too much, you don't get paid. Today
I understand. Anytime there is rampant growth, cash flow becomes a
problem.
I jumped back into the trades and attempted to be a "design/build" remodeling
contractor. It was a case of "high design" and my lacking of the building
experience.
The designer was an incredible, gifted woman. She had a son graduating
the 8th grade in Tiburon, just north of San Francisco. In his graduating
class of 320, none had their original parents. There were a lot of good
house keepers (a woman gets married, gets divorced, keeps the house). But
100% of the kids had gone through a divorce. When I decided to have kids,
I decided to move a little north.
I tried to sell residential remodel, had moderate success, and home mortgages
went to 16%.
My Own Contract Office Furniture Business
I decided to try my had selling contract office furniture. That's where
you take an order for furniture and then it's built. I had good success
and started my own contract office furniture business. I got good at
selling executive offices, conference rooms and receptions areas. Those
areas are less likely to go out to bid, so the profit is better. I could
sell an executive office in four hours. A ten minute meeting with the
executive to understand his tastes. Next a 20 minute meeting to go through
catalogs. Then a 2-3 hour trip into the showrooms. You need to
"touch and feel" before making a decision that important. Then a 15 minute
meeting to review the final order and it's done.
Life was good.
IFMA & Check In & VSI
During my time in the office furniture industry, I gained notoriety for a few
fun things. One was office productivity. The industry tried to sell
new furniture because of claims it would increase office productivity. I
always figured that you shouldn't talk about increasing productivity if
productivity was being measured in the first place. There are many ways to
measure office productivity. But in the mid '80's not much was being done.
So, I made National press for saying the best way to measure it was in, "Smiles
per Hour" since happy people are normally more productive than their counter
parts.
I also studied the work of Robert Propst, the inventor of open office
planning (office cubicles). His 1968 book, The Office - A Facility
Based on Change, detailed how a work station could be adjusted to match the
needs of an individual worker. (I am still amazed how far ahead he was.)
Seventeen years after he wrote his book, I incorporated his theories into a
program for the Port of Oakland. It was wonderful. The basic work
stations were installed. Thirty days later each worker was asked two
questions, "What do you do? and How can we make it better?". Twenty
percent of the furniture budget had been set aside so the individuals could add
the exact pieces that made them work better.
I produced and presented a workshop/seminar for Herman Miller at their
showroom in San Francisco. It was designed for facility managers to help
them take some of the confusion out of buying office furniture. We learned
that "free" didn't work and a $50 fee increased attendance by 400%.
Along this time, IFMA (International Facilities Management Association) ask
me to be a speaker at their National convention at Mosconi Center. It was
fun. And for the next three years I got to work with great people on fun
projects for the conventions. One year we even had a Herman Miller Action
Office "work station" set up that we changed into a "party station" at 5:00.
The unions didn't like us doing their work, but luckily, our workers were
beautiful sales women. Beauty always slays the beast.
Check In - another fun project during my contract office
furniture days. Once again, salesmen were selling "ergonomic" chairs to
prevent back problems. I wanted to know the truth. I did a lot of
research and ended up with a 2 minute stretching program that relaxed all the
major muscle groups. The list of medical advisors on the project ranged
from Dr. White, who did Joe Montana's back surgery, to chiropractors, Rolf and
F.M. Alexander Therapists, to Chinese Doctors. There were nine diverse
medical practitioners that endorsed the program.
It worked. Fireman's Fund National Headquarters in Novato documented
100% return on investment in the first 30 days. Things were exciting.
VSI, Inc. - I spent so much time going through showroom with clients
that I thought there should be a Video Show Room that I could take to clients.
This was before "point-of-sale" videos, so I was five to ten years ahead of the
technology. I also ran into personalities involved in the film industry.
Looking back, most of all I think I wore the wrong shoes.
The wrong shoes
That's one of my favorite excuses. All excuses are based on fact.
One's as good as another. They all work. And none of them matter.
I knew #1 son understood that when he came home with a bad results on a 3rd
grade spelling test. I asked him what happened. He answered, "I must
have worn the wrong shoes."
