Authors: Joe Lamacchia,Bridget Samburg
Tags: #Business
Mostly, what I hope you will take away from this chapter is that you can reach for themoon but you have to do it when the time is right and only after some planning. More than anything, this isn’t about doing one job or one task for the rest of your life. This is not about having the same entry-level job for the next ten years. This is not about pushing that lawn mower forever. But it is about the fact that knowing the best way to mow the lawn is essential if you want to run a landscaping business. Learning from the bottom up is actually a great way to invest in your future, and climbing up that ladder is ultimately going to bring you more challenges, more fulfillment, and more financial stability.
I
’m going to let you in on a bit more of what I was really going through while starting up my business. Hopefully you’ll see that no matter what you’re feeling like on the inside and no matter how badly things are stacked against you, you just have to keep going. I hit a really rough patch after my first wife left and I ended up moving back home to my parents’ house. It was April 7, 1983, at 6:45 PM when I was holdingmy son Anthony in one arm and reaching up with the other to knock on my parents’ door. “Hi, Mom. I’m home.” That was tough. I was there for eighteen months. Anthony went to day care at my aunt’s house, and I went to work. Fortunately, my parents were willing to help and they loved Anthony and helped me raise him. There were many days when I felt like it was just Anthony and me against the world. At one point I was working three jobs and I was pretty poor. But I kept going.
I was also drinking too much. I told you I had a drinking problem, and it became a serious one. I was an alcoholic. The good news is that I’ve been sober since 1990. But before I get to that part of the story, I have to back up to tell you about when I startedmy business in the winter of 1981. I asked my dad if he would help me out. “Buy me a truck and I’ll build a business, ” I said to him. He agreed, but not without warning. “I’mnot a bank, Joey. You’d bettermakemoney.” I’ve told you that I like challenges, right? I was excited to start earning a good living. I wanted to make my parents proud, but mostly I just wanted to prove that I could support myself. By the spring of 1982 I had thirty customers, and I was on my way to success.
I worked alone for nearly ten years.During the busiest times, especially when fall came around, Iwould hire a part-time crewto help pick up leaves. Thingswere goingwellwithmy business, and then inMarch 1986 Imetmy wifeDawnwhenwewent on a blind date. Anthonywas just five at the time, andDawn had her four-year-old son, JohnMark. We hit it off, somuch so that after dating for only amonth and a half wewere already talking about buying a house andmoving in together.Dawn’smother helped us to buy our first house, and we weremarried in June 1988.
I was in love, my business was growing, and I should have been happy. But my anger was raging and my drinking was bad. I would drink just to calm down and try to feel better about myself. It wasn’t working. I don’t know how Dawn put up with me. At first, she did, and then she got wise and decided she couldn’t take it anymore. Our marriage was crumbling, the booze was coming between us, and she wanted out. We split up, and I was even more miserable. Throughmy drinking I kept working very hard. I channeled a huge amount of my anger and frustration with the world intomy business. I could get sweaty and dirty and be physical all day long. I loved that. I still do. I needed it.
In 1990 I quit drinking. I showed up atmy firstAlcoholicsAnonymous meeting, and really the rest is history. I’mnot saying it’s been easy, but that was the start of a whole new part of my life. There were days when I had to walk in circles to keep myself from popping open a can of beer. It can be all-consuming, at least for a while. But I hadmy last drink in September 1990 and owe a lot of my recovery to the men (yup, they were men) who put their arms aroundme and toldme I could do it. I drank fromage fifteen to thirty-one, and then, I’mproud to say, I stopped.
What I got back was something incredible.Dawn and I had divorced in November 1990, but two years later we got back together. We had been passing our son Joey back and forth, since we shared custody, and we still loved each other. My drinking was no longer going to come between us, and we decided to give things another try, so we were back together again as a family. It was a wonderful thing. I like to say that Dawn and I dated for another nine years before tying the knot yet again. Whatever you call it, we got married, for a second time, while standing next to the Christmas tree in 1999. We bought a house in Holliston, just outside Boston where we still live. Life was good.
