Episode 704 - Did I Learn My Lesson... Uh, No!

In this week's episode of Monday Morning Mojo, Phil takes us on a humorous journey through two well-meaning gift-giving misadventures, one involving a bottle of bourbon in a borrowed Lexus, the other a sun-soaked bottle of Raki in Crete. What began as thoughtful gestures quickly turned into sticky, aromatic lessons in physics, foresight, and the fine print on packaging. Along the way, Phil reminds us that even the most intentional acts can go sideways, and sometimes, the best stories come from the messes we didn’t plan. It’s a lighthearted ode to learning, laughter, and the art of giving well.

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Transcript

Top performers in every field surround themselves with those who inspire them, who seek to build them up, and who push them to reach beyond their current limits. I am Phil Buchanan, executive chairman of Cannon Financial Institute. I designed Monday Morning Mojo to provide you with a weekly spark, a push and motivational insight to live your best life. Thanks for joining.

Good Monday morning. It is Phil here with episode 704 of Monday Morning Mojo. I'm a gift-giving guy, not big and flashy gifts, but I try to give gifts that are very intentional. Ones that the receiver will appreciate and remember. I find that corporate gifts generally just drive me nuts.

It's the same gift given to everyone on the list, whether they will value it or not. My advice is pretty simple: consider doing fewer but more intentional gifts. You want your gifts to be memorable. However you approach gifting, the best of intentions that you have, can and will meet challenging scenarios.

Believe me, I know. Let's go back a few years. This was a time when I actually had a class that was scheduled to take place in South Georgia in the early part of June. Tends to get pretty warm there that time of year. I was going to fly into Waycross, Georgia and wanted and needed access to a car for a couple of days.

Now I have a very dear friend who grew up in Waycross, so I called her and asked if there was perhaps a beater car in her family, AKA, that is a used car that is typically beat up and may have dents in it, and it certainly isn't anyone's primary daily driver. It turned out that her dad actually owned a 25-year-old Lexus that she described as having peeling paint and every check engine light illuminated, but it drives perfectly and the air conditioning is cold.

That sounded absolutely ideal for my mission. Now having spent time with my friend's dad who was a retired physician, I knew that he was a fan of great bourbon. Thus, I brought along a great small-batch bourbon as a thank you gift for the use of his car. On arriving at the airport, I had received a text message en route that he had dropped the car off, had hidden the keys, and that all was good to go.

So I threw my luggage, my briefcase and bottle of bourbon in the car and headed to the hotel. I'd simply give him the bourbon when I dropped the car off at the end of my visit. The next morning I was up early and headed to my session. It was going to be an all-day deal, and that can be taxing, but we were inside, out of the 90 plus degree outside temperature.

So my day ended, and I headed to the car, looking forward to an evening meal. As I opened the door, the stench of hot bourbon washed over me. I looked on the seat. To see the prized bottle of bourbon had been sitting in the sun the entire day, and the expanding vapors of the bourbon had popped the cork and three quarters of the bottle of bourbon had spilled onto the seat and onto the floor.

This was not good. Imagine me returning a bourbon infused car to my friend's dad. I immediately drove to the local AutoZone store and told the clerk behind the counter that I needed something to remove bad smells from a car. He looked at me without a blink, dead in the eye and asked, “Is it weed, alcohol, or something else?”

I responded, well, it's alcohol. He asked liquor, beer, or wine? “Liquor” I said. Without missing a beat, he said, “I got you.” He then went around the store. He grabbed a pack of shop towels. He grabbed some carpet cleaning freshener powder. He grabbed some air freshener pods, and then a small little vial of liquid that I didn't recognize.

He then gave me the process and recipe to go about using to remove the smells. I wrote down his instructions, paid him, and then went to work. Ironically, by the next afternoon when I returned the car to Doc, there wasn't a smell of bourbon remaining. Evidently the liquid vial was essential as when I first opened it, it was so intense in smell, but I believe that it somehow bonded with the other vapors and dissipated them all together.

I had stopped by a liquor store to buy a replacement bottle for Doc on the way to drop the car off, and actually he was none the wiser that anything had ever occurred. That was, of course, until I fessed up in that fall and told him the story. I don't know if I've ever seen him laugh so much.

His wife did ask me while I was telling the story, did I think there would've been a different recipe if the smells weren't alcohol, but something else. And I said, I'm absolutely certain that that was the case as the store clerk seemed very well-versed in dealing with these issues.

Now should I have known better than to leave a, a sealed bottle of alcohol in a car? Well, of course. Gases expand with heat and, eventually, the expanded pressure is going to pop the top or break the bottle. It's basic science. It's something we all learned in grade school. But those lessons in grade school sometimes don't make as much sense as the lessons that we experience in real life.

You know, it's in real life that those learnings can and should stick, but maybe I should emphasize the word should.

While in Greece a few weeks ago, I bought a couple of bottles of Raki, which is an after-meal liqueur, famous on the isle of Crete.

Recently, I went to deliver both of those bottles to a couple of buddies of mine. I stopped at my first buddy's house with his bottle. We visited for a few minutes, and then his phone rang. It seemed that one of his friends was needing help with something and he said, “Hey, come on and help me out on this.” So we jumped in his truck. We drove over to his friend's house. It wasn't anything major. He just needed a couple of extra hands to help him with a small project.

We were gone no more than 90 minutes, perhaps no more than an hour, but it did seem quite long as the temperature afternoon was in the high nineties. We made it back to my buddy's house and I said bye to him, and went to get in the truck to go drop off the other bottle, except when I opened the door, I caught a huge stench of hot, Raki as it washed over my nose.

Yes, you already know the rest of this story. Evidently, Raki sitting in direct sun in a hot car on a 95 degree plus day acts just like bourbon does, its gases expand the top pops and the liquid pours out. The real problem on that day is that I wasn't near an AutoZone and I didn't have a knowledgeable clerk with a recipe to deal with the issue.

All of this has got me to thinking that I may need to change my gifting strategy on a go- forward basis. Either that or store gifts out of the sun in the trunk, in a cool, dry place. You know, if you look on the back of a label, that's the instructions. I've always wondered about the labels that show up on certain things.

You know, sometimes you'll see things. Don't put this toaster in water. You'll also see instructions. Don't eat the, the stuffing that goes around packaging. I've always said, I wonder why they put those kinds of instructions there. Well, recently I've realized that I may be why some of those instructions are there.

If that doesn't make you chuckle, I don't know what will. But I do hope that each one of you has a fantastic 4th of July, and remember why we celebrate the 4th of July. It's America's birthday, the greatest country on earth. We are all blessed beyond measure, even if we sometimes continue to make the same mistakes.

Have a great week everybody.

Monday morning Mojo is production of Cannon Financial Institute, executive producer of Monday Morning Mojo is Sarah Jones. Editing and mixing is done by Danny Brunner. Until next time, I'm Phil Buchanan reminding you to be a force for good. Have a great week and thanks for being part of the Mojo community.