Jeff Smith Oral History Project
Interview with Jeff Smith
Date of Interview: April 12, 2007; Salt Lake City, UT
Holt: Michelle Holt
Transcriber: Michelle Holt


Holt: Could you please state your name?

Smith: Jeff Smith.

Holt: And, do you mind sharing when you were born?

Smith: April 6, 1948.

Holt: This interview is part of a Media History class, and we are finding out about people’s experience with media throughout their life. Do you have a childhood memory when you first noticed television or the radio?

Smith: My parents moved into a home in Pasadena. CA, that had television in 1950. The television had a 4-inch screen. The television probably was three feet cubed, but it had a 4-inch screen, and it was very hot; you couldn’t get close to it. But, it had this little black and white screen, I would sit and, yes, I remember distinctly being a television kid.

I can almost see myself sitting in what we called the “TV Room”. The TV was left there by the previous owners; they didn’t want to move it. I can remember sitting in that room watch the Kate Smith Show. Kate Smith is the woman for whom Irving Berlin wrote God Bless America. She would open and close her show with When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain, and that had to be in ’52. That was an early memory, very distinct. I remember TV going color, I remember Bonanza being the first color show, I remember not having a color TV and being very irritated with my parents that we couldn’t get a color TV. I doubt if they had a color TV until I went to college.

Holt: Were you pretty unique amongst your friends and neighbors that you guys had a TV?

Smith: Oh yes, I don’t think my parents would have purchased a TV, but this one came with the house. And, I think that my parents would not have been a TV family for years and years. I don’t know that, but I know my mother, and I don’t think she would have done it, and I’m not sure she ever liked it very much.

Holt: What was the generational difference between you and your parents regarding TV and Radio? It sounds to me like they weren’t as anxious or excited to see this new technology.

Smith: I think they were like any older generation in that they adapt to technology a lot slower than those younger. Computers are the an example, the Internet is the latest example of that, and I don’t know what the next example will be, but older people just don’t adapt all that quickly. When they do adapt, they’re in full tilt. My mother became a TV watcher. She watched the soap operas, she watched everything, that became her life as she got older. The TV was almost always on in her home in her 80’s and 90’s, but she was alone, and it was a voice, it was a sound in the house; it was company. So, did she adapt? Yes, definitely. But did she initially see the value? No. She saw the value in radio of the imagery and the imagination that radio brought into her life as a young child, and loved to share that with me, and, we listened to a lot of radio, even then.

Holt: What kinds of shows?

Smith: The shows that were on in those days were The Lone Ranger and Hop-Along Cassidy (I think that was a radio show), Amos and Andy, were the shows that were on the radio, and if you listen to those old radio shows, the imagery and the imagination that it requires is wonderful. The TV strips all that away from you. It’s fascinating, and I still think we go a long way when we do drama that’s not visual to encouraging a child’s imagination. I’m not sure that it sells well. I’m not sure that it communicates products well, because I don’t think radio’s a particularly good advertising medium anymore, but the imagery is still there, so we listen now to talk radio, but I don’t think we buy products from it, which is interesting.

Holt: So, tell me about that, because you have an advertising background. Through your 30-something year career…

Smith: 50! I started working for my dad’s advertising agency when I was eight years old.

Holt: Really! What did you do when you were eight?

Smith: I washed the windows. Then every weekend & most weeknights, dad would bring home projects (it was a direct mail advertising agency) and we would sit at the kitchen table after dinner and stuff envelopes and do other types of manual labor that was required then because there weren’t such things as enclosing machines that did this automatically.

Holt: Were you on the payroll, or did he just hand you a few bucks?

Smith: Often we got ….dinner. I once did a job for him that he said he would give me a penny apiece for doing it, and I did it so fast that he tried to change the deal. But my mother defended me and said “You made a deal with the boy, and you have to pay him a penny apiece”. I don’t remember how much I made, but it made me work faster when my mother defended me.

