Today I'm here to tell a story. This is the city of Lagrange, Georgia:
It's a sleepy hamlet of roughly 30,000 people, and it's the town I've had the displeasure of living in on-and-off for about 7 of the last 15 years. The town is chock-full of sidewalkers with a smattering of slowlaners.
While I've formatted this post as a rant, that's only because I've noticed all these things from a personal perspective. In reality I'm glad to be here, because I think this town provides me with a pretty vivid example of what not to do. Hopefully I can impart that to you.
On a side-note, I think the most expensive car I've seen here in 7 years was probably worth $70,000:
I only started to notice this after reading TMF , but this town has no hustle. I've outlined a few events that have opened my eyes to this place below:
1. Everyone here works a Monday-Friday 9-5, even most non-chain retailers. If I want to buy furniture, house paint, or have a repairman out to fix something on my house, I either have to take time out of work to get it done, skip lunch to get it done, or go somewhere like Atlanta on a Saturday.
2. There's an abundance of dance studios and martial arts dojos, no shortage of "entrepreneurs" "following their dreams".
3. Local sales reps for the products we need at work have no drive to sell. When I decide not to get a certain item from a certain supplier, 95% of the time I don't have to inform a salesman because there is no follow-up on my initial inquiry. This happens even if they went to the trouble of getting me a full-blown quote. Often-times these are $100,000 pieces of equipment that they aren't selling.
4. When I was looking for houses, I contacted a realtor about a 4-plex in the area. As we did the walkthrough, the realtor was mostly silent. When she did talk, she focused on the negatives of the house, like the fact that there was mold in the central heating/air system, and the insects. Maybe there's some hidden motivation there(like if the owners are paying her per month to show it to people), but either way there's some serious lack of hunger from the owners given that it's still on the market.
5. The previous owner of my duplex had tenants who had been living here 5 years on a de-facto month-to-month lease, at the same rent from 5 years ago. This meant that she was charging them 25% under fair market value in rent, simply because she was too lazy to research local rent values. She also put the house on the market at 20% less than other identical properties in the area had sold for that year. And this woman was a realtor of 30 years.
6. There are about 3 gyms in town. The first has insufficient lighting and only a smattering of ancient equipment. The second has also has poor lighting and too few machines or weights, and markets themselves as a "christian gym". The third, my gym, has good lighting and lots of weights/equipment, but has had a broken water fountain and leaking roof they haven't bothered fixing for the last 9 months. Every time I go in after a big rain, I expect to see 8-10 buckets catching drips throughout, and puddles of water where they've missed the leaks.
7. When I first bought my duplex, it came with a lawnmower man. Aside from upping the cost for me from $25/mow to $37.5/mow, he was 10 days late on his first mow. Then he asked me when the last time it was mowed because he "pretty much had to do a full month service on it". I fired him on the spot. (For those in drier parts of the world, you HAVE to mow every 10-14 days here.)
8. I found a local plumber with good ratings on angie's list to install a new sink for my tenants(the one they were using had worn completely through from decades of use). He would have had to turn off the water main to fix it. When I got back from work, I had no water pressure, and my water main was busted. I called him hoping it was a simple fix and he'd be willing to fix it up, since he would have been the only one near the main when it broke. It was a simple fix, but he accused me of using him for a dollar, and talked over me, wouldn't even let me finish a sentence. This was the owner of the company.
9. Just this last Saturday my girlfriend and I went to a local flea market to walk around. You wouldn't believe some of the stands at this thing. I probably saw 30 tables piled with crap I'd estimate to be worth less than $100 total. These people are spending their entire Saturday piling this crap into a vehicle, sitting in one place for 8 hours, and packing the rest up and taking it home for essentially minimum wage or less.
Stay hungry, guys and gals. Don't be like the people of Lagrange, GA.
Full disclosure: I don't actually live in Lagrange. This post is about a very similar town in Georgia.
It's a sleepy hamlet of roughly 30,000 people, and it's the town I've had the displeasure of living in on-and-off for about 7 of the last 15 years. The town is chock-full of sidewalkers with a smattering of slowlaners.
While I've formatted this post as a rant, that's only because I've noticed all these things from a personal perspective. In reality I'm glad to be here, because I think this town provides me with a pretty vivid example of what not to do. Hopefully I can impart that to you.
On a side-note, I think the most expensive car I've seen here in 7 years was probably worth $70,000:
I only started to notice this after reading TMF , but this town has no hustle. I've outlined a few events that have opened my eyes to this place below:
1. Everyone here works a Monday-Friday 9-5, even most non-chain retailers. If I want to buy furniture, house paint, or have a repairman out to fix something on my house, I either have to take time out of work to get it done, skip lunch to get it done, or go somewhere like Atlanta on a Saturday.
2. There's an abundance of dance studios and martial arts dojos, no shortage of "entrepreneurs" "following their dreams".
3. Local sales reps for the products we need at work have no drive to sell. When I decide not to get a certain item from a certain supplier, 95% of the time I don't have to inform a salesman because there is no follow-up on my initial inquiry. This happens even if they went to the trouble of getting me a full-blown quote. Often-times these are $100,000 pieces of equipment that they aren't selling.
4. When I was looking for houses, I contacted a realtor about a 4-plex in the area. As we did the walkthrough, the realtor was mostly silent. When she did talk, she focused on the negatives of the house, like the fact that there was mold in the central heating/air system, and the insects. Maybe there's some hidden motivation there(like if the owners are paying her per month to show it to people), but either way there's some serious lack of hunger from the owners given that it's still on the market.
5. The previous owner of my duplex had tenants who had been living here 5 years on a de-facto month-to-month lease, at the same rent from 5 years ago. This meant that she was charging them 25% under fair market value in rent, simply because she was too lazy to research local rent values. She also put the house on the market at 20% less than other identical properties in the area had sold for that year. And this woman was a realtor of 30 years.
6. There are about 3 gyms in town. The first has insufficient lighting and only a smattering of ancient equipment. The second has also has poor lighting and too few machines or weights, and markets themselves as a "christian gym". The third, my gym, has good lighting and lots of weights/equipment, but has had a broken water fountain and leaking roof they haven't bothered fixing for the last 9 months. Every time I go in after a big rain, I expect to see 8-10 buckets catching drips throughout, and puddles of water where they've missed the leaks.
7. When I first bought my duplex, it came with a lawnmower man. Aside from upping the cost for me from $25/mow to $37.5/mow, he was 10 days late on his first mow. Then he asked me when the last time it was mowed because he "pretty much had to do a full month service on it". I fired him on the spot. (For those in drier parts of the world, you HAVE to mow every 10-14 days here.)
8. I found a local plumber with good ratings on angie's list to install a new sink for my tenants(the one they were using had worn completely through from decades of use). He would have had to turn off the water main to fix it. When I got back from work, I had no water pressure, and my water main was busted. I called him hoping it was a simple fix and he'd be willing to fix it up, since he would have been the only one near the main when it broke. It was a simple fix, but he accused me of using him for a dollar, and talked over me, wouldn't even let me finish a sentence. This was the owner of the company.
9. Just this last Saturday my girlfriend and I went to a local flea market to walk around. You wouldn't believe some of the stands at this thing. I probably saw 30 tables piled with crap I'd estimate to be worth less than $100 total. These people are spending their entire Saturday piling this crap into a vehicle, sitting in one place for 8 hours, and packing the rest up and taking it home for essentially minimum wage or less.
Stay hungry, guys and gals. Don't be like the people of Lagrange, GA.
Full disclosure: I don't actually live in Lagrange. This post is about a very similar town in Georgia.
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