I often use the expression, "One person can make all the difference in the world."

That adage certainly applied to my friend Bruce Halle, who recently passed away. Bruce was the founder of Discount Tire, the nation’s largest tire and wheel retailer, with 975 stores in 34 states and nearly 20,000 employees.

Bruce truly was a self-made man, working as a paperboy as I did, and even working as a gravedigger to support his family. He tried selling life insurance before he opened his first tire store in 1960 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was the sole employee. His original inventory consisted of two new tires and four retreads. Like many entrepreneurs, Bruce did everything from cleaning toilets to painting signs.

The company grew at record speed because of Bruce’s leadership and his three-pronged approach -- provide reasonable prices, tremendous customer service and guarantee satisfaction. He believed that happy employees make happy customers. He taught his employees to live by the credo "Treat others the way you would want to be treated."

I’d like to focus on one of Bruce’s quotes and provide you with my thoughts: “There are really just five simple lessons to life: Be honest, work hard, have fun, be grateful and pay it forward.”

Honesty

Tell the truth at all times to build solid relationships. Your word must be your bond. Complete honesty in little things is not a little thing at all.

Honesty, ethics, integrity, values, morals -- all mean more or less the same thing. In my estimation, you can interchange them, because they all convey the single attribute that determines whether a person or an organization can be trusted.

Work hard

The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. There is no magic formula for being a success. It takes hard work. Hard work is not a bad thing. Sure, natural talent can make a big difference. But show me a natural .300 hitter in Major League Baseball, and I'll show you someone who bangs the ball until their hands bleed trying to keep that stroke honed. Ask any surgeon about how much sleep they got for the eight to 10 years it took them to get through medical school, internship and residency. Ask any concert pianist how much practice it takes to perform a 40-minute piano concerto from memory. All these gigs take more than magic hands. It takes iron determination and lots of hard, hard work. The harder you work, the luckier you'll get.

Have fun

Business and fun are not polar opposites. In fact, another piece of advice that I share frequently is “Do what you love, love what you do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” Adopt a "TGIM" attitude: Thank God It’s Monday. A positive work environment encourages fun. Quite often, those are the most successful enterprises as well.

Be grateful

Gratitude should be a continuous attitude. It’s very disheartening to see a decline in the use of “thank you” by so many. When I hold doors open for people, I seldom hear "Thank you." When I go shopping and buy something, I’m usually the one saying "Thank you for serving me"!

For a while, I thought it was just me being overly sensitive. But a few years ago, I was watching the “Late Show With David Letterman” and heard about a man who went into a store looking for an item. He found no one to help him. The clerks were uninterested at best, rude at worst. After much searching, he finally found the item himself. At the checkout counter, he found a long line of people and a clerk who definitely worked only at her own speed. Finally, he paid for his item, and the clerk threw it into a plastic bag and shoved his change at him.

The man had to say something, so he asked the cashier, “Can't you even say 'Thank you'?”

And the cashier said, “It's printed on your receipt.”

Pay it forward

When you have the opportunity to do something kind or helpful for someone who doesn’t expect it, take it! It’s even better when the recipient doesn’t know who is responsible. We all have enough time and resources to lend a hand. You might even make someone’s day.

Thanks for sharing your lessons, Bruce. We will sorely miss you.

Mackay’s Moral: Never discount the importance of honesty and hard work.

Readers of this column know that I am a big fan of Dale Carnegie, the master of making friends. I carry an excerpt from one of his books with me and often share it when I am speaking to groups. It’s about the value of a smile, and I hope you learn as much from it as I have:

“It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits.

“It creates happiness in the home, fosters goodwill in a business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad and nature's best antidote for trouble.

“Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anyone 'til it is given away. And if in the hurly-burly bustle of today's business world, some of the people you meet should be too tired to give you a smile, may we ask you to leave one of yours?

“For nobody needs a smile so much as those who have none left to give.”

I learned years ago that one of the most powerful things you can do to gain influence with others is to smile at them. Never underestimate the value of a smile. The person who is smart enough to keep smiling usually winds up with something good enough to smile about.

People all over the world smile in the same language. A smile should be standard equipment for all people, both at work and at home. It takes far fewer muscles to smile than to frown -- so really, you have no excuse. Put on a happy face!

Smiling adds face value and helps you make a good impression. We like people who smile, because they appear warm and kind. They are more approachable.

Smiling encourages trust. People who are constantly smiling appear to be more trustful than those who are not.

People who smile are more productive. A 2010 study by Andrew Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England, proved that employees who smile more often are significantly more productive and creative in the workplace.

Smiling makes you more creative. A 2013 study from the University of California, San Francisco, explored this connection in men and found that those who were happier had a more comprehensive approach to problems, improving their ability to think of more solutions than their negative-minded counterparts. The researchers connected this finding to the release of dopamine triggered by happiness, since the neurotransmitter is involved in learning, processing and decision-making.

