Henry David Thoreau on Business: Radical Simplicity for Complex Times

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity.

0:49 In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, doctor Elise Cortez. Welcome back to Working on Purpose? Which is there about to you? With passion and pride. Since February of twenty fifteen. Already, thanks for tuning in again this week. I'm your host, doctor Elis Cortes. If we have not met before and you don't know me, I'm a workforce advisor, organizational psychologist, to management consultant, local therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto and Now help companies to enliven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high performance culture, inspirational leadership, and nurturing managers activated by meaning and purpose.

1:32 Did you know that inspired employees and purpose letter organizations outperform their satisfied peers by factor of two point two five to one. In other words, purpose and inspiration are good for the bottom line. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at Gusto dashnow dot com or visit my personal site at least Coortes dot com. With us today, we have Ken Lazott. He is the founder and CEO of Emerson Consulting Group, a consulting firm helping establish thought, leadership and professionals of all types. He's the author eight books and the editor of two more. We'll be talking about his book Walden for Hire. Business Lessons from Henry David Threau. Specifically, we'll talk about his vast work experience in philosophy of work and life, his work as an entrepreneur and inventor in his family pencil business, and the school he founded, all of which give us a fresh perspective on business today.

2:19 He joined it today from Concord, Massachusetts, the hometown of Henry David Thureau, where he lives just a femile shy of Walden pond Ken. Welcome to working on purpose. Wow, well, thank you for inviting me to be on what we're working on purpose? Most welcome, and let us celebrate this wonderful creation you brought into the world. Shall we look at this? Yeah, it looks a lot like that one. I have to correct you in one thing in my biome. Oh please, here is you Let everybody know that I live in Concord, Massachusetts. But I don't live in Concord, Massachusetts. I live in Concord, Massachusetts. Concuss you say it around. You concent Okay, I thank you for a very important correction.

3:03 Corrected. Okay, Another big university there here is Habit. Have it? Yeah, have it. I'll work on my a's right. Good good good? Okay. So here we are already celebrating Henry David Throw and Walden Pond. We kind of start by orient our listeners and viewers as to why in the heck that you were so drawn to researching Hindry David Throw. I mean, I realized, he's You're in his neighborhood, you're in his backyard. But beyond that, well, I moved to Conquered about thirty years ago. Okay, I honestly didn't know that much about Henry back then, but when you live here, you learn about him and Dribs and Drabs. You learn about Louisa may Alcott and Dribs and Drabs, Ralph Waldo Emerson or on, all these people that were all hanging out together back in the mid eighteen hundred and so you learn a little bit. What really happened with me is that I got asked to become a part of the thorough Farm birthplace house, a place where Henry was born, and that's the Aeron conk It and I was asked to be on the board of directors. And it was at a time in my life when it felt like the right thing to do, so I immediately said yes and started going to meetings, but not necessarily understanding much about Henry David

4:37 Thurrow himself. Again, it sort of. Drips in drabs until what really happened is I became president at one point, and I was president ended up being a president of the board for ten years. And so you learn more and more and more. But my day job, my company, h Emerson Consulting Group, helps business experts today become published thought leaders and and their business is my specialty to work with. So I I have the business on my mind during the day and at night.

5:19 Once once a week or once a month, I would go to these meetings where it's it's not business at all, it's about Henry this and Henry that, Henry environmentalism, and Henry the writer, and Henry the uh the saunterer around Walden Woods and all these kinds of things. And one day it just snapped. Something happened. I just soned because because I would see these various authors come and go and talk about their new book and you know, learn about it's always this. I don't mean to say they're mundane themes, but they would They tended to repeat themselves and the nature ecology writing and like that, and something happened where I said, wait a minute, what about business.

6:11 I'm thinking about business all day long? What about Henry and business? And it got me thinking that I should look into it. And the more I did, the more I found again dribs and drabs of Henry relating to business. So I'm sitting at. The Thorough farm House one day and there are a couple of people that I've been working with on the board for a few years who knew a lot about Thorough and I said to them, you know, I've been thinking about writing a book about Henry as a business expert. And their first instinct, both of them very knowledgeable people, is to sort of laugh.

