Contact | Follow
Bluetooth

Bluetooth Business Blabbermouths

Posted July 18, 2011

images

I’m sitting in Oakland Airport listening to what appears to be a very intelligent person spilling proprietary information across the entire waiting area. I’m going to be kind to this doofus and disguise the name of his company and the identity of the individual on the other end of the phone, although both are now known to me. He’s a jobber of some kind who works in telecommunications. His business has gotten more national in scope, so he’s got to decline the proposal that was made by Kent, who works for ABCD, another firm that’s up to something more local to northern California. This guy’s name is Steve. He used to work more locally, but now his work takes him across the land, in fact he has absolutely no real business in the Bay Area at all right now.

Kent seems to have abandoned his big proposal and is suggesting an hourly rate. Steve is going to talk to Jerry about this idea, which he thinks is fair because obviously Kent needs to clear his overhead and can’t work for free. Steve is going to Los Angeles. Jerry is the head of their tax practice and is a real good guy. Steve has hung up now and is speaking with his office about his schedule. I now know what he’s got going on for the next three days.

What does he imagine? Does he think he’s inaudible? That his bluetooth gives him Wonder Woman’s cloak of invisibility? That his information is so unimportant that everybody in a 50 foot circumference should be okay to hear it? Now he’s got his head down on the table in front of him. He’s sleeping. Waiting for his phone to ring again, I guess.

Last week I sat waiting for an airplane to take off and heard all about how Ned didn’t like the reading his Law department was giving him on a contract with Disney. I learned a lot about him, and a lot about Disney’s purchasing department, not that I plan to do anything with the information. I can’t imagine that Mickey and Goofy wanted me to hear it, though. And it’s not like I was eavesdropping, either. You can’t ignore these guys. They are businessmen, and businessmen have a certain timbre to their voices. Businessmen are loud. They enunciate. They give a little basso to their profundo. They’re as distinctive and unavoidable as a crying baby.

I’m going to offer a few tidbits of information to you Bluetooth Blabbermouths out there:

1. You are really audible.

2. Your conversation is a weird admixture of boring and fascinating, like gossip about individuals you don’t know.

3. Your Bluetooth setup doesn’t create a karmic bubble that insulates you from the ears and eyes of others.

4. It is quite possible that a competitor is listening to you and taking notes.

5. Privacy that is not protected is lost.

For the rest of us? I suggest, when the situation becomes truly intrusive, a little intervention. Simply go over to the Steves of this world and say, “Too bad you had to bother Kent on his vacation to decline his proposal.” I guarantee you the recipient of this observation will be utterly horrified. How dare you listen in to his private conversation?!

18
Add a comment
, , ,
Business Life

Reason #147 to Thank God: I’m Not in Sun Valley

Posted July 8, 2010

It was near 100 degrees in New York City yesterday. The asphalt was melting. The heat was a palpable presence you cut your way through as you made your sorry, soggy way down the street. The air was so thick you could eat it with a spoon, if it wasn’t so toxic. And I couldn’t have been happier to be here.  After all, I could have been at the mogul fest in Sun Valley. Of course, I wasn’t invited. But just the thought of it gave me a welcome shiver in all this heat.

There are people who fight for an invitation to the thing. Me? I’d rather be stabbed in the head.

For those of you who have been residing either in the real world or on Planet Mambo, the basic facts are simple. Herb Allen, whose business, like all men of his stature, seems to consist mostly of being Herb Allen, advises major moguls on business deals. He’s like Yenta the Matchmaker — only for Big Business. Once a year, he hosts a big extravaganza at his place in Sun Valley, Idaho, and anybody who is, was, or wants to be anybody has to go there or they are dead in show business. If you are a mogul of any size and you are not there, your body discorporeates and your spirit is left to wander this spectral plane until it can find another career to inhabit.

All these gigantic egos coalesce around this event and rub elbows and psyches all week long. Naturally, the event swarms with journalists, bloggers and video types, all eager to suck up any shred of information, scuttlebutt, rumor, innuendo or, lacking any of that, fiction that may fall out of the sequestered assembly. For the most part, the Big Dudes stay away from the media. It’s considered bad form to mingle with the groundlings on this occasion. But inside, the crème de la crème of the media that covers media helps to hold workshops and Think Big Thoughts. That leaves really nothing for the swarm covering the thing, though. So the journalism that comes out of the event is a pretty limp affair.

