Not that you asked, but I have some things to say.

I saw a play today. It was based on a movie that had, as one of it's primary characters, a very famous person. Fans of the movie will love the play. Many critics will have a field day with this play. It, for me, wasn't great. I took my mom to see it, and we had a nice bit of brunch beforehand, so it had that as a positive. My primary issue? It was too long. Two and one-half hours. It was longer than the movie it was based on. It also had, at it's center, a somewhat outdated and highly repetitive theme. It took two hours to repeat the same concepts a movie had made, much more enjoyably, two decades earlier. 'Les Miz' gets a much larger point across, in less time. So...how does this translate to my 'somewhat-business related blog?" Be Succinct. We strive daily to make our points. We inform, persuade, and influence our clients by making a point. We also (and I can be one of the worst) tend to prattle on. We like to hear ourselves talk. Let's work on that. ...

Around 2:49 into the enclosed link (click on the blog title) an amazing statement is slipped into the famous rant by Alec Baldwin's character in GGGR. "...and your name is 'you're wanting'..." Mull it over, sip it, roll it around your tongue like a fine red wine. Getting anything? The comment is made to Jack Lemmon's character, Shel 'the Machine' Levine. Shel is a once-great salesman with little control over his situation. He was a superstar in his heyday, but as the movie progresses you see that Shel is no longer 'the Machine'. This could be one of the scariest thoughts about the existential truth of 'being great'. Could it slip away? Could it be situation vs you? Oh Shel, there but for the grace of God go I????? As I rise within my industry and make my name in it, I sometimes feel the scratching, gnawing fear that something outside of my control could bring everything down. At some point every one of us has looked in the mirror an...

"He was the first casualty of the next great war." were the words spoken by Charles Lewin at the funeral of his son Daniel Lewin. Daniel Lewin was on Flight 11, one of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center on 9/11/01. Mr. Lewin, once a member of the Israeli Special Forces was killed by the terrorists. FAA reports suggest that Mr. Lewin attempted to defend the take over of the plane by the terrorist hijackers. Had he been successful, the events of the 9/11 attack could have been very different. One man, ironically trained in counter-terrorism by the Sayeret Matkal division of the Israeli Defence Force, gave his life fighting the terrorists. It is believed he was the first death of the 9/11 attack. סיירת מטכ"ל is the motto of the Sayeret Matkal and means "Who Dares Wins". Mr. Lewin dared to take on roughly half a dozen armed attackers. He went out fighting. Today I will remember the events of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and how it has chang...

Hard work, pain, adversity, struggle.....I was raised to believe these things created character and should be embraced. I've spent my time with manual labor, I've worked through the pain, I've walked it off, I've bided my time, I've persevered. I'm sort of done with all of that now. I've got character out the wazoo. In this day and age a measure of a man should be his ability to avoid pain, not endure it. To select one's pursuits is a benefit of selective evolution. When we were fighting off bears, natives, and cholera such ruggedness made sense. Now, I should be celebrated as a "Man of Leisure". Our current evolutionary path should favor my success-pouch (gut) and intellectual-hands (i.e soft as a girls). So....any tree chopping and earth moving will be hired out, I will buy my food already picked or slaughtered, and I'm updated on all of my immunizations. The 'Marlboro Men' were rugged embodiments of the 'tough guy, all-Americ...