Little Known Hilarious Advice
This is a true story.
It doesn’t matter if you spell it doughnut or donut. My father’s piece of business advice is still the same:
“As you ramble on through life, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole.”
The quote is actually from Margaret Atwood who wrote The Blind Assassin.
My father gave this advice to me when I was still in high school. My father died when I was 19.
But what does it mean? I pondered the real meaning of this (from my dad’s perspective) for years. When I was in college and before I received my degree, I finally settled on a meaning that resonated with me:
Focus on substance over form.
Some would say:
Watch the doughnut and not the hole. Meaning: Focus on what you have and not on what you don’t.
While both are good, my dad, like his dad and unlike me, was a man of few words. He watched me obsess over the organization of something, anything. Years ago someone said of me, you are Mr. Cross File and Indexed. They pointed out that of the eight children I raised they were all ordered: Boy then Girl.
My dad’s only other piece of business advice was don’t do business with aircraft companies. That piece of advice saved my business in 1971. I had let the aircraft industry be nineteen percent of my business at the end of the third quarter of 1970. We refocused on other industries and by the time the aircraft manufacturers were so hard hit in the second quarter of 1971 we were down to three percent of our business coming from this vertical.
If you enjoy quotes as much as I do, then follow this article by Jo Hawk:
