For a whole decade, from fifteen to about twenty five years old I followed the herd. I drank the Kool-aid. I swallowed the party line, hook line and stinker. Algebra, accounting, phycology, sociology you name it I wasted my life learning it.
Sales? All you had to do was be enthusiastic. So I was super enthusiastic until I read about a young British Army Lieutenant called Winston Churchill. He and 250 British Soldiers went up against an army of 30,000 Dervishes. These Dervishes were told by their medicine men that if they spun around in circles or ‘whirled’ they would be immune to the English bullets. The faster they whirled the more protection the Dervishes would have.
Except against these Whirling Dervishes the British had Maxim machine guns.
When the battle was over the English casualties numbered about 4 or 5 soldiers. But the battlefield was covered with 30,000 once very enthusiastic Dervish tribesmen that were now very, very dead.
So much for enthusiasm.
With a bitter taste in my mouth I realized that I should beware of old men in business suits that nod sagely and talk stupidly. You’d be surprized how many of these old men call themselves ‘self-made’ as they step into Daddy’s business.
So I asked myself a simple question. Who do I know that was truly self made, and how did they start? Turns out it was my Uncle Gil Henderson and my brother-in-law Paul. Both of which started out as an apprentice in their father’s shops. Both of which retired multi-multi millionaires.
My father was in the Air Force but my Father-in-law Jim Mason had connections. Those connections were working at the CNR and it just so happened that the railway was just then looking for apprentices. I did the test and was told I had the marks for either a Pipefitter, Boilermaker, or Blacksmith Apprenticeship.
My first day I stood looking around the Boiler Shop and asked myself, ‘What the Hell have I done?’ It was the first time I had gone against the expectations of other people and thought for myself. I was that ten-year-old kid on the ultimate high diving board. I stepped off the high board and punched my work card.
Thinking for myself bought and paid for homes, put daughters into university, paid for a wife to become a nurse, gave my family a good living and got myself a pretty good life while doing it.
‘Find out what everybody thinks is a great idea, and then don’t do it.’
Rick Ranson 