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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Goodbye, Old Friend

We lost one of our family friends last night and it brought a tear to my eye.  It happened in just a few seconds and had been coming for years, yet it was sad when it happened.  And we will be re-living it for a long time because he won't be going away soon, instead just laying there in the river, rotting and waiting for a big flood to carry him away.

Our friend was a big cottonwood tree right at the edge of the river that runs by our house.  For the last ten days we have been having rain, a lot of it, and flooding.  Even though we had protected the tree with rip-rap (large  rocks) several years ago, there just was not enough root structure there to support it in the super saturated soil.  Last night my wife and I were sitting in our "River Room" when we heard a large "crack" which sounded like thunder, but was instead our tree falling into the river.

It was a major highway for squirrels as they made their way along the river bank up in the trees.  It has been home to squirrels, racoons, other animals and a variety of birds, including baltimore orioles.  We've had bald eagles in the high branches every fall and winter and ducks in the lower branches every spring.  It has given us shade and was a large visual anchor to our view of the river

But no more.  We will miss you old friend. You will be stuck in the river for a long time to come, maybe even years, before a big flood comes to take you away. You will be a sad reminder of your former grand presence.

Our loss is minor, compared to that of many.  We have had no floods or tornadoes to tear our lives apart.  (Our house sets on a high riverbank and and only a flood much greater than the epic record breaker of 2008 would cause us problems)

We have not lost possessions or family (or friends) lives due to this "natural disaster"   We spent a few minutes putting our loss in perspective compared to that of many others.  A loss?  Yes.  But significant on the larger scale?   No.

Still, Goodbye Old Friend.

The value of "seasoned" staff members

Long before I became "older" myself, I liked to have few older people on our workforce.  They could  draw on their work experience to help mentor some of our younger staff members in learning "how to work".  Of course there was always the danger that they would teach or encourage some bad work habits too.  But generally  they added some stability to our workforce.  By the time they came to Richway, these "mentors" had long ago learned he importance of coming to work every day ---on time, and of  how to work at a steady pace----though sometimes slower than I wanted.

We did try to screen out the ones who would not be a positive influence.

Sometimes things did not work out real well.  Some 35 years ago we had a retired worker who had the capability and experience, but things were just not going well on the job.  I suspected that alcohol was involved, but I was not prepared for what I learned one morning.  I was behind a parts cabinet when his wife came in and said to him, not three feet from me (though of course neither of them knew I was behind then cabinet)  "Glenn, you forgot your bottle this morning.  I put it in your truck for you."  Within just a few days we had more evidence and brought in a counselor for a meeting with him.  We gave him a choice, get treatment or lose his job.  He quit.  Even that probably taught some of our younger employees a lesson.


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Space Center Update

During a recent trip to Cocoa Beach, I came to believe that momentum is building for something big to happen at the Kennedy Space Center.  Refurbishment-repurposing is going on at the VAB (vehicle assembly building).  A major aerospace company is bringing several hundred jobs to the "Space Coast" (for "manned aircraft design")  and there are public announcements of other new activities.


Learn about "mobile launcher" modification here

Click to learn about Grumman expansion in Melbourne FL    (just south of Cocoa Beach)



Of course there continues to be launching of satellite rockets from the  adjoining Canaveral Air Force Station.


Elon Musk, the man behind Space-X, the first commercial private rocket launching company, has tweeted that he has important announcements coming.  But he is also "the man" at Tesla, Solar City and co-founded PayPal, so an announcement could be about any of them.

SpaceX launch site story here

My pieces of information are all "rock solid" (only one of them is not public knowledge) and they may mean nothing even when combined, but if it happens, remember you heard it here first!


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IT IS ALL ABOUT MARKETING

We are all Marketers!

The small town in which I live has an excellent, but small, school system.  So excellent in fact, that when the nearby University of Northern Iowa closed their "laboratory school" which they used to train teachers and also test innovative and new teaching methods and strategies, 70 students elected to transfer to our school, ten miles away.   Why? you may ask.   Marketing is my answer. The marketing leader was Steve Gray, the superintendent of our school system.  As he will tell you though, it was the efforts of many people that helped make the prospective students aware of the educational opportunities at our school.  The team used a number of techniques to help prospective students and parents explore Janesville Schools.  And those 70 students increased the total enrollment by nearly 20%.

Supeintendent Gray is moving on after the close'of the school year. His next school is getting an excellent leader AND marketer!

You wouldn't normally think of a school as being involved in marketing, but you would be wrong.  In fact the schools are constantly marketing within  their own system.    Marketing to students  (work hard, learn, stay in school)  and marketing to teachers (and prospective teachers), other staff, parents and the community. 

I am an engineer by education, but I figured out long ago that without marketing, you have nothing ... no matter what you are; manufacturer, retail store, writer, parent, religious entity, school, or golf professional.  That is why much more of my time has been spent on marketing than engineering for the last 35 years.