6:56 At that, and it had to be laughter. Young, yeah, yeah, And I thought that was interesting. It just made me more interested to pursue this. So I started to do some research and it really didn't take long for me to realize that I was really onto something. There's never has been a book on this theme Henry David Thurrow as a business expert. In one hundred and seventy plus years since he left this earth, so many thousands of essays and so many thousands of books have been written about him, but none of them had the laser focused theme of him as a business expert.

7:40 And it took me a while to do this, to research it at all. But you know, as you and I just proved everybody, that's a book and there's a lot in there. And I covered eighteen chapters with Henry as a business expert. So that's that's how it all came about it. Well, that's it. You've inspired me to write my next book, and it's going to have to be on what we can learn from Garfield, the cartoon character on inspiration. Right, that's where it has to be next. You've just inspired me. I got the subtitle Moments of Inspiration from Garfield. Well I love it? Right, isn't this fun?

8:20 Oh? See? You wonder why I keep hosting the show after all these eleven years? Right? I just have these kinds of conversations. Well, just quickly, for our listeners and viewers who haven't read your book and don't know throw I call him Threau. You're calling him thorough. Yeah, I should say something about that. Yes, please. He actually born David Henry Threau, and as he guided I don't know how, maybe late late teens or early twenties. For some reason, he. Decided he wanted to switch the first two names, not David Henry, but Henry David. And then as he got thinking about his last name, he liked that sort of French pronunciation better.

9:03 Thorough rather than. Good. This is so good. And most people don't know that. I didn't know it, so you know a long time, uh, and it's Henry David thorow. Okay, thorough well. So I also was dazzled by just the sheer quantities different kinds of work that he had done in his life. And you could just kind of give us a short tour or at least legals of what he did. I don't want to spend a lot of time on that, but just come to give us a breadth of the stuff this man was up to. Yeah. Well, one of the things that in the book is that the chapters. I break the chapters up into these various jobs, and you do.

9:46 I think it's delightful, and it's easier for me to go to the pole of contents and. And read through them quickly. I can find it now. Of course I can't with him on on camera. I can't. But yeah, no, I've got the page and just for me to scan it myself. He was of course, he was a builder. People know about his cabin the shores of Walden Ponds and that. Uh. And he also helped other people that he knew and conquered too to build.

10:26 Things or you know, renovate the houses and that sort of thing. Uh. He was a farmer. He was a farmer because he didn't own that land that he was on. Ralph Emerson was a mentor of his and Waldo as he was called was uh uh had owned the land and made a deal with Henry that if Henry would start guards yes, yeah, that he would give the beans to Waldo for his family, and some of them he could keep to himself for his own family whatever. But that was part of his deal there. So he was a farmer.

11:11 And in farming he was always inventing new ways to go about things that farmers had done for you know, centuries eons, and he was always looking to see how could he improve on it. And he was actually able to improve in a sort of a minor way. You know. It wasn't a big farm, but a few acres he would have he would have enough for Waldo his family. He would have enough for his own family. Both of them are five six, seven people in each family, and then for himself. And then there's some leftover, I mean the take the ones that were left over. And he went to the market in the center of Conquered, like a lot of the farmers did, and he just set up shopping and.

12:04 And sold what he had left over. He claimed that he was making more money profit wise, profit ratio than the farmers that had been there for a long time. And this is one of the things. They have to take his word for it because there isn't a lot of documentation otherwise. But farming was another thing. And then just really quickly he was a surveyor, and he became the chief surveyor of Conquered after a number of years. Moving how great he was. He was a public speaker, he was a scientist, naturalist, he was a inventor.

12:46 Waiving this pencil, yes, the pencil. This pencil is called and we all know what these are called, because they've all used them and still use them. A number two pencil. A Pencils have a lot of numbers. This is something I learned and the course of investigating this. But pencils were really bad back in those days. Even the good pencils. The best pencils, they were sloppy, and they didn't necessarily write, or they didn't write consistently, and they get all over your hands and leak down a page, and there are all kinds of problems. And yet people accepted that because that was how a pencil was. Henry Dear he didn't accept that. And in his father's pencil factory, which produced good pencils and did well, but again the kind that I just described, he said, this's got to be a better way. So he thought about it and thought about it, and then thought he should do some research.

