Episode 173 - Dan Moore - Leaders On Leadership
Today’s guest has gone on the path to becoming a tremendous leader. Dan Moore, the Author of “Control, Influence, Accept (For Now): Coping with a Future No One Can Predict,” unpacks wisdom on how shaping your thoughts helps in becoming a tremendous leader. Learning to get excited about your work, talking yourself out of weariness, abandoning the idea that you can do everything, and setting your vision to become the best are the factors that make Dan a successful leader. He also touches on his book “Control, Influence, Accept (For Now).” Further in the conversation, we will also get a glimpse of Southwestern Company. Tune in to this episode with Dan Moore and be inspired by his leadership journey today.
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Dan Moore - Leaders On Leadership
I am tremendously excited to welcome my guest, Dan Moore. I want to tell you a little bit about Dan Moore. I have known Dan for decades. Dan has known the Joneses for even more decades. Dan has now retired as the President of the Southwestern Company, which has been building leaders out of young people for many years. For those of our readers out there who have been book boys or book girls, I was one of them, selling books door-to-door in between your summer breaks and colleges. You are going to love this. This is the man. He started with the company as a freshman at Harvard, and he never left. Dan, not many people get it right out the gate. I'm excited to hear all about it. Thank you for being here. Welcome, Dan.
It’s an honor to be here with you. As you said, your family means a great deal to me. This is a great privilege.
My dad loved the Book Kids. That's how I wanted it upselling. He would speak to your sales or conferences at whatever city. He'd host the Southwestern Kids. He and Gloria are at the house. You people out there, I know summer’s over but anytime a boy or girl knocks on your door, you be kind to them because they are out there learning some incredible things in life. As I understand, even with COVID now, Southwestern Company is bigger, stronger, and more profitable than it ever has been. Is that correct?
We certainly had a record year in 2022 and a very close year this year 2023, although it’s too early to call. I'm so grateful for the leadership that we have because it is all about leadership. You get through something like COVID, which for everyone was a huge issue. Many people lost family members and lost loved ones. For many businesses, it was a huge challenge. For our case, going door-to-door, what if we couldn't go door-to-door? That was a really important question, what you might call an existential crisis, but the leadership for our company came through in such a great way. I couldn't be more grateful for the young men and women who made it happen.
I can't wait to hear all about it. Let's get right into it. You knew my father and you knew the two things that he loved to talk about, in addition to God and Gloria, were motivation and leadership. His speech, the Price of Leadership, has been given thousands of times. In it, my father talks about four things that you are going to have to be committed to paying to truly be a leader and not just a leader in name only. The first of those is loneliness. We have all heard the saying, “It's lonely at the top. I used to have friends and then I got in leadership or management.” Can you unpack loneliness for us, maybe a time when you went through it? What counsel would you give to our audience?
I’m absolutely happy to do that. A little bit of background, my upbringing was in a small town in Northern New Mexico. A wonderful family, no real challenges to deal with, did well in school and sports, and was popular. When I got into Harvard, it was a different story. I felt as if I couldn't compete, which I could actually compete but I believed I couldn't. I developed a massive inferiority complex, which covered up some negative behaviors during my first year in college.
Southwestern Advantage came along, and a guy named Martin Fridson stopped his tray in front of mine in the dining hall and said, “Are you a freshman? I'm a senior. I want to chat a bit,” then introduced me to the program. I thought, “This is a chance for me to get back on the success trail.” I don't remember being homesick or lonely at all that first year in college, but once I got to San Antonio, Texas to sell books, your father is the one that got me through that first period of loneliness.
I was sitting on a street corner feeling sorry for myself because the night before, I'd been under the street lamp looking at my map. Some local guys came by drinking beer and throwing beer cans at me and thought it was funny. I sat there feeling sorry for myself, and I pulled out the book they gave us in sales school called Life is Tremendous.
