Wednesday, September 3, 2003
History of a Business Professional
Part 2
Alright, here are two subjects that we are going to get started on today: What is business and why study business. But before we get to that, we have to finish-up my little life story. And we’ll pass around the attendance sheet; make sure that you get that signed. Now, is there anyone here new today for the first day? Ok, there’s one. You need to come to my office after class, get the syllabus, fill out a card. Did we have you guys introduce yourselves yet? Yeah? Ok. So you need to introduce yourself to someone, find a study buddy, and start to get integrated into the class. We want people here on time, no cell phones, if you need to leave to leave the class, it would be a good idea to talk to me about that ahead of time. And I’ll explain a little more about the assignments later.
The Rusty Mitchell Story
1948, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974-78, 1979 (start IHCC), 2003 (BUS 1101)
If I remember correctly, I was living in St. Paul, I was depressed, I was by the railroad track, the bum had fallen asleep on my car… Am I on track, here? Ok. Anyway, I said to myself, “I don’t want to live in St. Paul anymore.” I didn’t know anyone there; I only had Joe’s Sporting Goods shop as an account, and things weren’t going well. I was probably clinically depressed. If I’ve ever seen the definition of that closely fulfilled, I think I was pretty much there. I was driving my dad’s big old car that sucked up gas, and I got the car for like one hundred bucks, so the price was right. But it was a big old car that had a huge engine in it, and all the power stuff in it. It was comfortable… But that’s where I was at.
In that first year, I think I lost about twelve hundred bucks in my dad’s business. The second year, I think I broke even; and then in the third year, I think I made about twelve hundred bucks, and that’s what I paid taxes on. So my commissions were higher than that. But after you subtract your expenses, that’s what I paid taxes on.
Then I went to like… And I just looked at this record from Social Security just a little bit ago, so these numbers are even more clear to me than they were a few years ago. But I went from like two-thousand four hundred that I paid taxes on; and then it jumped up to like eight-thousand five-hundred, and then nine-thousand eight-hundred, and then twelve-thousand and something. But by the time I left the family business, I had earned income that I paid taxes on of thirty-thousand, which was considerable at the time.
1948, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974-78, 1979 (start IHCC), 2003 (BUS 1101)
Not that I’m trying to brag or anything, but I was in my late 20’s and early 30’s and I was making some pretty good money. This was in 1976, the big bicentennial year. And that was a great year for ad specialties. Everything was printed for the bicentennial; every bank gave away stuff; every organization gave away stuff; we sold flags, plaques; it was amazing, and I was busy.
I also, that year, was treasurer of the Bloomington Biennial Committee. So I really became immersed into the Bloomington community. My brother-in-law was a big-shot there as a builder, real estate developer. He had his own agency, and he also taught at Normandale. So he knew a lot of people there, and I felt comfortable.
So, why Bloomington and why not Minneapolis? Well, I was bigger fish in the pond when I was in Bloomington than I would have been in Minneapolis. So it made sense, I was close to home, I could be to my accounts in ten minutes. It all worked out pretty good. There didn’t seem to be a lot of competition working the Bloomington area. But every body was working down town. I mean there were too many people working down town. Some of my dad’s main accounts were there, so there wasn’t much left for me to call on. We had some sales people who would call on the Gas company and the electric company, and so there wasn’t much. And there were a few accounts, like the County Seat that I picked up because of Super Value [?], which was actually in Edina. But the County Seat Offices were up in Columbia Heights. But I was able to do better because I moved back to my old hood, I moved back into my old neighborhood. And that was a critical thing.
So when we moved from St. Paul, I was able to buy my dad’s neighbor’s house. And if you wonder why I ended up getting divorced… I mean there’s are stupid written all over my forehead, and I mean in big letters. I mean, do you really want to take your nice young wife and move next door to mom and dad? I mean it’s just like that sit com on television, Everyone Loves Raymond. Yeah, the parents are over there all the time! Good intentions, yes, but they are there all the time. I recall my dad saying, “Well, I have a rule, I always knock.” But what kind of a rule is that? And I had my office in the basement, so he thought that he could come over anytime. And I did some dumb things like establishing inventory down there that he needed. So we printed t-shirts for Cenex, and if you needed something for Cenex, you’d just go get it. And we had a printing press down there. If he needed to do a sample checkbook for Deluxe or a gift thing for one of his clients, he’d go down there and just do it. Anyway, he wouldn’t be down there every day, but he would be down there often. And we even built a little step between the fence, so we could just jump over the fence to get back and forth. Those houses were built pretty close together. …By the way, when I was doing my research for Signs For Sale, I was looking at aerial photographs of Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun, and I said to the man, “Wow, there’s my house!” And he said, “Yeah, and there’s your steps…” And I said what do you mean? And he told me, “Well, you know we do this for tax purposes,” He knew that I had built that steps there. So, I asked, “When I added my deck in the back, you knew that?” And he said, “Yeah, and we’re going to come back and tax you for that.” And I said, “Oh, really, this is like Big Brother-spy-in-the-sky!” And he said, “Not only that, we actually do have a picture of your dad strutting between the houses.” My father was a pretty big guy, so you can imagine the photo of him taken while he was crossing over the fence. We had a pretty good laugh over that one.
But, anyway, just to paint the picture for you, that’s where we operated. My dad had his office in the duplex; he wrote of two-thirds of the building, one third for his office and one third for the rental. And then he’d lived in one-third of it, right. So, he got to write off two thirds of the tax bill, two-thirds of the heating bill, two thirds of the electric bill—pretty good, right? That’s how you build equity. And it’s critical that you know that, because I don’t want you pissing money down the rat hole of rent, ok? You only rent for about six months if you have to, and then you’re done. Then you own property, and preferably rental properties, so your generating income, right? That’s what my brother-in-law taught me, and that’s what I did.
How I got that house…we were looking for properties on Summit Avenue; we were looking at Crocus Hill, we were looking for houses that we could fix up to rent out a lot of rooms to single people, young people. We also looked at some duplexes, as well. I’ve looked at some burnt-out buildings; I looked at one property that was a ghetto property that was just unbelievably bad. You would walk into the kitchen and there was grease literally hanging from the light bulbs. There was a circular fan that somebody had installed maybe four or five years before that was probably a really nice addition over the dinette table. And you could see where the streaks of grease had rippled as the fan went around—it was unbelievable. I think they fried everything. I didn’t get to buy that house because we put in a bid…ok, you make an offer, and my realtor, who was my brother-in-law’s employee said, “Mitchell, no one is going to want this house. Bid fifty thousand under, bid sixty thousand under!” So, they were asking about one-hundred twenty thousand, and I think we bid thirty-five or something like that. As it happened, we didn’t get the house; it ended up selling for a few more than that. But before the deal closed, it burned. Somebody had thrown something on to the back of the house that was flammable and they had a wooden porch. …Actually, the previous owners had rented out this wooden porch out to people as a full-time year round room. So, it had electric heaters and it was a fire disaster. Anyway, I drove by one last time, and I was considering to raise my offer and compete with the other buyer. But I had seen that it had burned; so I walked away from it. This was in St. Paul, kind of close to Marshall Avenue.
