Thursday, August 10, 2006
Assorted Updates
My last posting was about the Middle East situation, which has only gotten worse since then. I don't have much more to say about it for now, other than I wish it wasn't happening and I wish my country wasn't supplying a lot of the bombs and tacit support.
Turning to other matters closer to my personal sphere...
It's funny that I haven't felt like I had anything worth writing about on this blog for a while, given how busy I am.
I had a CEO (whose name is Joe) in place in my company for a little over a year. It started as a 3-month consulting job, and it went well enough that we extended it to a year. By mutual agreement we have been winding down over the last month or so, and Joe was looking for another job. He was offered a position as head of development for a southern Californian tribe of Native Americans, and he asked if it would be OK if he concluded his tour here on one week's notice so he could take a week off before starting an intense new job. I told him it was fine, and off he went to stay with a friend for a week in Stockholm. (I'd like to visit there one day.) That was a week ago today.
So I am back in the pilot's seat again for a while. I feel good about it presently; We've done a lot of restructuring in the past year, and we completed a number of major strategic projects that previously had been dragging a bit. The company is now in a stronger position for its future growth, and internally better organized and somewhat easier to manage.
We made some staff cuts recently; this was the first time in the company's 18-year history that we ever did layoffs. Six people were affected. Structural changes in the business had made their positions unsustainable. Everyone got a month's notice and at least a month's severance. That was sad and difficult to do, one of the toughest days I've had in all my years in business. I handled it as well as I could, and the people affected seemed to take it really well, but of course as hard as it was for me I imagine at least some of them felt worse. I have noticed in the past that people who leave our company usually seem to land on their feet and thrive at their next stop. From what I'm hearing, I am hopeful that the same will be true for this group. Tomorrow is their last day, and we are having a staff lunch.
The same day we announced our 6 layoffs, Disney announced that 650 would be cut. The next day Intel announced 1000 would be let go, and soon after that AOL announced their elimination of 5000 jobs. I thought 6 was difficult enough. That gave me cause for gratitude that our corporation is relatively small.
My plan is to play the chief executive for a while, maybe a few months, and let the company consolidate financially and organizationally. But if I'm still in this same seat a year from now, someone please call or email me to remind me that I'm supposed to be somewhere else... composing music, writing, traveling, playing concerts, being away from L.A. more.
The Syren merger is going well. The newly-remodeled store looks great. We had a grand opening a couple of weeks ago, and that seemed to be a hit. My old friend Byron has been dedicated and energetic in getting the store together and promoting it. He has been a little stretched; The Stockroom team has been so busy with competing projects (including a recent emergency-- unanticipated instability in our website last week that knocked our sales down by 20% for the week), it's hard for him to get the level of organizational support he would ideally have. However, in spite of those things, the retail store is showing signs of life, wholesale and website sales are good, and the Syren production team has settled comfortably into our Silverlake facility and they seem to be quite happy and impressively productive in terms of both speed and quality.
Next week I will be traveling to Chicago for another EO-University (the twice-a-year conference of the Entrepreneurs' Organization). It will be nice to see my business-owner friends from around the world.
The music project is still on track, although it's moving slowly since everyone involved has other high-priority commitments. But I still hope to have something I can share by year's end. My producer/engineer collaborators seem excited about how it's developing, which is gratifying as they are seasoned professionals with respectable pop-music credentials.
I recently found myself in a conversation about moodiness and impulsivity, which led to someone suggesting that I have a look at a book on sugar sensitivity, cheezily titled Potatoes, Not Prozac. I read that book with keen interest, and was persuaded to try some dietary changes...
It's not like I didn't already know that refined sugar is a semi-poisonous drug (at least for me), but reading a basic biochemical explanation of how it affects certain people was illuminating and motivating. So although I like sweet stuff, I'm now avoiding sugar, and I am pleased with the results. Even if I could get a comparable lift from pharmaceutical antidepressants (which I doubt), it wouldn't be as safe or feel as physically/spiritually clean as adjusting my diet in healthy (and manageable) ways. I have noticed subtle but significant improvements in my energy level and concentration, as well as just feeling a little more on top of things. This discovery comes at an opportune moment, since I'm taking back the CEO job presently.
The author of the aforementioned book has a website, RadiantRecovery.com, if you're curious to learn more. And/or you can probably find a copy of the book for about $2 on Half.com. It was published in 1998... but nobody told me until a couple of weeks ago. Better late than never.
I have my New Orleans property on the market. No offers after a few weeks. The rental market is healthy, but generally to buy a property most people need a loan. In order to write a loan, banks generally require the mortgaged property to be insured. Most insurance companies are not writing new policies in New Orleans these days, for obvious reasons.
Our new building has 3 storefronts on Sunset Blvd. We rented one to a furniture store last year, and we recently signed a lease with a yoga studio for the second one. The third one (the small one in the center) we are saving for Stockroom use. We are also in negotiations with a cellphone company that wants to rent space on our roof for some cell towers and equipment. It's all very interesting.
