Lessons about Business and Life I Learned From My Father

For the Second episode of Beans 2 Billions Podcast - Part 2 of of a real American rags to riches story.

While my father found financial success through hard work and perseverance, it came at a cost.  In this episode, I discuss many lessons about life and success that I learned from him, and a few lessons that I learned the hard way.

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Edited in Descript - Simply one of the most amazing tools I've ever found for podcast and video editing A total GAME CHANGER !!!
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:30 Never Give Up
02:07 No Excuses
04:02 Boring Business Makes Money
06:27 Learn the Trade Before You Start
09:11 Perfectionism is a Double Edged Sword
11:43 Do it the Right Way Just Because
13:18 Perfect is the Enemy of Done
16:52 Something More Important Than Success

Transcript

dadvidtry2: 0:01

I think it's important to reflect on lessons that I learned from my dad. I think number. One and this is something that's been really central to my personality for my entire life, is if you want something in life, you keep fighting for it. Even if you lose everything, as long as you're willing to work harder than everyone else and keep fighting and not give up, you still have a chance. I mean, think about it. People that quit never get anywhere. People that never give up at least have a chance. There's no guarantee that if you work hard and you do everything right in life and you go get your education and you, start a business, you go get a job, you work nine to five. You do everything that society tells you to do. There is no guarantee that if you do all of that, that you're going to achieve any of the goals that you have in life. But if you don't do that, there is practically a guarantee that you will not get anything. If you want to have the kind of life that is not just punching a clock and taking what you're given, if you're willing to work for it, whether it's to build a house, whether your goal is to build a company, to build a legacy, to donate more to charity, to volunteer more to, put more good out into the world, to do something for your family. If you don't work hard at it, you're not gonna get it. And even if you have obstacles, even if you have a hundred things that go wrong in your life, that would cause everybody else to quit and accept the lot that they have in life, and accept that they had no way out. If you are willing to keep fighting for it, you can get something. You have a chance. I don't know anybody out there who gets something, who is a success, who can go on and create financial independence, emotional independence, freedom in their lifestyle that hasn't worked hard to get there, and who hasn't faced challenges and who hasn't had to fight to overcome those challenges. I think about my dad. I think about him starting a business when he had a job and small children, he didn't give excuses. He didn't tell himself that it was okay to fail. He kept going out and doing it. He borrowed money, he took risks. He put himself in a position that allowed himself to be successful. And while it took luck, he had to come along with the right partners. He had to have the right customers. He had to be in the right place at the right time. He had to have all those things come together. but there was a lot of people in Cleveland, Ohio at that time, that had machining experience. There was a lot of people that were in a similar position to him that were not willing to take the extra step that it took to get out of the rut that they were in to build a business. And then even when he lost it all, he was able to claw his way back in and get back in there and eventually own the entire thing by himself. And be not only responsible for, but rewarded by his own failure or own success. It's all he wanted. He wanted to know that if he put the work in, he could get back out of it, what he put in. And I think that for myself, that's something that I've always looked at and I've looked up to and I've always admired it. And I always have tried to see that in myself and, quite frankly, pass those attitudes and those values onto my own daughters. and I think that's probably the top thing that I really learned from him is that it just doesn't matter, man. You can say, oh, I'm not successful because I didn't go to college. I'm not successful cause I don't have a education. I'm not successful because I didn't have rich parents. I'm not successful because I don't have A, B, C, or D or all these other things. But if you are willing to learn, you're willing to work, you're willing to sacrifice, you're willing to risk, you at least have a chance. Another lesson that I learned is that sometimes boring businesses make money. If you think about it, there's nothing sexy about a machine shop. Can you think of anybody that you know that when they were growing up and you asked them what do you want to be when you grow up? You know how many people. Do you know, said what I want to do when I grow up is I wanna be a machinist. I wanna run a machine. I wanna sit there and push buttons on a machine, and I want to watch the smoke and oil come up and chips fly off and have chips in my shoes when I go home. And mean, stand there and watch a piece of spinning metal, have flakes come off of it. Not many people want that. It's not a business that people gravitate towards. It's not sexy, it's not a you're