June 28, 2021
Good morning! I think this is the final edition before United States of America (declared) Independence Day — and so, Happy 245th, I think. And, if you’re not happy about it, as many weren’t, there is still the BRexit model if you prefer. As Ben famously said eleven years later, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Financial Security Creates Optimistic Conditions
- Here’s a head scratcher: The higher your income the more optimistic you are about the future!
- No kidding. Across all races, genders, ethnic backgrounds, rural/ urban, immigration status, Etc. (Fleming)
- In the same survey, 43% of workers aged 65+ reported their age as a major barrier to finding work.
- Twenty-seven million (27,000,000) people in the U.S. require child care in order to work.
- Less than half of women — 43% — report child care as affordable.
Out on the Road Again
- Out on the road again — overnight even.
- I love to people watch, especially in small rural villages where my roots still seek nourishment.
- With some time before my next meeting I stopped at an edge-of-the-road diner advertising Home Cooking.
- The place was populated with older couples who appeared to be in their 80s and 90s, most with posture painfully betraying a lifetime of hard physical labour.
- Though seated near each other, each couple stuck stoically and silently to itself sipping coffee, nibbling toast, spooning eggs and hash browns.
- Why had they come to town when breakfast prepared by and for each other was probably tastier and certainly less expensive back home?
- A special treat perhaps — or, at this age, a daily routine well-earned?
- Offered a bite of fruit, a husband reached over with his fork and helped himself to one small chunk of cantaloupe, no words spoken
- A balanced meal thus achieved.
- Soiled suspenders and well-worn belts — double protection — helped defeat gravity, though not in all cases.
- Baseball caps — none backwards — advertised farm implements, the local grain elevator, seed corn, and the Minnesota Twins.
- No cap was new, most had seen maybe ten or more years in the fields and in the barn; badges of honour.
- I wanted to interview each couple, hear their story, but I was from out of town, an intruder.
- It wasn’t my time or place to interrupt.
These Are the Tasks Entrepreneurs Should be Delegating to Others
- These are the tasks entrepreneurs should be delegating to others, according to Forbes, (May 2021)
- Low value administrative; i.e., repetitive tasks
- High value tasks you’re NOT an expert at
- High value tasks you ARE an expert at…
- Counterintuitive? Not really, if you consider sustainability, growth, vision, strength, and succession.
- I haven’t worn a suit and tie — on purpose — for more than four years.
- I wore one nearly every single work day for 46 years and I thought, “That’s enough… never again!”
- I don’t think I’ve broken my rule the last 1500 days — until five nights ago.
- I was informed that a suit was expected and so I quickly grabbed one from the storage rack down in our basement
- I was on the road overnight for the first time in a long time; packing the right things proved to be difficult, no longer automatic as it had been for years.
- I packed LOTS of stuff, too much stuff, mostly the wrong stuff.
- When it came time to dress for the big event I discovered the pants to the suit were wrinkled, stained, and soiled beyond remedy or hope, and so…
- I put on a pair of pants somewhat the same color as the suit coat. Well, those pants had big stains, too — unbeknownst to me until it was too late.
- Well, maybe I can camouflage the stains once I have the coat on?
- What shirt goes with all this mess?
- I picked the wrong one, that’s for sure. Too bad I didn’t have an orange-colored one… would have taken the focus off the suit.
- I affixed my name badge to the lapel of the coat and hiked the one-half mile to the venue, coat over my shoulder… too hot to put it on, I think it was ninety-five with a hot wind.
- When I reached the lobby of the hotel where the event was to happen, I hastily donned the suit coat jacket so that I wouldn’t be booted out the front door for inappropriate attire.
- The suit coat was at least two sizes too small… the sleeves were too short and I couldn’t get the buttons closed across my middle.
- What the heck?! Did all of the parts and pieces of my body shift that dramatically in just four years?!
- The suit I had quickly grabbed from the basement storage closet was the mandated uniform of the day for my daughter’s wedding in Chicago six years ago.
- I had worn it off and on in the two years subsequent to the wedding, but not in the last four years.
- It had been pressed, dry cleaned, stored carefully, Etc. I’m not (usually) that big of a slob.
- I weigh at least 30 pounds less now than at the wedding; why doesn’t this thing fit?
- Cold sweat, hot flashes, embarrassment.
- Mystery solved, at least to ONE thing.
- The suit I grabbed from the basement closet rack belonged to my SON and not to me — and he is more slovenly than I — and a bit smaller.
- Mine was hanging right where I had put it — and I found it upon my return home.
- I kept asking my wife of 41 years, “Why wouldn’t this have fit?!” “How did this get so wrinkled and dirty and smelly?!”
- And she said, “Well, maybe you took the wrong one, maybe you took (our youngest son’s)?
- Yyyyyup.
- And she said, “Well, maybe you took the wrong one, maybe you took (our youngest son’s)?
- I will try to do better, though I am loath to break my self-imposed sanction on suit wearing.
- “If serving is below you, leadership is beyond you.” (Kirchner)
