Last Sunday, I attended a back yard BBQ. I started chatting with someone that had just arrived.  We are mutual friends of the afternoon’s hosts, but I had never met him before.  He looked to me like a reasonably healthy man in his mid sixties with a sort of care free attitude.  He introduced himself simply as Joe.  We started chatting, and at one point he caught my ear by stating “I wanted to retire at fifty-five.”

Explaining his comment Joe began. “I started working at Pratt-Whitney about thirty years ago, and I was with them for almost twenty years.  Everyone balked when I announced I was leaving.  “No one leaves this company before retiring” they bellowed.  But I did.” Joe had a plan.

Continuing, he told me “Each month, I had a meeting in the Tampa area to attend.  I would drive across the state through the sugarcane fields. The sugarcane made up most of the scenery along the way.  At one location I noticed a large pile of stuff.  It seemed to be growing ever larger.  Each month I would drive past the pile, and each month there seemed to be lots more of it.  Driving past on one trip, the pile was higher than ever.  A large truck adorned the highest point of the pile of stuff. The truck looked to me like a Tonka toy dwarfed by the huge pile.” 

“That was it!”  Joe exclaimed.  “My curiosity could be shunted no longer.  I pulled over to find out what this ‘stuff’ was. I Found worker near the base of the pile, and asked him ‘what is this stuff?’  The worker informed me that ‘this is sugarcane waste after the sweet juice has been extracted.’  What do you do with it? I asked the worker.  ‘Nothing’ was his reply.  So, I asked Can I have a sample? The worker gave me bags of the stuff; as much as I wanted.”

This is where Joe told me that “yes; I majored in finance and counted beans for Pratt-Whitney.”  He began to smirk; “However, I minored in Biochemistry.  With some research and experiment, I found a way to combine the sugarcane waste with chemicals to create an extremely tuff wood-like material that could be used in construction and as railroad ties.  We used to create ¼ inch thick boards of the stuff and challenged people to attempt to break the board with a sledgehammer. None could” he exclaimed with pride. 

Being a bean counter, and having his goal of retiring at fifty-five, he had been aggressively saving as he worked, leveraging the company’s dollar matching and investment plan.  So, armed with this and some outside investment, he was able to raise the $1.5M needed to start his new company. 

Joe told me of the blood sweat and tears he put in to make his company succeed.  “I couldn’t trust anyone, so, having two shifts I was there from 8 am till 12 am every day.”  “How long did you do this?” I inquired.  “Four years” he replied.  Continuing, he grinned “a German company bought me out then, for ten million dollars!”  This is more than six times the initial investment!  I was very impressed.
So, is there a moral here?  Well, I don’t think it needs to be spelled out for you.  If you work for MOLI, you are living it.  You saw the pile, you stopped to ask the question, you used your talents; you put in the hard work, and made the commitment.  See what happens next!

If there is any downside to Joe’s tale of railroad ties and retirement it is this:  Retiring at fifty-five as planned, he has become bored with world travel.  I hope to have his problem some day.  On this, Joe said “I have been to all those places over and over.  I would wake up on the cruise ship and look out thinking ‘this island again? I am staying on the boat.’”