not selling cars, you're not selling boats, you're not building great things we built. And that company we built parts that were little pieces of another machine. We might build a little, one little component of a crane, one little component of an engine. There was nothing beautiful or sexy about it. But it made money because it was a service that was valuable that people and other companies needed. It provided value. So I think a lot of people, we always want to chase the next trend. When we want to try to make more money. We want to do the glamor jobs, we wanna start software companies, we wanna start the next Facebook or the next Amazon, all those kind of things. But everybody else wants to start those two. Take a look around, there's a lot of people out there that make a lot of money with landscaping companies that make a lot of money with roofing companies that make a lot of money in construction and plumbing and electrical and trades and paving and a lot of the blue collar, hard work industries that nobody really grows up saying, I wanna run a paving machine when I grow up. But you know what, if you do that and you build a business around it, you can create yourself quite a living with that. So I, I feel like that was something else. He always imparted in me the value that you don't have to do the sexy or exciting thing. You can do the boring blue collar hard work thing. Do it well enough to be proud of it. Build a reputation for being good at it, and not just good, but build a reputation for being great at it. And you'll always be able to make a living doing it. You'll always be able to at least make a living and if not, build a business. Another thing that I learned is that if you want to build a business for yourself, the number one thing that you can do to give yourself a leg up is to go get a job in the industry that you wanna work in. My dad built a business in machining and he didn't he wasn't sprung from the womb being an expert machinist. he learned the trade by apprenticing by going and getting paid for it. There was no school that he went to, Hey, here's building a machine shop business 1 0 1. Now he went and worked as an apprentice. He worked hard for years, learned the craft, learned the trade learned learned how to do the process and make the mistakes and do all that on somebody else's dime. He learned to scrap parts. He learned to do, basically everything that business needed to do. Learn that skill and become proficient and an expert at it while being paid by somebody else to do that. And I think that's a mistake that I made when I was younger. The first business that I ever started, I started a screen printing business. And I'll never forget my dad said, You wanna learn, you want to be in the screen printing business, go get a job in a screen printing company. Go get a job doing the thing you want to do so you can learn to do it. And I was, I said, no. I've got the internet I can research it. I can learn all about it. I can learn all the things that I need to learn to do this without going and doing that. I don't want to go work for somebody else. I want to be a business owner. And I forget. He said, then you're gonna be a bad business owner. Go work somewhere else and learn what to do. Make all the mistakes. Learn from their experience. They'll teach you how not to make the mistakes that you're gonna think that you know everything and you're gonna think that you know how to do it, but you really don't. They've already made those mistakes. They'll teach you how not to, you'll make more and you get paid for doing it. And then you do that for a couple of years. You're ready to actually go out and start your own business doing the same thing. or even you may go out and say, you know what? I don't wanna work in this business anymore. I don't like the industry. I don't like what the job actually is once I'm actually doing it. And I kind of really wish, when I was younger, I would've listened to him a lot more on that. I, was very headstrong. I was bullheaded. I thought I knew more than I did. That's one thing that I really think that he was very, wise in. And I think that's something else that we all want shortcuts, right? And my dad was a perfectionist. He never, ever, ever believed in doing something the easy way. If there was a way to do it the right way. And that's something that I, feel like being committed to perfectionism is, a great, asset that he had. And it's something that he really imparted in me as well. That leads me into another lesson that I learned from him, though, which is perfectionism is a double-edged sword. Precision machining. The, tolerances were many times a thousandth of an inch or a 10000th of an inch. I mean the, the, difference between a, finished part that was sellable and one that was scrap was a smaller margin than was visible by the human eye. And we had to have, we had literal gauges and measuring equipment that was able to discern the difference between thousands of an inch, I mean, thinner than a human hair, a fraction of a human hair. So everything in his life that his living depended on, that his employees livelihoods depended on, that his reputation depended on was all. Predicated on something being perfect to an extent that is just unimaginable by most of us. And having a personal sense of pride about the quality of work that you do was a huge asset that he had in every aspect of his life. And it's something that was really, ingrained