A very hard day.
Just a quick reminder - Our main website was lost on Thursday. Gone into the ether world of non-retrievability due to an unheard of human failing at our server company, which deleted my life's work with a click of a button. Let me add a quick insult to injury - when we went to redirect the url to a different location, we didn't have the security pin number (we had the password and ID), so they wouldn't let us do it, and we now thus far spent 45 hours on the phone with GoDaddy online chat trying to resolve, so when the AP article that just came out and the NYTimes article that will come out on Sunday searches of me and my company don't reach a broken link. Seriously stressful.
It wasn't the fanciest website. It was without debate out of date. But it functioned well, had a ton of content, and in a way, really represented us in a true fashion. Not too fancy, not perfect, not entirely convinced of our own authenticity, not over-branded, not too slick. Violated some basis website rules like too much narrative, undersized script. It got 10,000 visitors a month, month after month, year after year. Hundreds of thousands of page views. It was a tank. It never went down.
It had a pic of my son when he was 6 months old; he is now nearly 12 (I love the semi-colon use when possible). The brand, logo, color, fonts haven't really changed since 2001 when I first created it. Of all the things that have changed in my life, it's fascinating that the look and the feel of the company that I created when the company was more an idea than a reality had been right on. The concept, the original idea remains unchanged.
The website was familiar. A millennial client a few weeks ago gave me the compliment, "I love how out of date your website it!. Its retro". Now, in a testament to my growth as a person, I did still sell them a house. And it was 'out of date', but it functioned fine, and was a tool that hundreds of thousands of people and families have used to not only get a flavor of what we do, but a flavor of the Catskills.
And not some perfect filtered instagramed version of makers, and farmers and chair makers and morning dew off the grass - that's for other people's make believe version of the New Catskills. Us, we remained linked to the soil, the Catskills unbranded, a getaway, familiar, approachable. Affordable.
So I mourn, though the efforts of recovery that were undertaken over the last 40 hours has been remarkable and bring me to my point of this post.
In the building industry especially, as I'm sure is true in most creative/service/production industries, most clients are awesome, thankful, respectful. But there's always that one a year that is just awful, unthankful, unrepentant. And those suck. My favorite example was two guys we built a house for, found land for, designed a house for, then built it quickly, even though the whole area was hit by a windstorm that knocked out power for 5 weeks - meaning people working on their home had no electric when they went home, couldn't shower, couldn't refrigerate their food, couldn't turn on a light, get water, etc... These guys were so awful, so mean, so publically intent on soiling us as they floated in their swimming pool and broadcast cooking shows and entertained wildly from the house that 'was so bad', that I had to come up with a coping mechanism. Spending 8 months bringing someone's dream to life, only to be rejected in the end, is not a small issue for a professional who takes pride in what they do - that end of the job relief in a 'job well-done' is replaced with tired anxiety.
Anyone who achieves has been there. At the moment you think you get respite, you don't, and you have find the reserves you thought you would get from a job well-done, you have to get it from somewhere else, typically from within.
I mean, I was hurt by it, but I felt awful for my team, my designers, my cleaners, painters, carpenters and others. Out of a need for a mental health tool, it occurred to me what might be a surprisingly more effective tool of response was to try and keep it at arm's length. So, a failproof tool I know use in these situations is to pivot and find someone who has done something great for me, and show them the gratitude that was missing from the other experience.
And truth be told, while I suffer great ups and downs as I keep my company small while it grows large, there are heroics performed on my behalf every day, every hour actually. We have teams of people, father and son teams, subcontractors, employees, families, homeowners - to find the glory and the gratitude in this mix of activity is not hard. It may be hard to get out of the weeds and stick your head up while you are solving these problems, but if you do, you get to see glory in the effort, glory in the creative problem solving, glory in the 'they got my back' mantra of those I surround myself with.
As I get better at solving problems - and I don't mean the actual remedy or solution since I've been successfully solving hard problems from day one in this line of work I selected - I more mean the process and attitude I employ as I solve them, the ability to succeed as a team, to motivate effectively, to lead constructively, to accept 'business is problem-solving at its core', to relish the opportunity to work daily with a talented team of individuals who come from incredibly diverse backgrounds - from PHDs to garbage men - to respect their contribution equally, honestly, to show them gratitude with friendship and respect, when you get right down to it, I'm a lucky guy indeed.
Even if website is gone forever. And it doesn't change the fact I sold my Tesla stock last year at what is now a 52 week low of $235 per share (I think the last marker was $1600).
Insanity
I might have said my life is exciting, and not wholly in positive ways, but defined by lots of unexpected events each and every week, but even in the course of my ups and downs, the recent past and present has been insane.
Just 30 minutes ago, I found out my website of 20 years is gone. I don't mean 'gone, like I forgot to renew the url so they took it off line to scare me' - I mean 'GONE', like my web developer had it hosted with an organization that deleted it, then deleted the backup. It's a wtf moment of exasperation.
