Ode to Capitalist Dogs

Mergers, acquisitions,

Affiliations, integrations,

Assimilations, and a whole lot of flatulation. 

All done under the banner of improving efficiencies, 

outputs, outcomes, and whatever guise fits the situation.  

Some might be true.  

Some surely are not.

Alas, we are Capitalists, 

trained in the inherent spirit 

of expansion, growth, and 

Econ. 101 telling us that status quo is actually regression. 

Naive to believe 

otherwise. 

Naive to believe 

that the view is the same 

from wherever your seat is 

on the company bus. 

Best exemplified in this piece, modified from an ode on page 187 of Seeing Systems by Barry Oshry.  

======================

From the outside,

Integration is beautiful

From the inside,

it is warfare.

From the outside,

it is open-ended inquiry.

From the inside,

it is fixed and final truths.

From the outside

it is "Let us explore all of the possibilities for this system."

From the inside,

it is "Let us pursue my way, the right way, the only True Way.

From the outside,

all possibilities seem worth exploring.

From the inside,

your possibility threatens the validity of my possibility.

From the outside,

there is an inevitability and beauty in our integrations.

From the inside,

there is pain and loss ---

separation and alienation,

the dissolution of partnerships,

costly reorganizations,

abuse and oppression,

cultural conflicts. 

Are you telling me that the Truth is

one way

or the other?

Expand or stand pat?

Black or white?

Fast or slow?

Your terrain or mine?

Now or later?

Hit 'em hard or be reasonable?

Your type or mine?

Such Truth exists on the inside.

From the outside

it's all inquiry. 

======================

Sadly funny to think of the number of "insiders" who think like "outsiders".

Piece of dogly advice for the brilliant minds pulling together these business relationships:  

Put down the financial statements and peruse Oshry’s book.  

If you think it’s BS, you’re a good capitalist whose expansion/exploitation will fare well for your pockets and either dis-integrate in the short-term or find a place on the re-sale market.  

If you believe at least some of it, and you practice some of it, there’s hope for your relationship to achieve long-term success. 

One way or the other, you'll probably do okay, but can you say the same for that hourly worker who trusts you to lead their livelihood?   

Not guilt... truth.   

Dog's Delivering Papers

Another day, another trip down the lane of memory.   
Hanging at a local water hole last week, enjoying a happier hour and somehow the topic of newspaper delivery arose.  The local newspaper delivery person seemed to have a holy muffler lately and was waking everyone up at 5 am when she drives around to toss the papers somewhere in the yard.   
When the Dog mentioned that he had a paper route when he was a pup (age 12-16), the proverbial hush fell over the pack.  
Q:  How many papers did you deliver?  
A:  My route was always around 106.  

Now the marvel there might be that the Dog remembered that number almost 50 years after-the-last-delivery, but stay tuned.  

Q:  How did you deliver them?   On your bike?
A:  Walked.  We all walked the routes in those days.   We were "required" to deliver the papers on the customers front porches, not just toss them in the yard.   Some of us were pretty good at tossing them on the porch from the sidewalks, but every now and then we'd have to go dig them out of a bush and put it on the porch.  
Stunned amazement.

Q:  How did you carry 106 papers?
A:  A thing we called a bag.  It had big pouches in the front and the back; with a hole for your head in the middle.   50 papers in the front, 50 papers in the back, most of the time.   Deliver the front 50 and swing the bag around for the next 50.   If the papers were really heavy, we'd delivery 25, then swing it, 25 more, and repeat the process.   .
By now the Dog is feeling like he was born a year before Neanderthal got published.  

Q:  How about when the papers were big, like Sundays, you couldn't fit them all in that bag, much less lift it.  
A:  On those days, carriers would take the bundles of papers from where they were dropped off, and distribute them around the routes to be picked up along the way.   Sometimes, I do remember having to load the bag and then sort of get on the ground and get my head through the hole and lift it up.   (Who in the h--- can remember this stuff??).   It was great for the upper body and leg strength, but not much for any sort of posture.  

