Gone Big Fishing

A story of entrepreneurship, freedom, and fishing...

Without question, I owe everything to my mother and my father equally. My mother is incredible — raising three sons, always there for us, taking care of everything, going on incredible trips… she was the Chief Executive Officer of our family. I am my mother’s son. I have her humor, her silliness, and fun-loving attitude. But when I turned 36 this year, it hit me: I am also my father’s son. Professionally speaking, I owe more to his influence than I think he knows. This essay is a thank you to them both, and the interview below is a dedication to my father and entrepreneurship itself. It’s two interconnected stories — his journey as a business owner… and an amazing record-breaking fish — a classic never-gets-old story made possible only by the freedoms of being in your own business.

I wrote this because I believe a lot of entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners might enjoy reading it — especially young fathers like me. It’s helpful to learn of someone who started on an entrepreneurial path a few decades before us. It can be entertaining too. No matter where you start in life, anyone can achieve personal freedom and wealth — financial or, more importantly, family. It turns out my father thought about a lot of the same things in his 30s as I find myself pondering in my 30s. Perhaps some things will resonate with you too.

You’ll like it even more if you like to fish.

Introduction…

My father started in the construction business in the early 1970s building decks and hanging storm doors. Over 50 years, he’s built and developed all sorts of incredible properties and is still doing it. He’s won a National Contractor of the Year Award and over a dozen regional and state awards. At peak complexity of his business in the 1980s/90s, he had a business partner, upwards of 50 employees, and $15 million in annual sales. They built large luxury homes, commercial buildings like retail stores and car dealerships, and occasional residential subdivisions and small office parks. In 2000, he and his partner moved in different strategic directions. My father rebranded and reincorporated the construction operation and downsized to an asset-light hybrid GC/CM model specializing in luxury homes, remodeling, and smaller commercial projects. All while he and my mother raised a family of three boys — with all its requisite chaos and challenges.

He is purely self-made. He came “from nothing” in a financial or business sense. I think he might look back at certain aspects of his business or life that didn’t fall exactly his way… like any other business owner… but to me, he is a man who has achieved unsurpassed wealth. It may not be the kind of grandiose, superficial financial wealth young entrepreneurs dream about today (my father is not on a beach somewhere living off dividends… nor would he even want to be), but he built a business that funded an incredible life for his family, raised 3 successful men, has 3 beautiful grandchildren, and gets to travel the world almost routinely these days while managing multiple construction projects simultaneously. I think any one of us would chose this outcome in our 60s, 70s, and beyond. It is the definition of true wealth.

Tool quality… and why I’m thankful

My father was 36 when I was born — first of three boys. I have a five-year head start (I was 31 when our oldest arrived), but we’re essentially walking the same path separated by 30-40 years — fathers building futures for our families while figuring out how to pay for it all. He got married, had 3 boys, and has worked mostly in the construction world. I got married, have 2 boys, and have worked mostly in the financial world. He started a business at 23. I started a business at 33. The biggest difference, ironically, is that I had much better tools. This, of course, is true only in a figurative sense (he has the best actual tools). What I mean is: I had the privilege of growing up in a stable and safe household of upper-middle-class means — the first born to a successful small business owner and an active fun-loving mother.

My father was the 4th-born after 3 sisters to a furniture salesman and a baby nurse who emigrated from Ireland. Two of my father’s sisters contracted polio shortly before he was born and grew up permanently disabled physically (he was born in an isolation hospital). My mother was the middle-born among 7 kids to a Teamster truck driver (a one-million-mile recipient) and a homemaker. I went to a private high school and graduated with honors. My father barely graduated public high school. He was the classic rebellious teenager in the 1960s… an M80-lighting, beer-drinking, treehouse-in-the-woods-building, car-crashing, motorcycle-riding borderline vagabond. His relationship with his father was somewhat distant compared to the one we have — perhaps owed to being a 4th child late in his father’s life and having had to care for his two daughters. And my father’s grandfather was an alcoholic who abandoned the family in the early 1920s. Meanwhile, in stark contrast to all of this… my parents, thanks to their parents’ sacrifices, were much better situated and prepared for us three sons.

