The Monastery | Siam Polymers | North 4th |
This One's for You Dad
My dad was almost a millionaire, once. He was also a dreamer with an engineering way of looking at life and a salesman’s approach. At one point in time he owned seven hardware stores, a bakery distributing company, as well as, a real estate and insurance firm. He started as a sales clerk at Macy’s. Then he bought a truck and created a trucking firm with about seven driver’s working for him. He sold the trucking firm, bought a hardware store and grew from there.
Dad had wonderful ideas, but he didn’t always pay attention to details. About age 12, I noticed the manager at one of dad’s hardware stores pocket the cash for a sale without ringing it up. The manager said he intended to ring it up later. I watched for a while. He seemed to pocket about every fifth sale. I told dad. Nothing much happened. About five years later this same manager actually stole the hardware store by presenting over five years of un-cashed paychecks. We know how he lived for five years, but the court bought his story and dad lost the store.
I was just about to leave camp at the end of the season. I turned 21 that summer and was the assistant head of the waterfront. Dad called asking me to be the president of his bakery distributing company. His partner had stolen $80,000 from the company and he was putting the pieces back together. We were down to four drivers from 15 and were renting our trucks. For a short time we almost made a profit. We even kept the union out in Youngstown, OH. But we ran out of our $5000 kitty and had to close. I turned 22 a little later, got a job, went back to school, eventually got married and later divorced, worked for the Ohio Youth Commission for 14 years, started my own brokerage business, married again … got on with my life. I still feel guilty that I didn’t pull it off, sometimes.
Dad lost most of his businesses. He was down to one hardware store. He came up with ideas to build indoor ski slopes, later over 200 ideas for recycling, and he sold me on his ideas. I spent hundreds of hours talking to people, writing letters, drawing plans, reality testing things, writing The New Recycling story and searching for money … always searching for money that almost happened several times, but never actually.
Although it was a part-time effort, for years trying to help dad pursue his dreams distracted me from my brokerage business, from developing Chimorel, from time with my wife and kids. There are very sound ideas in the recycling program we developed, but writing letters to congress people, company presidents and hundreds of others was a waste of time. I stopped this effort, began actual recycling programs at a few companies, recycled about 200 computers donated to Chimorel and took tangible steps that work on a small, doable scale. The recycling program became part of Chimorel, instead of a distraction.
Dad eventually went into a nursing home. I visited him 2-3 times each week. He was still telling every one about his recycling ideas right there in the nursing home. He still wanted me to write hundreds of letters. Quietly, but firmly, I told him about what I was doing that actually worked. We argued sometimes, but I stayed the course. Dad died without ever getting close to his dreams. I feel guilty, sometimes, but I know that some day some of his ideas can live on as Chimorel’s recycling program continues to grow. This one’s for you, Dad.
Lessons to Learn:
* Pay attention to detail.
* Reality test your ideas/plans.
*Do what works.
* Don’t let guilt take you from the important things.
The Monastery
Warren got a call about a priest who was developing a fantastic inner city ministry. Warren made several calls, leaving messages with no response. Finally he connected with Father John.
Wow! Father John had as many great ideas as Warren dad did. And he had been involved running real businesses, making real money in the real world. Then he had an epiphany and became a priest with the original Orthodox church.
The MAP program had told Warren about someone who had a heavy desk in an upstairs hard to access location they wanted to dispose of. Warren charged $25 to dispose of the desk and gave the $25 and the desk to Father John.
In a relatively short time, Warren was very much involved in developing a business plan for a complex project. There were forty apartment units to buy and renovate, a $250,000 building to house a comprehensive inner city training program to buy and renovate, a coffee shop and sewing business to develop, a four unit building to convert into a soup kitchen, a house ready to turn into a monastery/chapel and a lot more. Warren would be the business manager.
Warren contacted several banks, negotiated with owners, designed a strategic plan/business plan that could pay for everything and could be implemented in stages, participated in renovation for the monastery, met people in the neighborhood and a lot more.
