Karma

I don't know if you ever watched it or not, but there used to be a show on television called "My Name is Earl."  Now, in my opinion, this show would have had to move a LONG way to have ever become mainstream, but like so many other things in my life, if you put it at the right time of the day, I watch it.  That usually means sometime between 3 and 5 am when I'm having my daily sleep sabbatical.

Anyway, the premise behind the show was that Earl had done a lot of bad things in his life, and after an event that changed him, was working his way back through his life, correcting as many of these injustices as  possible. He talked about karma as if it were a true force of nature, one to be realized and recognized at every turn.

I am not to the place that Earl was with his worship of karma. Rather, I love to watch people either do something unexpected or something to pay it forward. I absolutely love stories about people in the Starbucks line paying for the person behind them, and the process continuing for hours after it started.

I find myself actually looking for opportunities to do something nice for someone I don't know. Of course there are a lot of them. Every now and then, one really makes you smile. Yesterday was one of them. We'd gone to breakfast at a place we had never tried before. Breakfast was incredible, but there was an item on the menu that I wondered about - bread pudding French toast.

So check this out: they make bread pudding from their leftover sticky buns, let it cool, slice it, batter it, and cook it as French toast. After asking questions, even though we were finished eating, we had  to try it. I placed an order for the table.

In the time between ordering it and having it arrive, I heard two older ladies talking at the next table.  Now, the reason I had even thought about trying this was that they had been asking questions about it all through breakfast. Anyway, they finally decided to try it themselves. When they ordered, I heard the waitress tell them that they had just sold their last serving for the day. Of course, I knew that serving was coming to us. There was only one thing to do. I asked our waitress if she would please charge the order to us, but split it between us and the next table. After all, we all just wanted to try it.

When the waitress delivered the half order to the other table, you could tell immediately that the ladies were pleased and amazed. In some small way we helped make their day brighter and maybe, just maybe, we started a chain reaction of one person helping another person for no real reason other than it was the right thing to do. And if not, it sure made me feel good. Helped to brighten a day that was already pretty darn good.

So, next time you are sitting in that line at Starbucks, think about buying coffee for the next person in line, or help someone with a door, or help someone carrying a heavy load. You will be amazed how good it makes you feel.  Have a great day.

Morning

I know that I've talked about this before, but I love mornings. This is the time of the day I like best because, honestly, I haven't screwed anything up yet. In the morning, a day is perfect, without the imperfections that litter the rest of the day as I begin to do things and make decisions. Admittedly, this time doesn't always last very long, but there are always at least a few minutes of this feeling.  But that isn't really what I am talking about today.

The morning that I am talking about is the way that the day itself, and the world around you, actually stretches and yawns as a way to get started. If you've never thought about this, stop and take a moment one of these days and really listen to the world. This has to be in the quiet time just as the day is getting started. Here are some of the things I've seen or heard in the last few days.

Driving to Weekend with Wood last Friday morning. I had already been in to work to get a couple of things done. I had a cup of coffee (one of my signature morning activities) and was in the heart of downtown. Two separate times, women crossed the street in front of me, carrying large satchels.  Both were dressed professionally, both were wearing running shoes of one type or another. These women were on their way to work, traveling at least some of the way on foot. This may have been from a parking structure, or maybe from their home. Both were going to get to work and change into whatever they needed to wear for the rest of the day. They may have even been carrying their lunch in the bag as well. I had to slow down my morning while waiting for them to cross in front of me and it was a quiet moment for all of us as the day was beginning. Just people trying to live their lives, and get their day started. Sometimes I think that I need to be more aware of the fact that this is what people are doing, just trying to live their lives.