Life is Tremendous
When your father wrote in that book, “The first Law of Leadership is learning to get excited about your work.” I remember thinking, “That's one thing, Charlie, but you got a really cool job. I'm sure. I'm a door-to-door salesman.” He said, “Not the job you wish you had. The job you have now. That's not the same as working because I know I work myself out into oblivion half a dozen times. It's getting excited about your work.”
There's a cartoon of a guy with a stack of paperwork on his desk this high. He was all excited. I jumped up at that moment. I said, “He's right. I have got to get excited about what I'm doing right now.” It's not being as lonely. Your father got me through that very first event. That was 1974. One of the most important things that I have upstairs in my library is his portrait that your father sent me about a month before he passed away.
He said, “My beloved Dan, Acts 20:24 Charles “Tremendous” Jones. Your father's counsel, advice, and guidance were essential to my younger times and getting through those lonely periods. One thing that I have been learning over the years is that each time we have an opportunity to move up, we don't get moved up before we are ready. We get moved up because people think we can do it. Even if you don't think you can do it, if we prepare ourselves along the way, we can be the effective leader that we want to be.
One of the things that your dad wrote about in the loneliness part is that at every level, you are going to be lonely if in fact you want to be a leader. By definition, the leader is ahead or stands out a little bit differently. Loneliness in the company is almost every different stage of this journey that we are all on. When he says, “The first price of leadership is loneliness,” I remember experiencing as a first-year leader, as a student leader, and as a sales manager going between campuses trying to talk to students about working with us.
Nobody wanted to work with me that summer. I remember crying and breaking down in front of my new wife. She said, “What are you so upset about?” I said, “I don’t think I can do that. I can't do this. I'm so lonely. I'm working so hard.” As a newlywed, she's the only one that got it, but the fact of the matter is loneliness means we are going to do something a little different. We are going to step away from other people, and hopefully lead in an effective way.
When I first became president of our company, it was a huge honor. The man that had it before me, you know well, Jerry Heffel. Jerry said to tell you hello as well. He and I spoke by phone. The very first thing I did was approach one of our top sales leaders. I said, “I sure need your help. I would love it if you take over the sales function.” He said, “Actually, I'm getting ready to resign.”
My very first blow was realizing, “This guy I thought I could partner with is not going to be part of the team now.” It was a real blow to my confidence, but that's when I realized this is what leaders do. It's okay to feel lonely. What we have to do at that moment is hug our mission so tightly and believe in it so strongly that the loneliness eventually dissipates to different levels. That's what's hit me about this issue of loneliness.
I don't know what to say, Dan. You are talking about how sometimes loneliness is self-imposed. When you went to Harvard the first year and then you think, “We are not good.” We have ostracized ourselves so that self-imposed loneliness, but then also talking about loneliness stepping out. What makes you a leader and not a follower is stepping out. I love that, hugging the mission. Charles would have loved that too as a big hugger.
Dad talked about that in Life is Tremendous. You are going to have some of your great years and next, you are going to have your worst year. The only thing we never talk about is productivity or getting back on track. Go back to your purpose and why. When you talk about hugging your mission, that's what always brings it back. Thank God you had a wife that didn't coddle you and tell you, “Come cry on my shoulder.” He talks about that too. He was like, “Gloria was like, ‘We have got kids. You have got to get back out there and get to work.’” He's like, “If you have a wife that says ‘Hey and clocks are ticking,’ be thankful.” I'm glad she was there for you to help be that sounding board for you.
Tell Jerry I said hi too. This is going way back. Thank you for sharing that Dad said that. He said that if you can't get excited about the job you are doing now, forget about the job you are going to have because it's easy to get excited about the things we like to do, but that doesn't happen that often in life. Most of the time, you are going to be doing things that you don't want to do, and if you can get excited about them, that's a secret to success. How many years were you with Southwestern before you took over as the President?
Let's see, I started in 1974. I became president in 2007, so whatever that would be. Quite a few years.
