I'm moving!

In two ways, actually. First, I've already move to a new blog. Second, we're moving to a new house. Still renting, but it's cheaper, better and bigger. Just the way this 'Murrican likes things.

The new blog is called "What Did We Learn Today?" Why a new blog? I was getting sick of the moderate amount of effort it took to segment my online life and offer material relevant to six different blogs. (You didn't think this was my only rodeo, did you? ;-)). In other words, I'm consolidating all my blogs into one, although I'll probably keep the Truck Buddy business blog running, and I'll keep posting to the Joseph Update for family reasons. But the bulk of the writing I do online will happen at "What Did We Learn Today."

Another reason for the switch is that, not to be too cryptic, something has changed. I think I'm a little more serious about the writing I do, and while I will strive to entertain (and do it far more often than I ever did here!) I want it to be worth something, not just a bunch of snark. Man, I hate people who just try to be snarky all the time.

Anyway, this blog is now more or less closed. If you want to follow me over to the new place, I'd love to see you there!

Best,
C.

p.s. About the new house, I've written a bit about it over at WDWLT. There are pictures, too!

Today I dropped an entertainment center on my face

Literally. Well, okay, not quite literally. I had to patch the details of what actually happened together from the one eye-witness, the guy holding the other end of it. His name is Stu, and after today, he's my boy. I may even promote him to Truck Buddy #1 status because, well, my #1 took the day off. On a Saturday. I don't care if it IS your first wedding anniversary -- this is bidness, TJ.

Bidness.

Anyway, what happened is this...I think. We were carrying a fairly light-weight yet two-person TV stand up a narrow staircase out of the basement of one of those pleasant little D.C. basement apartments. (Very nice customers, by the way.) This much I remember. I also remember being especially careful because the stairway -- only three steps or so -- was covered in that ultra-slick slime/moss that, comparatively, makes an oil slick as tactile as sandpaper.

We'd successfully negotiated the steps and a slight turn, and walked across a short patio. There were three steps down to the alleyway where the "Peneske" truck was parked. That's where it gets a little hazy, but let me try to describe my impressions of the moment.

Stepping down...

No step...no problem, I've missed steps holding heavy-ish things before...

Still no step...

Getting worried now. (A half-second has elapsed at this point).

Still no step...

Body reacts...somehow. Ever been so deep underwater and run out of breath? It was a little like that. But instead of gulping for air, my foot twitched looking for solid ground. Before I could say "Uh, Stu, I've lost the Earth," I was flying backward with a TV stand going up somewhere...toward my face.

I think. I'm not sure because several things happened simultaneously at that moment.

1. Somebody hit me in the face with an ACME hammer.
2. Somebody hit me in the back of the head with an Empire State Building.
3. I saw a flash of light. And, quite possibly, Jesus.
4. Somebody grabbed my elbows with pliers -- big, industrial sized pliers with jagged teeth -- and pulled. Hard.

Ever been caught impossibly between two immovable objects? Say, in coach between two corpulent twins? Kinda like that, only firmer.

The next thing I know, Stu is looking down at me with huge, white eyes. "Dude! Are you alright? I was laughing, but then I saw you hit the second time, and...huh?"

I tried to say something, but whatever I managed must have scared the big lug, because he just kept saying "Oh shit oh shit oh shit."

Standing up was a bit of a problem. Nothing had landed on my legs, and yet I couldn't even stand up straight. The world kept wobbling, or the floor of the world had gotten warped in the rains of the last few days...

This is the kind of thing I was thinking. And damn it, why couldn't I stand up--or walk?!?

"What happened, Stu?"

"Dude! You slammed your face into the TV stand on the way down! Just sit, will you?"

"Did I hit the back of my head somewhere? Or did North Korea just test something right behind me?"

(Maybe I wasn't that clever, but that's how I remember it.)

"You hit your head on the concrete there."

"Hrngh."

Self-assessment:

Overall: light-headed. Fuzzy. More than a little nauseous.

Left side of face puffy and bleeding.

Spitting blood from where my teeth chattered together. (Thank God I hadn't had my tongue between them).

Elbows: total road rash and bleeding.

Torso: Internal organs rearranged.

Possible leg abrasions.

Oh yeah, and somebody appears to have sewn a golf ball under my left elbow.

And yet, I managed to finish the day. We had to call in an extra hand because walking in straight lines was impossible, but I lifted a few more boxes. Stu swears it was a mild concussion. We'll see how it goes.

Oh yeah, about Stu--he's a big dude with a beard. He's a self-described heathen who says he subscribes to the Tao of Stu, which mostly involves a state of mind and drinking. But this big dude who would probably retch if made to hold another man's hand for a $500 bet marched me into the kitchen, twisted my arms under the sink, and poured hydrogen peroxide over my boo-boos.

