Tomato Paste Leadership

The Right Tomato and The Right Leader  

 

 

There is a small town about an hour and a half southeast of Rome, Italy, called Boville Ernica.  Boville Ernica is a town in the province of Frosinone, Lazio, Italy. 

 

From a small town came a mother, Mamma Maria and her daughter, Annuciatina.  They both lived on a small piece of land and lived and thrived by farming the land. 

Life was hard: growing their food, raising cows, chickens, and goats, for milk, eggs, and cheese.  They made money by selling or bartering their eggs from their chicken to enjoy just a little more of life, and surviving the Nazis during World War II.

But they were happy.  It was a time with very little money but a thirst to eat off the land, help others live, and enjoy family and friends, 

 

They left their proud town for a better life and ended in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  They came to America for the American dream.  

 

But what they brought with them, some 72 years ago, was a vision, happiness, and a recipe.

 

What was that vision?

She is about to let you in on the secret of jarring one of the most incredible Italian tomato paste that one day will be part of her homemade pasta. 
Now, I know what you are thinking: "what the hell does that have to do with leadership?"

Think about it, a vision of making the best pasta and the best pasta sauce, year after year, so that your family can have the best!

Like a great business, you are giving the best service to clients and employees, year after year, so that your clients and employees can have the best!

 

It is the choices leaders make and how they follow through with leadership.  

 

And Annuciatina made the right choices to bring it here in the USA and to hone it to perfection. 

She made the choices over the years to hone her recipe, to use what worked and keep it or change what didn't; hence, improving it.  She discards what doesn't work—taking responsibility for correcting the course along the way.  She knows what she wants and where she wants to end up.

She communicated what the vision is and helps us get to the success of making the best tomato sauce,  Happiness!!!!

 

 

Great leaders do the same thing:  they have a vision, and they teach and mentor to help all of us get to that vision.  They make the course changes without pointing and accusing, without ego, without worrying about failure.  It is the success of the team that matters to the leader.  There are always bumps and turns to get to happiness. 

 

One sees the many weak leaders, the ones that look for very little real change and growth.  They keep doing the same thing over and over but still get the same results.  

They talk about what they want, and when things go wrong, they look for a scapegoat for the reasons something didn't work. 

Failure to weak leaders is a significant blow to their ego, a blow to themselves.  

 

How do great leaders know what they are doing and where they are going?  

 

I have learned the hard way.  I thought growing my business was giving to my family by working 24/7 and financially supporting them.  I thought of coming home for dinner, being with them a bit, putting my daughters to sleep, then back to the office working the rest of the evening.  

Growing my business and creating success in my life starts with knowing what I want in life.  What is important to me?  Where do I want to end up and where you want to be, is it what I value?  

I started my journey by finding my actual values, not the ones I want to parade around to show friends and family.  The kind of aims that if you read my tombstone, one would have found out who I was. My values can be traced back to my primary aims are in life.  

 

 

 

 

Your Primary Aim is the innermost motivating strength that drives you in your life.  And when you understand your aims and you are guided by what you want in life, you can develop your company and your organization. 

It is the foundation that gives you your strength and your commitment. 

With a primary aim – what you do as a leader as well as what you do in life – you will do so with a direction and a purpose. 

 

Here is the catch:
We must know our primary aim in life BEFORE you write your strategic objective for our businesses. 

A Strategic Objective is only a vital PART OF OUR LIVES and must satisfy our primary aim in life. 

 

It needs to be only a part of who you are, and it must satisfy both personally and spiritually, what you want to do in your life.  After all, your business is simply one of many essential aspects of your life. NOT YOUR LIFE! 

This idea is something that I have wrestled with, "Is my life the business?" or (and I have been there!) "Is this work, this business my whole life?" 

I have learned the hard way but realized that the organization was just the method through which I achieved my primary aims in life. It helped ground me as the leader of the organization as well as grounded me in my personal life to make the many important decisions. 

It helped me make life decisions with a solid understanding of what is and what is not important. 

 

Some example questions for you to start and to put down on paper your primary aims in life:

 

I have had the pleasure to learn many of the how and most importantly, the whys of creating/writing down my Primary Aims from the great mentors at E-Myth.  I have used the Primary Aims for my life to guide all of my crossroads and my minor decisions. 

