Just Another Day At the Office

Before I showed up to Medellin Bill had filled me in on the great business idea he had been playing with for the last several weeks. Saddles! “You mean like for horses?” I asked him at first? Yup, turns out Colombia is known for making high quality, hand-made leather saddles. “But I don’t know anything about horses or saddles” I told Bill. “That’s ok” he assured me, “neither do I.”

Bill is one of those guys you want to hang out with just so you can hear his stories. It’s been 5 years since he sold his commercial lighting business and he was ready to do something, anything again. It’s been at least 9 months since I put in an honest day of work, and I guess I was ready for the same. Bill had the entrepreneurial spirit, and I was all for playing apprentice. We’ve always had a great time hanging out together, probably because he reminds me so much of myself only 20 some years older, and I assume the same in the other direction. I was sure this would be no different.

So we spent the next two weeks visiting various saddlery shops to check out their stocks, learning about the shipping routes through the Carribean, discussing visa requirements with lawyers over three martini lunches and learning the right way, and the wrong way, to negotiate a contract in Medellin. We learned about the difference between fiber glass hulls versus wood, metal horns versus leather, and the thickness required to etch patterns on leather surfaces.

In our down time, which was fairly common, we argued about the usage of the subjunctive tense in Spanish, experimented with different footwork for performing the “Dile que no”, smoked dried out Cuban cigars, made several promises to quit drinking rum and comiserated in our tortured love lives.

With the recent news out about Fidel we decided we should try any get Bill’s half written travelogue about Cuba tidied up. Then we talked about how cheaply designer jeans could be made in Colombia and that somehow worked its way towards exporting and distributing a well known line of Colombian lingerie to the US.

Bill started to apologize at some point, “I don’t want to make it sound like we’re just throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, but…” Not to worry, I assured him. “Throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks is one of my favorite pastimes.”

We had both agreed early on that the whole point of this exercise wasn't just to make a bunch of money. Although, that would be nice of course. It was about financing a lifestyle. Well actually we went back and forth on it quite a bit. After about 45 minutes and half a cigar we agreed it was more like 50% about the lifestyle and maybe 30% about making money and a remaining 20% about just having something to do.

After three weeks we’ve gotten to the point where we have about 4 or 5 lines in the water. The plan now is to see which one, if any, of them gets a bite. I’m getting ready to continue my journey north, head to Santa Marta and find another beach to bask in. Maybe one of these projects will turn into something, maybe not, either way it certainly felt good to be something close to relatively productive again. I suppose that’s what you call hanging out with a good friend for 3 weeks.