So, my better tools were social and family stability, reasonable financial means that afforded a great education, and the countless lessons learned from watching my father grow a business on his own terms that funded our entire lifestyle for decades. There was no corporate influence in my family, even extended family. That's not atypical of large Irish-Catholic families living in blue-collar enclaves in the shadow of New York City. As a result, my schema had been stitched and sewn with concepts of personal discretion, control, and entrepreneurship... a blue-collar swagger that's hard to define... something I didn't fully appreciate until I aged into the modern corporate and financial world. I was a top-performer, but I was also a squeaky wheel.. a rebel of the roll call.. a heretic of the handbook. In 2015, a behavioral assessment concluded that I was "ingenious and venturesome and will become restless and dissatisfied if required to work under close control or to do work which is routine or highly structured." Yikes.

I was always moving.. never comfortable in rigid, corporate, bureaucratic settings. This is what drove me to take professional risk, but the confidence to take those risks came from the belief that I could “always just go work in the family business." Putting the actual practicality of this aside, the aura of the family business -- just its very existence -- was like a Get-Out-Of-Jail card for me. It was Super Mario star power. It was my psychological safety net. I could always join the family business.. or hell, I could just start my own business. My father showed me.

Setting the scene…

It’s summer 2023, about 5 o’clock. The whole family is grilling, eating, and drinking on the porch of our beach rental in Seaside Park, New Jersey. We’ve got a chill playlist going on Spotify. The kids and cousins are playing. In one week, my family and I will have relocated to Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We’re all talking about whatever and my dad is in story-telling mode. For some reason, I decided to hit record on my iPhone and start asking questions.

The Interview…

KL: Dad, what are all the jobs you’ve had… where you’ve worked for somebody else?

JCL: Not many. Well in high school I worked for ChemSpray. I worked for Martin Paints. I had a job driving cars from one dealership to another… we’d drive from New Jersey through the tunnel to Manhattan. That was a fun job. I had a paper route when I was 14. But when I got out of high school I worked for a local builder… started as a laborer with him.

KL: How old were you?

JCL: I was 19 or 20, but then I traveled a lot – ▊▊▊▊ and I took that trip to California.. hung out there for a while. Colorado. Texas. Then I came back and I just started my own business. I was in my early 20s.. I didn't have anything official, I just worked for people and they paid me, I had no company, I just worked for myself.

KL: But didn't you work for the Union at some point?

JCL: I did work for a union, yeah, but just for one summer.

KL: And when did you live in New Orleans? Weren't you working as a carpenter down there?

JCL: I spent about four to five months down there. I went to New Orleans a lot because we had a place to go. It was a big thing in town.. we’d all go down.. have about 20 of us down there. I've been to, like, 9 Mardi Gras not even exaggerating. We went 9 years in a row.

KL: And this is all before you came back and started your own business?

JCL: No, we had Brotherhood Construction going on at that point [that was his company in the 70s-90s]. I was partnered with ▊▊▊▊▊, though, before I was with ▊▊▊▊.

KL: That was Brotherhood or Sunrise?

JCL: Oh Sunrise! That was with ▊▊▊.

KL: That was your first company, right?

JCL: Sunrise Construction, yeah.

KL: So back then, did you incorporate these businesses… or was it very informal and mostly cash?

JCL: Yeah pretty informal. I actually got screwed on my first job. So, ▊▊▊ was an ambitious guy but not really a great carpenter. He was more of a businessman. We were young. We broke up because I was doing all the work. He was, like, my helper and I'm doing all the work. I'm giving up half the money. I thought, hey I don't even need this guy, I can make all the money myself. So, we broke up. This was 1972-73. Then we incorporated Brother Construction in 1975. But we worked a year or so before we even did that. I graduated high school in 1970, so I was working on my own business again, like, almost right away.

So anyway, ▊▊▊ was dating this girl and her brother was a lawyer. He wasn’t much older than us, and he had just started his practice.

So he wanted us to fix up his office, panel it and put some ceilings up. So we did all the work and had given him a price for 600 bucks. Then at the end of the job, he gives us a partnership agreement instead of paying us.

