Kindness, Cash Flow, & Camelot

The promotional flyer for my dad's Business Power Hour.

I was digging through my emails today looking for a piece of Tatsuda history I knew was in there somewhere.

Buried files. Old attachments. Fragments of a life that used to be so active, so full.

And then I found something I wasn’t looking for.

A document my dad had created to guide a Business Power Hour presentation he gave in October 2022.

At that point, the store was already gone.

But there he was still teaching. Still sharing. Still trying to help other people build something meaningful from what he had learned over a lifetime.

I opened it expecting bullet points.

What I found was him.

My dad was an entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word.

Not just someone who ran a business—but someone who saw opportunity, took risks, and built things from the ground up.

Over the course of his life, he owned and operated multiple businesses—each one teaching him something different.

Some he built from nothing.

Warehouse of Music.

The Little Dipper.

JR’s Grocery.

Gas At Last.

These were ideas he brought to life—seeing a need, taking the risk, and creating something where there had been nothing before.

Others, he stepped into.

Tatsuda’s had been in our family since 1916—something he carried forward, expanded, and protected for decades.

He partnered for a time in Lighthouse Grocery.

And he purchased Ward Cove Market—

a decision that came at a steep cost when the pulp mill closed and much of the customer base disappeared almost overnight.

Not everything worked the way he hoped.

Not every decision paid off.

But he stayed in it.

He learned.

He adapted.

And over time, he built not just businesses—

but wisdom.

My dad was an excellent businessman.

Not because everything always worked—but because he paid attention, adjusted, and stayed in it long enough to learn what actually mattered.

His notes were simple. Direct. No fluff.

Serve a need.

Fill a niche.

Provide a service.

Every business he built came from noticing what was missing and stepping in to meet it. A gas station where there wasn’t one. An ice cream shop when tourism was just starting to take off. A grocery store that understood its community.

It wasn’t theoretical.

It was practical. Observant. Grounded in real life.

But what struck me most reading through his notes wasn’t strategy.

It was how much of it came back to people.

Everyone is important, he wrote.

Everyone.

Your employees. Your customers. Your suppliers. The mailman. The kids. The delivery drivers.

Everyone.

And not just in theory.

He believed in treating people with honor and respect. In helping when you could. In understanding that people remember kindness—sometimes decades later.

He told stories about that.

Moments that stuck.

Because to him, business wasn’t separate from humanity.

It was one of the clearest expressions of it.

He had a whole section on complaints.

Not how to avoid them—but how to handle them.

He saw them as opportunities.

He wrote about listening carefully. About repeating back what someone is saying until they feel understood. About how so many conflicts aren’t really conflicts at all—they’re misunderstandings, assumptions, things left unsaid.

And then this line:

People don’t quit companies. They quit people.

That wasn’t a quote to him.

That was something he lived and learned—sometimes the hard way.

He didn’t pretend he got it right from the beginning.

In fact, he was pretty honest about getting it wrong.

Early on, he hired for experience, not personality. He ended up with a store culture that didn’t work—people clashing, pointing fingers, running to the boss.

Experience, it turns out, doesn’t tell you much about how someone treats people.

And then… things shifted.

That part made me pause when I read it.

Because I know that story from the inside.

And the truth is—

that shift didn’t just happen.

I led that.

I changed how we hired. I looked for personality, for cultural fit, for how people showed up—not just what they had done before.

And over time, everything changed.

The culture.

The energy.

The way people treated each other.

It became a true community center.

He also wrote about trust.

About explaining the purpose of a job and then letting people do it.

Not micromanaging.

Not controlling.

Letting people take ownership of their departments, their work, their decisions.

And because of that, people thrived.

Departments excelled. The store became known for being the best stocked, the most accurate, the most consistent.

He didn’t take credit for that.

He pointed to the people.

There was a whole section on financial management too.

Very him.

Clear. Direct. No room for confusion.

Cash flow is everything.

Know your numbers.

Watch them daily.

Be willing to risk everything and commit fully.

It wasn’t romantic.

It was real.

And then there was the part that made me smile.

The Walmart story.

When Walmart came in, they took 35% of the business overnight.

Thirty-five percent.

Most people would have panicked.

He got curious.

He went to Chicago. Sat in workshops. Learned what other businesses were doing. Came back with a strategy—and implemented it.

Over time, the store became more profitable than ever.

That was him.

Not defeated.

Not stuck.

Just… willing to learn.

And then, at the very end of the document, he wrote something that didn’t sound like business at all.

He said he was sad the store was no longer there.

But how special it was…

that for a time, we had our own little Camelot on the south side of town.

I sat with that for a while.

Because that’s exactly what it was.

Not perfect.

Not without mistakes, stress, or hard seasons.

But meaningful.

Alive.

Ours.

A place where people were known.

Where relationships were built.

Where kindness mattered.

Where a life was lived in full.

I learned a lot working alongside my dad.

About business.

About leadership.

About people.

About life.

There is something about being part of a business

that existed in a community for over a hundred years.

It gives you a different kind of perspective.

You see things most people don’t get to see.

Not just success or failure—

but cycles.

Peaks and valleys.

Expansion and contraction.

A few days ago, I was talking with someone about what’s happening in our community right now—declining population, shifts in the economy, the move from a resource-based economy to a service-based one.

He asked me if I thought it was good or bad.

What I learned from being part of a business that lived in this community for over a hundred years…

is that it’s neither.

It just is.

Things change.

Industries rise and fall.

Communities evolve.

And what matters isn’t whether it’s good or bad.

What matters is how you respond.

You adapt.

You learn.

You keep going.

You take care of people.

You look for ways to improve quality of life and create opportunity.

You do the best you can with what you have in the moment you’re in.

And then you adjust again.

That’s what I learned.

Not just from what my dad said—

but from how he lived.

I went looking for a piece of history today.

What I found instead…

was a reminder of who my dad really was.

An entrepreneur.

A builder.

A man who paid attention—to business, to people, to life.

And what he built—

not just in business,

but in people.

And what we built, together.

And maybe that’s the real legacy—

learning, adapting, and treating everyone with respect and dignity.

And how lucky we were

to have been part of it.