Different day, different place. As is often the case, I was up early. As part of that I got to listen to the house come awake. Slowly, almost cautiously, there started to be the little sounds of a day starting. The squeak of a bed as someone started rolling around to wake up; the long sigh from another - stretching and getting all of the body parts moving; sometimes even the sound of the house as weight came to bear on places that it hadn't all night. I love this little symphony that plays out at the beginning of the day. And that is only inside the house. Open a window, or go outside and listen to what the rest of the world is doing. It always helps me to know that there is something more going on than what happens in my little corner.

Okay, that is probably about as philosophic as I ever get and definitely enough for today. Take the time, even if you aren't a morning person, to try at least to embrace the morning once. You may actually find something there to like.

Control

I guess I need to admit something and this is probably a pretty good forum for me to do it in. I think I may be a bit of a control freak. No, wait a minute. Let's think about this and think about what those of you that know me would say about that. I think you're right. As long as I'm in control, I really don't have any type of control issue.

There it is, all that I really need is to be solidly in control.

But wait, there are situations, rare though they may be when you con't be in control, or as was said in the movie Days of Thunder, "Control is an illusion."

Okay, now I'm back to this being an issue. When we come to those times that we are truly in the hands of others, such as going in for the "procedure" that occurs after we are fifty years old, (yeah you all know exactly what I mean), I think the control freak in all of us shows up. But, truly for some of us, it's more pronounced than that.

Some people think that I drive a lot of the time when we go to events because I love driving. The truth is I don't really love to drive, but rather, I want to make sure that if a decision needs to be made in a split second, I don't need to confer with anyone. I may not always make the best decision, but I know that I will make a decision and be willing to stand behind it, win or lose.

Many years ago, I went through some testing with the team that I worked with. When all of the results came back, we gathered in large groups to discuss the results. The discussions revolved around how we could work together more effectively, knowing how each of us reacted in given situations. I don't remember all of the dimensions, but I one of the measures was "Assertiveness." In this particular area, I actually got the highest score possible.

As we were going through the results, our Regional VP, Dave Krumbholtz for you old Payless folk, looked at my results and said, "Aw Martin, you aren't assertive." He was absolutely serious. He didn't see me that way. The funny part was that the rest of my team was sitting there, giving him all the verbal and nonverbal cues that I actually was. At the end of the discussion, Dave had decided that I was a "closet assertive."

Maybe that's the way I am in control. Maybe I'm a "closet control freak." If there is a chance to be in control, I will take it, but if there's no need for anyone to be in control, I'm okay with that, too. After all, that's kind of the way the assertiveness thing worked out: if someone needed to take charge, I would and could be assertive, but if there was no need, I was fine with it.

Hum... very interesting, maybe I don't have a control issue. Thoughts?

Like-Minded

In this time in which we live, you can barely turn around without being exposed to a multitude of ways people find to express their opinions.  This not only has many positive effects but also intended and unintended negative effects. I have to laugh just a little bit as I am talking about this in a blog, a manner of communication that really hasn't existed for that many years, and was certainly not something that I knew about several years ago.  Now, there are a million ways that people can reach out, through Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and other ways that I'll never understand.

But sometimes we get a chance to land in a group of like-minded individuals. This happened to me over the last weekend. It was time for Wood Magazine's annual "Weekend with Wood," and this is truly a bunch of folks who are interested in and committed to improving their knowledge and skills around woodworking.  Really a group of like-minded individuals.

Okay, hold on a second. Really? Well, not really. Even though there was an overarching interest in woodworking and the skills it takes to do good work, as I listened to the group there were fully as many other topics as you would find anywhere else. I listened to a very impassioned conversation about Homeowners Associations. The four people involved were from different cities and different states, but were able to have a very animated conversation about their thoughts. The conversation could have gone on anywhere. And in the middle of it I found myself smiling. You may ask why?

