Everyone is a prospect

In the mid 1980's we had designed a foam generation machine to apply greenhouse pesticides which we were introducing.  We were exhibiting at a show in Chicago and it was the last day of the show.  Not just the last day, but the last 30 minutes.  By then, you are more than ready to get packed up and go home.  All the "real" prospects have come and gone, though there might be a few stragglers still wandering around the show floor.  But, "everybody knows", they are just distractions to the real job of closing down the show.

So, here came our straggler, dressed in old jeans and an old tee shirt.  He had unkempt hair and two bags full of information and free hand-outs.  If you have ever worked a trade show, you know the type: out to collect every free thing they can, but not a real prospect.   He expressed interest in our largest machine, so I told him a bit about it.  Suddenly he said "I am the operations manager for the largest green plant leasing firm in Chicago and this is just what we need."

It went on to be a great relationship.  They had locations in other cities as well and Ken was in charge of all of them.

The product line never took off (in large part because misuse could and did cause leaf "burning") and we stopped producing and promoting it, but if we'd had more "Ken's" things might have been different.


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He Tickled Me Until I Cried

I still am sensitive to being touched (or fear of being touched) in the area of my ribs!

My Uncle Keith would come to visit us or we would visit my grandparents and see him. He was still in high school when I was born.  He took delight in hearing me laugh, so he tickled me, a lot!  I had five uncles, but he is the last one.  He is one of the smartest people I know.  I am still amazed by his mastery of a wide variety of technical subjects.  Remember, there was not a Google, or internet, or personal computer to aid in knowledge acquisition.  It was HARD work to get knowledge, before the internet and search engines.

Soon after graduating from high school, he used to dismantle windmills, once a fixture on every farm, to get the steel for "making things." He also painted barns and I remember as a child seeing him dangling from a barn in a rope swing, spraying red paint.  He is a pilot who, the story goes, more than once deliberately stalled his plane to learn more about airplane stalls from the inside out.  Failure was not an accepted end result and he built a thriving and successful manufacturing  company, which is one of the top park equipment manufacturers in the country.

Nicknamed "Kay" by his grandmother, most of us in the family call him just that. He is my father's youngest brother and the only one of the four still alive.  I never forget about him, especially when anyone, including my doctor, gets anywhere near my ribs.   And still I admire him and love him.



Happy Fathers Day, Uncle Kay!

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"Ain't nobody gonna hurt you if they don't know you got it"

Some twenty years ago we had a sales rep in Brazil, whom I was going to visit.  He wanted me to bring his commission, some $5,000, in cash.  The Brazilian economy had a really high inflation rate right then (close to 1% PER DAY) and US dollars were almost like gold!  I was reluctant to carry that much cash for fear of being robbed or worse.  Howard "reassured" me by telling me to be casual and calm and telling me that "Richard, ain't nobody gonna hurt you if they don't know you got it."  In short, don't act like you have anything special.

I have a friend who built a new house several years ago.  It was an attractive larger house.   He was asked by a friend when he was going to cut down the grove of trees in front of it so people could see his new house.  His response:  "I am not going to remove the trees.  We built the house for us, not to show off to people."  And then they planted even more trees.

The moral of these two stories.   In the big picture, be discreet and don't "flash around" whatever you may have.  You should want people to accept you for whom you are, not what you have.  Nobody likes a braggart.


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