Helpful Suggestions

Helpful Suggestions

Walking by the ocean clearing my head, I needed it badly. I’d lost another job because I wasn’t being smart… I’m actually quite intelligent, I just don’t take orders well, and I’m always telling people how much better what they are doing would go if they just tweaked it a bit… It’s true! It’s just that a lot of people don’t take it as helpful suggestions, especially if they’re the boss…

So unemployed again, and trying to figure out how I was going to pay the rent next month, I walked the beach. I’d brought a pen and pad of paper, intending to actually make a list of what I might be doing wrong. Twenty minutes in, I hadn’t even gotten a number one down. I mean I know I was right, Mr. Bell just refused to admit it.

Suddenly, as I got to the spot where I usually turned for the return trip back up the beach, I had another idea. Instead of trying to fix business for people I work for, maybe I could help people who were actually trying to fix their businesses. The very next day I put an ad online. And two days later I started getting calls.

I was so excited! My first client was also excited about every idea I gave him! He went straight to work on fixing the help, the client issues, even the location of his business and where he advertised. It was so uplifting! Until he went overboard, then bankrupt, and blamed me.

It was a devastating blow. But it didn’t stop me. He eventually lost the suit, and I learned a lot about “clients” in that very first job. I already knew how to do things better, I just listened to myself.

Forty years later, still in business.