Q: How did you get paid?   
A: The paperboys (yes, they were all boys back then...) were charged for all the papers they received, and then we had to go around door-to-door every month and collect from our customers.   
Some paid regularly, and some you had to basically stalk to catch them at home. Some even tipped pretty good ($3 Christmas tips were big time...). And, on my 16th birthday, right after I got my driver's license, I went to Grassi Motors in South Tacoma with my Dad and bought my first car.   1958 Ford hardtop, with a 352 Interceptor engine in it.   $450 in cash.   

Q:   You did this for 4 years??
A:   Yup, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.  And I was a "sub" for another guy (Bruce Dodge -- seriously... who remembers this much detail???)  before before getting my own route.   Every carrier had to have his own "sub", or there was no days off.   I had Larry Thompson; and paid him $2 to do my route for me when I couldn't.  If he missed someone and I got called on it, I deducted a dime for each miss from the pay.

Upon reflection, the Dog would suggest that he learned a lot of life's lessons from that experience.  On that evening he got a free refill on his water dish, and felt bad for all the kids today who don't have the same experiences because paper delivery has moved to adults who are doing it to make a living. 

Tip your delivery person more.   

Dog-preneurism

The Dog has the honor of sitting on an advisory board of one of the local Universities; and with that comes the opportunity to participate in various faculty presentations about learning adventures.  The most recent session asked us for input on the idea of undergraduate students determining ideas and strategies for new business development and expansion of existing small business.   It was filled lots of suggestions about legalities, and accounting needs, and marketing plans, and such business things.   

It also gave me a moment to reminisce about my own youthful inexperience in starting a business; and why I continue to worry that if we overload students with nothing but legal requirements and accounting rules, we will deter a lot of them from trying to do something.   

Too often I see the entrepreneurial spirit shot down by the numerous challenges that come with any new venture.   

Sometimes, I must say that ignorance is a blissful place to start learning, and (as I think most successful business leaders would agree) failure is the greatest teacher.  

 Anyway, this Dog started a newspaper in Lafayette, Colorado, in 1973, and it’s what I still call my “real” master’s degree in business.   I still have that first edition (my “first child”) framed and hung directly over my desk. 

I was 23 and looking for a journalism job in Denver. This was before even considering college. The Dog became very frustrated and finally ran an ad in the Colorado Press Association newsletter that said, “with 15 minutes training I can do anything in journalism”. 

About 2 weeks later the phone rang with a couple of publishers asking me if I would be interested in starting a weekly newspaper in Lafayette, Colorado.  I won’t bore you with the details, but I said yes.   The deal was that they put up the money and I put up the work.  

I started by going up to Lafayette (9 miles east of Boulder), and visiting the local grocery, the local banks, the local bars, the local everything, and asking them about the previous local paper that went out of business.   I asked them what value they thought a local paper gave Lafayette, and a lot of other questions, mainly just starting to get a feel for the town.   The weekly paper could only survive if their advertising paid for it, and I was pretty up front with them on that. These days that exercise would be called doing a "market assessment".  Back then it was just curiosity and common sense.   

We rented a building, we found some old desks & typewriters, we got a typesetter, we arranged for printing; and away we went.   I didn't have a lawyer or an accountant, and it was really learning as I went.   

At the end of the first year, when I finally did get an accountant to do the taxes, I still remember him asking, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU NEVER ACCRUED FOR TAXES?”

Needless to say, the cash on hand took a big hit, and a payment plan was struck with the IRS.   But, this Dog learned a lot more by screwing that up, and we moved on quickly.   We went on to increase circulation and advertising sales & revenue.   I also hired an associate to help me.  

The Lafayette Times was the only weekly newspaper in state history (at that time) that made a profit at the end of the first year.  

At the end of the second year, I had paid back the other partners initial investment and we had no debt.  

At that point, the other partners wanted to pull more money out and I wanted to put more in and continue to build it.   The partnership dissolved, and another life learning was waiting for me.   What do you do when your 25 and you have achieved your life's goal for what you want to do?  

I learned a whole lot of business acumen, and I learned integrity and commitment to a cause. 

The value of learning forever instilled in my DNA, and the search for what I want to do continues.