Local Market Monopoly

Clarence Fisher: For about six months, I started every single day the same way. I walked out my back door, dragged a lawn chair to the middle of my backyard and sat down in it. By myself, I sat there and tried to talk myself into believing it was a new day. That was me. That is where I've been. All right. Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. It's Clarence Fisher and this is the Comeback episode. Yeah, it's been two years since the last episode. Well, the episode before this, 104, was with Jenna Harkreader. And I could have just started dropping new episodes and acting like nothing has happened, but I'm not going to do that. As we started coming out of the gate, I though, I need to let you know because you've rode with me for so long. I mean, here we are at 105 episodes, but you'd be sitting there going, okay, where have you been?
So I'm going to tell you, I'm only going to talk about this one time and then we're going to get back to work.
And if you don't care about where I've been, don't worry about it. There's something in here for you. Just stay with me because the middle of this story is about your business, not mine. Three years of COVID, I survived it all. I was careful the whole time. Actually, it was three and a half years. The whole time avoided everybody. My wife will tell you. My friends will tell me. I was the guy that, are you sick? Is your mama sick? Oh, your kid's sick? Your grandma's sick. Don't come around me. We had everything set up because of what we were going through, set up for my wife to be okay if I did not make it through COVID. That was the fear that I'd lived with for three, three and a half years. Then it was all over. And my guard came down. And guess what?
The first thing that I did after three and a half years of avoiding everybody is I went to a room full of kids and read to them on career day. I was the business owner for the career week. And I read for these kids and lo and behold, I caught COVID. But I got through it. I thought it wasn't so bad. And then some months later, I caught COVID again.
Then fast forward a few months, I caught something nobody could put a name on. Before this one, I was religiously walking 10, 12,000 steps a day, almost kind of obsessed about it. Three miles every weekend, minimum. I had a 5K coming up. I was training because I wanted to run the whole thing without stopping. Every single year I run the driller 5K. And every year I've been tracking how far I can run without stopping. It was just a personal thing. Well, what this turned into after that last sickness was one minute on the treadmill at one mile an hour and I couldn't breathe. I mean, it came right after. I had lunch with a buddy and then like a few days later, not saying it was him, a few days later, I couldn't get on the treadmill. I called my wife. My wife was out of town and I was telling her about this.
And she said, "Don't do the treadmill. Just wait." Because she knew I had a certain amount of steps that I needed to get every single day. Well, if you've ever trained for. I told you I was training for a 5K, not a marathon, but you know you don't want to miss a training day. And plus she was out of town anyway, right? I got on the treadmill anyway. I did the workout and pushed myself through it. And as soon as I got out of it, I knew that was a mistake. I barely made it back to the bed. I should have gone to the emergency room then, but I waited. She got home and she looked at me and she was like, she said, "You got on the treadmill didn't you?" I said, "Yeah, I did." But we made it through that night. Well, the next day I had a call and I got on Zoom and I couldn't make it through the call.
As soon as it got off, I went into the bedroom and I told my wife like, "I don't know what's going on." She looked at me and she said, "You need to go to the emergency room." So both of us are workaholics. Neither one of us wants to go to the emergency room either. But I mean, for her to take me, for me to go, it's just like, it's super serious. So we're negotiating. I remember on the way to the hospital. I said, "All right, just drop me off and then go finish what you needed to do and then you can come back later if I'm still there." I'm on slack the entire time I'm working. I'm in the waiting room. I'm working. They finally called me back. And about the time they're calling me back, I remember I was slacking Florence. And I said, "You're not going to believe this, but I can't do this anymore.
You have to take this." And then that was it. Over the course of three days, they tested me for everything. COVID came back negative. Flu came back negative. Never got a name for it. I still don't have a name for it. But when I came out of the hospital, my body was wrecked. I couldn't walk. I couldn't stay upright very long. But my body wasn't the scary part. That wasn't the real scary part. What tripped me out was my mind was gone.
I would get on a Zoom call and in 15 minutes, I'm talking gibberish. Never seen anything like it. I get off the call. I go lay down for the rest of the day. Every morning, out the back door, dragging that chair in the middle of my yard, sit down, try to tell my brain it is another day. Try to start again. The best words that I have for it, and I think Aman Rose from Purview Life, who has been a client for a long time, and we ended up being friends through that. Being able to call her and sit with her over lunch, she gave me the words for it. Because they deal with a lot of elderly people who are going through this. I couldn't feel the edges. I couldn't feel the edges of life. I couldn't feel the edges of reality.
