The essential difference between man and beast [aside from our unique advantage of opposing thumbs] is that man’s desire to build more out of what exists is in sharp contrast to an animal’s vital pursuit of its competitive advantage in the food chain.

Our inherent desire to build more out of what exists is buoyed by our thoughtful curiosity and occasional reason.  It is further advanced by our competitive nature and social agenda.  This, however, is a shared experience – to varying degrees – with the rest of the animal kingdom [of which we are the presumptive king].

Nevertheless, our desire to build more out of what exists is what ultimately defines and rewards us.  While you could argue that [today] it is the notoriety of our personal brand in our vapid celebratory culture that rewards and defines us, I would still default to my more substantive assumption.  Of course, if I’m wrong, I’ve clearly wasted 60 years.

As with any assertion, the opposite holds forth as a troublesome counter-point.  It allows for our innate desire to destroy as well as build.  This desire to build more, by its very nature, spawns the desire to destroy more.  The old yin and yang.*  For my edification, I have simply recognized people as occupied by one or the other.  For the most part, it has held true.

But that’s not what this post was going to be about.  What I wanted to talk about was the key elements to making something more out of what exists.  To be sure, the are many aspects, criteria, and resources that are involved in any successful activity.  But what propels all of this activity to success?  What engages us?

To build more out of what exists, any endeavor requires the recognition and embodiment of 5 indispensable elements of engagement: excite, empower, enable, encourage, and energize. 

The genesis of this theory of activity is eclipsed by the anecdotal evidence that has manifested itself over 35 years of the success and failure of numerous personal enterprises from raising a family to building a business.  The elements that I recognize and espouse are entirely based on my experiences, and I’m convinced that if any of these elements are eliminated from the engagement – the prospects of success ebb.

While I could enliven this discourse with entertaining examples of effective execution of my theory, I would prefer to have you embark on your own exercise of exploration.  Entrusted with nothing more than your own criteria for success, evaluate some recent or past experiences, and see if they embody these 5 elements.

Very seldom do I get a written comment from the readers of my blog.  When I do receive the occasional thoughtful missive, I am more than delighted.  It’s the little things in life …

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* yin-yang  In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin-yang is used to describe how seemingly opposite or contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world; and, how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.  Many natural dualities [such as light and dark, high and low, hot and cold, fire and water, life and death, and so on] are thought of as physical manifestations of the yin-yang concept.

Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary [instead of opposing] forces interacting to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the parts.  Everything has both yin and yang aspects, [for instance shadow cannot exist without light].  Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation.

I remember more and more about Frank every day.  And while I still haven’t made peace with his death, I am comforted by the smile that inevitably passes over everyone’s face when I mention him.  Is there any better legacy?  

He gave me a signet ring when he got married back in the mid 60’s. I was about 12 years old, and, although I treasured it, time and indifference conspired against it.  Today, I slipped on my new signet ring with FGT on it.  Frank Thomas Gaglione.

I even started wearing penny loafers again, because for the first 8 years I knew him [until he became a lawyer with a real job] that’s all he wore.  Bertha wouldn’t let him wear sneakers, and he could wear out a new pair of Weejun penny loafers during a good stretch of basketball on my driveway.  Campus Corner khakis, Weejun penny loafers, and a Barracuda jacket were all I wanted.  To me he was nothing more and nothing less than the coolest guy on the planet.

And then along came the Beatles in their Chelsea boots.  Being a little hood from the West Side – they just felt better – and I’ve been wearing them for almost 50 years.  But today, for Frank, I’m back in my penny loafers.  [Although, I have to admit that I’m just waiting for the Chelsea boots to go back out of style.  Every 20 years or so they start to be fashionable again like skinny pants.  So, for the time being, I’m just applying the mink oil and waiting for it to pass.  It will.]

But this post isn’t about signet rings or my choice in shoes, it’s about our legacy.  What will it be?

I remember when I was 38, and I retired from the Stereo Advantage.  My claim was that I didn’t want to still be singing Brown Sugar when I was 60.  That’s why I always feel bad for the Rolling Stones – I couldn’t imagine singing the same crap for 50 years.  What will their legacy be:  The greatest rock’n’roll band in history or some pathetic money-grubbing entertainers who didn’t know when to hang’em up?  They’re going to just milk that cow dry.

