Two Poodled

To build a successful business you have to do good work at a fair price.  And you have to do what you say you’re going to do, keep your word. 

Mark Stith, roofer par excellence
Mark Stith, roofer par excellence

That’s the way my son, Mark, runs his company, Roofcrafters.

But to get a signed contract, Mark told me, it helps a lot if the customer plain old likes you.  So you try to make a good impression, he said.  You look customers in the eye. You speak courteously .  And, if you get an opportunity, you two poodle them.

Two poodle?  Yea, it’s a new expression — you heard it here first.

Mark went to a woman’s house to give her an estimate and she met him at the door carrying two poodles.

Two poodles!
Two poodles!

“I see you have two poodles,” Mark said to her.

That’s really all he had to say.

She told him all about her sweet poodles.  He listened attentively.  And then she hired him to re-roof her house.

Coming Friday: Cotton Mouth

What Is The Point?

Joy
Joy

My wife, Donna, and I were sitting on a bench at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, watching our son Mark’s children roll down a grassy slope and listening to their peals of laughter.

But I guess Mark sensed my unease. 

Our older son, Bo, and his wife, Vicki, were organized.  They made a plan.  They went here, they went there, they saw this or that on the way. They got tickets when it was too crowded, which allowed them to go to the head of the line. They didn’t waste a minute. They and their children, Joy and Eli, were seeing and doing pretty much everything worth seeing and doing.

Eli
Eli

Mark is, how shall I say? Not that way. He is so laid back sometimes he could pass for limp.

Mark: He's laid back
Mark, Curtis, L, and Christian

Donna and I would go around Disney World with one family for a while, then the other, then by ourselves. This particular afternoon we were with Mark, his wife, and their four children. The kids had been resting, and playing, on that grassy bank for quite a while.

[Note: You can roll down a grassy bank back in Raleigh. For free.  We were wasting time.]

I was busy biting my tongue when Mark asked me, “Do you think they’re having fun?”

Cole and Chelsea
Cole and Chelsea

Well, that was obvious from their laughter. They were having a wonderful time.

“Isn’t that the whole point,” he said.

 

Coming Friday: The Good Fairy, Part 1