The Wisdom of Bruce Halle

The Wisdom of Bruce Halle

– Harvey Mackay

I often use the expression, “One person can make all the difference in the world.”

That adage certainly applied to my friend Bruce Halle who recently passed away. Bruce was the founder of Discount Tire, the nation’s largest tire and wheel retailer with 975 stores in 34 states and more than 20,000 employees.

He truly was a self-made man, working as a paperboy as I did, and even being a gravedigger to support his family. He tried selling life insurance before he opened his first tire store in 1960 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was the sole employee. His original inventory consisted of two new tires and four retreads. Like many entrepreneurs, Bruce did everything from cleaning toilets to painting signs.

The company grew at record speed because of Bruce’s leadership and his three-pronged approach – provide reasonable prices, tremendous customer service and guarantee satisfaction. He believed that happy employees make happy customers. He taught his employees to live by the credo: Treat others the way you would want to be treated.

I’d like to focus on one of Bruce’s quotes and provide you with my thoughts: “There are really just five simple lessons to life: Be honest, work hard, have fun, be grateful and pay it forward.”

Honesty

Tell the truth at all times to build solid relationships. Your word has to be your bond. Complete honesty in little things is not a little thing at all. Honesty, ethics, integrity, values, morals – all mean the same thing. In my estimation, you can interchange them, because they all convey the single attribute that determines whether a person or an organization can be trusted.

Work Hard

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. There is no magic formula for being a success. It takes hard work. Hard work is not a bad thing. Sure, natural talent can make a big difference. But show me a natural .300 hitter in Major League Baseball, and I’ll show you someone who bangs the ball until their hands bleed trying to keep that stroke honed. Ask any surgeon about how much sleep they got for the eight to 10 years it took them to get through medical school, internship and residency. Ask any concert pianist how much practice it takes to perform a 40-minute piano concerto from memory. All these gigs take more than magic hands. It takes iron determination and lots of hard, hard work. The harder you work, the luckier you’ll get.

Have fun

Business and fun are not polar opposites. In fact, another piece of advice that I share frequently is “Do what you love, love what you do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” Adopt a TGIM attitude – Thank God It’s Monday. A positive work environment encourages fun. Quite often, those are the most successful enterprises as well.

Be grateful

Gratitude should be a continuous attitude. It’s very disheartening to see a decline in the use of “thank you” by so many. When I hold doors open for people, I seldom hear a thank you. When I go shopping and buy something, I’m usually the one saying thank you for serving me!

For a while, I thought it was just me, being overly sensitive. But a few years ago I was watching the “Late Show with David Letterman” and heard about a man who went into a store looking for an item. He found no one to help. The clerks were disinterested at best, rude at worst. After much searching, he finally found the item himself. At the checkout counter he found a long line of people and a clerk who definitely worked only at her own speed. Finally he paid for his item, and the clerk threw it into a plastic bag and shoved his change at him.

The man had to say something, so he asked the cashier, “Can’t you even say thank you?”

And the cashier said, “It’s printed on your receipt.”

Pay it forward

When you have the opportunity to do something kind or helpful for someone who doesn’t expect it, take it! It’s even better when the recipient doesn’t know who is responsible. We all have enough time and resources to lend a hand. You might even make someone’s day.

Thanks for sharing your lessons, Bruce. We will sorely miss you.

Mackay’s Moral: Never discount the importance of honesty and hard work.

The Key to Posture Is Patience

The key to posture is patience!

– Robert Rohm

 

In this particular Tip, I want to share with you some very wise insight that one of my dear business friends taught me several years ago. He explained to me that the key to having good posture in any situation is patience. (When I am speaking of posture, I am not referring to sitting up straight or walking tall. I am talking about how to position yourself, so any personal relationship or business deal can be a “win-win” situation.)

 

It goes without saying that you cannot control another person. Neither can you judge what their motive may be in any given situation. Even if they want to win and want you to lose, you can still put yourself in a position where both of you can have a winning situation, or a winning posture. Maybe an example would help.