It struck me that in our daily lives, in a time and a society that it feels as though there is NEVER a clear agreement, really all that you have to do is look for it, and when you see it you have to recognize it.  Now, if you are scratching your head, let me see if I can help to clarify with an example.  Suppose that you are at a dinner party and discover the the two most politically polar people that you have ever met are in attendance. You would of course expect that the conversation would become contentious, right?  Well, maybe ... maybe not.  If the conversation goes the rightt way, it may be possible that these people are also the biggest Kansas City Royals fans on... the... PLANET. Who knew?  It might be possible for these two to have a conversation and go through the whole evening without landing on what their political beliefs are.

So, what is my point here? I guess that I'm saying that sometimes we should spend the energy looking for the way we are like each other rather than the ways we are different from each other. I know that in the middle of that group at the Meredith Corporation this weekend there was probably someone I could have argued with over something that we both felt passionate about.  But, instead, we were all SO focused on woodworking that when other topics came up, they were really just as ponts of interest and nothing that would drive a conversation. It was very refreshing.

At this point I find myself challenged going forward to strive to find the commonality that I have with others, rather than looking for the differences and reasons to argue. It will be interesting to see how I do with that. It isn't necessarily the way that I have functioned up to this point. Wish me luck.

Numbers

I'm glad that I've always been comfortable with numbers and that math has come relatively easy to me. As I started thinking about where this came from, I was amazed to realize that it really tracked back to my grandmother.  This was my mom's mother, Josephine Helen Nauman Milburn. She was 94 when she died in June of 2000, still living in her own home. She was taking out the garbage at the time she passed away.  I am sure that I speak for many of us when I say that I certainly hope I have some of that karma in my life.

Grandma and Grandpa were very important members of my life, as they were to all of their children and grandchildren. When I was still relatively young, Grandma was still working in the Keokuk County Engineer's office. She had all of the knowledge to be an engineer, from the practical point of view, but didn't have the required educational background.  At least two of the people that she worked for told me that.  Anyway, at that time, the office was open on Saturday until noon.  On good weekends, I would get to wake up early, go to breakfast at the Town House Cafe with Grandpa and then he dropped me off at the courthouse to spend part of the morning with Grandma.  Our mornings were somewhat of a ritual.

During the course of the morning, we would make and fly paper airplanes.  In later years, when they went to paint the office, they found some of the planes on top of a high set of shelves.  You know, sometimes that just happens.  After our flight exercise though, Grandma would sit me down at a drafting table with an architect's rule and a set of colored pencils and we would draw house plans.  I was forever trying to figure out how to design a house with a round kitchen.  The problem wasn't really the kitchen, it was the rest of the rooms around the kitchen and what you did with those spaces.  To this day, I haven't come up with a good answer.  But, with this work, Grandma taught me about scale and how to draw plans "to scale."  I was probably the only 7-10 year old in Sigourney, Iowa that could accurately read and understand all of the scales on the rule that I was using.

When we were done with that, the next thing was to use the ten column calculator in the office.  This thing was a MONSTER.  It seemed like one of the biggest pieces of equipment I had ever seen, let alone used.  And in a day when very few calculations had to be carried out to ten columns, I am sure that it was also a very expensive piece of equipment.  But, being the lucky young man that I was, I got to sit there and figure out how numbers went together and of course what you had to add to overflow the capability of the calculator.  You know, you always have to figure that out.

Now, as if this were not all enough to cement a love of numbers into my brain, Grandma also had a couple of number games that she liked to play.  One was to come up with a mathematical "equation" that would describe someone's birthday, and the other was to do the same thing with their license plates.

I will give you an example.  Let's say that someone's birthday was September 27,1993.  We would work through this and come to the decision that all you really had to remember was that this person was born in '93.  From that you could remember that they were born in September (the ninth month) and on the 27th (9 x 3).  We played this game all of the time, and honestly, I still use this trick to help me remember people's birthdays and other special days.

After Grandma started me down this path, somewhere along the line someone taught me the Pythagorean theorem - A2 + B2 = C2 - and I was off and running.  Still today, with this basic interest in math and these tricks, along with a little understanding of percentages, I get through a lot of situations with ease.

