Amanda Leaves the Building
We had our exit party for Amanda yesterday, February 3rd, and it was well attended by her colleagues present and past. My team is an extraordinary group of people. This chapter ends, and next begins. Feels good to have done this right. Now I re-invent, and if the past is any indicator of the future, we end up better.
Speech I made about her service at Catskill Farms, through tears and unsteady voice.
"Well, here we are. Amanda’s last day. Words I really don’t think most of us would ever hear me utter. Amanda was part of the succession plan.
I’m sure I’m not the only employer here who has seen a fair share of burned bridges departures - so despite the mixed emotions and emotional roller coaster I’ve been on for the last 2 weeks, I was and am determined to end this in the fairest, most respectful fashion, and that’s why we are here today.
I invited my son here today to show him how to be graceful in defeat, because make no mistake, no matter the reason for her departure, good or bad, fair or unfair, just or unjust, today is a defeat for me. I have my mother here because she knows the precarious journey this has been since 2001. This is just another marker along the way.
Amanda was my first successful office hire, after years of trial and error. So, in some ways, this is like the first time for me even though I’ve hired and fired dozens if not hundreds of people. I can now agree and attest - the first cut is the deepest.
I also just want to be clear, if I show any emotion, it’s not because Amanda is leaving us, it’s just because I just feel lucky she was here at all. Any emotion is just just a testament to how hard this business is, and how Amanda was by my side during 7 incredibly good and incredibly difficult years. I can’t think of a better reason to shed a tear than to honor her and her hard work. Let’s face it - that’s why we own businesses - so we feel the glory of victory and agony of defeat. Moments when we really feel, that’s why people like me are self-employed. I want those highs and lows - I live for them, painful as they may be.
There’s not a person in this room who hasn’t had my back in some significant way over the last decade - some of you in ways that exceed my ability to thank you enough. Amanda definitely fits into that camp. We play in the big leagues - it’s no joke, with a lot on the line.
Amanda’s accomplishments here at Catskill Farms are legendary and vast, and only with time and distance and other jobs will she really understand what she did here. She created systems for our company and our clients. She managed, wrangled and motivated dozens of vendors and subcontractors, usually men twice her age. She dealt with me day in and day out. She sweet-talked code enforcers. She coordinated and collaborated with our staff and crew. She accepted thousands of deliveries. Picked up the mail everyday. Remembered to take the trash cans out each week. Help me with technology. She juggled dozens of jobs and clients, each with hundreds of details. She navigated the pandemic while juggling dozens of jobs. She literally built 100 homes or more with me worth more than $40,000,000. Her design talents can be seen all over the Hudson Valley. She’s quite literally one of the most recognized designers in upstate New York.
I love teams. Always have played on teams, love building them, tweaking them, messing around with them, making them better. Stress testing them. Practicing, experimenting, working hard together, perfecting. I love being the quarterback, responsible for the whole game and for every win and loss. That’s my lane.
Teams celebrate each other, and I’m here to, and invited you to, help me thank amanda and at the same time make sure everyone in this room knows how much I appreciate the work we do together. We are simply the best around, and it comes mostly from our hard work and ability to work as a team, and our willingness to constantly learn and improve even after 20 years. Some days we are the bad news bears, other days we are like the USA hockey team in 1980 winning the gold medal over Russia. I am really proud of this team standing here. Many of us have worked together for 15 years. Thats a long time in this industry. The bond we share with each other forged thru trial and fire and experience, is a part of teamwork and team-building that can’t be faked, can’t be shortcutted, can’t be rushed. Its earned, inch by inch and day by day.
And Amanda was an integral part of this team all through her 20’s. 7 year is a long time to work for someone in this day and age of job hopping. I fished her right out of college. She May not the quarterback, but definitely an important and pivotal member who played both sides of the ball. No matter how hard I tried it seemed- i just never felt I was giving to her what she was giving to me - even though my accountant disagreed with me. I guess I’ll always feel that any show of gratitude I’m familiar with just isn’t enough for the effort she put out there on my behalf.
