In a message dated 12/27/00 7:02:24 AM Central Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< You need people who have money enough to pay you more than it cost to
produce your work. >>

John,

It also helps, at least for those of us working on buildings, if we go to an
area (either living near to or moving around a lot to get to it) that has a
demand for our services -- meaning more of the people with money to pay.

It is a similar situation as the number of acres of grassland needed to
sustain one sheep. If you are a wonderous farmer and concentrate the yield of
grass per acre then you can support more sheep. Enough of a concentration
then you can contemplate breeding one sheep that only eats chicory in bloom.
That does not mean that some other sheep won't eat grass, or weeds, or rocks
or move to another field.

In Manhattan and surrounding area there are a lot of masonry buildings
requiring a great deal of work, some of them historic... in part the real
estate economy and defered maintenance make for a booming maintenance and
repair business. Notice that I am not saying that I will only work on
buildings or materials that I like. I'm talking about people.

There are top and bottom feeders in the maintenance chain. We don't seem to
start out at the top. I've been at the top and the bottom. Having been at the
bottom more than at the top I continue to believe that an essential rule of
business, if you want to be at the top more often than not, is to work with
people that you like, and to like the people that you work with. I'm not
talking about people being demanding or difficult... I work for plenty of
demanding and difficult people. It is when I find myself working with people
that I know that I do not like, and I have met many of them along the way,
that I find myself running into the greatest number of problems and the least
profitable relationships. As there are a lot of buildings in my area of work,
there are also a lot of people. What I find is that there are more than
enough good people to go around.

I'd much rather enjoy working with people than having them fly me to Jamaica
for vacation, for which I would be "obligated", which, also by the way, I
would not spend alone, or bored in a resort complex, as I would be visiting
with the families of several of our employees, the ones that I like, of
course -- the people that I work to keep in work, the ones who stay around
each spring and do not run off to a higher pay check, yet.

If you are not comfortable, if you do not like something, then either change
it or change yourself... but I refuse to take the viewpoint that says that we
all need to eat crap from the world-at-large, particularly the crap of doing
business with people that we do not like under the guise of *making* money. I
read recently... "people who work all their lives and all they make is
money." Yeah, I like having an income, it makes it possible for me to do neat
things like stay alive, but I like to pretend that I have a choice in how I
go about securing my income. I also do not like the idea of closing my mind
off to blindly accept the tyranny of others, simply because they have money
to pay for my services. I would rather work for someone willingly and by free
choice. I've always been unreasonable, to the point that when I had my own
business, many years ago, I failed because I did not like ANY of my
customers. I then ended up working for several years with people that I
really did not like at all and had absolutely nothing in common with and kept
at it, and at it, and eventually learned what I do not want to be or to do.

What I am not saying is that blooming chicory eating sheep are universal and
that we all need to imitate their diet.

Best,
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