Make Your Work Your Play

Scott Mooney is the founder of Country Supply based in Ottumwa, Iowa. He built his horse supply business into a catalog company with 450,000 customers generating $17 million in annual sales.

TRANSCRIPT

SCOTT: I have a picture in my office of a mountain goat jumping across this huge crevice. He's halfway across, and I say that's what Country Supply does every day, because he's only halfway across. And it really looks in the picture, it looks like he's not going to make it, but I know he makes it. He'll make it across there, taking that leap, not taking those two little steps. Sometimes you just have to take leaps. If you take the leap, know that you're willing to do what it takes to make it work.

HATTIE: So what does it take to build a long-lived company like this? This is from 1976 until now.

SCOTT: All them times going to bat. Sometimes you're going to go to bat at 3:00 in the afternoon; sometimes you're going to go to bat at 5, but maybe you're going to go to bat at 7, you're going to go to bat at midnight. It's going to be 3:00 tomorrow morning, you're still going to be swinging. You know, whatever it takes to get that done, you're going to go to bat all that many times.

HATTIE: I think it's a game with you.

SCOTT: You're probably right.

HATTIE: I mean, I think it's your game. Other guys played baseball, you played business.

SCOTT: I'd say you're probably right.

HATTIE: And then you grew up and hit a home run.

SCOTT: Yes. I hit a home run only probably because I went to bat thousands of times.

HATTIE: At 4:30 in the morning, when you wake up, what's going through your head?

SCOTT: I get to go play the game again.

This video serves as an illustration of finding joy in work in "Joy (Eccl 5:1-6:9)" in Ecclesiastes and Work at www.theologyofwork.org.