People sometimes ask me, “What does a a typical day in a gi business owner’s life look like? Is it really as cool as it sounds like? Do you get to sleep in late and train whenever you want?” Well, here you can read about a day in my life. You be the judge.
Monday. The day started off shitty. My son decided suddenly that he didn’t like Fruit Loops any more and asked for a Pop-Tart. Pop-Tart? What? I don’t have Pop-Tarts. I had just spent over four dollars on this extra huge family size box of cereal and he wants Pop-Tarts. Get outta here! My daughter was angry about something I did or did not do, can’t remember what it was. She is always angry. Both of them knew I had a lot of work to do so they got a yelled at before it was even 7:30 AM.
It was an extremely important day; we had to push out a new women’s gi design and time was ticking fast. I got my two designers on the phone and told them the usual, “Make me something good.” The designers mumbled something about direction, that they need direction. I was like, “What? You’re the designer, you know what I want. Make it!” They kept arguing with me and it really escalated because you know, I’m the boss here. They started suggesting the regular gi design ideas: samurai, octopus, skull and some other nonsense. So I yelled at them and called them morons, idiots, imbeciles and entry-level clip art artists among other things. I know that this always makes them work hard so I kept my tirade going for a good 10 minutes threatening to fire everyone if I didn’t get a design in the next hour.
Then I hung up the phone, got me a fresh cup of coffee and dove into Facebook. It’s always good to spend time on Facebook admiring other people’s lives. Some of my friends have such perfect lives. The food is AMAZING, the husband is the most AMAZING and the training is always AMMMMAZZZINGG! Damn it.
In about an hour I opened my email and guess what! There it was: THE email with an attachment. I knew I could squeeze a good design out of my employees! It was a picture of a carrot, an organic carrot to be specific. First I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not but the more I looked at it, the more it made sense. I’ve seen gis with all sorts of crazy designs so this is no different.
It will sell; I know it will. At this point I had nothing else so it was either a blank gi or the carrot. I went with the carrot. I stamped APPROVED on the design and thanked the designer for doing an outstanding job bringing my vision to life in such a vibrant manner.
It was a tremendously successful day. I felt accomplished and started counting the money I would be making when the new batch of gis drops. Did I train? No, I skipped that; grabbed a big bag of potato chips instead and plopped myself on the couch. Great day it was!
Happy April Fools Day!