It looks like our rental income will offset enough of our mortgage and line-of-credit payments that our monthly costs for being in this building won't be much more than they were in the last location. This is fortunate, considering that the new building is about four times the size and a much nicer home for our 40+ people. That is thanks in part to over $500K in renovations and repairs.
It took a hell of a lot of work and coordination from so many different people to pull all this off, as well as substantial investment and the ever-present elements of risk. It has been just one of the more recent and larger example of managing complexity over time.
Sometimes, when I stop to think about it, I am quietly astonished at how far this enterprise has come over how long a time. Somehow over 18 years we have always stayed on the tightrope, and managed so far not to fall into the lava pit, as so many businesses of all sizes do every year. A large and complex machine was created starting with almost nothing... except for consciousness, which is really the crucial active ingredient in pretty much any human creation. It started with my consciousness, but soon blended with many others. But then, even my own consciousness is just something the was passed on to me, handed down, given on loan for a while. Just passing through.
If I had fathered a child at the age of 21 instead of starting this business, he or she would be at the off-to-college age now. He or she could be getting ready to head off to Harvard, or maybe Arizona State (#1 on Playboy's ranking of top party schools), or possibly a first prison term... and perhaps leaving me with a newly emptied nest. Or maybe s/he would be smoking crack and leaving grandchildren on my doorstep. Who knows. You never know what you're going to get if you impulsively conceive a child at such a young age.
Instead, I have this maturing business that I impulsively conceived at a young age. I think of it as a beacon of sorts in the adult industry, at least equal to any of my youthful visions for it when I started. And I'm pleased with that, even though if I were to start a new business today, the adult industry would not be in the first 20 fields I'd be likely to think of. But then it might not make the bottom 20 either, since there are so many other contenders for Technically Legal Businesses I Would Least Want To Engage In... for example: most of what I have observed going on in the so-called "legitimate" entertainment industry, modern banking, corporate agriculture, most drug companies, big oil, big telecoms, the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, telemarketing, Democratic or Replublican party politics, battlefield logistics or whatever the hell it is that Halliburton supposedly does, or the manufacture and distribution of terrorism supplies and mass-murder equipment (which likes to call itself "the defense industry"). In most of the aforementioned fields, if you do honest and honorable business, you may find it difficult or impossible to compete well enough to stay afloat.
Oops... ranting. Sorry.
As always, whoever you are, you read this blog at your own risk, and I make no representations regarding the suitability of this text for your entertainment, edification, gratification, motivation, refreshment, or for any other purpose. However, if you get this far, thanks for reading along.
Joel
P.S. I have been reading up on the "Federal Reserve," the gizmo that creates US dollars. Did you know it's not federal, and there's no reserve? (White man speak with forked tongue.) But I'll leave further discussion of that for another time. This entry has gone on too long already.
Turning to other matters closer to my personal sphere...
It's funny that I haven't felt like I had anything worth writing about on this blog for a while, given how busy I am.
I had a CEO (whose name is Joe) in place in my company for a little over a year. It started as a 3-month consulting job, and it went well enough that we extended it to a year. By mutual agreement we have been winding down over the last month or so, and Joe was looking for another job. He was offered a position as head of development for a southern Californian tribe of Native Americans, and he asked if it would be OK if he concluded his tour here on one week's notice so he could take a week off before starting an intense new job. I told him it was fine, and off he went to stay with a friend for a week in Stockholm. (I'd like to visit there one day.) That was a week ago today.
So I am back in the pilot's seat again for a while. I feel good about it presently; We've done a lot of restructuring in the past year, and we completed a number of major strategic projects that previously had been dragging a bit. The company is now in a stronger position for its future growth, and internally better organized and somewhat easier to manage.
We made some staff cuts recently; this was the first time in the company's 18-year history that we ever did layoffs. Six people were affected. Structural changes in the business had made their positions unsustainable. Everyone got a month's notice and at least a month's severance. That was sad and difficult to do, one of the toughest days I've had in all my years in business. I handled it as well as I could, and the people affected seemed to take it really well, but of course as hard as it was for me I imagine at least some of them felt worse. I have noticed in the past that people who leave our company usually seem to land on their feet and thrive at their next stop. From what I'm hearing, I am hopeful that the same will be true for this group. Tomorrow is their last day, and we are having a staff lunch.
The same day we announced our 6 layoffs, Disney announced that 650 would be cut. The next day Intel announced 1000 would be let go, and soon after that AOL announced their elimination of 5000 jobs. I thought 6 was difficult enough. That gave me cause for gratitude that our corporation is relatively small.
My plan is to play the chief executive for a while, maybe a few months, and let the company consolidate financially and organizationally. But if I'm still in this same seat a year from now, someone please call or email me to remind me that I'm supposed to be somewhere else... composing music, writing, traveling, playing concerts, being away from L.A. more.
