If, rather than exhibiting a sense of entitlement, employees were to express gratitude for the employment opportunity, as my grandfather did when he was let go, many could find themselves swinging to a new and better opportunity.
Big D didn’t ask for a dollar more, and he didn’t get severance pay. But his attitude did win him the admiration of his ex-boss and the help he needed to get his next job at Westinghouse. What do you think was worth more in the long term? He made his boss feel indebted—to a degree.
That’s what I would recommend to people who work for someone else. Go over and above what you’re called to do. Don’t always be looking for quid pro quo. Don’t say, “It’s not my job,” or “It’s not my problem.” As expressed by the adage that “the cream rises to the top,” those who are willing to work hard and go the extra mile are usually more successful in life and business.
Employees should also seek to be not only indispensible but also introspective. They should ask themselves what their skills and weaknesses are, and they should be honest with themselves and seek improvement in areas that need it. Most people who are fired don’t seem to understand why they were fired, although everyone around them may have complained for months about their behavior or about their attitude.
My COO, Liz, is an example of someone who gives everything she has to her job and more. She started off in customer service before becoming my executive assistant. I needed her to handle the bookkeeping in one of my divisions, so she did it. Then I asked her to be our director of human resources. Now she’s my COO, helping me run the entire Vallorani Estates brand and making a nice salary. She’s just pushed and pushed and pushed.
My CFO, Tracey, often works long into the night and on weekends to ensure my companies are on track financially, and to deliver necessary reporting to our clients. Jared, my CEO, is available 24-7 to solve problems, manage multiple projects, and streamline operations.
Many people will never climb their organization’s ladder, because they won’t invest enough of their time and make an effort to stand out from the pack. They’re clock-punchers, in at 9:00 a.m., out at 5:00 p.m. “Oh, you need me to do something extra? I want overtime,” they may say, or “I want a day off.” They’ll even say, “That’s not in my job description.”
In my company, people with that attitude never go very far. They either keep the job they’re in for years, or they move elsewhere. But for people who put in the effort, there’s no ceiling. Eventually, Liz, Tracey, and Jared became business partners in my various endeavors because their attitude matched their ambition. That’s how my grandfather prospered too.
I was raised in a very moral home with a strong work ethic. If I learned anything from my family’s example and the examples of those who’d gone before, it is that it’s a privilege to be alive and to be able to work hard to make a good life. Despite the wolves in life, hardships, challenges, naysayers, and even our own inner demons, we can enjoy the music of the mandolin. It’s a privilege just to get up in the morning and take a breath, to enjoy life, to sip a cup of great coffee, or to toast with a divine wine over a long dinner with friends.
These simple yet profound pleasures are privileges, not rights. We are not entitled to anything. We work hard to earn such pleasures, and we should learn to appreciate them and enjoy sharing them with others around us.
Nothing worth having comes easily. Nobody hands anything to us. We have to have a vision to accomplish our aims. We have to work hard. We have to take risks. We have to make sacrifices. We can’t just talk about achieving. Marcus Aurelius said, “Don’t talk about what being a good man is. Be one.” Don’t talk about what you’re going to do. Do it. Just start. It’s never too early, and it’s never too late.
Another thing I learned from my family is to celebrate every victory with style, and that’s one thing I’ve tried to carry forward in my business and in my family. I remember when we paid off our house mortgage, I brought my kids together, cracked open a bottle of prosecco, and said, “Okay guys, I want to let everybody know that we just paid off the house!” It was a special moment.
If you don’t take time out to celebrate those special little moments, even if it’s just surviving an especially challenging day of work, you’re cheating yourself of that victory. Seek to always find a victory to celebrate: “I accomplished five important things in my work or home life today. Now I’m going to pour myself a glass of wine and admire the sunset.”
Some people are workaholics and proud of it. I work extremely hard, but I believe in playing hard too. It takes effort to pause, smell the roses, play ball with my boys in the backyard, read to my youngest kids, tuck them in at night, and enjoy a good movie with the family. And it’s the best effort I am privileged to give.
There’s nothing better than sitting down to a freshly grilled steak on the patio and lighting up a great cigar as the moon rises over the tree line. Listening to some good tunes while I sip a glass of wine with my family reminds me of why I work hard. These are the privileges of life, these small moments.
If you find you are not taking the time to experience these moments in your life, what can you do to change? What is the point of all this hard work to keep the wolves at bay if you’re not enjoying the music of the mandolin?
Vallorani Estates promotes hard work but also encourages people to achieve enjoyment in life. Take the time to slow down and enjoy life’s privileges. Don’t let the wolves overtake you. And don’t die with nothing more than a big fat bank account. What good does that do?
If I die with a massive bank account, I’ve never enjoyed that money. If I didn’t spend it on my kids and take hunting trips with them, for instance, what am I going to leave them? Just a big pile of money they’re likely to perpetuate? They’re not going to spend it on making memories with their kids, either. Two or three generations later, we’ll get a kid who blows through it all. That’s not what taming life’s wolves should mean.
