Category: Newsletter (Page 13 of 20)

After the last few months, this week has been calm. That even includes my six-hour drive yesterday in an attempt to beat some of the holiday traffic going into the Thanksgiving weekend. The attempt was not as successful as I’d hoped, but my walk this morning was down to the pier, past the lighthouse, and through the live oaks instead of on the city streets in my Raleigh neighborhood.

On a broader level, this is a time of anticipation and building. There are a lot of things in development but none have yet borne fruit. I’ve had to force myself to zoom out and contemplate things on a timescale of months and quarters instead of days and weeks, and this has been frustrating given the rapid growth the business through most of this year. I’m sure many of you will have experienced similar times in your own lives. Now to keep my head down and keep moving forward through the rest of this period.

Last week offered a stark change from New York City. I spent a few days in east Tennessee surrounded by open space and very few people. There was still plenty of noise at times but noise of very different sorts than car horns and ambulance sirens.

The trip started with a multiday quail shoot on a preserve located on a bend in the Tennessee River. The hunts themselves involved walking through fields behind two dogs, a pointer and a flusher. To watch a bird dog in action is to see an animal in a state of absolute joy and it is a show just to watch it work the fields. The dogs worked in tandem. The pointer would run back and forth until it picked up a scent and pointed towards a covey of birds. Then the group would catch up to the pointer and the flusher would be released to flush the quail up into the air. The addition of the flushing dog made this hunt much less tiring than last year’s iteration where I was the one who had to kick about in the grass to get the birds to fly. The flushing dogs were also great retrievers and we didn’t lose a single bird during any of the three sessions. Dad did, however, shoot a few at such close range that there wasn’t much left to retrieve.

I then spent a couple of days with cousins and an aunt and uncle. Or more specifically, I stayed a few days with the three youngest members of the family and everyone else who happened to be with them while I was there. I hadn’t seen the kids in six months or more and they just keep growing, especially the youngest who was only a few weeks old when I saw him last. I don’t get to be around the children as much as I’d like, but I do enjoy how small their worlds are and how their worries are over toys and books and puzzles and combing their hair. I doubt I’ll ever be able to get that back. The oldest is now in first grade and has so many questions about so many things, especially Spanish translations this time, and her younger sister soaks in what information she can from listening.  It is refreshing to just sit and answer their little questions.

Last week was the longest I’ve ever spent in New York City. It was my first visit to the city in six years and I would be okay if I didn’t return for another decade or more. The way my life and business is trending, I don’t expect that to be the case but alas. Working out of a small hotel room that exceeds a dollar per square foot per night is not exactly my dream remote work arrangement. And while coffee shops and open coworking spaces function well for some, we can’t have client calls in such surrounds. That chained me to within a certain distance of the hotel and so forced me to stay in Midtown for most of the trip.

Walking up and down Fifth and Madison Avenues was more jarring than I expected. It is early November, so a few of the stores already had their Christmas decorations on display and the public ice rinks were set up at Bryant Park and Rockefeller Center. And it was 70 degrees every afternoon. The juxtaposition felt off.

I got a glimpse into life in a Brooklyn brownstone too on this trip. That was the one area I went where the noise wasn’t constant. Brooklyn is also (for now) built more on a human scale so that the buildings don’t smother you. Brooklyn has lots of other things that would make it a frustrating place to live, too, but at least this time I was able to do more than aimlessly walk around after choosing a subway stop to exit like I did on my previous visit to the borough. In any event, score a point for local knowledge.

Food is very important to me and often my travel schedule is constructed around meals. When I chose restaurants on this trip, there was a clear bifurcation. If I chose an old-school Jewish deli, then I had a very good pastrami sandwich and a mix of very good and not-so-good pickles. If I chose anything else, the food was mediocre at best. When a client or friend chose the restaurant, the food was great and the atmosphere matched. They were four for four in that regard and all very different—oyster bar; tapas; Mediterranean; Asian fusion. Score a few more points for local knowledge. Not that I needed to relearn the lesson that going with a local makes travel better, but there were several reiterations of that lesson over the past week.

This is not my first time in New York City, not even my first time staying in Midtown Manhattan. It is the first work trip to the city and the first time I’ll be hosting client meals anywhere, but that comes with my current working life. Fortunately for the clients, they have chosen the restaurants as I picked a dud last night for myself. There are still more opportunities, though, so I’ll keep trying new places in the hopes of finding one that I remember fondly many moons from now. I am handicapped by not having had the benefit of several weeks’ advance notice regarding the trip, precluding anything requiring an advance reservation.