And, as an aside, it was only 3 months ago that I found out my computer company who we trusted and paid good money had not only not backed up our company files for 2 years, but then didn't bother to back up the server before moving it to the new location, violating the number 1 rule of data protection. Of course the server got bounced around and then the data couldn't be retrieved, and then we spent 48 hours of sleeplessness until they found a way to read the tape.
We also had a friend and high ranking carpenter find out his 10 yr old daughter had a massive tumor in her head and he just spent the last 7 days and nights by her bedside as she when in and out of several day long surgeries.
And of course you have the life disruption of the pandemic itself, upsetting our mental health, spiritual center, and watching our children get robbed of the community of friends and activities that make up a childhood and young adulthood.
These are gut punches. Juxtapositioned against that is the pandemic pandemonium urban flight that has filled our coffers, made us more popular and hunted than we've ever been, made us feel like Kathy Ireland in her Sports Illustrated prime, allowed us to book 14-18 months of business in 6 weeks, reward our employees and vendors, and fire on all cylinders. See last Blog post for just a sampling of what we have cooking. Like a good racehorse, we are best at full stride, fully galloped.
Sure, heavy weighs the crowns, but I'm not sure I'm into this proportional up and down thing, where every momentous victory needs to be qualified and defined by how you handle a just as great disruption.
In other news, my 11 year old son had the audacity to auto-reply to a text I sent him with a 'Sorry, I can't talk right now'. That was a real daring, boundary pushing action on his part, and he knows it. The pool in the pic is a joke, fyi. We'd never.
I've been getting a lot of press recently, because I am an expert in the catskills' scene, and the catskills' scene is pretty interesting right now. 'Right place, right time' type of thing.
New-yorkers-ditching-city-for-elbow-room-fuel-housing-boom
Turns out it's an AP article, and one of interest, and it's been picked up by 335 separate news outlets, and has had 2.3m impressions.
Perfect time not to have my life's work represented by my Catskill Farms Website. People from all over the country looking for my website, and it's not there, and never will be, at least not in the same form. And even best case scenario, we are weeks away from getting something new up.
So, what am I supposed to do? Drop everything and now tend to this immersive project which demands strategic, technical and creative resources? Really, how deep can your reserves really be, seems to be the question the Gods are asking me today.
Life in The Fast Lane
I don't know if I've used that title before, and I'm too lazy to go find out. Typing on my new MacBook Air, my 3rd since 2012. I like this piece of equipment - my first one rocked, my 2nd had some bugs, and hoping for the best on this one.
So much action, seriously, and no room for anything unexpected in the production force, which is never a good bet to make. Life always happens.
My residence for 10 years, in Eldred NY, just got rented for a good price. The woman who rented it on behalf of their family was literally in labor as she was nailing down the lease - I think her exact words were 'I'm in labor, so I end this email abruptly you know why'. First time for everything but a great real life indicator of how tight the market is.
This new home in Callicoon NY had 3 bids in the same weekend, two of them doctors from Manhattan.
This house just going up also just went into contract to a couple who had been looking for years -
The Mini-barn with views in the Beechwoods outside of Callicoon just went into contract -
Barn 36 in Saugerties, under contract
Farm 57, some old tune, under contract -
Multiple bids, under contract
Multiple bids, under contract
Signed up before we got started and locked in this Ranch -
And the one over the river outside Rhinebeck, Under Contract.
Small Olivebridge farmhouse, under contract.
And 3 or 4 more pending.
Picking up 4 pieces of new land in Olivebridge, and 16 pieces in Saugerties. Have added to our construction team, counting my blessings I moved attorney firms last year (in order to keep up) and relying on a lot of long-established relationships to keep us motoring. This is not the time to be putting together a team - like I was in the last super boom of 2003/2004, when no one needed work, and you got stuck with the c or d team who overcharged you and and produced not the best work and you were lucky to have them.
Interesting times indeed.
Paradise Lost and Found
That Chinese man who - many centuries or millennia ago- coined the phrase to 'pray that you live an interesting life' would be proud of me. Life really doesn't get a whole lot more interesting, a least for a small-town guy.
First, there was a first, which is rare after 20 years in the business - a woman who was in labor was negotiating to secure the rental of my home past. She wrote, 'I'm in labor, but we will take it, and we are such a nice family, etc..., just give me a day or two!". It's a tough market out there, and you have to act in order to secure. Nothing lasts. That heroic effort pushed her to the front of the line.
I have a few rentals and it appears I'm using them to find good families in need of good shelter, and giving them first dibs. Last year, continuing to the present, was a West Point family of 5 plus dog from the South. I agreed to a reasonable rent, and then extended the term in a flexible way. This year, a neat family who is fleeing NYC and sending their child to the Homestead. It's cool to be able to help - it's not charity by any means, but it is a thoughtful prioritizing of applicants - starting with renting for longer-term in a market that is full of short term rentals but light on longer terms.