I love taking my kids on hunting trips. It takes several thousand dollars to make these trips, between airfare, lodging, guides, and the taxidermy afterward. People tell me I could have invested that money elsewhere. I could have bought this or that stock or put the money into my retirement account.
But for me, there’s no better way to spend my money than to create memories with my kids and spend time with them. I teach them how to be patient and wait for the right shot and to feed hungry children with the meat we donate from the hunt. We spend solid hours together and display the trophies in our home, a constant reminder of the skills we achieved through that trip. Those are some of our best memories. How can you put a price on that?
At WVU, I picked graphic design for my major because I felt it was a way to apply my artistic skills and talents to making a living. I also liked the fact that it had a business side to it. As a graphic designer, I put together advertisements, book covers, and posters. And graphic design utilized computers, another plus for me. The fine arts are the old-fashioned media, whereas graphic design harnesses the same creativity with a modern tool. However, I look forward to picking up a paintbrush again some day.
Our graphic-design professor put our work up on the wall from the first class, and mine came in dead last. I thought it was because my last name is Vallorani and she’d alphabetized. But no. She had put up our work in the order of best to worst. Mind you, this wasn’t my first experience with design. I had been a student of art for years and had already started creating display advertising, professionally, in my dad’s business.
This kind of thing could be discouraging to a lot of students, but to me, it was motivating. When I came in last, I told myself I’d never be last again. Consistently, after that first time, my assignment projects placed first, or were among the five best, and I was soon at the top of my class.
Unlike much of fine art, graphic design isn’t subjective. There are rules. Typography, lines, texture, white space—all of it matters. My professors gave us very specific assignments, such as how to draw perfect c
urves by hand. If we didn’t follow the instructions exactly, we were graded down. It was a real critique. We had to adhere to the elements of graphic design and create according to the rules. That was valuable education I’ve used through most of my business life.
I will also never forget my photography professor. He gave us an assignment to go out and take pictures at random for an entire day. I’m a very efficient person, so I took that assignment, thinking I’d take twenty-four pictures—one roll of film—and I’d be done quickly. The next day I turned in my twenty-four photos.
My professor just stared at me. “That’s it? Those are all the pictures you took?” His look said it more clearly than words could have. He was implying that the height of arrogance is to think of getting the perfect shot with only one roll of film. He expected us all to come in with rolls and rolls of printed shots. But I had a job, and I had all these classes—and the pictures I had taken were actually pretty good.
That wasn’t the point, of course, and I learned a big lesson in humility that day. Getting the perfect composition required effort, time, and attention to detail. It required pushing harder than I thought I could push. I gained a better understanding of what it was to look at everything in life through a new pair of eyes and to search to find the best artistic portrayal.
One piece of advice I received in that program has always stayed with me: my teachers told me to never apologize for my artwork. A local bank had our class design its new logo, and out of the entire class, my design was chosen. As part of the competition, I had to do a presentation in front of a group of bankers and businesspeople.
I remember my teacher telling me during the process, “Don’t get up there for your presentation and say, ‘I was up late last night. I’ve been really busy. I’m not sure I did this how you wanted. This is not my best work.’ Don’t make excuses. Just deliver it.”
It was great advice. If you say something negative, you encourage agreement. If you put yourself down, people might believe you! Why not simply stand up and say, “Here is my music.” Period. Don’t apologize or make excuses.
During my sophomore year, I met my future wife, Jan, through a campus Christian group. Her older sister was also a member of the group, and on Valentine’s Day, we played a dating game. Jan’s older sister somehow rigged it to make me the bachelor who won so Jan and I could go on a date. We got married while we were still in college, the summer before our senior year.
One important thing Jan and I had in common is that we both wanted children. She would have been content with three, but we ended up having seven: three girls and four boys. That’s because I think big and I wanted to extend the Vallorani name in a big way, and I love the joy of a full house.
Before we were married, we planned to homeschool our children. Having the flexibility that homeschooling gives allows us to take the kids on life experiences that are extended field trips: traveling the US and abroad, hunting, fishing, camping, visiting historic sites, museums—these kinds of things. Jan had gained valuable experience in teaching while she was earning her degree in elementary education. We’re currently part of a hybrid system in which our children are partly homeschooled and partly educated in a co-op. Classical Conversations gives kids a classical education while they are exposed to tutors and teachers other than their mother. Jan teaches one of these classes.
We were able to take our two oldest on a Mediterranean cruise to Italy, Spain, and France a couple of years ago. My daughter and I have hunted boar together, and my sons and I have had several hunting trips over the years. With trips to Plymouth Rock and Caribbean plantations and beach trips with the extended family, our life has been rich with happy moments because of the freedom homeschooling provides.
Why We Homeschool
Homeschooling was always our first choice, and it’s come a long way since it was first legalized. While there are some great teachers in the public schools, I do not always agree with the curriculum that is being taught today. First of all, much of the curriculum is built on atheistic philosophy and teaches that the state is the solution to society’s problems. Second, the promotion of socialism over capitalist ideology is alarming. Third, America’s great history and foundational principles have been largely ignored or totally rewritten.
