Sumthin' Stinks
When my new wife and I left Arabia after getting married in Bahrain, there was a two-year mini-adventure in my hometown of Pensacola, where I tried my hand at the fish business. I bought an existing fresh seafood market in a small coastal village across the bay from town. My family and friends thought I had lost my mind. They could not fathom why I got into the stink-ass fish business.
Running a 1920's ice plant and fuel dock on Pensacola Bay at age 20
But back when I was a student, I had a job running an old ice and fuel dock in the port of Pensacola. Many commercial fishing boats would tie up at this facility to load up on ice and fuel before heading out on their long fishing trips, and I got to know a lot of shrimpers and snapper boat captains. There was something alluring to me about this segment of society—rugged salt-of-the-earth types who earned an honest living the hard way with grit and wits. Some even seemed like mythic characters to me.
However, I was naïve and, at the age of twenty-eight, knew little about how to astutely buy a business of any kind. The prior owners had built it up successfully over five years and had just expanded their operations in a new location, but their business plan didn't work out. I didn't know all this when I bought the place, but just forged ahead and assumed I would figure it out. I did, but I had grossly overpaid for the business, and it took me two years to turn it around. This required shifting the business model from retail to wholesale. I began developing accounts with local restaurants and then expanded to inland cities like Atlanta and Nashville.
This meant I needed more product, so I let my great high school student employees run the store, and I began driving up and down the Gulf Coast for hundreds of miles in my insulated long-bed truck, buying fresh catch from wherever I could find it. I was a small fry compared to the large seafood wholesalers who dominated the market, so I had to find a way to stand out. I did that by only buying super fresh fish caught that day off of charter boats.
All this hustle helped, but it still wasn’t enough to turn the business around. I had to think larger scale, so I created more cooler and freezer space in my building and started buying the entire catch from large offshore shrimp trawlers. I began shipping longer distances, selling tons of shrimp to grocery store chains in the Midwest.
I stunk like a fish at the end of those long work days, and had to hose down in the driveway before coming into the house. As time went on, I was both physically and emotionally exhausted. Turning the business around had also burned through a lot of hard-earned cash from Arabia. But at least my wife and I ate well every night...jumbo shrimp, lump crabmeat, big salty oysters, fresh red snapper, and yellowfin grouper.
When I finally got the business into the black, I decided to sell it because my wife was really unhappy and ready to move on...couldn't blame her. Anyway, I found a buyer and got away with no outstanding debt. But I still took a huge financial hit keeping the business afloat until it could cash flow on its own. As I now know from this and a couple of other risky business moves over the years, when you fail, do it rapidly. I could teach an executive seminar on that. More importantly however, failures are not mistakes, just lessons that build confidence, perspective, and wisdom. They also improve your sense of humor.
On the upside, I picked up a couple of new life skills from the fish business. I could filet a forty-pound grouper in three minutes with a simple carving knife, and could split a three-hundred-pound block of ice in half with one stab of an ice pick. I also learned a little something about crawfish that became hugely important when I moved to Arizona (see CRAWDADDY page).
