Here and Now
A few lifetimes back, I worked in
corporate America. Over a twenty year
span, I accumulated twelve years with Ryder Truck Rental where I was, at
various times and in various places, a One-Way Dealer Manager, Rental Manager,
Account Manager, District Sales Manager, and Branch Manager.
My first tour of duty with Ryder began
in 1969, when I worked in Birmingham, Alabama, first as the One-Way Dealer
Manager for all of North Alabama and then as the District Rental Manager. One of the most enjoyable parts of the Rental
Manager position was calling on new and prospective commercial rental
customers. I loved to hear their stories
– find out how they reached their present you-are-here
point.
One day I took a call from a
prospective customer who wanted to rent a tractor-trailer. He said his name was Rick Mays, and he added
that he was starting a new branch of his existing business. He needed the rig to pick up and deliver
equipment in a number of states. The
last pick-up would be in Mexico, and he wondered if he would need any special
paperwork for that leg of the trip. So
did I, since none of my customers traveled in Mexico, but I didn’t say so. I just told him I’d figure it out. I asked a few questions and two minutes later
I was heading for his office.
Rick’s background was radio, TV, and
recording. In fact for many years, he
had been one of the top D.J.s in Birmingham. He took me to his cluttered office and after
moving stacks of stuff off the most accessible chair, we settled in to talk.
His primary business was a recording
studio. His secondary business was
duplicating and distributing cassette tapes.
His new enterprise was buying and selling used recording, TV, and
cassette duplication equipment. His idea
was brilliant and simple. He sent a
letter to radio and TV stations asking them to tell him what used equipment they
had to sell and what used equipment they would like to purchase. They answered the two questions on the
enclosed postcard and sent it back to Rick.
He had started small, a few months
earlier, and now the new operation had mushroomed, and he had outgrown the truck
that he owned. We worked out all the details and began what
became a neat business arrangement for both of us.
Over the next couple of years, we
became good friends, and over that period of time I heard the whole story of
his business adventure.
It went like this. After almost twenty years in the radio
business, there were no more challenges.
He wanted to do something different.
He said, “At first it was just a nagging thought in the back of my mind,
but it quickly grew until it was all I could think about.”
His eyes went out of focus as his mind traveled
back to the morning he left the radio business.
The he refocused his attention on me, grinned, and described that
moment. “I started a song, stood up and
walked out of the studio. I stuck my
head in the GM’s office and said, ‘Charlie, you’re going to have to get someone
to finish my show. I quit,’ and I walked
out.”
His first business venture was
promoting a boat race on the Warrior River.
He looked at me, bashfully I thought, and said, “Carson, don’t ever
promote a boat race. No one buys a
ticket. They come in boats and anchor in
the middle of the river, or else they just drive their pickup to a shady spot,
back up to the edge, and sit in the back drinking beer and watching the
show. In a few hours, I lost most of my
savings.”
But he didn’t quit. He took over a failing recording studio and
thanks to his local fame, he quickly got it on its feet. In six months, it was profitable, and he
began signing and promoting local talent.
Cassettes were new and hot, and Rick used a local company to reproduce
them for his entertainers. It was a lucrative
arrangement until the cassette company bellied-up early in their
relationship. There was no way to recover
the money he had prepaid for cassettes, so he took the cassette duplication
equipment instead.
“Business was a constant struggle,
compounded by the fact that I was always looking for the gold mine, instead of
taking care of the daily details. One
day, a woman called me from Mississippi.
She told me her daughter, Wynette, could ‘sing real good,’ and asked if
I’d audition her. I said no, I had a
bunch of experienced singers who were well on the way to success in Nashville.”
Rick stopped talking and I could see him
move back into his memory, so I kept my mouth shut. Finally he said, “She wouldn’t leave me
alone. Sometimes she would call twice a
day. Finally, just to get her off my
case, I said, ‘Ms. Byrd, why don’t you bring Wynette in Saturday morning, and I’ll
give her an audition.”
I sat through another long pause, then
he said, “Well she did bring her in, and I did give her an audition, but all
the time that kid was singing I was thinking about a dozen things, none of
which was her. When Wynette finished, I
said to her mother, ‘she’s not going to make it in the music business, Ms.
Byrd. I think you ought to take her on
back to Mississippi.”
“That was my wake up call, Carson.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Well,
Ms. Byrd didn’t take my advice. She took
Wynette to Nashville, got her an audition with someone who did listen, added
the first name ‘Tammy’ and made Wynette her last name. That was the beginning for her, and it was
the beginning for me. You see, I had
always believed that persistence would make me successful and thanks to Tammy
Wynette, I discovered that there is something more important than persistence.”
He shut up, and I knew he wasn’t going
to tell me what he had discovered until I asked. I blurted out, “What?”
He looked right in my eyes, through
them, and was staring into my soul when he said, “If you aren’t present,
totally present, in every moment, it doesn’t make a damn how persistent you
are.”
For more than forty years, Rick’s words
have never been far from the front of my mind, and I can say with absolute
certainty, he was dead on.
