Quote of the Day, March 9, 2014: “Don’t seek gain, seek growth.” (Extended Version)

This quote comes from my pastor, but it harkens back to a conversation I had two weeks ago with another gentleman about what the trouble is with our society and business, and in particular, with Christians and business. It all stemmed from him speaking about how when he first had kids he found an interest in finding out what the best way to educate them would be. He started out looking for a concise definition that he could accept for the word “eduction.” Education is something that we speak about all the time in our society. Our politicians talk about it and how they are going to fund this school and that set of teachers, and all in the sake of education, but they never really speak about what education is or what it’s for. Our parents want us to get a good education, and our teachers push us to get good grades and go higher and higher in our education but it’s still never quite defined for us. Is an education literally that piece of paper they give you at the end stating that now you have an education? Does it mean you can recite poetry and recall obscure battles and what dates the occurred. The definition that this man said he finally settled on after years of search was this: (Paraphrase) Education is preparing someone to respond to and engage with the world in an appropriate manner. I can guarantee that is a paraphrase although I’m doing my best to recall his exact words. I do believe the ones I’ve chosen speak to the heart of what he said though. He found that the idea behind education was teaching a young person that there is a big world out there with all kinds of ideas, and tools, and facts, and dangers and wonders and that person will need the intellectual and emotional tools to be able to interact with that world in a way that is #1 beneficial to them, and #2 should be beneficial to those they are interacting with.

Now in today’s day and age we usually harp on education for one thing and one thing only. Yes sure we pretend that you should get a good education so that you are a well-rounded person, or a productive member of society or something of that lofty and idealised nature, but the real reason people say get a good education because they believe that is the way to make money, and money is how you get what you want and need in this world. It is true that without some kind of education, you definitely will not have what you want, nor what you need in terms of money or much of any other type of success. But that education does not need to come from a class room. It can come from what has become far too much of a cliche for me to use without blushing; “the streets.” It can from from wisdom passed on from your parents. Or it can come from an institution set up for the purpose of educating young (or old) people. It can come from many types of places but the reality is that if you don’t learn how to engage with the world in a manner that correlates with what you want, which usually means giving someone what they want first, then you will not make it, nor will you make anything better.

How this carried over into business, and therefore connects with the quote is this. He said that whether all of us like it or not, and whether the other half of us believe it’s still the case or not, the fact remains that our society is heavily Christianized. This means that while there are plenty of us that do not subscribe to Christianity, or even subscribe to a deity at all for that matter, the culture we find ourselves in has been created and sustained by Christian peoples for the last several hundred years. Whether you think of it as lasting influence or baggage, the fact remains that the majority of our ideals are Christian ideals. This is on a subconscious level and wont’ easily be taken from us as a culture, though on the conscious level we may seek to attain these ideals in what appear to be radically secularised ways. For example, both our political parties seek to help the poor and the needy. One party simply thinks that the other is going about it the wrong way. One says the only way to help is to teach people to help themselves. The other says the only way to help people is to sort of do it for them in a way. Independent of which one is right and which one is wrong, both  take for granted that it is a good thing to help the needy and they get their reasoning in the first place from their shared Christian cultural ideals. If we didn’t have these ideals then we would be having debates on whether is was right or not to help the needy in the first place. Aside from being taken over by a culture that has radically different religious roots we will never see a debate on whether taking care of the poor and needy is a good thing or not in North America or Western Europe. We will however debate on how  to get this done, but never whether it should be done. Christianity teaches that those who are strong should take care of and make accommodations for those who are weak. Christianity teaches that those who have plenty should take care of those who are in need. Those are the givens in our society at a subconscious level, whether there are many other cultures who teach that those who are weak should show deference to those who are strong. This is why men hold doors for women, slavery of minority ethnic groups is outlawed, and children can’t work until they are 16. The confusion comes in when they play out on a day to day basis and we can see that we still have some maturing to do as a society. One place where we seem to have gotten confused, as a people, and as a still subconsciously Christian people is in business.

