A Tale of Two Grandmas
As Sir Richard Branson suggests, “to know if your business idea is any good, try it on your Mum.”
Imagine waking up and having no idea where you are. I’m not talking about a strange apartment after a night of binge drinking. The bed is familiar, and so is the carpet, the wallpaper and the tacky artwork hanging on the wall. But you can’t recall the city or the state. You’re not even sure of the time zone. Welcome to my life as a nomad…
Over the three years since graduation, I’ve lived on the road and up in the air. Don’t let George Clooney give you the wrong impression; my reality was much less Hollywood. The luxury planes, meticulously organized luggage and steamy romantic affairs were replaced by Southwest flights full of crying babies, carry-on bags overflowing with electronics and sweaty gym clothes, and late-night Skype sessions with my girlfriend over my sixth Chipotle meal of the week.
I travelled to small businesses across the country to teach roofing contractors how to use an online database to more efficiently manage scheduling, job costing, sales, and human resources. Over three years, I visited over 150 different companies in 40 states. At most companies, it was like trying to teach the ancient Egyptians to build the pyramids with cranes and bulldozers. The employees had limited or no experience with technology and had developed manual, hand-written processes that worked for decades. Imagine six reluctant employees huddled around my training presentation, projected on the back of some old blueprints taped to the wall of their sheet metal shop.
Nonetheless, I loved my job. Helping people see that the technology they so hate and resent can actually make their lives and work vastly easier and more pleasant was a thrill for me.
After two years on the road, life threw me a curveball. My mom’s mother, better known as my Bubba, was diagnosed with lung cancer. She changed my diapers, helped teach me multiplication and drove me to my sporting events and school dances. When I went to college, I saw her less often, only coming home for holidays and class breaks. When I graduated and started working, our visits were even less frequent, limited to an occasional phone call or holiday visit. After her diagnosis, my priorities changed.
For the next year and a half, among the flights, rental cars, hotels, projectors and contractor offices, I found more and more time to drive Enola, PA to sit with her at her kitchen table. We mostly just talked — the news, the weather, television shows, my childhood, her childhood, my life, her life. We laughed a lot. I will never hear another dirty joke without imagining Bubba laughing uncontrollably. If she had a good one, she rarely made it to the punch line — squealing with laughter before the rest of us even knew what was so funny.
We cried a little, too.
Shortly after she passed, I got another curveball. Greed and egos led to a change in management at my employer. As one of the first employees at the small startup, I pictured myself working there for the rest of my life. However, after a few weeks of internal chaos and unanswered questions, I realized I could no longer work for the company. I was devastated; I loved my job and could not imagine doing anything else. The subsequent weeks were filled with sleepless nights, tossing and turning, contemplating my future. Somehow, I wanted to continue to do what I love — educate individuals who were unfamiliar with technology.
More specifically, I wanted to start a business that trained older people to use technology to feel more connected to loved ones.
I knew exactly how to test-drive my idea. My dad’s 82-year-old mother, an absolute spitfire of a woman, lived two hours north of me, and I knew she missed her grandchildren terribly. A mother of five and widow for over 25 years, she lived alone and almost burst with excitement every time she saw one of her grandchildren.
When I called to ask her to lunch, I had to pull the phone away from my ear as she screamed, “Ohhhh yeah, you got it babycakes!”. Unfortunately, she was not as receptive to the iPad I tried to show her, or to the idea of using technology to stay in touch. Her youngest son had bought her a computer 10 years ago to email her as he travelled for work. “I told them to take it away! There were always things popping up that I didn’t want to see,” she told me. The computer got a virus, and that was the end of that.
I tried to assure her that technology had evolved, and I could teach her to use an iPad — a device recognized for its ease of use and for being safe from viruses. I was speaking Greek.
Eventually, I won her with an irresistible offer. Since I know that learning something completely new is a scary proposition for anyone, I agreed to let her teach my girlfriend and I ballroom dancing, if she let me teach her to use the iPad. That did the trick! A lifetime dancer (still goes dancing every Friday night,) she was so excited that I was willing to learn and finally gave in.
Knowing that I had to get her interested immediately, I instructed her how to video conference with my brother in Philadelphia via FaceTime. Even more animated than usual, she chatted with him for nearly 20 minutes. It was smooth sailing from there. She picked up on the navigation in no time.
My dancing was a different story. Rhythm nor grace is my strong suit, and my cha-cha showed it, looking more like a malfunctioning robot than a sexy Latin dancer.
Gram continued to find new reasons to use her iPad. She was frustrated that the local newspaper had reduced print frequency to three days a week and hated the small print. We downloaded an app for local and national news, customizing each with large font. She absolutely loved listening to John Pizzarelli on Pandora Radio. I encouraged my family to email pictures and taught her to save them into photo albums. We even started a private circle through Google + with my cousins, aunts and uncles. After three visits, she was completely addicted — reading the iPad every morning with her cup of coffee and every evening after dinner.
Since my first training with Gram, our startup has helped several older adults connect to loved ones. We partnered with a local college to host informational seminars, and our cause is spreading locally through word of mouth.
If I have learned anything during my short stint as an adult, it is that life can happen fast. The unexpected moments — the curveballs that inevitably occur — force us to recognize what is truly important. It’s strange to say, but I have to credit the losses of my first job and my grandmother with pushing me toward work that feels so right.
UPDATE — I first posted this article on my blog in May of last year. If you are interested in how the business turned out, check out my most recent update — My First Year as an Entrepreneur: An Exercise in Humility
