My dad’s ’61 Ford – big, hulking, white with four doors, plenty of chrome and a blue cloth interior – was backed up, rear-end to the one-car garage, as night fell, ready for a running start before dawn the next day.
It was the one day of the year that the car was backed into the driveway. The one day.
It was the day we rousted up out of bed before dawn, sensed the dew on the ground in the soft morning chill, knowing the grass would be crackling and sizzling before high noon in East Texas, and it was high time to get out of town.
Sleepwalking through preparation, I marveled that my dad was so alert, fitting the metal ice chest into the truck, emptying ice cube trays into it to keep the milk chilled, and the grapes, too. Always green grapes. A food box was packed in the trunk, plus suitcases, and assorted other items.
And two pillows for the backseat, so my sister and I could immediately go back to sleep as soon as we cleared the driveway and headed up the hill, to adventure.
Sometime on the second day of the road trip, after crossing the vastness of Texas, feeling the hot dust washing over you like a wave at the beach, it came into view.
Shiprock, New Mexico.
It’s in the Four Corners area, a place of mystical proportions, strange names, legends and mysteries…and always the gateway for whatever Western swing the Reetz family was embarking on that year. Sometimes we went east from Texas, driving to D.C., Niagara Falls, civilized places like that. But it seems more trips were headed West, and Shiprock always loomed as the point where the adventure began.
Sometimes we ended up on the Snake River, sometimes at Mount Rushmore or Yellowstone, or in California, Colorado, Nevada or Arizona. But always beating it down the road, green grapes, half-chilled milk and slushy water sloshing around in the tin cooler. It was nice when the ice ran out; that meant sweet canned milk for my morning cereal on the road.
Shiprock became a place of familiarity, a beacon to the West.
So when I left the cozy environs of a corporate culture a couple years ago, started out on my own and began to build a media consulting business, I needed something to guide me, something to help show the way. Shiprock.
In Navajo history and culture it is a sacred spot, a “winged rock” that the Navajo rode to escape attack in a distant land. It gave them new life and security.
As it did for me.
Once before, I struck out on my own, buying a weekly newspaper in East Texas, but that was decades ago and the fire was in the belly. Was it still there? It never goes out.
Once a colleague said, “I like xxx consulting firm because I pay them and they write a report that says whatever I want it to say.”
Was that what I was going to be as a consultant? I’d hate it.
And what a waste. Don’t you hire consultants – experts – to provide a fresh perspective, to provide needed and missing expertise, to get things done?
Yes, most businesses do.
For the last two years I have worked with several wonderful major clients and never has anyone said “here’s what we want you to say.” Instead, it’s always, “here’s the problem, what do you think?”
It’s a great feeling working with people who want not just advice, but action, who embrace you as a team member and value your expertise.
It’s not a job for everyone, and many frankly could not do it. You cultivate relationships, you must stay at the top of your game in your industry, you know the vendors even better than before, and you thought you already knew them well. Everything is built around what you deliver and the value you add, not what your PowerPoint slides promise.
It’s always about what you deliver, and shouldn’t it always be that way? Because, after all, that’s what life is about. Not what you say you will do, but what you do.
If you’re out West, pass by Shiprock. Maybe it’ll move you, too.