She helped me gain wealth. Helped me give money away. Helped me be a good father, steady ex-husband, and just generally helped me improve professionally and personally. She took some of the pressure off of me.
A testament to her impact is the people here today and the uniform praise she is getting as she leaves. As I wrote this up, and then edited to a much shorter version, I was able to reminiscence and savor my long history with Amanda. You could argue at times she held this thing together on her own, just on the strength of her will. She kept the pieces together. She kept my pieces together. I don’t have a lot of people around me that I can bounce things off of, to help me make good decisions - so Amanda’s mere presence each morning when I arrived, as long as she was here, it was proof I was doing something right. That will be missed.
Some of the many words that describe her - hardworking, diligent, honest, kind. Modest. Steady.
For those who have attended our Christmas parties, or pool parties or other company gatherings, this isn’t the first time you’ve heard the only thing coming out of my mouth is gratitude towards Amanda, except maybe that one christmas party in 2010 in Yulan which we dont talk about- Besides helping run this business, she helped me in a million other ways - wrap presents- perfectly of course, helped me run for political office, decorated the office, ran interference, didn’t judge. She had, and has, apparently limitless energy. Limitless problem-solving abilities.
This company has grown a lot in the last 8 years that Amanda has been here - the stability and talents she has brought has helped a lot of us here - have helped us stabilize our respective family status, helped us raise kids, put them in the military or college, has helped us build retirement funds, buy houses. It can’t be overstated the impact of someone willing to come into a leadership position and leave it all on the field, every day for almost a decade. We’ve all benefited from that work ethic. We all benefitted from her consistency. She only has one mode - and that is fully committed, to whatever she is doing. We benefitted from that. I benefitted from that. I benefitted from her steadiness, knowing she was always there to lend a hand.
As many of you may know, She came into this company as an intern, with nary a day on a construction site. Many of you know this story - and as Amanda and I have joked, the story keeps getting better with our embellishments - how her dad saw an article about me in the newspaper when we were building Country Living’s House of the year - and she cold called me out of the blue one summer between college semesters - and I returned her call a few weeks later and said ‘sure, come on in, you won’t last a week but what the hell’. And at the end of the first week, I was trying to convince her that college was for fools and she should just continue working here.
But lets face it, that was never going to happen. Amanda makes good decisions, and those decisions are clear, and rooted in a background and upbringing of strong values and priorities. And that was always clear to me and rang true.
And this company gave her talents the light of day - whatever she wanted to give, the company drank up, and gave she did, and grow we did. Doubling in size, then doubling again, then again and again. Amanda helped me grow as an executive, grow as a boss, watched me make colossal mistakes and win gigantic victories. She watched me fly high and crash right back down. I think it’s true that no person has spent more waking hours with her than me over the last 8 years, and each one has been an honest hour, of setbacks and achievements, of disappointment and success, and always filled with ‘tomorrow is another day’ approach. We really were a team, who knew how to step in and cover for another’s weakness and maybe more importantly, cover for each other’s mis-steps. There was no thinking to it - it was just what we did- it was second nature. There’s no denying this is a tough business, and there is no denying I got a lot of strength knowing Amanda had my back and we could outwork and outsmart any of the problems that dared challenge us. We did it everyday. The proof was in the pudding.
She helped me navigate a divorce, get a kid off to school each day from the office, and all too often did the over and above action - I remember one great example where I needed help getting Lucas to school, a little private school in glen spey, and my 6 year old reported it was pajama day - and they show up in the long line of cars dropping off kids and it with horror no one else in their pj’s, so with a 5 year old in the carseat, she makes a high speed U-turn, drives him 5 miles home, goes into a strange home (mine) finds him some regular clothes and drives him back. She had never been in charge of a kid before. She pulled it off of course. Her quickness on her feet is uncanny. Her common sense is uncommon.
