I entered 2022 with great hope that this year would be an improvement over the past two Covid-riddled years. Business was exceptionally good for me in late 2021, despite the Covid challenges, and I still haven’t caught Covid, although this damn Omicron seems like it is going to find us all eventually. But sometimes life […]
Archive | September, 2022
Book Review: The Radical Potter
This new book by Tristram Hunt, is a biography of Josiah Wedgwood, the Founder of the famous Wedgwood Pottery works, the maker of fine china for over 250 years. The book was published in fall of 2021. Even before the current Wedgwood company was founded, the Wedgwood family had been potters for over 200 years. […]
The Third Buyer
I have observed, in buying and selling businesses, an odd phenomenon. It is what I call, “The Third Buyer.” This refers to The Third Buyer becoming the successful buyer of a property or business. Here is how this goes down. The owner of a business decides they are ready to sell. It is an almost […]
Where Did Seven Million People Go?
Seven million is the number that has been put on the labor shortage currently in America. Every business I know is having difficulty finding skilled labor. Why? And why is this true for every industry and in every geography? Why are there so many unemployed while there are so many job openings? This is an […]
Book Review: Leonardo da Vinci
Once at a mixer, the host asked us to pick the one person we would like to meet from history. It was an interesting way to break the ice. I would pick Leonardo da Vinci, who I’ve long considered the ultimate Renaissance Man. But I really didn’t know much about Leonardo until I read this […]
Book Review: Peril
This is the latest book by Bob Woodward, who first entered the American consciousness with All the President’s Men, the story of the Watergate scandal, in 1974. Peril is his 20th book, four with co-authors, including Robert Costa on this book. Both authors are journalists with the Washington Post. I preordered this book prior to […]
What Are We Hiring the Office to Do?
What are we hiring the office to do? That’s a question asked by the CEO of a large investor in commercial office spaces. That’s also a question that CEOs of businesses large and small are asking right about now. Proponents of going back to pre-pandemic conditions are arguing that we are hiring the office to […]
Book Review: Bad Blood
Bad Blood is subtitled, Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup. This is the story of Theranos, the blood testing company started by a 19-year-old Stanford dropout, Elizabeth Holmes, and now called the biggest fraud since Enron. I started reading this book, by Wall Street Journal writer John Carreyrou, in August, not knowing that […]
Book Review: Double Entry
Double Entry refers to the bookkeeping system which uses a self-balancing set of accounts, where every entry is double-sided, a debit and a credit. Author Jane Gleeson-White subtitled her book, How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance. The book starts with a speech by Bobby Kennedy decrying the things that Gross National Product does […]
Book Review: Fulfillment—Winning and Losing in One-Click America
The pandemic has acted as an accelerant to trends that were already taking place. The pandemic led to everyone shopping from home and Amazon was the biggest beneficiary of the growth in online shopping. With the rise of Amazon and Jeff Bezos, there has been a rash of new books about the company and its […]