New York has never been my favorite city, and this will be the first time I’ve spent more than about 48 hours here. I’m going to really try to enjoy this visit, but I have always had a low-grade anxiety walking here, something different than fear. The Asian megacities I’ve visited pressed in on me, especially Delhi. There were crowds of people everywhere, a wall of traffic of all sorts of vehicles in the street, and horns blaring all the time. New York is different. Sure, it has the crowds and the traffic, but the horns are less frequent and there is much more steel and glass. New York presses down on me. It’s a different shade of mild claustrophobia and one I’ve never felt anywhere else. Surely I’m not the only person who has felt that way.

I woke up on Saturday and decided to drive into the high country for a change of scenery and a mental refresh. Along with the late spring, October is the best time to be in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The temperatures are finally cooling and the landscape is aflame in yellows, reds, and oranges. The differences in elevation mean that different parts of any view will have more or less color depending on the timing, but there are bands of bright colors for nearly a month as the color descends down into the valleys.

On my route, I crossed into Virginia and then looped back to Boone via the Blue Ridge Parkway, a road designed for a slow, leisurely ride. There are also lots of helpful pullouts at any curve where there is an open vantage from atop the ridges. The whole time, I had the music off. For stretches, I listened to the wind with the windows rolled down and the cool air flowing about me. I stopped at several of the pullouts to take a short walk or just to stand and take in the scenes laid out before me. At one stop, there was a short walk down to a waterfall crashing over a steep rock face. I stood watching it from below for several minutes as well. It was almost jarring to come into downtown Boone, crowded as it was with visitors and college students alike. I decided not to linger and so after a single down and back along King Street ate an early dinner and drove back to Raleigh.

It was a lot of driving and time spent with my own thoughts, but it was what I needed. Throughout my life I have taken drives like this. As early as high school there was a classic country radio show on Saturday nights that I used for the purpose. I even rented a car a few times when I lived in DC just to achieve the same environment. You don’t have to drive nearly as much as I did, though, to get out and let nature nourish your soul this fall.

I was in Las Vegas last week to attend a conference. I could go without visiting Las Vegas again at any point in the near future, but it was a great conference full of people operating and servicing digital businesses. As I was the only practicing lawyer in attendance, I’m hopeful that it will also be fruitful for business development. At the very least, I met some interesting people doing interesting things and will build upon some of the relationships I started.

As this was the first time I visited Las Vegas for more than a few minutes, I walked along the Vegas Strip and through some of the resorts. I wanted to see places like Caesar’s Palace and the Bellagio in person after seeing them in television and movies for so many years.

In order to walk through any of the Las Vegas resorts, you must walk through part of the resort’s casino. Doing so subjects you to a deluge of lights and sounds. The video machines, whether slots or otherwise, seem to have coalesced around the same design language and so they all look the same with slight variations (e.g. the Game of Thrones version had some loud dragon sounds). Then there were the table games, which were often tame as I walked during off-peak hours but from which still emanated the occasional cheer.

I have a rule that I don’t gamble in casinos. It is a decision I made once and a decision I will never have to make again. It is a meta-decision so to speak. There is a logic to this that extends beyond just wanting not to lose money. People only have a certain amount of mental energy. It can wax and wane during the day and through different periods of life, but it is never infinite. Implementing meta-decisions saves some of that energy. In this example, I didn’t have to pull my mind away every time I saw the shining lights of the slot machines or someone hit blackjack. I had already made the decision not to gamble and so just kept walking. The same dynamic exists for things like brushing your teeth. This decision making savings is also part of the reason why Steve Jobs wore the same clothing every day—that was one less decision he had to make.

Now, I am not recommending that everyone adopt a fixed wardrobe, though I have trended in that direction in recent years. No, my call to action is something else. Look for the places where you can make your life better by implementing a meta-decision. It is much harder to eat handfuls of candy if you don’t buy candy at the grocery store. It is easier to take a walk in the morning if you set out your exercise clothes every night. It is easier to study language flashcards if you always study them while you eat breakfast. Any way you can save your daily willpower by making positive things automatic with one larger decision is a good thing. I encourage you to spend a few minutes and think of a meta-decision or rule you can try out over the next week.

I felt old this weekend. Sure, according to many I was born old. Be that as it may, this was still a feeling I’ve only felt a few times. I was in Charleston with my family and many people from my little hometown for a wedding. The weekend was filled with seafood and the charm of walking through the city. I tried to go shopping as well, but that was a fool’s errand.

As for the exact source of my realization, that isn’t difficult to locate. It wasn’t the ceremony. It wasn’t the music at the reception. It wasn’t the conversation at my table at the reception either. No, it was that someone I watched grow up was getting married. That was a first. Even with my brother we grew up together. Talking with the bride’s younger brothers only added to the feeling. I had to look up at them as we spoke even though I can remember them as young children. I assume that these moments will become more frequent as the years go by, but for whatever reason I wasn’t ready for this one. Anyway, it was a very enjoyable weekend on the whole.