13:51 So he went to his alma mater, Harvard, and he spent a few days, maybe a week or two there the books, learning all he could about pencils. And he found that in Europe pencil makers did things differently, and they did it in such a way that their pencils were very reliable. So by looking at that, he brought the recipe for the lid mixture inside a pencil, and you know, a few experiments in all, and even creating a contraption that would create this lidden dust that was very fine and would float in the air and come down where he needed to capture it in anyway. Long story short, reinvented the pencil, and it's the same pencil.

14:42 This is the same approach that we use today. So those are the things farmer and inventor and building writer. Let's not forget writer, right and ut as well poetic well, you know, writer. Was important to him too, you know, in a way, this book is sort of a his journey toward having. A dream career manifest itself. And in the early days when he was thinking about what did he really want to do in life, he chose what a lot of writers chosen those days, and that was to be a poet. And he was very he was very good at being a poet, and he was very passionate about it. But then, like now, poets didn't really make much money. So while you could find a few instances of them becoming famous and making money and making a living, most of the time they didn't.

15:43 So he had the same problem. He would write his poems and submit them and sometimes they'd get published, sometimes they didn't. Didn't necessarily pay. Him much of anything, but that was his first step toward his dream career. Just the arc of the of the book. Is to finally get it to a point where he was he had given that up as the number one dream career in writing and writing books and was the most important thing. And I love how you revered him, will and we will talk more about that as we go, but let's grab our first break. I'm your host, doctor Earle's Cortez, who on the Eric Ken Lazzotte. He is the founder and CEO of Emerson Consulting Group, the consulting firm helping establish thought leadership to professionals of all types. We've been talking about where this book came from, his obsession with thorough and also his bit of his life and who he was as a human. After the break, we're going to talk a bit more about some of the things that he did in his work and what we can learn from those as leaders and business people.

16:43 We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise A lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

17:52 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor release Cortes, as I am dedicated to helping create a world where organizations throw because their people thrive. They're led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness that would do business in a way that betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books. So one of my lateis came out. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating a meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand today's discerning workforce. What did they want to need from you to give you their best and then I provide you twenty two best practices to equip you to instill it into your culture and your leadership to keep them. You can find my books on Amazon or on at leastcore test dot com.

18:33 If you are now just joining us. My guest is Kendl Resot. He is the author of eight books and the editor of another two. Today we're talking about his book Walden for Hire. Business Lessons from Henry David Threw. Before we get into a little bit of his work here, I would be remiss if we didn't just sort of remind our listeners and viewers a passage that he's incredibly known for. So I'd love to read it from your book. So this is where you're helping us. Remember Henry's own reasoning for camping out for two years, two months in two days on the tranquil shores nearby Walden Pond. You quote him as saying, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not when I came to die discovered that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life living in so dear, maybe dire, Nor did I wish to practice there was resignation unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and spartan like as to put to route all that was not life, to cut a broad swap and shave close, to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms. That is just so powerful.

19:55 And it's one will a lot of us feel a lot of field uh frequently. And that's where another famous quote of is the massive men lead lives of quiet, desperate. And that's something that he never wanted to do. When he did everything he could to prevent that from happening. But he was so critical and sad early in a way that wherever you would look, and he would see people around him, right right here in this town that they they were spending This is going to sound familiar to a lot of people, but that they were sent they spending so much time on a job that they didn't particularly particularly love. And uh, but why they do it?

20:41 Because they had bills to pay, mortgages to pay. You have car payments. You know, you have to take your dog to the vet. You know all these things. And Henry said in the very beginning of his book Walden that people should pay attention to what he called the necessaries of life, not the necessities. He didn't use that word for whatever reason. Necessaries. And those were things like what are the things that we can that are necessary? And they were pretty basic, you know they were. They were food, of course, and and and. Warmth. Warmth was a big one.

21:22 There are a few others, but I always find warmth kind of interesting because not only did he mean the warmth of the heating system, like in his cabin he had a stove, a wood stove, but the h but clothing, for example, he considered the clothing was unnecessary for the warmth as much as anything else. How basic can you be so that you're not having to have all these bills that are eating you up? And that are they seem so important? But in fact he has an other quote, and I don't know if I can remember precisely, but it had to do with the idea that a person is successful uh in in in in verse ratio to the things that they can let go or behind or or not not basically not be enslaved too.