in me at a very young age. And so anything that I've ever tried to do, I've always tried to do it as close to perfect as I can. I always want to make sure that the quality of work that I put out is of a level that I am personally proud of. And something that he used to do is we would maybe be building a barn on the farm that, that we had, and he would make it cut in a piece of wood and have two pieces that joined up. And there might be a little bit of a gap there. It was gonna be covered by molding. and the, maybe they didn't fit up right or this one was shorter than that one, or the, gap behind there was zigzagged instead of straight. It was gonna get covered up by molding. It was not a problem. Nobody will ever see it. And he would throw it away and start over and make sure that they met up perfectly. And that even if there was no molding on there, that joint, that seam was gonna be perfect. And I remember as a kid growing up with that level of perfectionism, I would say to him, I'm like, dad, this doesn't even matter. Nobody's ever going to see it. And he would just say, but even once you put the molding on there, I'm gonna know it's there. I'm gonna know that I could have done a better job and I chose not to. And someday when somebody tears down this barn, they're gonna, or they go to remodel it, or they take it out, they're going to see that that was not done right. And they're gonna wonder what kind of a person. Does that lousy quality of work I think that's a very important thought is if you are going to do something, do it right just for the sake of doing it right. Not just because somebody is gonna see it, but also just for your own self-satisfaction, your own pride of workmanship. And that's something that I've always tried to do. I've always tried to make sure that things that I do are good quality, that I'm doing things the right way, I'm treating people fairly, I'm doing the right thing for people. I'm doing things right. Whether it's a relationship, whether it is something that I'm building, a physical product or something like that I, always try to do it the right way because even if nobody sees it, I still know whether or not I did it to the best of my ability. Now, the part where that's a double-edged sword is if you're trying to build a business, you're trying to do a project, you're trying to build a fence. For instance if a one inch tolerance is good enough to get the job done, and you can get the job done in 10 hours by working with a one inch tolerance, and it affects the final product in no discernible way, but it takes you 30 hours to have it done. With a one eighth of an inch tolerance, you're gonna burn an extra 20 hours to get the exact same final product. Now, you may think the final product is slightly prettier. You may think the final product is more worthy of your of your own self-satisfaction and things like that. But truly, in many, cases, perfection is the enemy of done. So like growing up we would build a fence. My dad was insanely, perfectionistic about the tolerances and the levelness and, just the perfection of the fence that he was putting in a fence post had to be perfect. It had to be within an eighth of an inch of the same height of every fence post on the line. It had to be perfectly level from all, four axises. It had, if there was a gate, it had to line up where the gate came in. It had to be this close to the pole. It couldn't be this far, and it couldn't bump it. It had to be exactly that close. So it would go through, and now when it was done that was great. It looked perfect the day he was done. It took ungodly extra time than it would've been to put the gate up and get it close enough that a chain would go around and it would still keep your cows in. Now he would burn insane amounts of time, making it perfect and then, Well, what happens in fences is fences are under tension. They're put into the ground, ground heaves up and moves and, all those things. So you put all that in there and within a month or two, the pole is no longer level. The gate sags, it's now hitting or it's far away. The end result was still the same functionality. It no longer looked perfect. all the extra effort that was put into putting something out that was perfect was wasted. And as true as that is in building a barn or building a fence or putting a, installing a window or something like that, if you look at people who get stuff done, you know it, it can work whether you're producing a podcast if you're building software. The same applies. If you're building a business, if you're building a relationship, when you're raising your children, anything, if you are emotionally locked into the idea that something has to be perfect and you cannot make a mistake, then you cannot get things done. You don't make the decisions you need to make, you don't put the progress through that you need to have. You don't, you basically are not going to get the things done you need to do. Now, think about products you use in your everyday life. You buy an iPhone They keep continuously issuing software updates. They didn't put an iPhone out that was perfect and wait until everything was a hundred percent exactly perfect, completely flawless before they sold you the original iPhone. They keep improving it. Every generation. Every generation, they put out multiple software updates. it's never, ever, ever been, and never ever will be perfect. But they put it out when it is good