Like, the big news on the first day was that people had arrived. A list of names made its way across the blogosphere, accompanied by exciting pictures of moguls alighting from their cars. I believe several seem to have driven themselves, which was a form of news, I guess.

The rest of the events appear to be going on much as they ever do. All the names you would expect are scrumming about in the lobby, attending the panels, receiving swag and publicity copies of Ken Auletta’s 2009 book on Google. They have lunch. They have dinner. They closely observe each other, the way certain competitive animals do during mating season. For these guys, it’s always mating season. A few years ago, some big deals were cooked up at the Allen thing. But nobody expects much of that anymore. Now it’s mostly talk about the economy and a mutual affirmation of self-importance that keeps everybody going for another year.

Did you ever go to a party where the persons you were talking to all seemed to be distracted by everybody else who was in the room? With people who didn’t really make eye contact because they were looking over your shoulder to see if there was a better, more prestigious conversation available? Have you ever been forced to be informal with people whose relationship with you is based on formality? Ever seen a guy in dry-cleaned, freshly pressed denims, knowing that he’d rather be in pinstripes? Ever stand in a room with at least half a dozen people you’d like to kill, but know you have to hug them and grin into their faces when they are by you?

So yeah, it’s hot in New York. I hear it’s also disgusting outside right now in Las Vegas. And last week I near froze to death in San Francisco. Got another place that’s hell on earth right now? Take me there.

Anywhere but Sun Valley. This week, at least.

8
Add a comment
, , ,
Business Life

How NOT to handle a cocktail party

Posted June 11, 2010

You know, I think there are guys in this world who just have a deathwish, that’s all. It’s the only way to explain what they do. Like, you know they’re not stupid, because if they were stupid they’d have been killed or just plain expired a long time ago. And yet… they do stupid things. Particularly when they have a drink in their meaty little fists.

This brings me to this guy I know. Let’s call him Bundt. He’s a rather powerful fellow in his little world, and makes a ton of money. This in spite of the fact that he has a couple of funky habits. The worst of these — and I guess it’s nothing compared to the great, hairy miscreants of Wall Street and Main Street — is that he loves to talk about his money. He’s not alone in this regard. For some reason, people who make a lot of money tend to talk about it too much to people who don’t. You wonder what they’re thinking. But maybe they’re not thinking. Maybe they’re just being atavistic, which is generally part of the successful business person’s act anyway.

Anyway, I was at this cocktail party the other night with Bundt and a bunch of fellow prisoners. And I see that Bundt has his boss, a super-senior mid-level haute executive who has flown in all the way from Chicago, in a verbal hammerlock, schmoozing his teeny heart out, practically giving the guy a hickey.  The bossman is listening to Bundt with one of those polite little smiles people paste on when they feel like a very fine needle is being inserted into their eye socket by a person whose feelings they don’t want to hurt. I walk over and attend the conversation, just to see what Bundt is going to do now. The guy has a unique way of saying interestingly disadvantageous things, and I’m hoping to get a snapshot of this gift in action. And I am not disappointed.

“Your operation is doing very well, Mr. Bundt,” said the superior officer. I bet he says that to all the girls.

“Yes, I know,” says Bundt, and I am aware that he’s about to deliver something excessively dumb. “I was having lunch with Bob Dimler the other day and he said that if I were working for him, I’d be the President now.”

Bob Dimler is the head of our #1 competitor. If  there’s one thing we’re taught to do around here, it’s to hate Bob Dimler. If you work for us, you don’t “have lunch with Bob Dimler,” and if you do, you don’t tell your boss about it, and if you ARE stunningly idiotic enough to tell the boss about it, you don’t add how much Bob Dimler loves you. But Bundt did all those things. Why?

His boss simply looked at him in stunned silence, which I’m sure Bundt interpreted as admiration.  He then walked away replete with self-congratulation at the super-positive exchange. The Chairman looked after him and said, “If he wants to be working for Bob Dimler, I’m sure we could arrange that.”

Why do people do these things? Do we all, to some extent, undermine ourselves in one way or another? In what way are you doing it right now?

18
Add a comment
,
Business Life

The uncatered lunch meeting is not worth having

Posted June 1, 2010

Just a little note to get the summer started off right. I have noticed a disturbing, post-recessionary trend developing that should, I believe, be killed in its cradle.