Anyway, when I was a senior in high school, the first thing I did when I graduated was to paint my dad’s house. And I earned some money so that I could travel to Europe. And I had been saving money while in my first year of college. I had actually more than enough to pay for more than one year of school, tuition, books, room, miscellaneous expenses, parties and whatnot. I had more than enough saved up. And my dad had said, if you come up with the right dollar amount, then I’ll buy your second year. And that seemed fare to me, and I’d have to pay for the third year, and then he would pay for the fourth year. That was kind of our plan. And he had been saving money ever since I was a little kid, never really believing that I would be going to college, because I was this dyslectic kid who could never get stuff right. So he figured that he’s spend that money on an airplane or something. He had a lot of toys when I was growing up. But my father’s philosophy was, boys and their toys, you can only have one. You can have all the toys in the world, but you have to have one at a time. Most people want to have them all at once don’t they? But you can’t do that. My father had a private golf club membership, he had an airplane, he had an Air Stream trailer, he had a yacht based out of Stillwater—a Cris Craft yacht with twin Chevy engines—I used to love that baby.
But anyway, his philosophy was one toy at a time. And for many of those toys, he would own in partnership with his brother, who was really an entrepreneur. His brother started the first employment service, a company called Badis and Badis, where the employer pays the fee. And it was a radical new concept. You only paid a twenty-five process fee. Everyone else was charging you five-hundred. Well, that was a rip-off, right? And you had to pay the five-hundred whether found you a job or not. Well, his deal was that you pay twenty-five dollars, which covered a processing fee to get you into the computer and to keep track of your records, and then if the employer likes you, then they will pay the fee. And then he would only bring to the employer really good and qualified people. So that business grew and grew and he made a lot of money. Then he franchised it, and sold those franchises globally. So if you’re wondering how and why I’m franchising my Signs For Sale thing, it’s my dad’s brother who did that…. And when I was a junior in high school, he moved to Bolder Colorado and built this immense and amazing house so he and his family could ski every day and have this great life. He had somebody running his office, and he’d go in every three days. Anyway, I’ve seen this business thing work out pretty well.
…By the way did you know that Brian Addis…is there anyone, here, in the aviation program? Yeah, I though I had one of you. But, Brian Addis, that was one of his favorite instructors. That was a really sad thing that happened. I don’t know if it was someone actually doing Inver Hills work at the time?
[It was a U of M student who was flying]
The first thing, when I had heard that… You know, I grew-up flying my dad’s plane when I couldn’t even see out the window. And he was like, “I don’t get it Rusty, how can you do this? We have flown for an hour and twenty minutes and we haven’t veered off course on bit. We have not gone up or down…” So every now and then, I wonder what the hell was going on in Kennedy’s plane when they crashed, because even a kid read the instruments right? I think they were trying to join the mile-high club and they weren’t paying any attention. No, there were too many family members in the plane, so that’s not likely.
But you can get disoriented. And if you depend on outside things, you can get even more disoriented. But my dad wondered how I did it, and I just told him that it was easy if you just read the gauges. There’s two gauges one that goes this way and one that goes this way. As long as I kept both of those gauges right-on, I can fly straight all day long. And I didn’t have to touch the speed, because he set the speed in the beginning. I just loved to fly with him, though. When he was behind the wheel, he would be like, “I am going to make you throw-up kid!” That’s why I loved sailing after this, because I had learned to go upside down with no problem. You could do anything to me; you could put me on any ride, any roller coaster, and I will not throw-up. One day, my father was flying through this huge cloud, and then he’d bank one way, and then he’d do a complete flip; and sometimes he’d go around three times, then come out of the cloud—we shouldn’t have been doing that—but he wanted to try to make me sick, but I never barfed.
My wife’s ex likes to say that I grew-up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I don’t think that happened. I did grow-up having some interesting and fun experiences, though.
So, back to the St. Paul thing…we couldn’t find a place. But back when I was hanging off the side of my dad’s house painting—and there was a lot of windows in this house. It was an old English Tudor house that looked like a church. Actually, the guy who built it, built churches; and he built it like many of the churches in Minneapolis that he built. And if you look at the house, then you can easily identify the many churches that he had built in the Twin Cities. There’s one down by Lake of the Isles that I point out in my tour. He had two ugly daughters, and I mean they were really ugly! And he knew they were never going to get married, so he built this duplex for them, with both units identical. But they were really nice. They had Terrazzo floors in the dinning room and living room; they had very nice sun porches; they had underground indoor heated garages. The building had a huge oil-burning furnace. And there was a really nice turret-kind of enclosure for the front entryway. So when I was dating Martha King of Northrup-King fame, I took her by to see my dad’s house so I could let her know that, hey, my family had money too. I showed her the house and she was pretty impressed—but I never told her that it was a duplex. I didn’t tell her that my dad’s office was in the basement, there. …By the way, her dad hired a private detective to check me out. Having money is not always a good thing. They were constantly afraid that something was going to happen to them, that their kids would get kidnapped or something like that. When I would drive down their driveway, her dad would meet me at the front door. This happened like three times, and I asked him, once, “How do you know I’m even coming. I mean, I haven’t even rung the doorbell, and you open the door?” And he said that when I crossed the driveway, I would set-off an alarm, then their cameras would pick me up, and this is how I know it’s you. He went on to explain that he even had my license number locked-in on film. Actually, I have a service to where I lock that license number in, and you can’t come to my house and destroy it, because it’s also being monitored off-site. And by the way, this service checks all license numbers; they have a file on you. Well, they lived on Christmas Lake, they had sensors situated along the beech for security.
So, if you go by the Unysis property on Yankee Doodle and Pilot Knob, and see all of those sensors…well, that’s the kind of sensors that they have.
Anyway, I’m painting the windows; and I’m hanging off the back on this little thing that my dad made for me. It came with a rope from the roof, and you’d put this big eye-bolt in, and then it let’s you walk down this very steep roof, then you kind of work your way over the roof line so you can paint. It was like a chair, much like a boson’s chair. Anyway, you could hang from over the roof and paint. Then you could put your feet against the wall, move the rope and slide over to do another section or another window. Well, there was this lady who lived next door, and she was from Italy. I actually still have her old steamer trunk. But they came to the U.S. at around 1912 or so. And it said right on the trunk, their name, their address, and it was really cool.
Anyway, this was an old lady. She had to be in her mid to late eighties. She also was a weirdo lady; she would the sticks that fell from the tree that was actually in our yard, but of course you can’t control where the branches would hang, and so she would throw the sticks that fell into her yard from our tree back into our yard, all the while she would be hollering at my dad in Italian. Of course, my dad didn’t understand a word she was saying. Well, as it happened the squirrels would knock these dead branches off the trees. And we fed the squirrels, and she blamed us for that. So all the sticks in the yard were all our fault. For the longest time, I thought that she was this wicked old lady. But that summer, while I was painting, I got to know here. She would come out and talk to me, because she was lonely. I learned that her daughter was in the real estate business, and busy. She had only one child, and her husband had died. So she would set her lawn chair out there and we would talk. It was kind of like Breakfast with Harry, you know? And she told me her life’s story, when she came across in this steam ship, and how her husband had gotten into the wrought iron business, and how he put this wrought iron on all of these buildings, and on and on. And she just came to like me. Of course, I was this cute little red-headed kid, right?
