Making Tech Work

About me

2006-07-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

How I got started in Primerica
•My background
•I grew up in a very working class family. My dad was a carpenter and my mom was a bank teller for St. Bernard Bank and later worked in the mail room for the Orleans Parish School Board.
•How I learned the value of investing
•What I remember most is that when I was a kid my dad had these envelopes in one of the drawer in the dresser. Each envelope was marked with whatever bill it was designated for and each week my dad put money in each envelope so that at the end of the month there would be enough to pay each bill. I also think there was an envelope for some special thing he might have been saving for like a new motor for the boat or something. In retrospect, this is important because it proves that my parent's were savers and not investors.
•My dad's company
My father started a construction company in the early 1980's and at the time it seemed like a great idea. The construction market was hot, there were new subdivision going up all over eastern New Orleans and unemployment was at an all time low. What we couldn't see was the oil bust, that ended up destroying the economy in the local area, was just over the horizon. This was the equivalent of investing in the technology sector in February 2000. To compound this, my dad knew a lot about construction but very little about running a business. With better business acumen he may have survived the fall but it would have been difficult. The economy fell apart, interest rates were still high but so was inflation, and people began moving out of the city, especially professionals. This caused his business to go under and not too long after our financial situation took a turn for the worst.
I had attended Catholic school for all of my school years and I was a freshman at Brother Martin when all of this happened. It just so happens that my academic performance that year mirrored the stock market decline of 2000-2004. The following year I had to attend public school and retake all of my freshman classes. I ended up dropping out of school and getting a GED at 15 years old.
•How this affected my education and educational opportunities
•Now career prospects for a 15 year old GED graduate are not great. I went to work with my dad and applied to the University of New Orleans. I was accepted the following year but for whatever reason at that time you could not get financial aid unless you had registered for the draft and I was too young to register. My parent's could not afford to pay for my tuition so it was back to construction. Oh, don't be too impressed with my acceptance. I believe UNO's admissions criteria at the time was a pulse.
•I finally attended with the help of financial aid when I was 19 and promptly failed with a GPA of 1.8. I went back at 22 and got straight A's my first semester.
•My job history
During my college days at worked a lot of part-time jobs most of which I hated. I believe in my entire life I have had something like 14 or 15 jobs. I don't even remember them all. It is safe to say that most of them sucked and did nothing to prepare me for Primerica.
•The job at American Express Financial Advisers
I remember that I was invited to interview with AEFA by email because of a resume I had posted on Monster.com. Now I lost my invitation, I think I deleted it because I felt I was unqualified, and later my girlfriend got one too. Well I used hers and went to the interview. I believe it involved some kind of computerized test and then you waited for a response from the company. I was called back in for an interview and had to take a written test and then if I passed that I would be called in for a role playing interview that would be the final test. All this took about 12 weeks to transpire. When I was finally called in I was told that I scored off the charts on the test and despite my educational background, or lack thereof, and I was being offered a position. I gladly accepted.
•Life at AEFA
The first 12 weeks at American Express were spent studying for the NASD Series 7 Exam and the Louisiana Life, Health & Accident Insurance exam. I left training for a week to get married and go on my honeymoon. This was probably the least stressful time in my whole employment there. We also went to AEFA's headquarters in Chaska, MN which is about 30 minutes outside of Minneapolis.
The training in Chaska was supposed to teach us about “how to be advisers”. It turned out to be about “how to survive long enough to become an adviser”. Most of the training was based on Daniel Goleman's groundbreaking work on “EQ” or emotional intelligence or how to handle the ups and downs of working in a commission based business. It was very good training but I don't think that I was ready for it at the time. I didn't make my benchmark numbers required and quit before I was most likely going to be fired. There is a much longer story there but this is not the time for it.
•The article in Home Based Business magazine (I think!)
After I left American Express I need a job so I went to work in the Oakwood mall selling phones for Bell South Mobility (now Cingular Wireless). Every day for lunch I would go to Waldenbooks and check out the business books and the current magazines. Well in December of 2000 I stumbled across an article about Primerica in Home-Based business magazine. I was so intrigued by the article that after finishing it I opened the phone book and called the nearest Primerica office asking how I could get involved. Dominick answered the phone that day and invited in for an interview. I joined the company the following January.