I couldn’t imagine my legacy being that I sold a million vcr’s.  It just didn’t seem like a life well-lived.  Money, what an awful legacy.  Power, unfortunately, you lose it all when you’re dead.  Love, well, it certainly may not be the best legacy, but it makes every day that you’re alive better.  Friendship, joy, humor, caring, security, loyalty, opportunity ….

I’ve courted all of the above, but, if I had to choose one [and I have], it would be opportunity.  If, at the end of it all, my legacy is that I created opportunity for my family, friends, partners, employees, and community, then I lived a life that I am proud of.  It’s the road I chose, and I’m making progress.

Frank chose another road.  He kept us safe and he made us smile.  But, most of all, he made us smile.  That is his legacy.  Sometimes I wonder when I see the smile on everyone’s face when I tell a Frank story.  The laughter, the fondness, the inevitable “There was no one quite like him” comment.  It makes me a little wistful.  It makes me question my path.  But we all walk a different path.

What’s yours?

Giambattista Vico identified two kinds of arrogance that prevent true understanding, the conceit of nations and the conceit of scholars.  Both are at work in the racist sign.  Every nation thinks it was first and that everything useful and civilized was invented by it.  Scholars also take their particular brand of thinking to be the starting point of all knowledge.  Yet, no matter how many founding myths and symbols a nation constructs (Vico found that most begin with an eagle), it most likely stood upon another civilization’s shoulders.

Similarly, when considering the scholar’s written language, it is puny compared to the hundreds of thousands of lost, oral languages that have developed and faded away, unrecorded over time.  The oral tradition is a treasure trove of wisdom.  It is not certain that there is any evolution in language.  In fact images are often a more powerful and effective form of expression.  I mean to say that english does not happen to be the best or only way to express our reality.  I read recently that, “verbal expression is how we articulate our existence.”  How we speak shapes our reality and our being in the world.  As Marshall McLuhan said, “we shape the tools and then the tools shape us.”

So, it makes sense that hatred towards the other manifests itself in a battle over language.  A whole worldview or way of being is given within each language.  The metaphors unique to each language color a very different existence.  This difference is threatening.

I think at root there is an existential longing for home.  Everyone desires to feel at home in the world and at one time or another has most likely felt like a stranger.  People claim to have found the first nation or to be the first thinkers because they long to make the unknown familiar, to make it homey.  Benign longing turns dangerous when fear takes over, a fear of the other and of difference.  It is strange that the desire to be at home and to belong can turn so ugly.  Langston Hughes wrote, “misery is when you heard on the radio that you live in a slum but you always thought it was home.”  Maybe the route towards happiness is to make every place your home, as Richard Kearney says, “to find your home in every haunt.”  In other words, to never allow anyone to rob you of the joy of feeling at home in the world.

I am happy to see your post.  Most people just want to love and be loved, to smile and have someone smile back.  Every soul has a place in this world and a right to make it home.

I am spending way too much time online.  Whenever I am in Florida, I spend most of my day Skyping and writing.  Unfortunately, by being online so much, I am exposed to some of the most inane crap imaginable.  From Facebook to emails, I am inundated with pictures, comments, and opinions that range from foolish to worthless to dangerous.  One such Facebook posting came my way this morning, and it got me off track, so I just had to respond.

After this, I promise I’ll take a break from posting.  The sun is shining, and all those little Hispanics out there have our golf course in perfect condition.  I don’t have a clue as to what they are saying, but they sure can cut grass.  Maybe I’ll get a round in.

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How about everyone just take a deep breath here before you get out of control with your bigotry.  Assimilation always takes a generation or two.  It’s just the way it is.  My grandparents were born in Sicily, and although my grandmother came to America when she was only three years old, you would have never mistaken her for your version of an “American.”

As a merchant, I stay out of politics, but lately I have been inundated by quite a bit of mean-spirited “patriotism.”  While there is certainly no denying that the great Aryan migration from Eurasia through Europe to the British Isles to America has left an indelible mark on our heritage and culture, you shouldn’t forget that the indigenous language and culture of America was that of the Native American Indian.  In fact, thousands of languages were spoken in North and South America prior to the first contact with Europeans.

I guess it must really be surprising to some of the most racist people in America that the Aryan history starts with the ancient Indo-Iranians, who inhabited parts of what are now Iran, Afghanistan, and India.  Ouch.  It must really hurt when they hit a Seven Eleven.