Well, she had told her daughter by the end of that summer that if she ever died, that she wants Rusty to have this house. She was to give him the first offer. Well, her daughter was in the real estate business. And so, when she died, I got this call. Well she didn’t know that I was looking for rental property. But the two things came together. Sometimes I think the Lord runs us on a path… I’m not sure about that, but I often wonder why things happen. So, like an idiot I just walk this path and what ever seems to happen, happens. So I said to my dad, I said, “Hey, I’ve got this opportunity…” and he said, “no problem, I’ll give you the down payment.” Shocked, I said, “You’ll give me the down payment?” But he backed up and reiterated and told me that he’d loan me the down payment. He said that he would make sure that we were partners. The way it worked was that he would own sixty percent of the building, he would get all the rent from the tenants. When I said that wasn’t fare, he said, “Shut-up kid, I’ve got the down payment.” So, as it worked out, he got the rent, and I rented an office to myself, so I had monthly rental income, but it was from my business, and then I would write that off.
You see, the government wants you to start businesses don’t they? They wanted control data as a start-up business so later on they would have all of those employees paying taxes. So you get certain tax benefits for being an entrepreneur. And writing-off stuff happens to be one of them. So I got to write off two-thirds of your electric bill, two-thirds of your property tax bill, two-thirds of any expense related to the property. If you do landscaping or any yard improvements, which we did because of this really steep bank, which made it dangerous to mow the lawn, so we put in some really nice trees. If you ever drive by, you will see that my landscaping timbers are still there. By the way, I soaked every one of those—I hand soaked them—in Creosote. And as you are all now aware, that stuff is pretty dangerous to handle…well, I’m surprised that I haven’t died of cancer or something, right? I was in the garage treating them, and they were already treated, because that’s the way they came from the factory. But the guy who sold them to me told me that if I treated them three or four times and then retreat them every three or four years, they’ll last a long time. Well, that wall is still there. And I wrote two-thirds of that off. It was an improvement to the property, which, by the way, increased my equity on the property, as well. I’m a firm believer in sweat equity.
Well, I couldn’t pass up this deal. I had saved fifteen thousand dollars, which back then was a lot of money. We needed a little bit more than that, however. But we bought the house for fifty thousand dollars, and later on I sold that house for one hundred-fifty thousand. Was that a good deal? So if you see the house that I’m living in right now in Apple Valley, you can figure out where that equity came from.
My wife’s house was near the airport on 24th and 54th, right near Boson’s Field. I could stand on her chimney and catch a ride to the airport. That house, when I met her, had been paid for, and she had paid her ex off, just like I had paid mine off. By the way, normally when there’s a divorce the court says that you must liquidate your property. And it’s a stressed sale, where you can often get a great deal by buying divorced couples’ houses, because you can often get them at below market value. Most of the time they have to liquidate right away, or by a certain date. And as long as you know when that date is, you can be there with a low bid. That’s how it works.
So, she couldn’t afford ____. So we got three bids, found out what the property was worth, we added those three bids up then divided by three, and then she got half. By the way our divorce cost us zero. We were both U of M students at the time, so we went through legal aid at the U of M, it was an amicable divorce, and it went just fine. And it didn’t cost us one penny. I’ve done things smart most of my life.
Anyway, that was a nice profit. Well, what do you do with a hundred thousand profit? Well, you invest it in another property, and later on I did that. When I met my current wife, Nancy, she had a house, I had a house, and neither one of us wanted to be associated with the memories of those houses, so we sold both houses and built a house in Inver Grove Heights. Later on we got sick of being in Inver Grove Heights, and we built a house in Apple Valley.
But the bottom line is when I moved into that house, with my office in the basement, I had to hustle, now, didn’t I? Because I had a payment to make every month. She had a contract for deed, and I had to make that payment. So that’s when these numbers got better. I was driven, because I was in debt, now, wasn’t I? So debt is a good thing when it forces you to work and improve upon your work ethic. And I realized that I had to work smarter and not work harder, and I had to get better at what I did. So those numbers became better.
By the second or third year of living in that house, I had a friend come over and he went, “Wow, Mitchell, big difference from that shit place you were in at St. Paul…” And I said, “Well, yeah, nice view of the lake, and I can walk my dog and everything.” And he said, “No, that isn’t it, man, you got nice furniture, nice carpets, nice stereo…” I was Dick Schultz’s best customer. I told them that at their open house just a little while ago. I helped them, by the way, with their first store… His first store manager married a girl from my high school class, and I’ll see him later on in September at my class reunion. So, sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know. But I had the Advent speakers, I had the Pioneer record changer; I had the Pioneer tape deck. And I still have all that stuff up at my lake home, because that stuff lasts for ever right? You can’t kill it, it’s Japanese stuff and it was made to market well. But my friends would come over and they would be jealous. I had a camper; I had a motorcycle. Now, I didn’t just buy a regular camper; I took my snow plow, from my old snow plow business, and traded it in for a brand new Dodge F250 pickup truck. It was a camper special. It had the heavy duty suspension, the heavy duty transmission, cooling system, brakes, side-saddle fuel tanks. I could carry three hundred gallons of gas. I didn’t realize it at the time, but with the camper that I bought, which was an Owatonna camper with a gas bottle affixed on the back, I was a driving bomb, literally. If someone would have rear-ended me, that would have popped that gas bottle, which would have caused a spark. So that would have blown-up; and the main gas tank was behind the back seat, and it was huge. That tank would hold about sixty gallons of gas. But, remember, I also had those two side-saddle tanks.
This truck had cruse-control, it had an am/fm stereo cassette. That’s back when they first came out, and I had one of the first cassettes in a vehicle, which was pretty cool. It had a microphone, so I could record notes and minutes. Now, in my Explorer, I got a little button that records my stuff. But I could days worth of dictating memos, which, by the way, was good for a dyslectic kid, because if I had ideas, I would dictate them, and then give the tap to my secretary and she’d type them out.
My dad always said, you don’t need to learn to type—which now I wish I had, because the world is made up of keyboarding, right—but, he said that I would always have a secretary at my disposal, so I didn’t need to learn to type. Well, that isn’t always the case, and today, Inver Hills is thinking about firing all their secretaries, right? Because they’re not needed. This would be a bad thing for the students, right? Because you need to communicate with them when I’m not around. So I won’t let that happen, so don’t worry, because I need Michelle.
But I had a really nice camper; and I had it made. Back when I was sitting where you are right now, when I was taking Intro to Business in Society class, I dreamt of trading in my Honda 90 and having a Yamaha DT250 Enduro dirt bike—they were great the way they could take steep hills. I still have dreams about falling over backwards on my motorcycle. And every now and then I have this dream, only I’m in my car, and that’s even more scary. Once I had a dream that I was on a bridge that Frank Lloyd Wright had built, and it went over a river. But any car that would go over this bridge would fall over, because the bridge was so steep. Now, I know this was from my past motorcycle experiences.
Where Southdale is now, and where all of those fancy office buildings are called Centennial Lakes… Well, there used to be a gravel pit there, where I used to ride all of the time. One day I went up this hill, and some Edina kids, who I met later drinking beer, were in this great big Ford Bronco. Anyway, I was coming up the one side of this hill while they were coming up the other side, and we met at the top and missed each other by about an inch. Fortunately, I just saw the front wheels coming at me, and I veered just in time. So the Lord must have a plan for me, and maybe it’s teaching.
