Look to the Goal, and Stay out of the Ditch
I took a motorcycle class to get re-certified and learned an important principle that goes way beyond riding two wheelers. The instructor emphasized over and over in both the classroom and on the course that when you’re making a turn you want to look through the turn—look where you’re going—and not at the obstacle near […]
Hope for the Next Generation?
Several friends recently despaired about the fate of grown children raised by their “helicopter parent” friends. According to them these college educated twenty somethings, including one with a Master’s Degree from Notre Dame, had been coddled from the cradle and were now having problems making it in the real world without mommy and daddy to […]
The Art of Selling
The best sales people don’t rely on a smarmy pitch or underhanded tactics. They find out what people want, and then deliver. I spent one Seattle summer working as the ice cream man, selling my wares from a three-wheeled truck. My best route included Alki Beach a sandy summer hangout on the west side of […]
In Honor of Memorial Day: The Forgotten Sailors
In honor of Memorial Day I’m re-running this post about men who made the ultimate sacrifice in a lonely stretch of the Pacific Ocean. On a personal note, I did “process [the] advice” from the publisher I mentioned and have made some significant progress. On a narrow canal in a Midwestern city lies a memorial to […]
Everyday is Valentine’s Day?
Ten months after Laurie and I started dating we had our first Valentine’s Day together. We were both freshman at the University of Washington and commuted together to the campus. During a break between classes she presented me with a card to celebrate the occasion. Like a typical clueless college boy, I had neglected to […]
The Unexpected Gift
What do you get a blind woman for Christmas when you’re on a tight budget? In one case a little creativity on the part of a friend resulted in a unique, and very touching, gift. My mother-in-law lost her sight to macular degeneration over a decade ago and we often struggle to find appropriate gifts […]
Predictably Bad
History is littered with those who made monumentally bad predictions. In 1901 Wilbur Wright told his brother, Orville, that man would not fly for fifty years.” Two years later the brothers made a mockery of Wilbur’s prediction. At Yale, a professor gave a student a “C” for his paper suggesting that you could make a […]
Against the Odds
What happens when you ignore common business sense? Sometimes doing the right thing pays off—despite being totally against the odds. Earlier this month I had the pleasure of speaking at a local conference on cost benefit analysis for businesses trying to decide on which projects to start—and which to dump. It happened to be a […]
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