"You don't have the HIV, do you?" he asked as he poured it over my bleeding, hamburger-like elbows. "No herpes, anything?"

"No," I said. "All clean." But I noticed something. He was still literally man-handling me and my wounds when he asked that question. Whatever my status (what a modern thing to have to say), he was field-dressing my wounds anyway.

That calls to mind a marketing slogan TJ suggested -- "We're not just friends, we're Truck Buddies."

The end.

No, sometimes the customer is very, very wrong...

Saturday was a fun one. I'd taken an afternoon job because I just can't say "no." The problems began before I'd even gotten out of my truck.

As I backed the trailer down the long driveway, "Kumar" walked along side my window saying, "I do not believe this will be sufficient." (Read all his dialogue with an Indian accent). "I thought you were to bring a Peneske truck."

Peneske? Did he say that?

I got out of my truck and said "Hi, nice to meet you. No, I only bring Penske trucks to larger jobs. It's not standard."

"Your advertisement said you would bring a Peneske truck. I expected a Peneske truck."

Look, man, I don't even know what a Peneske truck IS...

Instead, I said, "I'm sorry, but you're mistaken. I don't advertise Penske trucks as standard."

Then I walked by him to the seller of the couches I was picking up and asked him to show me the way.

Of course Kumar was in the computer field. And of course he'd never exercised a day in his life. And of course he wanted to take the long way around the house instead of going up the short flight of stairs on the OTHER side that would put us right at the back of my trailer. So, to avoid six stairs and a walk of about 30 feet, we went around the house and added about a 100 feet to the walk.

Did I mention we were carrying couches? No? He dropped the heavy couch twice.

"I am disappointed you did not bring a Peneske truck," he said to me while he caught his breath.

My truck and trailer were more than sufficient. I stacked the couches in the bed, and stacked the tables in the trailer. I had about 20 cubic feet to spare. Still, it all required numerous tie-downs, and as I was strapping the sixth or so tie-down down, Kumar helpfully pointed out that the last mover he used had a Peneske truck, and that he didn't have to strap anything down. He just packed it all tightly enough that he could just load it and go. It only took that guy a few minutes.

"Well, Kumar, we have a Ford Ranger, so that's what we're going to use. Got it?"

No, he did not.

We got the couches and tables into his little apartment alright, and at the end he asked me if I would take $60 for the hour-and-a-half work I did.

"No, I don't negotiate after the deal has been made. I charge $50 per hour for just my service, and $70 per hour for two men."

Since It was an hour-and-a-half, I charged $75.

"But you didn't bring a Peneske truck like you advertised--"

Ding! And here we are at my breaking point.

"Kumar, if you can find the ad where I say I always bring a PENSKE truck, I will gladly write you a check for $15 and mail it to you. But since we made a deal for $50 per hour, you owe me $75."

I kept my voice down, but I was seething. I wondered if turning the other cheek included accepting the shaft in business deals.

"Here is $70," he said. Then he laughed.

He laughed.

His wife and kids were there, and I'm no good at confrontation when I'm pissed off, so I just let it slide. I grabbed the money from his wimpy little hand and left without so much as a goodbye. I was sure that he saw me as being in a lower caste or something. He was going to get a strongly worded e-mail later.

How lame. How impotent.

I packed everything back up into my truck, and was about to drive away when he came running out. Ah, I thought, he must feel bad, and he's bringing the $5 he owes me.

"Stop!" he said. "Can I ask you a favor? It will only take five minutes."

What. The. Eff.

He put his hand on the open passenger window of the truck. "I need to move a TV, and my wife can't lift it..." He offered a fraternal grin. Me and Kumar were in the same club, you see. We men, we understood women. Or something. At that point all I wanted to do was grab his arm that was resting on the door of my truck and just start driving.

"Here's the deal, Kumar. I do this job to feed my family. We made an agreement that you broke. In other words, you stole from my family. So, get your hands off my truck and find someone else to screw."

I'm not sure that translated, but I could tell from the look on his face that something had gone horribly wrong, but he didn't know why.

I'm still debating whether to write him an e-mail explaining how things work in the free world.

It's not the recession, it's you...

Found an awesome motivational post on a new blog today (new to me, like almost everything).

http://outspokenmedia.com/online-marketing/you-just-suck/

An excerpt:

Entrepreneurs are ruling this recession.

Why? Because they’re hungry and they’re motivated. That means they can’t spend their whole day getting caught in the fame game or in office politics. It means when they go to a conference or a networking event, they’re not there for the booze. They’re grabbing handfuls of business cards, talking to people, and then following up. And they don’t just say they’ll email you after the show. They really do. Actually, they email you as soon as they get home. They’re nurturing leads and finding clients and creating opportunities. They’re marketing themselves. They’re not tuning in to Oprah this afternoon to get Twitter tips from Ashton Kutcher.