22:27 I remember that I really appreciate that. To bring that whole idea of more of the necessities and left to modern day, I saw a delightful uh clip on LinkedIn that somebody had written up and this woman was writing about how, you know, with all this inflation that she needed to start cutting corners and you know, you know, chopping things off off off the budget. She said she was sitting around with her family one night watching TV and the kids went to turn the TV on which to go over their favorite channel and wasn't working, and and there and and their mom said, well I can't, and so basically said okay. They went to go to the next channel and the same thing, it wasn't working. To look to get it, hirsh like, I canceled that.

23:07 And so then by the third time that they had got to a channel that she had canceled for kids turned her and said, are you dying? It was just so funny, though, it's just this idea that he's talking about those kinds of things. And today, of course we're talking about canceling, you know, TV channels. Basically it's down to a more necessary subsistence. You know, Henry never watched cable TV. He had no interest in it. I suppose not. Yeah, I think about it. Back then, no radio, no this, no zoom, no. And to put that into context. We're talking about when he lived on while upon that was eighteen forty five. So it's important for listeners and viewers to recognize just the period we're talking about here.

23:51 It's it's just amazing what. He did right and all the more so here's another fascinating thing that I loved about your book. Can I didn't know that the man went to Harvard habbid So after graduating from Harvard, he lands this teaching job. And it's in the time. Period, five hundred dollars a year was considered a lot of money and he's like hit the jackpot. So tell the story about how what was that experience? And it didn't last long? So help us understand what happened there. Well, Henry, Henry went into this job. First of all, he was out just out of college, out of Harvard, and there was a depression at that time, in economic depression, which back in those days they called a panic.

24:39 I wonder what, why why do we have that word? By the way, as as that goes, But the. Panic of eighteen thirty seven, he was he was graduated and there were no jobs, so he was looking for one, but he couldn't find one, and he couldn't get an offer or anything, and then lo and behold somebody who knew somebody in Concer said, you know, we're looking for somebody to teach an elementary school here, and I think you'd be good for it, and he recommended Henry for the job, and he got the job. Now he's only out of college maybe a few months, and he's suddenly got a job where other people, you know, looking hard for a job not getting anywhere.

25:26 So he takes the job. One of the things he was happy about was that there had been a decision and conquered that they would do away with what most schools use for discipline, and that's corporal punishment. They would not he would not have to do that as a teacher. That was very important to Henry. So he took the job and he did the best he could to learn. I don't know if how many teachers we have out there, but I was a substitute teacher for like three or four days early in my life, because what am I doing here?

26:09 This is just it's. Keeping everybody quiet rather than really teaching. And I think that Henry had the same experience. He had a little bit of an unruly classroom at times. So one day the head of the school committee in Conquered came to sit in the back of the room and see how you was doing. And they were watching this kind of craziness that went on, which Henry was able to handle by the way he could see it as that as being a creativity experiment, let's say. And anyway, this school committee had said, no, you can't do that. You've got to do something here. This is not the way to keep kids in line, and so you're going to have to start slapping them on the wrist or the hand, even even though that was not the official policy, and that just Henry just didn't couldn't believe that he was being asked to do this, and he got so upset with it. He did it to a couple of the kids, wrapped them on the wrist and then knuckles or whatever, and sent them back to their seats in their chairs, crying.

27:29 But he just it was it didn't sit with him. It wasn't He didn't feel like he could keep doing it. So the very same day, after school was out, he went to the uh this superintendent's office and said, I quit ten days. Ten days, Yeah, right then and there that that was going over the line for him. He didn't. He couldn't, he couldn't buy it. In the end, he ended up not not getting another teaching job where he was going to be having to live day by day by someone else's rules. But he did become a teacher again when he and his brother founded a private school in Concrete.

28:19 Before you go into that next school, I want to emphasize a couple of lessons out of that because I wanted to speak separately about that school. That what I took to be out of the lessons and you sort of do talk about in your book too, is you know, the lesson from him leaving that very very very high paying, lucrative job that suited his what he wanted to do, et cetera in the world was he did not want to leave his morals behind. He was not willing to set aside his morals for a big pot of money. And I have met many people over my lifetime who have sold their soul for the pot of money. And so I really appreciated that he stuck to that. I just wanted to really celebrate that before we talk about the academy piece, because him starting the academy I thought was such a in the way you describe it in your book, such a like a vindication of all of that.