I had lots going on. My apartment had "story boards" on every square
foot of wall space. There were trails of papers all over. The dining
room table was an eight-foot, oval conference table with papers all over it and
the chairs. Everything the way I like it. Still today, if I file
something in a filing cabinet, I'll never find it again. Filing and
spelling, two of my biggest challenges.
That's when I learned that "Chapter 7 Bankruptcy" does mean they aren't going
to pay you. My major account was the third largest real estate syndicater
in the world. They were bought out in a hostile takeover with the intent
of breaking them apart, selling the assets and bankrupting the leftovers.
That gave me the time to review my "book-of-business" and realize that I had
much to high a percentage dedicated to one company. And, as things go, in
the same 90 day period, my CPA found $70,000 worth of errors in my books and I
found out I was pregnant with #1 son. I already knew that in the contract
office furniture business the time between contact and payment could be 6
months. "Can you say 'cash flow'?"
San Francisco Town Car Service & the 1989 Earth Quake
What I also learned was that there was a need for a "Town Car" service.
I would have used such a service on my trips with clients into the San Francisco
showrooms. My executive clients talked about wanting such a service.
So I started San Francisco Town Car Service. There were some hic-ups
during the transition, but we got to the point where we could afford to go out
to a fancy dinner once in a while. Having little boys by then, McDonalds
was normally as fancy as we got.
Our cars were mobile offices. There were two cell phones, on-board fax
and modem connections. It was "back in the day". It required a 10db
high-gain antenna on the trunk to run everything. On foggy trips through
San Francisco that antenna would glow in the moisture. Now we worry about
the little antennas in our hand helds.
Our pricing was also unique; fifty-cents a minute and fifty-cents per
mile. I needed a solution to a common problem. A business man would
come into town and charter a car to take him to a meeting. Often those
meets were an hour or more away. Our diver would take the client to his
meeting, then what? Dead head back? Wait without pay? So we
sold a service. While the client was in his meeting, we would take phone
calls for him in the car and give him the message when he returned. (I
billed $1 per minute for cell time...that was then.) Now the client would
pay fifty-cents a minute for that service and an additional fifty-cents per mile
for travel. We also would take "travel vouchers" for payment. We
would bill the client at his office which meant that often the payment for the
car he chartered for his family on the weekend could somehow fit into his books
better.
Then the 1989 earthquake hit San Francisco. It was awful. I was south
of Candlestick Park heading to the airport to pick up my favorite client.
Light polls were falling onto the freeway and cars were hitting them and being
hit by them. I made it to the airport and stopped on the upper level to
wait for my client. The first aftershock hit. The ceiling was
falling from the terminal. People were coming out hurt and screaming.
I moved my car out from under the overhang and continued to wait. No
client. (I found out later that he missed his flight.) I waited
until I was told all passengers were out of the terminal. I drove away
with 100's of people walking down the airport ramps to who knows where.
I knew the back way to get through San Francisco and thought that would be
the best way north and home. It may have been the best way, but it took 4
hours to make a 30 minute journey. I was listening to the news and seeing
devastation that wasn't even being talked about. I was trying to reach my
other drivers on the cell phone, but all lines were busy. I couldn't even reach
my home to tell my wife I was O.K. Finally I got home, said "hi" to all,
and went for my Bible. I played "Bible Roulette". I closed my eyes,
spun my Bible around several times, opened it and read, "God says he shall shake
the Heavens yet one more time to show that what man builds is shakable, only
what God builds in non-shakable."
I knew at that moment that God's hands were still on my shoulders. I
just didn't know what it meant. In fact, it took years for me to find out.
God needed to humble me in order to work with me. For that I am grateful.
For all the others that lost so much, I don't know what to say.
Once again I had the time to evaluate my business. 80% was inbound
businessmen and they quit coming. San Francisco was a business-meeting
destination where families could join up for weekends. The businessmen
could not risk being "cut off" from their businesses, so they went to
business-meetings in other locations.
The town car business couldn't take the "hit". I've know many great
salesmen, but even they couldn't sell a one-year-old Town Car with 110,000 miles
on it for enough money to cover the debt. I learned the difference between
cash-flow and profit.