•Katrina and it's affect on my business
I have been part-time for the most part since I joined back in 2001 and I have held various other full and part-time jobs during that period, most recently with Home Depot.
When you got to work at Home Depot they tell you the real test as an employee is working during the hurricane season before an evacuation.
•For those of you that don't know this is when thousand's of idiots wait until the last minute to go to Home Depot and all want to buy the cheapest plywood possible to board up there windows. Well home Depot inevitably sells out of cheap plywood and before long the only thing left is ¾ inch cabinet grade hardwood sheets for like $50/sheet and people say they are price gouging. No you were just STUPID and waited until the last minute. Also if you had saved the sheets from last year and labeled them for each window you could just put up and go in a less than an hour.
Well working at Home Depot after a major hurricane has hit the area is not just a test, it's graduate school. I didn't return to the area until 28 days after Katrina hit and it was CRAZY. We were working open to close every day, we were always out of stock for everything and just wanted out. About this time I decided to go full-time.
I had been contemplating it the entire time I was evacuated but the reality of it was here and I decided if ever there was a time it was now.
•My decision to go full time
I quit Home Depot went full-time and it was a disaster. Now it was a disaster of my own making but nonetheless a disaster. I made no money for months. This was most likely for lack of trying and when I did try I was awful. I didn't use any scripts when calling, I gave up at the first or second objection when I did call, I didn't prospect nearly enough and I kept looking for problems rather than opportunities. I realized there was a problem and decided to step back and re-evalute the situation.
•Introspection
I decided to look at what I was doing wrong, why I was doing it wrong, and if I should be doing it at all. I realized I was unhappy and I didn't know if it was because I wasn't making any money or because I should be doing something else. I spent some time exploring careers and looked back over my lifetime and tried to decide what I really enjoyed. I came up with idea that I might want to be a lawyer.
•Lawyers
I read a few books namely Law School Confidential and Planet Law School II. I also interviewed a few lawyers and discovered that a lot of lawyers don't like being lawyers and most of them if they had the chance to do it over again wouldn't. This was not going well. I decided that before I could go to law school I would have to complete my undergraduate degree and then decide. This leads me to.....
• My current educational dilemma
Whether I want to complete my undergraduate degree and then continue on to law school. Also, whether I want to go to a Tier 1(Tulane), Tier 2(LSU or Loyola), or Tier 3(Southern Law Center) school. This boils down to several factors mostly notably cost and whether you believe that school choice is a determinate factor in your success and/or job prospects. There is also the deeper question of “Why do I want to go law school?”

Getting back to business

2006-07-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Well now that my move is mostly a memory it's time to get back to work. I have so much to do. I have to update my website www.christopherjohnston.net, write this post to my blog, make about a hundred phone calls and thoroughly get back in the making money mode.
I have been so preoccupied with finding a new place and then moving into that place that I don't think I went on more than a handful of appointments in all of June. It's really time to get back on the ball and help some families. This weekend I had some time to be reflective and really consider how lucky I am to have been exposed to this opportunity called Primerica. It truly has changed my life in a myriad of ways not the least of which is by introducing me to two of the most awesome couples in the business today. The first two are Dominick and Stephanie Puipuro who I see on a almost daily basis. Dominick has trained and mentored me in the business and truly had an impact on my family's life. The second couple are David and Jill Landrum of Ridgeland, Miss. David and Jill are two of the nicest people I have ever met and they have allowed me to the see what can be accomplished when good people, from very modest backgrounds work hard toward a common goal. They have given back to their community in ways that you cannot even imagine and more than that they have empowered their teammates with the knowledge of how they can do the same and then given them all the support and training necessary to make it happen.
Over the next few days I am going to spend a little bit more time explaining what Primerica is and how I got involved.

Moving finally done!

2006-07-07T13:55:00.000-07:00

Well the moving is complete. I have finally moved into my new apartment but I still dont't have internet, phone,or television. I found out today that I cannot get DirecTV installed at my apartment because I don't have permission to connect to a part of the building necessary to get line of sight. So I had to break through my reluctance to get Cox cable and check out their website. Their prices were fairly reasonable if you bundled services so I bit the bullet and bundled everything, television, internet, and phone. I'm actually getting an increase from 1.5M to 4M download and from 256k to 512k upload, I'm getting all the features on my phone, caller ID, call waiting, call forward, call return, call block, etc, and I'm adding a movie channel that I did not have previously for about the same I was paying before. The bonus for me is that I pay one bill now instead of two. The only thing that sucks is that I can't have any of it installed until the 19th. Well, I guess I will pull out the rabbit ears and watch the local channels until then.