Especially amongst the tradespersons here, there is no one not guilty of taking advantage of her in some way, of being needy and asking for help when you could solve your own problems, giving 90% when you knew she needed and was going to ask for 100%, for bitching and complaining while she fed your families, for not sending her birthday and Christmas gifts to her, and notes of appreciation - when gratitude can be the nutrients that sustain us in this wild world of construction. We can’t demand it of our clients, who god knows should be offering it up freely and in abundance, but we can demand it of each other. We all share responsibility for her departure, because we never stopped asking her for help, which she unfailingly gave. She shielded me from a lot nonsense. She made us all look like our best selves. Her hard work helped us all succeed.
I used to tell a friend of mine, that I just pictured Amanda going home early in her career here, before she got married, and would take her concerns, questions, and problems home with her to the family dinner table each night. I always pictured her going home each day, sitting around a home-cooked meal with her parents, and discussing her day. And getting good advice, not about how to be needy or feeling like a victim, but giving her advice to stay in the game, to keep working hard, giving her young mind perspective on what it means to have responsibility, what it means to work for a hard charging entrepreneur. And she would come back the next day ready to tackle whatever challenge came her way. And understand, for the first 5 years, that meant tackling the the snake of a road over the Eagles Nest each day in her sturdy subaru and nerves of steel. Never late. Never an excuse. She was never a victim of circumstance or other people.
So I propose here today, we honor Amanda’s legacy at Catskill Farms and all the associated people and families who have benefitted from her efforts and her values, by remembering our goal each day we wake up - to put in a good days work, to take pride in our work, to respect each other, and to go the extra mile. As the days turn to weeks, turn to months, then years and decades. We are in this journey together. Like it or not this, today, is an end of an era an end to a big chapter in my life, …but the journey continues. I think I speak for everyone when I say we will miss you Amanda.
If we can do that, dedicate our best selves to our jobs and the efforts they require, then her efforts here at Catskill Farms will last and linger far into the future, as they most certainly deserve, just like the homes she has built for us and some of you.
Gaining her favor after being in business 12 long years was my first real break, helped me stay in the game long enough to find the success that was always just out of reach, just around the corner, and I’ll cherish it long after I’ve moved on from this business. I feel she was one of my first big breaks, after 12 years in business. I feel blessed and cursed for the exact same reason - having such a wonderful person cross my path.
I end - which I hate to do since that means the real end is even nearer than it was when I started this speech- by paraphrasing Captain Woodrow Call’s epitaph for Josh Deets, who had just died after an altercation with the Apache, in one of my favorite westerns, Lonesome Dove (I kept the original spelling).
“Amanda Krupinich Barton - SERVED WITH ME 8 YEARS. FOUGHT IN OVER 100 ENGAGEMENTS WITH FIESTY CLIENTS. CHERFUL IN ALL WEATHERS, NEVER SHERKED A TASK. SPLENDID BEHAVIOUR.”
To Amanda.
New Design Partner
I find myself writing whenever I have a complex problem to solve. The focus and regurgitation of thoughts from pen to paper is a process that helps me work through a problem. Always has been that way. The ability to think something through, toy with it, reshape it and write about has always served me well. I always write more when things go sideways.
The thing about business, at least my business, there's always a push and a pull, a ying and a yang. Right now, Amanda's leaving us, but I put $2,200,000 into contract over the last 10 days and have another $2.2 likely coming down the pike. I've interviewed and hired some really fascinating people. And I zero'ed in and now working with a very aligned design group out of the Baltimore area.
Her work, Inhabit Interiors, is a lot like ours, and truth be told, most of design work has always been done remotely, from the Catskill Farms/Client perspective. So not a lot will change except this group will bring a whole new set of modern skills to a process that might have become stuck in its own success lane. Reinvention is critical.
One thing this unexpected hurdle has provided me, is the opportunity to look across the company and decide what I want it to look like 5 years from now and, what part of Amanda's job can be delegated and outsourced, creating a more redundant, fire-proof company.
Another thing it has provided me is a lot less sleep - I'm up early thinking things through.
I can hear the wind howling; it's supposed to -5 today. 2022/2023 has been a mild winter, but for at least today, it's ferocious.
