A little follow up to “Be honest with yourself”.

I didn’t know it but the fellow I made the deal with read my scoop loop. He replied to me in an email, and it ended up being a real positive experience for me, and hopefully him.

Here’s what happens sometimes. We lose control of things, and other people make decisions that may not know all the details, and then the original deal is not met. While this explains why it happens, it still does not mean a promise was not made and broken. This may be what the term growing pains in business is part of.

When we purchased our place we are on from Fred Cougill, he gave us some things. The one I really liked was a flat bottom aluminum canoe, as we live on the Musselshell river, it would have been great to float the shallow river.

Through circumstances when it came time to move all Fred’s possessions off, he was in Arizona (He’s almost 90)and his daughters and there husbands came and moved his belongings to Oregon where they lived. I was gone, they new nothing of the deal, so they did what they were supposed to do and moved the canoe. Just circumstances that created a result, that was not the end of the world, and I probably would have never used it anyway. An honest set of circumstances that created an outcome.

The problem I have with the deal I wrote about is it’s either ego based, on account of me doing some things with a competitor or a lack of management skills. When we made the deal there was never an exclusive or any other stipulations. I would preform stockmanship demonstrations, that was it.

The man I made the deal with was strait up and apologized and didn’t make excuses. I appreciate that. Here is a little piece of what he wrote.

“This has helped me to review myself and I humbly trust I have learned something to improve the way I do business”

I really believe this has been a good experience for me, and I am glad I got the email that set it all off, or I would not of said anything and held a resentment. I think it has been a good experience for the other party as they seemed to have benefited from it as well.

Being honest is not easy, we must work on it, and help others work on it.