Monthly Archives: November 2013

By Tom Demerly.

Random Notes and Key Things I’ve learned so Far:

1. Life:

Friends and community are more important than we realize. Much more.
My Mom was right; travel really is the most opulent luxury.
I am not like other people. When I try to be, I am sad and look foolish.
Be gentle with people- both people who are kind and people who are mean to you.
You will have enemies. Don’t let it bother you. If you weren’t trying, you wouldn’t be making some people mad.
Most people who don’t like you envy your courage and are afraid themselves.
Be understanding of those people, their fears are real to them.
Difficulty can make you a better person if you decide to let it.
One of the smartest people I ever met, my friend Kim, told me “successful people are usually just the last to give up.” She is right.
It’s true. You will fail.
Failure sucks.
Not trying is worse than failure.
Try again.
Never stop learning, never lose the “beginner’s mind”.
If you know you are right about something and try to convince someone, but their own beliefs prevent them from listening, don’t force it. Let them be.
Make good choices but do make choices. Don’t be paralyzed by indecision.
You think you are the only person suffering when you suffer. You aren’t.
You can learn a lot about a person by how they treat animals and children.
Two key quotes:
- “We each create our own reality” Arthur C. Clarke.
- “Between stimulus and response is our greatest freedom; choice.” Steven Covey.

2. Love:

You are lucky if you have one true love, you will also likely lose them, but you are always better for having had them.
Always treasure the people who have brought true love and beauty into your life. Be a respectful friend to them forever. Revel in their new relationships and happiness. Stay friends with them unless they are cruel to you, in which case, just let them be.
When you truly love someone the thing you want most is for her to be happy and safe. You want that more than your selfish desire for them.
Have the courage to walk away from a relationship that is bad and never look back. Never be afraid to be alone.
It is better to be in a good relationship with yourself than a rotten one with some one else.
Great sex is about way more than the physical act.
Take a good, close look at her; she is more beautiful than you (and she) realize.
Beauty has almost nothing to do with looks.
The greatest luxury in a relationship is staying in it simply because you want to be there, no other reason.

3. The Military and Conflict:

Never underestimate the human capacity for cruelty. People are the most dangerous animals.
There are three important truisms in the military; 1. Your training will keep you alive. 2. In the military world, your comrades are your first priority. 3. When your enemy is subdued, treat them with dignity and humanity.
Train relentlessly and realistically. Your training will save your life and insure the success of your mission.
Do not dwell on the awful things you’ve been through. Hold them at arms’ length, let them go, forgive them and yourself.
If you live in a safe place, protect that. It is rare on this earth.

Learn the skills of war, hold them as precious, but do not flaunt them or revel in them. They are an ugly but necessary set of tools.
When an enemy dies, do not celebrate. Instead, pray for them and ask forgiveness.
The least painful way to learn is from history. History is a free lesson, a way to learn from the suffering and loss of previous men. Never stop learning, studying and analyzing history; its cost was high but it is free to keep.
Be kind and respectful of people who have a disdain for the military.
Being a soldier, a guardian of peace, is one of life’s highest honors.
Wars fought over money, resources, politics and territory can be resolved. Wars over religion never end until one side is completely annihilated and their history erased.

4. Business and Money:

See: “War and Conflict” above.
The Arabic proverb, “Do business as strangers, socialize as brothers” is good.
Pride has no place in business.
Trust that if you do a good job and devote yourself, you will be successful.
Even when (not if) you fail, if you have done the above, you have a basis for a new beginning.
Don’t try to bend the rules; it will bite you in the ass.
Your ass is going to have some tooth marks.
Pay yourself last.
Treat your employees well. Pay them first. Protect and honor them.
Respecting your employees as important human beings is as important as paying them, sometimes more so.
A harsh reality is that money does buy happiness. You can use it to help other people, keep yourself safe and healthy, travel and help animals. In the human world money is security.
Don’t trust banks. They are a business, a necessary tool.
Don’t be mean to or distrust the government or the IRS. They are people trying to do a difficult and unpopular job with few resources and huge bureaucracy. Be empathetic toward them.
The smarter you are the more successful you will be.
Learn from your mistakes. You’ll pay for them, you may as well use them.
Every dollar has 100 cents in it.
Every business is a nickel and dime business. There are no “small” losses.
Treat every day as your first day in business, and remember it could also be your last.
Failure always arrives before you think it will and is always a surprise.
In retrospect, failure and success both seem obvious.
Always call your customers “Sir” and “Ma’am”. It sets and maintains the tone of the customer/business relationship. It says you are doing business.
Save more money than you think you will ever need. Money is a tool.

On Getting Older.

November 25, 2013

Commentary.

7 Comments

By Tom Demerly.

I turn 52 today. I worried about that. Getting old. I decided to stop worrying about it. Instead I decided to worry about not living. I decided to stop looking into the rear view mirror of life and saying, “I remember when I…” instead of saying, “Right now I am…”

I was most worried about not doing things anymore. That scared me about aging. About being too old. Then I decided to stop worrying and just keep doing things. It really is that simple.

