Pumped...About Business

I have to be totally honest. From the time I started transitioning into my post full-time work life, the 'work' component has been something that I have done to fill time when I'm not traveling and to make the money to pay for travel. As I wrote a number of months ago, I go through cycles where I just want to travel, which are interrupted when I realize I have to do some work to pay for the travel. Then I get motivated, build up some income and cash, travel more, lose motivation and repeat the cycle. 

However, during the most recent work refocus period something very odd has happened. I've run into a set of circumstances that not only have me interested, but have me absolutely pumped about my work. It's a bit complicated, but I will try to summarize in bullet point form.

• The baby boomer generation, which has many business owners among them, is reaching a point where more and more need to figure out what to do with their businesses.
• There are a significant number of these that would really like their business to continue on for the good of their communities and their people. 
• But doing that is not easy. You need an heir, a family member, or people in your business to become owners. Typically those transactions are not successful for a variety of reasons.
• Another means often suggested is the Employee Stock Ownership Trust. It, also has a lot of impediments to being used.
• I remembered a very significant example of a business that successfully created a multi-generational succession that kept the company independent AND provided a charitable benefit at the same time...Hershey Foods. 
• I found another example...Rolex Watches
• Now I had a model that could be potentially replicated.
• These models have lots of challenges, but (for whatever reason), I seem to have resources that fit nicely to resolve the challenges. 
• Now I am having meetings with potential resources and slowly putting together the team of specialists one would need to do these kinds of transitions.

And I'm very excited. It is not just intellectually stimulating, it has the potential to provide a resolution to a number of vexing issues associated with businesses, their owners, and their communities.

The one thing though that rattles in my mind is...

 WHY IS THIS ALL HAPPENING WHEN I AM IN MY LATE 70'S????

COULDN'T HAVE COME EARLIER, WHEN I HAD MORE TIME AND ENERGY?

There is, of course, no answer to this. Things happen for a reason. I am not wise enough to see it at this moment in time.

Remodel At D+55, Disco

 We are taking reservations now for the bathroom

Remodel At D+52, Pressing Towards The Finish

In keeping with our skiing motif from the last few posts (odd as I've never skied in my life!), we are making our way down the last part of the race. We have our weight over our skis, putting all our momentum forward and increasing our speed to the max. You can hear the crowd cheering and ringing their cow bells.

The vast majority of the painting and flooring is complete (with some minor final touch-ups required), Starting the middle of last week and into next week they are putting in all of the plumbing fixtures, hardware, mirrors, lighting, etc. We keep hitting hiccups like finding one of the two toilets was broken upon opening its packaging. We've even set a date for our movers to come back to put the house together (May 4).

Given how nothing actually happens as it was planned, we will see how it all rolls out.

One Semi-Functional Bathroom

One Bathroom in Need of a Toilet

Remodel At D+48, Light At The End Of The Tunnel

You will remember 8 days ago we were descending the Black Diamond Trail of Remodel Chaos where all the careful choreography of the remodel had been thrown out the window due to the lack of enough carpet to finish our job and the piling of bedroom furniture in the bathroom where work needed to be done. Since that time we have been living with painters (I mean like they might as well be sleeping here), with major disruption to our life schedules (insert here appropriate tragic well-to-do, over-entitled people's sob story music). 

But today, the carpet people showed up (5 hours later than we were told) and the carpet was laid, furniture moved back, carpet measured and cut for the stairs, both bathrooms now ready for final work. The painters have finished the vast majority of the work until they get to the finishing touches toward the end. Our contractor is coming out tomorrow to start figuring out how we complete the job.

Current Status

The main living areas are still filled with furniture and will be until the very end of the project. But at least everything is painted.

 But things are looking better and better in the sleeping areas of the house.

 And the upstairs is pretty much done as well.

 

The Discovery In Plain Sight

The remodeling project has made most of the downstairs unusable. The bedrooms and major bathrooms won't be ready until the project is almost complete. Our public rooms (living room, library, lounge, New Mexico/dining room, & kitchen) are mostly filled with furniture and all in unusable states to allow for the flooring and painting. This resulted in Wife and I creating temporary bedrooms on the second story using air mattresses. 

Honestly, once we figured out how to deal with the heat sink properties of the air mattress, they have not been uncomfortable to sleep in. We were able to get Wife's chair and TV set up in the living room relatively quickly, so she has had a place to relax. The only place I have to go in the evening is back up stairs where my card table desk and chair are set up in my temporary bedroom. 

I go up here in the evening and do what I always do, work on my writing and watch YouTube. Which has led to an interesting realization. It is really cool up here! The evening light, the views, the air flow. It's wonderful.

I know you are scratching your head. How could this be a realization? You've had this space for 15 years and you use it virtually every day. Why is this a surprise to you?

The answer comes from our daily life habit and the design of our furniture. We have always visualized the upstairs space as our office. We come up in the morning and we spend most of our day here. In the evening we go down, have dinner and retire to our 'special comfortable chairs' for evening chilling. There really isn't anywhere to sit and relax. 

Now that I've had this epiphany, and we are looking moving furniture around upstairs, I am advocating for creating upstairs the kind of comfortable seating we have downstairs. It never ceases to amaze me the opportunities for new experiences if you are open to them. Even ones that have been in plain sight all along.

Remodel At D+42, Painting Blitzkrieg

As promised, the painters arrived first thing Monday morning. Despite the situation with the Master bedroom and bath, most of the house is in pretty good order for painting. There are some rooms where some furniture needs to be moved. This painting company owner insists his people not move things (evidently issues with customers in the past). But the actual guy running the painting crew (there are three all together) seems to be taking a more lenient approach. 

Nonetheless they have dived into the work and even in a single day have made great progress. They said they wanted to start at 7:30am this morning and we'll see how much more they can get done. Were it not for the moving and the Master Suite issues, I am sure they could have knocked this out by the end of the week.

Remodel at D+40, On The Other Side Of The Hump - The Black Diamond Trail Descent Of Chaos!!!!!

We are definitely on the way toward completion...just not in any nice smooth, well-planned manner. I don't ski but my friends who do note that the Black Diamond Trails are the steepest, fastest, most difficult. It feels like that's what happened in our project. 

Just this weekend all this took place.

• We are pressing our various contractors to get things done because we will have granddaughter 2.2 staying with us in two weeks.
• This means everyone is working all weekend to get the hardwood floor and carpeting done. 
• Wife is going nuts trying to pick out the paint colors because painting is supposed to start on Monday (today).
• It is critical that the bathrooms be painted first so they can be finished with the final plumbing and electrical installation. 
• On Sunday they are installing the last of the carpeting in the bedrooms. But they don't ask us where we want the furniture. They put it against the walls as it was but not the way it needs to be for the painters.
• And they announce there is not enough carpet ordered to do the master bedroom. They depart.
• We inspect. All the furniture from the bedroom as been stuffed into the master bathroom meaning that there is no way to paint there. Painting on hold.
  
• 2.2 contacts us. She's not coming. She's going to stay in Spain. 
• Our contractor comes today and tells us the painters are starting Tuesday (tomorrow) as we are on the schedule and if we don't start, the delay will be too long. 
• We're not sure when the final bedroom will finally get its carpet and they still need to do the stairs.

Stress, yes. Am I living in a poverty in an undeveloped country with no way out? No. And it is all looking pretty awesome I have to say. 

Hats off to Wife, design mastermind!