That was sitting around TV doing a menial job faster and faster and faster, and the fun was in doing it faster. Payroll? Probably when I was 14 or 15. And then I remember getting 35 or 40 cents an hour. I can remember at about 16 going into the bookkeeper (Dorthea was her name, Dorthea Harmson) and saying “Dorthea, I’ve worked here since I was eight”. “Yes, I know” she responded. “Should I not get the Fourth of July paid?” And she said “No, you’re temporary.” So I went into my dad and said “Can you believe what Dorthea said to me?” and he said “Good for her!” And, no, I didn’t get paid for the 4th of July or holidays or vacation.

Holt: So, on the books your dad saw you as temporary help.

Smith: He saw our family as part of the business. My sisters also worked; they called it “Ratland”. They hated it.

Holt: Why did they call it “Ratland”?

Smith: Because it was an old building and there were mice running around. And they still (the company was named Smith and Hemmings) call it “Ratland” to this day. I worked at “Ratland”. I never saw the rats – I loved it. But, my sisters did. So, yeah, dad saw the business as a family business, and we were part of it. If would could have lived over the store, it would have made him very happy, but we didn’t.

Holt: So are you the only son in the family?

Smith: Yes, I have two sisters. I’m the youngest.

Holt: So, did you always know you were going to go into his family business? At what point during your life did you know that this was what you were going to do? How did that happen?

Smith: I went to lunch with my priest’s quorum advisor when I was a junior in college, and my father was getting to be 60 years old at the time. My priest’s quorum adviser was a great guy, the same guy who inspired me to have Job played [by the Utah Symphony] (it’s Dale White), and I sat with him at lunch and I said “You know, I really don’t want to be coddled and go into my dad’s business, I would like to go make a name for myself, on my own.” And Dale reached across the table, grabbed my by the lapels and said “Don’t be a stupid son of a….. Your dad is the finest man on this earth, you will learn more from him than anybody else. Don’t be so da…. arrogant.” And I remember sitting back and saying “……okay.” So then I pleaded with dad to let me go off into an internship somewhere and I did, I went to Dayton, Ohio and went and worked for the YECK Company who were the best practitioners of the direct-mail advertising business in the East, and still are. I did that for a summer, then I went and finished my MBA and went and worked for dad for half of what my classmates were paid.

Holt: And why was that that moment with Dale White so definitive?

Smith: I respected him. I loved him. He was right. But I’ll never forget being pulled across the table in a nice restaurant with the water spilling, holding me by the lapels looking me this close in the face. He’s a great influence to me. And there were other people who said the same thing, I just can’t name them. Everybody loved dad, everyone. I still meet people who love dad.

Holt: You can’t name them because it’s confidential?

Smith: No, I can’t name them because that was the moment. It was endorsed. John Yeck endorsed it, Bill Yeck endorsed it, everyone I met in the business told me I’d be a fool not to do this, and dad knew everyone in the advertising agency business, everyone. David Ogelvy insisted that I do it. Max Sacheim, John Capples; I mean, these are great names in the business, still revered. Dad’s name is now, not well known, but everyone knew him then and told me I would be a fool not to do this. And today, I will still have people who will say “You’re Eric’s son? Oh.” And I’m suddenly accepted because of dad. I have not near the reputation my father was in this business.

Holt: Why do you say that?

Smith: Because I know him, and I know how people felt about him, and, my purview is a lot more limited than his was. So, I’m always second to my father and always will be, and it doesn’t bother me.

Holt: How did direct mail become what it is today? Now, today, it’s almost just this proliferation of stuff…

Smith: Junk. Dad used to say “junk mail is what the other guy sends out”.

Holt: I remember my grandma and my mom in Alberta, Canada, and in their day, when you got something in the mail, it was pretty exciting, because the paperboy brought the advertisements, but when you got something in mail, it was different. So, tell me about how that part of advertising has evolved.

