BUSINESS
Reputation
Matters
By Buck Darling, Herbert F. Darling
Forgive me if, once again, I get up on my soapbox in the
pages of PileDriver magazine. If there is only one thing
that really sank in throughout my upbringing in the family
pile driving business, it is that your reputation matters. Not only
in business, but personally.
As the third generation (yes, the one that usually screws it all
up), I routinely got that message from both my dad and my grandfather.
Unfortunately, Herb Sr. wasn’t around much past my 11th
birthday, but whoa, did he make an impression. My dad, Herb Jr.,
made sure that message never got old as well. He did that by showing
me how to “talk the talk and walk the walk” in all aspects of life.
Now, after 80 years, three generations have lived that mantra,
and I can say without reservation were it not for that, things might
be very different today. I could be trying to make a living elsewise.
Consider any one of the recessions that you have suffered when
work was scarce, and when the only thing that mattered was that
money talked and everything else walked because you weren’t
low bidder. Consider any one of the times that your company had
unfortunately found itself in trouble on a project over the years,
and someone stepped up to help you out. As a good friend stated
at the end of a poem he wrote for dad (on the remnants of a brown
paper lunch sack, framed in dad’s office), “When you hit the old
skids, every throne has a pair, when you get to the bottom, your
friends will be there.” This is impossible for me to ignore. A thought
that should never go unbidden, reputation matters.
It was little wonder, then, that my curiosity was piqued while
I was reading the Fall 2020 edition 2020 of Cornerstone magazine,
a publication of the Associated General Contractors of New
York State (AGCNYS). A headline for an article caught my eye.
“Reputation Matters.” Where had I heard that before?
It was written by Joe Hogan, CDT (construction documents
technology), vice-president of building services of AGCNYS. Please,
enjoy the reprint of his article , which appears on the next page. I
hope there are many messages that you can glean from it.
mrilkin/123rf
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