I'm Still Carrying GRIT

Top of Panther Mountain - Adirondacks

Sometime in the mid-1970s, when I was about ten years old, I got my first sales job selling GRIT newspapers door-to-door.

I would love to tell you this was the beginning of my illustrious sales career, when I learned how to prospect, overcome objections, build relationships, and close the deal before I was old enough to drive.

That would make a great story.

It also wouldn't be true.

I sold GRIT for the same reason I did a lot of things as a kid. I wanted money.

I spent a fair amount of my childhood hearing my mother say, "I don't have any money." If there was something I wanted, that pretty much ended the conversation. There wasn't any money.

Somewhere along the way, though, I figured out that her not having money didn't necessarily mean I couldn't have money. Apparently, money could magically materialize if you were willing to do things other people didn't want to do. My job was simply to figure out where the elusive cash was hiding.

So, I sold GRIT.

I also babysat, picked up sticks in the neighbors' yards and found ways to make a few dollars here and there doing odd jobs.

After one of those Kansas storms that left tree limbs everywhere, my mother even came up with another income opportunity: climb up the side of the chimney and sweep the branches off the roof.

Apparently, child labor laws were more of a suggestion in our house.

I'm not recommending that particular entrepreneurial venture. I'm actually a little surprised we survived some of the things we considered perfectly reasonable in the '70s. "Risk assessment" largely consisted of determining whether your mother was looking.

Then, when I was fourteen and had acquired my learner's permit, I decided I wanted a car.

I asked my mother, and she replied, "Get a job."

Okay.

I got a job waiting tables at a 24-hour truck-stop diner. My mother's friend Calvin had told me, "Go see Ellen at K32 Diner if you need a job. Tell her I sent you." So I pulled into the parking lot in my mother's '75 Monte Carlo, walked in like I was supposed to be there, and told Ellen Calvin sent me.

Apparently, that was sufficient.

Suddenly cash started flowing in. At fourteen, "cash flowing in" had a very different definition than it does today, but it was mine. I had found a way to change the circumstances. Unlike today, nobody asked how old I was, so I did not offer up that piece of information. I just happily accepted a dollar an hour under the table, plus tips. I'm pretty sure Ellen recognized my youth. Nobody seemed particularly concerned, least of all me.

I cleverly hid my growing fortune under my carpet, periodically lifting the corner to admire it. Apparently, I had invented both banking and the least secure financial institution in America.

The cash flowed well enough that by fifteen I had bought my first car: a beige 1974 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme with bucket seats and a 350 engine. In my teenage opinion, it was magnificent. It even had an 8-track player. It was also temporary, as teenage magnificence often is. I crashed it at seventeen and eventually ended up with a Pontiac Sunbird. Not as cool, but it carried me where I needed to go.

Revisiting these stories from my childhood, I recognize the pattern underneath them.

I didn't learn grit selling GRIT.

I sold GRIT because I already had it.

A few years ago, I was having a conversation with a recruiter when he said, "You have grit."

If only he knew. I'd been carrying GRIT door to door before he could drive.

But by then I had also been carrying another kind of grit for most of my life, and it had very little to do with sales.

I've carried that same instinct into business operations. Put me in the middle of something that isn't working and my instinct is to start looking around. What is actually happening here? What can be changed? What are we doing because we've always done it that way? What happens if we try something else?

It doesn't particularly bother me that the first solution might not work. That's information. We adjust. What does bother me is continuing to do something that clearly isn't working because everyone has agreed to call it "the process" or "the way we've always done it."

The pattern does not just show up professionally.

At one point, I looked at the life I was living in Kansas City and accepted something that wasn't particularly comfortable to admit: where I was wasn't where I wanted to be. So I changed my environment.

I didn't have some beautifully constructed five-year plan. I picked a direction, loaded the back of my Chrysler Laser with all my clothes, packed a paper bag with peanut butter, jelly and bread in case I got hungry, and carefully brought along the china and silverware I had just spent $700 on in case I needed to entertain. Then I started driving and let the future unfold.

Initially, it didn't work. The problems I ran into weren't the ones I had braced for. They were new ones, like trying to find a graphic design job in a strange town where I had no connections, no local references, and no portfolio because, unlike the china, I had somehow failed to pack it for the road trip.

For the record, I still have the damn china. I've probably eaten off it four times in 37 years.

That first move didn't solve everything, but it taught me what the next decision needed to look like.

I kept adjusting, accepting what each version of my life was showing me and moving forward. Some things worked. Some didn't. Some decisions created entirely new problems I hadn't anticipated. But I never needed to know exactly how the whole thing was going to turn out before I took the next step.

Looking back, I think that's where grit and acceptance began to come together for me.

Grit isn't believing everything is going to work out. That's optimism. Grit is knowing that if it doesn't, you'll figure out what to do next.

It's probably also why one of the philosophies I've come to believe most strongly is that:

“acceptance is the key to happiness.”

I still believe that. But writing this, I can see something I hadn't said out loud before.

Grit is what keeps acceptance from becoming resignation.

Not exactly a Hallmark card, but there it is.

People sometimes hear acceptance and think giving up. I don't.

Acceptance doesn't mean I like what happened. It means I stop arguing with the fact that it happened. I acknowledge what is and then decide what I'm going to do with it.

My mother doesn't have money. Okay. How can I make some?

Where I am isn't where I want to be. Okay. What can I change?

Something isn't working in a business. Okay. Why isn't it working?

Acceptance tells me where I am.

Grit keeps me from believing I have to stay there.

Agency is the bridge between the two: acceptance tells me what is true, and grit reminds me I still have choices.

I don't have to control the external environment or spend enormous amounts of energy demanding that reality be different.

I can accept what's in front of me and ask the question I've apparently been asking since I was a kid:

What can I do from here?

There is freedom in that question because it doesn't require certainty. It doesn't even require confidence that the next thing I try will work.

It only requires a willingness to try something, pay attention to what happens, and adjust.

Accept. Iterate. Move.

That same instinct still shows up in ordinary ways.

Just last week, my dishwasher started making a grinding noise. Not a little hum. A loud, disturbing, something-is-very-wrong kind of grinding noise.

I opened the door. Everything looked fine. I closed it. More grinding.

There's no negotiating with a dishwasher. It's broken. That's the whole conversation.

Okay. Now what?

I could wash the dishes by hand. I could call a repair person. I could buy a new dishwasher. Or I could grab a screwdriver.

The next day, while my husband was outside, I walked into the kitchen, turned around, and went back to the garage. I chose the screwdriver.

The dishwasher now runs like new, thanks to a screwdriver, a little curiosity, and a very supportive husband who did not panic when he found his wife standing over a disassembled appliance. Or at least had the good sense not to show it.

Fifty years apart, same instinct: don't argue with what's broken. Accept what's in front of you. Then figure out what you can do about it.

Almost fifty years ago, I walked around carrying a stack of newspapers with GRIT printed across the top. At the time, I thought I was carrying something I needed to sell so I could earn a little money and buy the things I wanted.

I stopped carrying the newspapers.

The grit stayed with me.

I'm still carrying it.