Trip To Houston

Early in December (2010), my son Chad decided he'd had enough of working for other people, especially for people who didn't have much of a clue how to handle employees.

So he decided to strike out on his own, to start his own business, mainly in computer consulting and programming.

In his short career since graduating from Belhaven College (now University - woo!), Chad has had three different computer programming jobs, each at an increasing salary. The first was pretty much an entry-level position, and he enjoyed the people there but not the work so much. The second job was when a many-years-ago graduate of Belhaven had started his own computer programming business, and got a lot of U.S. government contracts, and decided to open a branch in Jackson (still not sure why, but I think it was because he really likes the people at Belhaven) and hired the chief of Belhaven's computer science department to run the office. This person needed to hire one person to help him start the office, so he called Chad! Chad really enjoyed that job, and helping that company grow, but the owner wound up selling the company to a larger company, and Chad could see he was about to be made redundant, so he went out and found his third job. This third job involved staring at a computer screen in a cubicle in a hallway for 8 hours a day, working with people who weren't very social, never communicated with each other, and two of which were openly gay. He was NOT happy there.

The main impetus for starting out on his own came when he would get home from work, and his 2+ year old daughter Katie would squeal with glee and grab his hand and say, "Daddy! Daddy! Come play!" and he would be too tired. All he could do was to sit in his chair a while to recuperate.

He already had a few independent computer clients, and his wife Sarah told him that if he really thought starting his own business was the right thing, she supported him 100%.

So in late November, after much prayer and thought, he gave his employers his two weeks notice, and his last day of working for someone else was December 3.

As Chad and I chatted about this, I asked him if he'd like me to get in touch with some people I knew who might help him get started, and his answer was an enthusiastic, "Sure!"

So I began making calls, one of which was to my former employer, Chuck Drobny, now working for a company in Houston. Chuck started his own business in the early 1990's, called M.E.D. The intitals stood for "Management Engineering Design," but later was shortened to just the initials only because someone in some regulatory agency told him he couldn't have the word "Engineering" in his name unless he had someone with an engineering degree in the business. Chuck did very well at starting the business, making quite a bit of money and eventually selling the business to another company, but that's another story.

Chuck agreed to see us, to talk to Chad, and to tell him whatever he could about the do's and don't's of starting one's own business, so we set it up to travel from Jackson, MS to Houston, TX on Friday (Jan 7, 2011). Chuck said he had "a few hours available in the middle of the day."

I thought I remembered from checking in 2009 that Houston was about a six and a half hour drive, so I knew we had to leave at oh-dark-thirty Friday morning.

My alarm went off at 0400 (that's oh-four-hundred, which is milspeak for 4AM for all you civilian types), and I jumped up, dressed, grabbed the stuff I'd set out the night before to take, and was in the car programming the GPS by 0414. I got the GPS programmed and started out of the driveway, and something just didn't feel right. I stopped the car and went around looking at the tires - yep. The right front tire was flat.

Bummer.

My mind raced, what could I do about this? I could change the tire, but no way could I drive all the way to Houston on a donut spare tire, and nowhere would be open at this time of day to get the tire fixed. I could swap and take Jan's car, but I couldn't leave her to change the tire, so I still had to change the tire.

So at 0418, in 38° weather, I was in my carport, changing a tire. The cold made it harder, and the fact that I'd never done it before on this car made it something I had to figure out, but some of my prior tire-changing experience from prior years rescued me and I was back on the road to pick up Chad by 0442.

Fortunately, Jan's car also has a GPS system, and I programmed that for Chuck's office in Houston. When the route was finally calculated, I was surprised to see it said the time to the destination was seven hours and thirty-two minutes! Eeek!

It was a fun and rather uneventful trip there. Chad and I enjoyed a glorious sunrise, marveling at God's glorious creation.

Along about 0845 I texted Chuck, "Flat tire delay. GPS says ETA about 1230."

He texted back, "Bummer. Text when west of Beaumont."

Okay.

I did that and he texted me for us to meet him at a po-boy restaurant. I had Chad look up the restaurant's location on his iPhone, so when we got to Houston, we went directly there, arriving about 1210. I was glad to have the GPS, but it seems its estimated travel times are only approximate.

