My Best Man John
It’s been 4 months yesterday since my eBay adventure began. Significant progress has been made and I’m pleased with the results. I’ve tackled many new ‘learning curves’ and re-familiarized myself with others. All this is wonderful but by far my greatest achievement over the past four months is in the area of “belief”.
I believe I can do this. I am a natural risk taker. I like to take risks, try new things and step outside my comfort zone. In fact I’ll go so far as to say I NEED to take risks. Most people do not like taking risks with their hard earned security and that includes my beautiful bride of 28 years. Along time ago I determined not to allow anything to separate us so it’s taken a long time for us to get into a viable ‘life position’ in our marriage where I can begin to ‘honestly sell’ the benefits of taking large risks to Janet. Selling can get very close to manipulating if you’re not honest with yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not placing the excuse ‘of waiting’ on Janet but myself. You see Janet would have said yes to me at any point during our marriage if I’d have pushed for self employment while our family was younger and I almost did several times. But I never felt self employment served the best interest of our marriage, just my personal desire, so although I pulled my gun from its holster several times, I never pulled the trigger. Looking back I seriously doubt any of those attempts at self-employment would have succeeded. Mark may have been ready, but the marriage of Mark and Janet was not.
My first earthly priority has and will always be a strong marriage. If I’m not giving my all to my marriage my conscience gives me no peace, literally. No awards will be given but our happy marriage will be the proudest and greatest legacy I can leave to my offspring and to the society in which I live. Oh, how I wish our society celebrated annual awards ceremonies for the unseen sacrifices successful marriages endure like we annually celebrate the superficial Oscar extravaganza’s for those whose job it is to ‘act’ in front of a camera. The human condition has an unfortunate tendency towards the inane.
I am a huge believer in timing and in a rightly ordered life. My priorities were set by me when I was 21 and I have stayed true to them ever since; they are: God, family and in a poor third place are my personal desires such as owning a business.
Through the years I have witnessed first hand the destruction of strong marriages due to the starting of a business.
One such story is of John, the best man at our wedding.
Like me John was a meat cutter and I chose John to be my best man at our wedding back in 1978. That same year John opened up his meat shop called “John’s Butcher Block”. John was 26 years old, happily married for 6 years and had 3 children, a new home and a bright future ahead of him. I considered John my mentor and he was one of the nicest men I’ve ever known.
The meat industry is not for sissies, especially back then before the days of ‘boxed beef’. In those days all the beef came in ‘on the hoof’ and had to be broken down, a labor-intensive process demanding concentration and stamina. John was working two and sometimes three jobs and over 80 hours per week at this physically exhausting occupation to pay for their new home and support the needs of his family.
“Why work this hard for someone else? Why not directly leverage all that hard work for myself and my family”, John thought? So with the full support of his wife John opened a meat market in the small rural community of Derby just south of Buffalo New York.
Things went well for John at first. John was a seasoned veteran in the meat business. He had successfully managed several high-volume meat markets since he was 21. John had ‘guts’, drive and a very strong work ethic. It quickly showed as his John’s Butcher Block grew rapidly in this small community.
But even in the best of times John worked at his store over 100 hours per week. There was never a let up. John worked all the time, seven days a week from the crack of dawn until the stars were shining that night. Just as a reminder, this is not the type of occupation where you can run and hide to compose yourself. In this business you are completely exposed to your customers all the time, you are in charge and there is no one to dump your load off too. The stress is ever present and your reaction to that stress is right there in front of those who know you best, your day-to-day customers.
I worked side by side with John at John’s Butcher Block for 4 years while Janet and I were young in our marriage. I witnessed first hand the ridiculous stresses John and his young family endured. John felt a real kinship with the ‘Job’ of the Bible. Those quick to throw stones will doubtlessly ’see’ what John should have done lounging back in the cheap seats of the theater where they live, but believe me there was no easy way out here.
As I said in my blog post entitled “The Big Bang Theory, Shock and Awe” everyone who sells needs to experience ’selling’ perishable products and there is none more perishable than meat. To purchase thousands of dollars of meat on a Monday and watch that investment begin to rot on a Saturday is a humbly depressing state to be continuously exposed to week after unending week. That John survived 6 years of this grueling weekly cycle is nothing short of astounding to me. When I think back and contrast what John endured compared to the whining I read on the Internet I literally laugh out loud. I do!!!
Some people have no idea what the word sacrifice, work and giving something everything you’ve got, really mean.
What began as John’s dream over time turned into a horrible and inescapable nightmare. After 3 years of hard earned relative success a large supermarket opened up down the street in John’s small town and John’s Butcher Block lost the small margin it needed to cut a profit and stay alive. John’s Butcher Block survived for 3 more torturous years but each day for John was a living hell on earth.
I loved John and his experience left an indelible mark on my soul. Imprinted on my soul forever is a tattoo “worth wearing” and looking at every time I start feeling sorry for myself. Stored in my minds memory banks forever are the real dangers failure wreaks on a man and to those he risks everything to support. You see John could not let go of his dream. His heart and soul were completely invested into John’s Butcher Block.
John did not own John’s Butcher Block. John’s Butcher Block owned John.
John’s wife and family were literally forced to ‘visit’ John at the store. He never saw them while they were awake otherwise. When John was home he was worthless. I never remember seeing John without huge noticeably dark circles around his sunken eyes.
John began to drink. It was his only escape from the continual torment that was his life, the life of a proud man desperately wanting to provide for his family. Pride is a funny thing, to give up is considered weak and John was not a weak man. John could not let go of his business and John’s Butcher Block finally went under taking with it all of John’s and his family’s material wealth and belongings.
John and his family hung together and continued to struggle on for another few more years. But in John’s weakened state and with his dream removed forever or at least the foreseeable future, John lost interest in the mundane every day things of life. His dream and his identity had been ripped from his being, the fire in his spirit quenched by the cold cruel realities of life.
I ran into John in 1990. John was divorced and living with his 80 year old senile mother in an old trailer home way out in the backwoods, only a shell of the former man that opened John’s Butcher Block and that I looked up too. He was only 38 yet if you had seen him you would have sworn he was 68. I talked to him briefly and have not talked with him since. Several times I have tried to find him but he has vanished. Maybe I will run into John again someday in his new store or maybe I’ll run into him pushing a shopping cart on a downtown street corner.
Why do I tell this story? Because I think of John often and his story inspires me to always remember that there are real consequences to failure and that success demands not just knowledge but complete sacrifice. Most importantly, John’s story reminds me that success means so much more than being personally successful.
You see, even if I am successful in establishing an online presence the likes of which has never been seen before, my dream of becoming a successful online entrepreneur will be nothing short of a gruesome nightmare if I end up having no one to share my dream with once it is realized.
So here’s to you John, where ever you are, your real life story inspires me far more than a thousand Internet success stories and always will.
I’ll never forget you!
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