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

Episode Transcript

dadvidtry2 (00:01):
I think it's important to reflect on lessons
that I learned from my dad.
I think number.
One and this is something that'sbeen 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, aslong as you're willing to work
harder than everyone else andkeep fighting and not give up,

(00:24):
you still have a chance.
I mean, think about it.
People that quit never getanywhere.
People that never give up atleast have a chance.
There's no guarantee that if youwork hard and you do everything
right in life and you go getyour education and you, start a
business, you go get a job, youwork nine to five.
You do everything that societytells you to do.

(00:47):
There is no guarantee that ifyou do all of that, that you're
going to achieve any of thegoals that you have in life.
But if you don't do that, thereis practically a guarantee that
you will not get anything.
If you want to have the kind oflife that is not just punching a
clock and taking what you'regiven, if you're willing to work
for it, whether it's to build ahouse, whether your goal is to

(01:13):
build a company, to build alegacy, to donate more to
charity, to volunteer more to,put more good out into the
world, to do something for yourfamily.
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 yourlife, that would cause everybody

(01:35):
else to quit and accept the lotthat they have in life, and
accept that they had no way out.
If you are willing to keepfighting for it, you can get
something.
You have a chance.
I don't know anybody out therewho gets something, who is a
success, who can go on andcreate financial independence,

(01:55):
emotional independence, freedomin their lifestyle that hasn't
worked hard to get there, andwho hasn't faced challenges and
who hasn't had to fight toovercome those challenges.
I think about my dad.
I think about him starting abusiness when he had a job and
small children, he didn't giveexcuses.
He didn't tell himself that itwas okay to fail.

(02:17):
He kept going out and doing it.
He borrowed money, he tookrisks.
He put himself in a positionthat allowed himself to be
successful.
And while it took luck, he hadto come along with the right
partners.
He had to have the rightcustomers.
He had to be in the right placeat the right time.
He had to have all those thingscome together.
but there was a lot of people inCleveland, Ohio at that time,

(02:40):
that had machining experience.
There was a lot of people thatwere in a similar position to
him that were not willing totake the extra step that it took
to get out of the rut that theywere in to build a business.
And then even when he lost itall, he was able to claw his way
back in and get back in thereand eventually own the entire

(03:00):
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 putthe 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 lookedup to and I've always admired

(03:21):
it.
And I always have tried to seethat in myself and, quite
frankly, pass those attitudesand those values onto my own
daughters.
and I think that's probably thetop thing that I really learned
from him is that it just doesn'tmatter, man.
You can say, oh, I'm notsuccessful because I didn't go

(03:42):
to college.
I'm not successful cause I don'thave a education.
I'm not successful because Ididn't have rich parents.
I'm not successful because Idon'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'rewilling to risk, you at least
have a chance.

(04:03):
Another lesson that I learned isthat sometimes boring businesses
make money.
If you think about it, there'snothing sexy about a machine
shop.
Can you think of anybody thatyou know that when they were
growing up and you asked themwhat do you want to be when you
grow up?
You know how many people.
Do you know, said what I want todo when I grow up is I wanna be

(04:25):
a machinist.
I wanna run a machine.
I wanna sit there and pushbuttons on a machine, and I want
to watch the smoke and oil comeup and chips fly off and have
chips in my shoes when I gohome.
And mean, stand there and watcha piece of spinning metal, have
flakes come off of it.
Not many people want that.

(04:46):
It's not a business that peoplegravitate towards.
It's not sexy, it's not a you'renot selling cars, you're not
selling boats, you're notbuilding great things we built.
And that company we built partsthat were little pieces of
another machine.
We might build a little, onelittle component of a crane, one
little component of an engine.

(05:07):
There was nothing beautiful orsexy about it.
But it made money because it wasa service that was valuable that
people and other companiesneeded.
It provided value.
So I think a lot of people, wealways want to chase the next
trend.
When we want to try to make moremoney.
We want to do the glamor jobs,we wanna start software
companies, we wanna start thenext Facebook or the next

(05:27):
Amazon, all those kind ofthings.
But everybody else wants tostart those two.
Take a look around, there's alot of people out there that
make a lot of money withlandscaping companies that make
a lot of money with roofingcompanies that make a lot of
money in construction andplumbing and electrical and
trades and paving and a lot ofthe blue collar, hard work

(05:50):
industries that nobody reallygrows up saying, I wanna run a
paving machine when I grow up.
But you know what, if you dothat and you build a business
around it, you can createyourself quite a living with
that.
So I, I feel like that wassomething else.
He always imparted in me thevalue that you don't have to do
the sexy or exciting thing.