When she said that, you can't feel the edges. And I thought, that's it. There are no edges. Everything is, it's just really hard to explain. It took about a month before I came clean with the team. I wasn't as present as I needed to be. And finally, as this thing wasn't clearing up and I'm dragging this chair, I came clean with the team. I said, "Hey, remember when I went to the emergency room? This is what has been happening and I don't know if I am going to make it through this." It was a sobering conversation. I told them they would be taken care of regardless and give it. I got to get up to them. They prayed for me. They said that they have it and they took it.
I finally, I got in to see a neurologist. And long story short, my recovery took a year and a half of getting my mind back. I thought I was fully recovered. I went to New York with a client and my mind had been coming back to the point to where we were just praise God for my team. I went on this trip and turns out my body was not ready. I didn't wear the right shoes either. Somebody needs to tell you about New York. But I can only get a few blocks and I had to take an Uber back to the hotel. But where I am now is mine 100% back.
Fitness is the piece that I'm still working on getting back, but my mind is back. And I realized for months I made almost no decisions and the business kept running. Kristine, Florence, if you've worked with us, you know Kristine, you know Florence, the whole team. They ran it without me. My buddy Paul, praise God for him. He was there every morning with me in devotional. Never missed. Kevin, you were there. My wife. I thought COVID was hard, but this was the hardest thing that we've ever been through. I did not plan for this.
We happen to have enough people, enough processes. Mike Cooch, I owe you for putting that in my head to have a process for anything that has to be done twice. I mean, that paid off. We had all these processes in place. Most owners don't have that. And they know it. I mean, think about this. If you got taken out tomorrow, does the phone still get answered? Do leads still get follow up up with? Does anybody know where the money is? I mean, all of this stuff is stuff that we have to take time and answer. I found out the hard way that my business could do without me. You don't want to find out the hard way.
This is the whole reason that this show exists. Sitting in that chair thinking this is it. This is the thing I spent three years dreading and it got me anyway. I remember there was a moment when things became clear to me that, Lord, if this is it, I'm okay. I am okay. I did all the things, like I say, to make sure that everybody's taken care of. And then there was a. You hear this all the time, but it literally was this peace. And then it became. 4 hear this all the time, but there literally was this peace. Like the fear went away. I stopped worrying about it.
I was sitting in the chair and I'm thinking, okay. If I'm thinking, okay, I'm yours. The next day, I'm out in the chair. The next day, I'm out in the chair. Nothing's happening though. And finally, I just started talking to him like, "Look, it's up to you. You can take me. But if I get back, I'm going for it." I got in trouble as a kid. I came back stronger. Court case. Jail for a little bit. Come back stronger. Addiction. Hit rock bottom. Come back. Stronger. I went broke. Came back. Built something stronger. Faced death.
And here we are. Faced death. And here we are. And here we are. Faced death. And here we are. There is one part that I'm not proud of. I disappeared. I disappeared off social. I disappeared off everything. If you were not in my inner circle, you had no idea this happened. My brothers and sisters did not have any idea this was happening for the longest before I shared it with them. My kids didn't know for the longest. Because my kids are adults. They're out of the house. What I learned about myself is when it gets real, I disappear. I'm the guy who would likely walk into the woods like an animal and just disappear. That's it.
And I'm saying that out loud, so I don't do that again. But you know, if I disappear now, check on me. But I think owners do the same thing in business. Things get hard, cast gets tight. They go quiet. They stop posting. They stop calling back. They don't show up on the block and the block forgets about them. I'm not going to do it again though, and neither should you. So what I did is I started getting healthier and healthier, better and better. We hired an operations manager, Shilpa, so glad you're on the team. Kristine is still here. Florence is still here. John is still here. We've got 15 people now touching work. Six full-time. We're going for it. I mean, we're building something great. And so stick around. We're back. New episodes. Every Thursday we've got guests that actually own and run successful local businesses.
It's just not marketing people, talking to marketing people about marketing things. I'm going to give you, as I always have, but now I'm even more motivated to give you the framework, everything out in the open. I am leaving it on the court, leaving it on the field, everything I know about owning your block. Nothing. I'm holding nothing back.
And you don't even have to root for me if you don't want to. I know you do though. Because you've come back. You've had setbacks and you've come back. You know what's about to happen. This is my comeback. Watch me own my block. This is my comeback. Watch me own my block.