29:08 So beautiful what they did. So now please you know. The old expression of one door closes, another one opens right right, And that's kind of what happened there. He didn't just walk right into that idea. That took a little while for it at the fument in his brain. But he did like kids. See one thing about him is he really did. He never got married and never had kids of his own, but he really did like children, and he could relate to them and play with them, and teach them and inspire them and all of that. So he had this idea about starting his own school, and so he did. And there were some prominent people in Conquered who appreciated who Henry was and what they thought he might accomplish in this regard, and they sent their own kids to go and be part of the school. And so it started to fill up. And and what he did there was not it wasn't so much learning by wrote or just the three hours and and uh or when he was at Harvard. You know, back in those days, when you were in college, you were spending most of your time learning other languages Italian and French and Spanish, et cetera.

30:25 But anyway he started, Uh, he created his own curriculum, and his curriculum had to do with There was some of the the reading, writing, arithmetic type of thing, but half of the day was very often spent doing what he loved to do in particular, and that's uh trekking down to Walden Pond and through the woods there that we call the Walden Woods. Uh and uh and and. Stopping with with with the kids and saying, anybody, what do you see right here? And they would see certain flowers or certain plants or whatever, and he say, anybody see an arrowhead?

31:06 And he would and they look, they don't see an arrowhead. And he say, it was almost like a magic trick. It's sort of like stoop down and pull up an arrowhead from beneath the earth. And he's very good at that sort of thing. But the idea was to get in touch with nature, learn about nature, see the benefits of being in nature, you know, health benefits as well as inspirational benefits. And he literally for his own sake, would wander around the woods many days of the week for a full half day for four hours or something. When we all go hiking, most of us we might go for like a half an hour or forty minutes.

31:52 So call it really good. He literally went for four hours and just what call saunter word adoring around the world of woods. Hang on for this because I want to do a little more diving into this part. Ken. There's a few things about what he did at the academy that I want to extract for our listeners and viewers. So let's grab our last break and then we'll keep talking about his his academy. I'm your host, Doctor Earlie's Cortes, who are on the earth, Ken Lasot. He's the founder and CEO of Emerson Consulting Group, consulting firm helping establish thought leadership to professionals of all types. We've been talking a bit about Henry David throws Johnt into entrepreneurship in the world of business. After the break, we're going to continue talking about what there is to learn from what he did with that academy.

32:39 We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing and meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise A Lisee at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

33:47 Thank you for ding with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elase Cortes. If you're just joining us, my guest is Ken Lazant. He's the author of eight books and the editor of an additional two. Today we're talking about Walden for Hire business lessons from Henry David Dua. So one of the things I wanted to celebrate that I think also really speaks to what your whole point of writing the book is, what can we learn from how he lived and how he went through his life through enterprise, et cetera and bring it into the world of business and leadership. So just the very fact that when he started socializing his idea to the community about this academy, he referred to it he said, this would be a very progressive school, unlike that any had come before.

34:28 And the very fact that he. Socialized it that way I think is really compelling, right, because talk about marketing. You have a whole section on how he was a marketer, a whole chapter on how he was a marketer. I think that's really compelling. So that's one of the points I wanted to raise also too. Of course, in his school, no corporal punishment, right, that was another distinguishing factor. He's like that, I know. That's the norm out there. I got that, but we're not doing it that way. I'm going to do it my way. So those are a couple of things if you want to comment on those, there's a couple of things that I really want to make sure that we called out that really speak to I think what we can learn today from the way he lived and worked. Well. I think.

35:09 One thing that happened I think with him, if you take the public school with it, he quit after ten days, and then his school that he started he started on his own, and he brought his brother, who also was a public school teacher. You have the same feelings about that, into being his partner. So they were running it together for a while. And I personally spent about ten years previous to the business I have now working with professionals around how they can make career transitions.

35:53 Yes. Yes, And. One of the things that I found seems to be true for people in the workforce is you have to know what you are. Are you an employee? Are you an entrepreneur? And a lot of people who I would be coaching or put through my programs back then had been working as an employee at some sort of major company for maybe twenty twenty five, thirty years or something.

