Since starting my own business in July 2001, just weeks before the world changed in September 2001, there have been no shortage of, um, challenges. 9/11 itself was one of the first. There has always been some problem, some obstacle. This Gloomy Gus really summed it up for me: "There are no pleasant surprises when [...]
I played Pickleball last week. I am going to a Kenny Chesney concert next week. These two things have one thing in common: I was only vaguely aware of them. But after I said yes I was opened not only to the things themselves, but the attitudes and cultures surrounding them. The Tribes, if you [...]
I have decided that I am not taking telephone calls or answering emails on Friday afternoons. If there is a piece of bad news guaranteed to cause me stress, it almost always received on a Friday afternoon. The worst part about it is that I can't do anything but stew about it until Monday morning. [...]
I am not old enough to remember party lines (I am not sure they were ever used in the densely populated New York Metropolitan area) but I do remember phone books. Now a relic ignored by all and probably threat to the environment, phone books were at one time revolutionary. Before the invention of the telegraph [...]
In his book, Willpower Doesn't Work, Benjamin Hardy argues that creating environment, not the will to succeed, is the way to create new and positive habits. Let's say that you want to write every day, which is, not coincidentally, a goal of mine. In the past I tried to force myself to write. I left [...]
Answer Yes or No to the following: Is the work you do every day repetitive? Do you know the answer before you start? Can someone be trained to do what you do in a month or less? Is what you do something that any healthy adult can do? Does your work involve forms of any [...]
When I regularly post blogs, the traffic on my website goes up. Dramatically. Calls for proposals also go up. Dramatically. The complexity and challenge of the work also goes up. Dramatically. Did the calls come from the same people that came to my website? I don't think so. A desire to encourage, inform or entertain [...]
Give away money. Want to grow? Take a risk. Want to get better? Make a mistake. Want to make art? Risk embarrassment. Want gratitude? Visit a children's hospital.
An homage, a celebration, a shout out, a gesture of respect, admiration and appreciation is now potentially cultural appropriation? Isn't this how art, music, film, food and culture evolves?
The real estate appraisal industry, like most industries, is stuck in old thinking. Perhaps the worst of this thinking is the term and concept of Neighborhood. Most people correctly understand neighborhood as a collection of homes and perhaps businesses near their homes. Google images of neighborhood and you get what most people imagine a neighborhood [...]
Where is the modern Algonquin Round Table where artists and thinkers from a variety of disciplines come together to discuss big ideas? Where are the coffeehouses of Vienna where the likes of Jung, Freud, Zweig, Klimt, Loos and Adler would get together and toss about some bon mots? Where are the non-fiction Central Perk, Cheers or [...]
Last week President Trump signed an Executive Order allowing the sale of health insurance across state lines. This is all well and good, I thought, but how would it work mechanically? So I did some research and realized that this is change could be very exciting, especially for people who own small business or are otherwise [...]
I have done some reading lately by and about a Dutchman named Wim Hof. For years Hof, using himself as a guinea pig, has done experiments on the limits of human endurance (okay, some of them were stunts), specifically resistance to cold. Hof discovered that exposure to cold increases the number of brown fat cells, [...]
According to an article on the website Futurism, an incinerator in Switzerland was recently fitted with a carbon capture plant that is reportedly 1,000 times more efficient than plant photosynthesis. Filters capture the CO2 over several hours. The filters are then heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit (no great feat, your teakettle does the same thing and [...]
If you are proposing an out-of-the-ordinary project, trip, event or place and need team buy-in, add these words: "A little adventure." What man, woman or child can resist a little adventure?
Look, I know what you are going through. You have a problem, and it seems insurmountable. But it is not. Yes, there may be some hard choices. Things may not be the same. Maybe it is time things changed. You are being prompted to move on. So move on.