Business has become a dangerous word because it’s a slippery slope toward the word Big business which is certainly a curse word. And if big business is a curse word then ‘profits’ must be one of the most vulgar of all. In short this is because our subconscious religious heritage teaches us that there is more to life than what can be seen or touched. That is to say that there is not only more to our existence than material world but that there are things that actually supersede the material world. And all that money can buy are material things. It also teaches us that those who place too much importance on the material, at the expense of putting importance on the immaterial are fools and can lead to wickedness. And to top it all off, we have a directive to take care of the needy, and we almost always think of the needy in terms of material resources. There are plenty out there who ignore this religious and cultural directive to the point of doing the exact opposite and actually oppressing the needy. Because our culture is rather duplicitous at the moment, being intent on freeing our conscious behavior from the tyrannical shackles of Christianity and religion, but being forever subconsciously tied to it, we start to lose track of why  we believe some things are right and somethings are wrong, but still have an innate drive to carry out those rights and avoid those wrongs. When this confusion sets in, as it has for some time our society grows more and more politically chaotic and culturally schizophrenic. Instead of the potential oppressor being kept in check so as to never fall into the temptation of using his strength for ill, he becomes the very oppressed himself, in an effort to combat the ill dreamed up in a nightmare of one of the potentially oppressed, to give the oppressor a taste of his own medicine, a medicine that he hasn’t even necessarily concocted yet. Like a doctor sues book where fictional creatures are getting stars tattooed and then removed on them so fast that nobody can quite tell who the original perpetrator was, or if there ever was one, we take what is good, but has potential for evil, and then do that evil to them in the name of what is good, convoluting both entirely. Over time this develops not only a natural hatred for those with strength, any kind of strength really, which allows for many different kinds of people to fall into the category of being loathed by a confused society that is grappling with an innate sense of right, without acknowledging its source: corporations, men, whites, the rich, the religious majority, the educated, those with white collar jobs, the banking industry, the oil industry, attractive people, tall people, popular kids in school, whoever. If they have power, even if they aren’t wielding it, even if it’s only perceived power, because we’ve kept our ideals but thrown out the ‘manual’ so to speak, they are suspect and probably got that power from doing something bad.

Business and profits are no exception. The idea behind profits though, is that in the truest sense of the word, it does not mean gain, which is n excess of wealth, of fat really. And admittedly so, it has become that to many of us. When profit becomes gain, the acquisition of more and more, the consumption of more than is sufficient, then they are tainted and not only seen as greedy or distasteful by our fellow man (usually because of his own greed and jealousy) but it also goes against how God wants us to profit. That is because it is hard to gain in the sense of acquisition without taking form others. The true sense of the word profit is to grow. When we succeed in business or in any other part of life, we often retain excess with which we use to grow the good we are already doing. Success in business finds the growth of not only the business but the customer and the laborers as well. That is why the demonization of business and profit is understandable, seeing as we are culturally too confused to recognize good strength being used well versus ill-gotten strength being used poorly, and the fact that there are plenty out there who would prove this demonization to be justified with the way they conduct themselves. But this demonization is ultimately incorrect because it cannot recognize the need for and the command to grow as being contrasted against, but equally important to our command to take care of the needy. Growth strengthens those involved, while gain decays.

In business it is always better to focus on growth rather than gain. A child that ‘gains’ retains fat that is of little use to him and often slows him down. Aside from genetic reasons this often happens because of a sort of gluttony or a greed with food or the wrong types of food which ultimately makes the child weaker and weaker. A child who grows is eating the right kinds and the right amounts of food allowing him to get stronger and grow and do even more things as he approaches adulthood.

A business have profit, presumably because they are providing a service or a product that others need. They are not only providing this to people but doing it in an organized fashion that is dependable for their customers. This is a good thing and this good earns them profits. Some heads of companies take more and more of these profits and squander them on frivolities or keeping up with the business owner down the street. This luxury will eventually turn into fat because it is neither a wise nor helpful way to use those profits. But a company may also use those profits to do the good they are already doing, but more of it, or better. This is growth which in turn helps even more people on the outside but strengthens the company on the inside. Growth and change for the better is always a good thing. Acquiring for the sake of having more and more is not and usually leaves us with less or in a weakened state in the end. That’s simple enough.

Quote of the Day, March 9, 2014: “Don’t seek gain, seek growth.”

We often think of profits as gain. An excess of wealth, of fat really. And admittedly so, it has become that to many of us. When profit becomes gain, the acquisition of more and more, the consumption of more than is sufficient, then they are tainted and not only seen as greedy or distasteful by our fellow man (usually because of his own greed and jealousy) but it also goes against how God wants us to profit. The true sense of the word profit is to grow. When we succeed in business or in any other part of life, we often retain excess with which we use to grow the good we are already doing.

