By Mike Lessiter — November 10, 2024 – Rural Lifestyle Dealer
To do the right thing at the right time in the right way requires strength, wisdom and understanding.
A lot has changed in America and business in recent weeks. Since my last TO THE POINT blog, I’d attended the Nov. 1 Trump Rally in Milwaukee, used AI for the first time to recut a late 1990s Pop song (great fun by the way), met with all Lessiter Media managers prior to a full-staff meeting on the results of a challenging quarter, and monitored the Farm Equipment President Poll. That first-ever poll of machinery dealers accurately predicted the decisive outcome (near-mandate, even) of the U.S. presidential election.
And of course, there is the ongoing saga of the dealer-farmer fight (Lieb Farm vs. AHW), which continues to spur industry commentary and even a series of “answer letters” between big and small dealer execs. As of this writing, the guest blog “The Sacred Cow – Volume Discount/Bonus?” was the most viewed piece of content on the Farm Equipment website.
What happened in that Illinois dealer’s conference room segues well into a moving sermon heard at church.
Integrity: A Timely Topic
This morning, our longtime senior pastor, Chip Bernhard, left the pulpit momentarily to take a knee and lead the congregation in prayer for our newly-elected leaders. And then he stood and jumped right into the second theme of an extended study series on Biblical Virtues. This week’s message was all about integrity.
Unfortunately, it seems the days of expecting high character in the Oval Office – think Carter, Reagan and Bush – may forever be in the rear-view mirror. As critical as I was of President Clinton during his terms, history will remember him more fondly, as truth and presidential standards of character have since been redefined.
Save for the president of my earliest years (Nixon), I grew up admiring all the leaders in the White House. It’s a sad state of affairs when character, vision and governance abilities are viewed as mutually exclusive terms.