By Joseph Boles
You will be reading about lots and lots of area businesses in this month’s issue of Old City Life. You will hopefully look at all of the ads (especially mine!), in this issue as well! The ads are what brings in the bacon so there can be an OCL for us to enjoy. While you are enjoying the articles about these fine establishments and professions, one might ponder just how some of these “businesspersons”came to their calling and what makes a good and successful entrepreneur. Well, I believe they are born that way…it’s in their DNA so to speak. Here are a few examples:
Ryan Miller, (his real name), son of Barbara Ford (a dear friend of my wife Jane), is a successful professional. As Jane tells it, when Ryan was a little boy he would ask his mom’s friends if he could count all of the money in their purse or wallet and tell them how much was there! Very cute and a good way to practice his counting skills and math. But Ryan took it a step further. He did not ask them to give him the money (that would be economically foolish, he intuitively reasoned) but he did ask to be paid for doing it! A different wrinkle on the “give the cute kid some money angle,” and one that was very successful. Now he is a world-renowned surf photographer traveling the world and getting paid handsomely for it. Not a bad gig!
My stepson, Willie Masson, had a group of little “brainiac” friends in Middle School that were always inventing things and getting into trouble (well, really, mischief, not trouble). They made a hover craft with parts they bought at the hardware store and some old lumber that came out of one of their garages. It worked and they could actually stand on it and ride. Not far, mind you, but it did float them up a few inches and really, REALLY raised up their nerdy, giddy glee! When their home-built, remote-controlled race car invaded the gridiron at a St. Augustine high school football game, blaring out a risque rap song, they knew that they were the “coolest” guys in school.
But when they watched the Sheriff’s deputy confiscate their secretly maneuvered vehicle, they realized that not only had they lost the little car, but they couldn’t tell anyone about it! The risk of arrest was just too great.
One of their genius gang has now gone on to work for Space-X and is responsible for the rocket launches and getting them safely back on the ground (Shamal Patel, in case your wondering). My stepson Willie now works as a prosecutor for our State Attorney R.J.Larizza. He made sure he was on the right side of the law after that frightening flirtation with lawlessness (he also knows the statute of limitations has run out on remote-controlled car crimes!).
Then there is my little brother Michael Wade Boles, better known as “Booger.” He has always been successful in his business endeavors and I know how he got his start because I was right there to witness his genesis! You see, whenever our family traveled on vacation he would collect souvenirs and specimens from the trips. Seashells, shark’s teeth, sea glass and the occasional starfish that would die and start stinking in the car on the way back home…regular kid stuff! Then he started gathering up things from around our home. Unusual leaves, snail shells, arrowheads from the plowed fields, animal bones and shards of ancient pottery. He also got packages from our grandparents in Florida (we lived in NC at the time), which made me a little jealous. Alligator teeth; peacock feathers; one time a dried monkey paw made its way into our house. He kept all of his “collections” in our basement where he spent hours categorizing his fossils and minerals and sometimes just plain old rocks. I thought it was all stupid but at least he wasn’t bugging me and my older, much more sophisticated ten year old pals!
But there was a method to his madness. One day, I come home from playing outside and I hear my mother down in the basement laughing and clapping and I hear my brother talking quite loudly. So I head down the stairs and my Mother says “Stop. You can’t come down here without a ticket!”
“What do you mean a ticket?” I shout down. “A ticket to the museum, she shouts back up!
My little brother had taken all that junk he had collected and had opened a “museum” in our basement. He had made dozens of displays. He had cards with the description of the displays like “Rock found at Granny’s House on June 5, 1959”…really dumb stuff like that! He had made up tickets and I had to pay a nickel to go down into my own basement! I could have killed him right then and there but instead I paid my nickel and went on down. As a matter of fact, all our relatives, all of our friends and all of our neighbors came to see “Michael’s Museum” at a nickel a pop! It was in his DNA to turn his hobby into an entrepreneurial experience and he has done that successfully ever since. Whether it was his line of Booger Boles Surfboards, his surfshop,(where he would beat a young Mark Bailey at foosball with Mark’s surfshop salary on the line!), his insurance business, ERA realty with Bill Heavener, the Enterprise Banks, or his current Safety Minded Holdings company (they make cool suits from circulated water for race car drivers, surgeons and the movie industry, like Captain America and the Hulk from the Avengers).
My point is that good business minded skills can be part of someone’s psychological patterning from an early age.
My personal story is a little different. As a youngster all I wanted to do was draw and paint. Sure I played football, baseball, hunted and fished but never once did I believe I would be anything other than an artist. I got private lessons and I worked hard in high school so I could get into a good university. In 1970, I went off to the University of Florida and got my degree in Art (Advertising Design, or Commercial Art). Then I came out into the real world, where I discovered that you can be good but you only get payed well if you are not just good, but great…AND lucky. I worked at it for a while and dabbled in some start-up businesses until one day an Alachua County Deputy Sheriff came to get my car to satisfy some old debts from Highstepper’s Teenage Disco that I started in the late 70s (another story for another time!). So I thought I needed some more education. My roomate at the time, Tracy Upchurch, was in law school (him being an Upchurch and all), so he said “Why don’t you go to law school?” And I thought “Well, that would be just fine!” If he hadn’t said that, it would have never crossed my mind to be an attorney.
So I went to law school and graduated from UF with my Juris Doctor degree and started practicing in 1985. As a matter of fact, I didn’t make the Dean’s list in college until I went to law school, so I guess I had finally found my calling. For thirty plus years I have loved what I do as an Elder Law, Trusts and Asset Protection attorney and its given me a good living for me and my family. I can be a lawyer for a long time too. I can practice law until I’m 100 years old if I live that long because the older you get the more people think you know and they are right!
One more thing…now I can afford to buy the all the paints and canvases I want for my mediocre talent because I don’t have to live off the sales…and that’s a darn good thing!
Sincerely,
Joe “non-starving ‘artist’” Boles
