u/Think_Leadership_91

Trying to describe this briefly:

After 4 years of very serious, brutal bullying from age 11-15, I spent 40 years improving myself. I'm a business owner with a Ivy League certificates (not a full graduate degree), married with two kids, wealthy.

I had a client who I was really close to in 2020-2023. However he drank heavily in the office and often surrounded himself with young women from his company as well as my younger employees. I think I can name 4 much younger women he cheated on his wife with. He was a key client, but after 2024 I just wanted to cut him off because of the drinking and the women. Another contractor, owned by a woman who was sleeping with him, started to cause trouble and drama. Blaming my company for things and then running and hiding in his office, rather than work it out.

This Spring my major project ended and I transferred my staff away, happy that I didn't have to deal with him. Now I'm prepping to work with him in the Fall, but I realized that I sort of created an enemy. I settled into an enemy relationship. Very possibly I won't be able to win that work again (his girlfriend's company doesn't have the qualifications to win it, but competitors do). If I don't win that work in October, I may have to do layoffs and I'll be down $2m for 2027.

In meeting with a business advisor he told me point blank- You're over 50, how did you not learn how to kiss a bully's ass? You need to figure this out.

Well, I would never want to kiss a bully's ass. This guy is an alcoholic screwing girls 25 years younger than he is. I want to ignore him. But this seems wrapped up in how I have internally fought back against being bullied ever again. But convincing someone that I'm their friend is part of my job. I clearly f'd up. I want that contract and that money, but I'm not prepared to kiss his ass and when I think about it, I flash back to junior high bullies.

After quite a long time researching this. I determined that my late father received the Distinguished Flying Cross as a Ribbon only and never received the full USAAF Award. Or, potentially, the award was mailed to his parents' house and destroyed in a flood.

I have validated with NARA that the award is legit. I spoke to the Army and they suggested I buy a replacement rather than wait for them to authorize a replacement.

Does anyone know what would have constituted the full formal award "package" in 1945? It looks like the Medal itself, a container box, and a USAAF certificate. Does anyone have pictures of the complete versions of these so that I can buy a replacement for the family?

We have his original ribbon. Nothing else exists.

A friend introduced me to a friend of his. That guy introduced me to another company. In talking to the other company we struck a deal and completed a TA to go after this opportunity. We've had several calls for 3 weeks now.

The guy who introduced us is getting angrier and angrier that he's not part of the deal and that we moved on without him. He brought nothing to the table.

You guys starting out- don't be like the introduction guy. Stop imagining that you have skills and abilities and useful relationships when you don't. And if you don't have an agreement beforehand, you can't hallucinate that an agreement exists or "Should" exist when none exists.

A friend of mine has a new start up business. No contracts, nothing, just wants to set it up for when his friend gets out of the Army.

I want to help him set up from the beginning to pass CMMC. Is there a CMMC guide for a brand new company with no real assets other than Microsoft 365?