KL: A partnership agreement?

JCL: Yeah between me and ▊▊▊. We’re like “we don’t want a fuckin partnership agreement, we want to get paid”. We didn’t ask for a partnership agreement. We went to get paid and he says ”Hey instead of paying you, I drew up this partnership agreement for you guys”. I was probably one of the first people this lawyer screwed in business.

▊▊▊ and I were only partners for about 6 months anyway.. did a few jobs.. then we broke up.

KL: Then you were going to open a florist or something?

JCL: Yeah we did have a florist for a while. Me, ▊▊▊▊, and his mother. Remember that old antique cash register that was in the basement? That was from the florist. We took the money we were making from Brotherhood and bought a florist. We were trying to diversify a little bit. We had his mother running it because she was actually a trained florist. The business was doing OK. I mean, I think it would have been good — I think she would have had a decent salary — but it wasn't enough for 3 partners. And it was down here somewhere, down the shore.

I used to have to come down on weekends and nights to deliver fuckin’ flowers.

*laughter*

KL: How old were you at this point?

JCL: This was like 1977.. so 25 or 26.

KL: OK so what happened with the florist?

JCL: We just closed it. Got rid of it. Closed it up.

KL: What did you pay for it?

JCL: I don't remember. I think we just kind of broke even on the whole thing. I don't think we really lost any money.

KL: And then what about that light bulb franchise you were looking at one point?

JCL: Batteries. Batteries Plus. Yeah we ended up not pursuing it. I don't know if that was a risky business or not. We were always looking at stuff like that, which is good, but we decided we were better off just doing what we do. I was better off doing what I know.

The other thing is too… I like what I do. I don't like delivering fuckin’ flowers. I don’t want to sell batteries behind a counter. And you buy the business or the franchise, the building, the infrastructure, and then you hire somebody… at the end of the day, what are you making? An extra 300 bucks a week? It ain’t worth it.

When we were Brotherhood, we were probably doing about $5,000,000 a year in sales, typically.

And then we tried to bump it up and hire salespeople… and we’d be doing $15 million a year in sales.

And my salary went up 10%……

*laughter*

So we tripled our volume and I made like 10% more. We had to hire more people. We had to hire engineers. We had 11 people in the office dealing with the books and all the bullshit, the lawyers. If you think you triple your volume, you're going to triple your bottom line, no. Because you’ve got to invest in more infrastructure.

KL: But if you got to a higher and stable revenue run rate at some point…

JCL: Sure… well for about five years, our overhead was $1 million plus a year. 11 people in the office. Look, you know, we did have a lot of good years.

KL: What was the most money ever made in a year?

JCL: Probably 400, maybe 350. This was back in the 90’s.. definitely before the 2000s. I would always make in the 200s consistently.

KL: Did you ever get, like, depressed in any bad years? Did you ever think about going to work for somebody else?

JCL: No… you know, Kev, knock on wood, I never had a bad year. I never got depressed about the job, and I never wanted to work with anybody else. We would have some one-off issues like any business.. legal issues.. clients not paying.. but you know, you guys grew up, there was never any day when you had to eat spaghetti instead of steak. We never had to take you guys out of school. I've been lucky, never had a bad year. Even with COVID, we were super busy. We had all the work that people weren't allowed to do. We took it all.

KL: What was the story with the boat? Why did you buy the boat?

JCL: I liked it.

*laughter*

Your uncle and I were partners on it. I bought that boat in 1988… so you were 1. We just started having kids. It was a 36’ Trojan designed for sportfishing. We had it for about 8 years. We sold it in about 1995. I wasn’t using it much anymore. We had you kids.. and it cost a lot of money.

KL: What did it cost to buy?

JCL: The guy was asking $125,000 and I got it down to $112,500. That was a great boat. The guy who I then sold it to took it to Seatle. That was a specialty boat... probably wasn’t the best boat for us to own. It was specialty because you drove it from inside the salon. You had the upper helm station but you also had controls in the salon. The guy lived in Seattle and it rained a lot.. and he wanted to be able to drive the boat from inside the boat. He took that boat all apart.. whole upper helm off.. put it on a flatbed trailer and drove it to Seattle. It was amazing… I lost money on that.. I sold it for $40,000 and owned $65,000… had to come to the closing with a check for $25,000.