 

In business it is always better to focus on growth rather than gain. A child that ‘gains’ retains fat that is of little use to him and often slows him down. Aside from genetic reasons this often happens because of a sort of gluttony or a greed with food or the wrong types of food which ultimately makes the child weaker and weaker. A child who grows is eating the right kinds and the right amounts of food allowing him to get stronger and grow and do even more things as he approaches adulthood.

 

A business have profit, presumably because they are providing a service or a product that others need. They are not only providing this to people but doing it in an organized fashion that is dependable for their customers. This is a good thing and this good earns them profits. Some heads of companies take more and more of these profits and squander them on frivolities or keeping up with the business owner down the street. This luxury will eventually turn into fat because it is neither a wise nor helpful way to use those profits. But a company may also use those profits to do the good they are already doing, but more of it, or better. This is growth which in turn helps even more people on the outside but strengthens the company on the inside. Growth and change for the better is always a good thing. Acquiring for the sake of having more and more is not and usually leaves us with less or in a weakened state in the end. That’s simple enough.

Quote of the Day, March 6, 2014: “It’s quite a rare skill to be both professional and frank.”

It’s not necessarily a profound notion, but it was to me when I first realized it. I had always thought that to be professional meant, at it’s heart, to be frank with people. After all, beating around the bush is bad news in business. So are things like fine print, political-correctness and breaking things easy to people. Business is about relationships, but it’s also about numbers, and while relationships can often require a bit of fineness and polish, numbers are cold and hard. Numbers don’t have feelings. People often say that numbers don’t lie. Well in that way, numbers are like words. Word don’t lie either, but you can arrange them in a way that makes them misrepresent the truth. The same goes for numbers. The difference is, that whether the numbers are lying or not, they say it without emotion, without courtesy, but without being abrasive as well. They just say what they have to say, frank and matter of fact.

But as I grow older I find that while I might have said that business is always about relationships and numbers, I’ve always unwittingly sped across the relationships and emphasized the numbers. Numbers are the frank part, but relationships are what makes the professional part professional. The question I’ve yet to answer is how to be truthful, up front, say what you need to say, and yet still be enigmatic enough to conceal details about your own business that are, frankly, nobody else’s business. Sometimes what you need to conceal is the very thing you need to reveal in order to truly get your very relevant point across.

Like a game of poker, its understood that we all have enough relationship to play the game and keep to the rules, and I’ll even show you, or at least make you feel as though I’ve shown you, my cards in so long as it helps move the game forward. But also like poker, it’s also understood that I’m not showing you everything, and that anything I do show you is either by design so that you’ll give me what I want, or a slip up on my part to be taken advantage of. Now of course in theory, and in the practice of most honest businessmen, the idea of the game, unlike poker, is not to see you go bankrupt. After all the world runs by all of us moving and gaining and losing and doing and creating and destroying in a big self-perpetuating network of activity. But there is a certain sense that aside from ideas like true modesty and true humility, there is an element of professionalism is only modest with respect to the idea that my modest keeps you from thinking I’ve got a good hand, or that my stiff upper lip keeps you from realizing that I’m on the ropes and that one well placed sucker punch could finish me at this moment. I suppose like most other things in life, it involves a balance, two poles of tension on which one end is complete divulgence of pertinent and relevant information and the other is stone-faced bluffing.

There is another professionalism however, an older, more noble sense in which there is nothing necessarily to gain from the situation, and yet I’m still going to protect the names or reputations of the parties involved in a various matter. Something like a journalist protecting his sources, or and executive taking full responsibility for a mishap that actually involved a few of his underlings as well. But perhaps these are the situations that so perplex me at times. When truth and information matter to a situation, how does one appropriately say what is true, while still not throwing others under the bus. If you want an accurate solution, is it not prudent to collect real data? Suppose I had better work on my poker face.

Ever notice that whenever someone uses the phrase, “Good Man,” it is almost always from someone in authority to someone under authority to someone under it, sometimes by peers, and never by someone under authority to someone in authority.

Ever notice that whenever someone  uses the phrase, “Good Man,” it is almost always from someone in authority to someone under authority to someone under it, sometimes by peers, and never by someone under authority to someone in authority.

