One Summer, my friend T and I painted houses. After doing what had been my other job that Summer – selling encyclopedias door to door (and these weren’t Encarta discs, kids) – sweltering under the eaves wasn’t such a big deal. The woman whose house we were painting turned out to be a real pain – switching shades after we had done quite a bit, finding invisible missed spots, and, at the end, demanding we paint the foundation even though that hadn’t been part of the original job quote. It wasn’t so much the additional labor – only an extra day or so – but the fact that to do it right we had to rent a power washer to clean off the foundation so it could be painted as well as buy a lot of extra paint. Goodbye profits! Honest young men that we were, we bought what amounted to white-wash, threw it on to a foundation we had cleaned off with a hose, and prayed it wouldn’t rain until the check cleared. I’m still bothered by it 35+ years later. Continue reading
Tag Archives: business thinking
Life Lines
I got a note last night from a reader who also happens to be my sister-in-law. She’s way more tuned in than am I to some areas of pop culture (I compensate by over-learning digital, I guess). I couldn’t tell you what’s happening on The View with a gun to my head – she’s actually gone to see them live. Anyway, she asked me a question that got me thinking. Continue reading
Filed under Helpful Hints, Reality checks, Thinking Aloud
Amuse Yourselves
Sorry about being away for 2 days – duty calls, kids – not that I don’t feel as if I have an obligation to you! In any event, as I was flying about I started to think about the differences between how entertainment used to work when we were kids and how it works now. It’s a lot more than the differences between lean back and lean forward. It’s changed not only the nature of how we consume things but what those things are. Continue reading
Filed under digital media, Thinking Aloud
Consult Keith 