What Are Your Flies?

When I was 13, I got a job with the Movie Exchange. It was the company owned bye buy step-grandparents Monty and Shelly Tibbitts, whom I've talked about in prior episodes. They were the only entrepreneurs in my teen years, but I never had the courage to ask them real questions on business mindset. I wish that I had! However, I did learn a ton from them by watching the way the they lived and the way others treated them. First of all, they had money! There were always two Jags in the driveway. They owned a private plane, a boat, a beach house, wave runners. Secondly, they had beautiful decor and they entertained first rate. Check out "Eat with your Eyes First". The Tibbitts' were all about serving and mingling family with business. They made their business deals and built relationships with employees and their families at the dinner table in their home. Their imprint is definitely on me as an adult entrepreneur. I just didn't recognize it until Pop-Pop Monty passed away a few years ago.

I worked for the Movie Exchange for 2 summers. In this podcast, I'd like to share a fun story about swatting flies that connects deeply to how solo cleaners speed up their cleaning. This episode will be a great companion to "Optimizing is More Mental than Physical". During one of these summers, Grandma Shelly sent me into an unused, overflow office area. During the 90's, the Movie Exchange was rapidly growing a pre-viewed VHS division. They would sell acquire grocery store real estate sell these movies for under $10 and they sold very well. The movies had to be inspected, shrink-wrapped, price labeled, and distributed to their display cases in various outlets. In fact, my step-dad Paul was a lead salesman for this division of his parent's business. As a side note, I got to work in the shrink-wrap & labeling side the summer after this story takes place. Now that you understand the business model a little more, Grandma Shelly took me out to the empty office areas and showed me a full room of movie jackets (covers). She wanted me to organize these movie jackets alphabetically, so that they could easily match the VHS movies from the warehouse to the correct jacket faster. This work felt like busy work; a way to teach a teenager humility and work ethic. But no... I confirmed with Grandma Shellie recently and she assured me this was an important step in the process in 1990. She showed me where the box cutters, tape, and empty boxes were located and told me to stop by her office with any questions. That's all of the direction she gave me!

I remember this job distinctly 30 years later. There was a large central room approximately 40 feet by 30 feet and few side rooms. One of those side rooms was empty and the other was stocked floor to ceiling with movie jacket boxes. In 1990, I was a HUGE Beatles fan and was already wearing out the cassette tape of the Beatles Greatest Hits 1962-1966 on my Sony Walkman. I was ready to play this over-and-over while sorting through boxes all day... and I did! The Movie Exchange was paying me minimum wage of $3.85 per hour. I worked through July and August for 5 hours per day. It was awesome earning that biweekly paycheck as a teenager.

Read the rest of this article at the Solo Cleaning School website