Curt Doolittle

Category: Personal Reflections and Diary

  • LOOKING THROUGH MY ANNUAL STRATEGY DOCS FOR THE 00’s. (personal)(entrepreneurshi

    LOOKING THROUGH MY ANNUAL STRATEGY DOCS FOR THE 00’s.

    (personal)(entrepreneurship)

    Didn’t realize I was carrying them around on my hard drive. 🙂 It was entertaining. Looking back over more than a decade, six months of long discursive documents at a time, and sort of re-living the experience.

    One thing that I tried, other than ‘sovereignty’ for employees as a cultural and recruiting strategy, was to follow the Good To Great data on internal production of talent. I had always had the opposite view, and the GTG idea worked. I don’t really buy the GTG simple message thing. I mean, you need to be very good at what you need to be good at. But that’s just a starting point.

    DAY 0 Collecting the founders for an industry opportunity.

    DAY 1 Owner-Operator Goals. (must be the same)

    DAY 2 Basic market strategy given the era, location, customer base.

    DAY 3 Minimum capital strategy – how to do it for free or less. 🙂

    Year 1 Organizational culture, processes and systems

    Year 2 Talent acquisition at all costs (create a magnet)

    Year 3 Building a management team, and systems from within

    Year 4 Extending the product and service line through acquisition.

    (I start to see the economy at catastrophic risk, and with it, Microsoft’s future. And these two events mean that if I don’t do something the future is unsustainable.)

    Year 5 Extending the geography through acquisition

    Year 6 Extending growth rate by adding capital.

    By now I can see that the economy will collapse fairly soon and that it will stay down for a very long time, and that I will need to sell the business OR get enough cash to go on a buying spree after the crash. But that with our high dependence on Microsoft and our regional basis, It’s a death sentence to try to build a large company

    Year 7 Increasing the short term value of the company in prep for a raise, trying to beat the obviously-collapsing economy.

    Didn’t work. Why? Couldn’t get the data from accounting.

    — crash —

    Year 8 Selling off a profitable and large section of the business.

    Only mistakes I made that were really big, was that when I resigned I didn’t stay resigned. 🙂 Should have just stuck with it. Loyalty and all.

    Won’t do that again. 🙂 lol

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 03:56:00 UTC

  • PROGRESS REPORT : Dear Diary (personal) In ten years, with two bouts of cancer,

    PROGRESS REPORT : Dear Diary

    (personal)

    In ten years, with two bouts of cancer, and as a consequence, two more serious illnesses requiring surgery, followed by divorce from a long happy marriage, and the near destruction by an investor’s greed ignorance of the $100M company I built during that period despite these ‘challenges’.

    I set out to change my life, to leave the war-zone of that company behind me (check), to lose weight (check), to write at least half time (check), to treat each day as a precious gift to enjoy (check), to build a smaller company where I had more sovereign control (check) and less unnecessary stress herding not-very-bright-cats (check), to find a woman who was my dedicated friend and partner, not a life draining dependent (check). 🙂

    And I’m still building a new (and probably better) company, with better people, and writing what I think is pretty good, durable philosophy that’s reforming libertarianism from a rhetorical, moral and preferential basis, to a scientific and necessary one.

    Life is tragic, comic or heroic.

    It’s a choice.

    My advice is to choose. 🙂

    It is always better to be a warrior than a slave.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-10 02:50:00 UTC

  • That’s my girl. Love that look she gives me. 🙂 In less than two seconds she can

    That’s my girl. Love that look she gives me. 🙂

    In less than two seconds she can change from that peaceful loving expression into Sergeant Slaughter, principle disciplinarian of all masculine infractions, high priestess of finger-wagging, and champion of relentless, passionate, argumentative criticism that would drive Clarence Darrow into kneeling, shaking, tears.

    I love tough women

    Sure. Like all other guys, I love the sweet little feminine ones. But I mean, I’m kind of a barely domesticated gorilla and I’m always afraid of breaking them somehow.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-09 15:36:00 UTC

  • ON FB FRIENDS Friends keep increasing but the demographic is different. I’m cont

    ON FB FRIENDS

    Friends keep increasing but the demographic is different.

    I’m continuing to drop the old employees that I have nothing in common with. Its not like I’m going to get back into the agency or consulting business any time soon. I have the freedom to express myself now that I didn’t have as an American CEO. And while the technology business is a bit libertarian, the agency business is almost entirely socialist.

    I did manage to piss off a few people with Buddhist Interest with a few of my sketches. I guess if I want to promote scientifically based morality that I’m an equal opportunity offender. I try not to actually get into religion where it’s arational but still consequentially positive for economic cooperation. I try only to attack religious ideas that are IRRATIONAL and consequentially negative for economic cooperation. But I still manage to dig a hole.

    the entirely sentimental libertarians that I seem to offend now and then, well, I ‘m sorry but I’m kind of happy to offend them. I am OK with every religion doing it’s thing, but libertarianism is a pretty weak religion if that’s how you approach it. But some people take it as sacred and when I slay libertarian sacred cows now and then, I expect to lose people.