(06:11):
You can do the boring bluecollar hard work thing.
Do it well enough to be proud ofit.
Build a reputation for beinggood at it, and not just good,
but build a reputation for beinggreat at it.
And you'll always be able tomake a living doing it.
You'll always be able to atleast make a living and if not,
build a business.
Another thing that I learned isthat if you want to build a

(06:32):
business for yourself, thenumber one thing that you can do
to give yourself a leg up is togo get a job in the industry
that you wanna work in.
My dad built a business inmachining and he didn't he
wasn't sprung from the wombbeing an expert machinist.
he learned the trade byapprenticing by going and

(06:54):
getting paid for it.
There was no school that he wentto, Hey, here's building a
machine shop business 1 0 1.
Now he went and worked as anapprentice.
He worked hard for years,learned the craft, learned the
trade learned learned how to dothe process and make the
mistakes and do all that onsomebody else's dime.

(07:14):
He learned to scrap parts.
He learned to do, basicallyeverything that business needed
to do.
Learn that skill and becomeproficient and an expert at it
while being paid by somebodyelse to do that.
And I think that's a mistakethat I made when I was younger.
The first business that I everstarted, I started a screen
printing business.
And I'll never forget my dadsaid, You wanna learn, you want

(07:37):
to be in the screen printingbusiness, go get a job in a
screen printing company.
Go get a job doing the thing youwant to do so you can learn to
do it.
And I was, I said, no.
I've got the internet I canresearch it.
I can learn all about it.
I can learn all the things thatI need to learn to do this
without going and doing that.
I don't want to go work forsomebody else.
I want to be a business owner.

(07:57):
And I forget.
He said, then you're gonna be abad business owner.
Go work somewhere else and learnwhat to do.
Make all the mistakes.
Learn from their experience.
They'll teach you how not tomake the mistakes that you're
gonna think that you knoweverything and you're gonna
think that you know how to doit, but you really don't.
They've already made thosemistakes.
They'll teach you how not to,you'll make more and you get

(08:19):
paid for doing it.
And then you do that for acouple of years.
You're ready to actually go outand 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 thisbusiness anymore.
I don't like the industry.
I don't like what the jobactually is once I'm actually
doing it.
And I kind of really wish, whenI was younger, I would've
listened to him a lot more onthat.

(08:40):
I, was very headstrong.
I was bullheaded.
I thought I knew more than Idid.
That's one thing that I reallythink that he was very, wise in.
And I think that's somethingelse that we all want shortcuts,
right?
And my dad was a perfectionist.
He never, ever, ever believed indoing something the easy way.
If there was a way to do it theright way.

(09:00):
And that's something that I,feel like being committed to
perfectionism is, a great, assetthat he had.
And it's something that hereally imparted in me as well.
That leads me into anotherlesson that I learned from him,
though, which is perfectionismis a double-edged sword.

(09:20):
Precision machining.
The, tolerances were many timesa thousandth of an inch or a
10000th of an inch.
I mean the, the, differencebetween a, finished part that
was sellable and one that wasscrap was a smaller margin than
was visible by the human eye.
And we had to have, we hadliteral gauges and measuring

(09:44):
equipment that was able todiscern 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 thathis living depended on, that his
employees livelihoods dependedon, that his reputation depended
on was all.
Predicated on something beingperfect to an extent that is

(10:05):
just unimaginable by most of us.
And having a personal sense ofpride about the quality of work
that you do was a huge assetthat he had in every aspect of
his life.
And it's something that wasreally, ingrained in me at a
very young age.
And so anything that I've evertried to do, I've always tried

(10:25):
to do it as close to perfect asI can.
I always want to make sure thatthe quality of work that I put
out is of a level that I ampersonally proud of.
And something that he used to dois we would maybe be building a
barn on the farm that, that wehad, and he would make it cut in
a piece of wood and have twopieces that joined up.

