Monthly Archives: March 2020

03/10/20

The American Craftsman

One of the singular pleasures of my life has been building stuff. Since I was 8 years old and built a dam across a creek at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey thereby flooding the adjacent parking lot for the NCO’s housing (three feet deep), I have built things.

For the record, I got a full grown adult ass chewing, but my Dad was very interested in how I formed the local kids into a work force, stole the cinder blocks from the Post Engineers who were working on a culvert and crossover on the creek, and my design — which worked just fine. [My first startup?]

Later, when a combat engineer in Korea, I would build a series of gabion dams down a watercourse that flooded a village across from our base. It was a very similar design. That village never flooded again.

Anyway, there are those in life who are builders. They like to build things. I think I wanted to be one from an early age and I got to do it. I am addicted to the smell of sawdust.

I built a lot of things including high rise office buildings, land development, and renovating old office buildings, apartments, shopping centers. It always takes a team.

One American Center, Austin, Texas

One American Center at Sixth and Congress in the ATX. I oversaw its creation. It was a lot of fun.

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03/9/20

CEO Shoptalk — Staffing

The subject of how companies staff their businesses, manage their employees, and administer the employer-employee relationship has been lingering in my mind for some considerable time. Today, I will try to put some order to it. Staffing.

At the core of every business is people. It starts with the founder(s) and then grows. A company cannot grow without being a capable employer, but little is said as to the system by which that happens.

Allow me to jump ahead. Assume:

 1. You are a founder/CEO who now has some semblance of a product, are struggling with product-market fit, have raised a bit of capital, and will have to hire people to drive and scale the business.

 2. Assume, in the alternative, you are a founder/CEO who has more than 50 employees, plenty of money in the bank, have achieved product-market fit, have 1,000 customers, and are now ready to really scale.

I use these two examples because I hope the logic is universal.

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03/8/20

Oil War

If you slept in on Daylight Savings Time, then you may have missed that we have another war erupting in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia (through the newly public Aramco which it controls) has lowered the price of its crude, while threatening to increase crude oil production by more than 2,300,000 barrels daily to a total of 12MM barrels per day.

This is a hissy fit on the heels of an unsuccessful OPEC + meeting (the plus being the addition of Russia) attempt to reduce production by 1.5MM barrels.

As always when this group meets, there was a lot of discussion, but no consensus.

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03/4/20

Evolving Leadership Style

Leadership is one of those subjects that ebbs and flows in cycle with the startup and venture capital buzz. It was quite fashionable to discuss a few years ago, today, not so much. It is, however, a very important issue to understand. I want to discuss three different specific elements of evolving leadership.

 1. The first element is that leadership, you as a leader, the leadership style the organization needs, WILL evolve. You cannot run a 500 person company with the same leadership technique as a 10-person startup.

 2. The changes will be manifested in your leadership style which requires you to assess and give considerable thought to ‘what is your leadership style?’

 3. One of the most important elements of leadership style is your authentic leadership voice. This will also evolve.

It seems so obvious when one looks at it from afar, but you will be experiencing this when you are ass deep in alligators. You may not have the natural inclination to step back and assess the changes that are happening or are needed around you.

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03/4/20

Mike Bloomberg Is Out — Exclusive Interview

So, I get a call from the Bloomberg campaign saying that Mike wants to sit down and chat about the campaign as he is “reassessing” things post-Super Tuesday.

We visit in Austin, Texas (also known as Tejas) when he flies in on one of his Dassault Falcon 900s — he owns three of them.

“So, Mike, should we start with the planes? You own how many planes?”

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03/2/20

Corona Virus Working Theory

I have taken to calling the Corona Virus the Wutang Flu and I have developed a working theory as to what has really happened because, of course, whatever the Chinese are telling us is a lie.

Here is the essence of the Wutang Flu Theory:

 1. The Chinese have been sitting on this mess for more than 3 months trying to dampen the information because it reflects poorly on the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to control …………………………………………………….. everything.

Sort of like the year long riots in Hong Kong.

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