Then, the Rev. Laurie Stuart, publisher of the River Reporter, agreed to a 'mea culpa', pretty high profile 'editorial apology' for letting some mean letters to the editor about me be published. The paper is and has been anti-anything Petersheim for a decade, 1, because I'm progressive, politically engaged articulate and not prone to bandwagens, 2, call out their foolishness (while still believing local newspapers are the life-blood a healthy community) on probably more occasions than is polite, 3, I think the old editor was just plain jealous of how his life stacked up to mine, especially since his probably had a headstart and he toed the line of community homogeneousness, while I moved fast and broke everything in sight. The mean letters detailed my 'behavior in the community', like a guy who starts with a penny and ends up investing over $100m in a community is mis-behaved. Hopeful (and vocal) that a rising tide may lift many boats, but misbehaved? Ridiculous. It was one of those 'qualified' reversals that get mocked in when someone does it on the big stage, but it was a start and I appreciated it. Baby steps.
Granted, maybe some mis-steps but who's perfect?!?! Although being outspoken does put an easy target on your back, especially in when you add in social media. It takes a real willingness to be blooded and punched and kicked and ostracized and mis-interpreted. I know enough about history to know that the way forward is not for the meek or gun shy.
As Senator Tammy Duckworth recently wrote -"In a nation born out of an act of protest, there is nothing more patriotic than standing up for what you believe in, even if it goes against those in power."
Interestingly, all the current meany pants letters started when I wrote one criticizing a school board member Kristin Smith for thinking she needed to use her platform to chime in on a debate on whether some local moron had the right to fly a gigantic confederate flag in a high profile location. My point was simple and sweet - the rights you have that you refrain from using are as important as the rights you have that you choose to use, - in fact, this may actually define the fabric of the community in which you live. My point was also pretty simple - if she thought reminding people that you have the right to fly a confederate flag was somehow an impressive display of constitutional knowledge, she was mistaken. We all learned that in 1st grade. And you wouldn't believe all the panties that got tied in a knot after I said that.
But, to be honest, I am an alien in the community in which I live. With generations of economic decline all around me - with the decline of the borscht belt and the related real estate and hospitality industry, which started in earnest in the mid-1970's - I plopped out nowhere and sort of built a small scale empire, an affront to all those wading in the 'can't be helped, can't be improved' swamp of rural America for the last 40 years.
It's tough to really explain what economic decline does to the soul of a community. It grows unambitious, it grows complacent at the lowest common denominator, it grows physically unhealthy, it begins not to hope or help the next generation, academics slide, culture slides, people grow fat; improvement is a foreign, frightening and threatening word.
Which got me thinking about community. Most people who can choose their communities carefully. It's where their family is, it's where their job is, it's where the good schools are. As you slide up the income scale, it's where the day to day interactions are invigorating, the opportunities varied, and manners are acknowledged.
Personally, I got caught in no mans land. I wasn't from Eldred NY (pop 1500) I didn't really know anyone, I had nothing in common with the local community, and my life experiences, built-in ambition and eager to always improve left me nearly at polar opposites to the priorities of my community. But I had a business niche of building and selling homes to new yorkers (who liked the ruralness and had plenty of life-blood action back in the city) that kept me there for 15 years, raging against the inanity of 'spiteing ones nose off your face on a daily basis', having my soul unwatered by a sort of community cultural or educational ambivalence, a mean-spiritedness borne of failure, or at least borne of lack of improvement.
Seriously, the mismatch was insane - you have a tireless entrepreneur building one of the most dynamic companies in the Hudson Valley- every day waking up with people to pay, problems to solve, ventures to start- juxtaposed against a spiritless ooze of rusted complacency. It's one thing to motivate when you are motivated and inspired by those around you, it's another to motivate in a vacuum, to have to draw it all from within.
One easy measure of what I'm talking about is our local school, pop. 400. Eldred's schools have declined over the last decade from neat little rural school to a place that underachieves on every State metric, be it academics, athletics, preparation for college, attendance to college, culture. My efforts and others have dumped tax revenue into this school for decade-plus and all we have to show for it is a bloated pay, benefit and retirement package for the teachers who are leaving the kids short. It's frustrating. It doesn't improve, in fact, it's sort of anti-improvement. It's also very unhealthy for me - you can starve your mental well-being if you are not careful and dollars in your pocket does very little to alleviate being surrounded by blah.
That said, and I doubt I'm done with that, on a biz front, just a ton going on.
I accepted offer on these three little guys this week. 2 with multiple bids. 2 in Saugerties, 1 in Callicoon NY.
This one in Milan in NY is fully reserved.
And 4 more in Saugerties, and another in Kerhonkson, and another in Olivebridge and the phone doesn't stop ringing, though I stopped picking it up weeks ago.
I'm starting to see something very clearly in my future - a Pool.
or maybe -
