Black Friday I am not sure where Black Friday gets its name since the adjective “black” usually denotes a calamity of some sort. What I do know is that the commercial world wants us to start our Christmas shopping as early as possible. We in America have tacitly agreed to allow Christmas shopping to begin no earlier than Thanksgiving. That logically makes the Friday after Thanksgiving a big retailer day. The retail trade, both brick…
Reversal of Fortune The 1990 Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close story about the von Bulows of Newport, Rhode Island was a great movie that told the tale of two extremely wealthy and privileged people whose money did not bring them happiness, but quite the contrary. People love stories where wealthy people get their riches to rags just reward for leading puerile lives not caring about anyone else. The only thing better are stories of rags to…
Circling Around I recently took a motorcycle ride to to Mount Palomar with a friend in the neighborhood, Brian. Brian is 48 years old and has five kids that range from eighteen down to three. You don’t run into a lot of families with five kid anymore, but Brian seems blasé about that number of dependents, which is good because as I say to my kids all the time, “don’t worry, it’ll all be over…
The Land of Plenty With the passage of time, we all come to our own understanding of what matters and what does not. I am not so naive as to think that we all value the same things or that we value the same things at all stages of our lives. Like all aspects of our constantly changing lives, what matters to us at one age is likely quite different from what matters to us…
Gearing Up This morning it is not yet time for me to emerge from my office cave into the light of day. I have spent five hours talking to an old lawyer friend getting some pointers about the Investment Advisors Act (the 40-Act, as it is called in the biz) as it pertains to an expert witness case that I am up to my eyeballs in and then putting it down in writing. Only a…
Personal Space It’s Wednesday evening and I am at University of San Diego waiting for my class in Advanced Corporate Finance to begin in about 90 minutes. As those who know me understand, I rarely get anywhere late and I almost always err on being 15-30 minutes early. While that is not necessarily a good thing for hostesses throwing a party and putting finishing touches in place, mostly its a good thing that means I…
Head Game I spent about five hours yesterday with my brother-in-law Jeff at his house. Jeff and I met seventeen years ago in 2005, the year I met my magnificent Kim. Since my relationship with Jeff only exists because of Kim (I’m not sure how, in a country of just under 300 million people at the time, I would have otherwise run into Jeff), let me digress for a moment and tell you how I…
Fixing the World I often say to people that I teach because I get so much out of it. That sounds like a lot of Hoo Haw to most people, even to me, but it may also be true. One of the things that I clearly experience from teaching is the integration of that process with y expert witness activity. One truly does feed off the other. I am a more interesting and valuable expert…
Getting Pickled I have a funny relationship with pickles. I think it must have to do with PH balance or something. There are times I like them and times I find them very distasteful. If I’m going to have a hot dog, I generally prefer one with mustard and relish and relish is nothing more than ground up pickles, right? Maybe its the combination with mustard (something I believe Heinz may have combined and sold…
Influencer Hell A few years ago I read about a simple music teacher in South Korea that was eking out a living doing one-off music lessons. Then someone gave him the suggestion that he take his craft online and start leveraging himself by offering his lessons over the internet. The idea was initially about sourcing more clients through digital marketing, but also to create a network effect by allowing more students to access his supposedly…