    Women friends are interesting because I actually value their criticism pretty seriously for reasons that are too difficult to go into here. If the canary makes noise I know that I’ve done something wrong. If I say the truth and the truth is what it is, it should be disturbing, but still obvious that it’s true, and that it’s not my fault that it’s true. It’s true that marriage isn’t very good for a lot of women, and its probably disproportionately more satisfying for men. However, our economies depend on marriage and the nuclear family for our political institutions that govern by majority rule, to operate as designed and intended. And redistribution only can function if it’s not from married people to unmarried people and that’s what’s happening. Class is one thing. But if class means married and unmarried that’s going to have pretty serious consequences.

    But the number slowly grows.

    I can’t imagine there are more than a few hundred people out there that are really interested in libertarian philosophy at any level of detail.

    I can’t imagine that there are that many out there who understand that we need a reformation of libertarianism.

    I can’t imagine that there are all that many who could understand the argument and solution (although that is what I try to do.)

    So I don’t particularly seek numbers, I seek a certain class of individual who is interested in the detail, the reformation, and the solution.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-08 12:38:00 UTC

  • CRITERIA FOR CHARITY I like to sort of randomly give $20 or $50 to someone on th

    CRITERIA FOR CHARITY

    I like to sort of randomly give $20 or $50 to someone on the street here now and then.

    I’ve been taking my vitamin D lately because the dark season has started, and it makes me incredibly calm and cheerful. 🙂

    But I have this sort of criteria that the person can’t look mad at the world or beggardly. They just have to look poor, but that they carry on with quiet dignity.

    So usually I find some little old lady, babushka style.

    Couldn’t find anyone on the walk home today.

    That means just more opportunity tomorrow!

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-08 08:50:00 UTC

  • Brought an extra coffee for the taxi driver this morning. Instant smiles. Doesnt

    Brought an extra coffee for the taxi driver this morning.

    Instant smiles.

    Doesnt take much to make people happy. Just a little evidence that we care about one another.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-08 05:05:00 UTC

  • I love the holidays! (silly)(fun) October 31: Halloween (Pagan New Year’s Eve).

    I love the holidays!

    (silly)(fun)

    October 31: Halloween (Pagan New Year’s Eve).

    The 5th Of November: Guy Fawkes (‘anti-Popery’, anti-politician)

    Thanksgiving Day : Harvest Feast – celebration of the family.

    Friday the 13th of any month: Templar’s Remembrance Day, Finance and Banking Day.

    December 21’s – Solstice Festival Begins!

    December 25th – The Birthday of Pacifist Philosopher. Day of gifts.

    December 31 – Solstice Festival Ends

    January 1st – First day of rest, and beginning of the Commercial year.

    February 2nd : The Festival of Light (Candlemas/Imbolic)

    February 14th: Feast of Lovers (Valentine’s day)

    March 15th – Spring Equinox. Cleaning of home, heart, and soul.

    May 1st: May Day. The ‘High Holiday’ of the Pagan Calendar.

    June 20th: Aristotle’s Birthday

    June 21st: The Summer Solstice

    June 22nd: The River and Water Festival (Kupala Day)

    July 20th: Alexander’s Birthday: Celebration of Soldiers and Warriors.

    First three weeks of August: The holidays and Rest.

    First Monday in September: End of Summer Celebration.

    September 21: Fall Equinox: (Michaelmas) Farmer, Tradesman Year end, and Scholar’s Year Beginning.

    I’d rather be celebrating the wonder of the earth, and our relationship with it, than the worship of false gods, the worst of which is the state.

    “A STATE HOLIDAY IS A CELEBRATION OF THE STATE”

    I’d rather celebrate family, heroes, seasons, and the earth, than the state.

    DEMOCRACY : THE OTHER GOD THAT FAILED.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-06 03:40:00 UTC

  • A FLIGHT OF SCOTCH FOR A PARTY? (3) 1) Lagavulin LAH-GAH–vu’-lin 2) Ardbeg “ARD

    A FLIGHT OF SCOTCH FOR A PARTY? (3)

    1) Lagavulin LAH-GAH–vu’-lin

    2) Ardbeg “ARD-beg”

    3) Oban OH-baaan.

    Alternatives:

    4) Balvenie bal-VENN-EE

    Opinions?

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-05 14:29:00 UTC

  • Eeew… I thought those were cats. Too many of them, too low to the ground. Peri

    Eeew…

    I thought those were cats.

    Too many of them, too low to the ground.

    Perils of urban life. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-05 13:34:00 UTC

  • (personal) (sentiment) I loved my university experience. All six years of it. 🙂

    (personal) (sentiment)

    I loved my university experience. All six years of it. 🙂 Mostly what I loved was being with the people. Although very few of the professors were all that interesting. It was a lot less anxious environment for me than ‘real life’ which seemed largely populated by zombies.

    But as much as I loved the university, I learned almost everything of value reading on my own. And I think picking up debate as a hobby turned out to be almost as educational. Because it forces you to question your own ideas. As long as you learn from your failures.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-11-05 07:52:00 UTC