Welcome Sonoma County Condo Life
We lost everything, even the house in Marin County, and rented a condo in
Sonoma County. My degrees are in adolescent sociology and psychology, and
I saw the impact this loss had on my boys. There was going to be a
developmental price to be paid. I realized that I had two choices: pay the
price now or pay the price latter. I chose to pay the price now and became
the maintenance supervisor for the 241 unit condo complex we lived in.
Life was good.
The Best Multi-Family Recycling Program in California
One of the challenges that came with the job was a garbage mess.
Luckily, in 1993 I listened to the Waste Management driver named Jesus Lopez and
with his guidance, I created the best multi-family recycling program in
California. We were the first to divert over 50% of our garbage through
recycling. But I did it because I am a businessman. I figured if I
diverted 50% of our garbage, I would save 50% on the garbage bill. That
turned into $25,000 per year. Over $300,000 during the 14 years I was
there. Oh, by the way, I recycled enough newspaper to save over 17,000
trees. That's a big forest. I recycled more cardboard than
newspaper, but I don't have the conversion tables.
I won the Waste Reduction Award Program (WRAP) every year I entered.
The first year was 1994. The last year was 2000 where the second place
finisher was at a 25% diversion rate. There is a HUGE difference between
diverting 25% and 50%.
Of course, when I was developing the program, I had a great deal of passion.
We became the first complex with green waste for the residents. That only
accounted for 3% of the diversion, but every bit counts when you're after it
all. It took 3 months working with Waste Management to get them to go
along with the idea. Then, the day they were going to implement the
program, I was told by the supervisor I was working with that he couldn't do it.
The City got involved and said that I didn't get their approval. I had
talked to the City. But when your so far ahead, followers don't always
know what the road looks like.
I'd handle it differently today. But almost 14 years ago, I told the
supervisor, "When you put your zipper back in the front of your pants, I'll look
forward to working with you again. Until then, let you people know that at
the City Council meeting tomorrow night there will be 40 or 50 people from this
complex asking one question, 'How do you spell the name of the elected City
official that is denying me the right to implement State Law AB939 (California's
recycling law). I want to make sure we get the spelling right because the
press will be in the back of the room.'"
The next morning there was a message on my answering machine. I didn't
have to go the meeting. The green waste containers would be delivered by
2:00. And, at 2:00 that supervisor showed up in a flatbed truck, with no
clutch (only big truck he could find in the yard), and delivered the containers
that he personally assembled that morning. I loved working with Waste
Management. Of course, the press did do a story. And, in the story I
am called, "the recycling maniac" by the head of Waste Management in Sonoma
County. From her point of view, I'm sure she was right.
Desert Summers get HOT
We ended up buying the condo, fixing it up, selling it and buying a house in
the old part of Santa Rosa. Life was good. #1 son excelled in biking
and knew he wanted to be a pilot. The Air Force was the right choice for
him. Now it was #2 sons turn. I ask him what he wanted to do when he
grew up and he said, "Drink beer and build teekee huts." I said, "Won't
work. No profit." Then I told him the story about one of the
gazebos I built back when I was doing modular office furniture. One of the
"ally rats" (guys working in the industrial park) built gazebos. He needed
help building an incredibly fancy gazebo. He paid me around $2,500 for
building it and I was happy. That was a lot of money for a side job in
1978. That is, until I found out he sold it for $12,000. I learn
fast.
So I told #2 son we should move to the desert where the boom is and build a
gazebo designed for the desert. And that was the start of Play Tough
Construction (#2 son chose the name). Two years of research and
development and a bunch of money and we created the most technologically advance
backyard structure in the desert. It works. We also created the
first BTU rated, 250 PSI, backyard cooling system.
Then #2 son went to Germany to visit his brother who was stationed there.
He called and said he was joining the Marines. When he got home we talked.
He said, "If I don't do it now, I never will and somebody's got to do it."
I am proud of him. I am proud of all my boys. If you are lucky,
you'll get to meet one of them sometime. And if things ever got really
bad, I'd want all of them in my fox hole.
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