Smiling enhances your disposition. The more you smile, the happier you are. And don’t forget that the more you smile, the happier other people around you feel.

Smiling makes you more attractive. A smile is a very inexpensive way to improve your looks. People are naturally attracted to people who smile.

Smiling improves health. Studies have proven that when people smile, endorphins are released making people feel happy and less stressed. The more you smile, the happier and more relaxed you get. Surprisingly, this also works when faking a smile or laugh, as the brain can’t differentiate between real or fake smiles.

Endorphins act as natural painkillers. The added oxygen from smiling and laughing benefits your body while improving your immune system. Smiling releases more white blood cells, which protect the body against infectious diseases.

In a 2012 study published in the journal Psychological Science, University of Kansas psychological scientists Tara Kraft and Sarah Pressman studied 170 participants who were told to hold chopsticks in their mouths in three formations, making them smile to various degrees without realizing it, after performing a stressful task. The experiment revealed that subjects who smiled the biggest with the chopsticks experienced a substantial reduction in heart rate and quicker stress recovery compared to those whose expressions remained neutral.

Finally, smiles are contagious, just like yawns. So, smile and start an epidemic.

Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important. That’s why you should not only smile from ear-to-ear, but from year-to-year.

Mackay’s Moral: Smiles never go up in price nor down in value.

If I had to name the single characteristic shared by all the truly successful people I’ve met over a lifetime, I’d say it is the ability to create and nurture a network of contacts.

Although I never met David Rockefeller, he certainly would have fit in this category. When he passed away in March 2017 at the age of 101, Bloomberg News revealed that he had an “electronic Rolodex” of 150,000 people. The Wall Street Journal recently reported it was 200,000. He was a master networker during his two decades as the head of Chase Manhattan Bank and 60 years of being involved with the Council on Foreign Relations.

In my corporate speeches, I often ask the question: What is one of the most important words in the English language? I add that if all of us understood this word just a little bit better, we’d be way more successful than we already are. That word is “Rolodex,” which of course is now referred to as a "contact management system."

My father, Jack Mackay, who for 35 years headed the Associated Press in St. Paul, Minnesota, shared his secret with me when I was 18. He said, “Harvey, every single person you meet the rest of your life should go in your Rolodex file. Write a little bit about that person on the bottom or the back of the card. And now, here’s the key -- find a creative way to keep in touch.”

That’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I now have nearly 20,000 names in my electronic Rolodex file, a far cry from David Rockefeller, but still crucial to my career. The contacts I’ve made over all these years are why I’ve been writing this nationally syndicated column for the last 24 years.

My Rolodex was instrumental in launching my publishing career. Let me explain. In 1988, there were roughly 2 million “wannabes” -- people who wrote manuscripts. Roughly 200,000 books got published. Of those, only a small percentage were business books. If you’re a first-time, unknown author like me and you write a business book, you want to get it published. But a work by a debut author would get a print run of 10,000 hardcover books, at most. That’s it. Tom Peters, “In Search of Excellence,” 10,000 copies; Ken Blanchard, “The One Minute Manager,” 7,500 books.

This is why it was so tough to get started. There were 5,000 bookstores back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, which means an average of only two books per store if they print 10,000 copies.

I had written a book titled “Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.” I wanted the publisher to print a lot of books so they would promote it and not run out of copies. I scheduled a summit meeting with publisher William Morrow and Company -- the CEO, president and vice president of national sales. About 45 minutes into the meeting, I asked for the order. I said, “I would like you to seriously consider printing 100,000 hardcover copies of ‘Swim With the Sharks.’" We were on the 37th floor, and they basically told me to jump. The VP of national sales closed his notebook and said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Mackay. Obviously, we’re not going to get together.” Then he basically screamed, “Who are you coming in here asking for 100,000 copies? We only print 10,000 copies for any first-time unknown author.”

I’d brought in two humongous briefcases and took them out. Inside were two huge Rolodex files, 6,500 names at the time. I started to go through them: “Pillsbury, 18,000 employees. We do business with them. Maybe they’ll read the book and pass it along. General Mills, 23,000 employees; Cargill; 3M; here’s American Express.” I went to the second Rolodex file. “We do business in six countries, France, Germany, Spain ... maybe it’ll be an international best-seller.”

Three weeks and three meetings later, William Morrow published 100,000 hardcover copies of “Swim With the Sharks.” And it became a New York Times No. 1 best-seller.

Did I know when I was 18 where my contacts were going to come from? Do any of you know where your contacts will come from five, 10 or 15 years from now?

Our lives basically change in two ways -- the people we meet and the books we read. Trust me; the people you meet every day are extremely important in building your network.

In my entire career, I have never once heard a successful person say he or she regretted putting time and energy into keeping their Rolodex file.

Mackay’s Moral: When you work on your network, your network works for you.