My goodness! It is officially November and I can hardly believe it has already been six months since I went on “board troll” status! I’ve been threatening to take some time to update everybody, so I figure if I didn’t do it –right now- It would be another month!
Life has been a whirwind here … let’s see.. the highlights!
The hail storm totaled our roof which was replaced and then we were promptly dropped by our home owner’s insurance for making the claim (that was nice after 13 years of being customers….) thankfully we picked back up coverage in a relatively short period of time by another insurance company who looked at our record and whet “you’re good customers and you have a new roof.. welcome aboard!”
We’ve been vehicle shopping as both of our autos are 20+ and 10+ years old and both have been driven to the edge of rust, bailwire, and tipping over 200K miles… that’s been surprisingly hard! We have had a heck of a time finding something in better condition than we already own in our price range.
Work has been all consuming, but I think still moving in positive directions. We had two employees take vacation and then return to turn in their two week notice. Their last day was the same and they went to go work together somewhere else, which was fine with us, but of course I inherited their jobs until we re-organize.
Then a third employee and his wife had a baby (yay! Baby!) and so he was gone literally the week after the other two left so we were short-handed by three people for awhile. (Ironically this all happened two weeks before my scheduled vacation time, so that got canceled and still haven't managed to put that back on the calendar
)
It’s been six weeks and we have yet to find any good candidates. I’m really surprised given the economy and how many people tell me they are looking for work. We’ve had a grand total of only 10 resumes and interviewed 8 people, and … nothing… I even had two people basically tell me if I can’t guarantee they will be able to stay long term during the interview (how could I?) they don’t want the job, because they don’t want to give up unemployment. … yah….
The upside is we were able to make all the internal structural changes we need to put me where I need/want to be inside the company and from a work-flow perspective things are working very nicely! Of course.. we’re short-handed so I’m eager to find somebody (or two!) and get things back off my desk again where they should be.. (can’t wait until I can stop saying that too! LOL)
The MAIN (and very exciting) news is that my dad, Gray, and I have officially started our own company! We pulled all of our operations, people, and technology skills and have combined them together to form our own consulting firm. I know that’s a bit vague, but I’ll post more details when I have more public things to share! .. so there have been many hours spent developing our network, getting things set up and in order, going through our business plan and defining our niche market, etc. etc. We’re very close to a “live” date and I’m really really excited!
We’re also officially finished with everything we needed to fix/repair on the outside of house and have started the internal re-finishing of the inside of the house. We’re on track to make our goal date of being able to have everything in order come spring to put it on the Market. We don’t know where we’re moving to yet, but it is time! A lot depends on how quickly we are able to develop our prospective markets with our new company.
Gosh, I’m already tipping over a page, so I had best quit while I’m ahead. I hope you all are doing well and having a blast!
I miss you all terribly and thank you for putting up with my random posts.
glad everything is alright with you and hope to see more of you next time!