Everything You Do Matters

Hey team, so here we are. It is Monday, October is here. I don’t know about you guys, but this last weekend, I did quite a bit of yard chores and stuff. I started getting the house buttoned up and ready for the onslaught of cold weather and rain that we’ve got coming and the leaves dropping. Fall is in the air.

I know that some of you are excited about that. Me, I am thinking about going to Hawaii because I would much rather be there than here. But we do love the Northwest, and it is a part of our lives.

So, today’s quote I want to talk to you about is, “Act as if everything you do makes a difference. It does.” The person who said that was a gentleman by the name of William James. Act as if everything that you do, everything, makes a difference because it does. I talk to officers about this in orientation and in our core values. Be valuable because nothing less will do. Our core purpose is being invested in the things that we do to invest in ourselves.

Everything You Do Matters

Sometimes we come to a company, and I’ve explained my life story probably dozens of times. Working for people, one of the reasons we started this company is because somebody told me that, these are not encouraging words. But I was working for a guy, and he said, “I’m sorry, I can’t pay you this week because the dog ate my checkbook.” True story. It was from episodes like that and situations like that of working hard for somebody else that brought me to a place where being treated the way I was treated made me want to do something different and be something different. But it never changed my work ethic.

The person that treated me like that didn’t make me work less hard for them or for anybody else. The next job I took, I didn’t work a little less hard because I was treated badly by a guy in the previous career or job because there’s something I recognize about my work ethic and who I am. It is me. I do everything that I do to build Chad, to build me, what I’m trying to do.

So my hard work, my dedication, my motivation is to continue to be the best me I can be, and it will be recognized by others in a leadership position.

It will draw other people to your leadership style. It will draw people to want to invest. And give because of who you are as a worker. It will draw employers to you to say, “Wow, I need somebody like that on my team.” It works on both sides of the fence. Your work ethic. Everything that you do from polishing your shoes to ironing your uniform to smiling to showing up on post on time and ready to work, by cleaning up your post and making it a nice-looking area for the person that follows you, everything that you do is building you to be prepared for the next thing.

I just read a book by a Navy SEAL Admiral for the Navy. He was in charge of the Navy SEALs for decades. He worked his way up and became the head guy. Some of you guys might know the name Admiral McCraven. He wrote a book called “Make Your Bed.” He breaks down just the daily task of making your bed. In the military is a task that’s important for building yourself. It’s a building block of life. The things that you do, everything you do matters, all the way down to making your bed, cleaning your room, making a sandwich, doing the dishes, cleaning up your post, polishing your shoes.

Everything matters because it’s building you and honing you and shaping you for the next big thing that’s coming your way.

A lot of people wonder how do people get to these big, you know, situations in their lives where they are on top of the world? Well, if you look at their history, you will probably find under circumstances somebody that had to crawl through a lot of mud and muck and mire to get to the place they are today. It’s not something that they just poof right. It’s not something like in Cinderella where, you know, and even Cinderella, to be honest, right, she worked her little butt off, and yeah, she had the Fairy Godmother thing. But for most of us, we don’t have a fairy godmother, and what happens to us is we crawl through the muck and the mire to get to the place where we finally have maybe arrived.

But success is not a final thing. You don’t hit success and then look, I’m here. It is a constant battle. Even when you get to that top, maybe when you were a kid, you know, I remember in kindergarten, we used to play King of the mountain. It was great to get to be king of the mountain, but then everybody wanted to topple you. It’s a lot like that in success, and sometimes we see that in places that we go.

So as you’re moving through this week, remember that everything you do, even down to making your bed this morning, matters because it’s building you, shaping you, honing you, making you the better person to prepare you for the better thing, the next thing that you’ve got going in your life. And if you didn’t make your bed this morning, guess what? You get to go to sleep tonight, and tomorrow you can do it.

Whatever you do, put your heart and soul into it everywhere you go, no matter how you think you’re being treated because the person you’re making is you.

It’s not about the company you work for, even. It’s not even about the boss or the supervisor you currently have. It is about you. Everything you do matters. All right, God bless you guys. Have a wonderful rest of your week, and I’ll see you next week. Bye, see you.