Business Development

Some Lessons in Gratitude

I am spending the week in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, a leafy suburb of Philadelphia.  It’s fall here, the air is cool and the trees are changing color.  As I walked along, my destination was Curtis Arboretum, which was donated to the county by the family that founded and published The Saturday Evening Post.  On the way, I passed several incredible houses.  This area was extremely prosperous a century ago, and many of the houses are enormous, built of stone, and have broad, sweeping lawns.  If these houses were located where I live in California they would be several million dollars each. Here’s an example:

As I stood on the sidewalk contemplating this incredible house, the owner came down the driveway towards me.  A long, long driveway.  She was at least 70 years old.  She was wearing a wool cap and a jacket, was at least 100 pounds overweight, and hobbling slowly down to the end of the driveway to put something in the recycling box with the aid of a cane.  It must have taken her at least two minutes to walk the length of her own driveway.  Given the fact that I was walking along at a pretty good clip listening to music on my headphones, the difference between our conditions really struck me.  I am absolutely sure she would be happy to trade her huge, beautiful house for the ability to just effortlessly walk. I am incredibly lucky.  I’ll bet you are, too.    As I entered the Arboretum, I passed by a plaque set in stone next to a pond.  The plaque listed the names of township residents who had been killed in World War II.  Here is a picture of it:
As you can see, around 71 residents of this small town (population today around 37,000) never came back from the war.  To put that into perspective, it’s equivalent, roughly, to New York City having two 9/11-sized events every year for four years. I am incredibly lucky, and you probably are too.    I spent the rest of the hour on a brisk walk through the Arboretum.  It is incredibly beautiful, in the way that only East Coast parks like this can be.  Huge, open lawns with carefully planted rows of trees in the distance – something like a painting of an English country home. The park, it turned out, was laid out by Frederick Law Olmstead himself, perhaps the most famous landscape architect in history.  It is extraordinarily beautiful, and I got to walk through it for free.  Here's a picture of part of it:
I am incredibly lucky.  I’ll bet you are, too.   

Every once in a while, I think it’s important to be reminded of this.

Mud

A perfect little moment this morning.

I am out on my morning hike. It has been raining here in Northern California for what seems like a week straight. I am hiking up a hill, and the trail looks like this:

I come stomping around a bend, and there, about thirty yards in front of me, is a little girl and her father. The girl is about three. She's wearing Hello Kitty rubber boots, a hat, and is standing right in the middle of the trail, in the mud. Her father is standing next to her.

I am:

• Unshaven
• Unshowered
• 6'2", 240 lbs and wearing jeans, a fishing vest, and boots that are covered in mud
• Listening to an iPod (Grateful Dead, 1973, RFK Stadium, "Morning Dew")

I walk up to them. I take my earphones out, and squat down next to the girl. She has huge brown eyes, and is very shy. I look at her, and I say "Do you like ... mud?"

Her face lights up. HUGE smile. Still shy, she half-whispers "Yeah."

I look at her for a second, smiling myself. "Me, too."

Then I stand up, put on my earphones, and continue my walk.

I'm Going to Be On NPR -- sort of

Actually, I'm going to be on their website.

About a year ago, I guess, NPR revived the old "This I Believe" series of radio essays. To quote Wikipedia:

This I Believe was a five-minute CBS radio network program hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow from 1951  to 1955. The originating American show encouraged both famous and everyday people to write short essays about their own personal motivation in life and then read them on the air.

About a year ago, I wrote one, and just emailed it into NPR, and forgot about it. Yesterday, I got this in my email:

The producers of This I Believe would like to include your essay in a special feature about walking in the woods. Your piece would accompany several other essays to be highlighted on our homepage at www.thisibelieve.org.

How about that?

A note of explanation. Until I left for college, I grew up in a very remote part of upstate New York. Most people, when they think of upstate, think of, say, Poughkeepsie. Wrong, Western New York State is virtually empty, and incredibly beautiful. Our house was on the edge of a really big forest, and that's where I spent most of my free time as a child.

I wrote about how that kind of upbringing influenced me, basically. The essay does far better justice to this subject than a blog post can, but essentially, from spending a lot of time in the woods, alone, beginning as a small boy, I learned a great deal. That environment shaped who I grew up to be as an adult, and is a kind of emotional home base -- no matter where I am, or what's going on in my life, in the deepest recesses of my mind, I know that I can always go back there.

You can read the essay in full here.

Congratulations to Me

A couple of weeks ago I got some very welcome news -- an article I wrote last year has won an award. Okay, let's rephrase that. An article I wrote last year has won an award! One day, out of the clear, blue sky, I got an email that read as follows:

On behalf of Law Practice magazine and the ABA Law Practice Management Section, I am delighted to advise you that your article, "Seeking Out New Markets" (September 2006) has been selected by the 2006-2007 Edge Award Board as the Silver Award Winner!

Cool.

You can download a copy here:

The article is based on some thinking I had been doing about professional services firms and strategy. Basically, if you're marketing your expertise, particularly in law, the raw material of your practice keeps changing, because the law keeps changing, as do the markets your clients compete in.

Every time this happens, you have new opportunities. Unlike, say, the automobile industry, or the trucking industry, where change is slow, gradual and incremental, in law, our friends in Congress can create a whole new market overnight. Similarly, changes in technology can have the same impact.

If you're a good marketer, and/or a sharp strategist, you can leverage this situation to your incredible advantage. Hence, the article.

Funniest. Cartoon. Ever.

Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

I never really liked his writing, but that's my fault not his. In his blog, Doc Searls provides a lovely, simple epitaph, and a link to Vonnegut's self-created memorial drawing. Here it is -- a picture really does speak a thousand words: