Nah, I'm no genius. Just a lot of hard work and a little luck. I longed for the day when I could just go into work and have people tell me what to do all day. Unfortunately, now that I have that job, I don't like it so much! LOL!

I never understood why people have the need to reinvent the wheel vs going with a tried and true route. You designed the business to run a certain way after going through the trials and tribulations and you sold the playbook to the buyer. If I was buying someone's business, I'd utilize their experiences as my survival guide.

While I was in mortgage lending, I'd get clients with very weird/f*cked up situations and when devising a roadmap for them, some of them did exactly what they were told not to do while also not doing what they were told to do.

You gotta give yourself credit. Aside from the monetary startup aspect and managing the finances of it, to be able to come up with an idea on your own to generate income and then to maintain/build that revenue stream takes a special kind of intelligence. Statistically, most new startup's fail within 2 years, so you obviously did something right :tup:

:hello:

Morning

Thanks, but if really were a genius I would have sold the business 2 years before I did when it was worth almost double what I got for it. All in all I have no regrets. It supported 4 employees and my family for 32 years. Like I said, hard work and some luck goes a long way.

Some people just think they're smarter than everyone else. ::Cough:: LIBERALS ::Cough::

:stirthepot:

One helluva ride at 32 years :eek:

If you could go back in time to yourself when you first started the business, what one piece of advice would you give? Same question to Rusty as well :hello:

And I wish the later Millennials and after, esp. Gen Z, would grasp onto the concept of hard work. The younger generation doesn't seem to want to lift a finger but demand respect and results. I know it's not fair to say all of them, but the ones I encountered seem to have this common mentality. I will say with the rise in social media, the smart ones have found a way to become multi-millionaires just from posting content and have a sh!tload of subscribers. Can you imagine if they went back in time and actually had to put in real effort and real work?

:hello:

Morning

Piece of advice.......start saving for retirement at a very early age. Don't count on anyone to help you out.

With the internet and social media is when all of this bull crap started. :shakes head:

:iagree:

We don't get to retire these days. We will have to work until our ten toes turn up.

If i had to do it over I'd go with less employees. Keep the business lean and mean. Employees are expensive. When tough times hit, (and they did) a lot out people overextended went belly up.

Chasing dollars to make payroll sucks big time. Another problem i had was accounts recieveable. It was industry standard in printing back then to give customers unsecured credit. I was constantly on the phone chasing my money. Over 32 years I was probably stiffed for over $750,000. The couple of guys left today doing what I did take Credit Cards and get paid in advance.

Great advice I wish I'd followed! Time goes by faster than you think.

You kids today got it easy! Get off my lawn! :tiphat:

I always liked Hoovies you tube channel until recently. He just bought a Buggatti that he claims costs him $40,000 a month. I can pay off my house in 6 months! He did this whole epside whining about how his tax bill was $500,000 more than he expected.

Bruh, taxes suck, but if you owe $500,000 MORE than you thought, you're doing ok. Maybe it's part jealousy, but he's become a clown with too much easy money doing nothing.

LOL, I am 56. I will be working for as long as I can. I won't make the same mistake my other coworkers have. Get mad and then retire early. Seen it too many times. It cost money to have fun. I have been so busy over the last 25yrs I can't sit around and do nothing. I am constantly learning new things and I enjoy it.

More money than brains.:shakes head:

I retired early at the age of 60. Partly because of past family health history. Didn't know if I would follow my dad's side or my mom's side. Looking back, I could/should have retired at 65. But I didn't think i would last at the plant power because of the new company. They were making things tough on the older guys. I had 7 weeks of vacation time and 520 hrs of sick time every year for the last 5 yrs there. If I would have stayed for another 2 yrs. i would have picked up another week of vacation. They don't like those kind of benefits.

No they don't. That's when you wait for the layoff package. Volunteer and get a lump sum.

Good advice, and wifey said the same thing about retirement funds. Not going to lie, this isn't something that I really pay attention to, but wifey has taken the liberty and created a retirement portfolio a while back. I honestly have no idea what I'm looking at and leave it up to her.

Honestly, if the past 3 months are a preview of retirement, then I'm probably not going to. It's been super boring, even if I try to find stuff to do. I've gotten to a point where I have my old team call me incognito and I help them out with their work.

Yeah, that would be frustrating. Were you able to place liens on their businesses for non-payment?

Not Dynergy. They are very underhanded when it comes to employees. When Duke Energy sold the power plant to Dynergy. Chit changed overnight. And not in a good way. Management that went from helping you in anyway they can. To back stabbing you in a heart beat. When i retired. 3 others retired in 3 months after me. It was that bad.

