Life in Carson: The belated farewell column

When I left my newspaper job in September after 15 years with the same company, I wrote a farewell column. Unfortunately, the publisher at the Nevada Appeal decided not to run it, despite the editor telling me she liked it and wanted to put it in the paper. This happened even though I made sure to make it as non-controversial as I could, putting in the kind of local business cheerleading our publisher loved.

I was a bit insulted about this at the time, but was more focused on moving forward with the Carson Now project and my other business interests instead of dwelling on the past. Let's just say they are lucky that I didn't share my wife's feelings on this subject, as she wanted to make a big, splashy mess about it.

Today I saw a letter to the editor on the Tahoe Bonanza website that made me rethink my position on my farewell column. The writer remembered fondly the farewell column that I wrote when I left that paper five years ago, as well as the column by former Nevada Appeal publisher Jeff Ackerman when he left the Bonanza back in the 90s.

She also complained that the paper had suddenly last month changed its policy and forbade a reporter from writing a farewell column, with the editor saying they wanted to reserve their limited opinion space for content more relevant to readers.

Well, if you look over some of the pieces they did run in the last few weeks, it's hard to argue they were any more relevant than what this reporter's farewell column would have been. In fact, this letter writer's recollection of our farewell columns long past is testament to just how relevant these pieces have been.

So with that, here is the farewell column that the Nevada Appeal decided not to run. Maybe someone can tell me how this column was so less relevant than some of the other columns that run in the business section every week. I don't see it.

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Passion is necessary ingredient for success in business
column by Kirk Caraway

About nine months ago, I began the weekly task of writing profiles of local businesses in Carson City. It wasn¹t the job that I really wanted at the time, but it may have been the most important.

The first profile I did about guy who started a gourmet hot dog business, which my publisher decided to feature on the front page. That sparked some ribbing from a fellow journalist. ³It¹s just a hot dog,² he chided.

But that observation missed the real point. The hot dogs weren¹t the story. It was the passion that this man, Mike Gribbles, had for what he was doing. Gribbles had a vision for creating the best hot dogs in town. That passion was strong enough to carry him through his first setback, and on to opening a new, bigger shop a few weeks ago.

It¹s that passion that makes these stories interesting. Rarely have I ever interviewed a business owner who didn¹t have a passion for what they do, whether it be working on cars, creating works of art, or making people happy.

They will sacrifice a lot in the pursuit of this passion. Some will invest their life savings, knowing that most small businesses will fail. They will work long hours, give up weekends and holidays, and otherwise pour their hearts and souls into their businesses.

And the successful ones have the drive and determination to not let anything stand in their way. Mitch Abdelhady, who with brother Khaled own the car stereo business Unique Sounds, may have said it best: "You just have to put your heart in it, and don't come up with any excuses that you can't make it, you can't do it. Just keep pushing."

It was that kind of spirit that led the Abdelhady brothers from being a couple of kids on the streets of Jerusalem to being successful business owners at a young age, working in a business that they love.

Some of these businesses started as the lifelong dreams of some would-be entrepreneur, such as Alvaro Brito and his son Marcos, owners of San Marcos Grill. Others kind of fell into their current businesses through luck and happenstance, like Mary Wecker, owner of The LED Light. Still others seemed to be born into their businesses, like David Theiss of Butler Meats.

These are the heroes we should be holding up for our children as examples for them to follow. Long gone is the time when people could work for a company all of their lives and retire with a nice pension. Our children will need to be entrepreneurs to survive and thrive in the coming years.

There have been so many examples of this entrepreneurial spirit that I have run into the past months that it has rubbed off on me. After 15 years of getting a regular paycheck from the same company, I¹m ready to follow my passion and create my own business. It¹s a scary proposition in this current economic climate. And the fear of not having that paycheck -- or the health insurance that goes with it -- does weigh heavily on me.

But nothing worth doing comes easy. And that¹s part of the attraction. I¹ve known all of my life that I didn¹t just want to show up, collect my pay and move on. Having a mission that I¹m passionate about is important to me.

And fortunately for all of us, we have so many people who feel the same way, from the Henry Fords of the world to the restaurant owner down the street. They have created the products and services we need and desire, and make life better.

I¹ve learned a lot about what it takes to be successful in business these past months, maybe none more important than the advice that Ted Rupert, general manager of Rupert¹s Auto Body, received from his grandfather who started the business 50 years ago. "Take care of your customers, and they will take care of you."