(10:48):
And there might be a little bitof a gap there.
It was gonna be covered bymolding.
and the, maybe they didn't fitup right or this one was shorter
than that one, or the, gapbehind there was zigzagged
instead of straight.
It was gonna get covered up bymolding.
It was not a problem.
Nobody will ever see it.
And he would throw it away andstart over and make sure that
they met up perfectly.

(11:09):
And that even if there was nomolding on there, that joint,
that seam was gonna be perfect.
And I remember as a kid growingup with that level of
perfectionism, I would say tohim, I'm like, dad, this doesn't
even matter.
Nobody's ever going to see it.
And he would just say, but evenonce you put the molding on
there, I'm gonna know it'sthere.

(11:30):
I'm gonna know that I could havedone a better job and I chose
not to.
And someday when somebody tearsdown this barn, they're gonna,
or they go to remodel it, orthey take it out, they're going
to see that that was not doneright.
And they're gonna wonder whatkind of a person.
Does that lousy quality of workI think that's a very important
thought is if you are going todo something, do it right just

(11:55):
for the sake of doing it right.
Not just because somebody isgonna see it, but also just for
your own self-satisfaction, yourown pride of workmanship.
And that's something that I'vealways tried to do.
I've always tried to make surethat things that I do are good
quality, that I'm doing thingsthe right way, I'm treating
people fairly, I'm doing theright thing for people.

(12:16):
I'm doing things right.
Whether it's a relationship,whether it is something that I'm
building, a physical product orsomething like that I, always
try to do it the right waybecause even if nobody sees it,
I still know whether or not Idid it to the best of my
ability.
Now, the part where that's adouble-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.

(12:37):
For instance if a one inchtolerance is good enough to get
the job done, and you can getthe job done in 10 hours by
working with a one inchtolerance, and it affects the
final product in no discernibleway, but it takes you 30 hours
to have it done.
With a one eighth of an inchtolerance, you're gonna burn an

(13:00):
extra 20 hours to get the exactsame final product.
Now, you may think the finalproduct is slightly prettier.
You may think the final productis more worthy of your of your
own self-satisfaction and thingslike that.
But truly, in many, cases,perfection is the enemy of done.

(13:21):
So like growing up we wouldbuild a fence.
My dad was insanely,perfectionistic about the
tolerances and the levelnessand, just the perfection of the
fence that he was putting in afence post had to be perfect.
It had to be within an eighth ofan inch of the same height of
every fence post on the line.
It had to be perfectly levelfrom all, four axises.

(13:42):
It had, if there was a gate, ithad to line up where the gate
came in.
It had to be this close to thepole.
It couldn't be this far, and itcouldn't bump it.
It had to be exactly that close.
So it would go through, and nowwhen it was done that was great.
It looked perfect the day he wasdone.
It took ungodly extra time thanit would've been to put the gate

(14:04):
up and get it close enough thata chain would go around and it
would still keep your cows in.
Now he would burn insane amountsof time, making it perfect and
then, Well, what happens infences is fences are under
tension.
They're put into the ground,ground heaves up and moves and,
all those things.

(14:24):
So you put all that in there andwithin a month or two, the pole
is no longer level.
The gate sags, it's now hittingor it's far away.
The end result was still thesame functionality.
It no longer looked perfect.
all the extra effort that wasput into putting something out
that was perfect was wasted.
And as true as that is inbuilding a barn or building a

(14:46):
fence or putting a, installing awindow or something like that,
if you look at people who getstuff done, you know it, it can
work whether you're producing apodcast if you're building
software.
The same applies.
If you're building a business,if you're building a
relationship, when you'reraising your children, anything,
if you are emotionally lockedinto the idea that something has

(15:09):
to be perfect and you cannotmake a mistake, then you cannot
get things done.
You don't make the decisions youneed to make, you don't put the
progress through that you needto have.
You don't, you basically are notgoing to get the things done you
need to do.
Now, think about products youuse in your everyday life.
You buy an iPhone They keepcontinuously issuing software

(15:29):
updates.
They didn't put an iPhone outthat was perfect and wait until
everything was a hundred percentexactly perfect, completely
flawless before they sold youthe original iPhone.
They keep improving it.
Every generation.
Every generation, they put outmultiple software updates.
it's never, ever, ever been, andnever ever will be perfect.

