WEBVTT
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The topics and opinions express in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
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make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
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should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for
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choosing W FOURCY Radio.
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What's working on Purpose?
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Anyway?
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Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People
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ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their
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talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave
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being part of an organization that inspires them and helps
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them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be
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such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity.
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In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help
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usher in this world we all want working on Purpose.
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Now here's your host, doctor Elise Cortez.
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Welcome back to Working on Purpose? Which is there about
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to you? With passion and pride. Since February of twenty fifteen. Already,
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thanks for tuning in again this week. I'm your host,
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doctor Elis Cortes. If we have not met before and
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you don't know me, I'm a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist,
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to management consultant, local therapist, speaker and author. My team
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and I at Gusto and Now help companies to enliven
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and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high performance culture,
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inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers activated by meaning and purpose.
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Did you know that inspired employees and purpose letter organizations
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outperform their satisfied peers by factor of two point two
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five to one. In other words, purpose and inspiration are
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good for the bottom line. You can learn more about
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us and how we can work together at Gusto dashnow
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dot com or visit my personal site at least Coortes
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dot com.
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With us today, we have Ken Lazott.
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He is the founder and CEO of Emerson Consulting Group,
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a consulting firm helping establish thought, leadership and professionals of
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all types. He's the author eight books and the editor
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of two more. We'll be talking about his book Walden
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for Hire. Business Lessons from Henry David Threau. Specifically, we'll
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talk about his vast work experience in philosophy of work
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and life, his work as an entrepreneur and inventor in
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his family pencil business, and the school he founded, all
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of which give us a fresh perspective on business today.
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He joined it today from Concord, Massachusetts, the hometown of
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Henry David Thureau, where he lives just a femile shy
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of Walden pond Ken. Welcome to working on purpose.
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Wow, well, thank you for inviting me to be on
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what we're working on purpose?
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Most welcome, and let us celebrate this wonderful creation you
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brought into the world.
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Shall we look at this?
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Yeah, it looks a lot like that one.
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I have to correct you in one thing in my biome.
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Oh please, here is you Let everybody know that I
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live in Concord, Massachusetts. But I don't live in Concord, Massachusetts.
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I live in Concord, Massachusetts. Concuss you say it around.
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You concent Okay, I thank you for a very important correction.
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Corrected.
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Okay, Another big university there here is Habit.
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Have it? Yeah, have it.
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I'll work on my a's right.
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Good good good?
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Okay.
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So here we are already celebrating Henry David Throw and
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Walden Pond. We kind of start by orient our listeners
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and viewers as to why in the heck that you
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were so drawn to researching Hindry David Throw. I mean,
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I realized, he's You're in his neighborhood, you're in his backyard.
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But beyond that, well, I moved to Conquered about thirty
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years ago. Okay, I honestly didn't know that much about
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Henry back then, but when you live here, you learn
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about him and Dribs and Drabs. You learn about Louisa
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may Alcott and Dribs and Drabs, Ralph Waldo Emerson or on,
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all these people that were all hanging out together back
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in the mid eighteen hundred and so you learn a
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little bit. What really happened with me is that I
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got asked to become a part of the thorough Farm
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birthplace house, a place where Henry was born, and that's
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the Aeron conk It and I was asked to be
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on the board of directors. And it was at a
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time in my life when it felt like the right
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thing to do, so I immediately said yes and started going
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to meetings, but not necessarily understanding much about Henry David
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Thurrow himself.
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Again, it sort of.
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Drips in drabs until what really happened is I became
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president at one point, and I was president ended up
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being a president of the board for ten years. And
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so you learn more and more and more. But my
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day job, my company, h Emerson Consulting Group, helps business
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experts today become published thought leaders and and their business
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is my specialty to work with. So I I have
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the business on my mind during the day and at night.
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Once once a week or once a month, I would
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go to these meetings where it's it's not business at all,
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it's about Henry this and Henry that, Henry environmentalism, and
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Henry the writer, and Henry the uh the saunterer around
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Walden Woods and all these kinds of things. And one
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day it just snapped. Something happened. I just soned because
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because I would see these various authors come and go
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and talk about their new book and you know, learn
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about it's always this. I don't mean to say they're
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mundane themes, but they would They tended to repeat themselves
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and the nature ecology writing and like that, and something
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happened where I said, wait a minute, what about business.
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I'm thinking about business all day long? What about Henry
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and business? And it got me thinking that I should
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look into it. And the more I did, the more
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I found again dribs and drabs of Henry relating to business.
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So I'm sitting at.