Last week, as a group of intelligent men that I work with were trying to calculate the volume of a cylinder, I was able to estimate it as a cube and come to an answer while we were still on-site.  I know that one of the gentlemen I was working with is probably still in his office crunching numbers, but I'm sure that my estimate was close enough. Though they talked about finishing the conversation after they'd done all of the calculations back in the office, I knew we had plenty of information to move forward.

I appreciate having the confidence and assurance that the quick calculations I do in my head are generally correct. It has made my life a whole lot easier and sometimes a whole lot of fun. Thanks for the help Grandma Jo.

Small Green Stone

There are numerous ways we remember people, and lots of things that enter our lives and then are just around, sometimes for no real known reason. I have many of those in my office, my home, and my shop. These are the items that ... if we died, nobody would have a clue as to the story behind them, or the value that they hold for me.  One of these items is a small green stone.  It weighs very little and has a tendency to move around my desk. I hold it and roll it over in my hand at times when I am thinking about something.  Many might call it a "worry stone." That's a good name for it.

Over the years I've had the opportunity to work with a great number of individuals - from the old Payless days, through distribution, to today at Diamond Oil. I learned much from these folks and I hope they learned as much from me.

One particular group was from when I worked at Huttig in Kansas City. This group of people distinguished themselves by taking a facility that was losing a lot of money to becoming profitable in just two years. We got a lot of attention from others who tried to figure out exactly what we were doing and why it worked. It was the people, which is always the answer. Let me tell you about some of these individuals.

My Production Manager had come from Guatemala to make a better life for his family. Alary never met a challenge that he couldn't overcome.  As I continued to add production to his schedule, he complained in passing fashion and then dug in and figured out how to get it done.  He threatened me a couple of times about it, but always just got it completed. I still grin when I think about his words: "Meester Martin, I beech-slap you if you..." Add whatever challenge I set before him.

My operations team was made up of a lot of people, but Benny and Jamie were two of the folks that really got it done.  They were the people who made sure all of the orders were pulled and completed every day, and got the product on the trucks and routed so that everything was delivered.  This was one of the largest jigsaw puzzles that you could ever imagine, and they took it on day after day.  Pretty amazing.

Then there was the inside sales team.  Dawn, Donna, Joe, Grif, Andrelee, Dave and Roy.  They took tremendous care of the customer.  As we worked to change the way that the branch responded to its customers, this was the group that stepped up to tell the story and bring back the customers that we had lost with bad service and bad pricing.  They did the work one customer at a time, in conjunction with the outside sales team. These teams spurred our growth until we were moving forward again.  As individuals we were all flawed and had our quirks, but as a team, we were just about unstoppable.

So you ask, what does this have to do with a small green stone?  When I roll this stone over in my hand, these are all of the things that I think of and more. This stone reminds me of all.

But most specifically it reminds me of Grif Davies.  I'd known Grif when he was the sales representative for Magic Woods when I worked at Payless.  He sold me hardwood lumber and specially items and was always there to help. Years later, when I landed at Huttig, he worked as an inside seller for me. I remember sitting down with Grif for his annual review and asking him what his goals were for the upcoming year. He told me that he wanted to live to the next review, going on to tell me that he was going to need a lung/heart transplant in order to get there. Over the coming months, we all worked to support him in all the ways we could.  He ended up gong in for the surgery and although things started out well, as we all followed him through his "caring bridge," we hoped for the best. But in the end, his body was unable to overcome all of the indignities that had been done to it over the years and we lost him.

When we went to the funeral, there was a basket of these small stones at the entrance to the sanctuary. Each stone was unique and a handwritten note from Grif. He wanted us to take a stone and use it over the years to remember that day and the friends that were there with us.  It has always done just this for me.

I know there will be a day when someone goes through my things and tosses this stone in a box to go to Goodwill, or to the curb. But like so many things for so many of us, it really is just a symbol. This little green stone isn't just a rock to me. It's something that helps me remember.

