I spent most of my career dealing with intangibles. My work on the air in radio was about selling advertisements (products and services) and entertaining with music through the magic of the airwaves. It is cliche to say it but we were in the business of creating theater of the mind.

You can’t touch a song however, a song can touch you! You hear a news report, commercial or a contest and you hope the listener will be impacted by it. The challenge was to attract and hold an audience with the content of your format…music, talk, sports, news, etc. I found live radio absolutely fascinating and compelling.

Then later I switched from radio programming to record promotion. Again I found myself selling intangibles. Promoting to radio decision makers to play a song or an artist was such a subjective thing. It was tricky. They heard the music and chose whether to share it on the airwaves of their radio station. The only way for a promotion person to gauge the success of the song or artist was by consumer sales of an album (or today as a stream and/or download). And by a national chart position. Relationships are key. And how those are solidified are sometimes very intangible.

So it was more mental than physical effort for me (plus a bit stressful). Now I look at my son and my older grandson and see them in labor intensive jobs. I’m proud of their work ethics. Their gigs are definitely NOT intangibles! Mark is a printer for a merchandiser. He sets up and runs printers for clothing, mostly shirts. He must be meticulous in how the ink connects to each piece of clothing for successful results, hundreds printing per hour.

Jose drives a truck to various sites to load equipment and clear out offices, homes and other structures. If you’ve ever seen the TV show “Hoarders” you know what kind of physical work that is. At the end of each workday, he “sees” the results of his labor. Very tangible evidence!