MY BRIEF CAREER IN THE EGG BUSINESS
I hatched an egg business when I was in the second grade. It was my second entrepreneurial attempt, and it ended in a disaster reminiscent of Humpty-Dumpty. My mother financed some chickens for me; the plan was that I would pay her back through the sale of the eggs, hand-delivered to neighbors, then go on to reap vast profits in the egg business.
I underestimated the amount of daily work it took to feed and maintain my chickens, but other than that the plan began to pay off. My chickens began to lay eggs, and all went well for the first few deliveries. One day I was rushing to make a delivery when I tripped climbing the steps of Mr. and Mrs. Geiger’s house. I landed on top of the dozen eggs I was carrying, wiping out my profits for the entire week.
Not long after that, I faced another disaster: my chickens escaped, causing me to spend a hot afternoon rounding them up from the neighborhood. Unbeknownst to me, during their break for liberation some of the chickens had feasted on camphor berries from a neighbor’s tree. My next batch of eggs tasted and smelled like Vick’s Vapo-Rub. The end of my egg career was near. My mother began having second thoughts about the egg business. She was under pressure from the neighbors, who didn’t like the racket the chickens made in the backyard. Finally she shut my operation down, with very little complaint from me, and we donated the chickens to a farmer we knew.
I looked for other business opportunities, and soon spotted an opportunity that had all the ingredients of a winning enterprise. I would soon learn, though, something quite contrary to an old saying.
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, DON’T MAKE LEMONADE!
When I was nine years old I launched a lemonade stand, which quickly taught me the truth of the old saying “location is everything.” I moved it to four different corners of my block before finding the one with the most foot traffic. I also learned a few other key truths on my first day of business:
Flies love lemonade.
Ice melts fast in Central Florida.
You have to stand around shooing flies a long time in order to sell a pitcher of lemonade.
According to the family story, though, there was another problem: I drank up a lot of my profits. I’ve conveniently forgotten this part of the story, but I suspect there may be some truth in it. If you stand around a pitcher of cold lemonade for long enough on a hot day, you’re going to want to take a swig.
After a few days in the lemonade business, I decided to fold the enterprise and seek my fortune somewhere else.
Finally, though, I found a business that worked, and made my first dollar as a professional entrepreneur. The difference between an amateur and a professional is very simple: $1. The moment you make a buck of “keeping money” from your entrepreneurial efforts you’re a professional, and I attained professional status when I was ten years old.
BREAKTHROUGH!
It was the summer after fifth grade when I conceived my first successful business. I also learned something incredibly useful for any business enterprise: think from the customer’s point of view. My next-door neighbor, Mr. Lewin, was in the watermelon and Christmas tree business. An odd combination, you might think, but not for a guy who liked to spend half the year in Florida and half the year in Long Island. While he was in Florida for the winter, he shipped watermelons northward. While he was in Long Island for the summer, he made deals that would ship the trees south to Florida the next winter.
I admired Sam Lewin for lots of things. First of all, he was a great source of stories, having walked across Russia to escape Cossacks. He settled in Germany, only to encounter more intolerant types there. I loved talking to a man who had dealt with real-life Cossacks and Nazis; who spoke Yiddish, German, and Russian; and who could talk into two telephones at once. Mr. Lewin would put one phone down into his lap, fire off a burst of Yiddish into the other phone, then switch back to English on the first phone. By hanging around Mr. Lewin, I collected a great arsenal of Yiddish words and phrases I used when I wanted to hurl innovative insults at my friends. If I remember correctly, gonif (thief) and schlemiel (habitual screwup) were a couple of my favorite epithets. In my neighborhood there were copious opportunities to use both of these terms.
I came up with the idea of selling watermelons by the side of the highway that ran through my hometown. This was long before Interstate 95, the big freeway that now runs through Florida. In my day southbound motorists had to percolate through the many small towns of Highway 27. Each town had its own speed trap (and rumor had it that my little town made much of its annual budget from nabbing Northerners speeding toward Miami.) For a watermelon entrepreneur, this was a dream come true. My watermelon location had a stream of hot drivers poking along at the local speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour.
Mr. Lewin fronted me four watermelons to sell, and I agreed to split the profits with him. In those days whole watermelons sold for about twenty-five cents.