Smith: The concept of direct-mail advertising is that of a personal message, multiplied. A personal message being a letter from you to your grandma. How would you talk to your grandma? If you wanted to convince her to do something, how would you talk to her? You’d have a dialogue with her, you’d have a discussion, you would go over and sit face to face with her. You might write her a very nice, long letter and tell her how much you loved her and complemented her and then you might say, “Grandma, what I would like you to do is this” and she would write back to you and say “Thank you very much for the complements, but I can’t do that.” You would go through this discussion, a dialogue.

Good direct mail advertising (and there’s darn little of it) is a dialogue, it’s conversation in print, and it was started that way by the guy who started the National Cash Register. His is idea was “I will have a conversation with my customers by the mail.” It was promulgated in a big way in the early days by John Cappels, Asop Glimm, and others…by these men who really believed in the power of the letter, the power of personal communication. Dad was a great letter writer.

He wasn’t great at advertising, but he was a great letter writer, and when he wanted to change your life, he could write you a letter that would change your soul – right down to the bottom. It’s a great fundraising technique, it’s a great customer retention and business building technique. In the 50’s and 60’s is was a magnificent media.

In the 50’s we invented something called the zip code (late 50’s – early 60’s), and I remember that. And we cursed it, how terrible it was going to be that we had to sort the mail by eight thousand different codes instead of fifty states. We used to be able sort into fifty states, there was a sorting box on the wall for all the various states, and you would sort it like that and put it in bags, wrap it up and put the state name on it. All of a sudden we were going to have to sort by eight thousand zip codes and we thought “Now where are we going to get all those bins?”

Well, the computer did it. Even thought the computer was the size of this hotel, the computer did it and would sort them all up. You could actually take them off the enclosing machine and say “Oh, that’s 91107, and you would tie that out, and that’s 91108, etc.”, and it was a very simple, revolutionary thing.

Credit Cards came along in my lifetime. My mother had a “charge-a-plate” at the Bullock’s department store, a little metal plate with embossed names through the back. Well, all of a sudden you and I are carrying Visas and American Expresses, and it’s commonplace to get Skymiles on a card.

The 800 number came along: toll-free calling anywhere in the country. You wanna buy that? Dial the 800 number, there’s no obligation to me, I give them my credit card over the phone, the package arrives.

FedEx came along in my lifetime, where I could call Apple, order that computer, and it will be delivered tomorrow? Think of this! My father was used to writing a letter that took 10 days to get there and 10 days for the response to come back. Well, we’re doing these things instantaneously.

The Internet comes along, and is proving to be a very good fulfillment source, a very good way to place an order. Many people will get a mail-order catalog and then they’ll go straight to the Internet and buy. It’s kind of taking over for the 800 number, but, not quite yet, but it will take the over 800 number as the Internet becomes more acceptable. We’re not sure what else it’s good at; it seems to be a good lead generator, and a good information source. It doesn’t seem to be a good advertiser yet, but we’re working on that, everybody’s working on that. And it will be. There will be real smart people that will make it a good advertising medium, and people will accept it as that, and thus it will become.

So, what has happened to the paper in print direct mail? It’s become very expensive, and that means it’s got to work even better that it used to, because it’s now in a battle on cost per response, cost per order, cost per lead. And so when your cost is really high going in, you’ve got to get even more responses to beat the cost per lead versus, say an internet lead, and that makes it harder to do. Thus, those of us in the business do less and less direct mail. Interestingly, all those mail catalog order people are taking off and doing more and more, because they’re finding out that people don’t want to buy from a catalog that’s on the web. They like the paper catalog lying on their lap while they’re watching TV at night, they like that, it’s a “human” thing.

Holt: I can relate because when I get a Brooks Brothers catalog in the mail, I like that a lot more than their website, and I don’t know why. I’ve often wondered why. I’ve said “Hey, they’re advertising for the LA Phil in Brooks Brothers”!

