Sometimes the biggest obstacle to making a business comeback is
a personal one. Salesman-turned-entrepreneur Wallace J. Light
became all too familiar with this kind of struggle when he waged a
battle against drug and alcohol abuse that threatened not only his
business but his life.
Window Man, the residential window-cleaning business Light
started in 1989, is expected to ring up $250,000 in sales this
year, and its reputation for excellence has been lauded by local
media. Window Man's client list of 2,000 crisscrosses
California's Silicon Valley, leaving sparkling panes on the
multimillion-dollar estates of some of the high-tech capital's
richest and most famous residents.
When you talk to Light, 51, his enthusiasm threatens to overflow
with every syllable. This is a man who definitely ate his Wheaties
this morning. You sense that accounts of his accomplishments are
not exaggerated. Yet how he revived the flagging business that
flourishes today is nothing short of miraculous.
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The place he occupies these days is a comfortable one, but
it's not Light's first rendezvous with financial success.
His circuitous route to the top began in the Air Force, where he
served in Southeast Asia and gained a background in airborne
electronics.
Upon leaving the military in 1970, he earned a degree in
electronics and, for the next decade, worked around the world as a
technical and logistical services advisor for an engineering
contractor to NASA's Ames Research Center.
Surrounded by opportunities in the burgeoning technology
industry of the early 1980s, Light made an easy transition from
electronics engineering to electronics sales. Affable and
people-oriented, Light was soon pulling in a six-figure income.
"When you're hot, you're hot," says Light of
those glory days. But his enjoyment of the sales game was
short-lived. "I could go out and book a million-dollar order,
[and the response was] `What are you going to do
next?' " he says. "I was making a lot of money,
but after a while there was no satisfaction."
Zooming down the management fast lane as a regional and then
national sales manager, a vicious cycle began. Increasing
disenchantment with his career led to increased attention to his
inner party animal; Light turned up his drinking a notch and added
cocaine to the mix.
His judgment was becoming cloudier, and his career decisions
showed it. In 1988, Light's sales career began a downward
spiral, as he bounced from company to company. "On a typical
day," Light recalls, "I'd go to lunch, drink brandy
and a couple glasses of wine, come back, sit in the office
comatose, and head home at 3:30--and then stop off and have drinks
on the way home."
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