Mr. Lewin, bless his heart, let me have the melons for the super-wholesale price of a dime per melon.
I remember having to make four trips down to the highway to lug the huge melons down to my stand. My first day in business I stood all day in the Florida sun, holding my “Watermelons 25 Cents” sign, and didn’t sell a single melon. Boy, was I discouraged, especially when I had to haul the melons one at a time back up the hill to Mr. Lewin’s garage.
That night, though, I had a revelation: people weren’t buying because they couldn’t see the immediate benefit of biting into a juicy, crisp slice of watermelon!
Inspiration: what if I sliced the melons into eight pieces and sold the slices for a nickel apiece?
The next day I tried my new approach and my melon business went wild. Hot motorists responded gratefully to the sight of a juicy slice of watermelon being held aloft. Dads and Moms would practically jump from their cars to get slices for their screaming backseat passengers. I sold my thirty-two pieces in about an hour and went back up the hill many times for more melons. I had the weather on my side, too.
The day was excruciatingly hot, just perfect for watermelon sales. When I closed down for the day, I had $3.75 worth of nickels, which I carried home in a bag and carefully spread out on the floor to count.
Nowadays $3.75 will barely get you a medium cappuccino, but in 1955 it seemed like a small fortune. Even though I’ve had a lot of success since then with my entrepreneurial activities, I can tell you that nothing has ever quite equaled the pure joy of seeing all those nickels spread out on the floor. There was also a satisfaction that day that went far beyond the financial. It was seeing the delight on the faces of all those people as they bit into a cool, sweet watermelon on a hot summer day! It’s one thing to give customers what they want, but to see them devour it on the spot is sweet satisfaction indeed. When I went back to school that year, I’d put close to $50 in my savings account.
WHAT I LEARNED
I think those early ventures still guide my thinking. They taught me to focus on what I now think of as Priority No. 1: creating things that make people’s lives better. I also do my best to create things that make their faces light up, just like biting into a watermelon on a hot day. By focusing on those qualities, I wake up each day knowing I’m going to spend my time creating value and delight. I’ve lived in that state of consciousness for decades now. It’s what I love, and what I wish for you. The best job of all is doing something that doesn’t feel like a job at all.
Acknowledgments
I’m deeply grateful to my beloved mate of the past three decades, Kathlyn Hendricks, for being with me in every exploration that inspired this book. With every passing year, I grow more in awe of the loving-kindness and astute brilliance she radiates. Living in the field of her love is the greatest honor and privilege any person could want. As I say to her nearly every day, “You make me feel like the luckiest man on earth.” People of the present and future, I say to you: Study this woman. She is the real deal.
I thank the members of my creative, quirky, and loving family.
Amanda, Chris and Helen, Elsie and Imogen; you are on my mind and in my heart every day. I also bow to the memory of my mother, Norma Hendricks; my grandparents Rebecca Delle Garrett Canaday and Elmer Ray Canaday; and my aunts Lyndelle, Catherine, and Audrey.
I’m very grateful to have a literary agent, Bonnie Solow, who is much more than a major professional asset to my life. She’s a treasured friend and confidante, dearly loved by both Kathlyn and myself. I’m also blessed with a staff, led by the indomitable Monika Krajewska, who make it possible for me to accomplish a great deal more than I could ever do on my own. My gratitude to you all is boundless.
About the Author
GAY HENDRICKS has served for more than thirty years as one of the major contributors to the fields of relationship transformation and body-mind therapies. Throughout his career, Dr. Hendricks has coached more than eight hundred executives, including the top management at firms such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and KLM. Along with his wife, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks, he has coauthored many books including Conscious Loving, The Corporate Mystic, and his latest, the New York Times bestseller Five Wishes, which has been translated into seventeen languages. Dr. Hendricks received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Stanford University. After a twenty-one-year career as a professor at the University of Colorado, he founded the Hendricks Institute, which offers seminars in North America, Asia, and Europe. He is also the founder of a new virtual learning center for transformation, Illumination University. Visit the author online at www.hendricks.com.
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Books by Gay Hendricks
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Copyright
THE BIG LEAP: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level. Copyright © 2009 by Gay Hendricks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Epub Edition March 2009 ISBN 9780061872785
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