Typical upscale home in my area, or why I'll never buy a truckmount

[GeeeAus]

G'day Peter.

My name is Grant and I'm a solo cleaner over in sunny Australia. Legally, I'm blind...... Bummer dude..... Anyway, it isn't appropriate to just sit in my proverbial my life and feel sad because of the way things are and there is some adversity to overcome.

Now I've only been a cleaner..... Sort of 18 months or so now and cleaning is nothing like my last career choice in most respects. Furthermore my previous work has kept me in the same field for 17ish years.

Every day (well not every day but we're getting there) I get up and go cleaning with this.....

Which I cart about in this.....

So what I'm trying to show you is I - get - hard knocks, I get hard work, I get losing patience and I get slow progress. But it can be done. If you really - personally - don't like what you are doing, there is no way you will ever see it through the hard times. Not becuas you lack the skill or know how, but because you will lack the hunger.....

as I mentioned, I can' drive, so my wife Carly who is actually the 'baws' on paper drives me and the gear to the job. I unload - ALL - of it - EVERY - job. Often she will then leave. I work my lilly white albino arse off for about 90 minutes per room and then I get my $100 per room..... Yep...... Per room......

And you know what, I don't - Always - get it - instead when the customer has more than two rooms they want to negotiate, and I do a 20% off for $80 and get that without argument. So I am getting 88 cents per minute on the job.


And for the price the customer gets - kaboom - and every time I go I make sure I am ready to give the customer - kaboom -.

You are WAY better poised than me..... If YOU can't look your customer in the face with an honest smile and an optimistic outlook - and ask shamelessly - indeed - even in such as way as it is just a formality - for what you are - worth - then save yourself the hard yards and find something you care deeply about and pursue that.

I chose this........

I WANT this to work out.

I hope you find your lions roar soon my friend.

One last nugget of - er - um - advice......?

Having joined a few forums, and made a mess and then sorted it out, well on one of them anyway...... I can tell that you are in a dark place,. You feel concern for your future, you feel a sense of disappointment at the lack of results and that - more - than bums you out.

So you tend to get a bit short, take posting that can be ready a few ways as being rude or dismissive and appear to others who do not share or intimately understand your frustration as somebody in a thread, having a whinge and needlessly venting.

When my wife was put in hospital last March for threatening to take her own - and our child's life (I became you). For this reason...... I will ask indulgence and patience from the forum members on your behalf simple because I really DO have a connection to your feelings. They have already taken it rather well and been reasonably charitable. For that I would also like to say thanks.

It never helped me, it didn't keep the detractors at bay (nobody here has done that yet). It didn't make people understand how subjectively broken over it all I felt. Our business was just six months old when this happened, and we looked to be dead in the water.

But, my daughter and I got through. I put on a helper, he had his own ute ( pickup truck). So we would drop my kid off in the AM, work the jibs and pick her up that PM.

A way through was found....,...

Tread water, think hard, think honest and be Uber patient with people who offer you advice.

Stay cool.

grant.au

 

[AJR]

I know my attitude is bad. A lot of people intimidate me and it pisses me off and I avoid them. I seem to gravitate towards chump change jobs and that pisses me off. To be honest, I don't get my market. I should be making $100,000 a year. In 2012 I made $30,000. In 2013, I made $25,000. At the current pace, 2014 could be $25,000 again and that is ridiculous.
As for appearance, I always wear Dickies, khaki pants, navy shirt. I discovered that is WalMart dress code when picking up some Advil a few weeks ago and in like 2 minutes 10 people approached me. I wear a pin on engraved name tag. My physical appearance is poor. I am 6'3", but also 100 lbs overweight. Too many trips to fast food joints after sucking carpet in some crap hole. I just started the process for bariatric surgery. To be "normal" I need to lose 107-116 lbs. I'll settle for 100.
I think I end up in some very dark places mentally when I'm doing something nasty for $15 per hour. That was never my plan. My wife has suggested I get to a counselor of some sort to get me out of this deep depression and on a positive path. She says it has deeply manifested itself in perhaps the last two years, maybe 6 months into starting this business full time. I had more ambition and positive attitude when I moon lighted. I was actually 40 lbs lighter when I started this and the physical work should have made me lighter, not heavier. My original pants were 42's, now I'm tight in 44's. I'm at a fork in the road, people want to help me, but I'm afraid.
I have a pair of dual cord portys, one with heat and I'm actually OK with that. I'm most at peace with myself and the world when I'm pushing my auto scrubber or power washing some nasty public restroom, and that seems strange to me too.

Hey take a deep breath and take it easy. I know that i can speak for many here as well as my self, many of us have been there at one point or another. I know when i feel a bit discouraged i look to God. I ask him to guide me, more important to help me recognize when he is trying to help me. Some times we get so emotionally inverted that we cant even see when we are being helped. So first thing is to just relax and ask God for guidance and try to clear your mind and tune in his message.

The other thing is that we often attempt to move into new areas of work that sometimes we are not ready for yet. I know the times that i have moved into new service and did so with out properly training or investing the time to learn first that things didn't usually go very well, mostly due to the lack of knowledge and lack of confidence stemming form not knowing what i was doing. I have found that the more i educated myself in my trade the better i did, and Probably because i had more confidence in what i was doing. God has a plan for all of us but only when we are ready can we act on that plan. Imagine a marine that works up to a rank of a four star general. To do so he endured total commitment and sacrifice in his training. As he fine tuned his skills he worked up thru the ranks until he made it to that rank. At any step thru his career if he had stopped at any stage of his training he would not have moved up the ranks. I believe God wants us to train for what he may have in store for us. Imagine sending a private to do a generals job. Even Jesus trained in the desert and sparred with the Devil before he saved us.

So what are you going to do? God bless.

 

[AJR]

 

[Zee]

It becomes kinda messed up reading advice given after the fact that Mikey says we've been Lumpkined...

Nevertheless..good advices given but it may have been given to a fictional character.

Btw for you newbs: Darren Lumpkin is worth reading upon. Although the old ics is gone so you may not find much.

 

[AJR]

lol