Anyway, I had all the toys that I wanted. We custom designed our camper so we could take pictures of the races at Donny Brook, where I used to take my friends. And so, it had a huge port on the top, so you could stand on the bed and walk up to it. And it an extra special thick roof, so my wife could do her nature photography, as she was a nature girl. So we could set up all of our cameras and night scopes and look at the moon, and that was pretty cool. The guys at Owatonna Camper sold dozens of others based on our drawings. And we didn’t care as long as we got what we wanted. But for people who liked to hunt deer, it was perfect, because you could simply pull into your perfect spot and you would just sit. And you could put your lawn chair up there and you could make your meals. We even had a thing that allowed us to bring the burner from the stove via a long rubber tube, so we could prepare our tea, which my wife enjoys. And we would just sit up there while she would take her photographs. She always dreamt about being the next ___ Rogers, or…
[Jane Goodall?]
Well, no, maybe not Jane Goodall…but, that was her influence. She was really into that stuff.
But, anyway, I had it all, and I thought it was just great.
1948, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974-78, 1979 (start IHCC), 2003 (BUS 1101)
But 1976 comes along and I’m making good bucks, things are going pretty well. I’m back in my neighborhood, and I’m selling to people that I know and like, and things are going just fine. I told my dad, I wanted to start a direct mail business, we were going to buy a direct mail machine that printed labels and stuff. We would have been able to send out one hundred thousand of this and one hundred thousand of that. We would have sent to realtors and funeral homes. Because if you come up with a custom program for one kind of industry, then it’s easier to set up other ones, once you create the program, right? But how do you get to them all? They’re all on the other side of the country, so you have to them via mail order. But my dad didn’t want to do that; he thought it was risky. He wouldn’t let me risk his retirement. His retirement was that business, right? And his dream was for me to fund his retirement by continuing to work. I would run the business and give him the check every month. So, anyway, it didn’t work out that way. He ended up selling the business, and he got a lot less for the business than he expected or thought it was worth. And if I had bought it, I would have probably paid much more than it was really worth, which would have been ok, because it was funding my dad’s retirement. My current wife has joked about that. She would say that (a) if you had stayed in the business you’d be dead by now and (b) you would have paid your mom and dad a lot more. My father used to sell to insurance, but he did not believe in insurance. He would not buy life insurance. So, just a word to the wise, tell you mom and dad to buy life insurance, because you might have to support mom somewhere down the road if they don’t have it.
Fortunately, he sold his business and his properties and my mother is doing ok.
My dad’s dad had been a banker who lost his bank in the Great Depression. His dad had three brothers, and two of those other brothers had had banks, one in Mitchell South Dakota and one in Sioux Falls. And when the Great Depression came along, most all of those banks were gone. Those were among the first banks to fall during the Great Depression. Well, one of the products that they sold was insurance. Banks always sell insurance, right? So when the depression came, he moved to Minneapolis and said I’m going to sell insurance. The insurance company that he worked for cheated him. And it was a sad story, but it’s absolutely true. They had a policy that every employee got as a gift. Because people might have asked, “Do you have this insurance for yourself?” And then you can answer yes, right? So this policy had a one hundred thousand dollar payoff. But when he died in an accident, they didn’t pay. He was their own employee and they wouldn’t pay. Now, he had also purchased, out of his own pocket, a twenty-five thousand dollar policy; and, that one, they did pay for. But here’s the skinny: He was killed in a car crash; he was driving his Model A back from a business call he had in Mankato. Now, when you buy life insurance for your life, it’s time-date stamped, it’s effective as of that moment, so they knew exactly when he signed for that policy it was 5:03 pm. He was heading back from Mankato, hit a patch of ice, the car went into the ditch; there was water in the ditch; he was knocked unconscious, and he drowned in three and a half inches of water. Well, when they went to turn in the claim, they said, yes, we’ll pay this, and they got a check almost ten days later for the twenty-five thousand. But what about the one hundred thousand? Well, “no, no, no,” they said, “ you have to read the fine print on the policy.” As it happened, the fine print only stated that he was only covered while he was working. But he was working, because he went to Mankato on a call. But they said, “no, no, no it says in the fine print that we define working as corporate headquarter hours, which are from 9 to 4 eastern standard time.” So that’s the real world of business. Sometimes, business can be really shitty, right? Hopefully, most insurance company’s don’t practice like that today. So my father hated insurance companies. I wish it could have turned out better in his case. I wish he would have bought a term-life or a whole-life policy, but he didn’t.
1948, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974-78, 1979 (start IHCC), 2003 (BUS 1101)
Ok, back to 1976… I had lots of dollars coming in; I was feeling pretty good about myself. In 1976 I was making about thirty grand. And I was living like I had a salary of fifty or sixty. Now, as a teacher, I get sixty-six thousand seven hundred dollars this year. It sounds like a lot of money, but it’s not, because most of that goes for taxes. But I was doing pretty well.
So here we are at the bicentennial. After the bicentennial I had some stomach problems. And I thought that I was getting a stomach ulcer. My dad used to joke, by the way, “I don’t get stomach ulcers—I give them!” And so I went into my doctor and I said my father jokes, can I get ulcers from my dad? And the doctor said, “No, it’s not passed it on; it’s cause by stress or tension or what you eat. What is it that you do?” And I told him that I was a sales guy. And then he asked me what my daily life was like. And I told him that I would visit my accounts, and they would give me coffee, and I would get a headache, so I’d some Excedrin, the headache goes away. And I’d from one account to another, and I’d wear this tag that says, “Time is money—can I have some of yours?” And he looked at me and he goes, “Ok, we’re going to do a full stress-test on you.” So I did the whole the treadmill thing, where they hook-up the breathing apparatus, the whole nine yards. I mean they gave me a complete physical; they looked in every orifice, and they did everything. I never had a military-kind of complete physical, because the last physical that he had on record was the one that the health service did at Mankato State. And so he said that he needed to have one of our physicals done, and so they did a complete physical. So I went through this physical, that actually took three visits in two days time. I had to drink some stuff, and do some stuff, and take some pictures. Then, finally, I came back for the consultation appointment. And he’s got this whole folder spread out on his desk. It’s not in a waiting room, it’s in his office, which was a little cubical about the size of mine. Anyway, he asked me to sit down. And I mentioned to him that I had an appointment next door at Campel-Scott Mold. And I asked if he could just give me the facts, give me my Mylanta, so I could be out of there. And he looks at me and says, “No, no, you must sit down, this is serious, you must sit down.” So I sit down, he looks me in the eyes, and he took a deep breath and said, “Mr. Mitchell…you are going to die!” And I said, “What!” Then he said that he was only joking. But he did say that my blood pressure was off the chart, and that I had better slow down.
Now, this guy signed my dad’s death certificate, so he knew my family. And he had mentioned that he had hoped that I had my mother’s genes for dealing with stress, but he also hoped that I didn’t have my mom’s high blood pressure and heart problems. But, anyway, he was a hoot. By the way, my dad rented to two of his nurses; so we knew all about the group-health parties, and they came to their parties there. So this guy had seen my dad’s office before. And I said that I couldn’t leave the family business, and I asked him how much he made? I was making thirty grand a year, and I know he made more, but it wasn’t that much more… I told him that I couldn’t walk away from this. And he agreed, but stressed the fact that I had to do something different. And I asked him what could I do differently? He said go live in the woods or something. Well, my wife had always dreamed about living in the woods. But he had stressed the fact that I had to start doing something differently.
