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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, the US Parcel Service handles over 221,000 pieces of mail every minute, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.

I’ve talked a lot on this podcast about my years working in various roles at a regional bookstore chain based out of my home state of Oklahoma. I started out as a part time cashier, and six years later at the age of 24 I became the youngest store manager in company history. Well, second youngest if you count the guy that started the company.

You may also recall that I took over a store in Wichita Falls, Texas that had some serious problems. Fortunately, the previous manager had done a very good job hiring a competent team who had a desire to see the store do well and perform at a high level. By the time I arrived, they were desperate to see a change at the manager position.

The store had several issues with cleanliness, organization, inventory control, and merchandising. During my six years leading up to the promotion to store manager, I’d worked in several departments within my home store, helped set up several new stores around Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Arkansas, as well as helped relocate existing stores to new locations. 

I was very knowledgeable on our company’s policies, procedures, protocols, and standards. However, we all know there’s a big difference in book knowledge and practical knowledge. It’s a big jump from being in a supportive role to carrying the weight of all the decisions and responsibilities of being in charge.

With that in mind, I wasn’t just dropped off at the front door and left to myself. My store was about a two and a half hour drive from the corporate office, so it was pretty common for various personnel to come down and pay me a visit.

The most common visitor was my boss, the district manager. He was required to visit my store monthly, but during my first year he often visited twice a month to check in on me, offer support, encouragement, and make sure things were going smoothly.

Aside from him, the company’s CEO and founder paid me a few visits. He’d walk around the store and look over everything, pick my brain on ideas, and test me on different scenarios or procedures. I was quite happy that the company’s construction and design team made several visits to repair and replace fixtures and elements of the store that had been allowed to become dilapidated by the previous manager. 

But there were two other individuals who made visits to my store that changed my life. One of those was the company’s operations manager, Jason. Jason oversaw all of the store planning. He selected the site for new stores, oversaw the operations side of setting them up, and oversaw the district managers. He and I had established a rapport during store setups, and his visits were always fun and insightful. When I later got promoted to become the ecommerce director, Jason was my direct supervisor, having been promoted to president by that time.

But today’s story is not about any of these people. They were all great and I wouldn’t have had the success I did without every single one of them coming down and giving me their support as often as they did.

Today’s story is about Kendall, the merchandising manager of the company. The merchandising manager was responsible for overseeing all of the buyers at the home office and the merchandising of goods at the store level. Having said that, I did not report to him. There were six other stores that were closer to corporate than mine, and he could get all the info he needed about his team by visiting any of those stores.

But like most of the team that worked at corporate, he saw the benefit of visiting the outlying stores. It kept us connected, made us feel like we were part of the overall team, and maintained that rapport that makes organizations strong at each level.

I was the manager in Wichita Falls for two years, but for our story today, only the first year of that matters. During that year, Kendall made two visits to my store. As merchandising manager, Kendall would have walked the store to check things out. He would walk our seasonal aisle, check stands, and merchandise tables across the front of the store to ensure they were all properly up to date, well stocked, and displayed properly. 

Likewise, he would have walked through each department and made note of the same things and asked about communication we were receiving from the various buyers. Having completed that, he could have thanked me for my time, handed me any notes, and left. But that wasn’t Kendall.

Kendall wasn’t just working a job. Kendall wasn’t just marking off items on a checklist. Kendall understood that what really mattered was the people. Kendall had been hired to our company from Wal-Mart, so he and I didn’t have the years of connection that I’d established with other leaders of the company. Because of that, he took time to get to know me.

He didn’t just ask me questions about my wife and then talk about the weather. He sought to know me personally. I’ve mentioned before that this was a Christian company, and it was common for spiritual conversations to come up. Certainly not all times and with all people, but it was very much a common occurrence. With Kendall, he understood how all of life’s components fit together. 

He knew that work must balance with home life and that our spiritual lives were more important than anything else. He prayed with me, asked for book recommendations from me, offered me advice on every aspect of life, and was as genuine as a person can be. 

