Welcome to Wise Men Wednesday, your weekly dose of wisdom to thrive at work and at home.
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Posts published this week:
Former Best Buy Manager’s Review of His CEO Hubert Joly’s Book The Heart of Business:
I pulled off the highway, parked my car, and got out to take a photograph and then fired off this email to my colleagues at Best Buy, “Congratulations! We did it. We beat our long time competitor, Circuit City.”
But I was celebrating a bit too soon. The headwinds that destroyed Circuit City changed directions and onto Best Buy. It wasn’t looking good and I began to think I made an irreversible mistake.
A few years earlier I dropped out of college and accepted a position as an entry level salesperson at Best Buy. A hiring manager convinced me that Best Buy was a great company to work for and that I’d move up the ladder quickly.
But, our customers knew the writing was on the wall long before I did.
Customers came into my store to use their gift cards, “While they still could”, declined buying extended warranties because they were worried we couldn’t honor them once our doors were shut, and they made comments whenever we ran out of stock of a product or our price wasn’t as good as Amazon such as, “Well, this is why you’re going out of business.”
“This is why you’re going out of business.”
Being told this every single day doesn’t exactly boost your confidence. And one day I broke down after being told this for the 1,000th time. I finally admitted that the picture for the company’s future was grim and I logged into Fidelity and sold all my shares of the company stock.
Words of wisdom:
“The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the Pursuit of useful Knowledge, in honorable Actions and the Practice of Virtue; in which he who labors to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest Fruits of them; not only because these never leave a Man, nor even in the extremist Old Age; but because a Conscience bearing Witness that our Life was well-spent, together with the Remembrance of past good Actions, yields an unspeakable Comfort to the Soul.”
Cicero quote from Poor Charlie’s Almanack
Have a great rest of the week!
James Quandahl