My Blog

Albert Einstein once said:  “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”  For me, this is such an important personal message that I intend to return to it in some future blogs.  Hence, this blog is designated as Part 1.

When I was about 12 years old—roughly 55 years ago—my 89 year old grandmother lived with us.  I liked her a lot, partly because she did some of the chores that would otherwise have fallen on me.

I still remember the day she was drying the dishes I had washed, and dropped a plate to the floor.  It was her second shattered plate in a week.  A tear ran down her cheek as she put her towel down:  “Now I’m of no value.”  She walked into her bedroom and died several weeks later. 

The experience affected me deeply, and I never forgot the lesson.  I believe that being of value is an important personal need, and it comes into play in a variety of successful human ventures—businesses, family life, friendships, organizations, sports teams, etc.

We all know people who slide through life making little or no effort to add value to their world.  Their goal is to “take” rather than to “give”, and they tend to live difficult, lonely, unhappy, unsuccessful lives.  It is the “givers” who enjoy happy, successful lives.

Most successful businesses follow a business model that is designed to be of value to their customers and to their communities.  In my experience, any other business model is simply not sustainable over a period of time. 

In recent times, we have witnessed “flippers”, who were simply betting on a rising real estate market, come crashing down to financial ruin.  Their business model did not include a way to be of value to anyone other than themselves, and they brought the residential real estate market down with them.

We have also witnessed Wall Street firms who were simply re-packaging investment risks such as mortgage-backed securities designed not to add value, but to leverage their profits.  They almost succeeded in wrecking the U.S. and the Global economies.   

The mission of the Boeglin Team is to strive to be of value.  We attribute our success to these efforts.  Some of our future blogs will share some of the ways that we observe people, companies, and organizations striving to be of value.  We welcome feedback from all of you that share situations you observe in which value is added to our world.