Sandy Grover started her company Interior Designs and Decorations to prove something to her husband Joe.
Joe Grover was a brilliant electronic engineer and after working as a senior executive in a well known automobile company got laid off during the recession. He applied to several organizations for job but could not get any. Recession was too severe and rather than getting jobs, even bright professionals were being laid off in hundreds.
Having tried his hand at seeking job and seeing no scope of getting one till the recession was phased out; he decided to go on his own. With his decent savings during the first twelve years of employment, he could think of starting his business. He had the seed capital and additionally he borrowed money from his bank. He set up a small electronic factory to manufacture and supply components to the larger corporate companies in diverse industries. Electronic components were needed everywhere. Joe Grover was an ace designer and he could easily customize his products to his customers’ requirements.
We all know that any big business starts with it being small to start with. And there are always initial teething troubles. First few years of inception can be very trying both from work point of view and also from the revenues point of view. Joe Grover was no exception.
As the days passed, Joe Grover’s business started growing but only at snail’s pace. The income was not much. Joe’s strength was electronic design and his designs were robust. That did create interest in many prospective customers but still the orders were not coming in bulk; they just trickled.
Sandy Grover was watching the progress of Joe but was not very happy with it. She was not happy with the rate of growth and more particularly with the income- the income which was far lower than the salary Joe used to bring home when he was a senior executive.
Sandy concluded that it was a hopeless sign. She anticipated that the financial burden on her family would start mounting in the near future and soon enough she might be forced to accept a situation when the income would not be enough to take care of even the monthly installments of repayment of loans as well as to pull on with family’s day-to-day expenses.
She needed money to take care of the bills towards grocery, electricity, gas, telephones and school fees of their two children and what have you. Plus Sandy had got used to the standard of living that they could easily afford when Joe was employed as a senior executive. It was not possible for her to get used to the new idea where now Joe was self employed and at least for the time being the income had dwindled and she saw no signs of it increasing in the near future.
If that kind of scenario continued, she thought that they might not be left with any alternative but to dip into the savings of all these years. And that wasn’t proper. She just couldn’t allow it to happen. She thought to herself, “I must start thinking to make sure that such a thing does not happen. I must involve myself more seriously into saving the family from it much earlier than it would finally happen.”
So, Sandy started complaining. She said to Joe, “You are not getting enough orders. You must concentrate on marketing rather than on designing. I understand that designing is your favorite area but you should spend less time there and spend more time in building up a good customer base. You must develop more contacts and build up your network. I hear that it is the networking and personal contacts that really help getting the business. You seem to be doing nothing about it. I have seen some real smart people who started their own businesses and within a very short time they have flourished. I see them throwing parties, meeting various people in the clubs and playing golf and they are busy developing contacts and making friends. Now I call that as real marketing.”
Joe replied, “I fully appreciate what you are suggesting. But the competition is quite severe and after entering into business field I can see that the corruption is a real phenomenon. For getting a break with big sales orders, the outsourcing chiefs of some of our client companies are demanding kickbacks. The kind of networking and personal contacts you are talking does help in breaking the wall that the buyers build around them but for making them to sign on the dotted line for placing orders on us, they expect from us more than a clean business; they want the money under the table and I do not wish to compromise this way. My product designs are perfect, our manufacturing quality is superb and we have reached a large number of clients through various means that are pretty effective. Do not say that I am not marketing at all. I am doing a pretty serious marketing too. But the true story is that if you wish to get a quick bulk order and make quick bucks, you have to learn to compromise. You may call that as my weak point- I cannot learn to compromise.”
And then these arguments became more frequent and always ended with a fight between Sandy and Joe.
That is when sandy thought of starting her own business. She just could not see all of their savings go away before Joe really started earning the real money. And as per the serious assessment made by Sandy, Joe was not smart enough to do business. She concluded that he would remain where he started and with Joe’s ways of working he would never be able to make money. She branded him as incompetent in her own mind. She was losing respect for him and also her love for him.
She thought that she was an interior designer and decorator and she would launch her own business immediately. They still had more than adequate money in their savings right now to launch such a business and soon with her ideas on how to acquire big business in short time she would multiply the money in no time, she was very sure of it. She was also aware that she was quite attractive and that too was her plus point and in men’s world it mattered.
So, she started off. She opened her office in a plush location and inaugurated it by throwing a huge party. Among many people she met in the party, one gentleman influenced her a lot. She particularly liked that person since she knew that he was a very successful builder and owned an enormous real estate and construction conglomerate. She took initiative to get introduced to him and made him to agree for a meeting with her in his office.
She said, “So, I will see you in your office the coming Monday. Mr Jay Robbins, you must not disappoint me when I meet you in your office. I am looking forward to long term professional association with you and your company.”
Jay Robbins said, “Please call me Jay. I look forward to our meeting Mrs Grover.”
Sandy Grover said, “Please call me Sandy. I will be there pronto.”
Monday came and Sandy Grover was with Jay Robbins discussing business propositions.
Jay Robbins made a remark, “Sandy, your timing has been perfect. I have launched a project of gigantic proportions and we are at the stage of doing the interiors of these luxury apartments. My present interior decorator has not been quite up to her mettle and I was seriously looking out for her replacement. You will have to meet me couple of times to understand my requirements and then you can start off with interior designing and decoration of the apartment houses. Why not meet tomorrow evening in my club?”
Then there were series of meetings between Sandy and Jay and they went on getting closer and closer with each other not only professionally and business wise but also personally and as a result, very intimate relationship started growing between them. Sandy got an enormous business contract from Jay Robbins and within a period of an year Sandy’s monthly income soared very high. She was becoming rich literally overnight. She found no need to develop any new clients. Work coming from Jay’s company kept her and her ever growing staff fully busy.
As Sandy and Jay started getting more and more intimate, Joe and Sandy started falling apart more and more. Sandy thought that Jay was smart and competent and she also thought that Joe was dull and incompetent.
Joe noticed the changes in Sandy and their relationship with each other and he was intelligent to understand the reasons. Yet he put in his efforts to save his marriage, to keep the family intact; he loved his two kids lots and he also loved Sandy as his kids’ mother and his wife. He decided to hold his family together despite the pain he was suffering because of Sandy’s fling. He was sure that she would get over it in due course.
In the mean time Joe was gradually gaining fame due to his creative designs, excellent quality of manufacture and his professional marketing and also more and more clients started placing more and more orders on his firm. Yet his income levels just could not reach anywhere near the income levels of Sandy.
Eight years went by. Through this period Joe was sad, Sandy was jubilant. Sandy and Jay continued with each other; Joe was lonesome.
Then, one evening when Joe returned home from his factory, he heard Sandy’s uncontrollable sobbing and hiccups. He sat near her and held her hand in his. Sandy dropped her head on Joe’s shoulders and spoke out incoherently with lots of effort, “……Jay Robbins has cancelled all my contracts with his company and he has found out a new and younger interior designer and decorator and he has now placed all the contracts on her firm. He says that I have been messing up with things lately and he suffered huge losses due to it and so he cannot continue with me. He had done the same thing with the earlier interior designer and decorator when he had fired her and took me instead. Now the history is repeating. He has also replaced his old secretary with a much younger and more beautiful girl. The older secretary was hysterical and was blurting out that Jay is a play boy. He likes only younger women…..”
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