But I got whacked again by something that sent me reeling. Dawn and I were expecting our second child together and our fourth between us.Our little girl Heather was born prematurely in January 2000 at just twenty-seven weeks old.On top of that, Heather had a rare heart defect. Even our amazing doctors at Children’s Hospital in Boston knew little about her condition. They did everything they could, we did everything we could, and we stayed with her each night, hoping she would make it through. But on February 24, a Wednesday, at 9:45 in the morning, Heather passed away, at just six weeks old.
I thought I had been through enough. I thought all had gone wrong that could. I didn’t think I’d get dealt a hand like this. It was too much. Some days I would just sob, unable to think about anything but my little baby girl. The doctors told Dawn and me that the way to get over our heartbreak was to have another child—when we were ready, of course. We’ll never get over the loss of Heather, but we did have another baby. Madison was born in November 2002 and has kept us on our toes since. Here I am, close to fifty years old, and I have a little girl in my house who tries to tell me what to do and huffs away each time she doesn’t get her way. She melts my heart, she’s opened my eyes in new ways, and yes, she can make me nuts. But mostly she’s brought laughter back into our home. Madison was exactly what Dawn and I needed to get back on track.
So, that’s my story. Why am I telling you all of this? What does this have to do with this book, with being blue collar and proud of it? Because when I say that you can work hard, or you can work even harder and I tell you to stop complaining, I mean it. I’ve been there. Really, through alcoholism, through divorce, through loss, through loneliness, through a bankruptcy, and through the joys of raising a family and the thrills of running a business I’ve been there. I hear people say, “It’s hard” or “I can’t, ” and all I can think is,
Yes, it’s hard.
Life is hard
. And some days you feel like life might break you. But guess what? You don’t havemuch of a choice.You have to get back up and get going again. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not flying high every day. Every day isn’t perfect. I havemy ups and downs. I still havemy bad days and my anger still builds until I think I’m going to explode, when I think aboutmy babyHeather, or remember disturbing things frommy childhood. Still, I know that we each have to keep going, through the rotten and the wonderful. It’s the only way to succeed.
I’ve read books before and thought,
Ha, easy for this guy to say. He has no idea how hard it is
. Maybe you got to this point in the book and were thinking,
Well, this guy just doesn’t understand. I bet he had it easy
. I wanted you to know that’s not the case. I’m not whining or complaining but just telling you that you can’t let your own problems, your own catastrophes, or your own heartaches stand in the way of becoming a success.
So how did I go from all of that to working on this book and start-ingmy website? By the spring of 2003 I was so tired of dealing withmy son’s high school teachers. Joey was never very good at school even though he’s smart.He reminds me a lot of myself.He’s got my personality and my inability to sit still, and he absolutely loves working with his hands. But his teachers were telling me that he had to go to college. “He just has to, Mr. LaMacchia. It’s the only way for him to get a good job.” That’s what they would say tome. They wouldn’t even have a conversation withme about why collegemay not be for everyone. And they wouldn’t even listen when all I wanted to say was that if my son could barely get through high school, I didn’t think he would do very well in college. I had been through all of this just a few years earlier with my oldest son Anthony.
I heard about other people who were dealing with the same thing, and meanwhile Joey felt like there wasn’t any support for him as the kid who wasn’t planning to apply to college.No one would hearme out when I tried to explain that while I understood college was good for some, it wasn’t for everyone. That’s when I decided to startmy website,
BlueCollarandProudofIt.com
. And that’s when I realized there are tons of people out there who are being directed to college, and who are feeling isolated or stupid for not wanting to go. I’ve always wanted the site to be for people like Joey, and the hundreds of thousands of other people out there to see that they’re not alone. I want parents to know that they haven’t failed if their kid is interested in a trade or wants to a join a union apprenticeship. And I want people to see that there are awesome, respectable blue-collar jobs out there.