I still remember Kendall’s last visit during my first year as the store manager. Two doors down from our store was a Mexican restaurant called El Chico. That day after Kendall finished his visit, he invited me to lunch and we walked over to El Chico. As we ate, we talked about work, family, leadership, and faith. I remember talking about books we liked. I remember he told me about one of his favorite books and that he would give me a copy of it the next time we saw each other. I don’t recall which book it was, but I was looking forward to reading it.

I had no idea that would be our final conversation.

A short time later Kendall was playing basketball in his driveway with his teenage son, when he suddenly collapsed. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital. Although they saved his life, he was in critical condition. He remained in the hospital for weeks.

While he was in the hospital, I made the trip to the home office for one of our bi-annual meetings. Myself and other managers inquired to see if it were possible to go see him and we were granted access. I’m not sure if he was in a coma at that time, but he was certainly heavily sedated. We were encouraged to speak to him and we did. We prayed for him. My final words to him were, “I love you, Kendall.”

A short time later Kendal had a moment of terminal lucidity and then died the next day. He was 41 years old. He left behind a wife and four kids, including a daughter who was born 4 months after his passing.

Here’s what I learned.

Everyone thought we had more time with Kendall. His impact on my life was profound. I still think of him regularly. Here’s the crazy part. He visited my store twice. My only other encounters with him were on the rare occasion that I visited the home office. In total, I spent ten hours maximum with Kendall. Kendall knew how to make the small moments matter.

I’m pretty sure he looked at our times together as an opportunity to mentor me. I’m sure he thought we’d have more conversations and share more times where we could reflect on our families, personal growth, and our faith. I know I did.

I don’t know whose idea it was, but it certainly wasn’t mine. But after Kendall died someone had the idea to write letters. It was completely voluntary, but we were asked to write a letter to Kendall’s unborn daughter to tell her about her dad. Naturally, I chose to write her a letter and tell her about how amazing her dad was.

While Kendall has never left my mind, writing that letter did. At some point it totally slipped from memory. It was a small moment that faded away.

With more regularity than I wish were possible, I get spam messages from Facebook Messenger. Nearly 100% of the time they come from people wanting to help me promote my podcast. So when I get a notification from a name I don’t recognize, I typically ignore it.

Last year as fall was turning into winter I got such a message from an unrecognized name. I was just sitting on the couch watching TV so I decided to open it. The message said:

Hi Darrell!

I’m not sure if you know me, considering I don’t really know you personally either. 

I wanted to reach out because for years now, the only evidence I have written out of my father’s character is from a letter you wrote to my family after he passed away.

I’m [name redacted] and my father was Kendall [name redacted]. I’m reaching out now to thank you for the kind words you wrote about him, and I wanted to let you know that it has never left my mind. 

To be honest, I’m not sure I have anything else to say, I just wanted you to know that a letter from 23 years ago hasn’t lost its meaning. 

Thank you Darrell

I sat there in utter shock at what I’d just read. And, of course, I was weeping by the time I got to the end. My wife, who remembered Kendall, was stunned as well. It was a moment that I knew would eventually end up as a SILY episode, but I first needed to compose myself and send her a reply.

I told her about how wise, patient, caring, and kind her dad was, how grateful I was to have had him in my life and how I still think about him to this day.

Small moments matter. In reality, my total time with Kendall was probably closer to five hours than ten hours, but either way, it was an incredibly small amount of time. The time I spent writing that letter was a small amount of time. And yet both of those investments are still making ripples in the world to this very day.

And that brings us to today’s lessons. First, don’t underestimate the impact a small moment can have on someone’s life. Be engaged and authentic. Make the time count. Second, take time to let someone know when they’ve impacted your life in a positive way. Kind words are like honey—sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.

I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.

I want you to be a part of the next Monday Mailbag on June 30th! Monday Mailbag is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU.  It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long.  It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others.  You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes. You can participate in Monday Mailbags by visiting the Golden Spiral Media listener feedback page.