“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
Seneca
What is the greatest holiday gift of all time?
A fresh new year is just around the corner!
For 45 years, the week before Thanksgiving through New Year’s has always been an intense time at Queensboro.
It is kind of a Goldilocks time. Sometimes, there are too many orders, and sometimes, there are not enough. Sometimes, folks look forward to working overtime and making some extra money. Other years, they are so exhausted from pushing out work all year that they just want to sit down and relax for a couple of days.
Everyone is busy. Lots of plans are being made. The stores and roads get crowded. It is difficult to focus on new projects and start new things.
We often need to remind ourselves and others that this is a season of joy.
Sometimes in North Carolina and Texas, fall extends well into December and we get some spectacular, sunny 60-degree (short) days. These days are a welcome relief from the many 100+ degree days we get in the summer. We can enjoy the sun with a full face, instead of running from it. These are days that cause us to pause, lift our spirits, and always make us feel like we are getting something for nothing. We think smugly about our friends and family up North and are happy to be living where we are.
But there are still plenty of grey days, and by mid-December, regardless of the weather, we invariably start thinking about January, the New Year, and a new beginning.
There are several reasons why, in general, January is a challenging month. It is our slowest month of the year and often the coldest and greyest. We make New Year’s resolutions that we quickly find to have been too ambitious. Travel can be difficult. There are many runny noses and all kinds of germs floating around, and a lot of extra clothes to deal with. The mornings still feel like the middle of the night.
January is also my wife’s birthday and with the slow sales at that time of the year, I must admit sometimes it has been difficult to give with a full heart. We’ve been married a long time, though, so over the years, this has become a good source of humor between us. About two weeks before her birthday she starts asking how sales are going with a curiosity she doesn’t have most of the year. As I said, we’ve been married for a long time, and this is some fun we have every January. A few years ago, however, she started a tradition of giving me cigars and bourbon for my birthday in September, which I took as a license (and a bad joke) to do the same for her. Occasionally she’ll hold her nose and drink some bourbon to show me that she can, but I don’t think she’ll ever get that far with the cigars. Being married to an entrepreneur is no easy assignment. I don’t think I’d want to do it.
But… In January, the New Year has begun! Slowly the days start to lengthen. The pressure and anticipation of the holidays are behind us. It feels like we have a minute to catch our breath and think about what the year could be. We are in week ONE of the year!
Not all new beginnings follow the calendar. We have some time to prepare for some of these new beginnings. In a family, if we are not the youngest, sometimes we get a new sibling, a new brother or sister (in-law), or maybe even a new parent. As we grow up, we move to new places and start new adventures in school and work. Sometimes we plan for years for these new beginnings, and then one day, it begins!
Some new beginnings come with no advance warning. Seemingly randomly, in an instant we meet people who are going to completely transform our lives as either friends, bosses, co-workers, or life partners. Sometimes we know right away that our lives are never going to be the same. Other times it takes years to understand how important a person is to you. But every relationship starts in an instant and there is just no telling at the time where it is going to go or what the impact on your life is going to be.
In 45 years, we have worked with many hundreds of great people at Queensboro. We have helped thousands of great customers “share who they are with the world” and we have been supported in this work with many fantastic vendors and partners. Each has added something unique to our story, and each has represented a new beginning for us.
Between all those people, including 45 January’s, we have had A LOT of new beginnings over the years at Queensboro. That is roughly 16,500 days!
In 1977, after growing up in suburban Connecticut, I went to college in New York City. New York was pretty rough at that time. That was different. I started Queensboro while in school and had the business in New York for 15 years. In our first 5 years of business, I think we moved 7 times.
In 1996 I moved the business to a small beachside city in North Carolina. That was also different. In 2021 we opened an office in Dallas, and I moved to Texas. Texas is unlike any place I have ever been in my life. And I say that in a good way. Texas is different.
Showing up for the first day of work at each one of these places was like the first day in a new school. Welcome to your new life! This year we are planning a West Coast expansion. I am not planning on moving again, but I am looking forward to getting to know yet another part of this great country and finishing the work of building a “trans-continental” company that is one-day ground shipping away from 95+% of our customers.
As I reflect on all these new beginnings and our impending West Coast expansion, my heart and mind start racing. Each of these new beginnings has been so exciting! Am I a new beginning addict? That seems like a bit of a disconnect for someone who has been doing the same thing since he was 20 years old! True, during my family’s formative years we did live in the same house for 25 years. But during that time, we raised 5 kids and experienced many, many new beginnings as they were born, grew up, got into all kinds of stuff, and then left home.
Some may call all this change, and all these new beginnings manic. They are probably right. In business, they call this iteration. You try something, see what happens, adjust, or try something else. How does a business survive without trial and error? It took me about 15 years for the idea to sink in that a person who gets anything right on the first try is just lucky.
I have managed to keep Queensboro going for 45 years now. My goal is to get to 50 and then turn it over to the next group to shoot for 100 years. I am very proud of what we have accomplished, but my legacy will be what happens when I am gone. There will need to be countless new beginnings to get to 100.
There have been lots of mistakes. None of them has been catastrophic. Maybe that is because of my love for new beginnings.
At the beginning of this piece, I quote Seneca, an ancient philosopher. He says, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
Ask a snake about new beginnings and you’ll get a story about shedding skins. It can’t be easy, but it must be a relief. What about a caterpillar?
New beginnings are what allow us to grow, but they are also what allow us to preserve the essence of who we are. Some would call this our souls. Our appearance changes but what is inside is the same, though hopefully wizened, strengthened, and elevated by all our new beginnings.
Best wishes to everyone for a transformative, super-productive, and very Happy New Year!
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