I'm not putting all the blame on the company for what happened, even though some people think I should. I still believe that it is possible to succeed using that system that they have set up. The big problem is that they are giving the financial responsibility of runnong a business to s lot of very young people, some of which (like me) have had no business training prior to signing up.
So let's get down to some of the specifics of how things went wrong. First off was the relationship I had with my employees. My initial round of hiring was pretty much giving jobs to the first people who asked. As a person who hangs out mainly with computer and art students. I didn't see a problem with that immediately. I mean, I was an art and formerly computer student, and I did great last year. If painting houses is do simple that even I could do it, then pretty much anyone should be able to do it. Right? Wrong. I want to state for the record that these people were not lazy. What I didn't know at the time was that there are some things that, oddly enough, I was more suited to doing, compared to many people I know. Through my summer jobs from 2010 to 2012 had built up enough resilience and mental fortitude to handle summer temperatures and working on ladders, whereas most of my friends, as eager as they were to learn, were not able to keep up with the physical demands of the job.
I approached the my relationship with my employees as being too much of a teacher or buddy than an actual boss. I couldn't bring myself to give warnings or fire people for when it seemed like things weren't going too well for them. Instead I tried to pick up the slack by putting in extra hours on the site without tracking them to boost their numbers. I tried to encourage them, telling them (and myself) that they would get better in time. Since they were better able to see than I did that things weren't working out, it was up to them to call things off, which they did. I don't blame them for this, though at the time I felt like I was being abandoned in my time of need. While part of it was that they needed to look out for their own interests, they also couldn't stand watching me destroy myself in trying to make it work.
Another big issue was in a marketing tactic that ultimately came back to bite me. It was suggested to me that a good way of closing an estimate is by offering a %10 discount, while marking up the overall price to compensate. While I liked the idea of giving discounts for booking early, I foolishly decided against marking up, as I felt that such a tactic would be too dishonest for my tastes. Unfortunately, what I didn't realize about this was that if you are only getting what's left once all the painters, supplies, and royalties are left over, a %10 discount off the overall job meant a %50 or more decrease on what I was taking home from each job, and that didn't even include fuel or non-paint expenses. I ended up selling off my entire profit margin just to make a sale, without considering my own bottom line.
In addition to those problems there were a number of jobs that I ended up running into unforseen problems that I did not ha e the experience to solve, and resulted in me either having to pay to repair damages or lose jobs contracts entirely. Thankfully those lost contracts were only priced for roughly $550 each, but things get messy when you need to pay your painters, from your own pocket, and you haven't made a cent off the entire month. If any of my previous employees are reading this, I thank you again for the grace you have given me.
I worked hard to adapt to my situation, frequently working 12 hour days, and on the weekend to meet deadlines. There were even times when things looked like they were starting to come together, and I was finally starting to get some money coming back to me. It was in one of these little eyes in the hurricane that I agreed to sign on for a second year. After all, with so many mistakes made this year, I would have far less to make the next year.
Then it came crashing down again with a job where fixing one problem led to creating an even bigger one. What should have been a two day job stretched into two weeks. I couldn't bring my painters back to help fix their mistakes because there was no room left in the budget, and so I had to spend long and odd hours of the day trying to fix everything on my own.
Finally, I had enough of that job. All my efforts to fix the situation had failed, and I had to accept defeat in the face of a job that had become beyond my ability to repair. It was then decided to strip and replace the aluminum siding altogether and to hire a contractor to do the job, but I was saddled with having to pay multiple insurance deductibles amounting to almost double the original value of the job. I am not proud of that job. I put everything I could into fixing it, but there came a point where I just didn't know how to fix the problems anymore, and my parent company was too remote to give me the help I needed right from the start of the job. I remember coming home from work at 8:30 in the evening on a Saturday, and my mom was so proud of me for all the effort I was putting into my job, but even then I knew that even if I did somehow manage to get paid for the job, I wouldn't be getting nearly as much back as I had already put into it.
Again, earlier in the year, thinking that I would be making more money, I made the decision to go to PAX for a second year. With the tickets already paid for, and the rooms already booked, it felt like it was too late to bail out by the time I knew I couldn't afford it. But, after the gut wrenching tragedy of my past summer so immediately behind me, I really felt like i needed something good to have happened that year just to keep me from committing suicide. So, I skipped refilling my prescription anyways, promising myself to spend as little money as possible. Without my medication, most of the weekend was a haze, and not in a good way. Most of what I remember was feeling miserable out of guilt I was spending money that I didn't feel was my own and complaining about the prices and lines for everything. I really hope I didn't bring down anyone else's fun, but given that I was simultaneously withdrawing into ADD and severe Depression, I did not enjoy my time there nearly as much as th previous year. I had some fun there, don't get me wrong, but overall, it felt less of a "much deserved vacation, and more of a frivolous misuse of money.
At last , at around the middle of September, I had run out of jobs and finished a final warranty job from the last year, getting me a $600 check that promptly was consumed by Bill payments. I had planned to try to keep going another month or two working on my own, but I had to face the fact that even if I could find a few more jobs to keep me busy for another month, I couldn't even pay for gas. So I called my district manager, told him I couldn't keep going this year, and decided to try to save up enough money for the next year doing something else. All I could really find at the time was a weekend job driving a dog waste removal truck, and a small handful of either independent or sub contracting jobs. At best, that amounted to the equivalent of a small part time job in terms of income, but I am grateful to my clients for the work they gave me, and I am proud to say that they were really pleased by the quality of the work that I did for them in return.
While it was slow going, I felt like I was slowly recovering from my losses of the past several months. In the middle of it all, there was a looming sense of dread with the knowledge that I had still signed on for a second year, and I was still trying to pay back the losses from the first tear, much less afford all the marketing and setup that would be needed before going into a second year, even with the bonus they give returning veterans. In this time, my family and friends could tell that the events of last summer had scarred me psychologically. Internally, I kept telling myself that next year would be different, and that with everything I learned from this year, I should have no problem next year. Even with that potentially being true, there was still the far too threatening possibility that I may fail again. If the first year left me in a pit, failing a second year would have sealed my coffin and buried me in it. I needed out, but backing out of a contract would be a difficult process of its own. There were heavy fines set up to discourage quitting prematurely, and company was very strong in their encouragement to keep me going, offering me more stable plans for the next year, which almost had me thinking that it might be worth it to tough it out for one more year. But even with a simpler plan, I would still have to rely on support from my parents to even get started, and they were not going to be sponsoring a threat to their son's financial and psychological wellbeing. They had me schedule a meeting between them and a representative of the company, so that they could make it clear that they wanted me out of the contract.
I know that the idea of a 25 year old man, relying on his parents to fight his battles for him is pretty pathetic. At that point in time, though, I was I could no longer fight for myself. My confidence and Willpower was shattered, and judging myself by my financial wellbeing, I felt like I was less than nothing. The sum of my life felt like a net loss on the world. Even without paying for rent and food, though, the bills and interest that I had to pay on a monthly basis consumed almost all the money I made that wasn't spent on gas. From my perspective, climbing out of this financial pit would be a slow, and distance I was needing to climb seemed like it was always getting bigger. I gave up on having any sense of ambition, as I felt like ambition was an invitation to failure. You can't fly when you are using all your strength to climb.
That's where I was at the end of 2013. 2014 hasn't been as dark as as this year was so far, I'm still dealing with fallout from last year, and probably will be for at least a few more years to come. Even then, there are still psychological scars that I will likely be carrying for the rest of my mortal existence. I am a sadder person than the man I was before, but hopefully the wisdom gained will make up for it in the long run.
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