Category Archives: Career

Dogs and the stock market

Career, Life

Did you know there is a reason for how a dog got its name? It is God spelled backward.

These past 14 days have been breathtaking for the hotel industry. Companies that I have known for years have lost 60-75% of their equity value. The transaction market will undoubtably be in turmoil for the coming months. Yesterday (Thursday March 12) was a day of value decline that I have never seen in 30 years.

So, I went home and didn’t want to see any news or check my phone. I just wanted to eat dinner with my wife and watch some TV and let my mind cool down. We have two dogs, a fat Sheltie and a little 5-month-old Yorkie. They didn’t care what happened to the stock market yesterday. Ha. Their love and unconditional acceptance were the same as the day before and the day before that. All they wanted was to be loved. That’s all they cared about. So, I picked them both up and loved on them. The little one (yorkie) licked my face like she was telling me, its ok.

A dog is an amazing gift because their love is truly unconditional. Whatever happened that day just doesn’t matter to them. I believe (at least imagine) God created everything and stepped back and said, now, I am going to create the only animal that desires human contact and human love. The dog was created with the most forgiving heart and the greatest ability to love of all the animals.

So, our fat Sheltie and little 3lb Yorkie will be waiting for me when I get home today and it doesn’t matter what the stock market does. KT

Fast decisions

Career, Life

The company was floundering, and the board decided to replace the CEO with a young aggressive guy to turn the company around. The next morning, the new CEO scheduled a meeting in the board room with all the company leadership. He walked into the packed board room ready to take charge, make some changes and show everyone just how magnificent a leader he was. When he walked in, he saw one of the guys leaning against the wall. In front of everyone, he walked up to the guy and ask him how money he makes every week. Surprised, the guy says about $400 dollars a week. The CEO turns around walks out and comes back a few minutes later with a check for $1,600 dollars which represented a month severance pay. He handed the guy the check and told him he was fired and to get out. The guy took the $1,600 check and quietly left. The new CEO, feeling that he had really made a real leadership statement and showed them who the new boss was, asked one of the other people what job role the fired guy did. The other person told him; he was the pizza delivery guy. Ha

The point is even though you feel like it (like twitter and all the singers and Hollywood stars), it is best sometimes to take breath, think about it before you make rash decisions. KT

Life Dreams

Career, Family, Life

Dreams are sometimes a funny thing. They can happen when you least expect it.

Type A people like to plan every detail of their life and set weekly, monthly and yearly goals. They want to be in full control of their future. The problem is no one has ever been able to control their future and events in their life. Life happens and we deal with it as it comes.

The life you have dreamed of and hoped for doesn’t come on our schedule or when we think it should. Many people never get to live their dream but there are also many people who do. The funny thing is, it can happen when you least expect it and it can come in the form you never envisioned. We as humans think in the vernacular but God acts in the unexpected.

The bible says in proverbs 16:9, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord established his steps.” In many of my blogs I refer to being on the right road of life. When you are on that road there may be times when you can’t see a gas station or an restaurants and it may look bleak but it is in those periods you just need to know in your heart that you are on the path (road) God wants you on. Dreams are something like driving on a road. You might be slugging uphill thinking; will this ever change, and then you look up and see the destination. The city you were dreaming of.

You can’t plan it, schedule it or force it to come but every now and then, when you least expect it, your dream shows up. KT

Fixer

Career, Life

In business, the term fixer, is the person that comes up with the solution to a problem. In corporate America from Goldman Sachs, Ford Motor Company to a local investment groups, there are always issues that arise and unforeseen problems that come up. When these problems come up, the people in charge are looking for someone to figure out how to resolve it.

Henry Ford the second (The Deuce) once took his whole executive team to the assembly line and told the foreman to stop all production. He stood up and told all his employees (without the colorful language) that his granddaddy didn’t create Ford to be beaten by a Chevy Impala. He told them to walk home that day and think about a way to fix Ford and for every person that came to him with an idea, he would be sure they kept their job. Ha

The ‘Deuce’ was head strong leader that many disliked, but he led Ford through a very difficult earnings period and launched the Mustang in 1965 that turned the company around.

Whatever job you have, the greatest thing a person can do is not think like an employee but think like an owner and offer ideas and solutions to a problem. It makes you stand out and become very valuable. Most employees just want to huddle around the water cooler and gossip about what is wrong but never give a thought to how to fix it. I heard an attorney one time refer to himself as a garbage man because his role was to clean up the trash and fix the problems. Think like a fixer and ask yourself, if I was in charge, what would I do?

Alan Turing once said, “sometimes, it is the very people no one can imagine anything of, who do the very thing no one can imagine.” KT

Intense Focus

Career

In life there is a very small percentage of people that can truly focus on multiple ideas and projects at the same time.

Years ago, I was meeting with a construction contractor who ran a very large commercial construction company and he built many office buildings, apartments, retail centers, restaurants etc. all over the United States. I had been to many construction offices before and they were all a mess with stacks upon stacks of papers and files all over the office, on the floor etc. So, I walk into this guy’s office and there is not one paper clip on his desk. It looks like it has been spit-shined. On his credenza, he had a picture of his family and a calendar and that was it. Everything was buttoned up tight, clear and completely clean and organized.

I ask him how he keeps his offices so straight. He said, “well, I believe in focusing on one thing at a time until I have done all I need to do with it for that day. Then I file that away and take out another project. In doing this, I find I am able to oversee a lot of projects and get more done.”

That is why to this day, everything I am working on has its own file and its own place and my desk (usually) is clean. I realized that day in that contractor’s office that I performed better when I could focus on one thing at a time versus thinking I was able to work on multiple projects at the same time.

Andrew Carnegie (died 1919) was one of the wealthiest men in the history of the US. His net worth in today’s dollars was 372 billion. We think Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos etc. are so very wealthy, and they are, but they are worth about 1/3 of what Andrew Carnegie was worth. He owned the largest steel company (Carnegie Steel) in the world. Every night he would take out a card and list the things he needed to do the next day. He would put a number of importance by each task. When he got to the office the next day, he would start at number one and stay on number one until he had completed that task to the best of his ability and only then, would he move to number two on his list.

See, he realized the importance of organization and the ability to focus on one task at a time. Organization is a funny thing and many times difficult to get started with, but the objective and goal is clarity of thought and mental focus. KT