Don't Get Me Started: December 1, 2017

Sometimes I want to teach how to run a small business. How does this relate to the fact that my trophy wife spent yesterday on top of a pump house? All day. With me steppin’ and fetchin’ tools and cutting up roofing shingles?

It’s like this. Out where our farm is located, you can’t hire anyone to do small jobs. I’m not even sure you can hire anyone to do big ones that easily. Oh, let me revise my premise. You might find someone if you are willing to ignore multiple stays in prison, severe meth addiction, and the stickiest fingers this side of Las Vegas, in the hiring.

We’re a little choosy.

Oh, we asked around and were referred to a man who “just loved” to do small jobs. He actually made it out to the farm to look at the job on the second try at an appointed time. He said he would check some material prices and get back with us. That was nearly three months ago.

So, we finally “backed our ears,” as Sainted Mother would say, and did it ourselves, my wife and I. We succeeded, she serving as “La Jefa” and me as “Jimmie Gofetch.” It’s done now and we can move on. To hell with the local contractor.

Honestly, I don’t know how people expect a business to succeed like that. I could have understood it if the man had said, “that’s not really my can of beer.” Disappearing, though, strikes him off the list for any future work or referrals. Consider too, that between my wife and her family, they know practically everyone in the county. It doesn’t take long for failure to overtake a person. Ask the former politician who lost an election by a dozen or so votes after she was rude to the Lady Hazel, my mother-in-law.

I think about small business success sometimes when I’m travelling the back roads of the state and come across an abandoned diner or retail shop on a road that maybe handles 100 vehicles on a good day in an area with a population of one person per square mile.

What has gotten into people? Has the act of contemplating reality disappeared from our national psyche? Never mind. Don’t answer that.

On the other hand, someone very close to me asked me once about going into business for himself. He was highly skilled, honest, dependable, hard-working, and well-liked, so we could avoid the initial threshold requirements. Also, the market was there. My advice?

- First: retain an accountant and pay attention

- Next: Pay your taxes,

- Pay your subcontractors,

- Pay your employees,

- Pay you creditors,

- Pay yourself last, and

- Do what you agreed to do, maybe a bit more.

It’s fairly simple. Long story short: He’s working on his second or third million now. I’m not sure which. He still lives in the same house he and his wife bought when they first married, when he was working on salary. Sometimes in my envy, I wonder if my advice was too good, or whether he just had a knack for it. I do know that he’s done two jobs for me at a bit more than two-thirds the figure the competition quoted and his crews arrived a bit early (from an hour and a half away) and finished before the estimated time.

I have people stop and ask me if we are related. Guess.

Too bad he doesn’t fix roofs. Maybe we wouldn’t have had to spend all day yesterday fixing one, and at our age at that.

Sure