Lessons From the Hardware Store #3

Lessons from the Hardware Store #3

If you’ve read my previous stories you know that from the time I was 9-years old, my parents owned a small hardware store in a community called Ladera, near Stanford University in California.? This area was the birthplace of Silicon Valley, Private Equity, and much of the Technology industry we live in today.? Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was given the opportunity to rub elbows with many titans of industry, entertainment, & politics.? These individuals loved their Do-It-Yourself projects, but they also loved to tell stories and impart advice, much of which I was the recipient of.? I can’t say I fully realized the value at the time, but many of these interactions imprinted on me, I clearly remember many of those discussions, and I find much of that advice aligns with who I became and my own success in the business world.? These are those stories.? I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have remembering and writing them.

It was the mid-1980’s and I was about 13, I worked at the family hardware store a lot, especially after school if there was no sports & on weekends when I didn’t have games.? I remember my sister, two years my senior, telling me, “You know you’re not going to have a lot of friends if you keep spending all your time at the store.”? My parents didn’t require us to work more than a day or so a week, but I enjoyed making money and learning about the business.? In fact, my first job out of college was in Retail Management and I was that young, hard charging management trainee that would go into competitors stores and figure out their costs and profit margins by reading the codes on their shelf labels. ?I brought a childhood of learnings to that job and it spring-boarded me into bigger things.? One interaction that I’m reminded of was a gentleman that I remember only came in on weekends, my parents called him a famous singer, but he certainly wasn’t from near my generation, at the time his name didn’t ring any bells, and even today I have to look up exactly what songs he had (hint: he was big in the 1950’s).? But he certainly left an impression on me one day.

I was working at the cash register one weekend, when an older gentleman, with a distinctive mustache, came up to pay for his purchase.? I gave him my usual, “How are you today, did you find everything you were looking for?”, he smiled and said, “What's your name, I don’t think I’ve seen you in here, but you look like you’re related to the owners,” (I got that a lot actually!).? When I told him my name, he put on a bigger smile, “My son’s name is Brian as well!? A name to be proud of!”? He was like a lot of successful people I met while I was young, he had great presence, his words slightly boomed when he talked and held “weight”, to this day I can hear his voice say these things.? Of course, as it turns out he was a tremendous singer and entertainer, and both those skills obviously came naturally to him.? He was one of those very personable people, he had what he came in for, but I could tell he was in no rush, he had a story he wanted to tell.? The irony of this of course was the 13-yr old Brian was wondering if he was going to keep me from the Roast Beef sandwich on a French crunch roll (to this day still my favorite) I had waiting for me behind the counter.? The life lesson I was about to receive was not the most important thing on my mind back then!? From there, he told me a story I have never forgotten:

“I love coming into this store, your folks have done a great job with it.? My old friend George used to own this place.? Now, you’ve never heard of me I’m sure, I’m old and out of date, but there were times when I would travel the world and come back here on the weekend to help George work the store, right behind the counter where you are.”? Now this kind of confused me, I knew from my parents that he was kind of famous and he obviously made a lot of money, why in the world would he want to work the cash register at a hardware store on weekends!?? Talk about a befuddling question to the teenage mind!? He could see that I was puzzled by his story, so he spared no time in letting me know his reasoning.? “I meet a lot of people in life and I love people, I engage with them whenever I can, but I know I only have a few true friends.? So no matter what I’m doing, or how tired I am, where I’m traveling from, I always make time for my true friends.”? Even at 13, the similarity between what he had told me, and what my sister had chastised me earlier about caused me to contemplate my friends.? I remember thinking, here’s a famous guy who can go anywhere, do anything, meet anyone, and yet he comes back to hang out with his friend that owns a little hardware store in a small community, far away from Los Angeles, Nashville, and wherever else he spends his time.? He’s probably got a lot of people who want to be his friend and he’s hanging out with George at the hardware store.? I never sought to collect friends in life, I found Facebook and social media to be a great irony in that fashion, but cherishing my group of friends is something I was always keenly aware of as I climbed the ranks and realized success in business.

I worked for three companies over the course of my post-college career, the last as a Partner at Deloitte.? In each stop, on any major program or initiative, the first thing I did was gather those who I had previous successful initiatives with, those who I knew I could count on, because trust and integrity are paramount to success in any business or personal endeavor.? It’s one of the reasons I loved consulting in the early days, we tackled very complex projects, initiatives that clients knew they couldn’t do themselves, and I was always able to at least put a core team together of people I knew, I trusted, and who ultimately, on a relative scale, de-risked the program and made it fun.? In fact, looking back, many of those projects had never been attempted or successfully done before, and those teams made it look relatively common (I won't say "easy"!). I see this everywhere in the business world.? What’s the first thing a typical new CEO does at a new company?? They bring executives from outside that they know, they establish a core team with built-in trust and alignment.? I follow this credo in my personal life as well, I have a small cadre of trusted friends, it rarely expands, my time, and theirs, is valuable. Some of them I met through work and experienced joint success with, others I’ve known since grade school.? Looking back on my career and life so far, that lesson that was relayed to me at 13 means so much more today.? A famous singer/entertainer, who could gather “friends” by the thousands, yet chose to spend weekends in a small hardware store with his trusted ally. ?And today I know that lesson means so much more then the Roast Beef sandwich he originally kept me from! ?

So, you’ve got this far… you want to know who he was!? Tennessee Ernie Ford.? I would see him a lot more in the store over the years, although he passed away in 1991.? I later learned he and old George probably kept a couple of cases of Wild Turkey in the back room along with boxes of roofing nails and lag screws, and there were probably a lot of customers with some great stories about what was supposed to be just their quick run to the hardware store.? I’m just lucky I had the chance to meet him, hear his story, and contemplate what it meant at such a young age.? It’s a value I hold true to this day.?

So here's the moral of the story, directly from Tennessee Ernie Ford:

While you should always expand your personal and professional networks, it's your small group of trusted friends & allies who will likely have an out-sized impact on your success and happiness. And remember, you have to be the trusted friend as much as you need them as well! Thanks Ernie!

I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I liked telling it publicly for the first time.

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Cheers!

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Brian