Now, my dad had slowed down, right? But I couldn’t slow down. He wasn’t willing to turn over accounts anymore. He had gotten to the point where he would only take on new accounts if they meant big money, right? But I was still trying to get to that point. In the ad specialty business, there’s a thing called the one hundred-thousand dollar club. And what that means is that you have commissionable income of one hundred thousand dollars per year. So if I had ten sales reps, and if each of them were in the one hundred thousand dollar club, I’d have a really successful business. He had seven salesmen, of which, only two were in that club. One of them was way over, almost to his level. Well, one was just barely over that. But my goal was to do that. I was a year or two from that point. I had kept a bar graph in my office where I would track weekly sales, monthly sales…and I had a plan that I was going to get there. If I had gotten to that point of being in that club, then I could start training other people to do what I do. Then I could just take the best accounts and work with the best stuff and have a much better lifestyle.
My brother-in-law likes to joke about it…Frank went to a four day work week, then he went to a three day work week, then he went to a two day work week. Then he said, and this wasn’t really true, I’ll call you when I need to. You can’t really run a business that way, but he did go to a four day work week then, ultimately, he started taking more vacation time.
[What did you guys sell?]
We were in the ad specialty business: ballpoint pens, pencils, calendars… You’re wearing an Opal t-shirt, right? That’s car manufacturer and we would have made that. Actually, we wouldn’t have made it, we would have represented the factory that would have made it, and I would have gotten a commission on the sale.
So, anyway, we were looking at this stress thing… I came home and told my wife about it, but I didn’t tell my mom and dad. They didn’t have a clue as to what was going on. But I told my wife what the doctor had said, and she said, “We’re taking a three and a half or four week vacation!” Well, we ended up taking a six week vacation. We went out to British Columbia and out to Victoria Island, and it was pretty cool. We went to Banff and Lake Louise and we stayed in Mr. Hill’s fancy resorts, and it was pretty cool. We loaded up the camper and took the Brittany spaniel, I had Brittanies back then, and we were gone. We put the motorcycle in the back. Actually, the whole back door came off, so we roll the cycle right in there; it was pretty cool.
On that trip, my wife had said to me, “Well, what’s the best thing about the last three or four years? What do you really enjoy? What do you like doing?” And I said, “Well, it’s the restaurants, it’s using the credit card, it’s the entertaining of our friends; and it’s going up to Donny Brook and being the big hero, bringing the beer, you know—I love all that. Oh, the stereo gear, and the new sofa—that’s so cool!” And she said, “Oh, you are so superficial, so hollow, so materialistic—you make me sick.” Here, we’re on our way back from long and romantic trip, and this is what she says to me. “What do you mean I make you sick?” I asked. And she said, “Oh, that’s just gross. Tell me, what truly turns you on?” That’s why I asked you guys what it is that you love, right? So I told her, “What I really love is being an ad specialty association guest speaker, going out and talking to students” just like you about our industry. And they were typically marketing classes, right? I did it at the U of M; my dad had done it before me at Normandale and at the U of M. I did it at River Falls, I did it at Stout, I did it at U.N.D. By the way, when I did it at U.N.D it was really cool, because the industry would fly me out there and then they would pay for my hotel and they would give stuff to give away. And by the way, when I did that, I got an applause when I was done—not that I expect a standing ovation from you. It was pretty fulfilling, right? And I have a high need for recognition; that’s a part my personality profile, which we’ll talk more about later on.
But anyway, she then said to me that I should have been a teacher. I said, “But, honey, I can’t walk away from thirty grand a year to go and be a stupid teacher!” And she said, “No, there’s new program out and it’s called DECCA, where you can still be in the family business, you can still maintain your business connections.” The deal was that I’d have to get up at five in the morning, which was no big deal, because I used to do that at Edina Towers, then I would work till one o’clock, and then you go out and you supervise interns, so your working with employers. So, when I’m supervising you at this site, and you at this site, and you at this site, can I sell your employer something? Sure, it’s ok. So I thought that could work; I could still keep my fingers in the family business. So I asked her where I go for this. She told me that Mankato has a program; St Cloud has a program. But the best one in the world, the people who started the whole thing is the people at the U of M. And I said, “Oh my God! I can’t go to the U of M; it’s too big, it’s too impersonal!” And then she said, “But master’s work is easy, it’s a smaller group. And besides, you’re a sales guy, and they want sales guys. I mean, they will smell you, and tell you that you’re good!” And I said, “Do you really think so?” “Well, yeah,” she said, “You talked me into marrying you—ya doofus!”
So, I went to the U of M, and I checked it all out. They told me that I could be recertified and you need to take three classes. Then you’ll be up to speed. Then you can go and teach at a high school and you can do this. So when I found about this, I went for it. Not only that, it was a great opportunity to make some sales calls to the book store and the foundation, where I can sell them ad specialties; I could even write off my parking expenses. So when I went to the university, I didn’t park six hundred miles away and then walk in the cold. I parked in the indoor heated garage where the professors parked. And helped me to get to know some of those professors, which later on helped me here, and which also help me to get the B.A.B program going here, which unfortunately died.
But it worked out quite well. I took those three classes and after the second class, the advisor Dr. Thorns pulled me into her office and sat me down and said, “Your going to get a masters degree!” And I looked at her and said, “Dr Thorns, what have you been smoking?” I am not masters candidate material. I can’t write, I’m sure I wouldn’t be any good at it. I just wanted to get recertified. But she said, “No, no, no, we’ll make it easy for you, we’ll help you along the way; we’ll show you how. You’d be a great teacher!” She showed me the salary schedule so I could see how much more I would get paid for teaching. This is where I saw how much more I could make with a masters degree. She went on to say, “You like school, right? You’ll go to school for the next ten to twelve years; but it’s no problem, because it will be part time. Our classes are all in the evenings and weekends, and you can still stay in the family business. So get your masters degree!” Well, I hemmed and hawed a little bit and said, “Well, I don’t know…” “But you could teach with me…” she said, “You could teach here at the U of M later on!” And I did teach at the U of M. I’m an adjunct faculty at the U of M. I Still have my U of M identification card. I put that on my dash board when ever I need to park over there. It works out really slick. I’m always afraid that somebody will steal it, break the window and disappears. It’s outdated but it still works, but the cops never look that closely.
1948, 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974-78, 1979 (start IHCC), 2003 (BUS 1101)
So she said that I could even teach at a community college or a vocational school. And I got to thinking, “Wow, my brother-in-law teaches in a community college and he has a great lifestyle.” I know he doesn’t work a lot of hours, and I would like to do that. He’s got weekends off, and holidays; and he’s got this fishing boat and that’s what I need. So she talked me into getting my masters in education. So in 1978 I completed my masters at the U of M.
…and I told him that I was going to do the masters. And he said that that was cool. Plus, he wanted to brag about his kid who had a masters degree. And by the way, if the teaching thing hadn’t gone all that well, could I have done that in the business, hire sales people, train them, and grown the business that way? Yeah, I could; then I would have had all of these sales people and I wouldn’t have to work so hard. And I would just come in, look at my numbers, and watch my bank account go higher and higher, make sure some phone calls get made, and pay some bills.
So, anyway it worked out pretty good. When I did my masters thesis, I created it for a small business program at a community college, a two-year accredited college. Of course, it was for Normandale, because that’s where my brother-in-law was, right? They weren’t teaching small business back then, but now it’s common place. But I was a pioneer in teaching entrepreneurship in a college department. Actually, Intro To Business, your book, has how many chapters dedicated to entrepreneurship and small business? It has two chapters. The first author of an intro to business book that ever included it was a U of M professor, who had become my friend, and I helped him to write the chapter. So when I look at any intro to business book today, and I see how and what they are writing for entrepreneurship, I’m thrilled. Because back then the U of M only thought that you were going to work for General Mills, Pillsbury, General Motors…it was all big business, right? But ninety percent of all the jobs come from small businesses, right. Most college students really dream about having their own business and being entrepreneurs. Anyway, now it’s become commonplace, and I help the author, Berman Longnecker, with some additions to their small business book. It is now the standard of small business textbooks.