 

Recently I was supposed to have a very important meeting with someone. He had called me twice on the day before to make sure that I would be there exactly on time. The next day came and I was fifteen minutes early for the appointment. I waited and waited for our 10 o’clock meeting. At 10:20, I realized that something must have happened because the person did not show up. By 10:25 I needed to depart for another appointment. Rather than getting angry or upset for my wasted time, effort and energy, I decided to simply exercise some patience. I did not know what had taken place nor was I in a position to judge the situation properly since I did not know all the circumstances. It is important to realize that the patience I was demonstrating was not so much for the other person as much as it was for me. That is the key to having good posture or a good relationship with another person. It starts with having patience within yourself.

 

Later that day, the person I was to meet called to find out why I had not shown up! I explained that I had been there and waited until 10:25 and then, since I did not receive any other communication, I left for my next meeting. He laughed and told me he was just running a little bit late and that he had arrived at about 10:30. It would have been very easy at that point for me to say, “Well, it would have been nice if you had called me or let me know!”, but if I genuinely wanted to practice patience it was going to require me to PRACTICE PATIENCE!

 

This thing about patience is not as easy as it sounds. I could hardly believe his attitude about the whole thing! It was like it was no big deal. Yet, I had gone out of my way to be early for the appointment and waited an additional twenty-five minutes. But, I held my tongue and my posture. I practiced patience.

 

When we were finally able to meet several days later, there were some things he wanted to show me and to sell me. Again I decided the best thing I could do was to keep my mouth shut and continue to demonstrate patience. If any of you know me very well, you know that I am rarely short on having something to say. My biggest challenge is that I have something to say about everything! But, fortunately, I continue to learn that patience is a great virtue. The best way I have learned to demonstrate patience is to keep my mouth shut and listen and wait, and listen and wait, and listen and wait. And, if you think this is easy, I would just love to watch YOU when things don’t go your way to see how long you can listen and wait! If you are anything like me, it is not very easy.

 

We continued to have our meeting and the amazing thing was that he seemed to have a genuine kindness and interest in me. Without me ever having to say a word, he realized that he had not been very professional with me or very punctual. I continued to be kind. I continued to listen. I continued to practice patience. I felt like I was getting a good work out at the gym.

 

He shared some really good information with me about his product, as well as the opportunity he was putting before me. We were able to have a wonderful meeting and I do count him as a friend. By the end of the meeting, we were both laughing at some funny things that had happened in our lives.

 

This is one Tip that I wish that I could convey better with words. Unfortunately, I have found that words are the very things that destroy what I am trying to communicate. Our posture is most clearly seen by others through our silence and patience. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived said in Proverbs 17:28, “Even a fool is thought to be wise when he keeps his mouth shut.” That hits close to home!

 

The next time you are in a business or personal situation, see how you can better demonstrate posture in the circumstances by simply listening and not talking. I am not talking about manipulation or deception. I am talking about having the posture of one who is genuinely interested; one who wants to listen and connect without acting like a grown child. Maturity can be clearly seen by the way a person behaves when things do not go the way they had planned. All of us can be wonderful people when everything goes our way and falls into place just like we planned. But, when life throws us a surprise or curve, it is at that point when our posture will be revealed. It will mostly be seen or heard by our words and by the patience we demonstrate when we are trying to work through some issues.

 

I hope that you will begin to practice this Tip in the next encounter you have with someone in which you find yourself needing to get your point across. The only way to get your posture back, when you are feeling a little off balance, is to listen, think and hold your tongue. I have found listening and demonstrating patience to be the tools that help get me back on track every time. You will, too!

 

Tip: The key to posture is patience!

 

Have a great week! God bless you!

 

Dr. Robert A. Rohm

Blessed For Success

Blessed For Success

– John Maxwell

 

Not everyone you influence will think the same way you do. You have to help them not only believe that they can succeed, but also show them that you want them to succeed.

How do you do that?

 

1. Expect it: People can sense your underlying attitude no matter what you say or do. If you have an expectation for your people to be successful, they will know it.

 

2. Project it: People need to hear you tell them that you believe in them and want them to succeed. Become a positive prophet of their success.

 

3. Reinforce it: You can never do too much when it comes to believing in people.

 

4. Verbalize it: Once people recognize and understand that you genuinely want to see them succeed and are committed to helping them, they will begin to believe they can accomplish what you give them to do.