Smith: It’s a very female thing. Women who work, women who are committed, women who are busy don’t go to the mall as much as they might like, enjoy a mail order catalog. They would rather go to the mall. They would like to wander the mall and touch the clothing, put it on and we look good, They don’t necessarily buy, but they love the process. Men go, come, leave. Well, men don’t “caress” mail order catalogs either. But women, love to shop, even on paper, with fashion, clothing, household, that’s the big mail order world.

I get……I would bet… thirty catalogs a week having to do with women’s clothing, and Joyce looks at every one of them. Sometimes duplicates, just different covers. The truth is that direct mail isn’t dying, there’s probably more money being spent on it now and it’s better than it used to be, it’s always been a very effective medium; effective meaning it has always generated results.

Holt: So what happened when you did your internship, where did you go to college?

Smith: I went to BYU. I have no marketing education, by the way, I have an economics and accounting undergraduate degree. Then an MBA, and it was an immediate MBA, which is very very difficult to find anymore. The lesser schools allow you to do that, but the finer schools, including BYU, want you to have three or four years of experience.

Holt: Unless you’re a woman?

Smith: Unless you’re a woman, or you have color, or you’re in a joint degree. You can go to law school & MBA at BYU and at most schools. The average age of a guy going into the Harvard Business School is about 29 or 30, so, compared to a 22 year old graduating from college, that’s a long wait. I went straight though. I did the internship in-between the two years of the MBA. It was a great adventure in our lives.

Holt: Now, you were married at that point?

Smith: Yes.

Holt: So tell me about that, did your wife Joyce have an influence on your career, on what your plans were?

Smith: You’d have to ask her. Today she would say no, she hasn’t had any influence on me at all.

Holt: And what do you say?

Smith: She has had a tremendous influence. Now, it’s a tremendous influence because she’s always been supportive, always been trusting, always been anxiously engaged in making sure I’m anxiously engaged. But, she came from a family of a mom and a dad who truly worked hard at everything. Her dad was a telephone man and he worked long hours installing telephones. Mike loved to work with his hands and touch things, loved to have his hands in the wires, and my father didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Yardwork was… well, he would have said “I work so I can pay a gardener”. He could not pound a nail. Now, somehow I can, and somehow I love that kind of stuff. And so, Joyce’s mom and dad were just as hardworking (they would say “poor”, “blue-collar”), but they’re poor, they are wealthy in lots of ways, including having saved enough money to keep themselves very nicely in their later years, and I admire them for that.

So, Joyce comes out of that family having worked hard, having watched her mom and dad work hard to remodel houses, to build up this little house in Perrysburg, Ohio and sell it and make money on it, which they never thought they could do, ever. And then she moves into a family who’s thinking on a whole different level, not a better level, just a whole different level, and I have no idea how hard that was for her. I’m not sensitive enough to even care, but I know it has to have been a unique challenge.

Dad once asked her to matte (because she was an art major) a painting, so she had the mattes and her exacto blades and she was at the breakfast table in our home in Pasadena, and she was cutting a matte. She put her fingers down to cut and cut the corner of her index finger off. I went “ugh” and tried to keep the blood off the matte. It’s a very typical thing for an art major to do, they do it all the time. Two weeks later dad says “can we finish that matte now that you’re finger’s better?” and so she was then cutting with her hands in the opposite direction and she cut the other edge of her finger off, so if you look at her right index finger, and it kind of comes to a point. And my father, the second time around says, “She’s not very smart, son.”

Dad never meant anything malicious, but he was always saying things like that. Joyce was just so embarrassed that she would do that in front of my father, but she learned over many years that dad was never judgmental of somebody else. He just loved people’s anomalies, he loved it, he loved human beings and the way in which they made their living, the way in which they worked. He loved Joyce’s dad, and I’m sure that Mike and Sue never thought they could have a neat relationship with these “rich people” from California. Talk to Sue about Mom and Dad, they loved my folks. To me, that’s a great credit to my parents, and a great credit to Joyce’s folks that they were able to do that. And Joyce became Mom’s best friend in her later years

Holt: Two questions: What was one of your greatest challenges, and then what was one of your greatest joys being a young married person knowing that you’re going to go into your father’s business? Now, at the end of your career, what was the most overwhelming thing when you were young and married and looking forward into the future?