KL: It depreciated that much?

JCL: Well, that was a bad market I think. Things were a little bit pressured.

** we start eating **

KL: Tell us the big fish story again.

*chuckles*

Someone in the background: I think your dad is tired

JCL: You’ve heard this story

KL: Yeah, let’s hear it again!

JCL: You know… it was your birthday, Kev.

KL: Yeah, I remember.

My brother in the background: This is just like the movie “Big Fish” right now. Kev you’ve seen it, right?

KL: No I haven’t.

Brother: What?!

KL: What’s it about?

Brother: It's about this old guy and his son who’s had a troubled relationship with his dad because he never believed his father's, like, far-fetched stories. And turns out like all those stories were kind of true, but exaggerated. But still all true. Like he claimed he caught this humongous fish. Basically it wasn’t as big as he said, but it was still pretty big. Has a bunch of good actors. Very good movie, very good feel.

KL: So basically the story we're about to hear, minus the strained relationship and exaggeration..?

*laughter*

JCL: OK so the day I caught that fish was the day of your birthday party. It was October 1993.

KL: I know.. mom was so pissed at you, right?.

JCL: Oh, my God. She was so mad.

So we're down there fishing for two or three days already.. its in the middle of the week. We just started to get a routine down, you know, really just felt so good about our whole technique. I was supposed to go home and help your mom with your party at the bowling alley. And she's talking to me and she goes, “alright, what time will you be home?”

I'm not coming home.

“Not coming home?!” she yells.

“Well, we're fishing down here. They're going to close the fishery tomorrow. They're closing because they're running out of quota… we just really feel like just have a really good feeling about the fish.” She’s laughing. “Hahaha, you're joking when will you get here?” This went on for a few minutes.. then finally, I said “no, I’m not coming home.” She was flipping out.

My wife chiming in, to me: If you ever pulled that shit!

JCL: I know I know, but I caught a fish that we sold for $13,000.

My wife: Yeah, you're VERY lucky that you did!

JCL: So your mom saw the check, and then she understood how serious we were about trying to catch this fish.

**laughter**

So we went out there.. we’re getting all set up.. we had been out there you know, 10-12 hours, fishing but not really catching much. So it’s like 7:30 in the morning.. The anchor line is still limp in the water. The boat’s not even taught yet.. I'm eating a bowl of Cheerios… all of a sudden, the line goes off. The first bait we threw, one bait in the water, a bunker on the one line about 15 feet behind the boat, just threw it in.

Weren’t even ready to be set up yet... probably needed about 15 more minutes. Then EEEEEE… the rod went off. That was it.

We had about 300-400 bucks worth of bait on the boat… we used one.

KL: Did it really take 7 hours to reel this fish in?

JCL: Yeah… 7 hours.

KL: And then the rod broke?

JCL: The rod broke after 5 hours. It was a miracle we caught that fish because what happened was.. the hook got caught around the gum of the tooth so it really couldn’t spit it out.. so it got hooked extremely well.. normally the fish would have spit the hook out. These fish are concentrated in a school.. hundreds of them, but in an area about 300 feet around.. like a big ball.. and everybody is trying to fish on top of this ball.

So it took us almost 5 hours to get the fish out of the fleet…because the lines are getting tangled.. all that shit is going on.. people are catching fish, the lines are breaking and all. So we finally get the fish out of the fleet. Now the fleet is about a half mile or so away from us.. had it pulled out pretty good.

Then the rod broke and we had to put slack in the line until we figured it out… and the fish went right back into its school.. back to its sanctuary.

I had the rod in front of my face and it was like a firecracker *SNAP*… and as soon as it snapped I had to take the drag off the line because I knew the line would break .. and you’re fighting with 40lbs drag on the line.. you can’t even hold these rods.. that’s 40lbs of pressure.. it has to be in the transom of the boat. So I took the pressure off it and the rod just kind of went down in the water… we had to take another rod and get all the line off it.. these reels are like *that big*.. it took a while.. entire back of the boat is like a big birds nest.. so we took all the line off the thing and then had to tie a knot onto the new rod.. at this point the line is just floating in the water. It’s so slacked. You know, we figured the fish is gone.. the line’s just floating.. there’s no tension on the line. We tie it off on the rod and start cranking.

I’m up driving the boat this time and your uncle starts cranking.. EEEEEeEEEEEEeEEEEE... for like ten minutes.. **audible strain sounds***.. and then finally the rod goes ERRRRKKKK. And we got the fish back on… we couldn’t believe it.

KL: How long was that whole process of respooling the line?

JCL: About a half hour.. it was a long time.

KL: And this new line didn’t get tangled up again? How the hell did the fish stay on?

JCL: Remember, when we caught the fish, we saw the hook was around the tooth and into its gum.. it was really stuck in there. If you look at the picture.. you can actually see the hook. The fish couldn’t spit it. We were extremely lucky how we hooked it.

KL: OK so then it took another 2 hours to finally reel it in?

JCL: Yeah and it was 5 hours before we even saw the fish for the first time.

KL: Wasn’t there a ring of other boats watching you guys at one point? Like you had an audience?

Brother: You guys knew it was big, but you didn’t know exactly?

JCL: We knew it was big but didn’t know exactly. What happened was… we were on the radio.. we’re only 20 miles off shore.. we’re not far off shore.. talking to the dock.. talking to the guys at the marina about the fish.. they’re telling us to hang in there, “keep going”, they can’t believe its been 5 hours.

So after about 7 hours I think the whole southern shore of New Jersey knew about us and this fish. When we got back to the dock at Hoffman’s in Manasquan... we couldn’t even get off the boat.. people were standing like sardines.. dock was packed with people trying to see this fish.. it was so cool

But when we finally got the fish to the boat.. we had to harpoon it twice.. so now we have a harpoon in it with a 3/8th inch rope.. really got it secure, right? But once these fish stop swimming.. they sink! The fish weighed 900 pounds and now it’s sinking! We’re trying to pull this thing up right?.. so anyway we had a jib pole on the boat with a little block and tackle… so we got this thing tail-roped and bring it over.. we’re cranking it up .. the boat’s going like THIS.. the tail gets to the top of the jib pole.. and the gills aren’t even out of the water yet.. that’s how long this fish was.. so I tell your uncle “this ain’t gonna work.”  

So then what happened was.. well, meanwhile these 3 or 4 other boats are just circling us, watching the show. One of the boats comes up to us.. the ocean was like a lake.. the most calm perfect day. You couldn’t write a better story. So 4 or 5 of those guys jump onto our boat and now there’s 8 of us trying to get this fish in the boat… and we couldn’t pick it up.

*laughter*

KL: So what were you guys grabbing on to?

JCL: We had gaffes in it.. ropes.. everybody’s just grabbing pieces of it just trying to pull it up… tried everything. Remember the fish is still alive.. still moving a little bit. It’s still not totally dead. So it was already tail-roped and then we started to drive back in. What was happening was.. the fish was riding on the wake of the boat. We're only doing like 5 or 6 knots. Very slow, but the fish was riding on the wake and the gills of the fish would open up and water would go into them… it was like pulling an umbrella.. like a parachute.

So we had to stop. We would flip the fish around. We got, like, a drill and drilled a hole through the gum of the fish.

KL: You actually used a drill?

JCL: We had some kind of tool, we banged a hole through the top of this fish… and then we took the rope through the jaw and pulled it forward. So that was like streamlined.. But we had to drive at a certain speed just so the fish would just kind of fly on the wake. If we went too fast it would go down, too slow it would sink.

KL: Were you worried the whole time that you'd lose this thing?

JCL: We were worried about sharks… so we hung in the back with a couple of guns that we had on the boat.

KL: No you didn’t.

JCL: Yeah, my .357 Magnum. So we’d have a couple guns to protect against some sharks that might come up and grab the fish.. or us.