I returned to Raleigh on Sunday from my latest “work” trip (in time for week two of my Monday curling league). And while I did not neglect my work, I did other things too. This post is more of a highlights summary than the usual fare of a more detailed account of a single topic or event.

I sat alone under redwood trees in the cool mornings while my body adjusted to the time difference. These were not the giant sequoias, but they still make one feel small in their presence. That is something needed from time to time.

I drove a car remotely that was in a parking lot several miles away. That is what is now possible through the technology developed by Qibus, the client alongside whom I worked during the trip. Even with the prototype driving setup I used, it is incredible (1) that the whole thing is possible at all and (2) how close it felt to driving while physically in the car. Just don’t ask me to explain any of the underlying engineering.

I had small group dinners almost every night, an experience I have too rarely. It is remarkable what conversation among friends can bring to the spirit. The conversation was different every night, but I did try most of the time to steer things away from whatever projects we had each been working on that day.

I took the ferry into the city for a meeting with the MicroAcquire team, a beautiful ride across the bay unshrouded by its famous fog. We celebrated the closing of the first transaction they helped broker directly as we were the attorneys who represented the seller. Then at lunch, standing in a park looking across the bay, we saw some of the activity that has tarnished San Francisco in recent years. When I did some work in an alcove in a shopping mall, I was treated to even more. Take nothing away from how San Francisco looks from a distance, though, as it is something to see out on or across the bay.

I took in a jazz concert in a small community theater where we were the youngest people in attendance by twenty years or more. My grandmother would have been proud. The songs were from an earlier era of jazz than I had listened to before and while the change was nice I don’t anticipate altering my regular workday background music.

I attended an Octoberfest event that was so out of place as to be comical. Sure, there was a large tent set up with long communal tables, but they also played the chicken dance song multiple times. And the lines were so long for bratwursts that I had paella for lunch and finished my lunch before those who waited in line for sausage and cabbage even sat down. Then once I got back to my lodgings I was whisked off to evening tea and ginger snap cookies to round off the trip.

The broad outline of the training cycle at the gym I patronize is a few months of exercise programming and then tests to measure your benchmark numbers for a series of main lifts. At the conclusion of the most recent cycle none of my numbers increased. I largely blame my second bout of COVID for this, but there was a major decrease in one lift that was due to something else, something positive. That something is the subject of this post.

My hamstring flexibility has always been limited. I’ve never had any serious muscular injury, but this lack of flexibility has been and is a problem. I’m working to address this both through a dedicated stretching routine and through placing special emphasis on loading my hamstrings during weighted exercises. A key aspect of this is going through the full range of motion of the squat, something I haven’t really done in the past. Given the limitations of my hamstrings, I can lift less going through the full range of motion than if I only went through half or three-quarters of it. This caused the number on the board to go down quite dramatically. Now, though, I’ll be able to consistently perform the full exercise at weight ranges where I might finally improve my strength and flexibility after a long period of stagnation.

It’s not enough just to track metrics. For starters, you need to track the things that actually matter. This is not easy and something of a trial and error process. Then, once you home in on the correct things to measure, you need to measure them accurately so you aren’t lying to yourself. This can be even harder. Lifting weights offers some easy metrics—how much weight and how many reps. Most things aren’t so simple, but I was deluding myself to my detriment even with easy metrics available. Let this be a reminder that both measuring the right things and being accurate in your measurements matter if you want to improve something.

One of my tasks today is to mark up a purchase agreement, a routine part of my work. I have already skimmed it and know what is ahead of me. Actually, I didn’t even need to skim it to know what I’ll face. It will be a document designed to achieve three purposes: to catch out the unwary; to anchor to aggressive positions; and to increase legal bills. Never mind that time kills deals and the attorneys on both sides know the final terms will not resemble those presented in the initial draft, going through the back-and-forth of sending redline after redline is the process of “negotiating” a contract. An entire economic model has been constructed around this process, the almighty billable hour.

Our value proposition is different. We charge our clients to deliver positive outcomes no matter how much of our time it takes. We also offer pricing certainty. Those are the things clients care about and why our model will prevail. It is the difference between delivering a process and delivering an outcome. I came across a blog post this week that presented a story illustrating this. I’ll reproduce part of the post here:

A giant ship engine failed. The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine. Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a young boy. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom. Two of the ship’s owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars. “What?!” the owners exclaimed. “He hardly did anything!” So they wrote the old man a note saying, “Please send us an itemized bill.”

The man sent a bill that read:

Tapping with a hammer………………….. $ 2.00

Knowing where to tap…………………….. $ 9,998.00

That story is apocryphal. Nonetheless, it really was the man’s knowledge that constituted all of his value, not his time. We take more time on our projects than did the old man in the story, but we too are in the outcomes business. And even though we have lost the business of potential clients who would prefer to pay for a process, the outcomes business is where we will stay.