Things change, business continues
Today is the last ‘work’ day for my colleague who after 7 years has found a new gig. In those 2 weeks since her notice, the pace of my participation in the day to day operations of the business has increased expotentially. While, operationally, the team I have in place can handle most eventualities, I’ve never stopped paying attention, so it’s not like I don’t know how to run my company. In fact, like I’ve mentioned a few times over the years, to succeed in business - at least in my business - you really have to lower your expectations of your help. It’s no slight against them to acknowledge that few people you hire will be as committed as the Owner, so as an owner, you just have to find a way to accept that so you don’t drive everyone out the door.
The reason I mention it, is similar to why I said in the last post, ‘my skills aren’t what they used to be…. (Wait for it) - they are a whole lot stronger than the last time I had to flex like this. I know my business inside and out, I built it from it literally from nothing to a marketplace leader. I’ve hired most of the team. I’m the one with the more durable relationships with our vendors and subcontractors. Takes a lot of work, and takes a shift in my mindset, but it’s not as if I’ve lost touch with the nitty gritty of the pulse of the business - that’s one thing I’ve learned over the last two weeks.
This departure by a senior member of the team has allowed me, has forced me, to look at the company and decide how to move forward, and interestingly there are lots of ways to re-invent and improve - just have to shift out of cruise control and rev the rpm's, - which is getting a little harder as I age, and have a comfortable nest egg, I must admit.
Another thing I’ve learned is that the Catskill’s marketplace for real estate is still pretty strong. It died out a little last fall, but starting about 2 weeks ago, you could tell that there were still a lot of buyers out there. We have put 2 homes into contract - 2 completely finished spec homes - in the last week, and we weren’t even that motivated to sell them with the market still trying to figure itself out. But that’s an incredible unexpected boost to the 2023 outlook, and gives us the leeway to lean into the mystery of what the marketplace will bear in 2023.
2 houses just going into contract for March or April closings.
When employees depart
Business is heart-break. It happens when you invest in an employee and it doesn’t work out even though it should and it costs time and money and opportunity. It also happens on the other end when you meet and mentor and see them successfully leave the nest for the next thing.
I’m experiencing that now, with my long-time right hand woman Amanda departing after 8 years and a hundred plus homes. She’s my project manager, sounding board, assistant, supporter, crutch and cheerleader. She saw me hit it big, and fall right back to earth.
We are a small company and it came out of the blue so not only do I have the need to process the personal loss, I have to get busy and in 2 weeks forge a new path in a way I had never really considered. I sort of thought, as my friend Bryan said at the bank, that she was part of the succession plan. So much for best laid plans.
So I now think, wake early, first in the office last to leave old skool work hours - turning on the skills energy and brains that have powered me thus far, and as I hit the gas this time and navigate the curves, I reflect and notice my skills aren’t what they used to be - my skills are on a whole new level of expertise, and while setbacks and disappointments are sure to lurk in all the shadows of all our bright rays of success, the experience I now have as part of my professional fabric is like teflon - or that of the newest jeans out there - durable, flexible and ready for a whole host of life eventualities.
My experience with Amanda, who I fished right out of college reminds me of the singer/songwriter Albert Hammond (as many of you know whose son we built a compound for), he sings in what I believe to be his most famous song - It never rains in southern California - he writes , and makes me remember how Amanda ‘found me’ in 2014 -
- Out of work, I'm out of my head
- Out of self respect, I'm out of bread
- I'm underloved, I'm underfed
- I wanna go home
- Will you tell the folks back home I nearly made it?
- Please don't tell 'em how you found me
- Don't tell 'em how you found me
- Gimme a break, give me a break
I feel she was my first big break, after 12 years in business. I feel blessed and cursed for the exact same reason - having such a wonderful person cross my path.
Busy day last Monday wrapping up a big project in The Fields, our anchor project at the Crest.
Of course it snowed big time when we had everyone and their mom scheduled for their punch list day. No where to hide on that big mountainside.