For our audience out there, timing. As you said, Dan, you will come into the spot when people think you are ready to come into the spot. I know some people want to get there, jump steps or jump the ladder, but sometimes it takes decades, and that's okay, just stay the course. That's phenomenal. I love it.
The next step my father talked about is weariness, and you have alluded to some of that. He's like, “You are going to be working with some people who are doing way more than they should, a lot that are doing way less than they should, and it's tiring.” A lot of people just tap out because I can't do it anymore. How do you deal with weariness and stay in your top form, Dan?
Most of it has to do with self-talk. In other words, we talk ourselves out of doing our very best much more often than we talk ourselves into doing our very best. I have learned over the years anytime I say, “I'm tired.” I need to put it in perspective and realize I'm really not. I got a nice home, air conditioning, and a fine car. There are people that have none of those things. They get up every day and do their job. They do the best they can for the family. They try everything they can to move forward. I'm really not that tired.
That's a breakthrough in the way we think about it ourselves. We can feel legitimately physically weary, emotionally and mentally. Sometimes even spiritually weary, but those are the times when the Lord said, “Lean into me. I will make sure I never forsake you. You will never be alone.” That weariness can go away because he said, “I will give you rest.” When we have that feeling in our hearts, we can breathe deeper. “One more demo, one more call, one more thing, one more memo, one more presentation.” We can do one more. Always we can do one more.
You talk about your faith, and I am aware of that. How do you dial that in? Do you start the morning with that? Do you do devotions? Do you Sabbath? How do you stay with the Creator who can give us the power that we need to do the things that we need to do?
I spent the first twenty years of my life not being aware of that at all. Not even knowing him. It was my fourth summer on the field that through the influence of the sales manager who shared his story with me that I finally realized this is what I need in my life and my eternity. At that moment, when I accepted Jesus into my life as my savior, things didn't become easier. I had my hardest year in the business ever after I made that decision.
As a young naive person, I thought, “Now that I'm a Christian, everything is going to be easy.” Wrong. He doubled down at that point. We know that for the first book of James, the trying of our faith makes patience, so we should count it all joy. I love the word joy. Every morning when I wake up, I have my first thought. It used to be my first thought was, “I wish I could sleep another hour.” My older brother passed away at 58. My baby sister passed away at 46. When my brother died, I woke up and said, “I'm now an orphan and an only child but I'm still here.”
The trying of our faith makes patience. We should count it all as joy.
Every day from that point until this point, my first thought of the morning is, “Thank you. I'm grateful I have got another day.” It's how I started my day, then I might say, “I wish I could sleep another hour.” Leaning into that thankfulness, gratitude, and sense of “I have got this opportunity. Let me use it as well as I can.” It's a big one. It helps overcome weariness too.
I love to use the word orphan. When I lost Gloria years ago, I didn't have children and both my parents were gone. I remember somebody telling me, “Now you are like an orphan.” I was like, “I can't believe you said that because now I can't get this out of my head.” That is what Christ said. He goes, “I'm going to leave you and you are going to be orphans but not for long because I'm going to send you the comforter and the advocate and the Holy Spirit.”
You lean into that, like you said, with your eternity. Now, I play my inheritance and I know I'm going to see my family on the other side and my brother Jerry who I lost. Otherwise, it is a little bit, when you finally hit that and go, “I'm alone,” then you are like, “No, you are not alone. That's what Satan wants you to think.” Thank you so much for sharing that. That tender memory. The next thing he talked about was abandonment. I'm a big pet rescue person so abandonment is a very bad word and fear of abandonment is a bad thing but Charles talked about abandonment in a sense of pruning and hyper-focus.
I can remember him telling me, “I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success. Every day, I have to abandon what I like and want to think about and do in favor of what I ought and need to.” You have touched on this before. I'm sure in your role so many new ideas and wonderful things. You are crafting the business for the future, so you always have to be open but you have to be very tightly focused on what your zone of gifting is and what you are calling is for the organization. How do you abandon all the stuff that you shouldn't stay focused on?