One bank wanted a solid business plan, and appeared to be very interested. For weeks Warren met with Father John 1-3 times each week, frequently for many hours. Way too much of the time the discussion was on dreams. It was like pulling teeth to get details. Warren addressed this issue, but things didn’t change, so Warren took the time to develop his own details based on what appeared to be realistic. A solid business plan was actually developed which could be implemented in stages. Then Father John wanted to tinker with the plan in ways that constantly made the plan unworkable. The bank’s interest began to wane.
Warren’s father was in a nursing home. Father John and Warren would visit Dad and talk recycling ideas, then work on the monastery project. It was as if Warren was being pulled into two grand, wonderful, impractical projects simultaneously. One day as Warren was driving Father John home, Father John said, “Warren, I want to buy Chimorel from you.” Not long after that he offered the “controllership” to a retiring nonprofit accountant who wasn’t interested.
There was a little girl that visited Father John. When my sister visited, we took Father John and the little girl out to eat. She wanted a computer so Warren set up a program for her to buy a computer for $600 by working for Father John at $10/hr. One week the record of her hours jumped from $334 to $600. She got the computer. When I reviewed the record some of the numbers had changed and there were a number of hours at times that didn’t seem plausible.
Warren contacted a person at his church who could have brought many investors/donors to the project. Father John did not call him and did not return his calls. Warren discovered that the monastery building wasn’t owned, that the agreement to acquire this building was essentially verbal, that no permit had been pulled to initiate renovation. Warren took back his tools and went home to think.
Dad died. Father John performed an impromptu, unrequested eulogy at the funeral home. Warren and his sister went back to Elyria where they had the real eulogy. Then Warren drove Dad in his casket in Warren’s van to his family burial plot in Pennsylvania where Warren and his sister buried Dad.
Father John didn’t follow through on something again. Warren wrote a letter that concluded by saying it was time to stop for a while, but all Father John had to do was call and Warren would be willing to explore a realistic program. Warren is still waiting. He saw Father John at an International Convention one day. Father John quickly turned away. One of the trainees in our Work for Rent program, brought Father John to Warren’s attention one day. Father John actually called. I gave him something to do. It didn’t get done.
Lessons to Learn:
* Do what you say you will do.
* Chimorel will wait until you are ready.
Siam Polymers
Warren was working as the Placement Coordinator for a college chain. A student told him about a man who was recycling computers and wanted to hire some students. Warren contacted the man who needed help with the EPA, marketing and writing a business plan. He also wanted to hire some students for a short time to prepare things for a big bank interested in recycling a lot of computers.
Warren charged a $500 advance, which was paid, agreed to a $35/hr billing rate and gave the man credit against billing hours for hiring students. Warren contacted the EPA website and a Tami at the EPA. Warren lined up six students and worked out hours that fit with the student schedules. The Letter of Understanding became the Invoices which detailed what Warren did and gave credit for hiring students.
Prita (not his real name) took Warren on a tour of two warehouse facilities he was renting. Stacked outside one were a hundred or so monitors exposed to the elements. {1st red flag} Warren told Prita he would have to get that cleaned up before the EPA would bless his program. Prita hired six students. The project got off to a good start. Warren was paid. The students were paid. Warren completed the EPA initial form, wrote a marketing flier, started the business plan and made many suggestions.
A few days in Warren visited the warehouse. Students were using a hammer to break the glass in the monitor. A worker was moving stacks of monitors without stacking them properly. One stack fell over with a monitor falling on Warren’s foot. Warren addressed these issues with Prita who initially seemed very concerned. { Second red flag} Warren billed the second invoice. Payment was slow but made. Reports from the students indicated safety issues were not being addressed and checks were delayed. Warren drove by the pile of monitors outside the second warehouse. The pile was still there. {more red flags} Warrencautioned the students.
Then, all of a sudden, the cell phone was not answered. The students were no longer working. Warren was not able to contact anyone, Prita, his partner, no one. Warren went on to other projects. Someone else is renting the warehouses. Someone else cleaned up the monitor pile. Based on the agreement signed, Warren kept the balance of the advance, which wasn’t much considering the credits given.
