If it were to turn out that chattiness is a superpower, I’m going to have to get my fiancée Gaetana a cape for Christmas!
I’ll have to get one for my mother too!
It was last week when mom showed up for a visit and you’d think that after five-days under one roof my fiancée and mother would have said all there was to say.
Which would make you wrong!
Guy feasts on my mother’s stories about what makes Mark, Mark and so I allow my mother to ramble on with her Lipton history lesson. “I remember when Mark was 12……” was the last thing I heard as I headed up to my office to write this blog.
I hope that she gets to at-least 30 before the pizza gets here. My 20’s may be difficult to relive while eating!
I Can Blog That
It’s a good conversation with loved ones if it ends with me asking, “Can I blog that?”
When I ask my daughter Buck Wheat, Guy or my mother that question the answer generally is, “yes.”
Generally.
It's rarely an emphatic, "YES!"
“NO!” tends to bring more passion.
Last week during a conversation with Buck regarding her special talents to bend her neck in a way which gets her head all the way up her butt, I asked the obvious, “Can I blog this?” and Buck said “NO!”
Energetically.
At the time of her rejection I had just finished paying off, on THE Buck’s behalf, over $700 in tolls and toll-beating violations to the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Texas!
Shout-out to the fine people of Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas: the only states along Buck’s route from Stamford to Austin who did not put tolls on their roads!
Buck had always wondered what those big signs which said “E-Z Pass ONLY” meant!
And that’s the part of the story I was given permission to share!
There’s only one Buck.
In the last two-weeks, I have become aware of seven independent paint dealers who are dealing with Covid-19 in their stores in some significant way. Some of those dealers are just dealing with “exposures” which gratefully left no one sick. Managing the circumstances surrounding a Covid exposure in a retail environment is complicated and stressful enough without additional health concerns.
Some dealers were managing actual outbreaks of the virus among their staffs.
All, are stretched thin!
Three of these dealers have asked sarcastically, “Don’t you miss your stores?”
I was in my old store on Broadway in THE Bronx last week, to gather mail which continues to trickle in. While I know that a new sign saying "Janovic" will one-day come, I was glad to see that the old sign was still up!
So was mom!
I do miss my time in a paint store. But in the time of Covid it would be hard for me to say I miss owning paint stores, while still sounding authentic.
During my 30+ year career as a paint dealer, I swam with Tremont Paint through the shark-filled waters of two economic collapses and a divorce which always reminded me of the good old days of economic collapses!
To my dealer-brethren managing this current burden I encourage you to remember the words of the writer and Roman slave Publilius Syrus, “The sweetest pleasure arises from difficulty overcome!”
It will not stay like this forever.
On Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 7 PM Eastern time, I will be hosting a Zoom event. THE public “reveal” of my web and e-commerce platform for independent paint dealers, THE Revolution.
If you are a paint dealer, this is where your journey into the digital revolution should begin!
Designed by a paint dealer, THE sites of THE Revolution are intended to get you found online! And then, to complete the sale in a way which is familiar and comfortable for paint consumers.
All are welcome! Whether you are a dealer, work for a dealer, sell to dealers or are a reader just wondering what all the hoopla is about, pour yourself a drink, light a cigar or anything else you care to smoke and tune in here.
I am really excited about the way these sites are coming together and am looking forward to showing them off to you!
And finally, today I dropped a new episode of the Mark, My Words podcast. This one with the founder of THE Paint Foundation, Huzaifa Matawala.
Whether the problem is mis-tints for dealers, over-stock and discontinued items for distributors or waste paint and chemicals for manufacturers, The Paint Foundation looks to resolve these problems by turning the mis-tint pile into a pile of profits AND tax deductions, while removing the unusable product from the waste stream! Huzaifa has by far the most creative solution to an age-old problem in our industry; The waste we generate from cradle to grave in the paint process.
As always, you can listen on my site here, or on Soundcloud, Apple and Stitcher.