That's a difficult challenging question about which many books have been written, I'm sure. In my mind, the important thing is to realize that every single individual human being has limits. When we view ourselves as unlimited in our ability, we are not even telling the truth because we all have limits. We wouldn't have associates, colleagues, younger people, and people who want to move up and want to learn things, we limit them by having that belief. That sense, “I have got to do this. I'm the only one that can do this.” Even though that sounds contradictory the leader is only a person, the leader is always looking to the people around them and giving them opportunities to fail, chances to grow, and opportunities to fail.
Tremendous Leader: We're not even telling the truth when we view ourselves as unlimited in our ability because we all have limits. We wouldn't have associates, colleagues, and people who want to move up and learn things. We limit them by having that belief.
I had to abandon the sense that I had to do everything myself. I can remember when I hit that point. It was in the mid-'80s. I was trying to lead a team of people. Down the organization a bit. I was struggling with lots of things and I had this little plaque on my desk that said, “I will do it.” One of my alumni came in, he said, “That's a lot like my sign.” His sign was different. His sign said, “It can be done.” Now the difference between I will do it, which is very self-centered and it can be done is a huge difference.
I had to abandon the idea that I'm the only guy that has any brains. I'm the only guy who didn't get it done and give other people that chance to grow. As a leader, I suppose my main goal was always to help people have resources, which means listening ears and some guidance, but never trying to do their job for them. First of all, I wouldn't do it as well as they could do it. Every time I'd say, “This is what I want. That's how I want it done.” It was a huge mistake.
Instead, I said, “This is what I want done. How do you think you could do it?” They come up with the most brilliant, amazing, clever, and creative ideas in the universe. Abandonment to me was abandoning the idea that I'm some wonder boy. I'm going to get it done. It couldn't be farther from the truth. That was a big lesson and hopefully, I have been able to continue that throughout the whole course of my career.
Have you ever heard the poem The Indispensable Man?
I don't think I have.
I came across it. It came out many years ago The Indispensable Man. Every time I bring it up, people are like, “I have heard it.” Very much the same thing. It's all about keeping your ego in check because we do the best we can but do you know what? If you are gone, the world will continue spinning on its access. Do the best you can and it's about pouring into the lives of others. It's a very poignant thing that helps you remember and keep it.
Your comments reminded me of my favorite patent quote, “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” I love what you talked about there, allowing them to bring the creative stuff and it can be none. Not all do it because that's how we do this. That's how we burn ourselves out. Nobody likes working for somebody if the boss is going to do everything.
Not only that. It causes people to lose their hope that they have a future here. It’s giving that chance to grow is so important.
Thank you for that. The last thing my father talked about was vision and growing up with all these visionaries. I was always like, “They have different blood coursing through their veins or they are wired differently.” He's like, “Vision is seeing what needs to be done. There's this visualization or attraction then doing it, the action piece.” I'm like, “I can do that.” It was always very encouraging to me. What does vision look like for you? How do you continually look to the future for the best possible version of what you and your enterprise can be?
To me, vision is often mistaken for financial goals. People would say, “This is our five-year vision to be an X million-dollar company or to be this size company.” Maybe that's a financial goal. It's not a vision. A vision is a state of future affairs that we'd like to be able to see and all the financial dimension is an important part of that. There's the people's illness so much more important. Years ago, sometime before I was born, the company developed a motto, “Building character and young people since 1868.”
Often, we mistake vision for financial goals. A vision is a state of future affairs that we'd like to see.
That's where I grew up under. That was a powerful mission statement. An important one. We found over the years students would become maybe a little more cynical, and a little bit more influenced by outside people. They said, “What's this character stuff all about anyway? I don't need character. I need a good resume.” We modified it and we decided that the whole key is can we be the best organization in the world? Not the biggest. Not the largest. Not even the fastest-growing.
