Common Sense

How important is common sense ?

Some can make argument that common sense is more important then college degrees, now if you happen to have college degrees AND common sense even better.
For some reason some people that I know that have a higher education seem to have lost the common sense gene,( unless they never had it to begin with).

My mentor, Paul Arpin, did not happen to have a college degree or even a high school diploma , he had to leave high school to help support his family at the time. Paul was able to take a moving company that was mostly local and had a few trucks and grow it to one of the biggest household moving companies in the world. Of course his sons, David and Peter jumped on the mid eighties to help propel the company to the level that is now- but make no mistake Paul steered the ship for those important first few decades.
Paul may not have had degrees on his wall in his office but he had common sense and a great business mind, mostly he had the drive and later felt great responsibility to do the best job he could not only for him and his family but for everyone.

I sat in many meetings with Paul and watched and listened and learned. Paul would always arrange meetings with whoever he felt could help with the subject he was addressing at the time and he would always listen. Steering the conversation and eliminating the BS he would gather the information he needed to make his decision. Paul also had the best BS meter out of anyone that I ever met, if you did not know the answer you were best to just admit it , say you will find the answer- find the answer and return at that time but for heaven's sake do not try to tap dance your way out of it.
The thing is once you know that someone is a bull shitter your trust diminishes and seeing that there is so much time in the day Paul did not have time to invest in those people so they usually found themselves on the outside looking in sooner rather than later.

When I joined Arpin in 1985 they were a 7 million dollar company and they are now a company of over 200 million.

As they say if you want to be successful watch and learn from those that are successful.
I have learned a lot here at Arpin - in short I have learned the common sense trumps all and that treating others with respect will help form the allies that you will need to stay successful..and happy.