Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening depending on when and where you're tuning in. This is episode 17 of The Blue Collar Executive podcast. I am your host Lewis Taulbee, Jr. Remember the phrase don't sweat the small stuff? Sounds logical and we've all said it. However, if we really think about it, there's a problem with that statement because only in the small essence of everything we do is where we find the truth. If we want to improve our life in any aspect, we may need to sweat the small stuff. I once had an employee give me a card for Boss's Day. On the inside of it she wrote, I have never been more dedicated to give my best at my job. It is not because my salary because I have made more. It is not because of the company's culture as I have worked in the same environment for many companies. Rather it is because I know I am genuinely cared for as an employee and a person. I know this because when my mother passed away, I received flowers from you. When I had my surgery, you called to check on me and when my daughter had her accident, you text me on a Sunday afternoon asking about her. I wanted to use this card to make two points today. The first one is that when I make someone a job offer, I tell them the salary benefits and about the company, because those are the big things. But after reading this, I realized that this lady was a happy, motivated, and frankly, great employee because of a short phone call or a simple Sunday afternoon text. The second point that I want to make is that I don't remember all of this lady's accomplishments as an employee although as her manager, her performance directly impacted my performance and bonus. I do still remember exactly what she wrote in that card. That performance review is buried in a file somewhere and the bonus long spent but that little note had a huge impact on me forever as a manager by helping me recognize the importance of always taking the time to do the little things. Sometimes big picture people forget that there are many little things that must be done to have great success in anything we do. When Leonardo DaVinci started painting the Mona Lisa he began with a tiny paintbrush. His friends thought he was crazy and they questioned him about it. They said, “what are you doing, man? We have to sell this stuff. We can't make a living waiting on you to complete something with those tiny little brushes”. His only response was I am creating a masterpiece and that's exactly what he did. In fact, I'm told that if you take a magnifying glass to it today, you cannot discern a single brush stroke. The same is true for whatever we're creating, whether it's our business, our family, or our life. At the end of it all, whether we have created a disaster or a masterpiece, it will all have been done one tiny moment, or tiny brush stroke at a time. I have a friend that is an expert in going into businesses and identifying problems. I guess his title would be a fixer. For 40 years he has made a great living being called upon by some of the largest companies in the world, by many professional and college sports organizations, and by the U.S. military to come in and help them find ways to improve or to fix something that isn't working. He was once even called in by a U.S. president to help identify the problem in his marriage. What a job right? He told me that in every single case it is always something small that is overlooked. Not sometimes, but a hundred percent of the time there is a small thing that was overlooked in the process. Everyone talks about you have to have the big picture for success. You have to see the vision. All that is true however, all that is the easy part. The true success is in the minute details. When we neglect the little things and take shortcuts, we're not serving ourselves. In fact, we're setting ourselves up for failure down the road. Chrysler once had to recall thousands of automobiles because of a missing tiny 5 cent washer. Remember, a little leak can sink a giant ship. So again, when we think about it, it is the little things that matter. Not just in business. This is just as important for our family, our relationships, in any aspect of our lives. We always need to look for the details in everything. I fly a lot. In fact, there's times that I'm in the air more than I'm on the street. I don't worry about flying. I know it's very safe. However, a few years back, a Continental flight crashed because of some missing little screws. What happened was maintenance was replacing the wind fins on each wing. The second shift guy took out all the screws and then the third shift guy came in and began to install them. However, he only got one installed and thought he would just wait for the next evening to do the other one not knowing that the second shift guy had taken the screws out of both. Because of some tiny little screws that plane went down and killed everyone on board. I now look at the wings when I'm getting on to ensure the screws are there. If you think I'm crazy, look up an article from January 20th, 2017, when another guy doing exactly the same thing that I do noticed 20 screws were missing from the exact same fin on a Frontier airline airbus taking off from Denver. Yes, the big stuff matters. Those wings matter, but it's the little things. The little tiny screws that are vital to the success of those wings. Remember when God asked King Solomon what he wanted? Solomon said wisdom. He could have asked for anything. He could have just looked at the big picture and said I want the biggest mansion and all the riches in the world, but he understood that without wisdom, all those other things are meaningless and could dwindle away at some point. God gave him wisdom and to this day, Solomon remains the richest human to ever live on Earth. You may be thinking, well, wisdom isn't a little thing and you're absolutely right. However, if you were on The Price Is Right and behind curtain #1 was a million dollars or behind curtain #2 was wisdom, which one would you take? Be honest. I think most of us would take the million because that's all we can see is that big picture. Maybe we don't realize that behind curtain #2 is a perfect blueprint for a billion dollar operation. Always enjoy and be grateful for the little things, because I promise one day you'll look back and realize that in all that mattered those were the big things. We can't solve the world's problems, but by always doing the little things, we can have a huge impact on our lives and the lives of others. I am reminded of a little story about an old man walking along the beach after a tide went down. He was picking up starfish and throwing them back into the sea. This young fellow was watching him and after seeing him toss a few he asked the old man what he was doing. The old man replied “when the sun comes out, these starfish will all die in this hot sand so I'm putting them back in the water”. The young fellow laughed and said, “man there's 30 miles of beach here lined with starfish do you really think you can make a difference?”