Support Local Business
I drew the sign above sitting at my kitchen table over 40 years ago. I said I'm going to start a real estate company ! Everyone said I was crazy ! I was a carpenter and worked in the woods cutting pulp. Two years before I had bought a 2 room house that had a path instead of a bath and we had a new baby. I bought the house for $2500 and my brother in law Cy Harvey cosigned at the bank for the loan. I quite literaly didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out ! One Saturday while I was building a deck my wife read an add in the paper looking for real estate agents. She said "You've got a big mouth you might be good at that." She was working in Halifax traveling 60 miles night and morning for $80 per week. I applied for the job. I was hired and studied and wrote my exam and worked 6 months and never made a cent. Jim Conley in Noel gave us credit for groceries and John Jollymore in Nine Mile River gave me credit for gas. We were broke! John Burton and I went to Cape Breton clearing land for Bruce Miller and Dale Ettinger I made enough money to catch our bills up and went back at trying to sell real estate. By the end of the year I was the top salesperson in the office. I sold John Burton his first house. I bought my ball coach Ed Harvey's house in Nine Mile River and sold him the Birch Hill Dance Hall he became nervous before closing about buying a rough and tumble dance hall so I agreed to bounce for 6 months and my wife tended bar. I have a saying " I will do anything to help a customer except sacrifice my integrity." Bill Lawrence called me to sell his garage in Upper Rawdon and I sold it to Artie Webb and his brother. In 1981 when the interest rates went to 22% homes weren't selling Bruce Miller and I partnered up and cleared a power line from St Croix to Hantsport to get through the winter. All these people knew what support local meant some have since passed but without their support our business wouldn't be here today and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. One more point ! I hear a lot about the "Me Too" movement and after growing up in a rough and tumble single parent home of 7 boys (I remember when my mother received $89 per months widows allowance and her rent was $40) I was far from a Saint when I met my wife. (She was 15 and I was 17) I have no sympathy for these men whose past has come back to convict them as in my younger years I met few men who had any respect for women including respecting my mother. There were few examples out there. My wife educated , loved and put up with me as I became the man I am today. We have worked side by side for all these years and now we work with my daughters and grand daughters. We could be an example of the "Us Too" movement ! God meant men and women to be partners in life repectful of each other creating the balance society needs filled with the love and compassion of a womens heart to offset man's egotistical and often war like nature. We can't change the past but we can change the future. Don't give up on us Ladies we would be lost without you !
Support Local Business
I've heard that phrase thrown around so much in my 40 years in business that I almost let it go in one ear and out the other. Now maybe thats because there's not a whole lot between my ears to stop it. Let's examine that phrase support local business further. First what is a local business. To me a local business is a business owned locally by a person living in the community paying local taxes and providing a service and employment from that local location. They are active in the community and support local community initiatives. Now of course larger business enterprises with multiple locations could have ownership anywhere. Residing anywhere but management and employees may be local. To me a local business is a business venture that is providing a service or product locally and is re-investing in our community by creating jobs and paying taxes.
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