From Senior Customer Engineer Level 5 to Novice Yacht Broker

From Senior Customer Engineer Level 5 to Novice Yacht Broker

This, the third entry of my new blog is the one that has taken the longest to produce and is also the one loaded with all sorts of deep and soul heavy emotions.
My college education ended on a Friday, the next Monday I started my new job in the field of computers and systems support. Besscorp was the name of my first job in electronics. A papa-mama shop who tore away from Burroughs some 15 years before. Great little shop, component level repairs on desktop calculators, photocopy machines and mini-computers. I was a bench monkey. To this day I can recite from memory the color codes on resistors, I can even do some bolean math in my head. At Besscorp I learned my first lessons on direct person to person customer support. It has always made me feel good to be the facilitator, the guy who confronts problems and finds solutions. Little problems or highly complex problems spanning across two or more companies, applications, and systems. At Tandem Computers (and through all the corporate logo changes) I always wore my Senior Customer Support Engineer Level 5 certification proudly. Always happy to see the face of my customers when I show up at their computer rooms, the look of relieve on their brows, in the knowledge that I was on their case and somehow, one way or the other, things were going to work out fine.
Well, that is what I did for years on end. Besscorp, my own Electronic Programming Services venture, Burroughs, Tandem and with Tandem the disaster of Compaq/Digital/hp. It was with hp where my systems support career ended. Never a bad performance review, always a met or exceeded goals grades, tons of attaboys for jobs well done, exemplary Y2K (remember the madness?) conversions, huge appreciations from my direct customers and system managers. Alas, it seems none of that mattered when I turned 50 and was about to enter my 20th year of service at hp. A phone call from my non-manager manager within a month of the death of my mother to announce the news of my promotion to the “work force reduction program” and an exit interview in a parking area next to a McDonald’s. Class all the way. Bastards.
There are plenty of good stories from the years of servicing big companies and their computer systems but…we will explore those latter, for now, we will go to the middle of the center of the convergence of that proverbial fork in the road.
Unemployed. Never since I was 17 years old had I been unemployed.
What to do? Back to computers seem the logical choice but there had to be more to life than that. Certainly the steady money, 401k plans, medical coverage, etc. was appealing but unappealing was…the long hours, the on-call nights and weekends, the burden of being ON all the time. Come on, carrying a cell phone while racing a laser because I was on a systems alert or duty manager for the State…I needed to breathe.
Good to have friends though..ever so good to have friends! Over coffee at the club, my dear Herman points out that I love sailing, boating, fishing, talking to people, being nice, helping folks, safety first; you ought to be a yacht broker he spurts. Yeah, yeah a yacht broker. Three years earlier I almost become one but being gainfully employed at the time and not knowing that the greedy bastards were aiming at me, I shied away from pulling the trigger. This time it was different. I needed a job and the means to make a living.
Again; funny how things work out. I was at the yard with my beloved SHIPAJOY on the hard having a lot of work being performed on the running gear, cutlass bearings, engine mounts, new shaft…you get the idea. A guy is having his catamaran surveyed for sale and he is looking at my Lippincott. I am looking at his catamaran. We start a conversation. Turns out he is a yacht broker, the boat is being surveyed to be sold to fresh new owners. We spoke some more and he suggests, “we are looking to hire a new guy”. I am giddily surprised at this “coincidence”. Furthermore, his manager shows up unexpectedly at the yard to check on the cat’s survey. We get introduced and I get interviewed right then and there. The details from here on are boring. Until we get to the part where hands are shaken in agreement and I become the newest yacht broker at Yacht Sales Florida, part of the Florida yacht Group. I have a desk overlooking the Harborage Marina, my fellow co-workers at the office are very knowledgeable, experience, helpful and fun. My new manager is awesome, such an experienced businessman but so light and jovial all the time. My mentor has cradled me from day one and continues to give me all sorts of advise and insights into the selling world. Just two weeks ago, we closed the office at 1600 and took a new Jeanneau 33i for a short spin on Tampa Bay! The five of us on a sailing trip. Nice.
I am getting in at the right time, the market is ticking up, my company is growing, the Miami Boat Show 2010 was a blast, we just opened an office in Miami, the Florida Yacht Group branding is in full ahead mode, my mentor has sold 4 boats since January 2010 (including that catamaran), we represent used and new boats. We are dealers for new Jeanneau, Hanse, Fountaine Pajot, Carver, Moody and on the East Coast we also represent Beneteau. Exciting times indeed.
Licensed, bonded and ready to serve you with the same enthusiasm and pride as when I was the Senior Customer Support Engineer Level 5 and Duty Manager for the State of Florida.