TODAY'S RAMBLINGS It's Monday, and I am recovering nicely from a wonderful holiday party at the home of Emery and Nib Riddle. Thanks, guys - great job - it was very festive and oh, those gin fizzes.
Today will be a touch on the serious side, but not in a dark way. If you're reading this, it's probably obvious by now that I enjoy writing. A lot. In fact, it is among my only endeavors where I understand the term "flow", as in: I get in a real flow when I sit down and write. Whether what I produce is any good or not is highly debatable. But I will say time flies in a beautiful way when I sit down, put on music, and type up the thoughts pinging around my (inflated) head.
You've already seen that I've expanded beyond these newsletters, with my occasional Travel Guides. In fact, there will be a new one soon about our Christmas trip to LA. But this is different.
At the encouragement of absolutely no one (oh, OK, Andy Jones did say once that I should keep going), I decided to write up my observations on 40 years of entrepreneurship. The result is "On Entrepreneurship", a monograph containing stories, advice, tools, and techniques for surviving and ideally thriving as an entrepreneur. Yeah, I know - what a really super fresh idea!
It is comprised mostly of essays I recently published serially at LinkedIn, so perhaps you've seen them already if you're connected with me there. But I've now compiled it all in one place, almost like a real book. Almost. And as a special bonus, there's a giant Epilogue - that I didn't post at LinkedIn - with the sordid and other details from the 8 startups of which I've been a part.
I hope you'll glance at its content, and perhaps read some. Mostly, though, I hope anyone reading this will share the monograph with someone you know that's starting a business.
Because 10 seconds of seriousness: it would be great to learn that my advice helped someone, even just a little bit.
But even if no one uses it (or even reads it), I had a lot of fun writing this up and putting it together. Thank you.
FROM THE UNWASHED MASSES I was beaming when I read this from the witty midwestern forager Raymond Michaels. Plus, he added some color:
"A+ post today. Further evidence for your thesis. Hope you and Julie have a great holiday."
And from the "It's Good To Be An Executive At A Big Company" department, there was this via the modern day telegraph from Ol' Purple Label, at sunrise last Friday here in SF. Diamond Certified? You betcha, and the view isn't bad either . . .
Thank you to any one that is reading this newsletter.
KLUF This is perfect! Given the self-absorbed nature of Today's Ramblings, here is an example of it actually being warranted! Here is one of my musical heroes, Dave Grohl, with his completely solo "Play". Who has heard this before?
Give it a go - it's a very unusual suggestion in that it's a single, instrumental track, 23 minutes in duration, with Diamond Certified Dave doing it all. Gosh.