That program that I launched was a morphed or combined program that had already been experimented with at the U of M agriculture campus, because the agriculture campus had a small business program where their ag guys, or people like that, who didn’t want to do the agriculture thing anymore could work with main street entrepreneurs. So they would take people and they would take them for one night a month in class, and then they would go to their businesses and work with them. So I wanted to have a community college thing, where we didn’t do that exact thing, but where you could come in and do workshops and seminars and whatnot. We had a fancy band painted up and we’d go out into the community. So we would spend time actually with small business in their communities. That worked out pretty well for my masters thesis.
When I got to Inver Hills for a job interview, I didn’t realize it, but they had already created a program to get the program seed money from the state in small business management, because it was being written about in the press at the time, and that’s how Gary new to influence me, because he had read what was being written. So they some money to start a program, and I didn’t know that. In my classes at the U of M, one of my class mates, just like you two are sitting next to each other, this guy’s name was Tom Friendly and he taught at Inver Hills. He had his MBA, he had worked in Chicago, he had an office in the Hancock building, and he came to the university to become certified for teaching. So he had his MBA, right? But now he needed the certification to teach class. So he knew what I was all about, he said, “Rusty, there’s a job at Inver Hills, you have to go.” So if anyone ever tells you to come and interview for a job, do it. Don’t ask why, don’t ask any questions, just do it. Because he knew that they created a program, but they hadn’t posted the position yet, but he didn’t tell me that. To himself, he was hoping that they would see Rusty’s skills and offer him a job. But he said, “Come and interview.” I said, “What’s the job?” He said, “Retail operations. You’ve worked at Kinny’s, you’ve worked for Daytons, your clients were County Seat, and Super Value, and you know retail. You’ve taken all the display classes, all the fashion stuff…you can do this!” And I’m like, “Well, I don’t know if I just want to teach retail…” But he said, “No, it’s an adult career program, you’ll love it, focusing in on that knish market in career adults. Just interview for the job.”
And I said, “Inver Hills…I don’t know, that’s way out in the middle of the cow pastures.” That’s almost half way to Welsh Village where I would do ski patrol. I’d have to cross the damned Mendota bridge… He said it was a beautiful campus, he told me to take a tour and see the campus. He said, “But really, you have to go for the interview; it’s a twelve person interview, and you’ve sold to committees before. But this is way more intense than any company sale that you’ve ever had, so it would be a good experience for you. Once you’ve been interviewed at our college, with the way that we do it, any other college job interview will be a piece of cake.” So I agreed to do it and I sent in my application. Unbenounced to me, a guy transferring from Austin, Roger Winch, who has just recently retired, had retail experience and applied for the job within the system. He was guaranteed the job, because he came from within the system. I didn’t know that and they didn’t even know that, because they hadn’t even interviewed Roger yet. He interviewed after me. But I came for my interview, and by-the-way, I called on the bookstore, so I could write the trip off, and the lady who toured me around the campus was impressed that I already knew the bookstore manager, because I had set up an appointment. Well, I had been selling to the Normandale bookstore for years. So I called Dotty at Normandale and I asked who was the gal at Inver Hills? And she said Nancy Johnson. So I called Nancy Johnson and I said that I was a friend of Dotty’s and I’ve been selling this, this, and this. I have a job interview appointment at the school, can I squeeze in a sales call? And she said, well, yeah. Then that same day after my interview, I wrote an order for some mugs, ashtrays, and bumper stickers, and some window stickers. So, anyway, I made that pay off.
So, when I got back for the interview, by the way, when they were meeting to decide whether they were going to hire me or not, I was doing my tour. And when I got back from my tour, they sat me down in another room to talk to the personnel folks and to fill out some forms, they were quizzing the lady who gave me the tour. They asked her whether or not I stuck my finger up my but, did he stick his finger up his nose? Did he do anything stupid? And I have since been on search committees, and we’ve asked the same questions. How were their personal skills, and on and on. Well, she came back with a glowing report. I, of course, was brilliant in my interview. I mean I was wonderful. And Tom had said to bring my masters thesis with you, because they might ask me some questions about it. But I told him, “Yeah, but that’s for small business, and I’m applying for a retail job.” “Yeah,” he said, “but small business is retail and retail is small business—just bring it along.” So I brought it, and I had set it on the table and they asked me what it was, and I told them that it was my masters thesis for the creation of the small business management program. Well, he knew that question would trigger the connection. And they were kind of wowed. So while I was doing the tour, they were thinking about giving me the job. Well, Tom knew that would probably happen. I didn’t know it, but he did. And to this day, Tom and I are pretty good friends. By the way, Tom left Inver Hills to do public speaking. And now he goes on cruse ships and speaks about business, and does management consulting, and makes big money. He has three houses; one of them he just bought in La Hoyia California. If you know anything about California, that’s where some of the richest families in America live. In Europe, it’s Liechtenstein, but in America it’s La Hoyia California. But anyway, he’s done pretty well.
Anyway, when I came back to the interview, Jerry Isaac asked me if I would like to teach small business? And I said, “Wood eye-wood eye, poke me with a sharp stick!” (now, only a few of you got that joke, you were supposed to laugh at that… Has anyone seen Pirates of the Caribbean? Well, that’s a wood eye.)
Anyway, Jerry thought I had a good sense of humor. But he asked me if I would like to teach small business, and I said absolutely. But he had to tell me that it was a sunrise sunset program, we can’t give you tenure. And I said that I didn’t want tenor, because I had a family business to run. I said let me try this for a year, and that’s all I’m asking. He said your on probation every quarter for the next three years. And I asked what was the probation for a normal teacher? Well, for a normal teacher the probation period is only one year. But you are on probation for three years. If your program doesn’t grow, if you don’t have students, you’re out of here. Is that motivation to do well? I think so. I wish we still had that, but we don’t. Anyway, I said yeah, I’ll take it. Then he said, guess what, here’s the salary, so are you sure? This is all we can pay you. We’re going to give you credit for some of your work experience, one year, as if you’ve been teaching one year, which was good, because now I can retire early. And I’ve made more money along the way, which has turned out to be probably a lot more than I gave up for those first couple of years.
When I told this to my dad, and when I told him that I was considering it. He asked me what it paid, and I told him twelve thousand five hundred dollars a year. And he said, “I always knew you were dumb!” And I said, “But dad, my benefits will be worth almost have of that, and I get a twenty five thousand dollar life insurance policy.” Now, it’s probably up to one hundred thousand…I don’t know, because I haven’t looked at it lately. But they’ve been paying for my medical insurance, health and dental… I get a lot of benefits. And now my salary is about sixty six thousand seven hundred dollars. But the benefits are the biggest single expense that the state has and why our tuition is so much, because the cost of our benefits go up. The health care costs just keep rising, rising, and rising. But anyway, I said, “Dad, I’m going to do this. I can still work mornings, the afternoons on a couple of days, and maybe a couple of evenings. I can still be involved with the business—I’m going to take the job.” So I did.
