I've had a lot of jobs.
At 14, I began booking concerts, renting out our local Town Hall to put on punk shows.
At 17, I worked as the clubhouse manager for a local minor league baseball team.
And by 20, I was managing a restaurant in Yellowstone National Park.
But for all the jobs I've had, I never learned more about hard work than I did while working the graveyard shift at a local Dunkin Donuts to help pay my way through college.
The store manager, Thin, took me under her wing, bringing me meals of homemade Pho, which we would share in the back office when things got slow.
She was sharp tongued, but kind, and had an attention to detail unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
When cleaning the store, she had a propensity to put herself in odd or awkward positions to ensure quite literally that everything was clean. One of her favorite maneuvers was to lie on her back on the floor and look up on the underside of the counters.
It was on one of these occasions when I asked her if it was really worth it. Surely no health inspector ever crawled around inspecting the underside of our cabinets and counters.
But she told me she didn't do it to appease inspectors. She did it because it was her responsibility to ensure our store was clean; not just on the surface, but at every level and from every angle.
While it's been years since I spent my evenings serving coffee and donuts to the late night workers and college crowd of Albany, New York, I've done my best to carry that lesson with me.
We all have bosses, clients, or coworkers, who rely on us to perform. We all have scoreboards - in our own way - that light up and display how we are doing, whether it's on time delivery, client satisfaction, or reaching a sales quota.
But beyond the metrics that matter to others, there's something more that must matter to us. The idea that…
Success is not defined by the validation of others, but by the validation of self.
That success is not bestowed upon us, but built inside us; built upon the belief that we have truly and sincerely - and to the best of our ability - done what was needed to be done.
If it wasn't for Thin, I may never have taken the time to look under the counter. To look beyond how others defined my own success and decided how I would define it for myself.
While I’ve unfortunately lost touch with Thin over the years, and the old Dunkin Donuts where I used to work has long-since closed, I hope she knows the impact she had.
That all these years later, her old friend may finally understand.
Editor’s Note
A version of today’s newsletter originally appeared on my LinkedIn. If we’re not already, please feel free to connect with me there.
About the Author
Seth is the founder and CEO of Kanahoma, a San Diego-based education marketing agency. Operating at the intersection of beautiful brand creative and effective direct response marketing, Kanahoma partners with colleges and universities, education technology and service providers, as well as K-12 organizations.
You can learn more about Kanahoma at www.Kanahoma.com.