36:34 And this was back in the nineties, and it was a panic or a recession, and they were all being thrown out of work, and there was right sizing, downsizing, all those buzzwords, and a lot of them said that they two things. They wanted to do something on their own. They didn't want to go back to the corporate life, and they wanted it to have purpose. Speaking of working on purpose, that's what they wanted. And they and they and they understood that they had to be independent. So as I learned from that that we are either entrepreneurs or we're employees, and we should be we should It's not one one versus the other is not better than the other, but it's who you are, what you are, and it's a fit doesn't feel right, there's no reason why you shouldn't do Henry didn't and take him take yourself into into creating work lifestyle that works for you.

37:34 M h. And speaking to that, I was I thought the way you described the way that Henry and his brother johnn worked together was so endearing. They really had a beautiful of course, the business listen, there was hire somebody that who really is passionate about. What it is that they're doing and for the organization. But of course you also sure that ultimately he disbanded the academy when his brother died because he was such an integral part of the academy operationally run. It just really speaks a lot to what a relational soul he was too. Right, Well, that's the thing is that they were very close. He really he cared a lot about his brother and a brother had a freak accident where he got blockjaw from I think like a rusty razor blade or something, and and and.

38:23 He died in three days. And of course people did get sick and die in three days, little kids and all ages back in those days. So so it was so devastating to Henry. He couldn't really go on, and he decided to close it down. So that's that's the sad thing about not only losing his brother, but losing this this entrepreneurial venture that he was doing so well at. Indeed, he just decided to, okay, pick myself up. And what's the. Next thing, And is that when he became more of a master surveyor or did where there things stops along the way before he got there.

39:08 The thing that happens next. Is that he goes to Walden Pond and he builds his cabin and he. All the what you read. Is is what that was all about. He should find out what it is that matters to him. That's how service. That's when surveying got started. Not right away, maybe it might have been the second year that he was there, but he had always had a sort of an interest in surveying, and back in those days, a lot of people surveyed became surveyors. People like Georgia Washington with a surveyor. And what is a surveyor?

39:50 So for our listener viewers or don't really know what that term means, what does a surveyor do? What does it do? A survey Yeah, well so so here's one thing it does, is it it? Uh it measures land and water and. Uh natural uh, natural lands, natural escapes, natural landscapes and things like that, and and and he he had a sense of what it did, but he didn't know it very well. And he decided that the best way for him to know it was to take on a project and create a project. So right there at Wallerton and in the dead of winter, like right now, like February, and the ice is completely uh stiff, and uh he he decided he was going to measure Walden Pond. Now a lot of people at that time thought Walden Pond was it didn't have a bottom, believe it or not.

40:50 I guess go to the other side of the globe or something, and you know, it was just this. It was considered bottomless. So he says, I gotta find out if it was bottomless. So he had some kind of homemade makeshift tools that he used and he surveyed that the whole pond, everything from you know, across from shore to shore, but also uh, the the bottom to the bottom, and to see how far it went. Don't ask me how what the eventual measure number was. I don't remember if I even got that, but I think he did get it. So it so he did this thing that was on his own that helped him. What happened was then is they started to get these little jobs here and there, and a lot of times what it was it was working for let's say a farmer or a landowner that.

41:53 Wanted to. Maybe make more money with their land by cutting down trees and selling timberlood and things like that. But Henry had two things going on. One is that the surveying he liked because he liked to measure, and he liked to investigate things and all of that. But also he liked to be outside, so it was a great uh, you know, compromise. And then the other part, when we get back to the morality, the inner, inner core of who he was, he would he would take on jobs where uh, the goal of his.

42:33 Client was to have. Make as much money from the land as possible, which might mean devastating uh some of it against stand of trees or beautiful rock formation or something, and he would fight with the with his client over it. No, that's not a good thing. We've got to have all these kinds of uh natural uhiam's ingredients that make up who we are and so anyway, but the point is, the ultimate goal, to answer your question, would be to know exactly what you owned if you hired a surveyor, and what's the shape of it. And then you know, it's sort of up to you to do what you wanted to do with it. But he was so good at it, and he cared about it so much, and he did it in such a way where his heart was in it. People recognized that, and as a result, by the time he was in his last few years of life, he was doing a lot of surveying and he had been named the chief surveyor of Conquer. That good didn't stop him from writing, didn't stop him from writing poems, and by then he was he had his book Walden was finished and published. But surveying became a sort of a good compromise that could pay the bills such as they were, and they weren't

44:04 They weren't anything like what we were discussing before. Not for right right. I think it's also really beautiful and endearing how you capture that toward those ends of his life and reminds you of listeners and viewers. He passed at the age of forty five. He wasn't an old old man. Maybe maybe back in those days. I'm not sure, but I thought it was beautiful how you really shared too, that his sister Sophia really took care of him, and as as the care went along, she came to realize she could be a little more useful than just dusting and providing meals, et cetera. And she began to assemble his writings. So can you share a little bit about how that arrangement worked, how they what happened because of her work, She.