 

I created my primary aims in life many moons ago.  

I have been using it many times over the last 20 years.

I was looking at it for guidance and inspiration on what, when, and how to live my life.

It helped me decide to grow a $15M business so that I can give my triplet daughters a better life and more time with them.

It helped me decide to sell my partnership at the height of the business so that I could take care of my mom and my dad in the last years of their lives.
It helped me understand that the business no longer satisfied me as a man.  

I knew that my principal primary aim was taking care of my family, so mom and dad were first, and building my new business was second.

 

Another example, when my daughters wanted me to drop them off to ballet, I also had a ton of paperwork to finish. I thought about what is important to me: I had a choice of dropping off the kids or staying in my office. I instantly knew which one I wanted to do. 

Now, I had to build my business in such a way to be able to accomplish taking the time.  But that is another story of how I did that.

 

Having a primary aim in life gives you direction and a purpose. Goals are not the same thing as aims.  Primary Aims keep you focused on what is essential.

One of the aims for Nancy comes down to the Right Tomato.

 

Let me show you how to jar some of the most delicious tomato sauce, the real reason you are reading this article.

 

Honestly, the recipe was brought her four generations, from Italy to Connecticut, to you. 

 

Nancy needs to scour her garden for the right tomato.  But to make about 120+ jars of tomato paste, you will need about 15  - 20 baskets of tomatoes.

We need more tomatoes. 

 

We need the right man to get the right tomato. We happen to have the right man for the job, Jesus. The man who grew enough tomatoes to satisfy our leader, Nancy. 

Do you remember her, the one with the vision?  

Annuciatina needs only the right tomato, with a keen eye to detail.

She also needs her team, the services of two willing men, the incomparable multi-talented, Juan Torres and the rugged, bearded favorite son-in-law (her only one), Domenic to transport the tomatoes. 

 

Starting with adding 20 bushes of organic, just "picked from the vine" tomatoes to the mix of a great garden tomato. We delivered the tomatoes to la padrone, la Maestra, our leader, the lady that creates some of the most delicious Italian gravy (I would say sauce) on earth.

 

Lay the tomatoes on the paper on the floor of a cold, dry cellar or garage. 

The tomatoes need to ripen just right. 

Now, we must gather the tools of the trade to get the job done. Let me list a few:

Basil fresh from the garden.                                 

And 150 Mason Jars.

Italian Electric Tomato  Press.  Manufactured in Italy from cast iron and stainless steel and developed in Turin dating back to the 1900s. 

And of course, the team that is willing, ready, and able.

 Start by washing the tomatoes thoroughly. 

The leader teaches the team of outstanding workers, Toni, Rachael, and Jessica, to cut out the bad parts of the tomato.   

Cut and halve the tomatoes.  Take as much of the water out of the halves as you can by squeezing them in the colander. 

Set up the grinding station. 

And here are two trusty team members, one to grind, Dominick, and the other to QC, Rachael. 

Note:  never wear your bracelet while grinding.  Because if you do, Dominick, it may fall in the auger and stop the presses. Now, can you imagine what would have if you have your bracelet fall in the grinder!!!!  Dominick!!!  

Constantino is the second grinder and is just as handsome as the first grinder.

Grind the tomato halves by putting them into the hopper and pushing them through the hole. This part is where we remove the seeds and the skin. 

On one end of the auger comes the skins and the seeds.  From the grinding comes the fresh raw tomato sauce. 

The process of the tomatoes going into the hopper and the output, the tomato paste. We repeat the process four times.  

 

To be continued...

What do you do with your primary aims? 

How do you translate your aims to create a more successful business for all involved?  

 

What do you do with all the ground tomatoes?  How do you get to the successful, delicious sauce from the century-old recipe?

 

 

Do you like the story and the how-to jarring tomatoes?

Or how to create your primary aims to grow your business?

 

Leave a comment below.

Please write to [email protected].  I answer all of my email messages.

Please leave a message at my office at 203.264.6863.  We can set up some time.

 

Stay tuned for part two of Tomato Paste Leadership.  

Allora.  Ciao, Ciao Ragazzi da Domenic è Anuzziatina