enough to do what it needs to do and it's gonna meet the customer's expectations. And when the final product has enough value that people are going to be happy with it and not disappointed. Now, my dad would've been exactly opposite. He would still be working on getting iPhone 1.0 out 10 years, 15 years later, because it still wasn't as perfect as it could be. And I think that's something that is important. Life often rewards done over perfect. If you get something done and you put something out now you've got something done, you can move on to something else. If it is good enough, it does the job. It is what it needs to be, and everybody is happy with it. that is as close to perfect as it's gonna get, even if it's not perfectly square, perfectly round, perfectly level within the tightest tolerances you've ever seen. If it is good enough and it does the job, put it out there and move on to something else. One of the most important lessons that I learned from my dad is that money and success were worth a lot less to me than time with my children. When I was growing up, I used to say, often say to my dad, I, I wanna spend more time with you. I want to go fishing with you. Can we go camping? Can we go on a vacation? Can we what? Can we do stuff together? I wanna spend time with you, dad. And he said, John, it's too important that I work. I'm doing everything I can to provide a life for you where you can have anything that you want, that I'm giving you a better life than I had. I was, I grew up, I was, I grew up poor. I don't want you to have to be poor. And I remember being 8, 10, 12, 15, 16 years old, and I didn't really care, man. I, I, I said, dad, I don't, I don't need the money. I don't want the things. I want time with you. I, want my dad. And I think my dad always felt that there would always be more time for that. And when he, he, as an older man, had adult children who, he had five kids, he barely saw any, but two of us, my oldest brother or my brother. And then I, and we both had spent years also working out of the same offices in the building that he had for his machine shop. I worked part-time at the machine shop and also worked on my own businesses and used the offices for my, own offices. And so I actually got to spend a lot of time with him as an adult. And we really built a amazing relationship as adults. But I never got over the feeling that I missed an entire childhood with him, and my sisters all missed out on it. None of them really had much of a relationship with him. And I mean, my, my oldest sister Jill did. She, I mean, he loved her. She loved him, but she lived far away. They, got to talk on the phone sometimes, but they saw each other once a year if she would come to town. He rarely visited her because he was always too busy working and doing things. And I'll never forget just feeling that the one thing that I truly wanted in life growing up was a dad. And I promised myself when I had kids that I wouldn't do that while I wanted to be able to provide a good living for them, while I wanted to be able to have money and success and, personal satisfaction and all those things it, wasn't worth it to me and it will never be worth it to me to have those things if it cost me a relationship with my children. So, I was pretty successful in my twenties and thirties and built my own businesses and I had IT companies and really made pretty good living for myself and much like my father, I lost those during the recession. I, had sold my web hosting company and then my recruiting and staffing company went under in the recession because our entire industry just got hammered. I ended up divorced, single father raising my two children by myself. Now, here I was flat broke with preschool aged daughters and no clue how I was gonna support them, but the one thing that I was completely, completely, completely unmovable on. was that I would not sacrifice the time that I would spend with them. I would not sacrifice the relationship that I would have with them. I would not sacrifice the, opportunity that they would have to make memories with me in order to put more money in my bank account, as long as I was able to provide a roof over their head, food in their bellies, and a basic level of lifestyle that allowed them not to feel like they lived in total complete poverty. I was okay with that as long as they got to grow up knowing that their dad went to the park with them, that their dad went to the beach with them, that their dad made them a high priority in his life. and I feel like another thing I learned is that money doesn't buy you back the time that you lost or the memories that you passed up. And it doesn't fix the pain that you caused Others if you've heard other people, it doesn't matter how much money you've made or how much money you have, you've either caused the pain or you haven't. And I think the most important thing that I learned is that people can change. The dad I had when I was little was a hardworking, hard partying, hard drinking man's man type, a alpha type guy, right? It caused a ton of family problems. It caused him health problems. It caused marital problems. It caused a lot of things. that were just not good. But he truly changed. He saw what he had become. He didn't like it. He wanted to be somebody else. He changed his priorities. He changed how he behaved, changed how he treated people, and became a completely different person for the last 30 years of his life.