It’s the uncatered meeting that takes place during what in civilized societies would be considered lunchtime.

When I was a lad, I worked for a guy I’ll call Walt. Walt was a wonderful guy, except he had one (well, actually more than one, but that’s another story) peccadillo that used to bemuse and annoy me.  With alarming regularity, he would call me at about noon and bark at me, “Come in here for a minute.” Then we would chew the fat about sundry redundant things while he ate a big cup of soup and a bunch of bread sticks. I would watch him eat, stomach growling, until he was done. Sometimes this took ten minutes. Sometimes it took an hour, which smashed my own lunch plans to pieces. I think Walt just hated to eat alone. It just never occurred to him to order TWO bowls of soup or, for that matter, to give me advance notice. I guess he figured he just owned my ass 24/7/365, so lunchtime was as good a time as any to exercise his option.

Nowadays it’s a little different. Walt is gone, long gone, and I believe right now may be looking forward to a solitary lunch at his palatial home in Connecticut. But his heirs live on, apparently. Like today, Finance is having a staff meeting at 12:30. There will be no food. This means, for those who are attending, that they can have the early bird special and grab a sandwich at noon, which is pretty horrible, in my opinion. Who’s hungry at noon? Or they can wait until the end of the meeting and grab something at 2 p.m., when real working people are returning to do business after their respectable business lunches.

I believe there are three miscreant entities that are advancing this barbaric agenda. They are:

  • Finance: Because they can do what they want as controllers of the budget process;
  • Corporate Executives: Because they can do what they want, sitting atop the reporting structure;
  • The CEO: Because he/she can do what he/she wants, period.

There have been other fads that developed during my time on Planet B, including (but not limited to): Excellence, Quality, Managing By Walking Around, corporate seizure of airline miles accumulated during the course of business, 360-reviews, and so forth. All have bitten the dust. This one should too.

Meetings that take place between 12:01 and 1:59 should have food at them. Doesn’t matter what. Who cares? Let us eat cake!

25
Add a comment
,
bingstuff

Gotta make the donuts

Posted April 21, 2010

lou jacobi

A few years back, there was a commercial for Dunkin Donuts where an actor named Lou Jacobi awoke before dawn, dragged his ass out of bed, and plodded off to work muttering to himself, “Gotta make the donuts.”

Throughout the commercial, no matter what he was doing at the time, there came a moment where Lou had to mobilize himself and shuffle off to do it all over again. “Gotta make the donuts,” he said.

That’s me. No matter what day it is, no matter what else I’ve got going on inside my head or life as we know it, I gotta make the donuts.

This morning I have a breakfast with someone I really don’t want to see this early in the day. It’s a customer, sorta. I could cancel, I suppose. But that wouldn’t be making the donuts.

Later on, there’s a conference call with Miami. You think I want to sit in an airless room and hear a bunch of halting excuses about that situation? Donuts.

Then I get to sit in the same room with the same bunch of people and engage in a swift succession of video conference calls. There’s one at 9:30, 10:30, 11:30. They won’t be bad. There will be coffee. And donuts.

After lunch, the afternoon looks like it’s shaping up to be a bunch of unpleasant altercations with people who consider their interests to be superior to mine. They are wrong, at least as far as I’m concerned. That doesn’t mean they don’t need to be convinced. More donuts.

That’s just today. Tomorrow there’s a huge thing that has big, gnarly teeth all over it. Next week, most companies in my business start doing their earnings calls, which is a whole lot of donuts for everybody. And May looks like a pile of big fat crullers in a variety of flavors that have yet to be invented.

If it sounds like I’m complaining, you’re wrong. I’m not. Lou didn’t complain. He was beyond that. He had a fate. He woke. He put on the uniform, which at that time was an ignoble pair of brownish pajamas and a funny little cap. And he went to work.

Which is what I’m going to do right now. Without the cap. I have my dignity, you know.

30
Add a comment
bingstuff

Are you a Company Person?

Posted March 18, 2010

When I was a kid, there was an entity that everybody pretty much had contempt for. It was a thing called the Company Man. The Company Man was owned by the Company. He dressed the way the Company said to dress. His opinions and his attitudes were shaped by the Company. He was generally faceless, because his face was the face of the Company. Poor dude, we thought. To sell your soul to the Company store like that. Pathetic.

So I find it kind of interesting that today everybody I know has devolved to that status. You can’t really call it a Company Man anymore, because that is genderist. I’ll just say that we’re all Company People.

