Practice Makes Perfect
“The one thing that I know is that you win with good people.” – Don Shula Hi Everyone, I’ve been a bit circumspect and contemplative this week. I am keenly aware that time is marching on even though each day is bleeding into the next. I find myself vacillating between forgetting which day of the […]
A Matter of Perspective
“Life cannot be calculated. That’s the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation – it is part of the equation.” – Jeanette Winterson Hi Everyone, I write these letters every week and sometimes they are easy to write and other times I’m confounded. It’s not […]
Be Like Mike
“When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.” ― Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture) In loving memory of someone who made me try harder… We continue to enjoy good fortune in the marketplace. As I wrote yesterday, happy clients and perfect quality work create a virtuous […]
Showing That You Care
Saturday evening, I was traveling home in an Uber after a long day. I was tired and ready for a good night’s rest. My best friend had given a podcast on meditation, mostly related to the mind-body connection. The two hosts had those dreamy, serene voices that you’d expect when talking about meditation. Although tired, […]
Passion
We are only gated by our ambition. I was chatting the other day about my heroes and what I found so remarkable about them. I was recounting the first time I met Richard Branson, and what amazed me most was the way he thinks in terms of “Why not?”. The guy realizes that airplane travel […]
The Pivotal Moment
In every sporting event, there is a pivotal moment that determines the outcome of the competition. While that moment may seem a matter of luck or stoke of greatness, it is inevitably the byproduct of years of hard work. We celebrate the wins, but what we should be celebrating is the tireless effort and dedication […]
Maybe So
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein My mentor at Microsoft used to share this Chinese proverb occasionally as a reminder that things are not always as they appear to be… more to follow after you read the proverb. One day in late summer, an old farmer was working in his field […]
Are You a Chicken or a Pig?
When I was working at Microsoft, I organized a large project called the Geospatial Data Gateway. It was a database project with all the orthoimagery of the US Department of Agriculture coupled with all the tabular data associated with a common land unit. In one system, you could visualize a plot of land and have […]
Make Your Bed
“There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are afraid you will succeed.” – Ray Goforth There is an old saying… “The difference between people is the books they’ve read and the people they’ve met. I just […]
The Present
One of my favorite books to give is called The Precious Present by Spencer Johnson. Think of the title of the book as a riddle. I had dinner last night with an old friend and we were talking about building relationships with customers. I’ve known some of my customers for years, and many of them […]