My mother called another resident of her adult care facility a lush recently, and now there’s beef at the dinner table.
And it's not coming from the kitchen!
For those born closer to the 21st century than "Mah," a lush is a habitual and heavy drinker or alcoholic.
Considering the home’s “no walkers in the bar” policy, it seems my mother's epithet missed the mark!
In response the offended accused my mother of her own rules violations claiming THE old lady pushed a resident and their wheel chair out of the building and around the grounds without supervision.
Which seems about as likely as her being a lush.
THE Dealer’s Lament?
As a volunteer small business mentor for SCORE, I’m currently advising seven small business owners, all in the early stages of their ventures.
But despite being entrepreneurial rookies, they’ve been engaged long enough to have learned THE small business-owners lament!
As a partially-retired consultant working from home, a healthy work-life balance is inherent in my circumstance. But as a Bronx, New York paint dealer, the conflicting priorities of my work and home life were far more challenging to manage.
THE Dealer’s Contribution
In addition to my mentees, both of the paint dealers I’m consulting have work-life balance on the agenda. THE problem endemic for paint dealers, particularly of the single store and micro-chain variety.
As a dealer I developed a formula to determine which work was valuable enough to garner my attention and what could be left of others while I otherwise enjoyed my life: total revenue divided by hours worked per year.
Working 40-hours per-week with four-weeks vacation means I toiled 1920-hours for Tremont Paint each trip around the sun. At $3 million in sales per-year my Dealer’s Contribution would have been $1562 per-hour.
Meaning every hour of work I assigned myself had to be worth at-least $1562 per-hour to Tremont, or I'd look to delegated the task.
Using the Dealer’s Contribution as a guide, I removed myself from doing the low-value work of a paint store such as spending time behind THE counter and being scheduled as a keyholder.
The two tasks are quicksand for independent paint retailers looking to maintain their work-life balance!
THE result of applying the Dealer's Contribution methodology was less time spent in tasks which are otherwise easy and inexpensive to delegate to others. Allowing me to tilt my balance back towards my family and other interests.
Because it’s a misnomer that work and life should be in balance; work, is not that important!
What He Say?
On my podcast last week I let slip what I thought of Sherwin-Williams chief executive John Morikis and the way he treats his hourly employees.
Firing barbs runs in my family it seems, though I can still hit THE target!
