A clear path

A clear path

I was sitting at a bus stop shortly after my wife left me and I was contemplating how I had ended up in the spot I was in and a gentleman in his sixties asked me “How are you doing?” So I told him “I was making over $200,000 a year for five years in a row and now I no longer have a car or license, not a penny to my name, I am living in a beauty salon and riding the bus”. He replied “It’s happening to everyone, we are going through a global, secular reshuffling”. I said “What?” He replied “I’m sorry, I am a retired economist and sociology professor. All of the systems and strategies we have become used to have failed, they aren’t going to work anymore and everyone is scrambling to find the new path”.

I went from being a Navy SEAL, thinking I had reached the pinnacle, then I realized that bullets didn’t care how tough I was and neither did the military when they were downsizing. Then I got into sales, then the mortgage business when rates were at 7.5% and went all of the way to 9% before 9/11 and dropped to 4%. I had paid off all of my debt and socked away $50,000 in the bank but I knew that wasn’t going to get me to retirement. I started buying Real-Estate and trying to do what my clients were doing and take advantage of leverage and the unearned equity in the market. I realized that my niche was construction lending because of the kind of people I attract and that industry took its hit in 2006. I had already started to diversify into insurance and financial planning by this time.    

My wife had different plans, she divorced me and I did some contract work in the anti-piracy business and that brought me to the drone/UAS industry. I was promised the kind of money I was looking for, I suspended my licenses and tried to build a company and then I figured out after three months the guy I was working for was never going to do anything and he was just hyping the stock. I left him and went on my own and landed a consulting contract which paid me a base to live on but nobody closed any business. Partly because the FAA’s restriction on commercial unmanned operations but also because the person I was submitting my business to was holding onto them and pigeonholing them until he lined up his own investors and went on his own. The company figured him out and cut him loose and me with him.

I realized I was going to have to make a go of it on my own. I looked at what I had to offer the industry and the first thing was a financial strategy with self-insurance and I offered it to UAS manufactures recommended by Gene Payson.  I got the interest of a few connections with overseas ties and I also brought on an agricultural product, an all-natural colloid that separates the molecules in hydro-carbons, when mixed with water it softens the water and allows it to penetrate the exoskeleton of insects and disrupt their breathing systems and bursts their internal organs. I had to test it to satisfy everyone that it could kill the Red Palm Weevil. I tested it on the South American Palm Weevil which is basically the same bug and I did it, adults and larvae. This has garnered the attention of those at the highest levels of the agriculture industry. We had to go through a long process of certification with the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Now we are waiting on the certification in the Middle East, specifically for the Red Palm Weevil.

While I was waiting on this certification I was working out the details for border security of a Latin American country putting together the process of managing all of the data and one of my partners introduced me to DX2 Broadcast, they rep for over 20 different manufactures of LED lights and DELEC and Intercom for voice over IP. While waiting for the certification for the colloid, the investors for the financing/insurance and foreign orders to come through I have been marketing LED manufactures to resellers, installers and architects in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. The last time I sold anything that produced results as quickly was the end of 2000 when I made the switch from second mortgages to first mortgages and real-estate sales.

With my knowledge of Real-Estate, financing, life insurance and retirement planning, not just the strategies but implementation. For the first time in a long time I can see the path, it is like dominos falling, LED orders for video wall billboards, high-bay lighting, studio and stage lighting. By then certification for the colloid and orders to follow, then orders for unmanned systems for border and costal security from the foreign prospects. There are progressive steps to follow from here, business and personal.