Chad and I arrived at the restaurant, and waited at a table on the outside patio for Chuck, who arrived a few minutes later. I greeted him and shook his hand, then he re-introduced himself to Chad, expressing some surprise. He turned to me and said, "I didn't remember his was so big. How long has it been since I saw him?"

I think Chuck last saw Chad about 1998, more than 12 years ago, when Chad would have been 15 or 16.

We got our food, and for about 45 minutes, Chuck chatted at a hundred miles an hour about his current business, how they started less than a decade ago, doing a half a million in revenue the first year and last year doing over $15 million, about how they do the communications between the equipment at the well heads for oil wells but mostly natural gas and the home offices of the companies that run the wells, and about how there's enough natural gas reserves right here in the U.S. to last us more than 370 years. He told us about some of the people he'd hired recently and what their experiences had been, and we got a pretty good but superficial overview into a business that most people don't even know exists.

The one business-for-Chad thing Chuck said at lunch was (this is as closely as I can remember it), "There's only one thing you need when you start a business. A lot of people will tell you it's a business plan or a product or a service or an office, but they're wrong. You don't need any of that. The only thing you need to have a business is a customer. Anyone who says they have a business and has any of those other things but doesn't have a customer is just playing around, they're just wannabes."

After we'd all finished eating, Chuck said, "Let's go over to the office. Just follow me, and after we get inside the parking garage, I'll go straight and you turn right and park."

So we did.

Up in Chuck's office, which, by the way is in a building with his company's name prominently displayed on the outside, Chuck speared Chad with his eyes and said, "What was the one thing I told you you have to have if you own a business?"

We were still getting situated in seats, and Chad hemmed and hawed for a moment, then said, "A customer?"

"Right! And what is the one thing that the customer has to have before they will do business with you?"

Again, Chad fumbled around a bit, somewhat nonplussed by this teacher-style inquisition. Chad tried a few answers, including "Money?"

"No. They've got to have money, but that's not what I'm after here."

A bit of silence. "A contract?"

"No."

Chad was thinking furiously. I was at first thinking "He's asking Chad to answer questions on material he hasn't ever 'taught'." But then I saw it was making Chad do a lot of thinking, and that was the point.

After a few seconds of silence, Chuck said, "Give up?"

Chad said, "Well, I'm not sure exactly what you're after."

Chuck said, "The one thing that a customer has to have before they will do business with you, before they'll sign a contract or pay you any money, is trust. They have to absolutely trust you."

Chad nodded in understanding.

Then Chuck said, "Chad, do you have a photographic memory?"

Again, Chad was a bit taken aback at the question. "No, I don't have that kind of memory."

"Then you might want to get out a pen and some paper and write some of this stuff down."

One of the great things about Chuck is he doesn't beat around the bush. If he's thinking something, he lets you know, right away.

Then Chuck proceeded to unload to Chad for the next two hours, added to the hour we had spent at lunch. I truly wish I'd had a recorder on during the session, but Chad did take some notes.

Probably the best way to describe that session is to tell you what Chad said on Sunday evening when Jan asked him about it. He said, "I feel like I've been through an entire master's degree in business administration, condensed into bullets over about two and a half hours, and fired at me from a gun."

When we left Chuck's office and were waiting for the elevator to go back to the parking garage, I asked Chad, "So. Worth the trip?"

His eyes got big and he nodded. "Oooohhh, yes!"

As we got in the car, I asked him if he wanted to go over his notes while they were fresh in his mind, and I might be able to add things I remembered that he didn't have time to write. He said, "I need an hour or two first. There was so much."

A few hours later, in the car about dusk on the way home, I asked Chad if he had his computer with him. He confirmed he did, and I asked if he wanted to try to transcribe his notes into the computer, to reinforce what he'd gotten. He was still totally overwhelmed by all he'd heard, still digesting and processing.

We ran into a traffic jam just past Baton Rouge, which added almost another hour on to our trip. That made it right on about sixteen hours we spent in the car that day.

It was still worth it.

Fortunately, I had been to the library the day before, and had a book on CD that we listened to during the drive, which helped pass the time.

I got home about 11:30, and needless to say, was just a wee bit tuckered. Jan had experienced no problems with the donut spare on my car, going to work and back, and I was glad of that.

I think I was asleep before my head settled into my pillow.