I know a fellow who works for Google (GOOG). He totes around an Android, the phone sold by his company in its store. He loves it. Like everybody else I know, he says “we” when he talks about his firm. He gets really defensive when people say anything against the Goog.

My friend Larry works for Satan. I won’t reveal the human form that Satan is taking in his dealings with Larry, but believe me, he’s quite effective. Does Larry mind working for Satan? Not at all. “He’s a really nice guy when you get to know him,” Larry tells me. I believe him. Ted Bundy was charming, too.

My pal Danny works in terrestrial radio, a business that has been disrespected by the fad-crazy media but actually produces billions of dollars of profit every year for its proprietors, at good margins.  “I got satellite radio in this car I’m renting,” he told me the other day. “It’s pretty good. But I’d never subscribe to it.” I asked him why, if he liked it. “It would be like getting a season ticket to the Yankees,” he said. Danny bleeds Red Sox red. So I knew what he meant.

And then there’s me. I have worked for the same company for more than 20 years. I didn’t intend to. I’ve been begging them to put me on the beach for years. But here I still am. Same job, even, only bigger. Same chair, too. Why change it? You know how hard it is to get a comfortable chair?

Anyway, lately I find I hate the stuff made by our competitors. I won’t tell you what that is, because homey don’t play that. But I can say that whenever I run into it — on a plane, in a store, in somebody else’s house — I just despise it. If I’m exposed to it, I want to get away from it. If somebody expresses even mild approval of it, I feel like killing them.

This Company mentality expands to fill all areas of my working life. Take this blog, for instance. It’s on a specific web destination that is in competition with some others, although competition on the Internet is somewhat weird. People cruise all over the place all day and hit just about everything in the sector in which they have an interest. But still. There are sites that go mano-a-mano against this one. And I loathe them. I wish them ill. I want them to go away. I don’t frequent them.

I wish it could be different. My competitors are everywhere. And I hate them. I’m mildly annoyed by people who don’t, in fact.

It’s possible we’re all like dogs. We start life looking like ourselves, and after some time we end up looking like our owners. Why not? They’re the ones holding the box of biscuits, I guess.

32
Add a comment
Business Life

10 things to do on a snowy work day

Posted February 26, 2010

1. Wait for the snow plows to arrive. Look out window. Realize there will be no snow plows, because your neighborhood is not as important as some others.

2. Look out window. Pretty. Wonder if Mayor Bloomberg’s house and his big office building in midtown are being plowed right at this very moment. Suspect yes.

3. Select shoes, opting for stupidly optimistic loafers with leather soles. Put on scarf. Check BlackBerry for charge in case you get lost in snowdrift and must dial 911. Put on overcoat. Put on gloves. Remember important message that must be sent. Take off gloves. Send message. Put on gloves. Wonder whether anybody else will be at the office. Leave, feeling adventurous, virtuous and slightly demented.

4. Arrive at office. Listen to the silence. Look out window. See one lone snow plow making its way up the avenue. Watch cars spinning out all over the place. Wonder what makes people go to the office when they really don’t have to. Wonder if anybody would notice if you left.

5. Get coffee. Observe all the closed doors up and down the hallway. Notice one door that is open, lights on. Go over to that office. Observe Lester Gormley sitting at his desk in his overcoat, hat still on and covered with snow and ice. “Queens is a frickin’ mess,” he says. Inquire of Lester why he came in in the first place. Watch him think about it. Return to desk.

6. Drink remaining coffee. Consider acquiring another cup from the Starbuck’s machine in the conference room. Decide against it, but reserve options. Look out window. Wonder why the Mayor doesn’t deploy snow plows until AFTER the snow has totally, utterly and completely stopped. Imagine Mayor, sitting in his office, weighing alternatives: totally dysfunctional city vs. budget shortfall. See him choosing former. Wonder how much $$ the city could save if it just did away with snow plows altogether. Allow the very rich to pay for their own shoveling and snow removal. Sort of like the situation with the school system.

7. Change mind on coffee acquisition.

8. Return to desk. Look at clock. See it’s precisely 9:03 and you have been at the office for seven minutes. Wonder what you’re going to do with the next 593 minutes. Look out window.