What troubles me is this bigoted argument about who America really belongs to.  According to a prevailing New World migration model, migrations of humans from Eurasia to the Americas took place via Beringia, a land bridge which connected the two continents across what is now the Bering Strait.  The most recent migration took place around 12,000 years ago.  That makes the post Christopher Columbus era look quaint.

The indigenous people of America were particularly vulnerable to exploitation, marginalization, and oppression by the Europeans.  But it didn’t stop with the indigenous people of America, nearly every immigrant group has suffered.

If you talk to the Irish who were brutalized during the late 19th century, they would certainly tell you that it wasn’t their America [until they eventually took over the port cities of the Northeast].  As for the Southern Italians and Sicilians, they were second most lynched group in the South.  I won’t even touch the black equation.

To carve out a rail bed from ridges that jutted up 2,000 over the valley below, Chinese immigrants were lowered in baskets to hammer at solid shale and granite and insert dynamite.  During the winter of 1865-1866, when the railroad carved passages through the summit of the Sierra Nevadas, 3,000 Chinese workers lived and worked in tunnels dug beneath 40-foot snowdrifts.  Accidents, avalanches, and explosions left an estimated 1,200 Chinese immigrant workers dead.

Despite their heroic labors, California’s Chinese immigrants became the objects of discriminatory laws and racial violence.  California barred these immigrants from appearing as witnesses in court, prohibited them from voting or becoming naturalized citizens, and placed their children in segregated school.  The state imposed special taxes on “foreign” miners and Chinese fishermen.

And the list of “patriotic” atrocities goes on and on.

Nevertheless, the fact that America eventually does assimilate its masses is truly remarkable.  Not since Suleiman the Magnificent’s Ottoman Empire has there been a more magnanimous nation for immigrants and minorities.  Our American legacy finds its brightest moment in the poem of Emma Lazarus [an American-Sephardic Jew] which appears on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:

“… Give me your tired, your poor.  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The American Dream makes me proud to be an American.  It is the greatest country in the history of man.  It is a unique experiment in populist democracy, and it has certainly worked out for my family, friends, and me.  But it is a dream that needs to be shared or it will lose its will to live.

When I was a teenager, I remember sitting in an old girlfriend’s living room with her whiter than white WASP mother.  She asked me if I was Italian, and I said, “No, I am Sicilian.”  And she said, “Aren’t Sicilian’s just niggers come north?”  But before I get too upset with her, I will return to my dear old grandmother [who was arguably the nastiest woman who ever lived].  Whenever she would see a black person, she would say, “They should make every nigger swim back to Africa with a Jew under each arm.”  Nice.

Bigotry has a long history, and I was raised with it on the West Side.  Fr. John Sturm [who was a tough little German from the East Side of Buffalo] said that the toughest games at Canisius High School were when they would have the Germans vs the Irish vs the Italians vs the Polish intramurals.  Like Fr. John, I still get annoyed by every ethnic and racial group, but that doesn’t make me a racist, it makes me human.  So, before we start claiming this is your America, you better do a little digging to see just how valid your claim is.  What you find might surprise you.  I know when I did a little digging, I found out that America truly was mine – mine to build, mine to protect, mine to enjoy, and mine to share.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suleiman_the_Magnificent
http://www.class.uh.edu/gl/china1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

Are you better prepared than a Rookie?

We are on our way back to Naples.  Since we have Larry [the dog] with us, we flew direct on AirTran to Ft. Lauderdale, and now we are driving across alligator alley.  It’s about an hour and forty-five-minute drive.  Dick, from Florida Airport Transportation [239-390-2440], picked us up at around 11:45AM and should have us at the house by 12:30PM.  His car service is the best in Southwest Florida.  Knowing Dick, we’ll be there by 12:15PM.

I am pretty excited by what transpired while we were home over the past 7 weeks.  My return to the Walker Center in May started out a little slow, but quickly picked up a head of steam.

Here are some of the highlights:

The electronics division of the Advantage Co, which combines the various operations of the Stereo Advantage and Lifetime Service, has been on its best roll in 20 years.  It is truly a new company.  The renaissance of this division is due to the energy and determination of the leadership group that I call 9 Volt and our LTS technicians who have put us at the forefront of the industry.  I have had very little to do with this resurgence, and that makes me prouder than ever of what is still our signature business [and, once again, our most profitable resource].