My son Anthony didn’t go to college either, and he and I both struggled to explain that to teachers. Anthony worked with me for a few years after high school, but then decided he wanted to work as a real estate broker. I tease him because he goes to work in a suit and he gives me grief for being disorganized. But Anthony is happy, and he really enjoys what he’s doing. I’mso proud of how far he has come, how hard he works, and how honest he is in business. Joey got his truck license a few years ago and has been working for me since 2004.
I just turned fifty years old, and I have thirteen employees, nine trucks, an asphalt business, a masonry division, and a booming landscaping company. Since 2001, I’ve grossed a minimum of $1.5 million annually and am working toward higher numbers all the time. I just want parents and teachers and kids, especially, to see that going blue collar is not the kiss of death. I’m a pretty happy guy. I’m a successful businessman, and I have a trade that has become my expertise. I’ve learned from the bottom up, and I’m good at what I do. Who could argue that this isn’t a good life? It
is
a good life. I go on wonderful vacations withmy family, have a granddaughter I enjoy, children I love, and a wonderful community. No one can take that away from me just because I don’t have a college degree.
In the summertime, I often go to barbecues withmy neighbors, and I notice that many of them are wearing Harvard and Yale T-shirts. I thought they were bragging at first, sort of shoving it in everyone’s face that they were better or more educated. But you know what? It’s just that they’re proud of where they went to school. And they should be. To me their shirts sort of say, “White collar and proud of it.” They wear their accomplishments on their shirts. That’s okay, because I wearmine on my shirt, too. Only my shirt says, “Blue collar and proud of it; we built this country.” Isn’t that okay? I think it’s time to put aside the snobbery and the fear and recognize that even if your T-shirt doesn’t have a college name on it, you can be respected and recognized as a necessary part of the community and the workforce. When I’m at these barbecues, eating the same chicken and potato salad, standing in a backyard that looks likemy backyard, I think about how, in the end, we all got to the same place. Only we did it in different ways. It takes pride and it takes self-esteemand it takes a ton of hard work, nomatter who you are.
A severe case of ADHD brokemy early childhood. There were school and family frustrations I dealt with almost every day. I’ve had anger beyond belief. I’ve had zero self-worth. I mean
zero
. I was always wondering,
What is wrong with me? Why am I so bad? Why don’t I understand this?
But you just keep going, keep running, and for me, keep creating and tellingmy story. I started to wonder,
Howmany Joes are out there?
We’ll never know for sure, but my guess is that there are a lot. And I bet there are even more people out there who aren’t like me but they understand something I’ve just talked about in this book. They get it. They feel it. They’re relieved someone understands them, and they’re excited by what they’re reading.
I was at an intersection recently, sitting in traffic, watching a father who was holding his four-year-old son in his arms. The kid was practically foaming at the mouth watching a man with a jackhammer digging in the street. You’ve probably seen this before: the kid who can’t stop staring at the dump truck, the backhoe, or the crane. Kids are so excited when they come across construction sites. This little boy reminded me of a lion watching a wildebeest on the Serengeti. You could see the kid squirming to break free and get closer, but his dad was holding him back, for safety reasons of course. And then, as these kids get older, they lose that lust. They lose it because of the messages they are getting about the white-collar world. It’s as if there are these magical blinking lights of college, of the Internet, ofWall Street just sucking them in, guaranteeing them huge incomes. They forget that there are people who first have to build those buildings and create those roads to get you to work every day.
Still, there seems to be a natural craving in all of us. Some of us follow it, others don’t.But don’t you thinkwe should all have the option? And let’s face it; we have to spread around the jobs. We can’t all be plumbers, and we can’t all be bankers. We need all of these jobs to make the world work. We need the accountants, andwe need the automechanics.But some days I like to say that we need these blue-collar jobs even more. The appointment with your accountant can wait a day or a week, but if you have a leak in your water tank you need a plumber immediately.