I have made it to the age of 53 and during that time I was blessed to always be gainfully employed. Graduating from a well know university, I assume and achieved the American Dream. New home, wife and three lovely kids. I was the happiest person on the planet and had no Idea in the 70ties that the years to come would be what we see today.
As a young child of 9 I had a paper route five days a week, cut grass and made grocery deliveries on the weekend. I don't know if you could call it the land of milk and honey but it sure was the land of 5 cent candy bars and 2 cookies for a penny. Heck I'm not sure if there was a thing called unemployment insurance during that time. My parents and relatives were all ways at work. Between going to school, working in the eve and weekends, I would only see them on Sundays during dinner. My dad taught us that a man is only a man if he kept a job. So between my 6 siblings we were always finding ways to make a buck. From dumping trash, picking up old tires, selling scrap to yards, hustling bottles and even shoveling coal in apartment boilers.
It seems there were no end to finding ways to feed the family. I even remember my first full time job at 13; yes 13 there were no such thing of child labor laws or were not enforced. After getting out of school right to the restaurant and bust suds (washed dishes) 9hrs a day. Of course with age and education I got out of the kitchen to a career.
I do remember when we went through that time of waiting in long lines to buy gasoline. Now that was a trip in it self. Everyone droved gas guzzlers and did not know what the heck was going on. No sense of the fuel crisis, we just knew the lines were slowing us down from getting to work on time. And that was worse then breaking a law. We were a religious family but I guess in the order of things it was, Job, God, Family. I think we looked at it as God blessed us with a job to take care of the family.
In 1984 I experience my first Lay-off, wow when approached by my boss I thought he had put a little too much booze in his coffee cup during lunch. Half the department just stood there staring at this guy. One of my fellow employees started to laugh and said, damn he is just pulling our legs and started back to the department. But we found out he was not joking. I was not sure what lay-off meant, the only thing I heard in those days was someone getting fired. The personnel manager informed us what that was and we were entitled to unemployment insurance. Yes like we knew what that was, I thought I had to buy some insurance to get my job back. Nerveless we found out that the company had sold out and the new owners build a plant in Alabama to get away from the Union.
Being that my career was in the automotive supply industry the snow ball affect had just kicked in gear. In order to maintain employment meant relocating every two to three years. That is how the rest of my career went. This was hard on me and my family it almost resulted in divorce, separation of the family and was an attack on my core belief system. Of course it created serious stress and various but not serious illness. And when my last employer moved to China we did not know where to go from there. The industry I spent my career in had all but dried up, all of the small companies were gone. And the few that were left were dropping like flies on a monthly basis. If I got a job offer by the time I would be in the housing search mode, I would be informed they were filling chapter 11 or had been purchased. I understood that this was the future of my business and was forced to die with it or change things. And I must say change is extremely hard but starving was harder.
So what were we to do, both being in our fifties and knowing only to work?
My wife and I started to reevaluate our lives, the kids were gone we did have some savings. My wife was a house wife and I must say a very good one, if it was not for her I would not have made it that far or thru what we were going though. We talked about our child hood and how things were easy back then and how could we apply that to today’s issues. After first going though the process of denial, fear, lost and acceptance as my uncle use to say “kick that puppy and make him bark”. We went back to the beginning.
This was our thought process:
How much money did we need to live?
What skills did we have?
What was available to us for these skills?
What skills could we learn with a very short learning curve?
Who would hire fifty year olds?
What physical abilities could we still perform?
How far could we travel to accomplish the task?
How many more years would it take to retire financially ok?
Was there an alternative to working for someone?
What about working from home? (Smile)
• If so, what could we do at home?
• How much did we need to start it?
• What did we need to do to select the product or service?
• How would we market it?
• Cost to market?
• What was the expectation of income?
• How long would it take to make a profit?
• What funds would we use, ours or an investor?
• Who would invest?
• Did we need a business plan?
Needless to say the list went on and on for a month. I think we really enjoyed that process because we got to talk more, wake up in the middle of the night throwing ideas out. We had talked more in one month then we had done in the past 5 years and loved it.
We did all kinds of research from internet, SBA, talking with successful people and could not get comfortable with an idea. So one day my wife opens an old photo album that my mom had given her and there I was with bottles in hand and my puppy walking with me to the store. We both looked at each other and she went and got her album and in almost all of her photos as a child she was always making something in the kitchen. I know she was the best cook I have ever known and damn some of her food would make you eat until you just would lie still for an hour from being stuff.
During all of our brain storming this is what shook out.
1. Mail box Repair:
I generated flyers to repair mail box’s, visited home depot and found I could get parts and later using the net, found how to make the parts my self. The business took off I actually recruited my grand son to handle some of the routes.
2. Home Trash Removal
I remembered taking folks trash out as a child so I contact a few realtors and banks about removing trash from homes people had walked away from. Wow that one caught me off guard; I had to buy a pick up truck for $500.00 to handle the task of each house. And of course recruited another one of my grand kids (don’t you just love grand kids). We started to clean homes on weekends and some afternoon. This business has a double profit, some of the items that were left, made there way to pawn shops, garage sales and scrap yards.
3. Apartment Trash Removal
Running out of grand kids, I seen a guy holding a sign that he would work for food. The light bulb came on, so living in a residential area where there were also apartment complex. I would go to the complex meetings and ask the tenants how would they like someone to come by at least twice a week to pick up their waste and dump it into the complex dumpster. We started with a 300 apartment complex and moved on to three other complexes with a total of 780 apartments at $10.00 a week per apartment, with the use of 20 homeless people we made a striving business.
We now have 20 employees with homes and families, needless to say my wife is the book keeper, pay role and personnel. We still live in the same house and same way but don’t have to worry about what is going to happen for retirement. I have promised to give the business to the folks who help me get started when we retire and my wife and I have found a new way to love each other.
We plan to expand the operation working with local homeless shelters and Church’s to deal with restored office and store complex. I think this is a good model that could be implemented across the US. I have also been talking with HUD as to how the homeless could occupy some of the empty homes.
You are very welcome to contact me as to how to start each business; it has changed our lives and many others. I think the greatest pride we got, is that we taught our grand babies how it was back in the day and we allowed families to get off the street.
If you care to donate (see bottom of page) for the information that’s great but we are more then willing to give it for free with the hopes it helps you and others.
If you wish not to donate funds, we accept safety clothing, eye ware, boots, gift cards for gas or auto repair coupons. Or we welcome your ideas as to how to earn money. The more ideas we get the better equipted it makes us to help those who need it.
Our goal is to give them an opportunity to take care of them selves and their families.
L.F Inc.
5149 US 40 Suite 19
Centerville, IN 47330
The Old School Family
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