Cherish the things in your life that are more than they appear to be.  There value will rarely be understood by anyone but you.

Ice Cream

In past blogs, I've talked about how one person can make a difference. Everyone who knows me knows I truly believe this, and there are more examples of it than there is time to recount, but I also have owed you a story about ice cream since a blog (One Person) I wrote in March of 2014. Seems to me that this is the time that I should share that story.

For many years, I worked for Payless Cashways. At one time, we were labeled the "Sweetheart of the Industry," but before it was all done, we had worked our way through two Chapter 11 reorganizations and then one Monday, found ourselves with a negative cash flow we couldn't overcome. At the beginning of the decline we were 150 stores and $1.54 billion in sales. I remember our President holding up a screwdriver at one meeting and telling us that there was nobody in the company that could tell us how many of those we had sold in the previous year. At that point, by the way, we were blind, but very, very profitable.

Over the next number of years, we continued to add capabilities to our computer systems to be able to mine more and more information from our system under the guise of making better decisions. We had a great deal of metrics and information at our fingertips, but in the end, it didn't really matter. The company seemed to do its best when the decisions were made at the local level by individual managers who were completely responsible for most of the decisions made in the store. Although I am not completely sure of it, this seems to mimic the current Hy-Vee model - which seems to be highly successful.

Enough of my soapbox. On to the ice cream story. In later years, after we decided to embrace the Professional customer in our "Shift Right" strategy, we ended up trying a lot of different things to try to generate immediate cash and draw/keep customers in our stores. One thing we tried was ice cream novelties. Items like "Drumsticks" and "Bomb Pops", and my favorite, the ice cream sandwich made with chocolate chip cookies as the outside of the sandwich became popular. I found these to be a delightful afternoon snack. When we first added ice cream to the stores, I was at Store 16 in West Omaha. I remember telling the person who delivered our stock that I didn't ever want to be out of that particular item. Being a good supplier, they made it happen. Over time, the company asked me to move to Texas and run a district down there. I set up my home store at Store 21 Contractor Supply in Garland. I had the same conversation with my new ice cream supplier and after a couple of mis-steps, he was able to get it right.

Time marched forward and somewhere along the line, we had a meeting in Kansas City with all of the leadership of the organization in attendance. Millard Barron, our CEO, was very much into the numbers and he had carefully watched all new product lines. Ice cream had been one of them. In a breakout session to discuss some of these initiatives, the comment was made that for a long time Omaha had been the number one seller of ice cream, but then for a reason that was hard to identify, the Texas Contractor's Supply had taken over the lead.

There in front of many people I'd known for years - many that I respected a great deal and many who respected me - it was pointed out that the thing that changed was that Jim Martin had moved from Omaha to Texas. This wasn't necessarily the best way to have pointed out that one person can make a difference, but it certainly did that for me, and here, twenty plus years later, as I recount the story to you, I still find a bit of embarrassment welling in my throat. Never forget that one person can, and does matter. Okay, laugh a little bit, if you haven't yet.

Now I've admitted the story and it's out there. There are a couple of other pretty wonderful things I need to share with you.

First, this is my 100th blog. When I wrote the first one, I wondered how much I would possibly have to say. Although there have been times I've been hard-pressed to find something to talk about, I kept after it until I am now at 100. I'm sure some of you are laughing right now at even the thought that I might not have something to say, anytime, but it was a concern for me.

Second, this week I sold my first item through my Etsy store. I know that there isn't much there, but a person found something they liked enough to ask me to build one for them. This feels like high praise and fits with the fact that I've had a good year producing items out of the shop that others seem to like. We'll keep that going. And, just as a little view toward the future, I've also been asked to produce a teardrop trailer for someone. This should be fun.

I hope this 100th blog finds you all healthy and happy. Let me know what's going on with each of you.