by Jacob Taylor
“Anyway, as I said, the country was struggling economically. Many couldn’t afford food, let alone going out to eat. We barely scraped by. Along came two girls after me and one of them contracted polio, adding to our hardship. It was ironic that we owned a restaurant, yet felt like we never had enough to eat. At its worst, we lived in the back storeroom, hiding our bedding from customers. I remember having one pair of socks. With holes in them. The good news was, I never lost them in the dryer. They were always on my feet!” He laughed heartily at his own joke. I tried to imagine for myself what it must have been like for Mr. X’s father. The struggle of being surrounded by food every day, but barely able to feed his family. Like Tantalus from Greek mythology, his eternal punishment to stand beneath a fruit tree, the food ever eluding his grasp.
“We couldn’t afford employees, so the whole family worked in the restaurant. It sounds dismal, but I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. That crucible made us fiercely loyal to each other and gave us the grit to become who we were. My father swore he was the first to put a fried egg on top of a burger. He was hungry one morning and there happened to be one egg left in the house. He threw it on a leftover burger and the rest is Cootie history. Out of hardship came innovation. It seems like a small thing, but it was enough to make our little restaurant stand out just enough stay afloat. And now it’s an American staple.”
“Was it snowing and uphill both ways?” one of the chaperones jumped in, trying to be funny.
Mr. X eyed her briefly before answering. “It felt that way sometimes. Fast forward a few years. I did well in school; I felt like I had to after seeing my parents’ sacrifice. I earned a scholarship to Oklahoma State to study engineering. The country had recovered economically after the War, but my family’s prospects had stagnated. The restaurant business is tough. My plan was to get through school as fast as possible and find employment so I could send a financial lifeline to my struggling family.” I pictured a young Mr. X as a mountain climber; his family trapped down in a crevasse awaiting rescue. What pressure for a nineteen year old. I wasn’t even competent enough to take care of myself. He continued, “I would venture out into the world, get myself established and then go back to save them. That did end up happening, but not at all in the manner I planned.” He stared off quietly for a few moments.
“I’ll never forget the day,” he said, lost in nostalgia. “I was a sophomore at OSU. It was cold and dreary outside--I was studying in my dorm room for my winter finals. I was looking forward to wrapping up the semester and going back to Wichita to spend Christmas with my family. The student dorm monitor knocked on my door and handed me a telegram. It took all of ten seconds to read, but my life was changed forever. My father had passed away of a sudden heart attack. I was needed at home right away.”
I saw Mr. X’s eyes start to glisten, but he regained his composure, maybe before anyone else noticed. “I talked to the dean and was granted a leave of absence to help settle my father’s affairs. Knowing my modest circumstances, the dean personally paid for my bus ticket home. I’ve never forgotten that act of kindness when I was in need. You should find a way to have a profound impact like that for someone else at least once in your life.”
“When I got home, it was even worse than I had imagined,” he said. “Cootie Burger was teetering on the edge. My father had been borrowing money via business loans to keep the restaurant open and a roof barely over the family’s head. I saw the look of overwhelming panic in my mother’s eyes... she didn’t know how to run the business. My sisters still needed providing for. I knew how important the survival of the business was to my father. One of the only emotions he clearly expressed was that Cootie Burger was his legacy. I felt I had no other options. My dreams of college and becoming an engineer died that day. I had no choice but to drop out of school, move home to take care of my family, and see if I could save our struggling family business.” He was quiet for a moment. We all were.
“I wrote to the dean asking for a temporary leave. It ended up being permanent. The next time I stepped foot on campus was to receive an honorary degree decades later, not that I needed it.”
“I reluctantly threw myself into my father’s business, figuring out how to pay off the creditors and dig out of the hole they were living in. Things have obviously worked out, but it was a struggle. But it’s the struggle that gives you inner-strength.”
“So... I told you it was a long story, but that’s your answer to why hamburgers,” he said. We all shared a quiet moment. The next hour of questions were basically snoozers, but I’ll give you the highlights:
How much money should you leave your kids?
“I like Warren Buffett’s thoughts on this: you should leave your children enough to where they can afford to do anything. But not so much that they can afford to do nothing. You want to avoid a Vanderbilt situation where wealth ruins your offspring.”
What is leadership?
“There are many definitions of leadership that are useful. Here’s my version: I view it as a five-step process. Step one: see a problem for what it is. Not worse than it is; not better than it is. I often ask myself ‘Why?’ three or four times to help drill down to the root problem. That’s what you want to address. The biggest mistake I find leaders make is not seeing for themselves. As Gorbachev supposedly told President Reagan, ‘It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.’”
“Step two: have a vision of what could be. It often helps to have a strong why behind what you’re trying to improve. Where there’s a why, there’s a way. That motivation keeps you going when you want to quit. And I’ve found that just when everything looked darkest, victory and success were not far away. It just takes pushing through that last difficult patch.”
“Step three: set high standards for yourself first. In just about every situation in life, you have to be willing to go first. Hold yourself to the highest standards.”