There is a physical element to aging. I’ve had three knee surgeries, a broken back, too many broken left arms to remember, a broken right arm and hand, eye surgery; heart surgery, a stroke and I have a cardiac implant. Those things affect me a little, and they are a badge of experience; a life well lived. An active life. So I work around them. And the more I do the less of an issue they are. They are not a reason to stare in the rear view mirror looking at what is behind me. They are a reason to keep moving, keep doing, keep living. Because there is no denying some day something will catch up to me that will have a limiting factor on living. Until then, it’s a race to get as much stuff done as I can. There are people who, at 52, are so much less capable than I am. Actually, there are people at 23 who are.

An embarrassing element of aging is beginning to understand how stupid I was when I was younger. In my thirties I knew everything. It was amazing how smart and successful I was. Good looking too. I was wrong of course, but I thought I was quite impressive at the time. Now I know better. Some of the errors of judgment I made still sting pretty badly. The only thing I can do about those errors is own them and not make them again. Some people say they have no regrets. They must not have taken many chances. I have plenty of regrets. I’ve also taken a lot of chances. That I don’t regret. I still have time to take more. I guess I don’t regret that I have regrets. Is that possible?

The good news about being older is we may be truly smarter. Most of us. I hope. The greatest fear I live with is not learning something from my mistakes. The fear of repeating them. As a result I remind myself of them often. Another risk is being fixated on what I did wrong. Not having the confidence to take on more risk, and do it wisely tempered against what I’ve learned from experience. I suppose that’s called “good judgment”.

One of the lessons I’ve learned is that, like the lyric in the Pearl Jam song, “…that what you fear the most will meet you half way…” failure has a way of finding you if you live your life to avoid it. In the cruelest irony if you navigate life to a warm, comfortable death bed with no regrets, no mistakes then there is a tendency to realize, in your final moments, that you could have done more. That is the cruelest regret. I don’t have that one.

Rich People Don’t Cause Poor People.

November 22, 2013

Commentary.

4 Comments

By Tom Demerly.

Contrary to popular belief, rich people don’t cause other people to be poor. That’s a feeble excuse for our national condition.

There is a sentiment that the distribution of wealth in the United States, as inequitable as it is, comes from the wealthy “keeping the little man down”. To horde disproportionate amounts of wealth- taking it from the backs of Walmart workers.

That’s wrong. We’re not victims, we’re Americans. “The Man” isn’t keeping us down. That’s just an excuse. It’s us who let us down, and I am a perfect example.

I started and owned a successful business for over 16 years. Then lost everything. I lost my savings, my house, my car, my belongings, my income, my employees, my business, even my health… everything. There were circumstances that contributed to my loss. But ultimately I am the one responsible. Part of the proof is that two friends of mine in the same area and the same industry survived the recession. They survived because they made better decisions than me. They are better businessmen than me.

I am a reason why America failed during this last decade. There are a lot of “me” out there.

There is a reason to own this. Until we own the recession, the mortgage crisis, the banking collapse- unless we own these disasters, on an individual basis, we cannot correct them. We won’t truly recover.

The first step to correcting any problem is owning it. Taking responsibility for it. We need to take a painful and specific look at where we made bad decisions individually that led to our financial hardship. Once we understand how we got here, on an individual basis, we can get out, on an individual basis. America is built on the backs of individuals, and it fell on the backs of individuals who let it down. Guys like me.

Dearborn, Michigan, 2009 on Michigan Ave.

Abandoned businesses, downtown Dearborn, Michigan in 2009 on Michigan Ave.

What did I do wrong? Too much credit, not enough saving. Poor planning. Relying on the fact that money was easy to make and would always be easy to make. Becoming complacent, assuming business would always be good. Trusting the wrong institutions and people. Not saving enough for a rainy day. Beginning to think that earning a living was easy and success was common. Ignoring the basics. Never planning for a downturn in business. Those are some of the general mistakes I made. When you apply those mistakes to a huge company like General Motors before their bankruptcy, the banks before their collapse and the real estate market you see how these behaviors rippled from the individual through our entire culture. It was a house of cards. When the wind finally blew it didn’t need to blow very hard for it to topple.

So what now?

First, we need to own the problem on an individual basis. Look at how we failed. Individually, collectively. Then, with that knowledge, return to the basics of saving and building, working and taking risk, thinking and innovating. Our economic system, as chaotic as it seems, rewards risk and hard work with opulent success and penalizes failure with ruthless disregard and gut-wrenching impunity. It also rewards us with a second chance. It isn’t easy, in fact it is extremely difficult. My life these past few years has been more difficult than I care to share. It’s humiliating. Our system does work though. It provides a level of opportunity, however abrasive and difficult to achieve, that is nearly unmatched in the world. This is the greatest country, the land of opportunity, but it is also a ruthless arbiter.

It demands we own our past before we can earn our future. But our system also forgives.

In my case that meant a lot of tough years. Now I am certain I’ll never make these mistakes again. I’m thankful for a country that allows me to start again with what I’ve learned, no matter how difficult it is. That is the American way.