It can be the best organization in the world at helping young people develop the skills and the character they need to achieve their goals in life. That vision has always been the core at least as long as I have been in leadership at the company. To me, vision means seeing something big, is your dad talked about SIBKIS, See It Big Keep It Simple. The keep it simple part was we'd always ask the question after we make some big decision or in the process make a big decision.
Is it going to help our young people achieve their goals in life or is it something we think is a shiny good idea? It won't help them achieve their goals in life. It doesn't fit our mission. If we don't fit our mission, our vision is never going to happen. The vision of being the best organization in the world is a tough one because there are some amazing organizations out there helping young people.
We are going to keep working, keep striving, and the team that's there after me. It's the best people we have ever had in the world. The new president of the company is a young man you know very well, named Dave Koser. Dave is somebody who's been in the business longer than I have been. What a blessing it was when he stepped up that leadership and said, “Yes, I will take that role.”
Thank you for sharing that on vision and I love that. It keeps you purpose-oriented in everything. Is it going to help our young people achieve their goals? I wrote that down because I'm on several college boards and stuff and that's a great thing to say. I know it may look good from our level, but if you are not helping the young people achieve their goals, that's a great qualifier.
That's a litmus test for any decision that you make if you are working with any organization like that.
The raising the future leaders. We did loneliness, weariness, abandonment, and vision. I want to open it up now because you have laid some incredible truths and wisdom on us. Thank you so much. I got about a page and a half a note scribbled down. What else do you have going on? You have a new book coming out and I'd like to talk about your book. I'd like you to share with our readers about the Southwestern Company in case they want to get involved or anybody out there reading or has kids grandkids or great-grandkids. What's next for you now that you have retired? What does the next chapter look like for Dan? First of all, could you tell us about your new book coming out?
Happy to do that. The idea of a book is something that probably a lot of people think about over the course of their lives and somebody says, “You ought to write a book.” I got serious about it years ago. I remember what happened. The presentation I developed over the years for students primarily on how to prepare for a future that nobody can predict. What it had to do with is the rate of change so incredibly fast. Many students would start a subject as a freshman in college.
Control, Influence, Accept (For Now): Coping with a Future No One Can Predict
By the time they are senior, it's already obsolete. This rate of change created all kinds of scare and uncertainty. What am I going to do for a living someday? Everything's changing so fast. What hits me all the time is it's internal qualities to get us through anything. It's true in your background in the military as the internal qualities that get people through in business. The internal decision that keeps a marriage together. The internal factors to keep a family growing.
To me, the internal part was can I become more self-aware? Can become more effective in dealing with people? Can I be more resilient and be more emotionally flexible? I began to give this presentation on campuses. Students always enjoyed it. Occasionally, they’d invite their parents to come. At the University of Colorado Boulder, I gave a presentation. I still remember the evening. We were in the environmental science building and a young man came and said, “I want to meet my dad. My Dad's here.” The dad walked up, shook my hand, and said, “Have you written this into a book?” I said, “No.”
He didn't smile at all. He said, “You should,” and he walked out. That's planted the idea in my head. The next year, I said, “I will start writing it,” and I thought, “This can be easy.” Two years later, I have only written two pages. A colleague challenged me and said, “Dan, I want you to finish that book this year.” Maria and I went to her home. She grew up in the beautiful Azores Islands which are part of Portugal, in the middle of the Atlantic. We took a long break and I remembered taking out my laptop, sitting in a coffee shop, and started writing 80% of it.
The whole key to that is understanding that if we can develop these internal skills and internal characteristics, we are going to be better off in life. The name of the book deals very much with something we all learned when we started selling books. Do you remember the phrase control which you can control and don't worry about the results? I want to sell books so that we can control certain things. Control our effort and the number of demonstrations we make.
