****      Prior to writing this post, I had been up for nearly 36 hours preparing for our State inspection that ended with us getting our facility number, which ultimately means success in this line of work.  My point being is that after rereading this post I obviously spotted an incredibly large amount of errors and if anyone has previously read my posts they’ll know that I’m much better at writing and editing my work.  I’ve decided in the spirit of what makes  the post, THE POST, was to leave it as is  and leave all of the same mistakes and errors I made when writing it.  I wrote it in 15 minutes and hit publish.  No error correction, proofreading, nothing.  I had to get it out and do it fast.  Let me know if you were able to get an idea of what it was I was trying to say! ***********

If I recall correctly, Labor Day of 2010 was on September 6th.  I recall this because I began my first day as consultant for a healthcare based corporation in the Scranton, Pennsylvania that specialized in personal care services.  No, I did not have an ounce of experience working with that type of population.  Instead, I was recruited by executives from one company to help them build or repair something no working within their own company.

When I left the direct service providing days that I fondly named, “the 2nd time of my life when I was living in a black hole”, I swore I would never return to the substance abuse milieu nor the behavioral health care for that matter.  So why after 3 years of working as an entrepreneur and being my own boss did I end up back in the same subsection of the same industry I swore off of just three years prior?  It all starts with a phone call and a question from the person on the other end.

When I left the field I was providing direct service, however, when I did leave I was finishing a MBA in finance and had already started what has become a nice and little piece of solid business revenue coming in from Rinish.com. I was very good at providing direct therapeutic services but I felt as though I was wasting my talents and needed to build, create, grow and ultimately sit in the chair as the guy calling the shots.  Call it ego…. but recognizing what you’re good at and being right about it is something no many people can do.  I am good at developing businesses.  So when I got that call from a former supervisor asking for some help with his failing social services halfway house as it’s administrator and guy in charge of slowing down the $10k loss per month that was bleeding from his step-child of halfway houses, I eagerly accepted the position of Executive Director for a female substance abuse treatment facility.

When I came in, my web services firms was standing on it’s own, I had the freedom to look over its shoulder while at the same time just had to ensure that the staff was properly supervised and the money stopped flowing out the windows.  Done and done…. so what was I going to do with the other 7 months as I promised to give my former supervisor no more than one year?

I’ve always heard that when someone is good enough they don’t look for people, jobs or money… but those things look for them but I never understood it until the day when I was recruited, again, to come on to another social services company but instead of bringing a dying firm back to life I was asked to bring an entire pride of facility “lions” to life and do so by myself it was hard for me to play hard ball.

Ultimately, the way it worked out was that the facility I was the executive director of was owned by the CEO and entrepreneur of many personal care homes across the state.  This same man had over 20 years experience doing it.  So the guy knew how to make money in the field.  Prior to this, the facilities I worked with were all private, non-profits.

Naturally, since I was in charge of stopping the bleeding of a company providing residential services, I looked at the facility.  This led to multiple phone calls to the owner until things got fixed.  However, I was apparently such a big enough pain in the ass at getting what I wanted the man made it a point to come to his facility so I could take him on a tour.  After 15 minutes, my discussion of experience and handing him my business card with my credentials, I was asked if I’d be interested in a venture my soon-to-be-former landlord and soon-to-be-current-chairman-of-the-board overseeing my division was working on for the past year.  Actually, it was more like him asking me if I wouldn’t mind coming out to lunch with him and a few people so he could introduce me to some people who could help me with my current company…. that was bait and nothing more than a chance to get me with his people and conduct and interview.  I was  hip to it and said yes.

Needless to say, Labor Day of this past year was my first day as Lead Consultant in Charge of D&A Services Development to current Operations Officer and VP of D&A Services Development and tomorrow on April 13th I will have secured my first, from scratch licensure from the State Department of Health Drug & Alcohol Licensure Division for a facility I build by myself from what was otherwise the ground up.

After starting my first day in a janitor’s shed and on to a wild business development ride that brought me to feet and knees too many times to count; after not being sure if I’d see a paycheck cause the venture was not funded like I was told when I came on to the time I got that first check of a quarter of a million dollars in equity investment I secured through my work; after wondering if the State would ever get to my application to realizing that after only 4 months of what is normally a 6 to 12 month process; I am walking into my facility tomorrow and in doing so getting ready to walk a man around a building a grew into what is sure to become the high end of high end for the level of drug and alcohol services we’ll provide.  It’s like being 3 and knowing Santa Clause is coming.  You know you’re excited cause something good might happen but still not sure if it really will.

In this past 7 months I’ve worked countless 12 hours days, lost time with my family that I’ll never get back, stressed so much worrying about the project’s chances and wondering if I took on too much to the point where I am know interviewing, to recently hiring my first staff members which includes a full time assistant I’m left to think and ponder why the hell I put myself through that and why would I want to do that again ever.  Cause you know what?  I am.

After a 15 minutes meeting the other day with the Chair and his consultant I was provided with the task of creating a standard one page report on the feasibility, cost and timeline of building the next facility.  Of course, it won’t be building it from scratch and I’lll having team and resources and an office and probably won’t be on my knees as much as I was on the first one but it’ll still be with its challenges.  In fact, fuck having the time to let it all sink in cause I didn’t even have time to take a nice refreshing piss without feeling like I”m missing something important to do.  Fuck sitting back and relaxing.  I’m off to the races again.

So wheat does it all mean?  To me, it means a few things:

• A person has to be any combination of dumb, stupid, fucked up or just a straight up machochist to build a career as an entrepreneur and/or business developer
• I’m that fucked up cause I miss that feeling of starting my first business, Rinish.com on my own and even much more of a maschocist for having that feelings of missing being strictly on my own building building what no person with 20 years experience in business or the social services sector would do…. build an inpatient facility from scratch without a single professional resources to speak of besides what’s up in your head.
• I love what I do and at the same time hate it too but nothing gives me that sense of knowing that I am leading the next revolution in how substance abuse services will be delivered  while at the same time remembering that close to 6 years ago I was homeless, on dope and about to spend a year of my life in jail because of me not getting access to the services I today work hard to deliver.

And ultimately, that is why I do what I do and made the decision I made.  This field has a hard time finding good people let alone good people who understand the clinical end of it and know the business side of it just as well.  And for that, I’ll hopefully continue never having to write a resume again.