*laughter*

But we had no sharks. So we finally got back to the dock. I’m telling you the dock was packed. I had to tell people to stand back and me get off the boat, right. The guy at the marina is cranking the thing up right. Meanwhile, there are 3 buyers bidding on it right away. One guy's going, “I'll give you 12 a pound”.  “I’ll give you 15 a pound.” And some other guy comes up and says to us, “Hey I really want your fish. I'm gonna give you $19 a pound. I really want this fish”. Right? So I'm thinking like, look, we're kind of jet lagged. Imagine this whole day, 7 hours, right?

So then all of a sudden, we hear someone yell, “EIGHT NINETY NINE!”

I'm thinking 899 pounds? That's gotta be like, over 10 grand.. I couldn't even think.

And so we got $13,242 for that fish. It cleaned up at 697 pounds. Do the math: 697 * 19 is 13,242. I'll never forget it.

Brother: They cleaned it?

JCL: When they cut the head off and gutted and cleaned it was 697.

Brother: Is that like, two all you can eat sushi meals for us?

*laughter*

JCL: Yeah for two years. That was a great day. That was a great day. I’m sorry I missed your birthday party, Kev.

KL: It’s OK. The story is worth it.

JCL: But your mom didn’t talk to me for a long time, but when she saw the check she understood that we were really serious about this fish. That was 1993 to get a check for 13 grand. We got paid the most per pound anywhere in the East Coast that year.

KL: How do you know that?

JCL: Just from the people in the industry and at the marina… people who knew what fish sold for.

KL: On the entire East Coast?

JCL: Yeah, from all the way from the Carolinas up to Chatham, Massachusetts.

KL: And why do you think that was? Just timing in the market?

JCL: This guy really really wanted this fish.

KL: Japanese trader?

JCL: This guy was from New Jersey. He was, uh, something something seafood wholesale export I think. During giant fishing tuna season, they would have these refrigerated big box trucks with these crates that were about 3 foot square, 8 feet long, packed with ice. The guys told us the fish was in Japan 24 hours after we sold it. He had a plane ticket at JFK, waiting to go. And they sold that fish for $100,000 in Japan. And then when they broke it all up at restaurants. Who knows what it went for…

KL: So are there guys that are just driving around with these box trucks that are just on the radio waiting to hear about fish coming in from private boats.. just guys.. because obviously you weren’t a commercial operation.

JCL: They know it's giant fishing season.. and they're betting people are going to come in with fish.

KL: Such a great story

JCL: We were so excited.

KL: So much had to go right to fix all the things that went wrong.

JCL: We were so lucky. I mean that fish was probably about about 920 or 925 because it bled the whole way coming in. You know, we had harpoons in it and stuff, and so it was probably over 900 pounds, it was 899 on the scale at the marina. We knew it was a bluefin, but we thought it was maybe 600 pounds.

KL: You're 20 miles out?

JCL: We were on the Monster Ledge in the Mud Hole, right off Point Pleasant. It took us 4 hours to get back in.. to get out there only took us an hour. Al Ristori wrote the story on us. We were all written up down here. The picture of that fish was in a lot of papers down here. It was a big fish. It was a big story for the year. Not only did we get $13,242 for that fish, but Hoffman’s had a standing prize of $1,000 for the biggest fish caught that season out of the marina. So we also got that money.

That was 1993. I'll never forget that day.

KL: So you had the boat for 8 years?

JCL: The last couple of years I didn't fish on it. Your uncle had it by himself. I didn't really get a chance to go often.. had 3 kids then.. lost a little interest in it.

KL: But before that, you would just take off days and go fishing?

JCL: I remember times I'd be working on the job, you know, and your uncle would call me up around 11 o’clock and go “John! The fish are hot in the Canyon! They’re nailing the yellowfin!” … and like, you know, at 3 o’clock we’d be on the boat going.

KL: So what was he doing? Wasn’t he working?

JCL: Yeah he was laying carpet. Doing carpet work. You know, we always just did whatever we wanted to do. We’d just leave work. “Bye!” We’d be in the middle of someone’s bathroom and say “Be back in a couple days!” “Yellowfin’s good!”.

*Laughter*

KL: It’s the freedom that's great, isn’t it?

JCL: It was the freedom.

JCL (far left)