44:47 Like the rest of the siblings, was a teacher. And then I think had I don't know, retired or decided to leave her teaching job to or to take care of Henry because he was dying of tuberculosis. And uh, you know, it was a it was a slow kind of a diminishment that apparently takes place. But they they they wanted they decided together that he had a lot of unfinished writings and a lot of work to be done to kind of collect them and organize them. And she was really good at that, and she. Dedicated herself to that, and then he when he died, she then kind of like became his agent, his literary agent, even though he wasn't with us anymore, and went around to various potential publishers or editors or whatever and uh and got his work published, maybe more so than in his in his life.

45:50 But that's that's what was going on. He couldn't, he didn't, he was getting weaker and weaker. But she would sit him down in the in the living room on a couch and have the boxes of papers and go through it. And he did probably get tired after a few hours, but but she was. She was definitely guiding the process. And one thing that that does, by the way, when you go back to all the things of his he did in his life, including the cabin and writing, uh, working on his book Walden, which by the way, took nine years for him to write, eleven drafts nine years, uh and uh, but eventually it was it was done and it was published, and I a chapter we talked about the cabin. Uh, what did the cabin itself make profit? Make any kind of profit?

46:51 Show? Was it? Did it? Did it. Exemplify Henry's business sense? And did not just because of the farming and the beans, but because using the cabin to write that book turned out to be such a bonanza. It's uncountable how much money has been made over the years. Doesn't go to him anymore. But you know, you can go into a books There's a book shop across the street from Walden Pond called the Shop at Walden Pond. Go in there and you're going to see books like Mine and Little Women and all, and you're going to see various editions of Walden.

47:38 It's so much money has been made over the decades because of what he did at that cabin, that that itself was a big profitable enterprise. Sister helped a great deal. Yes, So that speaks to get the right people on the bus, hire people that have talents and skills that you don't have. Right, that really speaks to that beautifully. Well, we've managed to get through almost the whole amount of time here already, Ken, But I want to give you a chance to close the show as you like. Saying, like, say, twenty seconds, what was I to leave our listeners and viewers with. I think that if I were going to leave everybody with something that this book could show them, it is pay attention to what you care about. As I was saying before, in terms of you know, while you an entrepreneur or an employee, what is it? What's the core of what you want to do that it will fulfill you?

48:42 But also. How can you maintain the kind of inner core morality that Henry that caused Henry to give up a job after ten days. I mean, that's a tough tough thing to do. What was important to him in life guided him, and we always fagit that much attention to that much as we tried. Thank you, Ken, I thoroughly enjoyed your book and I'm very grateful to have met you and have you have you in the show. Thanks for being on working on purpose, it's a delight, and thanks for teaching me how to speak Boston Boston sort.

49:26 Of language. And uh Henry David Throw. Indeed, listeners and viewers you want to learn to want learn more about Ken Laza in his books, including Walden for Hire and maybe the work he does at Emmerson Consulting Groups, so you can visit him. At thought leader dot com. Excuse me, thought leading dot com. Last week, if you missed the Life Show you can always can't give you a recorded podcast. We were on air with doctor Vasutolia, a physician turned visual artist and international speaker who integrates her background in pediatric medicine with the transforming power of creativity. We talked about how organizations can use intentional art in the workplace to burnout and stress and increase focus and creativity. It was a wonderfully transportive conversation and will inspire you to consider how to incorporate art in your physical settings to amplify fightel vitality for yourselves. Next week, we'll be on the air with Paul White talking about the book he co authored with Gary Chapman called The Five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, Empowering organizations. By encouraging people, you will gain a whole new understanding of the power of uniquely appreciating your people through their preferred style. See you, then, let's continue leaning into discovering how to elevate your operating system as a leader, become inspirational and create destination workplaces where legendary business takes place.

50:45 Let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four CY. Together, we'll create a work world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose. They crave see you there. Let's work on Purpose.