Business Advice

Teaching and Preaching

Teaching and Preaching I am an outrageous guy.  What makes me particularly outrageous is that I am prepared to tell everyone about my outrageous behavior and turn it into a life lesson for others.  For ten years I was a Clinical Professor of Management at Cornell.  That gave me the platform to tell over 2,000 students all about the lessons from my forty years on Wall Street and the lessons learned.  I reveled in the…

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Business Advice

The Moment of Truth

The Moment of Truth I have, for some reason, made a habit of living on the brink, usually looking squarely into the abyss.  This has not been a life decision, but it does seem to be a career decision.  I do not want to talk about the exact nature of the abyss I am looking into at the moment but suffice it to say that the fork in the road is rather dramatic.  One route…

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Business Advice

Roller Coaster Design and Maintenance

Roller Coaster Design and Maintenance Jim’s wife came at him with an unusual question.  Had Jim ever told the night doorman of their apartment building that he was a designer of roller coasters? Sometimes comments take on a life of their own and once they go through the mill they morph in all kinds of interesting ways. When Jim was in between marriages he had dated a woman who was teaching him Spanish.  He immediately…

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Business Advice

On Innovation

On Innovation When I was in high school I can remember going to visit my aunt and uncle who had previously owned a grocery store.  They had an old adding machine that fascinated me.  I would play with it for long hours.  When I got to college, as a freshman engineer I took a computer programming course and learned how to write do-loop operands using IBM punch cards that we would submit to a computer…

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Business Advice

The Beast Within

The Beast Within James is not the man you think he is when you first see or meet him.   Some people show you who they are with their cultivated look.  I think Donald J. Trump announces to the world who he is with one glance.  Warren Buffet looks exactly like what you would expect The Sage from Omaha to look like.  Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos may be otherwise ordinary in their appearance, but I…

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Business Advice

Thawing a TV Dinner

Thawing a TV Dinner When I was a kid, just starting in grade school, we moved from a remote tropical valley in Costa Rica to Madison, Wisconsin. It was January, which was the start of the school year in the one-room schoolhouse on the institute grounds where we lived. I had never seen snow and here I was in frigid 30 degrees below zero weather in the midwestern United States. The explanation was that I…

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Business Advice

The Last Angry Man

The Last Angry Man Fred was livid and inconsolably so.  The thing was, he didn’t really know why.  He was generally an upbeat and pleasant sort that usually started each day with a smile and an optimistic outlook.  There had to be a reason he was so angry so he decided to set about figuring why. Fred had had more than an average amount of success in his life and in his career.  Yes, it…

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Business Advice

Sun on the Harbor

Sun on the Harbor Jim walked into his office at 7:30am and while he wheeled his carry-on bag to the back wall and took off his coat, it was hard not to notice the view.  The history of the United States was virtually laid out before him.  No joke.  He was looking out over New York Harbor on a sunny early March morning and it was nothing short of spectacular. Let me set the scene. …

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Business Advice

A Random Walk

A Random Walk There is a concept in investment management called random walk.  It’s exactly what it sounds like, one movement is not connected to another and is therefore random in nature.  It is the Shit Happens of finance, and it is used to describe the stock market and its gyrations. As a guy who managed very large money management businesses for many years, I spent some time thinking about random walk theory and whether…

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Business Advice

Genralist/Specialist Expertise

Generalist/Specialist Expertise One of the greatest balancing acts I have ever encountered in business is the choice between being a generalist or a specialist.  I’m not sure how many people focus on this juxtaposition, but I believe it is a primary choice that every professional must make.  Some will suggest that this does not apply to people who choose a specific professional track like medicine or law, but I think this choice exists in almost…

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