My little story of business resiliency - Part 5

Startup and tribulations

Winter is ending.

I'm on fire during my franchisee training, asking many questions and taking even more notes.  A whole universe opens up to me: marketing and sales techniques, employee management concepts, customer service fundamentals, all subjects fascinate me.  Even the painting concepts are enjoyable.

I'm floating on cloud nine. 

I get up early in the morning and go to bed late at night.  I work hard to ensure academic success while preparing for my entrepreneurial summer season.  I get a loan from the BDC to fund my Startup.

I find a way to buy my car, a Hyundai Pony hatchback 87.  It will be perfect for carrying paint cans, ladders, and tools and driving my painters around this summer.  How did I overcome the hurdles of my underage status; you may ask? Let's say that I had to be creative to get things done…

Spring is finally around the corner.

I hire my painters, two of whom worked for the previous year's franchisee, and the others are some of my closest friends.

I begin to quote estimates for potential clients and quickly close deals. I'm in my element.  I love the customers, and the customers love me.

My new pager vibrates with customer, employee, and head office calls.  I always carry a roll of quarters to return all those calls from the road.  I know every public phone booth in my area.

On the home front, I park my car around the corner to hide it and avoid unpleasant discussions with my mother.

I no longer discuss "my project" with her.  My life as an entrepreneur is in overdrive, but I can't even share it with the most important person in my young life.

I gain confidence day by day and finally decided to park my car in the second unoccupied parking space at home.  A scene to be remembered starts…

At the very moment I park, my mother's head peaks out the living room window overlooking the parking spot with a half-fig, half-grape smile: Her teenage son found a way to get a car.

I can hear her thinking: "With what money?  With whose help?"

If only she knew that legally, the DMV office needed her signature to register the sale of this Pony...

I never understood why she gave up at that moment in the story.  Not a single word from her, a full retreat on her part.  Her head slips back inside. I come in.  The silence is heavy.

Back to business: the challenges, not to call them problems, pile up over the next few weeks.

For example, Peter and Jocelyne trust me to refresh their basement, but the project fails.  My team forgets to protect an amateur artistic painting on the ground during the work.  The couple likes us, but they want a solution to this damage.  They call me a few times on my pager and even at home. They even speak to my mother at some point.

How do you compensate for a work of art with little value other than sentimental value?

Feeling overwhelmed by this problem for which I accept responsibility, I am tempted not to return to my clients but decide to stand strong and I’m determined to rise up to the occasion.  I will prove that I am worthy of my project.

The following week, one of my painters, Frank, a tall "slack dude" with round glasses who looks like a painter but more of a painter-artist than a residential one, keeps wasting time.  He even finds a way to step and break three windowpanes lying on the ground.  I roll up my sleeves to take care of that.  Thanks to my experience working in a window shop the year before, I fix the problem before the owner returns at the end of the day. What a great save!

The season becomes super busy and generates its share of calls and follow-ups.  My customers and employees, preferring to bypass the impersonal pager system as much as possible, start calling me often at home and leaving multiple messages.

My mother can see that the infamous business project her son talked about passionately during the winter has become a reality.  The entrepreneurial problems I experienced during the summer quickly became her problems with all these phone messages.

Didn't she object to this project and to the car purchase?  Who was this John she had spoken to several times over the previous months?  What kind of organization was recruiting minors to manage a business? Didn't she have any control over her son? 

Many of these questions were running through her head...