 

Now don’t confuse this with someone calling someone a good man. A woman might be describing someone they are in love with and say that, “he is a good man.” A student may admire a past politician and say, “he was a good man.” Certainly these figures aren’t in authority over these men. And the student is certainly not considered a peer of the late politician.

 

Also by authority I do mean actual authority in the sense of an employer to an employee, or perhaps a schoolmaster to a student, but I also mean it in a more connotative sense, as in a 50 year old man to a 30 year old man, or perhaps an employee of the same position that has held that post longer than another employee of technically the same structural standing. Perhaps ‘senior’ would be a better word than authority.

 

Nevertheless, the phrase, “Good Man,” often used by one man to another is a slang term that is consistently used when one man hears a report of another’s success in carrying out a task. This is usually said to the person directly although it can be said about him if he is not present.

 

The interesting part to me, however, is the fact that it is almost invariably used by someone with seniority in the situation. A junior executive would quite comfortably say it to a member of the managerial staff, yet it would not make sense for even the most senior of executives to say it to the CEO.

 

A wife, as his peer, may say it to a husband when she learns he’s succeeded in some aspect, however his son would never do so. It just wouldn’t make sense. The only way it would make sense is if the son was using a type of subtle, even inadvertent, sarcasm, but by doing so he is rhetorically elevating himself or lowing his father to peer level. Not sure why this is, but it seems to be so.

Quote of the Day, September 15, 2013: “The good CEO would, in theory, be willing to go out and do every job in his company to best of his ability”

Continued from Quote of the Day, September 13, 2013……….The natural way of things, and what seems to be the best way to keep everyone healthy and happy in their jobs is that everyone has certain skills and everyone only has so much time. When people understand their roles and feel respected in them for being a valuable part of a larger working organism things tend to go well. Lower level employees might have very specific projects they are working on. Managers may have several that they are overseeing all at the same time. And again executives and CEOs have even more to juggle.

The good CEO would in theory be willing to go out and do every job in his company to best of his ability, just as he would expect from any of his executives on down to the janitor. The reason he’s not is because he’s got so many projects in scope, he couldn’t possibly do them all well enough and in time to make the whole company work. That’s it. If there were a way to be proficient at it all and timely and still not die of the stress and lack of sleep, a company owner or CEO or manager would do it. But humans aren’t designed to do it all. We are designed to focus on a few things, and work together with others who are focused on a few (related) other things. Together we end up building huge systems that do lots of good. But the building blocks of any company are its employees and when managers learn to respect them they can soar.

So a company owner has a huge vision to do and create and serve. But he realizes that his vision is actually too big for himself. So he goes to someone else and says, “Hey I’ve got this idea but I can’t do it on my own. I need help and I’ll pay you to help share the load.” An employee is born. But the owner has to constantly keep his own vision in check. Are their parts to my vision that are simply too dangerous, or perhaps immoral. Say the whole business is up and up but there’s this one facet that requires somebody to do something a little illegal. I’m not willing to do it. So I’ll hire someone who is willing, or needs the money enough that they’ll go against their better judgment out of financial desperation. That is not a winning strategy and that owner needs to reevaluate his company.

And of course it’s only the CEO or the owner that should be willing to do every other job in the company if needed. The hire the position, the more responsibility and the more of a servant attitude is required. (Same goes for politicians.) The CEO in one sense, is the guy indirectly asking everyone below him to do all the tasks they are working on, so he better be willing to do that task himself. The janitor doesn’t necessarily need to be willing to do what the CEO does though, or even the manager directly above him. But the manager above him, needs to be willing to keep his own office clean if need be. Oddly enough a company, ideally, is a pyramid scheme in which service goes from the top downward and out to the consumers. The owners and executives ideally are the biggest servants of all, serving all their employees. So that the employees can in turn serve the public. It seems though that we have no shortage of examples of companies that have turned this idea on its head.

Quote of the Day, September 13, 2013: “If you’re the boss only ask others to do things that you either don’t have time to do, or don’t know how to do. Never ask anyone to do anything that you’d be unwilling to do yourself.”

So this one seems almost self-explanatory but I suppose I owe it a little context. I was having lunch with a friend of mine who is a middle manager of a mid-sized company, much like my position, and we were going back and forth about the challenges of being in the middle where you now have employees under you that report to you on various matters, and yet you still report to several of your own bosses.

I thought what he said was quite simple, quite brilliant, and too often overlooked by many of the bosses I’ve had in the past. What was even more interesting was why he thought he remembered it when some of his colleagues did not.

