From mansions on the hill to birdhouses in the backyard, The working class heroes of industry are what makes it all happen!
Yesterday while enjoying a Sunday morning cup of coffee with my wife Rebecca, I told her about an interesting trend that I had going in my blog. Rebecca and I always take our coffee together every morning before our kids wake up and discuss many current issues of the times mostly politics, business, and popular culture. It’s valued time for both of us and it really helps me to re-center for the day and never fails to get me off on the right mindset for running our business.
I mentioned to her that my blog posts have a lot of ups and downs when it comes to content and reader engagement. I told her that I don’t understand when I post entrepreneurial hustle content or write about some amazing new tech unicorn company, I get virtually crickets when it comes to engagement with my followers. But when I recently wrote a really short article about an older woman I overhear talking in a convenience store about how proud she was to have been a convenience store clerk for 42 years and how much she loved the work, my like indicator went through the roof with major engagement. Some of the people who liked my article about this woman I didn’t even know or hadn’t heard from in 20 years!
This difference was striking to me and conversation-worthy to the person I rely on the most for advice, Rebecca! As always, Rebecca has such a big heart and at the same time, an existential answer to everything I wonder about. She said, “I have always thought that your content wasn’t connecting with everyday people. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur or love reading about big-time successful industry giants. You need to reinvent your message and your content to connect with the vast majority of people that are trying to make a living, feed their families and doing the best they can for their kids and communities. They want to know they matter in your grand scheme.” She continued with, “These are the people that really make the difference in the world, the truck driver, the construction worker, the Walmart checkout clerk, convenience store clerk, the Pharmacists, etc.… You see, you always talk about in a speaking event, blog post or a when coaching young pre-entrepreneurs that you only start businesses to make other people’s lives better but you are forgetting to include the people that make all that stuff work, – to make other people’s lives better. Where would we be right now without your own employees Dan? Sure, you big business guys talk about all the risk, money and action you put up to start great new companies and you shout it to the world to encourage others to do the same. While your actions are blazingly significant, isn’t it just as bold and risky for someone to come and work for you at that great new company you so boldly launched? Even the great Daniel J Bockman has had people not work for him because they were not sure you’d be successful, think about that!”
After that and many other examples like, “where would we get our Christmas lights if not for these great people making, delivering, stocking and selling them to us” I started to feel a bit hollow. She was again, very right. I forgot about the people that matter the most and it was right there in front of me in my content engagement and I didn’t even see it! I was becoming business blind to a demographic of people that matter far more than my next big business breakthrough or how much money I can leverage for my next big endeavor. So with that, to the people making a much more significant difference in the world- the people actually doing the work- This Bud’s for you (as they say in the Budweiser commercial) or rather, this article is for you! I give you, the working class, all the credit. I get accolades all the time about my companies and the work we do but I always make sure to tell them that it’s not me, it’s my employees that do this great work. I have mentioned several times to customers that I myself couldn’t do that work that nice or professionally, it’s these great people that work for me that do this!
In companies like mine, every day is Labor Day and I always celebrate it within my mind. But after being reduced to mush by my wife on this issue, I will be sure to celebrate it with much more fanfare on the outside! For now on, all my business content is going to include the working man or woman that makes this world and industry go around. I appreciate you more than I can explain in this one article so I will dedicate most of what’s to come to you, great people!
Like it says in the John Conlee song The Carpenter, “he built boats out of wood, working in the shipyard, mansions on the hill and a birdhouse in the backyard”
Daniel J Bockman