We can control only a few things truly in our lives. Even our attitude. We always think, “I can control my attitude.” If you can do that, you are a better person than I am because I have learned over the years things can throw me off my stride, left field, a curve ball comes in and knocks me in the head. We can influence our attitude. We can certainly influence other people. Most of the things that happen in the world are things that we can either control or influence.
As I looked at people hitting their heads against that wall over and over, it occurred to me if they'd spend some of that emotional energy maybe on some things they could control and more on things they could influence. The things they need to accept for now, put them on the side. That's the title of the book, Control, Influence, Accept (For Now): Coping with a Future No One Can Predict.
I’m very excited about it. I had tremendous feedback from various editors, advanced readers, and people who said, “This would be better, do this and this.” It’s a collaborative effort there. The book is due out on October 31st, 2023. It is available for pre-order through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I'm mostly excited because of some young people. I regard young people as anybody on this side of the Earth, by the way. I still think I'm a young person. It can continue to grow throughout our lives. Whatever those lives mean. This can be worth it to us. That's what the book is all about.
That's so important. I love that and that's what Southwestern taught me. It's about processes and habits. People have these wild outcome goals. Outcome goals of the hardest because there's so much beyond your control but the procedures and the processes, how many doors you knock on, how well you prepare, and all that stuff. That's the stuff that I can control. If you follow that then success. You will hit you will hit the outcome goals.
Very important because people are losing that. A lot of the divisiveness is, “They got it at the cost of you.” It's like, experience and opportunity are equitable but you are bringing these truths out there. These are immutable truths for people to understand. Charles will always say, “Nothing works unless you are working.” Teach them how to work in a manner that brings the goals that they are looking for. I can't wait. Very exciting. We will put the links out there for that too.
Thank you for that.
Now, talk about Southwestern Company.
I’m grateful that Marty Fridson and my student manager took the time to seek me out in the dining hall. A little bit of background again. At Harvard, the dining halls were closed for the freshmen on weekends. The weekends when we ate in the upper-class dining halls. Most freshmen did not feel very welcome by these upperclassmen. When Marty came across this tray and said, “You are freshmen. Mind if I join you?” I learned later that was his style of prospecting for team members that he wanted to have but there was something about Marty that hit me as unusual and a bit different.
As he told me about the program, I realized, “This could be something great for me.” The problem was, I didn't know how to sell. I talked about it and thought it was the dumbest thing that ever heard. Some of them said, “If you do that, you are a bigger idiot than I think you are.” I decided not to go but Marty was pleasantly persistent. Invited me over to the meeting and I met a man named Jim Calder. Jim became my district sales leader.
Less than ten minutes into the meeting, I knew that Jim had something I needed in my life. I met another young leader named Sam Wee. Sam became one of my most important friends and mentor my entire lifetime. That's the essence of the Southwestern program. Although, the product line has changed over the years. When the company started back in the 1850s, it was entirely a Bible publisher. Now while those do sell some Bible-related products, they are only about 3% or 4% of total sales. Everything else is educational products for famous kids.
The product line can change. We are very automated now. We have brilliant apps and brilliant websites that people can subscribe to continue to great educational input for their kids. The best books we have ever had in our history are in the line now. The essence of the program is still about a young person becoming everything they can be with mentorship, guidance, and stripping away all their background and experiences, their social media, and their image. It’s just me face-to-face with a person at their home. It's the most elemental form of communication and developing ourselves.
That program continues in a big way this year, last year, and every year in the future. Over the years, we have had many students from around the world participate. About half the students who have participated now come at their own expense from Europe to be here in the summertime and do this. It's just been tremendously gratifying to see the company change, adapt and grow while standing true to that whole mission. It's an amazing thing.
People can reach out even to host a student to come over to sell, correct for the summer?
Almost everybody stays with a host family in the summertime.
For the readers out there, if your kids are grown or already out on their own. Now, do all college campuses have this?
