Sales Tsunami

I think I’ve decided that Mondays are the best days for Christmas and New Years Holidays.  Gives you that natural and extended weekend without ruining the whole week.  Now that we’ve staffed up, it’s hard to give out non-work days with abandon - just too expensive.

Geez, what started as a pretty good run of sales has now turned into a quasi-tsunami.   I know a lot of people read several blog posts at once so they sort of run together, but my efforts of composing and posting them seem like extended timeframes between with me having little memory of what I wrote just the post before.  I have no doubt I linger on certain topics before moving on, since that’s how I figure things out - toss them around in my mind until resolution arises.

I’ve probably been writing about some recent sales but with another $3.3m in just the last 10 days (merry christmas to me) things are really looking like 2021 all over again for us - and this time only us.  In 2020-2022, anybody could make money - there was land available, there were subcontractors available, there were buyers galore.

Now the buyers still exist, but they have regained their heads and are returning to value - which is fine with me, since that is what we do.  We didn’t catch the highest price wave like some souls did, but we keep plugging along and the tortoise and hare story couldn’t be more apt for our 20 year journey.  Our prices don’t go down, and only increase proportionally to our costs - and that seems to work out pretty well.

I often say I attribute a lot of my success to my ability to communicate and walk in another’s shoes and see it from their perspective.  This is true, but I’ve also come to see where it isn’t true - and one of those voids is realizing how some of our clients don’t realize, or perhaps don’t care, the blood we sweat on their behalf.  Coming from a blue collar upbringing, my inherent respect for my team's effort is just woven into every conversation I have, but that’s not true for many of our clients who perhaps have never actually had direct contact with an electrician, framer, plumber, sheetrocker and have little to know view into their workdays and lives.  So, I find myself with half a chip on my shoulder whenever a client ‘disrepects’ the team, since their many times super human efforts are so plain for me to see.  It’s the nature of the business, and it’s a bit irreconcilable.

That’s why when you really have a MasterClass client like those in the home we just finished in Hillsdale just south of Hudson NY, or over in Stone Ridge, or Up in North Branch, it’s just really refreshing.

Then I proceed to ask myself why I’m such a baby - all in all, we have tremendously grateful and resourceful clients who combine their talents with ours to create some of the best and sustainable value in the Catskills.  And this is entering its 3rd decade.

I listen to a lot of personal finance guru Dave Ramsey, and I agree with a lot and disagree with a lot.  There is the counter-Ramsey effort out there, pointing out that with home prices at historic highs and college costing 5x what it cost just 15 years ago, that his ideas are simplistic and dangerous and insulting.  I agree with him and his detractors.   He’s opened my eyes a lot to the the power of debt-less living and some of the macro marketing and corporate negative influences that we have normalized as Americans.  But some I think are very over-simplified, or actually wrong.  

One of them is the idea as a way to avoid auto debt - truly the curse of middle-class wealth building - you should buy they cheapest car you can find.  He has a word for it - a slang for a low-cost embarrassing to drive but affordable car.  Just can’t think of it currently.  But I know for a fact how costly and disruptive car repair and breakdowns can be - I see it among the many tradespeople I work with - so the idea that someone should just go out and buy a beater and take that risk of expensive repairs is really gambling and playing with fire.  It’s oversimplistic, and prone to lead to disaster and setback.  There is no ‘baby step’ progress or ‘debt snow ball’ progress when you can’t get to work and have a $1700 car repair bill on a car that’s worth $2000.