9. Answer phone. Talk with Roover, who is in his office on another floor. Ascertain you are both free for lunch. Return lots of old e-mail. Sign papers. Play casual game for a while. Remember carpal tunnel situation. Scroll websites. Look out window. Shoot off memo to boss so that he knows you’re on the case. File nails. Floss. Empty one drawer of credenza and toss away contents that have been carefully preserved for a decade. Call Finster, Bortz, Kerman, Lazenby and Snopes, leaving messages, so they know you were on the job when they were sitting at home with a nice hot cup of Ovaltine.

10. Go lunch with Roover. Do not return.

25
Add a comment
Cloud computing

Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!

Posted November 17, 2009

It is my understanding that by the time we get to Web 4.0 everything we do will be up in the cloud. All our writing, our spreadsheets, our photos, our videos, all up in the cloud, wherever that is. I guess it will be like heaven. Nobody knows where that is, either, even those who believe in it.

You may be more evolved than I am on this subject, but that idea makes me a little bit nervous. Perhaps it’s all the DID YOU BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER TODAY warnings I’ve received during the course of my digital life. Maybe it’s just my innate mistrust of things I can’t actually put my hands on and see. Me, I like to have it all on these neat little hard drives they make now, with a terabyte of storage for a couple hundred bucks. Give me a brick over a cloud any day.  I know I’m in the minority, though. It’s all headed for the cloud and ain’t nothin’ we can do about it.

So this morning I got to the office, and there was no cloud. In fact, there was no internet. No web. No e-mail. No shared documents. No access to you guys. Nothing. Just what we used to call a dead terminal. We used to like our dead terminals. We wrote on them, played games on them, ran numbers on them. Now you might as well try to work with a loaf of bread. A computer not connected to the great giant brain stem is nothing more than a doorstop.

I called IT. They were going crazy. I called HR, because that’s what you do around here when something malfunctions. Ambrose, the head of the department, was beside himself. Seems that a PowerPoint presentation he had to make to senior management was up in the cloud, too, safe and sound, naturally, but he couldn’t get to it. “We’re going to have to go to Plan B,” he said with a foreboding so dire I didn’t dare ask him what Plan B was.

We all had coffee. Walked around a little. An hour or so passed, and then suddenly the cloud was back. Connectivity was restored. We were all functioning business people again. I called Ambrose, who was very relieved. I heard clicking in the background and the sound of a printer churning out a hard copy behind him. “What was it?” I asked him.

“Mouse ate through a cable in midtown,” he said.

“A mouse?” I said.

“Apparently,” he said. “Incredible, huh?”

Yep. Incredible. One mouse brought down the entire communications function of a gigantic corporation. Not a hacker. Not the end of the world, brought to you by the Mayans and Roland Emmerich. Just one… small… rodent.

You know what they say, I’m sure. The best laid plans of women and men often go a-mouse. Well, maybe they didn’t say it exactly like that. But I’m sticking to my brick for the foreseeable future. I figure it would take one hell of a mouse to put that out of commission.

18
Add a comment
Airline Travel

Yes, I’ve found everything I !#@!$ wanted!

Posted November 16, 2009

unhappy faceChina is growing triple digits as we politely chug along toward greater mediocrity. Sarah Palin is topping the charts.  Winter is coming in. My 401(k) is still under water. War in the east is widening. Bonuses will hit record highs on Wall Street this year. Do all these things bother me? Sure they do. But not as much as the guys who run the stores at the airport.

I don’t like to think of myself as a peevish person. But I do have peeves.  And my peeves define me.

You go to the airport store. There’s at least one in every terminal. They have every stupid magazine in the world, so you look at them for a while. Brad is turning to Jen because of Angelina. Kate is courageously putting her life back together after Jon screwed it up, or vice versa. Rob Pattinson… something. There’s medicine and some books and gum, lots of gum, very expensive gum, and stuffed animals and shot glasses and tee-shirts celebrating Burbank or St. Louis (the Gateway to America!) and lousy headphones and all that stuff like that there. And eventually you come up with something you didn’t really need, two magazines, some mints, a little ferret that rolls over and over on the ground when you turn it on, an oinking pig that changes direction when it bumps into a wall… and then you go to the checkout… and the person behind the counter says, “Did you find everything you wanted?” Which is fine. You could interpret it as a caring question. Like, they’re really worried that I might not have found that copy of Digital Coin Collector I was looking for. So I say “Yes, thanks.” And that’s when it happens.

“Water?” says the lady. “Some candy?”