Smith: Truthfully, nothing. I keep my fears to myself or I throw them away. I’m not a person that is afraid of tomorrow.

Holt: Have you ever been scared of anything?

Smith: Oh, sure.

Holt: Like what?

Smith: The tough things, don’t scare me, but one of the tough things was being the SOB (the son of the boss) . That’s a unique place that I don’t wish on anybody, and I think I have a fairly good perspective on what it means to be the SOB. That’s what my dad’s partner still calls me, and he’s 90. But, the great joys, the things that make me tear up? Walking down Pasadena Avenue to Tommy’s Malt Shoppe with my father , three days a week, and being able to sit across the table and talk, sometimes with other people, but mostly just the two of us. Always, always, walking two extra blocks back to the office so he could walk through the front door and out the back door of the bank and wave to people. He taught me, he said “Be friends with your bankers. And don’t tell them everything.” But always, he would walk through and wave. “Jim, Bill, Mary, how are you? Good to see you!” and walk out the back door. And as I got to know his financial situation and the struggles he and Bob were having with the business at the time, as I became more and more familiar with that, I realized why that was really important. Great lessons. But, the conversations we would have were about people. It wasn’t about marketing or advertising, it was people. How do you get people to do what you want them to do? How do you entice them into (his line) “moving from where they are to where you want them to be?” Bob Hemmings, his partner, would say “How do you turn lemons into lemonade?” And, when you get down on the base level of marketing, where it’s not advertising in pretty pictures, and it’s not what media you’re running in, it’s this base human level of personal behavior. That’s what marketing is, and I don’t know how many marketing professionals agree with that, I don’t really care (they’re stupid if they don’t), but it’s a base level thing.

Dad would say, a couple of times a month, “What are you guys doing tomorrow?” And I would say “I don’t know yet” and he would say “Meet us at so-and-so mall at about noon, we’ll buy you lunch.” And I’d go home and say “Joyce, Mom and Dad want to meet us across Los Angeles at the so-and-so mall” and Joyce would say “Oh, that’s be fun.” (she loved to go shopping with mother). And dad would say, “let’s not walk around, let’s sit here and talk.” And then we wouldn’t say anything. And then he’d say “Look at thus woman walking right here. What caused her to dress that way? Tell me what her home is like. Just look at her, tell me what her home is like. Is it clean? Does she park her car on the lawn? What kind of car does she drive? Oh, she’s going to turn into this store, let’s move over on this bench and see if we can watch what’s she’s doing. Why would she pick that blouse?”

That insistence from him on talking about human behavior is marketing. Those are the things that I miss, that I probably don’t communicate that instruction well to anybody, I don’t do with any of the people who have worked for me over the years. I’ve dragged a couple off to things like that with me and they just kind of look at me. I did this every other week for five or six years, and those are joyous, as you look back, those are opportunities that are remarkable. And then to run into people who say “Eric’s your dad?” and then they’ll tell me a story. That’s still happening.

Holt: So, what is your dad’s legacy?

Smith: My father was never…….my father was anonymous. My father’s name is not known today. There’s a hall of fame in the Direct Marketing Association, his partner is in that hall of fame, Eric Smith isn’t. That would be very pleasing to my dad. It’s not to me. I’ve tried, I’ve submitted his name on 20 occasions over the last 30 years, but he has not been named to that Hall of Fame. What is his legacy to those who knew him well? A remarkable marketing guy, a remarkable writer. He invented some forms of fundraising that are still in use today. One’s called the Jimmy letter, which you will get between now and Christmas that will say “Susie (with a picture of a little girl) is struggling. Her dad left her when she was three, her mother works three jobs, she has a little brother Jimmy, and $39.95 will buy her a new coat, a nice dinner for Christmas, could you help her? You will see that form, whether it’s from the Children of the Earth or from the World Services Organization, or the Salvation Army. That’s Dad’s invention, and everyone will say “Oh yeah, Eric did the Jimmy letter.” Did he ever make a dime? Yeah, he made a little money doing it, but there are no royalties on this, that’s why I have very little respect for people who get royalties. Great stuff never has a royalty on it, great ideas live by themselves, and that’s a great idea.

