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Surviving Feasts and Famines
| Guest post by: James Chan |
Article Overview: Gary Samartino tells his story on how he succeeded in living through "feasts and famines" in his business as an independent service provider.
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Surviving Feasts and Famines
Gary Samartino hasn~{!/~}t just seen the ghost. He knows it personally.
The technical documentation business that he started with a partner did well enough in the first three years for them to hire an employee. Then business dried up, and they kept the business going for far too long. It failed, leaving only debts behind.
Gary is sole owner of InfoVentions, which he founded in 1993. In many ways, the history of the firm is similar to that of his previous venture. He had a couple of years of very good business, then there was a falloff in workload. Gary took a course in sales and marketing, but despite his efforts, nothing was happening. He was still paying bills from the previous business. Gary hung on, but barely. He worried about supporting his three children.
Finally, after several years of this, Gary~{!/~}s wife gave him an order: ~{!0~}Get a job!~{!1~} He hated the thought, though he understood the necessity.
Just as he was about to admit defeat and start his job search, the phone rang. It was a former customer who was working for a new company, and needed some help. This turned out to be a very large project, one demanding and lucrative enough to allow him to postpone his job search.
Then another customer for whom he had been doing small jobs came up with a larger one, then some new clients came in. In short order, Gary had more work than he could handle. Remembering his recent drought, he didn~{!/~}t dare turn anything down. He hired some subcontractors to help him.
At this point, a very large job that he had pitched for nearly two years before came through. This sounds like a truly happy ending. But when you are in business for yourself, there really is no happily ever after. Particularly, if you have stared failure in the face, you cannot afford to coast on your success.
Gary is still running from the ghost. He doesn~{!/~}t dare turn anything down. Before he knew it, he had 10 people working for him on various projects. He has become a manager, without quite meaning to, though he insists on doing much of the work himself and checking closely on the rest.
He often works until two or three in the morning. He sometimes sleeps at his office. He is able to have dinner with his family only about once a week. He worries that he has little family life. When he does go home, he feels that his daughter has become distant. ~{!0~}She doesn~{!/~}t want to feel rejected if she becomes too intimate with me, and I~{!/~}m not there,~{!1~} he says, recalling his own childhood when his salesman father was often absent. ~{!0~}I know how it was when Dad wasn~{!/~}t home.~{!1~}
He says his wife is pleased that his business has turned around and there is more income in the household, but she is very unhappy that it means that he has disappeared. ~{!0~}We don~{!/~}t have a relationship any more!~{!1~} she told him recently.
Gary believes that if work keeps up as it has, he will be able to retire in a few years. But by then, it might be too late for him to be a good father to his children or a good husband to his wife.
Gary~{!/~}s problem isn~{!/~}t that he is greedy. Rather, it is that he views his current success as a very short-term condition. If he felt confident that his business would continue at its current volume, he would give it a more permanent structure, one that would allow it to run if Gary weren~{!/~}t there 16 hours a day, seven days a week. He would be able to take a long weekend, perhaps even a vacation. He has the money for it. Instead, he conceives of what is, in effect, an 11-person firm as a one-man operation with 10 stopgap helpers.
Gary is riding a tiger; he dares not dismount. I can certainly sympathize with his feeling. Every independent business person has experienced the feasts, and especially the famines.
Yet it~{!/~}s also important to create a business that can survive success as well as failure. If you~{!/~}ve encountered the ghost, you~{!/~}ll never forget it. But you must try not to let yourself be haunted by it.
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Article Tags: debts, drought, failure, ghost, good business, hasn, job search, jobs, large project, sales and marketing, sole owner, subcontractors, technical documentation, workload
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