Sometimes You’re The Windshield

OOH …Here’s One Thing 

Sometimes You’re The Windshield

by Jim Johnsen,
Managing Director, Johnsen, Fretty & Company

“Well it’s a strange old game you learn it slow
One step forward and it’s back you go
You’re standing on the throttle
You’re standing on the brake
In the groove ’til you make a mistake”

Mary Chapin Carpenter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_rbjg2k6cI&feature=share&utm_source=EJGixIgBCJiu2KjB4oSJEQ

Love this song.  Many truisms in it.  I pity the fool who believes he or she is never the bug.  And if 2021 could be summed up in a Prince song (think 1999), lets just say 2022 is a bit more, e-hem, “nuanced”.

Speaking of 2021, I somehow, and I have no idea how, because I never read the corn beef hash that I serve up let alone go back a full year and read my ancient ramblings, but low and behold out of nowhere this pops up on my browser:

Don’t You – OOH TODAY

Surprise of all surprises, I didn’t think it was all that bad for a meathead.  And at least in my little world it still rings true.  And yes, I still mostly like my job.  But I do think I left one thing out in the prior post, and that is, there is one aspect of my job function that I really, really don’t relish.  Okay, I know you all will have many guesses.  Its not firing someone (sad to say at my advanced age I have never fired anyone other than myself), it’s not performance reviews (I’m pretty bad at those too), it’s not legal calls (wow certain lawyers know how to run the meter!), it’s not market rides (thank God for the invention of the smartphone) and it’s not even walking to the bank to make a deposit (actually that one is always fun).  

Okay Johnsen, you got us. What the hell is it?  Well if I have done everything in my power to help our client maximize value, then somewhere along in the marketing process we run for our clients looking to sell themselves or raise capital, I am going to make one or more parties find some choice adjectives for me.  As in there will be one winner and several losers, each of whom have invested time, effort, resources and desire.  I always preface it with “don’t shoot me, I am just the messenger”, but that preface is like the tree that falls in the forest with no one around.  

For those of you who spend much more of their time operating a dynamic, sales focused outdoor advertising business than trying to buy other businesses, let me see if the following analogy holds.  You go to sell one of your best faces and you have a line of 5 customers who really desperately want it.  Each of the 5 are good friends, have been great to you for years, have big budgets and in a word are important.  You have to make 4 of the 5 really unhappy.  Good for business?  For sure.  Less than pleasant?  Downright shitty.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, I love my job.  Wishing ya’ll a Louisville slugger week.  

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Securities transacted through StillPoint Capital Member firm FINRA/SiPC