 

Excerpt from Becoming a Person of Influence

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Watch with glittering eyes the whole wor

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. ~ Roald Dahl

It is only with the heart that one can s

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The greatest leaders are there to serve

The greatest leaders are there to serve all of those that they are leading. ~ Steve Green

One man cannot do right in one departmen

One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Giving is the Highest Level of Living

Giving is the Highest Level of Living

– John Maxwell 

 

Nothing speaks to others more loudly than generosity from a leader. True generosity isn’t an occasional event. It comes from the heart and permeates every aspect of a leader’s life, touching their time, money, talents, and possessions. Effective leaders, the kind people want to follow, don’t gather things just for themselves; they do it in order to give to others. To cultivate the quality of generosity in your life, do the following:

 

1. Be grateful for whatever you have.

 

2. Put people first.

 

3. Don’t allow the desire for possessions to control you.

 

4. See money as a resource.

 

5. Develop the habit of giving

.

The only way to maintain an attitude of generosity is to make it your habit to give-your time, attention, money, and resources. As Richard Foster says, “Just the very act of letting go of money, or some other treasure, does something within us. It destroys the demon ‘greed’.”

 

Excerpt from The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader

A Smile Adds Face Value

A Smile Adds Face Value

– Harvey Mackay

Readers of this column know that I am a big fan of Dale Carnegie, the master of making friends. I carry a poem from one of his books with me and often share it when I am speaking to groups. It’s called “The Value of a Smile,” and I hope you learn as much from it as I have.

“It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits.

“It creates happiness in the home, fosters goodwill in a business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and natures best antidote for trouble.

“Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anyone ’til it is given away. And if in the hurly-burly bustle of today’s business world, some of the people you meet should be too tired to give you a smile, may we ask you to leave one of yours?

“For nobody needs a smile so much, as those who have none left to give.”

I learned years ago that one of the most powerful things you can do to have influence with others is to smile at them. Never underestimate the value of a smile. The person who is smart enough to keep smiling usually winds up with something good enough to smile about.

People all over the world smile in the same language. A smile should be standard equipment for all people, both at work and at home. It takes only 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown – so really, you have no excuse. Put on a happy face!

Smiling adds face value and helps you make a good impression. We like people who smile, because they appear warm and kind. They are more approachable.

Smiling encourages trust. People who are constantly smiling appear to be more trustful than those who are not.

People who smile are more productive. A 2010 study by Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at Warwick Business School over in England, proved that employees who smile more often are significantly more productive and creative in the workplace.

Smiling makes you more creative. A 2013 study from the University of California, San Francisco, explored this connection in men and found that those who were happier had a more comprehensive approach to problems, improving their ability to think of more solutions than their negative-minded counterparts. The researchers connected this finding to the release of dopamine triggered by happiness, since the neurotransmitter is involved in learning, processing and decision-making.

Smiling enhances your disposition. The more you smile, the happier you are. And don’t forget that the more you smile, the happier other people around you feel.

Smiling makes you more attractive. A smile is a very inexpensive way to improve your looks. People are naturally attracted to people who smile.

Smiling improves health. Studies have proven that when people smile, endorphins are released making people feel happy and less stressed. The more you smile, the happier and more relaxed you get. Surprisingly, this also works when faking a smile or laugh, as the brain can’t differentiate between real or fake smiles.

Endorphins also act as natural pain killers. The added oxygen from smiling and laughing benefits your body while improving your immune system. Smiling releases more white blood cells, which protect the body against infectious diseases.

In a 2012 study published in the journal Psychological Science, University of Kansas psychological scientists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman studied 170 participants who were told to hold chopsticks in their mouths in three formations, making them smile to various degrees without realizing it, after performing a stressful task. The experiment revealed that subjects who smiled the biggest with the chopsticks experienced a substantial reduction in heart rate and quicker stress recovery compared to those whose expressions remained neutral.

Finally, smiles are contagious, just like yawns. So smile and start an epidemic. Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important. That’s why you should not only smile from “ear to ear” but from “year to year.”

Mackay’s Moral: Smiles never go up in price nor down in value.