Lessons to Learn:
* Pay attention to red flags.
* Get your money up front.
* Protect your constituents.
North 4th
Larry, his real first name, offered to give Chimorel 32 units / two buildings on the corner of N 4th and 8th streets in Columbus, OH. A significant mortgage and a difficult partner prevented the donation. Warren entered into a management agreement which gave Chimorel a 20% equity interest, $200/mo, up to $50,000 for repairs (verbal, not in agreement) and some other things. Warren said a prayer and drove into the parking lot to ask six people from the neighborhood if they wanted to work. Three scattered and three jumped at the chance. The deal was $7.50/hr for real work. Two worked, one pretended. Two hours later Warren had cleaned the first floor hall and the others had cleaned up part of the other floors.
Something good came from this bad story.
1407 had been gutted, no copper, drywall molding on the first floor. It looked like a war zone. Warren confronted the pretender and offered to pay him $3.50 for the actual work done. They agreed to work again a few days later, no one showed up. Instead Warren got a tenant who hadn’t paid rent for several months and another neighborhood guy to work. Soon we had a crew of seven people with many more asking for work.
Shortly after Warren got involved with N 4th, Larry and his partner had an argument. The tenants identified the partner as one of two people who broke windows in 1415 and left the water running in 1407 around 11 pm. The next day, just before Warren was going on vacation with Mrs Beautiful, at 8am he arrived with over a foot of water in 1407. He took off his shoes, avoided the broken glass, rolled up his pants and waded in to find the water turn off. After turning the water off he flagged some firemen in the area, trying to get the water pumped out. Their trucks didn’t pump water out, but they did suggest pulling some toilets. Warren took off his shoes and pulled several toilets. While he was on vacation the crew got rid of the water and continued to clean out 1407.
Over the next two years there were many, many incidents and opportunities which evolved into Chimorel’s I Got a Job and Work for Rent programs. The original tenant used drugs and eventually got kicked out by his girl friend, who got a job and paid rent once in a while. Others moved in, did some work, sometimes paid rent and were evicted when they didn’t meet their responsibilities. Larry stopped paying for the construction. Warren should have walked away at that point. Instead he invested about $25,000 from business credit cards.
We had a lot of small successes. In 2008 we helped approximately 21 people who were struggling to find a place to live. Through our Client Assistance program we helped others with bus tickets, furniture, coaching, cell phone payments and similar needs. Most of those who stuck with the program for a while got jobs. Some lost jobs and got other jobs.
We faced an ongoing series of challenges: gang activity, drug users and sellers, prostitution, threats from people who didn’t like being faced with the consequences of their actions (one literally threatened to kill Warren), a Worker’s Compensation case we won, no money to fix things and many more. We continue to meet a lot of helpful, good people: police officers, drug enforcement agents, code enforcement officers, political activists, community residents, food pantry and other agency personnel and many more. Many of the people in the community were very enthusiastic about our program. A few, especially those impacted by our “crime free” policies, had their feathers ruffled.
A receiver was appointed to break the log jam between Larry and his partner. The receiver refused to fix a frozen pipe leak in the middle of the winter. We had already fixed frozen pipes twice. A tenant got code enforcement involved. Code enforcement issued a vacate order. The building was vacated. At that point, the outcome of the story was in God’s hands.
The outcome has been decided. We were able to interest some investors. At first the outlook seemed very favorable. Then the investors decided to acquire the property on their own. They offered Warren an “opportunity” to find a grant to pay the cost of rehab, but couldn’t accept any of the ideas that would make it a viable project. Warren had invested two years and over $25,000 personally. It was beginning to look like another Monastery story. It was time to refocus.
While doing initial research for the investors, Warren discovered www.grants.gov. He also received an invitation from a friend to join Plaxo. Soon he had over 20,000 connections on many sites and uncovered many opportunities.
