Forty years ago I started a business. I bought a small IBM computer which was state of the art at the time. This was long before PC’s. This was a minicomputer, also known as a System 23 or a Datamaster. It cost $30,000 and could process about as much as a hand calculator now.
The system was not very reliable and often required maintenance from IBM. My service technician was a guy named Jeff Foxworthy. Several times a year I would call IBM and tell them that my computer needed servicing. They would ask the name of my technician and I would tell them, “Jeff Foxworthy.” One day Jeff came out on a service call, and gave me the bad news. My hard drive was fried.
I had borrowed the money to buy the computer. The hard drive replacement was going to cost $12,000. It weighed 70 pounds, and did not hold any data. The data was stored on an 8-inch floppy drive. I told Jeff that I did not have $12,000, and that I was probably out of business.
He called an engineer with IBM and told him that the hard drive was probably fried by a power surge, and that the drive should have had better protection than that. The engineer agreed, and IBM replaced my hard drive for free. Jeff saved my business.
Fast forward a couple of years. I made a call to IBM and asked for Jeff Foxworthy. I was told that he had left IBM and was trying to make it as a comedian at the Punchline Comedy Club in Atlanta. I told several of my friends this story, and we all agreed that this was foolish behavior to leave a solid job at IBM and try to become a comedian.
I had a televsion installed above my mantle a few years ago. The guy doing the install told me that he had just come from Jeff Foxworthy’s house where he had installed a very expensive system. I then googled Jeff Foxworthy, and found his net worth to be $100 million. What can I say about that?
He turned left. While most of us continue to pound out a career doing something that we would no longer do if we won the lottery, he was brave enough to take a chance on happiness. He said that one minute into his first standup routine he knew that he had found his calling. Just another example of the right way to live. Turn left.
Turn Left 