Peter's wife, Annie, an expert on the subculture known as yard-salers, made signs and put them in strategic places throughout the office park and neighboring major roads, and explained how to attract the Saturday and Sunday yard-sale junkies for the last, crucial big weekend.
As my friends came to help I was embarrassed to have them see the condition of my company. Like the former owner, I no longer had noticed the dirt, the grease, the grime, the disorganization. I had allowed the men's offices, their desks, their vans to become no better than the inside of garbage cans. I had let the shop remain in a state of chaos since we had moved there, in April 1991. Even though friends were coming out of the woodwork to help us, with no thought to their own schedules or priorities, I got more and more depressed. The enormity of my mismanagement and the scope of my incompetence overwhelmed and all but defeated me.
ADS had lived under the financial gun week after week, month after month, year after year. Our losses had mounted into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our payables-to-receivables ratio was rarely less than 2.5 to 1. We were constantly being put on "credit hold"--and there is nothing more embarrassing or infuriating to an employee than having the gas credit card refused (after he's filled up) or going to pick up a part and being turned away because the company's payments are past due.
The technicians and I never connected--ever. My lack of technical experience and knowledge grated on them--and rightly so. What good is a boss-owner who cannot truly understand what the staff is grappling with and who can contribute almost nothing to a discussion of a technical problem?
And I was totally unprepared for the way the technicians thought: the boss is automatically a bad guy; the boss will always take advantage of you; the boss is interested only in making money for himself; everything you do must be done to protect yourself from the boss. It took me years to understand that most of my employees thought that way most of the time. I never figured out how to deal with, or change, that mind-set.
We even fell behind--way behind--on employee withholding taxes, which I had always felt were sacrosanct. On April 1, 1993 (April Fools' Day, no less), the Internal Revenue Service "swept" our bank account and took $7,200 out for back payroll taxes. There is no way to describe the feeling as, with shaking hands, I read the notice from my bank informing us about that. I felt so low, so helpless, so angry, so frustrated that I kicked a hole in the wall outside my office.
But the worst part of the seven and a half years was the overwhelming sense of hopelessness, of fearing that I would never, ever be able to dig out of the hole. I hated the business, hated the industry, hated the job. Yet I would not, could not, give up or give in. My house was the ultimate collateral for the loan I'd taken out to buy the business. Therefore, lose the business, lose the house. I was trapped, and I couldn't turn the situation around, either. I tried everything I knew. I tried expensive staff, cheap staff, experienced staff, inexperienced staff. I tried to make money by having lots of people on the payroll and then by having few people on the payroll. I went through six bookkeepers, two operations managers, three sales managers, three office managers, and dozens of technicians. I applied every management principle known to man. Nothing changed. I simply had no choice but to hang in there and hope and pray that somehow I could make enough money, someday, to pay what I owed, lock the door, and walk away. I no longer had dreams of financial success. I just wanted to survive.
I was confused and frustrated by the dichotomy between my work life and my personal life. My home was an island of peace, calm, and joy...well, joy, anyway. My marriage was strong. My wife was a treasure. My children (we had three when we first bought the company; a fourth was born in 1995) were a delight. Our health was good. Our decision to teach our children at home was yielding tremendous benefits academically as well as spiritually. I'd begun teaching Latin and creative writing to Wesley (11) and Dale (9), and loved it. We were liked and respected in the home-schooling community and in our church. I was elected president of the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity. I coached soccer in the U.S. Naval Academy children's league and later in a new league that a friend and I launched. Judi and I were asked to take over the children's ministry at our church. A few men looked to me as an adviser and even a mentor. At work I felt like a deadbeat, an idiot, an incompetent fool. At home or anywhere but at work, I was a...decent guy.
I finally realized that the business/industry/job I hated was God's chosen tool for humbling and changing me. And, boy, did he pick a good one!
When your company is perpetually in financial trouble, you spend a lot of time apologizing and making excuses for not being able to keep your commitments. That is humiliating. In that kind of pressure cooker, you are easily tempted to get angry, hold a grudge, call someone a well-deserved name, fib, cheat, prevaricate, fudge, exaggerate, and mislead, just to survive. That shows you your character--and sometimes it's not a pretty sight.
Getting up early and going to work in a distasteful job in an industry I abhorred with people who didn't like me was a very good character-building exercise. Most important, though, I developed a sense of humility. When I bought ADS, I thought I could figure out anything. I had very little patience with those whose intellect did not match mine. I did not have good money sense. I had an explosive temper. Those flaws have been sanded down with God's heavenly sandpaper: adversity. The flaws aren't gone, of course, but they are now less visible. Proverbs 11:2 says, "When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom." I guess I now have a great deal of wisdom!
