I've had to start over more times than I can count.
I ran operations for a steel-hauling company for seven years. A hundred and twenty drivers. We never missed a load. Then the blast furnace blew, production stopped, and the mill went under.
I sold for a food company for five years, until they laid off a hundred and twenty of us in one move. Took the next sales job with a big pay cut and stuck it out two years in a place I never liked. Bounced around a few more after that.
Then I packed up and moved from Michigan to Florida for a fresh start, with not much else.
I started as a waiter. Made bartender in my first season, the first person in that restaurant ever to do it. Server. Lead server. Manager. Then general manager of a brand-new place. I opened it from scratch and ran it for almost four years. We turned it into a Florida Michelin Guide restaurant.
And then I walked away. Burnt out on managing people. Not because I failed. Because I knew myself well enough to know it couldn't go on like that.
Ten guys around a table. Not one of us with more than a year in at our company. That's stayed with me ever since.
That was about twelve years ago, at the Knights of Columbus after coaching football. Ten guys, forty-five to fifty-five. I looked around and realized not one of us had been with our company for more than a year.
Faith is somewhere in the foundation of all this, because it's in the foundation of me.
James Blevins