The Day Before it Started

Finding a start date to anything is very tough when you really start to think about the backstory that got you to that point. On March 26, 1999 (The day before my 29th Birthday) I recieved a call from the owner of Wreckless Abandon. Wreckless was a stop motion animation company that I freelanced for as the head of CGI for 2 years (we had 2 -6 people in the dept at any one time). WA was located in East Granby Ct (Not the mecca of stop motion animation but next to an airport with Fed Ex Drop off and the owners house). I worked 4 days a week at WA often sleeping at co-workers houses, the motel 6 or the pullout couch in the loft that was the CGI Dept. I only worked 4 days a week because East Granby was 3 hours away from my house in Newmarket, NH and my wife and I hadn't made the leap to moving our family so far from our family support system in NH. (our older 2 girls have epilepsy and required frequent hospital stays).
Back to my point. Mark B called me and said that they were laying off the 6 people that were left at the company and sticking with a 4 person crew (the 2 brothers/owners an assistant and one other if i remember correctly) The layoff was due to the effort to pull in some really big jobs and the turn around time of pulling these jobs in house is very long. As furrious as I was I understood. The 2 brothers had basically accepted me as their 3rd brother. I was able to see both sides of all the arguments (discussions) the CEO was always Black and White about his decisions and how things had to be done. The CCO was always White and Black. The 2 were almost always taking steps towards the same idea, solution, or answer but since they spoke 2 different languages they never listened to each other. I usually found myself moderating these discussions. Sometimes I was asked to refrain from commenting but sfter a while the 2 understood that I saw the world in levels of grey and I helped each of them to see what was going on and they if they took a breath and listened to each other that they were talking about the same things just from different angles.
In working at WA and being privy to some of the more complex business decisions, HR conversations, and creative meetings. I believe that these 2 years of tireless hours fo work and commuting were the foundation of what to do and what not to do if I was to ever start my own company.