Lost but Won: My Journey from Indigent to Desire, Hope, and Belonging

By Don Jones

The book is an autobiography about a young man who stumbled upon employment with a company over twenty-nine years ago, which changed the course of his life. He also shares with you the lessons he learned from his great-grandmother, work experience, and executive coach. The book is not a self-help guide, master keys to success, or answers to every encounter that you will experience in business. Heres what you can expect: honest dialogue on his experience in retail and the lessons he learned along the way. In addition, why he believes the Home Depot is one of the greatest retail companies to work for and advance your career path if you so desire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503595040

Don Jones

Don Jones is a PowerShell MVP, speaker, and trainer. He developed the Microsoft PowerShell courseware and has taught PowerShell to more than 20,000 IT pros. Don writes the PowerShell column for TechNet Magazine and blogs about PowerShell at PowerShell.com. Ask Don your PowerShell questions at http://bit.ly/AskDon.

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Copyright © 2015 by Don Jones.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/18/2015

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Chapter 1     Leadership

Chapter 2     Purpose

Chapter 3     The Retail Trade

Chapter 4     Heartfelt

Chapter 5     Rebirth of Potential

Chapter 6     Turning Point

Chapter 7     Communications

Chapter 8     Your Job

Chapter 9     About Luck

Chapter 10   Deliberate Practice

Chapter 11   Victim or Victimizer

Chapter 12   Willpower

Chapter 13   Revealing the Magic Tool Box

Chapter 14   The Orange Mile

Chapter 15   Hospitality

Chapter 16   Focus on Where the Birds are Flying Rather than Where the Birds are

Chapter 17   Get it Right or Pay the Price

Chapter 18   If You are Granted One Wish, Ask for Eye Surgery.

Chapter 19   Home Depot Poem

Chapter 20   Don’t Let Anyone Turn you Around

Chapter 21   Impact Recovery

Chapter 22   What it Means to be Accomplished

Chapter 23   Discernment Not Forgotten

Chapter 24   Make Sure This Year is a Game Changer for You!

Chapter 25   Living the Orange Life

Chapter 26   A New Level of Service

Chapter 27   Marketing and Time

Chapter 28   Go With the Bitter

Chapter 29   Overlooked Formula for Positive Growth

Chapter 30   It’s Decision Time!!!

Conclusion

Foreword

I AM FOREVER INDEBTED to the founders of this great company, Home Depot: Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank. Over twenty-eight years ago I came to Home Depot because I needed to figure out where I wanted to work for the rest of my life. Now I find that I can step outside of myself, reflect on how I think and work, and articulate what is important to me and my family. Being able to answer these questions for myself. Home Depot gave me a sense of direction which set me on a course to where I am today. And this for a kid who did not have any of the prerequisites for success in terms of education and let’s say gravitas.

I came to this great company as an indigent on a ten speed borrowed bicycle and enough money in my pocket to pay for living expenses for a week.

The ultimate position of District Manager wasn’t, at that point, even in my psyche.

Not only did this company have an impact on my life but it was a blessing for my mother, a single parent of seven children.

The company had such a profound impact on my life it inspired and enabled me to become a better citizen and person. In this regards my wife and I were foster parents for five years while raising three of our own kids. We were member of the Big Brothers and the Big Sisters program for three years. We were also in the Foreign Student Exchange Program. I spent a few years helping At Risk Youth helping young men with no male figure in their life. On any given week-end you can find me volunteering at a local soup kitchen.

You may be wondering what all this altruism has to do with my place of employment. The reason is that Home Depot has helped me be financially and morally able to help these young people. I have the instinct for it because I too know what it’s like to go to bed hungry. I know what it feels like to not be able to afford the basic necessities of life.

I dedicate this book to my great grandmother. She only had a third grade education but a Ph.D. in life. I sat many summer days on her front porch in Georgia learning invaluable life lessons. Lessons that allowed me to be humble and viable even when life seemed empty on the inside. And even more empty in the near future.

She used to tell me to go with the bitter because the sweet comes later. Another way of saying when the times get tough and they will, don’t abandon your goals, just stick with it. She also told me, We will never have a perfect world, but do your part to make it a better world. She was not around long enough to see the fruits of her wisdom but I hope she is looking down with absolute pleasure as I live my life improving the lives of the least of them.

To the great men and women who have made an indelible mark on my life, I can’t thank you enough. For believing in me, inspiring me, for allowing me to borrow your confidence when I didn’t have enough confidence to believe in myself.

You pushed me to limits I thought were impossible and you supported me when I wanted to give up. I’m not sure if there is another company or group of people who are willing to go the extra mile alongside you. What can I say? It all happened for me at Home Depot where dreams do come true.

Thank you, Ann Marie Campbell, Marc Powers, Hector Padilla, Heidi Thompson, Daria Perez, Mark Wilke, Bob Finneran, Dave Austin, Dedric Hudson, Connie Sheppard, and Dan McDevitt.

Only with their drive and inspiration, that I borrowed, was a kid from the Fort Lauderdale projects able to achieve such great success.

A special thanks to my dear friends who inspired me to write this book. Jim Parson, James McDuffy, and Ovrill Dwyer. You taught me how to increase my appetite for discomfort, as you have stated so many times, It’s the only way to achieve personal growth.

CHAPTER 1

Leadership

S INCE ONE OF the main goals of this book is to help you become a leader in your business life, that’s a good place for us to start. There is a long running Broadway hit comedy called, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. It sounds silly and therefore funny but think about it for a moment. If you know what you’re doing, if you have a plan and know how to follow it, it really is easy to succeed. It’s for those who flounder with no idea of what to do that it is difficult.

Most will agree that the path to advancement in any organization is grounded in efficiency, product knowledge, intelligence and personality but, most of all, leadership. Yet leadership is an often widely misunderstood idea. Now Mr. Webster (as in, Webster’s Dictionary) says leadership is about leading others in order to accomplish what needs to be done. True enough. But Mr. Webster’s slang for this person is even more revealing. He calls a leader a bigwig, kingpin, or magnate, among other such connotations. What does that suggest? Simply that the leader is looked on by those under him as someone important.

Young, inexperienced employees see this person as the boss and someone who they must obey. Of course the ideal of leadership is not really clear to them. For that matter, it is unclear to countless higher ups in business and in management as well.

Let’s start with a few assumptions. We can pretty safely assume that your employees and subordinates will believe that you are smarter than they are because you are the boss. Others, the more ambitious types perhaps, will assume that you are the boss because you’ve been employed longer and therefore know more about the company and its products than they have been able to learn so far.

But leadership is about much more than the accumulation of knowledge, or