In Episode 211 of Anecdotally Speaking, discover Ronald Read’s secret and its application to staff development and job design.



In Episode 211 of Anecdotally Speaking, Mark tells a fascinating story about a man named Ronald Read, who led a double life unbeknownst to anyone until his passing. This prompts Shawn to share a striking personal anecdote of his own.

Today’s story reinforces the age-old saying, “looks can be deceiving,” and is suitable for use in a business setting, particularly in the contexts of staff development, performance management, and job selection/design.

Mark and Shawn further discuss the importance of context in storytelling, building suspense, and why it is often better to use your own stories.

The Story of Ronald Read (A video by Brattleboro Memorial Hospital)

Learn more about the upcoming events discussed in the episode here

For your story bank

Tags: Storytelling, Performance, Job design

The story begins at 1:04

There was a gentleman called Ronald Read, born in 1921 in Vermont USA into a very poor family. His father used to mow lawns and chop wood on an extremely low income. He would walk 4 miles to school every day, he was the first in his family to graduate from high school, upon which he joined the army. He returned from World War 2 and worked for 25 years as a gas station attendant and mechanic. He then retired from the gas station, had one year off, then took a part-time job as a janitor at JC Penny where he worked until 1997. His life was a modest one, he wore old clothes, drove an old car, and lived in a simple house he purchased decades before. When his clothes tore he wouldn’t replace them, rather he would mend them with safety pins. He always went to one specific café as they served the cheapest coffee in town, on one particular day a patron of the café paid for Ronald’s coffee, mistakenly thinking he would not be able to afford one. When he retired he went to the local hospital (Brattleboro Memorial Hospital) every morning simply to have an English muffin with peanut butter for breakfast as it was the cheapest in town. From all accounts, he was a very simple man who lived a very frugal lifestyle. He passed away in 2014 and to the great surprise of Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, Ronald Read bequeathed them 5 million dollars and another organisation 2 million dollars. Without anyone else’s awareness, he had accumulated 8 million dollars throughout his life through careful spending and genius stock trading.