Billionaires and Reality About 10 pm — I sat in the lobby lounge at our hotel with a few people. The billionaire happened to own the hotel. There was a webcam temporarily affixed to a railing so his security people could monitor the lounge area. A little after 10, the hotel manager shooed everyone out […]
Read More »Re: Billionaires, cheapskates and apologies I’ve worked with a fair number of billionaires and with some hundreds-of-millionaires who were emotionally billionaires. Most have been very nice … There is, however a very particular type of billionaire … 1. The phone rang my second day on the job at Fortune. Howling on the other end of […]
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I promise you, I am way more cynical than you are when it comes to politics. Well, with one exception: local politics involving people whose character I know well. Today, Greenville, SC resident, Bruce Countryman shared with me that he had cast his early voting ballot. I grew up with Bruce and know his character […]
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Colin Huggins is a pianist from Georgia, who pursued classical music career for a while in New York, eventually becoming a ballet accompanist. For a while, he was music director for Joffrey Ballet School, and played with American Ballet Theatre. It wasn’t until he started dragging his piano into Union Square, and the subway and […]
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For most people 30 seconds isn’t a long time. For most people 30 seconds with Sonia Ghandi would be about 30 seconds longer than they expected to spend and 25 seconds longer than the typical meet-and-greet. Peter Wolff and I spent our first 30 seconds with Ms. Ghandi in complete silence. It’s Peter’s birthday today, […]
Read More »March, 2006 It was 1999. I hadn’t been to Mexico since 1997 and hadn’t worked with my business partners down there since 1996. We have warm feelings and great memories, but have lost touch as other priorities intrude. It’s been thousands of miles and several years since those days. I’m sitting in the capstone course of a graduate […]
Read More »I knew there would be a few days like this. Just didn’t think it would take until Day 23 in my temporarily-elevatorless building. On the fifth floor the stairwell door popped open and in came a board member I had chewed out at the board meeting last week (yes, that’s rare and is memorable when […]
Read More »I walk into Dylan’s candies. Look around the main floor. Go downstairs. Look around. Back up. An older woman bundled in a fur and carrying a purse approaches me: She: Are you looking for someone? Me: in fact i am. Do you work here? She: No. Me: Can you help me? She: No. I was […]
Read More »Dear 50-something-Guy-Next-to-Me, Way-too-Early-While-I’m-Having-Coffee: Whomever was on the other end of the phone listening to you read the ingredients of your juice bottle, then the ingredients of your fruit parfait while you consumed them, enjoys being flirted with in a very low-maintenance way. That is all. Best of luck in life. – the guy who handed […]
Read More »If I ever become sole decision-maker for a humanitarian award, without a doubt, you will be one of the first candidates, Guy in the Lane Next to Me at the pool Wednesday night. The public health awareness campaign you executed was graphic, innovative and memorable. A few laps into my swim, at first I thought […]
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