He said that he notices that most kids and young adults, whether in retail or fast food, start at the bottom. They are the buss boy, the hostess, or the mop guy. At the bottom of the food chain they end up doing their job, and the jobs of whoever else above them doesn’t feel like doing theirs that day. Sometimes the tasks are more than inconvenient but they are even disgusting or dangerous. They do them because they have to but they learn two things: Not to respect the manager above them who made them do the dangerous thing that they know they weren’t going to be willing to do themselves, and to not really respect the position that they themselves are holding.

The problem with the first is that they will start to do their work begrudgingly which will hamper their performance. And they will not respond to instruction and correction by the manager in the way that’s needed for the business to run smoothly. The problem with the second is that one day they will hopefully move up, but then they will think it’s their turn to dump the dangerous, disgusting, or inconvenient on people that are below them.

Leading by example seems to be the best way still. You don’t have to know everything or how to do every task. That’s why you have specialized people beneath you. But you do have to understand what you’re asking others to do enough to realize the nature of what you’re asking them to do, and therefore would you be willing to jump in their and get your hands dirty with this project if it was needed, or your role? Or would you be too good for it. If you need someone to dig through the trash for you, you better have a good enough relationship with your employees that they know, if you had the time and weren’t off doing something else that’s within your role to make the company better that you’d be right in their with them. Or if you need them to put something together, that they know that you don’t know how to put it together yourself and are relying on their expertise to finish that particular task, instead of you not putting it together, even though it’s within your role in the company and you have time, simply because you’re too lazy to do so……….Continued on Quote of the Day, September 15, 2013

Pulpit-Envy

It strikes me as odd every time I run into a Christian who is envious or regretful that they didn’t enter the pastorate. Heck, I’ve even felt that feeling, the sense that whenever you hang around a lot of Christians you get the feeling that the consensus is that the only truly worth while occupation is one that is overtly and strictly a pulpit or missionary job, and that you somehow don’t have as much worth or weight unless there’s a Pastor of… in front of your name on your business card. While I’ve felt that, I usually quickly give my head a shake, let things rattle back to their proper positions and move on in life. But it troubles me that so many of us get stuck right there.

 

First of let me just start out by saying that those of you looking to get into an occupational battle over the merits of being employed by the church and missions in some capacity, you are barking up the wrong tree. I think being a pastor or missionary is (not having ever been one myself) HARD, selfless, demanding, relentless, and gutsy. Among other things it’s a willingness to stand directly in the crossfire of not only those around us walking around in a body who would see the message of the gospel shut up and shut down, but those not walking around at all. All for the sake of teaching others about the creator and administering the sacraments. Those who are called to do such a thing and who answer that call deserve our respect. It doesn’t mean they are infallible or are somehow closer to God even than the rest of us, but any guy who signs up for a job that has listed in the description: Attempt to teach an incorrigible group of people who will be more attentive to whether your tie is the appropriate color for the month than your message, reoccurring public speaking, and possibly being called upon to perform an exorcism or two within your career, certainly gets the tip of the cap from me.

 

What this is about is the rest of us gawking in awe of that guy, all thinking that we are doing diddly squat while he’s the only one doing anything that God cares about. It’s my assertion that even the least thoughtful atheist among us should be able to, even if only on an intellectual level, realize that any God who made this world, would not possibly have made it simply for pastors to have the only worthwhile jobs.

 

Wow I’m realizing that this post is going to sound like a real bash-fest of a few professions but I urge you to hear me out and understand that it’s nothing of the sort. I’m going to compare pastoring and mission work to teaching, as in a school setting. Teachers again are wonderful and needed, BUT, the only point that teaching, even as a concept, exists at all is because there is an implied DOING that comes after it. Now on an individual basis my mom could have been a teacher, and I could have grown up and gone to school to be a teacher, and my son could grow up and become a teacher as well and we could start a whole line of teachers. That would be fine and good. But societally speaking we need to be growing up to be doers, with the occasional teacher, with the gift for teaching, rising up among our ranks to help guide the rest of the young doers. And there needs to be A LOT more doers than teachers. That’s becomes even from strictly an economic sense there’s no point in teaching everyone to do all these things that never end up getting done. How awesome would it be if we all have a very sophisticated understanding of music theory but there were never any concerts to go to because nobody actually just sat down and played the stinking piano once in a while?