All college campuses could have but we don't have every presence. We are not present in every school. There are about three 3,000 colleges in the US alone. Not going to be at all of those schools because of online access. We get many applications from people all over the country. As colleges may not currently have a presence. When that student gets started, they can then build their presence.
That's the thing about it. They start you out then the next year you bring your team. As I said, you don't stay in your hometown. You go to a different area. If you are like, “My college doesn't have it for the kids.” Still check out Southwestern because you will go to a different area that does have a presence and a force, correct? Is that still the way it works?
That's right. The name of the company is now Southwestern Advantage. The reason for that is Southwestern itself is diversified into many different companies. It’s now called the Southwestern Family of Companies. Southwestern Advantage is the name of the student program to convey beautifully, what it's about, it gives students an advantage throughout the rest of their lives. The families that buy the products have an advantage for their families as well. SouthwesternAdvantage.com is where people can find out more about the program.
Everywhere I go, every book I publish including my one coming out, I always talk about Southwestern because Dad told me, “If you can go out there and cold call and not going to door and make a connection with somebody who goes, ‘That's one of the hardest things in life you are going to have or have to do.’ If you learn how to do that early on.” I'm like, “Good. Let's get that hard stuff out of the way.”
I remember like you said that mano to mano that one-on-one how to connect with somebody and stay persistent when you are getting door slam. I was so thankful that when I went into the military after Southwestern, people were like, “Aren't you scared or getting yelled at by the general?” I'm like, “I sold bookstore to door. I'm tough. They I got nothing on me. I can sell on heat and get chased by dogs and turkeys. You don't even worry about me. I got this.” What's next? You retired from Southwestern, what's next for you?
I’m still very active with the company in certain ways as an advisor and consultant. One of the companies we started in the UK in the year 2002 is called SBR Consulting. It's a sales enablement consulting company. I'm still involved with them. I have a training program coming up in New York, where I will deliver training to some clients. I hope to stay involved with that company as long as they will have me. They are doing tremendous work helping the corporate world develop many of the same principles, skills, and attitudes young people develop in this program.
We have also got another coaching company based here in Nashville called Southwestern Consulting. It says SBR Consulting is based in the UK. It used to be part of Europe. They got a big office in Prague in the Southwestern Consulting here. I try to give them advice and help whenever they seek it out. They are doing fantastic things. I'm no longer on the board of directors, but I'm very interested in what happens with our company. Henry Bedford, our CEO and Chairman, is a brilliant leader and close touch.
As much as I can support the students, I will continue to do that. In retirement, the whole goal for me and Maria is to focus, first of all, on our personal wellness physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally because again, my family didn't live very long. My siblings did not practice good health habits. As long as God has blessed me with a decent brain, I have an obligation to stay healthy enough to use it to try to help some people along the way.
We are prioritizing that. My wife is a yoga instructor. Yoga has helped both of us from a spiritual development level as well as a physical development level. Learning how to let go and let God is such an important aspect of all of that. Keep that going and keep my running going. My daughter talked me into doing my 25th half marathon. That's going to keep rolling as well. We are doing a different kind of travel. We’ll slow down a little bit and get more involved in the culture of a place. I plan to continue that. With any success at all with the book, hopefully, the message will continue to spread and grow as I have a chance to travel, speak, and share these ideas with people. In the meantime, I'm going to grow into every day, live into it, see what happens, and do the best we can to be responsive to what God wants us to do next.
I love that. For our readers out there, you can reach out to him or if you have a sales team, you have heard the wisdom that he has to offer in his years of experience. If you can motivate college kids to change their life, he can help motivate your sales team. I will make sure that gets out there. Dan, thank you so much for reaching out. You have always been a constant presence. You guys still support me. You buy our books, my books and Life is Tremendous. I'm so thankful that you keep doing and raising the bar on helping young people and for what you’ve meant to my father and to me over the years that I have been back.