Now, Hemmings became the best practitioner of the Jimmy letter (he wrote better than dad), but dad invented it. Actually, for the Tuberculosis Association, which is now the American Lung Association, then the Salvation Army still uses it, the American Red Cross uses it. I mean, there are 90 charities that use this form; they don’t know where they got it, they just know it works better than anything else. So, Dad’s legacy, it’s in my heart.

Holt: What about your legacy? You just retired recently.

Smith: I want none. It’s not important. My family, my kids, that’s a legacy enough.

Holt: For example, how did your influence shape your dad’s business in a different way? That, because of the generation you came from, you were able to leave your fingerprint on the business?

Smith: I think I’ve just lived with the times, I’ve just adapted to the times. I think my father would be thrilled with the Internet, with the “instantaneous chat”, he would call it. A “chat” with a customer. What a great thing: I can actually “chat” with them? Oh, he would love it, and I’m sad that he missed it, because he would have loved it, he would have been overwhelmed. But, what’s mine? Doesn’t matter.

Holt: Did you like to work?

Smith: No.

Holt: Why?

Smith: I would much rather have been home, I would much rather have been with Joyce. I like the challenge, I like the dare, I like succeeding, I like the association, so…….I guess I did like to work.. I probably busier now since I left Studeo than I’ve ever been. But…..yeah, I guess I’d have to say I liked it.

Holt: Was it a fulfilling thing?

Smith: Oh yeah. It’s great to succeed. And the one thing that direct marketing people have is they get a report card on their work every day. And you know whether something works, because you’ve designed results into it, and if those results don’t happen, you’re a dirty bum. If they do happen, you’re a hero. So, fundamentally, yes, it was very fulfilling, and, there are some associations I have from early days doing very simple advertising programs, direct marketing programs, that worked overwhelmingly well, and those clients are dear friends. One of them is who we went to have supper with last week, Les Morris. A dear friend, a program that he and I did together is one of those memory things. And, yeah, those things exist.

I always have said and have tried to preach in the business that there is no great glory in advertising. There is nothing that is going to change the human condition by advertising a treadmill better than the other guy, for example. But we do this so our clients can be successful, so that their people who work for them can pay their mortgages, and our people can pay their mortgages; it’s actually a functionary of allowing you to build your own family. That’s why we do it. Now, some people open lemonade stands and some people run advertising agencies, and some people run law firms. But the objective is to build your own family. The objective should never be to build a business, and I think that’s a tough sell in today’s marketplace, but I still believe it’s true.

Many people don’t believe that, and many people want to move forward in life based on the fact that there is some great thing about being a good businessman, or being well-heeled in the community, or having a big house……the great triumph of life is seeing my kids with temple recommends. That’s the only thing that matters.

Holt: Has you being Mormon, being practicing in your religion, has that affected your career? Did you always work with Mormons?

Smith: No, dad used to say “Don’t do business with Mormons, and if you do, charge ‘em double so they won’t come back”. I was telling that story to a friend of mine one day (he’s Italian), and he said “Jeff, it’s not Mormons, it’s Pisan. It’s anyone in the brotherhood, it doesn’t matter what the brotherhood is called, but the Pisan brotherhood, the Jewish brotherhood, the Mormon brotherhood, we have a tendency to want a discount. We have a tendency to want something for less than it’s worth. I have tried to have a client first, then worry about their deeper feelings. The best clients were the guys who thought I was a little crazy for being a Mormon, and we had great relationships, and, hopefully, from time to time, I’ve had a positive influence on them.