Recognizing the impact that their commitment has had on their business encouraged me to create an opportunity for them to actually make it their own.  Accordingly, we have worked out a program for the 9 Volt management team [Dej, Al, Joe, Jim, Wes, Mike, Kevin, Kam, and Butch] to purchase 51% of the combined electronics operations [all headquartered at the Wehrle Dr. facility].  When the new Stereo Advantage Warehouse Sales Center opened on June 6th, the Wehrle facility became fully loaded.  It is a fitting start for the future.

Over at Giancarlo’s, adding a dinner menu, the new Cento rooms, and an expanded patio has brought us to full capacity.  This past Saturday night we had a full patio, two events in the Vantaggio and Cento Banquet Room respectively, and we were catering the White Party.  It was as busy as I could imagine.  Pat O’Connor has been doing a great job with our corporate catering, as well.  We are in the midst of a kitchen expansion, and it has been as chaotic as it is exciting.  We are still learning as we grow, but it’s been a remarkable first two years from concept to where we are today.

At TW&Co, we hosted Children’s Hospital’s Beautiful Women Do Beautiful Things event, and it was the impetus for a complete restyling of the Women’s department.  The store looked better than it ever has [at least that’s what Janet told me, and I trust her judgment], and the event was our best ever – by far.  Of course, we are continuing to renovate and expand, and the progress has been transformative.

The Nantucket Shop and Tiny Walker are currently being combined and developed with the anticipation of moving into their expanded space at the start of 2015.  Ali has brought her preppie pedigree and style instincts back home from college, and the next three years should provide a great incubation for our new pink and green initiative.

Footwear is expanding to include an outdoor shop that will feature Patagonia, Canada Goose, and The North Face.  While Jewelry has been expanded and moved closer to Women’s.  Women’s, of course, could not be left out of the mix, so we have added a new handbag department with everything from Marc Jacobs to DVF to Tory Burch to Rebecca Minkoff to …

With the remarkable success of The Beauty Bar, we have decided to expand it into a fully loaded cafe’.  TW Body+Beauty will also be getting a blowout bar and a new make-up shop by the end of the summer.  However, the biggest news out of B+B this summer is that Whole Foods Market has authorized our Bogavia line for their stores.  Bogavia, Modern Luxuri, and Piece Apparel are our future, and their current success gives us a great foundation to build on.

But there’s been even more to my seven-week visit:

At our Autonomic Resources partnership, we are about to get our DISA ATO from the Department of Defense, and that, along with our FedRAMP IaaS ATO, puts us at the forefront of the government’s cloud initiative.  This is remarkable for a company of our size and limited resources, and, because of our unexpected prowess in this sector, we are now being pursued for acquisition by the big boys of the industry.  This is all pretty heady stuff for the partnership.  We’ll see how it all plays out this summer.

And, last but not least, while I was home, Joe and I got to spend some time playing golf with a 12-year-old phenom named Will Thomson, who also happens to be Tom’s [our Consilium partner] son.  He was the youngest participant ever in the recent Junior Masters Tournament at East Aurora CC.  The tournament attracts the top 18 and under amateurs from around the world, and Will made it to the championship round of 32.  Simply incredible, but what’s more incredible is his demeanor, proving that, as always, how you do it is more important than what you do.

There’s more, but those are the highlights of the summer so far [along with my grandkids Francesca and Sam].  I hope your summer is going as well.

PS  The highlight of my flight down was riding along with my buddy Mitch.  He inadvertently inspired me to open a new Modern Luxuri mall concept store.  One of the key aspects of it [along with Modern Luxuri, Bogavia, and Piece Apparel] will be a jewelry trade-in component.  I’d like to have one open by Christmas.

→ Fear The Bow Tie.
→ 5,000 People Can’t Be Wrong.
→ Kids Don’t Ride Their Bikes To Work Anymore.

I sat down to write about a few things on my mind before I headed back up north for the summer, but I couldn’t decide where to start.  I’ve ruminated over 5,000 People Can’t Be Wrong for a week or so, but I’ve seen such a proliferation of bow ties that I am reluctantly drawn to the trivial.

Fear The Bow Tie.

