Attitude is Everything

   I have hired hundreds of people over the course of my career.  In the construction industry there are only two good times to hunt for work, the first thing in the morning before work begins and at the end of the day when you realize that an extra hand could have been useful.  All of the other hours are a distraction and I have planned my day based on what I have.
   The worst resumes were those with twenty year's experience and no tools of the trade.  If you don't take care of yourself I know you won't take care of me.  A good painter is picky and has his own brushes.  Every Skill Saw is a little different and a good carpenter is used to his own.
   Looking back, my favorite employees were the one's who insisted that I hire them.  They wouldn't take "no" for an answer and would show up repeatedly at my shop, often before I did, always asking if they were needed today.  Some would offer to work one day for free, again that attitude, "try me out, I know you will like me"!
   Attitude is everything on a construction site and I suspect a lot of other work environments.  Really, I am after a "can do" attitude but also a "will do" attitude.  Someone not afraid to get dirty and not limitted by a job description and can do it all with a smile.  I can teach anything but you have to be willing to learn.
  
My Business Site is HERE

Self Employed in not perfect...

It is just the way things turned out.  In 1978 I was a school teacher working on my second year of teaching History classes in a Junior High School.  My dad was a teacher.  It was in my background and in my education.  I liked teaching, liked the kids and their energy.  We had an economic slump then also and with 35 other teachers I was laid off.  They were hiring in Los Angeles and in Texas; I could have moved and continued doing what I was trained to do but I had just bough a "fixer house" and planted a garden.  I had a wife and two cats!
   That summer I was putting a new roof on my house (the directions are on the package!) when the neighbors saw me and wanted a new roof also.  "Jerry, can you...?" and that was my introduction to self employment!
   I became legal, registering with all the various governmental bodies that want a piece of the action and learned to pay my taxes and get the necessary building permits, all the paper work stuff.  Years and lots of experience later I had 15 employees, ran three jobs at a time and one year did over a million dollars worth of work.  That doesn't mean I got any.
   Literally tons of money goes through your hands when you are self employed.  It is tempting to buy new trucks, bigger this and that and more of it.  I realized the money wasn't mine, that I was the "go between guy"
between my customers and the government and material supply houses and the wages of my workers.  I had to finish the job and if there was anything left over, well, that is what I got.  No pay checks on Friday for me.
Sometimes there was no money left over at all and sometimes there was a lot.  It is a bit of a gamble but you get good at it or you get out.  The highest rates of business failure in America are in the Construction Industry and the Restaurant Business.  You have to get paid last or you won't make it.
    I stayed in this business because I liked the challenges of it.  I liked the successes, the accomplishments, the customers and just the idea of being able to say, "yes, I did that!"  My days were always varied and different, from foundations to roofing and everything in between and I liked that.
    Nevertheless, time changes everything.  I grew older, the paper work and business of being in business, ever more taxing agencies appeared from nowhere.  By the time I turned fifty years old I grew to hate it.
That is when I went from "Jerry Carlin Construction", my construction company to "Stone Post Company", the art side of me.  I went from seven full time employees to one part time employee and from a mountain of paper work to almost none.  I pick and choose my jobs now and accept the challenges that I wish to accept.
I would rather have discovered this earlier in life but perhaps I wasn't ready for it.
This is what I do, this is ME.