In my life I have had many mentors who affected my pathway of personal drive and ambition. I am deeply influenced by Sir Winston Churchill. He never gave up and he had a great vision of the future.
My love for my father, Jack Desmond Wordsworth, was profoundly deep. I can attribute the success I have today to his teachings. My father taught me many business practices. We shared our ideas daily about his business and mine.
One of my dad’s greatest lessons was the importance of getting the customer comfortable. “Son, get the customer talking, do not do the talking, and you will hit a home run every time.” When I had the opportunity to visit a potential customer I always tried to see if there were any clues to their passions and to see if we shared any interests. A photo of a boat was always a good topic that we could chat about, because I loved sailing. Any reader of this blog knows my passion for dogs, so if there were any signs of a dog in their life it meant a great opportunity to trade stories.
You simply had to make the individual comfortable and get them talking. Once they knew you were interested in what was going on in their lives, it was an easy transition to get them to discuss their business and its challenges. Then you had the opportunity to see if one of your products could be a solution.
Another of my mentors is Andrew Lederman. He was my father’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for over 30 years.
Andrew is one of those exceptional individuals who didn’t let the trauma of World War II and the loss of his parents destroy his life. He was able to make it to England and then North America where he joined the company my father ran. Dad had opened the Canadian branch of a British company and had fairly free reign over how it was managed.
While Andrew hadn’t had the luxury of attaining all the formal accounting credentials now a requirement of such positions, he was one of the most knowledgeable business people I ever met. My father knew this, and over time he often fought with the higher-ups about having someone without a formal designation in such a position.
The proof was in the pudding though, as the company grew and prospered until it was purchased by a much larger company later on.
Andrew had some great traits, on top of his exceptional grasp of accounting principles. I can still picture him entering either my Dad’s office, or my own later on, with his distinctive “Mr. Wordsworth, there’s something wrong here.” He always kept us in line and made sure we were following generally accepted accounting principles.
The other great lesson I learned from Andrew was the concept of having ‘reserves’. He insisted on reserves for a number of areas of any company that he was working with. This concept of having a ‘rainy day fund’ is one of the soundest of all business principles, and yet one that I feel is often sorely lacking with many companies today.
Today a lot of this comes from the top down. Governments at one time followed the Keynesian economic principle that developed during “The Depression” that governments should spend money and run deficits during the bad times and save money and run surpluses during the good times.
Governments today seem to like to run deficits during the good times to stay in power, and then run really big deficits during bad times like we’re experiencing now with the CoVID pandemic. This would be anathema to someone like Andrew and it may be something we could regret.
Andrew was never afraid of hard work either. Many times, while working full time with my Dad, he worked on weekends helping me run my companies. He taught me the financial ropes. From Andrew I learned the importance of projections to help steer the ship. As with any growing business that depends on loans to help fund that growth, he taught me about banking covenants and how to best use someone else’s money when necessary.
Andrew’s big passion was chicken wings and beer on a Sunday afternoon and there were more than a few times when we’d finally take a break and enjoy this small luxury as a reward for weekend work.
As one gets older you start to reflect on your accomplishments and the people who helped you achieve your goals. The road to my success included many great people but Andrew Lederman and my father Jack Wordsworth were both key players.
Postscript. You can always tell when someone you’ve worked with is more than a business associate, when you get birthday cards like this, which I received from Andrew and his wife:
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