Warren recycled computers and wrote ebooks. He created the free Success Journey and began asking contacts “What is your why?” He set up a program to help refugees and immigrants learn English and get jobs with Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services (ETSS) and has paid off the debt. He looks forward to the possibility to establish realistic Work for Rent, Transitional Housing and I Got a Job programs. For several years the property sat vacant and vandalized. The two buildings have been torn down. For a while two vacant lots sat where a potentially a $1.8 million dollar property could have been. The investors who tried to take over the property now face bankruptcy, IRS and bank fraud investigations. The site now has about six large family homes. The picture is what is there now.
Something very valuable came out of this project. We have a ready to go Work For Rent program. We know what works and what doesn’t work when managing a transitional housing program. What works is to test the motivation and willingness of prospective tenants before they move in and get enough upfront to evict them if they don’t live up to their promise. It is also a good idea to have something other than property renovation (like large scale computer recycling) that prospective tenants can do to earn their keep. What doesn’t work is to talk with investors whose goals are different than managing a transitional housing program. If you are an investor willing to accept a 20% annual return for a two year investment, we can put together a viable project. If you want ultimate control, we’ll have to pass. Incidentally, we didn’t point out all the red flags, but we suspect you noticed a few.
Lessons to Learn:
* Pay attention to red flags.
* Get your money up front.
* Make sure the deal is viable before you start.
Create a Career, Special Projects,
Chimorel Sanctuary, Remarry
This story is the aftermath of the N 4th story. Warren refinanced the home to pay the bills remaining from from N 4th. The loan is paid off. Some really good things have happened. You may recall that shortly after refocusing from N 4th Warren created the free Success Journey and developed over 20,000 connections all over the world. He has done a lot of research about internet marketing.
One day he was talking with one of his connections. She asked him the Why question. He gave her a quick response and directed her to the What is Your Why link. But she pushed beyond this. She wanted to know what he had done that tied back to his real purpose. We got to talking about enabling people to get jobs. All of a sudden a light flashed and the Create a Career program was born. Warren sent her some links and one of the ebooks he had read about Black Belt emarketing. Then he went back to a book he had written for a Career Development college course he taught and started writing.
A little later the Create a Career course was ready. Warren continued to work with ETSS enabling over 500 refugees and immigrants get jobs. During this time he wrote two white papers with the intention of enabling ETSS to become less grant dependent and offered to move from an employee position to an Independent Contractor position to facilitate the transition. Eventually, relying on grants seemed easier for ETSS and Warren went on to develop our eBay store, Chimorel4U, and work with people he met on the Internet. The Computer Recycling program is up and running moving toward the day when we obtain a warehouse.
In February, 2006, Warren established an eBay presence. Later he created an eBay store, Chimorel4U. This store has the potential to support people and to fund Special Projects, but it takes a lot of time for the money raised. We will describe this potential in much greater detail for those who become Action Planners and go on to establish Special Projects. For the moment let’s just say that the average middle class family has approximately $2000 worth of stuff sitting in closets, the attic, basement or garage that can be sold on eBay or at auction. Funding a Special Project can tap into this as one of more than 100 ways to generate revenue.
In April, 2020, Warren’s wife died. It was painful, but liberating for Warren. He had been her primary care giver for much of the previous year. When she developed cancer, her death was peaceful and quick. She could no longer be scared by his entrepreneurial activities, which he had stopped for her benefit.
One Sunday Warren was contemplating whether to buy a warehouse or a farm, the two most viable options considering his eBay and recycling activities, housing his trailer and other concerns. That night he decided, a farm. The next day he got a call regarding a farm in Delaware. That Tuesday he cut a tentative deal. It took a lot of negotiating to pull off the final deal, but he got a “reasonable” price for the farm, a $60,000/yr consulting contract which has not been honored and entered into a partnership (Chimorel Development LLC) with the sellers. Warren has remarried. He and his new wife are renovating the Sanctuary and taking the first steps to an Air B&B at the Sanctuary. We are pursuing the dream.
Lessons to Learn:
* Learn how to Create a Career.
* Learn about Chimorel4U, an eBay store.
* Learn how to fund a Special Project to meet your needs.
* Move to a sanctuary when your wife dies.
* Keep the vision going with a new wife who shares your vision.