“Step four: set high standards for others. Notice how you have to set high standards for yourself first? No one wants to follow a hypocrite. Expectations for others have to be clear and agreed upon.”
“Finally, five: take action. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Yes, it’s important to make decisions supported by data, but realize you’re never going to have all the numbers to feel completely confident. You still have to move forward at some point. There are very few decisions you can’t undo, so just making a decision and being willing to change keeps you moving forward.”
Then someone asked a good one.
What was your most difficult moment, and how did you deal with it?
“Are you sure you want to hear this one?” he asked. “OK, I will tell you this story to help you realize that life throws everyone curveballs. No one has it easy and everyone struggles.”
“I mentioned before that I have… had an amazing wife. Losing her was an incredibly difficult process. I’m not sure I’ll ever recover. What’s made it even more difficult is the strain on the relationship with my daughter. We don’t speak anymore. She told me that she never wants to see me again.” The room was funeral quiet for a few moments while he composed himself. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was imagining what dirt Mr. X’s daughter would have for me if I could get her dishing on her father.
“The point is, life is full of dark moments. You can’t hide from them. Let’s talk about something happier now, please.”
Mr. X had endured a difficult life. Fate had twisted him in complicated ways. I imagined those same forces would have broken a lesser man. I would later find out how complicated his story really was, and that he was barely scratching the surface.
CHAPTER 13
“Who’s next?” asked Mr. X. Two students raised their hands, but he didn’t even look in their direction. Instead, he was staring at me again. “You’ve been conspicuously quiet so far, Mr. Journalist. I’m curious, do you have a question for me?” His eyes bore straight into my soul. He knows!
I looked down at the table to avoid his pi
ercing stare. The five seconds of silence felt like an eternity. “Actually, just one,” I began. “What was the one insight you’ve had that created the biggest impact? Something that took twenty percent of your effort, but did eighty percent of the heavy lifting?”
“That’s a surprisingly good question, young man,” he said, narrowing his eyes in judgment. “Let me tell you another story from my youth. When I was in my mid-teens, my father had a friend named Eric. Eric was an interesting fellow, always into obscure hobbies. Most fascinating was Eric’s obsession with falconry. Do you know what that is? He had a pet hawk that he trained for hunting. It was quite the sight to behold. A wild animal is very powerful to see in person.”
I recalled myself as a kid loving the book My Side of the Mountain. It was about Sam Gribley, a 13-year-old boy who hated living in his parents' cramped New York City apartment with eight siblings. Sam decides to run away to an abandoned farm in the Catskill Mountains to live by himself in the wilderness. He inhabited a hollowed out tree and had a pet peregrine falcon he hunted with. As soon as I got my first pocket knife as a young boy, I was obsessed with the idea of scratching out a meager, tree-hollowed survival on my own. Check that “meager survival” box so far as an adult...
“Training a hawk is a big commitment,” Mr. X said, interrupting my childhood daydream. “To get the most out of your bird, you have to keep it at the perfect weight. The bird has to be slightly starved before it will hunt. A fully-fed bird just sits there fat and happy. But too hungry and the bird’s performance suffers from low energy. ‘Hungry, but not weakened,’ was how Eric described this perfect state. At that balance point, the bird has incredible clarity, energy, and singularity of purpose toward its most important objective: hunting. Eric told me that falconers have a specific term for that state. They call it yarak. Eric would occasionally take me out with him to see his bird hunt. There was nothing that would prevent that bird from tearing its prey to shreds. A bird in yarak is the purest expression of its genetic capabilities. You did not want to be a rabbit nearby when Eric’s bird was in full yarak.” Where was he going with all of this?
“Where was I going with this?” Mr. X smiled coyly. “Oh yeah, the insight. The concept of yarak doesn’t apply to only falconry. Have you heard of the personal finance idea of ‘Pay Yourself First?’ Basically, you take money out of your account every month in an automated way to save for the future, and then you live on whatever’s left. Pay yourself first before you pay everyone else. Sometimes you have to get creative to make ends meet and not dip into your savings. You create an artificial constraint, a hunger, this state of yarak in yourself. Yarak sparks a creativity that can only be unlocked when your back is against the wall. You become the bird that has to hunt.”
Through a lot of nodding heads, he continued, “Yarak also applies to running a business. Most businesses hustle to create revenue, pay out their various expenses, and with any luck, there’s a little profit left over for the owners. Here’s what you’re probably learning in business school: Revenue minus expenses equals profits. Sounds sensible, right?” He paused for the group of nodding heads. “Well, it’s not! It is completely backwards. It should be taught: Revenue minus PROFITS equal expenses.”
