The Mutany

Ok, I know i promised "The Mutany" over a week ago and i jumped off onto other topics. My bad. My goal was to give you the highlights of Supreme Clientele from the opening through the present time...but as you see, i may veer off of the path from time to time. But hey, as i said, its my blog and i can do that. Now...."The Mutany"

As you know, on any ship, there's a one captain, a shipmate and rest of the crew. A mutany occurs when the crew is able to overcome the shipmate and form a union against the captain. This, in my oppinion is exactly what happened to me. Now, others may have their oppinions regarding what actually happened, what were the "real" motives, etc...but from my point of view, i saw a MUTANY. Admittedly, during the first year of Supreme Clientele, things were not perfect or ideal...hell, some days it looked down right dismal. I mean, what people have to realize is that we were a small business - start up. That titles says so much, but is so underestimated to many. what that says is that we have a greater chance of failure than we do of success. it says that many people will not patronize our business right away because word of mouth has not provided us with its service. it says that even on the best day...we are still learining to grow and recovering from what we don't know. everything is stacked against you and the only thing you have is your faith, your vision and hopefully a crew that will stick with you when things are tough. well,that's what gives way to mutany... when people get hungry and look at you as the reason they are not eating. when someone gets jealous and has a cancer-like affect on the rest of the team...AND when the captain assumes that his shipmate and crew are completely behind him. and honestly, this is the ONLY way a ship can move.... if the shipmate and crew are 100% behind the captain and his direction of the ship. when there's one who doubts...it spreads like the worst disease. and as we know, jealousy and misery are diseases. they cannot survive alone...they need to tranfer energy into other parties in order to continue existence. and these diseases are so powerful. they are so strong...because they present themselves as the TRUTH or as alternative to something good. when in fact, they are just the opposite.
I take full responsibility for the mutany among the supreme clientele ship. hear me say it....I TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY...as any good captain should. now, don't confuse this with me accepting blame, because i don't see that i did anything wrong. but i do understand where i could have done some things differently. but like we all know, hindsight is 20/20. who knew?
i take responsibility because i assumed they were all full, mature adults with individual minds...and who understood what situation they were in...a small business start up! I assumed that each of them had Supreme Clientele's best interest in mind, as i did. I assumed that they understood that we'd encounter some rain, a few storms and some inclimate weather....but we WOULD NOT SINK. i assumed they understood this. along with these naive assumptions....I assumed that they did not need to see me to do what was needed. I was not aware that my face and my pressence...even thought i wasn't cutting any heads....was needed that badly. Not that i was just coming in on saturday to collect booth rent...but from my perspective, i didn't want to be overbearing. i didn't want them to think i was standing over them. I wanted them to feel free to be creative without me watching their every move. Besides, the place was so small that when we DID get busy, i was just standing somewhere feeling like i was in the way. so all of this is what i'd do differently and why i take responsibility, not blame. and even though what may have been viewed as negligence on my part...we still could have made it. bottom line was, i had a crew of historically discontent people who did not have it within themselves to grow their own businesses. if you are unaware...in a booth rental situation, it is your responsibility to acquire, maintain and grown your clientele. its my responsibility to keep the place open, bills paid, clean and of course to try to market as much as possible for the entire salon. but again, we are in an infant stage...and everything is fragile. so the advertising budget was minimal if at all....hell it was coming out of my pocket and i did what i could. but if you read my first blog, u know that i was barely scrapping wooden nickels together at that point. so, now...(from what i can decipher now) the crew members were beginning to look at me like,"he's not putting butts in the seats for me" and "he doesn't care about the shop because he's not here enough". i'm sayin....who knew? and i would have thought that my shipmate would have pulled me to the side and alerted me of the discontentment...but that didn't happen. again, i assumed that they all had Supreme Clientele's best interest in mind. So, i began to notice that people were not coming to work as often as before. and even when they were there, there was no fellowship...just do hair and go home. whereas before, people would hang around and be a part of the atmosphere. i saw this out of my peripheral, but i couldn't see what was coming. i was so stressed out from just trying to maintain the financials of the business, i let the personnel issues sneak by me. now enters the cancer...the ONE element needed for any successful mutany, rebellion, overthrow or whatever you want to call it. for discretion's sake, i'll call this person CRISPUS ATTUCKS. if you don't know who that is, i won't tell you. you need to read your history book. Crispus was always the loud talking person in the shop...opinions more abundant than butt holes. Crispus made it his point to let everyone know as often as he could the he was "all knowing". and i'll admit, i fell for it too. i put trust in him because we had mutual friends. i thought he was a good guy. a friend of ours. (donnie brasco). turned out to be a dumski...a JAKE!
