I could of chose a real cowboy ethics song or “Honesty” by Billy Joel  to go with the discussions of the past week but I think we’ve had enough of that for a while.  You can dwell on that stuff and make a big deal out of it and it will get you down, or you can get over it by listening to a good song.

Music can do lots of things for us.  For me, It’s the whole package that gives me a little endorphin release that gives me pleasure, sort of like a horse cribbin or Pickens your nose, it just makes you feel good.

I really enjoy Junior Brown.  I like his voice and how he hangs onto words and then gets real deep with it,  the way he dresses, how he honors tradition, and his music playing talent.

Wife Tammy and I spent some time with a real nice young man this week in Big Timber, Montana and he had worked for the Montana Highway Patrol in the past and when we lived in Big Timber during the filming of the “Horse Wisperer” Tammy got a ticket for not obeying traffic law, so I think this is a great song for the Saturday Music.

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.

I’ve been awake since 2:00 am and can’t sleep. Been thinking about honesty.
I recently had a situation that I made an agreement with a CEO of a company, and they backed out of the agreement. I found out that they had hired a good friend of mine to replace me, and while I know he will do a great job, and he knew nothing about my deal, the company did, and that’s not right.

I decided to leave it alone and not say anything to them.  Then I got an email from one of their marketers wanting to do some things but questioning some of the moral standards of some of the competitors of theirs that I had done some work with.  They now know how I feel about moral standards.

It’s got me to thinking about how to deal with right and wrong.

I remember when I was real young, we were at the Townsend Rodeo. Bill LaFromboise, a Native American guy I’ve mentioned before gave me some money to get us a hamburger and drinks. I decided to keep the change and tell him I didn’t get any. Well that didn’t work very good as he took me back to the concession stand, and they said they gave me change. My Mother didn’t put up with that and I got in lots of trouble and paid for it for a couple weeks of no TV and lots of extra chores. I learned a lesson in dishonesty and stealing.

I have put myself in situations in my life when I have not been honest with myself and others. Nothing good came out of it. Whatever I’ve gained was overcome by the results of not being honest.

I was in Nebraska last week at the Rex Ranch. Tom Drieling was telling me about a mechanic that worked on his car, and it had some problems, and he stood behind it 100%. Tom pointed out that he had to be honest because of the small amount of people in the Sand Hills community, that he would be out of business because every one would know if he didn’t do right.

This is a very important point. Honesty is so easy to fudge on trying to take the easy way out of something, or letting the desire for something overcome moral standards to get what you think you need or want.

I have worked with lots of different religious based groups. I always hear about if there is one, they will drink of steal, but if there are two they won’t. This might be true, or just that someone that is different in the way they dress, live or believe than we do makes us question their honesty.

But this really brings up a good point. We keep each other honest. If we don’t, our society will fall apart. The smaller the community the easier it is to get caught in a dishonest act. This is what is so great about the ranching community. It’s a small world that is very connected. If someone is dishonest on a cattle deal, word spreads like wildfire, and that person goes away. This is why we can still do business so much of the time on a handshake. Your hand shake is your contract to your word, and if your word is not good, pretty soon no one will shake your hand.

I feel this is one of the real advantages of a small church community. It keeps everyone looking each other in the eye, which helps folks pass on the temptations that are so abundant these days. We find comfort and support in like minded people.

I can’t remember being at anything of Bud Williams that he didn’t say “ you must be honest with yourself”. This is probably the most important thing he said, and he said a lot of important things.

Be honest with yourself. That’s quite a statement if you think about it, and it’s not much of a statement if you don’t take time to think about it.

If you take the time and put the effort into thinking about it and working on what you need to do, then you can be honest with yourself. If you have moral standards and are honest with yourself, then you can be honest with others.

Two of the biggest problems I see today are taking on to much debt and more to do than you have time for. These two things will cause you to not be honest with yourself and that will start the “when bad becomes normal” behavior.

I feel that one of the most important thing the leader of a country should do is set the moral tone of a country. As I think back to the presidents in my life and what they did for the moral standards of our country, it doesn’t matter so much the party they represented but the standards they set for us. Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush senior, George Bush junior, and Barrack Obama seemed to have good family lives, didn’t use vulgar language, and lived life in public that no matter what your political views you have, you could admire the example they set for the country. I can’t say that for the others that have been president in my lifetime.

The one that sticks out the most is President Reagan. He had a way of being president that even if people in power didn’t agree with him, they respected him because they new he was going to do what he promised, and he was not afraid to look anyone in the eye and tell them how it was. It was a great moral time for the country with Reagan raising the standards for the whole world. I wish we could get back to that.

President Trump might be getting a lot done and may be good for the economy, and might be achieving lots of on the world scene, but I really feel he is not being a good example for moral standards to our country, and that makes me concerned that honesty will be lessened to our moral standards level.

Now, back to what got me to not sleeping. I don’t know the reasons the company didn’t follow through with the deal we made. I do know I have never not kept my word to them. The only thing I have control over is my decision to allow it to happen again. I won’t.

So, be honest with yourself. Do business and associate with people that have the same or higher moral standards than you do. You can’t make people choose to be honest, but you can choose honest people.