Thank you Ernie the Attorney!

2006-06-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

I want to thank my friend Ernest who posted Help a guy find an apartment in Metairie on his blog Ernie the Attorney. Ernest is an attorney and all around great guy who escaped the corporate life and went out on his own after Katrina.
Many peoples live were changed by Katrina, my own included. Many of us realized what was truly important in our lives. I guess to the former owners of my building that was the almighty dollar. I thought I was lucky and escaped the damage done by Katrina. I didn't realize that nine months later I would feel her full effect. For those of you that are interested, below is the the exact wording of the letter left stuffed in my doorframe.

(beginning of letter)

June 8, 2006

Mr. Christopher Johnston

Apt. X

XXXX Zenith St.

Metairie, LA 70001

Mr. Johnston:

This letter is to inform you that LaCour Bros., LLC has accepted an offer to purchase the property located at XXXX Zenith St., Metairie, La.

As part of the purchase agreement I am required to notify you that you must vacate your apartment within 30 days of the receipt of this letter.

Sincerely,

R.H. LaCour

LaCour Bros., LLC

By R.H. LaCour

(end of letter)

Below is a portion of a letter I sent to Mr. Bill Capo, the Action Reporter at WWL TV.
---
Now several of us were on month to month leases so, as I understand, the owners are legally able to do this awful act. But given the current rental climate in the Metro area it will be near impossible for us to find comparable quarters in the same price range and certainly not in 30 days. Well, several of us contacted our property manager, Patty Lemaire-Mire with Prudential Gardner, and she informed us that she was unaware of the letters. One of the other residents of the property told me that Ms. Mire told her that if the building was sold she is no longer the manager and we should not contact her anymore. My wife called one of the owners, Mr. Owen J LaCour, Jr., the general agent and managing partner of LaCour Bros.,LLC (from the Secretary of State Corp Database), and who we write our rent checks to, and left a message asking him if we could possibly get some more time. Well he returned my wife’s call and said he was unaware of who was purchasing the building and we would have to discuss our problem with new owner. Then he said something interesting, he mentioned that the new owner needed several units for themselves and that they could be having problems securing insurance. This seems like a lot of information to know if you don’t know who is buying the building.

I am hoping that you might be able to help us. We have several single mothers in the building who are working hard to provide for their children and they are being kicked out on the street, one with an existing lease that they are not willing to honor. We have a lady who lost her home of 22 years in Lakeview and moved into our building with her 19 yr old daughter and now they will be forced from their home again. Across from me is a single mother who was planning to enter nursing school in the fall to provide a better future for her and her daughter and that may be impossible now. Please help us in anyway you can. I have added my contact information and the contact information for several of the people named in this email to assist you in your research.

Christopher M. Johnston
cmjohnston@gmail.com

Patti LeMaire-Mire
4140 Williams Blvd.
Kenner, LA 70065-3415
504-443-6464 work
504-874-7400 mobile
985-674-8940 home
PMire@PrudentialGardner.com

Owen J. LaCour, Jr.
LaCour Brothers, LLC
3113 Palm Vista Drive
Metairie, LA 70003
504-888-1014 home

Time to find a new home!

2006-06-09T18:38:00.000-07:00

I want to tell you what happened today. As some of you know I was planning to return to college and major in Computer Science. Well I went down to UNO today to meet my advisor and that went well and I was feeling pretty good. I also got a call that my car that was in the body shop for the past month was finally finished and I could pick it up, more good news. I got home and there was a letter shoved in my door frame with my name and apartment number on it. Well I opened it and found out I was being notified to vacate my apartment. Then the KICKER, I have 30 days to do it.

Apparently the owner of my building has decided to sell the building and the new owner does not want to renew the leases of any of the current tenants. The sick, awful truth is that they are legally within their right to do this and there is very little I can do about it. The new owners will probably come in and renovate the units, double the rent and take advantage of the situation that Katrina has created. There is one lady in my building who lost her home of 22 years to Hurricane Katrina and was forced to move into an apartment. Now she is being kicked out of her apartment so that the new owners can gouge people on rent. I really have no idea where I am going to live or how I am going to find a new place in only 30 days.

Well pray for me and if you know of a 2 or 3 bd apartment in Metairie for less than $700/mth email me!

2006-06-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

6.5.2006 - VIDEO: A classic office prank goes horribly awry...

Okay, who has not done this at one point in their career? Its a good thing Security was watching or the poor guy might still be there.

New Orleans Second Chance: The Seven Dwarfs

2006-04-17T21:25:00.000-07:00

New Orleans Second Chance: The Seven Dwarfs

The Seven Dwarfs

2006-04-17T20:53:00.000-07:00

I really feel embarrassed by the disaster played out on national television tonight. We had an tremendous opportunity to show that we had a plan for moving the city forward and recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Instead we showed a bunch of petty people concerned with placing blame on someone else and using race as card to get black voters. Let's move on with a plan to rebuild the city stop blaming everyone for what went wrong.
Everyone with a television can see what went wrong, placing blame is not going to change that. I'm watching the debate on Tivo right now and I just noticed an creative political move. When candidates could ask each other questions it was awfully smooth of Mitch Landrieu to use Rob Couhig to disparage Mayor Nagin. I also think that Peggy Wilson has lost her mind. I am a very proud Republican and I am disgraced that she represents my party. I am big believer in lowering taxes and allowing people to keep their money but it is unrealistic to expect that we can rebuild New Orleans as a tax free city.
Now I want to let you know thatI like Virgina Boulet. I think she has some good ideas and I believe she came to this race with good intentions. I also think her plan to move UNO downtown is the dumbest thing I heard this campaign, except for Mayor Nagin'"Chocolate City". I attended UNO and the entire timeI was a student there the number one student complaint was lack of adequate parking. UNO is a a commuter college, this means that there will be a lot of part-time students who need to get on and off campus to get to their jobs. It is the only cost effective college education solution for a large segment of the Greater New Orleans population.
The university has also recently invested heavily in improvements to the campus. For instance they had private developers come in and build apartments for student housing, the College of Business has recently moved into a beautiful new building, the new alumni center was completed in the last two years and I believe there are plans to improve the department of Drama and Communications.

Levee breaks

2005-12-15T17:23:00.000-08:00

The recent congressional hearing about the evacuation and subsequent flooding due to the levee breaks was a joke. I understand that it is important to diagnose what went wrong so we don't make the same mistakes again. The problem is that much more energy is being spent on looking for a person to blame rather than looking for a solution. If we don'( do something before June 1st what are we going to do when the next hurricane comes. Do you want to do this all over again? Do you want your newly remodeled house flooded again? How about your FEMA trailer?
I urge you to contact your elected officials by email, phone, postal mail, in person if possible and let them know that you will not accept anything less than Category 3 protection by next June and a plan to implement Category 5 in the future. I honestly believe that for a variety of engineering and geological factors true Category 5 protection is impossible or at least improbable anytime in the next 20 to 30 years if ever. I will post more about this later.

Chris
check out my 2 blogs at http://wallofwealth.blogspot.com
and
http://katrinarecovery.blogspot.com

2005-12-04T17:22:00.000-08:00

2005-12-04T17:21:00.001-08:00

mus tbe Uptown

2005-12-04T17:21:00.000-08:00

2005-12-04T17:20:00.001-08:00

2005-12-04T17:20:00.000-08:00

rebuilding the city

2005-12-04T17:18:00.001-08:00

2005-12-04T17:18:00.000-08:00

2005-12-04T17:17:00.000-08:00

Check out the boat with debris in front of the house

2005-12-04T17:16:00.000-08:00

2005-12-04T17:15:00.001-08:00

2005-12-04T17:15:00.000-08:00

2005-12-04T17:14:00.000-08:00

The only thing missing is the water and the media

The Blue Roof Village at Lakeside Mall

2005-12-04T17:13:00.000-08:00

LA Nature Center

2005-12-04T17:12:00.000-08:00

broken patio door in what use to be the library

2005-12-04T17:02:00.001-08:00

I don't think this will be going anywhere too soon.

2005-12-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

garage

2005-12-04T17:01:00.000-08:00

admin bldg

2005-12-04T16:58:00.001-08:00

More Greenhouse

LA Nature Center

2005-12-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

The Greenhouse

LA Nature Center

2005-12-04T16:55:00.000-08:00

Trees down over the back door out to the trails.