having had the opportunity to let things settle, i now know how crispus was talking about me behind my back...conspiring to overthrow my ship and disrupt my vision. i mean, what makes it so bad is that this cat was carrying a napsack when he came to supreme clientele. and when i say carrying a napsack, i mean that he had no place to work. he had no where to cut. he was out of work! dude called me in need of something right away. and i obliged. i was glad he'd fallen my way. he was mad nice with the clippers and he had mad clientele. dude's work was known around here and i had him. but what i know now is that he had his eye on my crown from the jump, sick that i pulled off, with no experience, what he couldn't seem to do with 15 years in the game. DONT HATE ME PLAYA...HATE MY SWAGGER!
ok, ok...back to the point. so i know now that this cat was telling people i was about to close when clearly i wasn't, tellin people that i'm not doing this or that...and i'm not even gone tell you bout how Crispus was lying about his affiliation. oh boy! so i opened my doors to him when he needed it. he became the anchor that i needed. i felt like joe torre and derek jeter. now that i think about it, the Nas joint, ETHER describes this situation. yeah...ETHER! so i don't know the details of how things worked themselves out...duh..its a mutany..not a corporate downsizing. but we got Crispus Attucks, who for some reason, is discontent...with the gift to gab and to sway weaker minds. Now, i'm not "saying" that he flat out just strong armed the crew into going along with the mutany...but i find it hard to believe that things were just that coincidental.
I get a phone call...rather a voicemail from Crispus like,"today is my last day." i'm like man, how cowardly is that...but more importanly, WHY? what was his beef? his clientele was good? what did i do to him? he clearly didn't want to to talk to me cuz he left a VM at damn 7:30 am. that was what got me heated. how he want out like dat. So, i go to the shop and now my shipmate like, "i'm leaving". whao....this is NOT a coincidence. something is happening here. next day, another crew member who strate up told me to my face, "i'm not leaving", said, "i guess you heard, we leaving". oh really...WE? so, yall leaving in packages now? so now you can imagine how i'm feeling...in one day i got 3 people who just decided to jump ship. i'm heated cuz i didn't see it comin. upset cuz i have to take it on the chin and be professional about it and disgusted cuz i'm thinking, how am i gonna pay the bills till i re-staff? the fourth person...i'll call this one BRUTUS, from Julius Ceasar. "et tu Brutae". LMAO... yo, on the real, i never knew that those boring english literature classes would ever come in handy. i hated reading Julius Ceasar....but i understood it tho. i understood what happened. and so, BRUTUS. the last one to jump. by this time, i already knew what Brutus was going to say so i just made it easy on him. like,"yeah...yeah..yeah...mmhmm...thanks." so, now in two days, i'd lost 4 of my 6 members and i was STUCK. i was beyond going back to the drawing board, hell there wasn't anything to draw. And how's this for coincidence...each of them went to the same salon. C'mon....you telling me that this wasn't planned? You telling me that a cancer didn't infect my staff? You telling me that everybody just happened to be feeling the same way and saw the same out? at the same time?
What had they done to Supreme Clientele? What had they done to my vision? There's no way i can run a business with the two remaining people when the bills were more than what the 7 of us could pay for. I guess the sensible thing to do is to call it a dream. close the curtains. rap it up.
But like Ali said when they thought Foreman would kill him..."THEY SAID THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE END MUHAMMAD ALI...WELL THEY MISJUDGED...THEY GOT IT WRONG".
and that is exactly what they did. They got it wrong. I would not close the doors. My faith would NOT waiver and my vision would remain as clear as ever. The TOUGH TWO who stayed showed me that Supreme Clientele was bigger than one individual and even a conspiring crew. At that point, Supreme Clientele became a movement! i felt as unstoppable as ever...even while looking into the eyes of defeat. I guess i felt like, "well...i've hit the bottom, there's no way to go but up. That bullisht just motivated me to be even better than i was and twice as good as they gave me credit for. I had the TOUGH TWO and myself. funny how i was comforted with that thought. i felt like the cancer was gone....the members that were affected by the cancer were gone and now....NOW i have a crew of dedicated shipmen. Sail On....Sail On!



As always, thank for following my journey.
Please leave me comments. keep them professional.


Peace,
Ramont


Next entry....The Second Coming....the building of the Supreme TEAM.