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The Thorough farm House one day and there are a
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couple of people that I've been working with on the
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board for a few years who knew a lot about
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Thorough and I said to them, you know, I've been
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thinking about writing a book about Henry as a business expert.
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And their first instinct, both of them very knowledgeable people,
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is to sort of laugh.
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At that, and it had to be laughter.
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Young, yeah, yeah, And I thought that was interesting.
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It just made me more interested to pursue this. So
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I started to do some research and it really didn't
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take long for me to realize that I was really
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onto something. There's never has been a book on this
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theme Henry David Thurrow as a business expert. In one
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hundred and seventy plus years since he left this earth,
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so many thousands of essays and so many thousands of
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books have been written about him, but none of them
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had the laser focused theme of him as a business expert.
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And it took me a while to do this, to
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research it at all.
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But you know, as you and I just proved everybody,
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that's a book and there's a lot in there. And
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I covered eighteen chapters with Henry as a business expert.
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So that's that's how it all came about it.
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Well, that's it.
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You've inspired me to write my next book, and it's
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going to have to be on what we can learn
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from Garfield, the cartoon character on inspiration.
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Right, that's where it has to be next. You've just
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inspired me.
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I got the subtitle Moments of Inspiration from Garfield.
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Well I love it? Right, isn't this fun?
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Oh?
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See?
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You wonder why I keep hosting the show after all
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these eleven years?
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Right?
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I just have these kinds of conversations. Well, just quickly,
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for our listeners and viewers who haven't read your book
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and don't know throw I call him Threau.
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You're calling him thorough.
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Yeah, I should say something about that.
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Yes, please.
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He actually born David Henry Threau, and as he guided
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I don't know how, maybe late late teens or early twenties.
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For some reason, he.
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Decided he wanted to switch the first two names, not
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David Henry, but Henry David. And then as he got
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thinking about his last name, he liked that sort of
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French pronunciation better.
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Thorough rather than.
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Good.
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This is so good.
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And most people don't know that.
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I didn't know it, so you know a long time, uh,
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and it's Henry David thorow.
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Okay, thorough well.
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So I also was dazzled by just the sheer quantities
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different kinds of work that he had done in his life.
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And you could just kind of give us a short
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tour or at least legals of what he did. I
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don't want to spend a lot of time on that,
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but just come to give us a breadth of the
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stuff this man was up to.
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Yeah.
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Well, one of the things that in the book is
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that the chapters. I break the chapters up into these
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various jobs, and you do.
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I think it's delightful, and it's easier for me to
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go to the pole of contents and.
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And read through them quickly. I can find it now.
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Of course I can't with him on on camera.
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I can't.
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But yeah, no, I've got the page and just for
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me to scan it myself. He was of course, he
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was a builder. People know about his cabin the shores
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of Walden Ponds and that. Uh. And he also helped
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other people that he knew and conquered too to build.
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Things or you know, renovate the houses and that sort
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of thing.
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Uh.
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He was a farmer.
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He was a farmer because he didn't own that land
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that he was on. Ralph Emerson was a mentor of
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his and Waldo as he was called was uh uh
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had owned the land and made a deal with Henry
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that if Henry would start guards yes, yeah, that he
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would give the beans to Waldo for his family, and
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some of them he could keep to himself for his
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own family whatever.
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But that was part of his deal there. So he
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was a farmer.
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And in farming he was always inventing new ways to
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go about things that farmers had done for you know,
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centuries eons, and he was always looking to see how
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could he improve on it. And he was actually able
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to improve in a sort of a minor way.
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You know.
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It wasn't a big farm, but a few acres he
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would have he would have enough for Waldo his family.
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He would have enough for his own family. Both of
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them are five six, seven people in each family, and
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then for himself. And then there's some leftover, I mean
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the take the ones that were left over. And he
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went to the market in the center of Conquered, like
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a lot of the farmers did, and he just set
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up shopping and.
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And sold what he had left over.
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He claimed that he was making more money profit wise,
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profit ratio than the farmers that had been there for
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a long time.
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And this is one of the things.
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They have to take his word for it because there
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isn't a lot of documentation otherwise. But farming was another thing.
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And then just really quickly he was a surveyor, and
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he became the chief surveyor of Conquered after a number
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of years. Moving how great he was. He was a
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public speaker, he was a scientist, naturalist, he was a inventor.
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Waiving this pencil, yes, the pencil.
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This pencil is called and we all know what these
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are called, because they've all used them and still use them.
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A number two pencil. A Pencils have a lot of numbers.
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This is something I learned and the course of investigating this.
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But pencils were really bad back in those days. Even
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the good pencils. The best pencils, they were sloppy, and
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they didn't necessarily write, or they didn't write consistently, and