Herman School of Business
Waffle House Tips
There was a time right after the “big crash” of my publicly trading company that challenged my mettle in many ways. After losing everything I owned and being tossed back into the never having money in my pocket mode I found myself out on the road each week looking at a new potential client for my Brokerage firm.
Now, when I say no money in my pocket, I mean until a deal was finished and we made a commission the coins in my pocket didn’t have many paper money friends to talk to. And yet, here I was spending hundreds of dollars on airplane tickets, more on a rental car and when I had to stay overnight the Holiday Inn got a bite out of me. In fact, the average trip was about eight hundred dollars. Gulp. But the reward was that if you signed up that deal and took in your travel expenses, which the client always paid us up front, then you could get your travel money back and keep making more trips. We usually signed up one client out of three, so seeing a new prospect each week meant I could just about pay off each months credit card charges when the bill came.
Getting to the town early was always my goal. Ride by the plant and check out the surroundings. Since I went to more than 1,000 new prospect meetings in 22 years, and since many factories are in remote areas, this meant breakfast a lot at the Waffle House. Where hard working people served you a fresh waffle, smashed bacon and hot tea for less than six bucks. And they gave you a wisecrack extra for free sometimes. I love the Waffle House, because of those hard working people, more than I loved the food.
At the end of every meal I would ask the waitress the same question…”are you lucky?” Surprisingly, considering that they were working early in the morning at a Waffle House many said they were. And the ones that said “No, I am not” at least smiled. I would then pay for my breakfast of about six dollars and then give that person a twenty dollar bill and say either, “Share your luck with me today,” or “Maybe this will bring us both some luck.” I never skipped this ritual no matter what restaurant I ate breakfast in on my way to a place where I might be making tens of thousands of dollars. Spreading a smile made me feel good. Even when it hurt to spend that twenty, hell that twenty wasn’t the difference between life and death for me with almost eight hundred dollars being bet on the trip already. Subway, pizza shops, and Ma and Pa restaurants worked just the same. Did it help? It made me grounded in the notion that despite my being broke didn’t preclude me from sharing something with others…who can’t get help from that Karma.
Friday morning when I finished a live interview at a radio studio in Burbank, the guy at Denny’s got his twenty
- Posted: 3 December 2007
- Comments: 0
- Category: Business success
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