Okay, I don’t know why this rubs me the wrong way so badly. But after years of traveling, during which this scenario developed and took shape and heft and national proportions, I’ve gotten really sick of it. Perhaps you can help me with it. It doesn’t seem so egregious, looking at it on the screen here. “Batteries?”

For a while, my tactic was simply to stare at the cashier with a bored expression and say nothing. Not no. Not yes. Just… nothing. As I would any comment not worthy of reply. They don’t get it, though. “Some magazines?” they will inquire if all I got was Tic Tacs. “Some Tic Tacs?” they will say when all I got was a magazine.

Lately, I’ve tried a small push-back, just to keep myself sane. “No thanks,” I’ll reply. “Why? Would YOU like some candy?”  Doesn’t stop them. Nothing does. They are indefatigable.

One time, at LAX, after paying $28.50 for a bunch of swill I didn’t really need (a copy of Car & Driver, a paperback I’d never read, a bottle of Coke Zero, some arcane gum whose packaging interested me), I got really peeved when the cashier asked me if I wanted a sports drink too. “Why do you guys all do this?” I asked the lady, perhaps a bit too sharply. She looked at me, very crestfallen, as if I had called attention to a physical defect over which she had no control. “We are required to,” was all she said. Afterwards, I felt bad. Why am I ragging on this poor employee who is only carrying out the instructions of her master?

Something too close to home, maybe, huh.

23
Add a comment
Business Life

How to save business journalism

Posted November 2, 2009

cowfart

cowfartThose who were enjoying a weekend of high sports drama or familial bliss might have missed another media obituary this past Sunday – David Carr’s persuasive au revoir to business journalism in the New York Times.

Carr cites several “technical reasons underlying the collapse — and that’s what it is — of business journalism.” It’s hard to argue with him, not to mention dangerous. You don’t want a guy like Carr mad at you. Still, you’ve got to hope he’s being a bit pessimistic in order to make his point, and that there’s still some life in the game if somebody can figure out a new way to do it.

Carr suggests that the beat itself has lost its mojo, because its subject — essentially the aggrandizement of Business and its practitioners — has disappeared. We’re not interested in big, glossy spreads of the superpeople who run the economy and its constituent parts.  We don’t want to see one more big piece on how great this or that financial wizard might be… because we’re not in the wizard business anymore.

Yet the need for stories that concern the making and spending of money have never been more important. The collapse of this discipline as a popular art form will spell disaster in the short and long term. Short term — we won’t know what’s really going on even more than usual. Long term — same, only bigger. So what should those who cover Business be writing about, and not? Here are some early suggestions:

NO: The Financial Sector. I’m bored with it. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be coverage. But about 80% of all stuff right now is about Wall Street, banks, financial institutions, rich farts getting bonuses, and so forth. Been there. Done that.  Unless a guy is running around in front of the stock exchange with his or her pants on fire, I’m not as interested as I should be anymore.

YES: People in other areas of enterprise who are making news in one way or another. There must be some other fields of endeavor where people make something other than decisions and big money. I mean… aren’t there?

NO: Prognostications from economists and security analysts. With the winnowing-away of huge swaths of reporters and editors, a lot of newspapers, magazines and websites now confine themselves almost exclusively to reporting on the reports of those whose job it is to issue reports. Sometimes these guys are right. Sometimes they’re wrong. They’re seldom very interesting to read about. But it fills space, particularly the more outlandish and opinionated ones.

YES: Bovine methane emissions and attempts to either reduce or monetize them.

NO: Davos. The Allen Conference. Any other story that features the usual stiffs wearing blue jeans and white water rafting. That includes Bono.

YES: Auto workers who are still employed. How science is making our lives better. Malls that are sinking into the swamps on which they were built. Stem-cell startups in weird locations. Businesses that are actually making money, instead of those that are grooming themselves for a VC run. You know… business.  Remember business?

NO: Global.

YES: Local.

NO: Dead stuff and why it’s dying.

YES: Having fun in Tokyo.

NO: What old guys are thinking.

YES: What young people are doing.

NO: Tech.

YES: Sex.

Business is about life, not death; about freedom, not prison; about struggle, not defeat. Sometimes when the story isn’t going your way, you have to change the story. What was first in importance is now last; what was last is suddenly first.

Maybe it’s time we all started looking at the front end of the elephant for a while. The view is different from up there.

20
Add a comment