In past blogs, I have referred to my love for hanging wall paper. There are days that stand out in my mind that are very much like Sylvester Stallone as Rocky, running up the steps of the front entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Arts. The music swells in the background as Rocky reaches the top, raises his arms in the air and breaks into a little dance of exultation. On one such day for me, I finished hanging wall paper in a bedroom of a palatial home in Lower Tuckahoe (Powhatan). The wall paper was actually fabric with a paper backing. The fabric cost $100 a yard and each sheet hung used up 3 yards of material. By the time I finished the room, I had installed $10,000 of material.
In 1992 I felt far more like John Denver than Rocky. His song about “Some days are diamonds, some days are stones; some days the hard times won’t leave me alone†rang true. I felt burned out, and the whole self employment thing felt like a trap. The grind never stopped. There were calls every day to be returned, estimates to be arranged, clients that wanted changes and additions to the original contract, flawed material from the manufacturer that needed to be replaced, clients that reserved time in my schedule and then cancelled the day before the start date. The worst of all was hanging wall paper that was flawed, and the flaw didn’t show until it was up on the wall and dry. Under those circumstances, the manufacturer’s representative would invariably tell the client that I didn’t know what I was doing.
I thought I could be content with going back to basically punching in at 8:00 in the morning and punching out at 5:00 in the evening, letting the buck stop with someone else, and have the weekend off. I tried being a car salesman, a delivery driver for a snack company, and a salesman for specialized health insurance, among other things. None of it worked, because I wasn’t invested in any of those things. Being self employed was, and still is who I am, even when I’m not working. Why? Because the rules are mine, and reflect my values. I can do whatever is necessary to satisfy my clients. No one is going to keep me from succeeding except me. Even when there were problems and the company reps were bad mouthing me, my clients trusted me. I always did whatever was necessary to complete a job to the clients’ satisfaction. I never worried about lay offs, or outsourcing, or company politics, and I had the authority to modify the grind. There’s nothing more heady, than being responsible and free.