My kids are fortunate their mom is their teacher, but they are not limited to just one person. Our kids are exposed to other adults as authority figures because they have always been involved in my business. They sit and listen when I have business guests join us for dinner and cigars. My older kids have traveled with me on business trips. They never developed the “youth-supremacy” mind-set that so many kids have today, in which authority is incessantly questioned. Interaction with other adults is a part of their everyday life, and they learned to converse with adults at an early age.
Unlike some homeschooling families, however, we are a family that watches films and listens to all types of music together. I want to expose them to other worldviews and help them understand why we believe what we do. They get a plethora of outside lessons too: sports, dance, music, art, martial arts, and so forth. I think we have been able to bring the best of both worlds together. It fits our lifestyle beautifully. We can just pick up and drive off in the RV and still homeschool according to our family values. They get experiences that few kids have the opportunity to enjoy.
During my final year at WVU, I interned in the printing and communications division, so I got to work in all aspects of the printing press—prepress, photolithography, press, and bindery, something I really enjoyed. A couple of months after I graduated and finished my internship, I went back to work at my dad’s company. Then my former boss called me from the school printing shop. The head of the department had gotten ill and I was told they really needed me back.
True to my nature, I was overly optimistic about my pay from my dad. I thought my dad was paying me $10 an hour. When the school officials offered me $10.25 an hour, I went to my dad for advice. “Hey, Dad, the university called me back and they’re going to pay me 25 cents more an hour than you’re paying me.” He said, “$8.75?” I said, “No, $10.25 an hour.” He said, “No, Son, that’s a couple more dollars an hour than what I’m paying you!” He urged me to take the opportunity.
My first job outside the family business was paid at that rate: a good bit of money in those days! It was great. We had a classified column for university jobs that I got first crack at since I was publishing it. I was always scanning for graphic design jobs, especially for ones that might promise even better opportunities.
One day, the opportunity came. It was a position with a higher rate of pay, as a salary with benefits, which was a big step up for me from an hourly rate. So I transferred to the extension service, a state-run entity within the university that sent experts into the field to work with farmers, breeders, and others in agriculture.
For two years, I worked there as a graphic designer and did web work too. That’s really where I first got experience with the Internet. We had to have a website, so I learned how to make GIFs and JPEGs and write HTML. I think we even did e-mail blasts, or at least an early version of them.
After about two years, I felt I’d done all I could in my job at the university. It is a state-run institution, which means budget limitations. A lot of the publications were in black and white. The paper selection was lean. Other than the web work, I found myself, in my second year, producing somewhat dull government pamphlets. I wanted to get into the private sector, make more of myself, and do more with my skills.
People around me were making more money, which motivated me. My sister-in-law was working in IT at a law firm. She would tell us she just got a $5,000 bonus. What? That was one-fifth of my annual salary! I had many great ideas about what I could do with $5,000. My brother-in-law had a music degree and was working at a tech company that provided cybersecurity. I didn’t really know what he did, but I knew he was making good money. That is when I started feeling the itch to move on and realize my potent
ial in a new career path.
What I Know to Be True
My art professor’s advice to me has continued to help me throughout my life: never begin by apologizing for your work. If you’re going to give a speech or a presentation or hand someone a resume—whatever it is—face your clients or your employer or potential employer and let them know, “You’re getting my absolute best. This is my top work.” People will believe you. If you start apologizing and make excuses, you’re setting them up to see a weakness or a failure.
There is, obviously, a time when you need to be honest or humble, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. When you’re self-deprecating while trying to sell something or close a deal or while giving a speech or presentation, it’s a turn-off. People will see flaws after you point them out, even if the flaws are not actually there. Stand up, square your shoulders, and say instead, “Here is my best.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Genesis of a Leader
A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions.
Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor (121-180)
Frustrated by my job’s lack of creative potential and little promise of a career path ahead, I was driven to find an exciting new opportunity. Instead of working in a government bureaucracy, I wanted the freedom to create and expand and grow. I found it at a nonprofit organization, Answers in Genesis (AiG).
AiG publishes magazines and books, produces films, and funds research that provides evidence of God’s existence and runs an internationally recognized museum in Kentucky.
As a trained graphic artist, I could see that a great artist created this world with purpose and style. When I look at the stars on a dark night or enjoy the crash of the ocean’s wave on the shore, I find artistic beauty, not accidental combustion. When I marvel at a fine wine, I see a master vintner. I do not believe our universe and our lives are the result of cosmic coincidence or a proverbial toss of the dice but rather that life and the world around us are the special creations of an intelligent, all-knowing designer. I believe it is our responsibility to learn about and take care of His planet. AiG espoused a thought process that was more mandolin and less wolf, and I loved it.
The Wolves and the Mandolin: Celebrating Life's Privileges In A Harsh World Page 5