Ups and Downs
After suffering through a pretty turbulent 2023, I made it clear to my team that my singular goal was to enter 2024 with a sense stability, and to sustain that consistently through May. It wasn’t a terribly big goal, it didn’t seem like I was asking that much; I certainly believed it was possible. (love flexing the semicolon).
But clearly some God was offended by this quest, and set about to turn my life upside down - again, just like January 2023 - and turn my best laid plans into tiny pieces of confetti blowing in the wind. Just like that, plans disintegrated one by one into nothingness.
And, a lot of the things that needed tending to weren’t even related, so the odds of them all going off the rails in tandem was unlikely, but however unlikely, it happened. Like, it didn’t have to rain several times a week since September - that really takes all the fun out of it, and makes everyone’s work harder, and for some trades, difficult to do well. It was unexpected that I couldn't motivate, cajole, threaten, bully, sweet-talk, bribe a trusted large subcontractor to improve their performance, and had to mid-stream change horses - not fun, stress-free or cheap. I certainly didn’t see the need to restructure and rejigger the office staff, as two vital positions needed weeded, pruned and replanted.
I didn’t expect to sell 6 houses at the same time, either. That may seem like a good thing, which is, but adds a whole new layer of complexity into our day as we onboard and acclimate our new client-partners.
In the end, it’s just as I’ve said before. You gotta have endurance. And you always gotta have some gas in the tank because you just can’t go around driving on empty when you never know when you might need to accelerate through a pressing problem.
So the brain is a funny thing and you can either let it auto-pilot its own path, or you can attempt to tell it where to go, and how to get there. So I’m going to use the next 10 days of vacation to tell it where to go, at least in part by writing, deliberately, where I want it to go.
So I’m leaving for Costa Rica, a place I’m eager to check out. Then to St Pete’s. Will be gone for 11 days or so, so plenty of time to tame the brain. I know in the past, with a concerted effort, it takes a few days for the iphone itch to decline, and the habit of waking early and directing business and operations traffic can and should be put aside if I’m going to do this right, and even screen time on the computer even if it is writing, would be nice to keep to a fair duration.
I do believe why I’ve been ‘following my thoughts’ on the writing front, and I believe it has something to do with a book I just finished named Rings of Saturn, where the writer ambles on foot around northern England and writes about his thoughts, and his thoughts were weaving in and out of ancient England, recent past England, silkworms, castles, battles, tides, cliffs, aristocracy and a lot of completely other related but not really ideas and thoughts. And the structure of the book was similar, with minimal paragraph breaks, few thoughts inside quotations even when they belonged there, and a few other structural oddities that carried you away with him.
I’m doing the same thing now. Journaling. Just need to follow my thoughts into the reservoir of knowledge I have to explore the caves and canals of my meandering and restless brain.
A lot of times I will read a book about the place I’m traveling too, which always struck my son as odd - ‘you are going there, why are you reading about it?’ he say. I haven’t found anything on Costa Rica just yet and trying to decide on which of 2 books to bring - they are quite different, so the selection is important to the tenor and tone of the trip. At the same time, the library work at the Pinchot Estate continues, and there are a lot of travel and ecology books that seem to be centered down around Costa Rica. There doesn’t seem to be a canon of Costa Rica thought and literature to lean into, say like the richness of the African genre.
Well, it worked. Flood the zone with my brain power and accumulated experience and don't stop thinking until the answer appears. It's a distracting process, and probably not that healthy, but time after time when I focus, and I mean really focus, the path forward reveals itself.
This has always been true. The big difference now is that when I arrive at the answer, or decision, I know it's the right one to follow, whereas for the longest time I just had a general hunch. In terms of the my first-ever legal trial, one wrought and forged from principles and boundaries, the die is now cast.
The Writing life
I don’t know why this legal process is giving me so much writing inspiration, but for anyone who has followed this blog for long can see the amount of words I’m putting out is exceeding past efforts by a long shot. Perhaps it’s because the law is actually really interesting and I guess 2, the more you write, the more you write. Writing is a habit, one that becomes more fluid with daily exercise. So I guess I’m a little bit a run.
It is interesting, though, thinking about why this issue is motivating me to write more than say selling $5m of new homes in 3 months to the coolest people around, or rebuilding my office team to a top notch level after a full year of re-jiggering, or raising a great kid, or the new land I’m looking at, or the hundred of other things I do weekly that actually pretty interesting. So, maybe if I continue to write, I’ll figure out why I continue to write about this, but at exact moment, I have no idea. Maybe the newness - the other stuff is sort of old hat. Maybe the mix of personal, business, legal strategy necessitated really sparks my brain. Maybe it’s just the education I’m getting - if I lived closer to a University I’m sure I’d be taking classes all the time. Maybe this is why people become lawyers, because it’s interesting.
Maybe it’s the competition between parties. Maybe it’s the desire to win - I’ve always been very competitive. Maybe it’s because it’s helping me define my boundaries and lines that don’t get crossed after spending 22 years of taking one for the team 15 times a day just to keep the show going, since the show must go on.
