Your authors story

Welcome, this blog site is about you. Knowledge is power and with the knowledge contained in our pages, you can learn and benefit. Most of the information in this blog comes from my personal experiences.

It’s time to give back for my many successful years creating businesses and helping others achieve their goals. I make use of references when they make sense and are relevant to the topic.

I have included opinions and tried my best to stay non-political (difficult in this climate where a banana can be seen as political).  When I say “our”, I don’t mean the royal “our”. My Son Michael has been a great help in helping me get this site started.

The news media today talks a lot about privilege the reason why people succeed in life. I grew up in a house with four siblings plus my parents.

My father worked two jobs for many years and my mother worked full-time. Neither went to college, my father went into the Army during WWII and my mother worked in a tank factory. After the war, they moved from Chicago to Southern California.

We did live in a new house and there was enough food but my mother often bought our clothes from Goodwill. They sent us to Catholic school which was a big drain on their finances.

We rode our bicycles about five miles each way to school, there were no busses (in the rain also). While there was no extra money for Disneyland (they could not afford to take us), we did ok. This was hardly a privileged environment. My parents insured we did our homework and actually learned something at school.

Looking back, I still can’t find any privilege, in fact, it was the distinct lack of privilege that made me want to work and earn more.

There is no doubt in my mind that the strong work ethic my parents instilled in me encouraged me to become an entrepreneur.

I had a job as far back as I can remember. Anything to earn some money. You name it, I did it. My big break was getting a job at a chain drugstore.

The hourly pay was $1.66 per hour which was very good at the time. Since I was a union member with dental insurance, I went for the first time in my life. My parents could not afford to send us to a dentist. As each of my siblings grew older they too started part-time jobs.

My parents clearly could not afford to send us to college so we were planning to attend Junior college and live at home. I decided to enlist in the U.S. Air Force with a friend so off I went on a four+ year experience of my life. I started attending college while I was in the Air Force.

The management positions that I held in the Air Force gave me the first experience of being responsible for others. Except of course when my daughter was born during my time working for Uncle Sam.

In the decades after leaving the U. S. Air Force, I went back to retail management for several years and then started my first business in the automotive aftermarket.

After selling this business, I joined Quaker State Oil Refining Corporation for almost 10 years. During much of this time, I traveled on average about 3-4 days each week across the country.

My experience working at the corporate level with Quaker State gave me significant insight into how large corporations are managed and the significant impact they have on the larger economy. I absorbed all that I could during my tenure there.

At the time, environmental issues were coming to the forefront of everything. Quaker State had not engaged in the larger discussion about waste oil and petroleum products so I created a market-based approach for the company.

Unfortunately, a major leadership change at Quaker State stalled the project so I left to start my own environmental consulting business. Many of Quaker State’s largest customers became my first clients. This business morphed into yet another consulting business which was even larger then came Curbside Inc.

My last large-scale project was to create a business called Curbside Inc. I have never been one to jump into a crowded field and try to fight it out for success.

An opportunity appeared one day from a client of my consulting company. He asked if my company could collect hazardous waste from homes.

Being an environmental consultant, with some experience in other areas of the business, I decided it was best to find some experts who could help me get started.

Within a few weeks, I created a business and was collecting used oil and other items from residents. I started this business with $10,100 in cash that I put in at the start.

This first collection took place in California, yes California. I developed skills in navigating the bureaucratic system to get a hazardous waste business off the ground in Califonia.

I mention this two-decade effort to remove tens of millions of pounds of hazardous waste from the environment as a quest of sorts. It’s a great thing to be on the right side of things e.g. helping residents and the environment.

It’s even better when all of the largest hazardous waste companies kept telling everyone our idea would not work. They were so sure we would fail, that they left the entire space to us.

Many times when a City or County would go out to bid for a contract, we were the only bidder because even the largest companies never developed the expertise to manage this delicate process.

It was a good feeling coming to work every day knowing that I was not only making money but helping everyone at the same time.

My company developed expertise to ensure that the majority of the waste was recycled, even some of the nastiest of chemicals.

MY BIGGEST CHALLENGE IN BUSINESS

You have heard that every successful project needs an exit strategy. Mine was to build a business that could be grown even larger with the right resources then sell my interest and move on to something else.

An opportunity came up a few years after I started the company when a good friend referred Curbside Inc. to leadership at Safety-Kleen the time one billion-dollar company in the hazardous waste and parts cleaning business.

To make a long story short, there was a fit here and Safety-Kleen purchased 49% of the business with a promise to buy out the remainder based on the terms of the agreement. Everything went very well, a great company with many facilities around the country that could make the business grow.

My team at our corporate office was responsible for sales, marketing, and technical expertise. Safety-Kleen was responsible for logistics, recycling, and disposal of materials they collected from homes.

A few years into the relationship, Safety-Kleen was bought out by Laidlaw Environmental and things began to go South as they say.

The two companies were not compatible and leadership went down the wrong path. This resulted in the “new” Safety-Kleen filing for bankruptcy protection.

Ultimately at least one executive was convicted of misdeeds. Our agreement died at that time. I was informed that Safety-Kleen would give us 90 days to take over all collection operations.

At this point, we had turned over our people, trucks, and facilities to Safety-Kleen when the original purchase took place. So, 90 days to hire talented people with hazardous waste experience, and lease trucks, and facilities.

Further, we had to reestablish trade lines with all of the companies that we used for recycling disposal. The challenge was almost overwhelming.

Thanks to the talented team I had surrounded myself with, we were able to do what was necessary to keep our business going. This was the biggest challenge of my business life.

The stress was almost overwhelming. Either rise to the occasion or let the business fail and all of the employees would be out of work. I called in every favor I had from everyone that I knew.

Trust was a big factor and every vendor who worked with us was rewarded by our eventual explosive business growth.

Still, in business, I needed to get back on track. This time an executive for a hazardous waste company whom I knew well advised me to contact Waste Management that they would be a good fit. He was correct, as it happened we already had a contract with Waste Management to service some of their client cities.

My new goal was to eventually sell my business to Waste Management because of their reach and the fact that my company and Waste Management were so closely aligned. Waste transporters, governments as customers, etc.

After years of pursuing this relationship, Waste Management agreed to buy my company. They retained the employees and me for some time.

Since August 1995, the company that I created Curbside Inc., is still operating as a subsidiary of Waste Management. I was able to expand the business to many states during my ownership and service many millions of households.

Waste Management has taken it further and it’s now available in most states where they have collection operations.

I am truly proud of the hundreds of employees who worked for me and my company over the years.

I never laid off employees due to economic conditions. My promise to my employees was that they would have a job if they worked hard.

When I hired a person to work for my company I explained my basic philosophy. When you wake up and feel that the job is no longer challenging or interesting and you really would rather stay at home, it was time to quit.