Our chaperoning professors did their best to hide their cloudy faces, but it was clear Mr. X didn’t mind offending them. “Don’t wait to see if there’s anything left over for a profit. By carving out a margin before you address expenses, you create a constraint on the resources available. This constraint unlocks your creativity to meet customers’ needs, streamline operations, and only spend money on that which truly generates value. There’s no room left for fluff and bloat. Difficult decisions on how you should run your business become obvious. No longer fat, dumb and happy, maybe you make that extra sales call or hold off on that unnecessary expense. Business is very competitive, and the difference between the Hall of Fame and the graveyard can be remarkably thin. Everyone says they want to run a tight ship, but the best way to harness your entrepreneurial verve is to tie your own hands to the yarak mast. It will turn all of your business SHOULDS into business MUSTS. I’ve spent a lot of time finding different places to apply the idea of yarak, and it never ceases to amaze me how helpful it is. So that’s my eighty-twenty secret. Shh… don’t tell anyone,” he whispered.
As Mr. X was finishing, his secretary appeared. “That’s all the time we have for today,” she said. Damn, that went by too fast. I certainly didn’t have enough material yet to write my exposé. A rebel like this must have skeletons in the closet somewhere though. “Mr. X wanted to do one last nice thing and buy you all lunch,” she said. “We’ve arranged to have a meal at Mr. X’s favorite steakhouse. Your bus will take you there now. Unfortunately, he has an important meeting scheduled and won’t be able to join you.” We all clapped for Mr. X sharing his wisdom and for the free steak lunch.
Only later would I discover where Mr. X was going. And that it would eventually break my heart.
CHAPTER 14
Mr. X and his secretary conferred behind the podium while we packed up. They looked over at me and I pretended not to be staring. They went back to talking--maybe they weren’t looking at me after all. Mr. X nodded and gave us a brief wave as he exited the conference room through a side door.
We made our way toward the main exit, excitedly sharing our favorite parts of the experience. Larry’s eyes were wild with possibility. “That was better than advertised!” he said. “I can’t wait to be as wealthy as Mr. X someday!” I don’t think that was the important takeaway, Larry.
Meandering toward the back of the pack in my usual way, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw Mr. X’s secretary standing studiously before me. “Hi, my name is Cathy. Mr. X was impressed with your question and responses. He wants to know if you might be open to a special project?”
Jackpot! This was exactly the break I needed to dig deeper into Mr. X’s operation and find out where the bodies were buried. I didn’t want to appear too eager though. “Uhh… I don’t know. I guess it depends on what it is? I’m pretty busy with school and work right now.” When you have the winning hand, you can afford to slow play it.
“Well, given your background as a journalist and your interest in business, it could be right up your alley,” she said. “We don’t have time to discuss the details right now, but here’s my card. Think about it for a few days and then let’s discuss over the phone.”
“Thanks, Cathy,” I said. “I’ll definitely think about it.”
“Enjoy your lunch,” she said. On the inside, I smiled like the Grinch about to wreck Christmas. This was all shaping up nicely.
CHAPTER 15
“What was that all about?” Larry asked as I caught up with him at the elevator.
“Oh, nothing. She just asked a question--not important.” What Larry doesn’t know won’t hurt him. “Let’s feast!” I said, knowing it would throw him off my tracks.
We enjoyed a fantastic steak lunch, courtesy of Mr. X. The restaurant was a dimly lit, wood-paneled affair that was charming enough and served large slabs of Kansas beef. I’m not sure what our vegan classmate ate--green beans and a baked potato?
To curry favor with Mr. X and increase the odds of future students being invited back, the group spent the rest of the afternoon volunteering at the Wichita YMCA in Mr. X’s name, each of us given different menial chores. Some were assigned to cleaning. Others organized sporting equipment and books. Larry and I (mostly Larry) must have looked somewhat handy as we were charged with putting together a bookshelf using a thrift store toolbox. Who needs Bob Vila?
Finishing up our good deeds at the YMCA, we were turned loose for dinner. Larry and I dragged the other students back to last night’s BBQ joint. It didn’t disappoint for a second round. The beer continued to flow and the hours slipped by. Before we knew it, it was late, and we all had early flights westward.
I needed a few aspirin in the morning to nurse my hangover. I spent most of the flight home
examining Cathy’s card while game-planning how I might use Mr. X’s special project to my advantage. It could be any number of things; I simply didn’t know. I also didn’t know I was actually the one being played.
CHAPTER 16
Back to the grind. A daunting school load and an endless stream of deliverables at Big Rock threatened to sink me in my first week back. One evening that week, as I walked home after a particularly mind-numbing day at the office, I got a call from my parents. Strange, why were they both on the line?
“Nick, your mother and I have something important to tell you.”
“You’re having another baby? I’m going to be a big brother again--that’s great!”
“What… no,” my dad said. “Nick, this is serious.”
“Sorry, what is it?”
My mom started with an odd tone, “Well, as you know, we’ve never been the best with money. We’ve always worked for something more important than money. We haven’t been very good about saving. It always felt like we could just make more.”
Dad’s turn, “We took some money out of our home equity when the prices were high. I made some investments in green energy… they didn’t work out. Long story short, the home prices aren’t as high now and my billings are down, so there’s less money coming in.”