In fact, there’s not even time to whine about how unfair the world is and how this recession is taking away their business. Because they’re out there finding business from places you wouldn’t have even thought to look. Or maybe you would have, if you worked as hard as they do. That’s the thing, people don’t want to work. They want a job and a paycheck. And those cushy jobs with those cushy paychecks are the first to go. Because really all those people are doing is taking up space. So it’s not so much that the recession came around and took your job, it’s that you allowed yourself to become expendable.

About that marketing business...

So, the other day I wrote a cryptic little note on my Facebook page. It said something like "I kicked off JolmaCom with my first client today!" What on earth do I mean? I will tell you...

Over the last year and a half or more, I've had to market the moving business with almost no money to do so. When you're broke, you don't buy radio spots. Or TV. Hell, buying ad space in a cash-strapped newspaper is prohibitively expensive. So, I had to figure out alternative methods of promoting MyTruckBuddy.com.

Do you know how many low-cost ways there are to promote a small business? How many free ways? Hundreds. And if you're a little creative, you can modify those basic things thousands of other ways. Want to move your Website up in the rankings? Easy (relatively speaking). There's no one, single silver bullet, and there's no super secret cyber lever you pull, but with a patchwork of efforts, you can get your site noticed fairly easily.

A lot of it is just common sense. For example, how you answer the phone can determine whether you get a new client. Some are more high-tech: weaving keywords into the copy on your website.

Anyway, after doing this for awhile, I realized that I was developing marketable skills. Why not teach other small businesses (not moving businesses, obviously, heh) for a small fee? (Small for now, that is). If I -- someone with almost no technical skills -- can get a website up and running, optimize it for search engines, and implement a bunch of online and offline marketing strategies, then anyone can do it. Like everything else, though, a lot of small businesses just don't know where to start.

I'm not doing anything new or different here. All the information is out there, and a lot of it is just pure crap. I think small businesses would love it if someone could just step in and say "do this, do this, and do this."

A couple of months ago I visited the DC Home & Garden Show. I pushed out of my comfort zone and got a little "schmoozy," walking away with three new clients for a business I hadn't even created yet. After I sent my first newsletter, I got three or four more. I was right -- small businesses, especially businesses with crappy websites they made in 1998 with an old version of FrontPage, are desperate to make their marketing dollars stretch farther.

Last week I had an initial meeting with one of my clients. She's a moving customer of mine, and she runs a hair salon here in Old Town. She wanted to 1) develop a newsletter marketing system, and 2) optimize her website for search engines. So, I did some research, threw together some ideas, and showed her some options on her work computer. This is what she wrote about an hour after we met:

I just want to tell you I am so impressed with you!! you gave so much of your time and did so much research for us without a commitment !! you will go very far with this excellent customer service skill of yours.

I am looking forward to doing buisiness with you!!

I also wanted to explain that I am willing to spend a lot more each month once I see results coming in. One hair cut is 65.00 so doing the math the more business we get the more we can spend , the more you can make!!

I wish we had you here on staff!

Of course, now I'm scared poopless. I HAVE TO DELIVER.

No problem, though. I'm not trying to do anything fancy. All I need to do is what I've been doing for my own business, right?

The pay for this first gig won't be much, but it's a welcome start. I have about six more people ready to go right now, and that means I have a ton of things to do. For example, I'm supposed to be writing a proposal for the above client. What the hell am I blogging for?

When physics attacks...(Updated)

Yesterday was fun. The picture below shows a 12' high truck I rented for my big job of the day. It's positioned right behind a 12' high beam that's supposed to prevent oversized trucks from entering the building.

My #1 guy, who I asked to lead that mission, drove the truck in with no problem, apparently, but when he tried to reposition and back out, suddenly the truck was about an inch too high. I don't get it either, but the space/time continuum has been a real bitch lately. The day before, I had to move several items down a long, narrow alleyway between two rowhouses. I'm not an exceptionally large person, and the two brick walls nearly touched my shoulders when I stood in the center of the alley. My customer swore that her couch and several other items had made it through before. We tried and tried, but no angle would get some of the things (like the couch) down the alley.

So, yeah.

Anyway, we tried a bunch of things, up to and including strapping a one-ton garbage receptacle onto the lift gate. Uh uh. In the end, Penske sent a technician out and deflated the tires. That still wasn't enough. But, the technician was able to jump up and down on the back so that we were able to just squeeze it through.

Fun times...

Uploaded by www.cellspin.net

What recession?

Phone ringing off hook. Muscles singing with blood. Money...flowing. Life--good.