. The old man reared back and threw another one out to sea and looked over at the young man and said, “I made a difference for that one”. Have you heard of the butterfly effect? It's a doctor thesis written in 1963 by Edward Lorens. It was presented to the New York Academy of Science and laughed out of the place. It states that a butterfly could flap its wings on one side of the Earth and set molecules of air in motion, which sets more molecules in the air in motion and continues to eventually create a hurricane on the other side of the Earth. Sounds crazy right? Well it hung around long enough that in the mid-nineties physics professors tested it and it worked every single time. Not just with butterflies, but with every moving matter including people. They even gave it a law, just like the law of gravity. It's called the law of sensitive dependence upon initial conditions. Everything we do matters. Matters to us. Matters to our families. Matters to our friends, our community, and our world. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1940, which has saved billions of lives and counting to date. He received a Nobel Prize for it in 1945. What most people don't know that in September, 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory after a month long family vacation and found some dirty dishes that he had forgotten to wash before he left. They were contaminated with a mold because his assistant forgot to close the window and he was upset with his assistant. Then he realized that the colonies of mold had been destroyed around the bacteria that we now know is as penicillin. So if you really think about it, maybe that assistant should have received that Nobel Prize. Maybe it was Tom Fleming, Alexander's brother that saved millions of people because he took his brother in and raised him from the age of seven after their dad passed away suddenly. Maybe it was Edward Wright, a biologist who took Fleming under his wing during the war and gave him a temporary job at St. Mary's Hospital, which changed his career path from being a surgeon to becoming a bacteriologist. I could go on and on and we are no less of an example as these people. Every single thing we do, especially the little things, matter. I want to share a letter with you that was written by an 82 year old looking back on her life. She wrote the following. If I had my life to live over again, I would make more mistakes next time. I would relax. I would limber up. I would be crazier than I have been on this trip. I know very few things I would take seriously anymore. I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would scale more mountains and I would swim more rivers. I would watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have much more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. You see, I was one of those people who live sensibly hour by hour, day by day. Oh, I had my moments and if I had them to do over again, I would have many more. In fact, I would just have moments. One right after another, instead of always trying to live life years ahead of my day. If I had it to do over again, I would travel lighter. I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and later in the fall. I would ride more merry go rounds and catch more goldfish. Greet more people, pick more flowers and dance more. Oh, if I had it to do all over again, but you see, I don't. Let's not get to the end of our journey and regret that we didn't take time out to do the little things. When we reach the end of our journey, it won't be that great job that we had or the big deal that we signed or what's in our bank account that we'll think about, it's going to be those little things that meant the most. One day recently I was sitting on the porch beside my wife. It was after work hours but I was still surfing my emails on my phone and my mind was still occupied with my job. My wife was talking to me and I was uh huhing her. I was trying to pay attention, but let's face it I'm a man so I have a one-track mind. I'm great at pretending to multitask, but my focus can only be on one thing at one time and as good as I think I am at pretending my wife knows. She was telling me about her day. I wasn't really tuned in and continued to just say aha but then she stopped talking. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the hurt in her eyes. I realized that I had just aha my wife. Whatever business was on my mind or whatever I was reading in that email certainly was not worth hurting my wife and was certainly far less important than being in that moment with her and listening about her day. While sitting on the porch and talking about our day is truly a little thing it really is what matters the most. I want to close this episode by reading a little bookmarker that I was given many years ago. My grandmother remarried at a late age to a gentleman that she met in church. He was great to her and the entire family loved him. He loved nothing more than for people to come visit him. He could sit and tell jokes for hours. I was just a teenager, but I went over and mowed the grass every week. When I was done I would go in and chat for a bit. As a teenager though, I always had someplace else that I needed to be and every time I would say goodbye, he would say “what's your hurry”. Isn’t it funny how we remember certain little things? I can hear him saying that as clear as if he was sitting right here beside me, what's your hurry? When he passed away, my grandma gave me his Bible. I didn't open it for a couple of years, but when I did this little bookmarker fell out. It has a simple little poem on it that I like and I think you'll like it too. It's called The Little Things. Oh, it's just the little homely things. The unobtrusive friendly things. The won't you let me help you things that make our pathway light and it's just the jolly, joking things. The never mind the trouble things. The laugh with me it's funny things that make our world seem bright. So here's to all the little things. The done and then forgotten things. The, oh it's simply nothing things that make life worth the fight. So what's your hurry? There will be plenty of time to chase that next big deal. To work another job or to make that mighty dollar, but if we have to sacrifice the little things for it, what's the purpose? It truly is the little things.
That concludes another episode of The Blue Collar Executive podcast. I hope you found some value in it or at the very least found it entertaining. I wish you all great success and hope you find happiness in every little thing. Thank you so much for listening.