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No leins. The only thing I could do was drag them into court get a judgement for something like $50 a month for 20 years or until they go chapter 11.

The only people that made out were the lawyer and the person who stiffed me.

:hello:

Happy Mother's Day to all of you mothers out there. Without you, we wouldn't be here.

Yesterday, took my brother in law and wife to Pittsburgh. Did a river tour on the Gateway Clipper , and rode the incline on Mt Washington. Today, I took my brother in law to Flight 94 Memorial. :usa: Everytime I go there. I get tears in my eyes.

:hello:

Morning

That was a horrible, horrible day... unlike some people, ill never forget what was done to us that day. I lost 12 friends that day and a couple more recently.

My old job's AP Team was notorious for late payments. One of the contractors we used was a mom-pop's place and each payment was crucial for their operations and ability to stay open. Their specialty was fencing and installation, and I remember one payment was almost a year past due, and they ended up going back to the site and dug up their fence and took it back.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was a HS freshman and sitting in Geometry class, thinking when am I going to use the Pythagorean Theorem in real life when the announcement was made. When they turned on the TV, I was like :eek: :mad: :shakes head:

Yea, I was always jealous of owners that could do that stuff! I sold printed material. Once it was out of my hands it was almost impossible to get back. Not that id want somebody's brochures back! LOL.

I went to see a customer once and demanding a check. He wouldn't come out of his office and I got so pissed I unplugged his copy machine and wheeled it out of his office. I got all the way to the parking lot when the cops showed up. They weren't mad and understood why I did what I did, but told me I really needed to put the copier back. I thanked them and told them I wouldn't go any further with it, but I wasn't taking it back in. They said fine and I left it in the parking lot. ��
The judge wasn't happy with me when we finally got to court but I did win my BS judgement.

I always felt that there were too many of us chasing the same dollars.
They'd run up a tab with me, stiff me, and then move on to the next guy.

I was friendly with a lot of owners in the profession and we used to share our black lists. Most of our competitors didnt. It was like they wanted everyone to get burned because they got burned.

We lived 12 miles away from the towers on the other side of the Hudson. We were driving in to work when we heard on the radio that a plane had hit the WTC. I remember saying something to my wife like "these idiots in their Cessnas shouldn't be allowed to fly around downtown". We only found out a little later it wasn't a Cessna and it certainly wasn't an accident. It was a very odd feeling. The 6 of us at work hanging around in the office watching everything unfold on our little TV. I remember we were all speechless while we watched the first tower fall.

My Brother in law was a trader on the floor of the NYSE. I remeber my wife crying uncontrollably trying call him to see if he was still alive. This was in the early days of cell phones and the service was spotty on a good day. He turned out to be fine but spent the night in the exchange.

I could go on for days with this, but it really brings back a lot of sadness. A lot of friends and friends of friends and friends of family were needlessly murdered that day. I lost a cousin who was a PA cop last year who died of cancer they attributed to inhaling all the crap that was in the air while he was doing search and rescue. He was 58 yo.

Ok, that's enough! Happy thoughts!!!

Just got home from working 11pm to 7am. Sister called and said to put the tv on. I sat on the edge of my lazyboy watching everything happened. Was to be working on-site in Brooklyn the Sunday before for 3 weeks, but the job was cancelled at the last minute.

:hello:

Morning

I think the thing that haunts me the most is the people that jumped from 90 stories to get away from the flames.

I lived up in PK at the time when it happened. Still filled with rage over that as a life long NYer.

Knicks in 5 btw.

Holy crap, you were basically on site as it happened :eek:

Okay yes, so happy thoughts!

I sure do miss the 90's/early 00's. Anyone watch WWF and the Attitude Era back then? I happened to come across a random RAW episode on Netflix and I'm like WTF happened? WTF sh!t storyline is this? No substance, no entertainment. I even miss the various camera light flashes (when cell phones weren't a thing) when the superstars would go up on the ring posts. Rock, Steve Austin, HHH, Taker, Kane, Mick Foley....

*Rock trolling and mimicking HHH*:

Rock [imitating how HHH speaks]: "Tonight uhhhh....I am the game uhhhh. And in this very ring uhhhh for the next 20 min uhhhh I'm going to be talking uhhhh and saying absolutely nothing uhhhh....well the Rock says uhhh uhhh you absolutely SUCK!"

:hello:

Morning knuckle draggers.

Good morning sir!:tiphat:

Loved the WWF in the 80's with Hulk, Macho Man, Ultimate Warrior, Undertaker, Mankind, etc. Best "fueds" ever! And yes, i know it was scripted, but it was so over the top you just had to love it!