Three or four years down the road, I was tenured, I was doing well, the small business program has been copied and duplicated in a number of places. And I’m here today to talk about that. Since then, we have phased out our career program, and have folded them into a business transfer program. That’s what all of you said that you wanted was to transfer. How many of you, when you came to Inver Hills, the first talk that you’ve had with a councilor, and when they asked you what it is that you wanted do or where is it that you want to go, how many of you said that you wanted to transfer? Well, if everyone says that you want to transfer, that’s what we have to offer, right? So the career programs took a back seat. The legal secretary and the medical secretary and a few of those programs are still hanging on, and the building inspection program is still hanging on. But the state, in its wisdom, took away the coordination time. I used to get three credits of coordination time per quarter to run that program and that worked out pretty well. And then that program had a champion, right? Every program needs a champion. Right now, the business department has no champion. I mean, it’s kind of me and its kind of Dan, but we don’t get any time to do this, and that’s the problem. And in my management class, I have a lecture about feeding the champions, and you have to feed the champions, you just have to.
But anyway, the program grew, it became duplicated. I had a motorcycle crash one spring, I lost my spleen and my kidney was bleeding. I thought I was going to die. Fortunately, because I was on ski patrol, I told the nurse that she couldn’t send me home. “I’m going to sit up, turn white like a ghost.” She said, “You sit up, turn white like a ghost and I’ll get a surgeon.” So, I did. I knew that I was bleeding internally and more than from just my kidneys. I had a BMW and I dropped it over by the University, where the pavement curves and where it has the ripples for the water, and fortunately I had a motorcycle safety training class, and I rolled into the gutter instead of away. If you roll away, then you roll into traffic, then you get run over and your dead. But I rolled in, the motorcycle just skidded right along the white line, and I actually drove the motorcycle home. But then when I got to my girlfriends house, I was single at the time, I said gee, I’d better check my urine, which was something I learned in the ski patrol. Sure enough I went to the bathroom and it was red with blood. So I had her take me to the hospital. I didn’t pass-out, but I told her where my group health card was and I instructed her to tell them what happened, and that I took the handlebars with my stomach.
As it turned out, I lived. And I was hospitalized for quite a while. You see, once again, the Lord is looking out for me. The guy who took my place and filled in, was a guy who was getting his MBA from St. Thomas, and he’s actually the one that launched the small business program at St. Thomas. His name was Tim Donahue. So I taught him how my program worked, how it all went together. Then, when somebody called and asked for a reference on him, I gave him a glowing reference, and I said to hire him here. Then he and I worked as a team together to launch the small business program at St. Thomas. So I’m very proud of the work that has been done in the past.
I’ve been here…this will be my twenty-seventh year, I’ve been head of the department, but I am no longer head of the department. I’ve taught advertising, sales, small business management, marketing, management, human relations, and just about everything. I’ve done a lot of CBE’s over the years. I taught the first international business class; I’ve taught operations management—I’ve taught just about everything. So anything you could have a question on in this class, Introduction to Business in Society, I can answer. And, by the way, when you teach something is when you really learn it. I have a little slogan in my office…come look at it. It says that it’s really true.
So, I have a fare amount of experience. Am I glad I left the family business? Yeah, it worked out pretty well. But I do want to start another business now in my retirement. And when I get a chance to do that, which will be soon, I started this summer with my Signs For Sale, we sell advertising space on the sail boats. I’ve contacted my account, the Malt Shop, and I will get paid twenty five dollars an hour to do something that I want to do anyway. By the way, most entrepreneur authors will tell you, work your passion. If you love your work, it’s not your work is it? It’s your passion. So follow your bliss, and sailing is my bliss. So are dogs, and scuba diving. So I’ll get to do that.
[What is this, billboards on spinnaker sheets, or what?]
Well, you can do it on a spinnaker sheet, but it’s mainly it’s hobiecat and the mainsail. And the hobiecat pulls up on the beech but the mainsail stays up, swings in the wind, I’ve got a billboard on the beach all day long. And I used to call on Neagle who had out door advertising, and it’s very creative. You’ll learn more about that as we go.
[Bacardi does something like that on parachutes and stuff like that.]
Oh, yeah…no, as in marketing, you’ll often not create things, but improve on them. And I saw this when I was down in Fort Myers, who had a sail for Coppertone on his boat. It was actually a student who gave me the idea in the first place. He wanted to put adds on wind surfers. And my comment on his paper was that wind surfers would be great, but hobycats would be better. Because with a wind surfer, the sail is always down, right? And they go to fast and are always bouncing around. A hobycat is a much larger sail, it’s twenty six feet of mast. Ultimately, I’ll have it on forty foot boats in Bayfield and other places. But I’ll tell you more about that as we go along.
So, my daughter is into modeling, I live in Apple Valley, I stay current with the marketing world a little bit, because of her modeling stuff. My wife has started a small business, so I’ve helped her out. She does life-care planning. I have a step-son, Ben, who has just completed his course work, here, at Inver Hills in law enforcement. He’s now going to Metro State. Yes, indeed, I used to go with my step-son and his dad up to my lake place up at Ely, where I now get to enjoy the wilderness and where we hunt. And people say, “Wait a minute, let me get this straight, you go with your wife’s ex-husband, and you bring loaded guns?—Is that smart?” But we’ve formed a way to make all of this work. I’m very proud of how we have done this step-parenting thing. The adults have to be civil about what they do, so the kids will grow up normal, and that’s not easy! So if any of you want to ever talk about stuff like that or talk about why I got divorced, I’m willing to share that with you, as well. My life is an open book to share with my students. I once had one student, who one day after hearing my story—after three hours worth of the whole story—he asked, why do you tell us all this? Well, it so you can learn, it’s so you can benefit. And so we began to build a relationship. And once I’ve shared something, then you share something with me. And that’s what relationships are all about; it’s like playing tennis.
What do you really do in business? You build relationships, it’s the same thing; that’s what it really is. And if it was all that simple, we wouldn’t have classes, and you wouldn’t have to come to lecture, right? So there’s a few more things, and a few more terms you’ll need to learn. But that’s what it’s really all about. Oh, by-the-way, when I went to British Columbia, we thought about living in the woods… But that’s not real, you really can’t do that. But we actually thought about selling all of our possessions, taking the money and putting it in a bank, and living off the interest, right? Hunt, fish, live in the woods… We read a book by Bradford Anger, Bradford Anger said you could do this. He went to the Peace River Valley, and that’s where he lived. And the Peace River Valley is canoeable, it’s your highway via boat in the summer, and in the winter it freezes, so there’s only a short in between where it’s unstable, and even then, you can drag your canoe. But he grew watermelons this big, and squash this big, and he had this big garden, and he hunted and he fished and made love to his wife on this fur bedspread and enjoyed this sauna that he made and all that. Well, we went up there, and we found out it was all crap! The book should have been identified as a work of fiction. But we went to the land office and the lady at the land office started laughing at us. She said, “You’re from America, aren’t ya?” And we said, “Yeah, we want that Crown Prince thing, where you get the free land!” She said, “Well, you know it’s not free land.” And I said, “No, it’s all in this Bradford Anger book. Well, Bradford Anger was a liar. It’s free land only if you farm. You have to produce a product within three years. She said, “Have you seen the big yellow Caterpillar tractors?” I’m like, “Yeah, I was thinking I should by Caterpillar stock…” She says, “Yeah, you’ve got to plow down all of the trees, lay them in a furrow, and later on when they rot, you dig them back out, and that’s your fertilizer.” But you have to have a crop in the ground within three years.” And she went on to ask, “Well, can you fix stuff?” And I’m like, “Well…no. I had a snowplow business, but I had to have the mechanics do everything. I’m dyslectic.” And she said, “If you can’t fix stuff, you’ll die here.” And so I though, “Wow, I don’t want to be a farmer!” So we realized that this wasn’t really a reality. But Bradford and his wife—and if you read the book, it’s really funny—they went up there on a train, and he stayed two weeks and that was it. He talks about being there all year…he wasn’t there all year. He stayed there two weeks to get the data. His wife, according to this girl at the land office, went up on the train, got off the train and was bit by a mosquitoes, harassed by flies, and was back on the train that went up, actually into Alaska, then it turned around and came back. And the next time it came back was on the following day, right. Well, she on that train—she was there for one night. So all this stuff about their hunting and fishing and whatever was a bunch of garbage.