I mean, I could easily write many pages full of things I have gratitude for, people I enjoy working with, efforts I’m impressed by, intelligence I’m awed by. My days are filled with people doing great work - which, in one way, is exactly why being treated and spoken to like piece of dog shit on the sidewalk was and always will be a trigger - I know how hard everyone is working. You don’t get to be on my team without being a hard-working SOB who leaves it on the field most days.
I mean, I could also write about all the stupid shit that happens each day, usually a result of someone doing something brainless, or maybe it’s just a result of us moving quickly at all times, or maybe it’s a combination of both. That would be fun, and probably healthy for me to vocalize.
So basically, my writing material is endless. You could say it’s a flaw in my motivation that it’s this issue that gets the writing juices flowing when so much other stuff could and should. But I’m flawed, that’s not news to anyone. A bit of misfit. My thinking is non-linear. I see things others don’t and don’t see what other’s do. I have the rare ability to be operationally proficient and very creative - typically you sacrifice one for the other. These opposing operation and creative talents pull uncomfortably in different directions. Maybe when I’m older I’ll get out of the operations end of things and stay in the creative lane - though, let’s be honest, sounds a little boring, since all the fun is in the operations, where you win, lose, live, die by your decisions and ability to motivate.
It’s funny with writing, or acting, or anything involving stage-craft - it’s just a front. Like right now on the blog I’m flexing the super-confident, hyper-aggressive gladiator, but that’s not really who I am. That’s my writing facade for this space in time. I guess priming the pump to build the audacity and courage to go into this battle with victory in mind. If you think it, you are it.
One thing I’ve learned over the years - and believe me - I’ve learned more in my lifetime than any person should, most of it coming after the age 40 - one thing I’ve learned is how careful you have to be when you find a good tool - be it an assistant, employee, or in this case, lawyer. I remember my first personal assistant/advisor (tangent alert - even calling someone my ‘assistant’ is something I do with hesitation, while Baumann had no trouble calling a young woman who was extremely accomplished ‘an administrative assistant or something’)- well, this advisor was good, and allowed me to accomplish and pursue many items on my to do list, and some of them weren’t that well thought out, and really weren’t that great of ideas.
So the lesson, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Same thing true, and I think very pertinent to this lawsuit, is with attorneys. Having a good attorney is important, but having a good attorney who lacks the credibility to advise against an action is dangerous as is one that will chase every stick that is thrown just to show off. Restraint derives from confidence. No action can be more of sign of strength than in-action. One of my most trusted advisors is the lawyer that I use for getting advice on the ups and downs, ins and outs of dealing with my ex-wife and the co-parenting we do. We do a good job together, but it’s not perfect, and on several occasions I contemplated going back to court to have this or that addressed. He never said no, and I think he would have done what I asked if in the end I asked, but in the interim, he lent me his time to listen to my issues and dilemmas, think about them, and walk me through the realities of what I was asking and seeking, and the most likely outcomes. He did it dispassionately, he did it intelligently, and he did it with my best interests in mind.
I can say with absolute clarity since it is my opinion and my perception and I've never seen this before, that a lot of the reason, if not the only reason, I'm in this current lawsuit is because how their attorney talked to me. He inflamed a volatile situation, threw gas on a fire that hadn't quit ignited, backed me into a corner where before his clumsy intervention there were a dozen resolution routes. That's actually being too generous - till his intervention, there wasn't even much spark in the fire- I don't even think my hackles were up- it was just a problem to be solved. And the same thing for the defendants, if this attorney advised them that aggression and attack was the prudent move, instead of a tip-toe out of a messy situation, then all I can say is, "I've been there'. I've been there 100x, when you realize too late you've gotten poor advice and counsel. When they realize they are wrong on the law, that they've actually been given poor advice from the very beginning, I wonder if they will blame me, or correctly gauge their error. Because if the strategy was to win before trial consuming an opponent with - how to phrase this - with legal moves, that strategy has been defeated.
And in the end, we never pursued any of my family law issues and concerns, since the courtroom is just not a great venue for getting what you want, compared to the costs - personal and financial - of the exercise. Even more so with family law, where you risk blowing up even an imperfect arrangement into something much worse.
Corby Baumann's deposition
This isn't the Jack Nicholson - Tom Cruise showdown in A Few Good Men, but still, it's pretty good, from Corby Baumann deposition, being triggered by my attorney -
Q.· · This indicates to you that he is not terminating the correct; correct?
A.· · No, it does not.
A.· · It does not at all.· You know what it means?· It means that he again has to tell us how stupid we are and how smart he is because he needs to give us perspective on construction.· And, again, he can't say "I was wrong, I didn't mean what I said in my e-mail."· He doubles down again. And, in fact, he breached the contract by stopping work, removing things from the property, saying he cancelled future work.· This does not negate all of the prior days' behavior for multiple days. This is his way of trying to bully us into continuing after he had already bullied us and old us he no longer wanted to work for us.
Q.· · But there is a very clear statement here correcting you saying if you are not agreeing to terminate the contract, then we will just move forward with it.
