Chapter 12. When Your Best Just Isn’t Good Enough

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation

One of the hardest things to accept about business, and maybe human behavior in general, is that most behavior doesn’t seem to be rational, but whimsical, irrational, and emotionally driven.  Decisions are based on emotion, and then the intellect is summoned to justify them.  Business could be gained and lost for some very arbitrary reasons.  My response to this was mostly terror.  On any given day I knew the wrath of the gods could descend on my head for reasons far beyond my control.  Since all of my contracts were on a month-to-month basis, I understood that on any given day I was only 30 days from bankruptcy court, if enough of my clients were to cancel my contracts at the same time.  No business was guaranteed, even if you were doing an excellent job, and the specter of economic death hung over your head all the time.  It was imperative to build relationships inside the client’s organization on at least three different levels.  Whenever possible I would build a relationship with the CEO of the corporation, my manager would build a rapport with his peer in the client’s organization, and we would try to match up our cleaners with the personalities of key people on each floor.  Generally speaking, it took all of us as a team to keep a tight grip on business.  Everyone was important, and I always told our people to avoid stepping on hands when climbing up the ladder, because those same hands could expedite the way down (or out the door!)  A disgruntled secretary in a client’s building could make our work life miserable.

Read more..

Chapter 11. “How Much Justice Can You Afford Today?”

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation.

Some of my most painful business lessons came from the legal system.  I was unaware that a large group of under-employed attorneys had invented a brand new field of litigation that came to be known as contract employment versus employment-at-will.  The theory apparently went something like this:  if an employer said something to an employee that could even vaguely be construed as an assurance of continued employment, it could be considered a binding verbal contract.  Let’s say, one day during a discussion with an employee that you, as the employer say something intended to show appreciation and encouragement for recent good work on their part such as “Keep up the good work.  You have a real future here”, and then let’s say that a few months later their attitude changes and their work goes south and you end up terminating their employment; they could now sue you for termination without just cause, because implied in your encouraging verbal statement months before was a guarantee of some sort of continued employement.  From that point on, in the eyes of the law, you could only discharge an employee for “just cause”.  Well , how hard can that be?  Who would want to terminate someone for an unjust cause?  The problem is, “for just cause” in the eyes of whom?  Of course it was appropriate in your mind to discharge them; you were probably fed up with their behavior, or taking a lot of grief from them and spending 80% of your time trying to correct them and taking heat from both your boss and the customer to get the situation fixed.  But the problem is, their discharge is never  for “just cause” in their own eyes.  When was the last time you heard someone say, ‘I got fired today, and by God, I deserved it.’  So now, under this concept of implied employment contract, this discharged employee can challenge his discharge in court, and you are obliged to defend your decision to let him go.  To a jury.  What if you get a jury that buys into the Hollywood stereotype that businessmen are greedy and corrupt and out to get the little guy?  You may successfully defend yourself, but it’s going to cost you money, probably a lot of it, and the plaintiff’s attorney knows that.  So he launches a paper battle that runs up the bill for the defense.  At some point the insurance company will capitulate and pay off, just to contain their spiraling legal costs.

Read more..

Chapter 10. Save the World, or Save Myself?

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation.

 

I apologize to my readers, for I have gotten ahead of myself in this story.  Picking up where I was at the beginning of Chapter 9, I had twelve part-time people working for me, and I was taking $800 per month out of the business to live on.  I had this dinky little office in the basement of a building near the apartment where Barbara, I, and our first daughter Meghan lived.  The office was about the size of a closet, one room, and there was this deep ditch outside the basement door to the building, with a wooden plank thrown across it as an entrance.  I paid $90 per month for this.  There was a large standpipe from the floors above that went right past my desk, and whenever anyone upstairs flushed a toilet, you could hear it whistling right past my desk on the way down into the sewer.  I had an old metal battleship desk I had bought from a customer for $25.  I was drowning in problems and had no idea where to turn to for help.  And I couldn’t think of whatever else I could do if this failed.  It was not uncommon at all for me to work 24 or even 36 hours straight before collapsing in bed.  I did not consider myself a businessman at all; I felt totally incompetent and foolish.  What kept me going was desperation and fear of failure.  Barbara and my combined, adjusted gross income that first year was $5600.  We were below Appalachian poverty level.  I’m sure we qualified for all kinds of government Welfare, but we didn’t even know it existed and it never occurred to us to ask.  It never occurred to us that we were anyone’s responsibility but ourselves.

I went to the town library and looked up trade journals and sent in a card to one of them.  I started getting junk mail, and eventually I saw an advertisement for a trade association convention to be held in Orlando, Florida.  I figured out what it was going to cost for Barbara and I to go down there, and it was about $600.  I don’t remember where we got the money from, but we went.  I was shocked.  I expected to meet a whole bunch of miserable sods like myself trying to stay alive, and there were some.  But I also met many very successful operators, some of them multi-national,  with literally tens of thousands of employees each. 

  Read more..

Passion, Power, and Panties . . . Confessions of a Businessman Preface, part 2

What follows is the second half of the Preface, a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation.

Psychology is the discipline that studies the fears that prevent us from perceiving reality correctly or of acting appropriately upon the knowledge and awareness of reality available to us.  One of the greatest appeals of religion is that it seduces us into believing we can short-circuit this entire process and rely on another to shoulder the burdens of dealing with reality.  This relieves us of the onerous burden of choosing our Purpose, and obviates the need for self-directed action, risk-taking, and courage to take those risks.  It welcomes us to the world of victim-hood, for having borrowed the purposes, principles, and ethics of others, we surely cannot be held responsible for the consequences of our actions, and having chosen to avoid thinking in order to avoid choices, we find ourselves unable to face life and its greatest issues with a direct gaze and our heads held high.  We are hostages of vague fears.  We can never become a champion of our own happiness, and must live our life at the most mundane, concrete level.  We have condemned ourselves to living the life of what Ayn Rand called a second-hander.   We never experience the joys of ownership–of ourselves.  Where there can be no failure, there can be no success.  Failing to empower ourselves at the deepest level, we may even attempt to substitute power over others.

Read more..

Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman Preface

What follows is the first of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation.

Man has evolved over millions of years.  Of all recorded history, it took almost 10,000 years for his entire body of knowledge to double once.  It took about 300 years for his body of knowledge to double again (the Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment), today it doubles about every 60 days (the Information Age with billions communicating with each other via the Internet).  Until recently, the one word that has characterized man’s development has been slow, with natural selection being the driving force.

 Man traditionally survived through his herding instinct, his need and desire to bunch together according to geographic, geneological , or shared-threat commonalities. These groups, or tribes,  competed with each other for resources, and often encouraged a sense of superiority among their members in relation to outsiders.  Herding provided a survival advantage in that even the less able among the herd were protected.  Such  a feeling of safety made it possible for them to contribute and succeed within their limitations, and if they successfully procreated, they also contributed  to the survival of that particular herd.  Such tribes often developed strong taboos about mixing and intermarrying with outsiders or other  forms of potential assimilation.   We know this today as ethnicity.  Ethnic “herding” tendencies have resulted in tenacious differences, each ethnic group becoming a sort of subspecies of Homo sapiens.  Some groups, as might be expected, have developed characteristics better suited for survival than others, and some groups have survived as parasites on others, something Nature allows.  An inherent problem with parasites is that their survival depends on the health of the host.  An additional problem, as the species evolves to a more conscious level, is the willingness of the host to tolerate their presence.

Read more..