Value Your Fortune

This Week's Summary:

Learned: Joy and tragedy

Planning: Sua sponte

Business idea: Feature v. value

Vet Opp: NFL Sunday Ticket

I met: Tom and Marie

Stoic Quote of the Week

Your good fortune consists in not needing good fortune.

-Seneca

What I learned this week:

Timing in life can be an exciting thing and full of conflicts. Wonderful events that are planned and expected, marked on the calendar months in advance, conflicted with unexpected tragedy, or just a day that sucks. I’ve had one of those weeks. The joy of attending the wedding of a dear friend intermingled with a tragic loss for another dear friend. Life rarely throws us soft pitches to hit out of the park. Truthfully, most home runs are fastballs that you connect with because of the prep work and training prior to the opportunity you get to swing. Thousands of swings and thousands of strikeouts before you finally connect, or you may never connect. It all comes back to the need to realize you can only control what you can control. If all you ever want is home runs, and you work and work and prepare and only ever swing for the fences, you will lose. You will not be Babe Ruth. Because you are tied to the outcome, the end state. Knowing the end state and outcome is critical to guiding you in the direction you want to go, but in the end, that cannot be the desire to achieve. The desire must be for the journey to get there. Here’s another way to picture this. When you are walking in the woods during land navigation or even following a trail, if all you ever look at is the top of the mountain or your next point, you will fall into a revean. I know because I’ve done this. I’ve walked the path looking ahead so far ahead that I missed the fifteen-foot washout that I fell into. That is life. If you look too far ahead or are hoping for the change, you will end up in the bottom of a Texas revean with mud and fire ants, not a fun place to be. Our true fortune lies along the path of life in every moment. In the moment of joy and utter sadness. We must seek the moment to be in because if we see something on the other side, it just may be enough of a siren's song to cause us to fall. Endure the tragedies of life because they are still part of life. Know that joy can be found anywhere at any time, no matter how bad it feels or seems. Do not let fortune be taken from you because that is all you want. Be here, be now, be on the path, in the moment.

Planning thought of the week:

The plan's end state is critical. It is a measurable, known goal that everyone on the team understands and will know when they reach it. When you set your team up for success by ensuring they know the expected outcome, you allow them to achieve it. When you empower your team to perform, they will succeed and excel. Allow your plan to be executed with precision and flexibility to achieve success. Don’t tie their hands, Sua Sponte.

Business idea I heard about or thought of:

I was thinking of the all-in-one tendency that IT tools tend to have. They are feature-loaded, but feature loading does not equal value loading. The more IT tools I see and am briefed on, the more I see features. The efforts to create a differentiator from their competitors are what drives the feature loading. It doesn’t necessarily make the product better. My first real taste of this was the Suunto watch, aka wrist compass. Man, this thing was cutting-edge fifteen years ago. I had to have it. The first one lasted about a year. The second one, about the same length. You guessed it, the third one, about a year. Each time it broke, I’d send it back to Suunto pay my $100+ repair fee and try it again. This watch was feature-loaded, and that’s one of the reasons it always broke. I bought features that didn’t bring me value. I see this in software tools all the time. Salesforce is a great example. There are very few companies out there using it that have a need or even know all the features that you can use within Salesforce. Next time you shop for anything, don’t be caught up in the features. Make sure you understand the values of the product.

Veteran opportunity of the week:

Here’s a little secret Veteran benefit: get the NFL Sunday Ticket for <50% off! At $199 for a year subscription vice $479, I might even get it. This is through ID me. Here is the link for more info: NFL Sunday Ticket.

Someone I met this week:

When Ms. Suzanne and I were in Long Island this week, we stayed at a Bed and Breakfast hosted by Tom and Marie. What a great time and amazing breakfasts they prepared for us. Thank goodness we were only there for two days, or my pants wouldn’t have fit anymore. They were great hosts and even drove us out to their local “mountain,” Merrick Mountain, a local park that used to be a landfill. I can tell you that if we find ourselves back on Long Island, Tom and Marie will be the folks we call. Let me know if you are looking for a B&B in the area, and we’ll pass along their contact info.

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