In all my 57 years, I do not ever remember my dad, Max Walker, or my grandpa, Wesley Walker, using the “R” word (retirement). Retirement was simply not part of their thinking and I am much the same. I know there are many folks who plan and dream of retirement. Our culture encourages it, and some companies and organizations force it. Yet the reality is that usefulness, accomplishment, production, experience, mentoring, learning and wisdom are all the positives of a person who stays engaged in living as much as they are able their entire life.

I have been thrilled to stand many places and look at buildings that have been built in part as a result of the Walker Mower. I am referring to buildings built by Walker distributors, dealers and commercial mowing contractors. It is not the building itself that excites me, but it is what the building represents. Here is a business that came “right up out of the ground”, and the Walker Mower has had a part in creating a new business opportunity.

One of the first ways people like to measure a business is “how big are you?” or “how many employees do you have?” The size question follows popular thinking: “the bigger the business, the more successful the business.” After 44 years in the manufacturing business, we have never been a big business, so we don’t know about being big. However, we have worked with many different sizes of businesses, and our experience says that a lot of success has been found in small businesses as well as big.

In addition to promoting our products and our company, an important purpose of Walker Talk is to communicate ways to success for our readers. “Work hard and play hard” as the mantra for successful living tells the popular culture in the USA. In our family and our company, we believe that “rest and worship” are being overlooked and ignored by many as an important part of successful living; living life as it was meant to be lived.

I’ll admit a bent toward studying philosophy and an inclination to use the Bible (Holy Scripture) as the source of wisdom. However, for me there must be a practical application that helps us live and be alive (not walking dead). I don’t want to be like the person of whom it was said, “They are so heavenly minded, they are of no earthly good.” In a practical sense, it helps us live each day, especially the rough, hard days if we have satisfying answers to the big questions like “Why am I here?”, “Why am I doing this?”, and for the entrepreneur, “Why am I in business?”

We slowed down in July. As a “level” manufacturer, we produce mowers at a steady rate year-round, based on an annual forecast with the objective of building the number of machines that can be sold to retail customers — not making more or less. The consequences of going too fast or slow are well-known; too much inventory means pushing product to customers at or below cost with resulting poor service and poor value. Too little inventory means customers cannot get the product when they need it, and ultimately they may purchase a lesser product, because it is available.