******
A... He had spent a day and a half, two days, not responding to any e-mails or phone calls.· He knew exactly what he was doing and on that call he tried to bully me into agreeing to something that I didn't agree to.
Chuck speaking now - the fact that she thought that a day or two went by without any return call or email shows just exactly how good we are to set that type of expectation. My god, I've been working with people for 25 years who don't return my calls for 2 weeks who I send lunches and chocolates to just so they get back to me.
No wonder they were seething about the trash and the 'communications' - completely unfair expectations, I guess we created our own monster by being so good, cooperative, responsive and expert. Goes to show how my suggestion to hire an Owner's rep was exactly what the project needed - so I could build a home, and they could gain valuable insight into the reality of a construction project. She's upset because I'm 'giving her construction perspective' - what in god's name is wrong with that? Isn't that part of my job?
Wowza. And the deposition transcript is 200+ pages long so stay tuned.
As I read through the deposition, which of course i take with a grain of salt because clearly anyone going into a deposition has thought about what they want to say and what they don't want to say so her answers have to be considered under that light, but some of the things that came out of her mouth that speak to her state of mind as to the services we were offering her- calling Amanda, probably the hardest working, most accomplished designer in the Hudson Valley an 'administrative assistant', nitpicking our accuracy on their round after round after round after round after round of powerpoint presentations to us adopt, adapt, change, and alter in the plans, denigrating and diminishing all my personal efforts to help them safely select, vet and purchase a perfect piece of land while on a parallel track walking them through a pre-construction build process so they are literally under construction within 2 months of buying a piece of land in a construction environment where no one is returning anyones calls and I'm leveraging every ounce relationship capital to get this project moving.
I mean, if she felt even 50% of what she relayed in her deposition - felt that our year long efforts to help them launch this building project in one of the toughest construction environments ever - no wonder they felt comfortable calling us unprofessional and feeling put out by our efforts. That was their perspective - and one that became increasingly clear to me. Can you imagine sweating blood and tears on a Saugerties mountaintop for a year for two people who view your efforts in that light, coming out of the pandemic where every single laborer, skilled and unskilled, was exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally?
I mean, no one just out of the blue writes an email calling your sole trusted advisor 'unprofessional and purposely sabotaging your dream home construction site'. I'm sure there is a long line of people who have received the exact same sort of email over the years from these folks. Maybe it worked in the past, and perhaps that created the trap that they inadvertently stepped into - that everyone will kneel and kiss the ring when you insult them, out of respect for the lofty heights from with Ben and Corby are perched. According to Baumannn's transcript, she just thought I should get over it, and actually say I'm sorry for being offended.
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What remains weird to this day is how she wouldn't let her husband fix the problem - which he had mostly done with a kind and gracious and generous email, exactly the type I would hope to write if I made an error in tone or message to an important, respected and trusted colleague. But instead, she took over, started looking for lawyers, started tape recording conversations while trying to get me say something incriminating, and drafting a 6 point plan of terminating the contract. All with 24 hours of her husband's unnecessary email, after working together for a year.
So the conclusion couldn't be more straightforward - either they are 1, insane, or 2, they weren't happy and were seething about our efforts and just had had enough and this provided an escape route. I guess in the end, the major miscalculation was 2 fold - 1, that finding another contractor would be easy and painless, and 2, that contractor would meet or exceed our efforts, however imperfect they were perceived to be.
It's clear from the discovery I'm receiving from the process they are now engaged in that a contractor I thought was a peer of mine, actually while quite respected and I'm sure offers quality works, has a communication and administrative process that can't touch ours. I'm sure complaining about a lack of return phone call in 24 hours seems small potatoes to what they are experiencing now, based on the records I'm reviewing. I know we are good, and in this up close and comparative light to a 'peer', I'm starting to really see how good. One thing unexpectedly beneficial about this process was we were able to and continue to request a lot of communications from the current contractor - bids, invoices, contracts, subcontractors - I'm mean we are like one of the team, and I'm able to up close and personal compare my efforts to his, which has been insightful.
Expenses
The Story of Business is the story of expenses. A story of Cash Flow. And eventually, a story of Profits.
And you are going to have weeks like this when you are building 14 homes across 3 counties, and have a portfolio of 8 single family rental homes in 4 states. But still, Really?
Our forklift lull didn't start - $3000. Tree fell on the roof of a rental - $2000. Someone - not mentioning any names - crashed some piece of equipment into a new AC condenser - $6500. Spec home water well sediment filter - $10,900. Sales tax audit - $35k (because for some god-forsaken reason a little hardware shop out of Tennessee didn't charge us sales tax for internet sales and we buy an impressive amount of hardware I guess). I think there's a few more, but I've put them out of mind for the moment.
Serious money! Out of the blue. Best strategy for those types of expenses is pay them quick and get them behind you since the longer you contemplate them, the longer the pain sticks around. Pay 'em, move on the next problem. Only thing that makes it better is knowing it's actually only 50% of the invoice because of my baller tax rate level.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the literal non-stop rain since September is degrading our driveways, private roads and everything else we do with land, which is all we do, period, so, that sort of sucks ass too.
