A New Chapter for U.S. Audios Inc.
As the end of the century approached, I was hit with a life changing event. I grew up in upstate New York; in the small town of LaGrangeville. I grew up near and working on the family farm – an experience that taught me that hard work is one of the many keys to achieving success in life. In this little community of seventy-eight people, I became close friends with the only other two boys my age: Richard and Bobby. Our fathers were lifelong friends as were two of our three grandfathers. Our fathers and grandfathers all worked hard and lived into their eighties and nineties. About the time I turned fifty, I got the call no one wants to get. Richard was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was gone within months at the tender age of fifty.
I was an admitted workaholic, and this hit me right between the eyes. Within a month, I made a promise to myself and to my wife, that I would put a plan in place to be retired within five years.
Step one toward that goal, and to grow, was to hire a sales manager – a position I had always filled. The best candidate was a person who had spent many years with Lanier Business Products. While I knew of Jim Wyatt, I had never meet him until the interview. We quickly came to an agreement and Jim began rebuilding the sales-force and increasing sales. Shortly after he arrived, we booked the largest sale in the fifty years US Audio, Inc. had provided excellent customer service to Northern California’s finest. The sale was to Bank of America and resulted in nearly doubling our annual revenue.
The next step in becoming retired was promoting Jim to general manager’s position. He had worked with US Audio, Inc. for several years, understood our mission and was growing the company nicely. We had offices next to each other. I made the announcement and decided to effectively make the conversion, to Jim running the company; this require for me to be absence for at least a month. It was a tough decision as I had never been away from the business for more than a week.
Judith and I rented an RV, which turned out to be the beginning of almost-eighteen-years seeing the entire United States and all of the lower Canadian Provinces. More on our history in the next post…
Ed Wright
Author, entrepreneur, ultimate optimist who believes hard work - works!