But the lady at the land office said, “Wow, you should go to the Sacunkwa River Valley? There’s some real good land there.” So we looked there, and that was going to be strip coal mines, so who wanted to be there. Now, when you see the coal train that comes through Rosemount late at night, if you’re awakened at night? Well, that’s the coal, the shale oil coal, and that’s where it comes from. Well, I’m glad I didn’t do that. She also said, that we had to see the beaver dam. And I said, “What are you talking about? You got beaver dams here, I’ve got beaver dams in Minnesota. We’ve got lots of beaver dams.” Actually, my mom and dad’s friend, there company, installed the cameras in the beaver house at the zoo, so you can see the beaver’s babies and everything. But this woman said, “No, it’s a earthen dam—hydro power!” Now, British Colombia sells electricity all over America, because of all their hydro power. They’re the biggest producer of electricity. And by the way, if your business is intensive in terms of electricity, you want to put in British Columbia, because they have some of the best electric rates in the world.
Anyway, we went to tour this dam. And the only thing that’s made out of concrete is the power station. All the rest is just rocks and logs. That’s why they call it the beaver dam. It’s called scrapple or something, and there’s a little bit of cloth that they spray cement on to prevent erosion. And I said, “Wow, what if this dam should break?” And the tour guide said, “Well, there were two of them in Russia that did break.” When that happens, everybody down stream will drown. And I said to Sharon, “Hey, didn’t the lady at the land office say the only land that was for sale was downstream from the dam?” Anyway, you wouldn’t want to be there. But we met these archeologists in British Columbia—and this is kind of an amazing story. We took my wife and myself and our dog onto their zodiac and went thirteen miles out to this island. Now, we didn’t know these guys. They looked just like this guy, I mean he had a pony-tail just like yours and he looked just like you, almost…he had the glasses and everything. The only thing that I know for real is that the boat had Canadian government stickers on it, and the motor did, and his shirt did. But his shirt looked awful grungy. But we took them at face value…By the way, we were so naive back then, my wife had beautiful long blond hair all the way down to her but. But we went to this island, and they could have killed us or eaten us and you know (I’ve got a vivid imagination don’t I?) But it turned out that they were good guys and they liked my dog. And they were like, “Hey mate—Hey! Where did you say you were from?” “Minnesota,” I said. “Oh, Minnesota, Hey. You got that BWCA Hey? You aught’a go there!” And I’m like, “Well, you can’t go there.” And he said, “No, no. You go and buy property on the boarder, the Canadian thing, ya know? Because this is all going stripped mined, and Alaska is going to be all pipelines and oil, and there isn’t anymore wilderness here anymore. You got it legislated by law! You should go and buy property on the boundary of the BWCA.” So that’s ultimately what we did. We’re not quite on the boundary of the BWCA, but we’re close to it.
My first wife would have loved it. But what does my second wife say when I bring her up? “Oh, my God! There’s mouse poop!” She hates the mosquitoes and the flies and, of course, you’re in a rain forest up there, so it rains all the time. She never goes up there. But, fortunately, I can go up there to relax. But when I first started teaching, they put me on this Tenorum, the beta-blocker. That controlled my blood pressure, and I’ve been pretty good until last spring, for the most part. But if I get too wound up, you guys let me know. Say, “Rusty, chill-out, do your Ti Chi.” Dennis taught me this, and I finally got it. If you do this and if you close your eyes, you have to focus, you can’t think about anything else, because otherwise you’ll fall down. And, really, it’s a great way to relax for however long you can stand there. Every now and then you’ll see me…I have a bad back, and I’ll be on the ____ thing down there, trying to relieve the pressure on my back.
I have learned to relax, and this summer I was up at my lake place. I enjoy it and I do get to sail. At some point in my life, I’m going to sail alone around the world, like my relative Joshua Slokum. My mom was a Slokum, he was the first man to sail alone around the world, so I want to make a movie about that. Talk about stress! But that would be good advertising for my Signs For Sail business, right? So we’ll see what my future will be like.
If I get the really nice boat, and you guys get involved in club activity—and I’ll be begging you to get involved in club activity—maybe you’ll get to come down there to Bay Field on my really nice boat, a forty foot Hunter Benito. If you’ve ever been to a marina, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It has a self-feralling main sail on either the mast or the boom, and it’s got a nice little kitchen. And it’s the kind of thing you can rent out… Like one of my former students, who is a photographer for honeymoons. So, let’s say…are you married? [no] Well, let’s say you do get married, and you really have a girl who loves sailing and you could come to me and I will set you up, and the photographer will do your wedding pictures, and then he’ll be there for some or all of the pictures of your honeymoon. But what we’ll do is hire a captain for the boat, because you don’t want to captain the boat, you want to enjoy the boat, right? And we’ll hire a chef. So when you get there all of the food is taken care of. You won’t have to think about a thing; you just step on the boat, they take pictures… And we might even train the captain to do some pictures. And so you get this wonderful four, five, or six days, where you are waited upon hand and foot, and just think about that. What a beautiful dream that is. I think I can sell it.
You see, marketing guys are always trying to figure out how to make a buck. My first wife used to say to me, “What are you doing?” We were at a New Year’s Eve party at the time, and she would say, “Are you in the bathroom doing coke, are you sniffin?” And I would say, “No…” And she’d say, “Well, you’re all hyper!” “Well, yeah…” I said, “I’m excited! This guy works for General Mills, and this guy works for Pillsbury, and this guy works for…” But she would as, “But what are you doing in there?” And I told her that I was writing down all their names and who they are. But she thought that was just offensive, she thought that was horrible. But that’s what you do, then after the party, you call them up and you say, “Hey, we really had a good time at that New Years Eve party, right? That Bill really knows how to throw a great party! I’m still feeling the Jack Daniels a little bit, how about you?” And then you throw out, “Hey, I’m in the ad specialty business. Do you want to make more money or a lot more money?” Well, of course they want to make more money. So I ask them, “Well, I got some ideas for you. Can I see you on Tuesday or Wednesday?” Well, Wednesday, and there you go. Well, she thought that I was in there doing coke. Although I must admit in college, like Mr. Clinton, I did try a few things. But you don’t ever want to do drugs, because drugs lead to crime, and people die everyday because of drugs. So if you ever do any drugs that are illegal, and people die in the street, you have a direct and immediate contribution to that end. And that’s my little sermon.
My gosh, we didn’t get to talk about what is business or why study business! Actually, we did talk a lot about what is business and why study business. But we’ll get a formal definition on Monday.