Why?  Because there is nothing behind it.  It’s a statement that says “I am a bow tie.”  It’s an inexpensive way of saying “I am a Ferrari.”  I saw a similar comment recently about handlebar mustaches, some things are just hard to get past.  The bow tie stops you dead in your tracks.  It shouts.  It annoys.  It defines.  But, most of all, it limits the wearer to a sudden and debilitating identity.  They are merely a cliche’.  It works best on the most insecure of wearers.  For them it is a necessary distraction.  While a fashionable woman [dressed head to toe from LVMH] is worriedly positioning her social status, a bow tie displaces the wearer.  It throws them into a void of nothingness – nothing but a bow tie.  And, besides, Ernie Johnson looks ridiculous.

5,000 People Can’t Be Wrong.*

So, who are these 5,000 apostates that defy argument and possess damming evidence of a reprobate merchant?  Unfortunately [and, sometimes, fortuitously], it’s the 5,000 or so ex-Advantage employees who have scattered around WNY and the world for the past 35 years.  It’s hard to argue that the Advantage wasn’t the place for them.  While the alumni of the Advantage roam from Elmwood to Chippewa, from John Hopkins to the Cleveland Clinic, from Apple to SalesForce, from Yale to Stanford, from California to Maine, from Clarence to Orchard Park, from Australia to London, from UB to Canisius, and from the courthouse to the jailhouse – it’s undeniable that the Advantage just wasn’t for them.  But, for many of them, it was a fruitful and beneficial experience.

Allow me the requisite quote from the Bible:

Matthew 7:15-20  Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits.  Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?  Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

You will know us by our fruits:  By our Walker Center, TW&Co, Lifetime Service, Stereo Advantage, iFul, House of Cotton, Bogavia, Giancarlo’s, Piece Apparel, Smart Squad Design, The Beauty Bar, Modern Luxuri, Sneaker Advantage, Advantage TI, Advantage Trade Group, Smart Squad Install, Brinkley Builders, Tiny Walker, Aussie T Co, The Nantucket Shop, Computer Head Start, SmartLinks, Sony Home Theaters, Forrestel Clothing Co, and the Advantage Computer Co.

By our founding support: AP Professionals, Advantage Wood Shop, Autonomic Resources, JNorman & Co, Consilium, CT&K, Black Box Creative, Capax Global, Greenview Landscaping, The Pizza Shoppe, Free Trade Consultants, Stereo Shops, Butler Chemical, Aussie Outfitters, Cleary Travel, Nobles, Bellus Development, Real Property Services, Manzella Gloves, Total Health & Fitness, Tony Walker Golf Club, Strategic Finance, Taplin Design, White & Co, My Personal Advisor, At Your Service, Gauntlet Design, Outback Paging, Advantage Marketing & Incentives, Trend Depot, Images & Graphics, and Irwin Sales.

And by our commitment: The Downtown Priest, Amherst Police Foundation, iWorldFundraising.org, and the Church of the Good.

Winston Churchill said that the only thing worse than having allies is not having them.

That leaves Kids Don’t Ride Their Bikes To Work Anymore.

The most recent Time cover story calls the generation of young adults known as millennials “lazy, entitled narcissists.”  The story points out, “The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older…; 58 percent more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982…  Their development is stunted: more people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse…”

I look forward to Joel Stein’s essay every week on the second last page of TIME, and this week his feature article didn’t disappoint.  He starts his cover story off by explaining, “I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow.”  It’s an interesting, humorous, dubious, and somewhat troubling article to read, but as I pondered the fate of the millennial’s, I couldn’t shake the notion that they are on the cusp of immortality.  From Ray Kurzweil’s How To Create A Mind  to the 3d printing revolution, I am convinced that the regeneration of essential organs and the storage and rebooting of our thoughts are going to be de rigueur for the millenials at best and my grandchildren at worst.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Create_a_Mind
http://blog.moebio.org/tag/3d-printing/

So, I’ll be busy next winter in Naples building my avatar of artificial intelligence coupled with my 30 years of personal journals so that I can converse with my great grandchildren a thousand years from now.  But, as for immortality, I’ll pass.

* I never asked them to like me, I asked them to build with me.  I’ve found that when it all works out the liking takes care of itself.  But when it doesn’t work out the way they want, I’ve found that I’m really in for it …  It’s been a small price to pay.  Thank you to everyone who has helped us build over the years.  We’ll be celebrating our 35th Anniversary on June 6th at the new Stereo Advantage Warehouse Sales Center located in our Lifetime Service and Distribution Center at 1955 Wehrle Dr.  Everyone is invited.  More info to follow.