LA Nature Center

2005-12-04T16:52:00.000-08:00

Two National Guardsmen I met while I was there.

LA Nature Center

2005-12-04T16:51:00.000-08:00

Trees down over the boardwalk to the entrance.

LA Nature Center

2005-12-04T16:49:00.000-08:00

Waterline at back of building, behind the amphitheater.

LA Nature Center

2005-12-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

Broken skylight on back of building

Louisiana Nature Center Post-Katrina photos

2005-12-04T16:43:00.000-08:00

This is a photo taken about a week ago at the amphitheater at the Louisiana Nature Center.

Donald Powell is an idiot

2005-11-29T16:11:00.000-08:00

It's not enough that we can't get the local officials to come up with one concise plan to rebuild the city but now the AP reports that Donald Powell, the top White House advisor on hurricane relief, has not determined whether the federal government should pay to improve the city's levees. Isn't it interesting that after the storm the President came to town and stood in Jackson Square and said we would rebuild New Orleans "higher and better". I guess that meant we would build it higher and better without federal help. We should build it just like Holland to a once in 10,000 year event standard and tell the federal government to bill it against our oil royalties.

2005-11-27T20:19:00.000-08:00

now there is something you don't see at the zoo everyday

2005-11-27T20:17:00.000-08:00

bored

2005-11-27T20:16:00.000-08:00

more pics at the zoo

2005-11-27T20:14:00.000-08:00

Pictures taken at the recently opened Audubon Zoo

2005-11-27T19:14:00.000-08:00

Coconut Beach post-Katrina

2005-11-27T19:11:00.000-08:00

Bucktown Bridge post-Katrina

2005-11-27T19:07:00.000-08:00

water still in the streets behind the London Ave. canal break almost two months after the hurricane

2005-11-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

London Ave. canal break most likely responsible for flooding my parents house

2005-11-27T18:59:00.000-08:00

Old Coast Guard base at Lakefront

2005-11-27T18:58:00.000-08:00

what use to be the entrance to Jeagers

2005-11-27T18:57:00.000-08:00

17th street levee break

Processing New Orleans mail after Katrina

2005-11-24T09:12:00.000-08:00

Processing New Orleans mail after Katrina
Originally uploaded by ernieattorney.

I got this fron the Ernie the Attorney weblog. Sorry I don't have the address handy.

Politics as usual

2005-11-23T17:43:00.000-08:00

This current political administration, from the governor on down, need to be replaced. The media, the federal government and the public are looking for a coherent, unified recovery plan to come out of Louisiana. This special session that has achieved little more than a four day tax holiday is an example of what I mean.
I believe that the current group of politicians are more concerned with power plays and partisan politics than with fixing the damage caused by Katrina. We need a regional levee board with strict minimum requirements for appointment to that board. A good start would be a bachelor's or preferably a master's degree in geology or engineering and 5 years experience in coastal restoration and/or levee design and construction. We should ask Shea Penland at the University of New Orleans to be the first member of the new board.
We need a comprehensive coastal restoration plan. Every Christmas we put our trees out on the curb to be used for coastal restoration and we enough tree branches and debris to fill four Superdomes and what are we doing with it? Why can't we put that out in the marsh?
We need to totally overhaul the Orleans Parish School system. The charter school program is a great start but we need legislation to castrate the power of the Orleans Parish Teachers Union. Prior to OSHA and US Labor Dept unions were necessary to protect workers. I believe they have outlived their usefulness. They are too often powerful political machines that are monuments to inefficiency. They keep companies from remaining competitive in the global economy and in most cases contribute to outsourcing.

2005-11-22T17:59:00.000-08:00

Taken at my parents house in Gentilly that was destroyed by Katrina.

My Katrina Blog

2005-11-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

I know that there are probably hundreds of other Katrina blogs out there and I add mine to the list. I just need a place to express my views about the recovery and what is being done right and what is being done wrong. I apologize in advance for the brevity of some of my post as they will be posted from my Blackberry.
I will try to make these post timely and provide links to other online information that I believe to be useful. I will also offer my opinion on what others can do to make a difference. The first recommendation is:
1. Contact your elected officials and let them know what you feel they should do to rectify the situation that we now have to deal with in New Orleans.