Hi, I’m Paul Darley and thanks for tuning into our August issue of Inside Darley.
August… where has the summer gone? For us here in the Midwest, we’ve got a very short window. Hopefully you’re finding some time to spend with friends and family during this summer. Our first article is actually on balance of family and work together. It’s a recent Time Magazine article. I don’t embrace everything in this article but I do like the five points they point out about ways to find that family and work balance. Number 1 talks about doing fewer things, but doing them very well. Number 2 is setting priorities on which things are going to have precedence in your life and particularly relates to business. Number 3: Doing things to get disproportionate results, kind of the 80/20 principle we’ve talked about. Number 4: Focus on things only you can do. So, if there is someone in your organization who is perhaps paid less than you are, that you can delegate that responsibility to. That was a lesson Bill Darley taught me at a very young age. Certainly good to do. Lastly, do things that have to be done now. So, make sure you are tackling the most difficult things and the most pressing things right away. Some good stuff there.
You might recall back in June when we reported about Fire Apparatus market. Our sense was that it was very slow for the first quarter this year, and in fact, that turned out to be the case. We received the Fire Apparatus Manufacturer’s Association Statistics of new orders for Fire Apparatus during the first quarter, and they were off substantially. The second quarter doesn’t seem to be much better just by talking with different folks in the industry.
The second article we’ve attached here is a US Metro Economies report that was just prepared for the US Council of Mayors. We encourage you to take a look at that. It talks a lot about gross metro product; GMP is how they refer to it. In this report, they talk about the first quarter being weak but the second quarter picking up and the balance of the year, and hopefully 2015 as well continuing to be strong. We are seeing our customers across the board looking for lower price alternatives to the products that they are buying. On the rural fire department end, many of them are switching over to our Hydrant Booster Pumps and if you have a few moments at the end of this video, we’ve got a great advertisement on our Hydrant Booster Pumps, so you can understand a little bit more on what we’re doing there.
The last article attached for you here is actually an article that is a summary of Admiral Bill McRaven’s commencement speech at the University of Texas, Austin, where he addressed the students on ten tips for college graduates It’s lessons for any leadership person in a leadership role that really came out of his SEAL training. He was well known for being the head of the SEALs for many years and got a lot of headlines during the Bin Laden capture. He’s currently the head of SOCOM, which is Special Operations Command. He’s a very close friend with Admiral Joe Maguire, who sits on our Board of Directors. I really encourage you to download that article and if you have 15 or 20 minutes, watch the video address, it makes you proud to be an American and just really good messages there.
Lastly, if you’re going to be down at Dallas, Texas on August 15th and 16th, we hope that you will stop by our booth and visit us at the International Fire Rescue Conference. We are going to be in booth 2421.
So thanks for tuning into this issue of Inside Darley. If there’s anything we can be doing to support you, we hope you’ll reach out to us.
