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of the numerous things i did while on break, one of them (one of the cooler) sent me to the northeast to interview a relative. i won't tire you with the full evolution of what interested me in such an adventure as that would take me a bit of time to tease apart the dovetailed influences, not all of which are of interest. through the process though, i stumbled into an unexpected landscape of unexpected gems, gems dealing with people's personal thoughts and life experiences. namely it got me asking folks, even those not being interviewed, questions, many of which were ones i usually would not ask someone in simple conversation. one such question that proved suprising was asking if they had ever received a bit of professional advice that helped them succeed. once the answers started flowing, i found myself struck that i haven't been asking this more often. given how much i enjoyed hearing and subsequently thinking on these morsels, this week i'm going to share a few of the answers i received to the 'did you ever receive any especially good business advice' question, starting with my uncle jerry, the man who inspired this whole interviewing-escapade to begin with.
my uncle jerry is a fellow who began with very humble roots. a for-sure country boy, the first home he and his wife shared privately, was weeks earlier a pig pen that sat behind the farmhouse he shared with his family and prior to their occupancy, served sixty-six hogs my uncle had purchased and then sold as an investment. his memory is shady on how long it took to convert the pig pen into livable space but he puts it at somewhere between one and two weeks. in the decades that followed, my uncle went on to become one of the more respected businessmen of the county he called home.
my uncle is now 87 and he pondered on my question for a fair bit before answering. then, slowly, he recalled a fellow he worked with once. he told of a moment at the end of the day where an older gentlemen wagged a finger at a twenty-something jerry and said in what sounded like a near-accusatory tone, "always put in an honest day's work son ... and then some." jerry confessed to remembering that sentence throughout his working life and he recalls many a day where he pushed his chair back to head home when the tail line of that proclamation rolled through his head. he'd then ask himself if he had yet done his "and then some". this contemplation often prompted him to slide back under his desk and put in another fifteen minutes or two hours depending on the task he chose to bite into. with this time he might get organized for the next morning's work or finish a bit of paperwork that had been eluding completion. in looking back on it he admits that it could very well be that "and then some" philosophy that proved the difference between his work product and that of his peers and his competition.
this is one of those magical life tenets i'm choosing to place in the "there's no way it could hurt" drawer right next to eating fruit and smiling more often.
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