 

How much more would a God who created such an intricate and wonderful universe with so much to discover, and explore, and manipulate, and make, and experience be wasting His time to create us all just so that we can all learn the rules to the game real well and then die. At some point he wants us to actually roll the dice and play the game and set the rule book aside, only to glance back at it from time to time when confusion on how to play may hit. God made the world and set it up so that we could “play” and enjoy it and in turn honor and glorify him. Just like Parker Brothers or James Naismith God made this game with certain rules, not really designed to restrict us but more to help us get the most out of the game.

 

The problem is that we take what’s known as the Great Commission all wrong. We must go and make disciples of all the nations but it’s not because God wants us all to be good disciples for the sake of being disciples sitting on pillars having food and water brought to us. The thing is God wants us to play the game but half of us are walking around without the foggiest idea what the rules really are and are therefore not having fun with the game at all, and not earning any accolades for the game’s creator. Some of us are using loaded dice, and others drawing two cards from the deck instead of one and then forgetting to discard. Still others of us both agree where the three point line is but we argue over whether it counts for 2 points or 3. And then there are some of us out there playing just straight up jungle ball or 52 card pick up. Well to use a, weak at best and sacrilegious at worst analogy, pastors and missionaries are God’s way of getting the rule book out to everybody and allowing us to refresh our memories and even see the rules in a new light time and time again. But that analogy is my attempt to illustrate that just as any home grown American can tell you that while rulebooks and referees are important, essential even, the NFL is most certainly NOT about whistles and flags. It’s about the players, the first downs, the completions, the tackles. So in life, God created a world with REAL work to be done; bridges to be built, languages to be deciphered, oil to be drilled, migration patterns to be charted. We need to do all this under the context that God created it all, hid it with pleasure, and then allows us the pleasure of digging it all up again, of playing the game He created. To take our eye off the ball and the desire to score the winning point because we have whistle-envy is almost completely backward.

 

Missions should be funded. Pastors should be supported. Not because they are the only truly worthwhile professions but because they have the unique and honorable task of getting everybody on the same page so that all the “real” professions and vocations out there can stop quibbling over the rules and really rock the planet (and eventually the universe) with all that humanity can accomplish with God’s help. Just as a piano teacher sits silently in the back of the audience beaming as her student hits every note with impeccable timing in a recital or a concert, so should a pastor beam when his parishioner closes a deal in which he legitimately met the other party’s needs, while also getting what he needed, and all without any corruption.

 

Nobody would have gotten there without the teacher, but let’s be real. It’s not about the teacher. It’s not even really about the student. It’s about the show. Likewise we won’t get there without church, without pastors to teach and support us, and without missionaries to help bring the world on board. But lets be real. It’s not about the pastor. It’s not even really about us. It’s actually about God, and God doesn’t want us to learn for the sake of learning. He wants us to learn so we can go out and close that deal.

People Who Complain About the Media Don’t Know How It Works Part I

 

People on both the Right and the Left get all bent out of shape about the media because they make the mistake of thinking that their objective is to give you the truth about what’s going on in the world. Unfortunately the true nature of any business is to make profits. The difference between things like a news outfit and say a company that rents heaters is that the company that rents heaters will simply not make money if their heaters don’t produce heat. And that’s because it’s very very easy to tell if you’re getting heat or not. Yet the news outfit’s prosperity is only very loosely tied to its ability to provide actual news and truth. What’s, perhaps even more, surprising is this is only really half the news industry’s fault. The second half, more like the other three quarters is our fault.

The mix up is that we tend to not see the real product that a news company is pushing. A heater renting company is very straightforward. Their product is definitely renting heaters to customers. Where it gets confusing is that a news outfit works a bit counter intuitively, or even backward. We think its product is current events provided in the form of video and audio commentary with a dash of overdramatized analysis and talking heads. But this is dead wrong. This is part of the shock and awe or really just the smoke screen. Actually to use a very crude analogy, the type of “current events” that show up on your TV screen every evening are as much the true product of the news organization as the color of the trucks that bring a heater from a heat company onto your hard. They may be flashy and orange, and that may even subconsciously play into your decision to go with that company over the ones with the beat up trucks, but at the end of the day that’s not the product at all. But that’s obvious. Again what’s not so obvious is the product the news outfits are pushing. Well if it’s not the news, what is it?

TO BE CONTINUED