I lost my Dad last Saturday. He wasn’t just my Dad. He was my buddy, my hero, my best friend, and my role model. I post this not to get sympathy, but to explain this column. I don’t think I’ve ever said much about him, or the rest of my family, in this space. To be honest, that’s just not me. And if I learned nothing else from Dad, it was to do it “My Way,” like the song said. And before you start thinking Sinatra, Dad was an Elvis man and it was Elvis’ version that I grew up on – and still prefer.
The truth was that Dad was ready. I knew it when I talked to him on the phone the last two days of his life. The health problems that had dogged him for the previous decade had finally made him infirm at the age of 76. From the hospital he was in, he knew the next stop was a nursing home. We’d talked to him and he’d accepted that well, but deep down I knew he’d never go there. And he didn’t. I’m convinced that when he went to sleep on Friday night, he simply decided not to wake up. That was the last of the many lessons that Dad taught me. Some of those lessons are useful, if not vital, for a sales career, and that’s why I’m sharing them with you.
Adapt and improvise when you have to, but always overcome. Dad would have made one hell of a Marine, except that he wasn’t good at being told what to do. He never served, but he faced numerous obstacles in his life and always found ways past them. In fact, there are scenarios where I might never have met him. Dad was pronounced dead twice – once after crashing a sprint car during a race at Kansas City’s Lakeside Speedway (my mother was pregnant at the time with me), and another after crashing a motorcycle before he ever met my mother. He’d been told he might never walk again – and he did. He’d been told he’d never race again, and thereafter he nearly won a national championship.
Whenever my dad confronted a problem, he always looked at it a little like one might look at a Rubik’s Cube (which he was able to solve and I never did). He knew there was a solution somewhere, and if you kept looking at the problem from different angles you’d find it. Once I remember we had a customer come into the auto repair shop that he and I owned for a time wanting to do an engine swap in his ’67 Lincoln that he’d been told was impossible by every other shop in the area. Four days later he drove away in the Lincoln. Was it easy? Nope. Did it require some rather elaborate fabrication and modification? Yep. But it’s been over 20 years and that car still runs around Topeka with that engine.
When in doubt, bet on yourself. Dad was something of a serial entrepreneur. Most of his businesses revolved around cars in some fashion or another, but he also had a boat service yard and a tree service. Dad hated to put his destiny in the hands of others, and when I went to him in 2004 to ask his advice on starting my own business, he brushed aside the problems that I saw and said, “If you commit yourself to it, you can make it. Period. Do you want to commit yourself?” I did, I do, and here I am.
I see people all the time who are hidebound, afraid to get out of their own way, and afraid to bet on themselves. They spend their lives asking others for permission to do things that are properly only permitted by themselves. That wasn’t my dad. And it’s not me, either.
Relationships matter. One of the running jokes in the Harrison family is that Dad was known by far more people than he knew. We’d be out and about and someone would come up to him and say, “Gerry, how are you doing? It’s great to see you!” And they would have a conversation – sometimes short, sometimes long. After the person left, whoever was with Dad would ask, “So who was that?” And at least half the time Dad would laugh and say, “I really don’t know.” Or sometimes he might get a little closer and say, “Can’t remember his name but he used to work at so-and-so.”
But the fact that he didn’t remember names well didn’t mean that he didn’t have relationships. Dad was one of those people who had “A guy” for everything. Need a golf cart wheel? Go see the guy with gray hair and glasses at such and such a place, and tell him Gerry Harrison sent you. Whatever you needed, Dad knew someone that could pull a string or call in a favor. Dad was a great networker before the term was known.
Quality matters. Dad could be the easiest sale in the world – if what you’re selling was a quality item, and he had an unerring eye for quality. Last Sunday I went to his place to start inventorying his tools. I plan to keep most of them. Dad’s favorite tools were made by Snap-On. Why? “Because they’re the best. Period.” That’s what he’d always tell me. Want to guess what’s in my toolbox? Mostly Snap-On. I still have my first wrenches that I bought off the Snap-On truck at age 13, and they still work perfectly. Quality lasts.
Dad always said that if you buy the good stuff once, you’ll never have to re-buy it. I was reminded of that on Sunday. Mom had been cremated when she passed, and Dad had bought a very nice cedar wood urn for her. Then he took the urn to the Daytona International Speedway, where we had all spent many happy times as a family, and scattered her ashes. Well, when I saw the urn, I knew what to do. That same urn now holds Dad, and he’s going to get scattered at the same place.
Don’t take time to be sad. If there was anything my Dad hated, it was a funeral. He hated the sadness. And he hated the fact that, as he said, “A bunch of damn phonies will come to see a guy dead who wouldn’t walk across the street to see him alive.” He ordered me – many times – not to have a funeral for him. He promised to come back from the dead and get me if I did. He said, “Have a party, laugh, have fun, and make sure there’s plenty of beer.” Well, in a few weeks when I get my head back above water that’s exactly what I will do. “Being sad takes time out of your life that you can’t get back,” he told me once.
When it’s time to stop…..stop. Dad was never one to push a rope uphill. He had a great eye for knowing when a deal would happen – or wouldn’t. When an employee wasn’t productive anymore, they separated. And – to be blunt – when Dad was ready to leave this Earth, he left it.
I know that this column hasn’t been my normal nuts-and-bolts of selling column, and in a way I want to apologize for that. But I’m not going to. Within these words are lessons both life and professional that the greatest man I ever knew taught me, and I hope you can gain from them.