I want to thank you for that. I wanted to share thoughts with everybody, first of all. Your dad had so many characteristics that were incredibly moving and powerful. You can distill a lot of his words in a couple of key lessons. One is the importance of humor. He used humor not only with people and groups, but in his own life. His ability to laugh at himself and laugh at his own troubles and his own mistakes and weaknesses was legendary.
It made all the rest of us feel like we could do something as well. He had a unique style of humor as you well know. I got to tell you about the very first time I met him in person. I'd read his book many times and they said, “Charlie Jones is coming to town. I’m going to have him speaking sales school.” I was so excited. I went to shake his hand. He gave me his big bear hug. Hugging me. Your father's a big man. He was probably 6’3” and hugging me, squeezing the life out of me.
I did what anybody did, I hugged him back. He whispered on my ear and said, “Don't hug back. Act like you are trying to get away. People are beginning to talk.” It was that tremendous sense of humor and that ability to help people just feel good about themselves. He was talking to one of my colleagues one time and he's like, “Charlie, let's get together for breakfast.” Charles said, “Okay. 8:00.” He said “Yes. If I'm not there, it means the rapture came and you weren't saved.”
The other thing he said to me about door-to-door before I went out my first summer in Princeton Bluefield West Virginia right on the border there, he said, “Tracey, if you see they are going to shut the door, put your head through the door, not your foot, because that way, when they go to slam the door, you can keep talking.” I'm telling you, when I would see they’re coming back, rather than cry, which happened from time to time, I would bust out a laugh and think about Dad saying, “No, just keep talking.” He did have a sense of humor.
He also had a tremendous love for music. He spoke about music therapy forgetting the difficult times in our lives. At the farm, outside Harrisburg, he had an entire little house dedicated to music, an old player piano, every kind of instrument under the sun. It didn't matter if you could play it or not. He said, “Pick this up and blow into it. Let's sing together. Let's sing some hymns.” He was amazing with the power of music. It can change our spirit and change our direction. It can move us in great ways. It's also been said that whenever we sing, we pray twice. God was the inventor of music. The best songwriter that ever lived was King David. When we sing, we pray twice. Your father was big in sharing that with all the rest of us.
The power of music can change our spirit and direction. It can move us in great ways.
Probably the third thing that I want everybody to remember about your father is that he was an imperfect human being, but he was a perfect example of being a human being. Imperfect because everybody's imperfect, but he was a perfect example of that. He inspired and developed so many people. He's a huge impact of my life and my son, Daniel. He and Charlie connected when Daniel was eight years old.
He mentored Daniel, tutored him, and helped him learn some things. Daniel rewrote Life is Tremendous for a younger reader and sent a copy to your dad. Your dad said the most glowing note. He sent him a $50 check out of nowhere. A cool connection that they had. Thank you, Tracey, for continuing that on, and Charles Tremendous, I know you are there.
Thank you so much. Dan, I can't thank you enough. My soul is full. I'm encouraged. You taught me so many wonderful things, and I'm excited for the book to come out. I'm excited we reconnected at this stage. Keep on doing what you are doing.
You do the same.
I sure will. To our audience out there, thank you so much for the honor of taking time out of your schedule to tune into the show. Please be sure to check the links, reach out to Dan, and stay in touch with him. Be sure and pick up his book. If you don't have a copy of Life is Tremendous, make sure you get a copy of that too.
We would love it if you would hit the like and subscribe button, and the honor of a review to share with other leaders who are going through how this message has blessed you. That would be absolutely tremendous. To all our readers out there, remember you will be the same person years from now that you are today except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read, so make them both tremendous. Have a tremendous rest of the day, everyone. Thanks again. Bye-bye.
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About Dan Moore
Dan Moore recently retired as President of the Southwestern Company, which has been building leaders out of young people for 150 years. He started with the company as a freshman at Harvard and never left!