(15:54):
But they put it out when it isgood enough to do what it needs
to do and it's gonna meet thecustomer's expectations.
And when the final product hasenough value that people are
going to be happy with it andnot disappointed.
Now, my dad would've beenexactly opposite.
He would still be working ongetting iPhone 1.0 out 10 years,

(16:15):
15 years later, because it stillwasn't as perfect as it could
be.
And I think that's somethingthat is important.
Life often rewards done overperfect.
If you get something done andyou put something out now you've
got something done, you can moveon to something else.
If it is good enough, it doesthe job.

(16:36):
It is what it needs to be, andeverybody is happy with it.
that is as close to perfect asit's gonna get, even if it's not
perfectly square, perfectlyround, perfectly level within
the tightest tolerances you'veever seen.
If it is good enough and it doesthe job, put it out there and
move on to something else.
One of the most importantlessons that I learned from my
dad is that money and successwere worth a lot less to me than

(17:00):
time with my children.
When I was growing up, I used tosay, 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 tooimportant that I work.

(17:23):
I'm doing everything I can toprovide 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 grewup poor.
I don't want you to have to bepoor.
And I remember being 8, 10, 12,15, 16 years old, and I didn't
really care, man.

(17:43):
I, I, I said, dad, I don't, Idon'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 feltthat there would always be more
time for that.
And when he, he, as an olderman, had adult children who, he
had five kids, he barely sawany, but two of us, my oldest

(18:07):
brother or my brother.
And then I, and we both hadspent years also working out of
the same offices in the buildingthat he had for his machine
shop.
I worked part-time at themachine shop and also worked on
my own businesses and used theoffices for my, own offices.
And so I actually got to spend alot of time with him as an

(18:28):
adult.
And we really built a amazingrelationship as adults.
But I never got over the feelingthat I missed an entire
childhood with him, and mysisters all missed out on it.
None of them really had much ofa relationship with him.
And I mean, my, my oldest sisterJill did.

(18:48):
She, I mean, he loved her.
She loved him, but she lived faraway.
They, got to talk on the phonesometimes, but they saw each
other once a year if she wouldcome to town.
He rarely visited her because hewas always too busy working and
doing things.
And I'll never forget justfeeling that the one thing that

(19:10):
I truly wanted in life growingup was a dad.
And I promised myself when I hadkids that I wouldn't do that
while I wanted to be able toprovide a good living for them,
while I wanted to be able tohave money and success and,
personal satisfaction and allthose things it, wasn't worth it
to me and it will never be worthit to me to have those things if

(19:33):
it cost me a relationship withmy children.
So, I was pretty successful inmy twenties and thirties and
built my own businesses and Ihad IT companies and really made
pretty good living for myselfand much like my father, I lost
those during the recession.

(19:53):
I, had sold my web hostingcompany and then my recruiting
and staffing company went underin the recession because our
entire industry just gothammered.
I ended up divorced, singlefather raising my two children
by myself.
Now, here I was flat broke withpreschool aged daughters and no

(20:14):
clue how I was gonna supportthem, but the one thing that I
was completely, completely,completely unmovable on.
was that I would not sacrificethe time that I would spend with
them.
I would not sacrifice therelationship that I would have
with them.
I would not sacrifice the,opportunity that they would have
to make memories with me inorder to put more money in my

(20:39):
bank account, as long as I wasable to provide a roof over
their head, food in theirbellies, and a basic level of
lifestyle that allowed them notto feel like they lived in total
complete poverty.
I was okay with that as long asthey got to grow up knowing that
their dad went to the park withthem, that their dad went to the

(21:01):
beach with them, that their dadmade them a high priority in his
life.
and I feel like another thing Ilearned is that money doesn't
buy you back the time that youlost or the memories that you
passed up.
And it doesn't fix the pain thatyou caused Others if you've
heard other people, it doesn'tmatter how much money you've
made or how much money you have,you've either caused the pain or

(21:23):
you haven't.
And I think the most importantthing that I learned is that
people can change.
The dad I had when I was littlewas a hardworking, hard
partying, hard drinking man'sman type, a alpha type guy,
right?
It caused a ton of familyproblems.
It caused him health problems.
It caused marital problems.

(21:43):
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 completelydifferent person for the last 30
years of his life.