Rob Walling

pulling a ripcord in essence and being like, I really can't figure this out.

And that was fine too.

I had a backstop.

But learning to handle things that were unclear set me apart from the other folks who were doing deliveries.

It's like, why does Rob always figure this out?

You know, I don't really have many problems with Rob doing the delivery, right?

Or doing the pickup or whatever.

And I think getting better at that was a skill that I wasn't taught as a kid.

And learning that as a teenager, I think was really helpful.

The second lesson I learned, still with this first job, and this job was, when was this?

It was in the mid-90s.

The lesson I learned was how to work with busy people higher up in an org chart.

So I regularly interfaced with executives, project managers, folks who needed stuff done, plans delivered, permits picked up, whatever.

At the time, I was pretty young.

I was inexperienced in a professional environment, and I was very unaware of how you're supposed to interface with these types of folks.

And what I learned was that respect includes respecting someone's time if they're busy and they're doing a lot of things.

The higher up someone is in an org,

the less bandwidth they have for small decisions, and the more work I could take off their plate, the more valuable I became.

And this was a super entry-level, this was the minimum wage job.

I talk about making $4.50 an hour starting, and I made a little more than that by the time I left.