Being a member of the church just has caused me to want to be and try to be more honest. Whether I have been or not, somebody has to judge, but, the whole goal is to move from where you are, a little bit at a time, to where you really ought to be, and “ought” is a word that is defined by someone besides me. I think the Church is a phenomenal benefit to bring focus into life, on things that really matter. And there are a lot of ways to describe that, but I think that’s as simple as it can be.

Holt: Have you ever been faced with an ethical challenge in your work where, ethically, you felt like “we just can’t do that.”

Smith: Sure! How about daily? You make judgments daily on honesty, ethical things.

Holt: Is there a story that comes to mind?

Smith: Oh, I had a client one day call me into his office and sit me down with the advertising manager, the VP of Marketing, (and they were spending a lot of money with us), and he, to the great embarrassment of my client, my friend, said “You know, we spend a lot of money with you. I think you should pay for his (my client’s) vacation.”

I don’t know how you react to that, I’m not even sure today if that’s the right kind of a thing to do or the wrong kind of a thing to do. Now, if the advertising guy had come to me and said “would you pay for my vacation?”, his boss could have fired him. But no, the boss asked me this! So I go back to my dad and his partner and I told them the story, and my dad just smiled and said “Well Bob, now we’re going to find out what kind of ethics the boy has.” and he turned and walked out of the room, and left it! He didn’t tell me what to do; it was a wonderful experience. As I was sitting there with Bob, who, I would say, had significantly different ethics than my dad, and we had this conversation, and I honestly don’t remember what we did, I really don’t know if we paid for it or not. But, people are always asking you for things. Then you say “am I being honest by saying yes, or am I being stupid by saying no? Do I have an ultimate responsibility to all these people for whom their mortgage payments matter? Or should I stand up for a perceived principle in my life and cause all these people to lose their jobs?”

I don’t know how you balance that, I still don’t know. I’ve lived with it all my life, and I’m sure I’ve made the wrong decision, and I’m sure I’ve made the right one. I just don’t know which one is right or wrong. I’ve talked to very wise people about it, and they all just kind of smile, especially business people who say “that’s that challenge”. How do you answer it? Daily is the answer. But nobody will say “Jeff, you do it this way”. And anyone who says “Jeff, you do it this way” or “Michelle, you do it this way”, is stepping into the realm of your personal progress, your personal perception. They’re really saying to you “Lean on my wisdom and what has happened to me. Don’t make your own decisions. Be a chameleon, be a lemming.” Dad’s line: “Now we’ll know what ethics the boy has” – a wonderful line in my life; and, I know of, on many occasions…..that’s just an interesting place.

I have a very dear friend who builds swimming pools, and swimming pools are ugly things. You build a swimming pool in somebody’s existing back yard, you’re driving the bulldozer over the roses, you’re breaking the concrete, the bulldozer driver tears the edge out of your house while he’s turning around, and I’ve had teenagers say “that so-and-so, he’s just immoral and dishonest” and I’ll say “Judge not. How do you make that judgment?”

There are people in this town who people lambaste for what people perceive as their honesty or dishonesty, but they don’t know the good that is being done by those same individuals. This is why we’re not supposed to judge, I think. And I also think that it’s because we are to make our own judgments for ourselves, about our behavior. I think it’s why you have a good spouse, because you have someone you can talk to and they can give you advice. Although, my father also said this: “Don’t share a lot with your wife. She’ll always give you the wrong advice. Not that she is wrong, it’s just that she doesn’t know all the details.” And, on many occasions, I’ll come home and start whining about somebody and she’ll say “Well, I don’t know why you just don’t fire him.” And I think “Gosh, I wish I hadn’t brought this up, because I can’t fire him. He does this and this and this that’s good, and I’m just complaining about this and this and this that’s bad.” You have to make these judgments, and it’s not that it’s lonely, it’s part of your perfection, it’s part of your personal growth, and it’s a long way from being done before we know that we’ve done things right or wrong. Hopefully on balance, you lean toward the right (having nothing to do with political philosophy).