The Syren merger is going well. The newly-remodeled store looks great. We had a grand opening a couple of weeks ago, and that seemed to be a hit. My old friend Byron has been dedicated and energetic in getting the store together and promoting it. He has been a little stretched; The Stockroom team has been so busy with competing projects (including a recent emergency-- unanticipated instability in our website last week that knocked our sales down by 20% for the week), it's hard for him to get the level of organizational support he would ideally have. However, in spite of those things, the retail store is showing signs of life, wholesale and website sales are good, and the Syren production team has settled comfortably into our Silverlake facility and they seem to be quite happy and impressively productive in terms of both speed and quality.
Next week I will be traveling to Chicago for another EO-University (the twice-a-year conference of the Entrepreneurs' Organization). It will be nice to see my business-owner friends from around the world.
The music project is still on track, although it's moving slowly since everyone involved has other high-priority commitments. But I still hope to have something I can share by year's end. My producer/engineer collaborators seem excited about how it's developing, which is gratifying as they are seasoned professionals with respectable pop-music credentials.
I recently found myself in a conversation about moodiness and impulsivity, which led to someone suggesting that I have a look at a book on sugar sensitivity, cheezily titled Potatoes, Not Prozac. I read that book with keen interest, and was persuaded to try some dietary changes...
It's not like I didn't already know that refined sugar is a semi-poisonous drug (at least for me), but reading a basic biochemical explanation of how it affects certain people was illuminating and motivating. So although I like sweet stuff, I'm now avoiding sugar, and I am pleased with the results. Even if I could get a comparable lift from pharmaceutical antidepressants (which I doubt), it wouldn't be as safe or feel as physically/spiritually clean as adjusting my diet in healthy (and manageable) ways. I have noticed subtle but significant improvements in my energy level and concentration, as well as just feeling a little more on top of things. This discovery comes at an opportune moment, since I'm taking back the CEO job presently.
The author of the aforementioned book has a website, RadiantRecovery.com, if you're curious to learn more. And/or you can probably find a copy of the book for about $2 on Half.com. It was published in 1998... but nobody told me until a couple of weeks ago. Better late than never.
I have my New Orleans property on the market. No offers after a few weeks. The rental market is healthy, but generally to buy a property most people need a loan. In order to write a loan, banks generally require the mortgaged property to be insured. Most insurance companies are not writing new policies in New Orleans these days, for obvious reasons.
Our new building has 3 storefronts on Sunset Blvd. We rented one to a furniture store last year, and we recently signed a lease with a yoga studio for the second one. The third one (the small one in the center) we are saving for Stockroom use. We are also in negotiations with a cellphone company that wants to rent space on our roof for some cell towers and equipment. It's all very interesting.
It looks like our rental income will offset enough of our mortgage and line-of-credit payments that our monthly costs for being in this building won't be much more than they were in the last location. This is fortunate, considering that the new building is about four times the size and a much nicer home for our 40+ people. That is thanks in part to over $500K in renovations and repairs.
It took a hell of a lot of work and coordination from so many different people to pull all this off, as well as substantial investment and the ever-present elements of risk. It has been just one of the more recent and larger example of managing complexity over time.
Sometimes, when I stop to think about it, I am quietly astonished at how far this enterprise has come over how long a time. Somehow over 18 years we have always stayed on the tightrope, and managed so far not to fall into the lava pit, as so many businesses of all sizes do every year. A large and complex machine was created starting with almost nothing... except for consciousness, which is really the crucial active ingredient in pretty much any human creation. It started with my consciousness, but soon blended with many others. But then, even my own consciousness is just something the was passed on to me, handed down, given on loan for a while. Just passing through.
If I had fathered a child at the age of 21 instead of starting this business, he or she would be at the off-to-college age now. He or she could be getting ready to head off to Harvard, or maybe Arizona State (#1 on Playboy's ranking of top party schools), or possibly a first prison term... and perhaps leaving me with a newly emptied nest. Or maybe s/he would be smoking crack and leaving grandchildren on my doorstep. Who knows. You never know what you're going to get if you impulsively conceive a child at such a young age.
Instead, I have this maturing business that I impulsively conceived at a young age. I think of it as a beacon of sorts in the adult industry, at least equal to any of my youthful visions for it when I started. And I'm pleased with that, even though if I were to start a new business today, the adult industry would not be in the first 20 fields I'd be likely to think of. But then it might not make the bottom 20 either, since there are so many other contenders for Technically Legal Businesses I Would Least Want To Engage In... for example: most of what I have observed going on in the so-called "legitimate" entertainment industry, modern banking, corporate agriculture, most drug companies, big oil, big telecoms, the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, telemarketing, Democratic or Replublican party politics, battlefield logistics or whatever the hell it is that Halliburton supposedly does, or the manufacture and distribution of terrorism supplies and mass-murder equipment (which likes to call itself "the defense industry"). In most of the aforementioned fields, if you do honest and honorable business, you may find it difficult or impossible to compete well enough to stay afloat.
Oops... ranting. Sorry.
As always, whoever you are, you read this blog at your own risk, and I make no representations regarding the suitability of this text for your entertainment, edification, gratification, motivation, refreshment, or for any other purpose. However, if you get this far, thanks for reading along.
Joel
P.S. I have been reading up on the "Federal Reserve," the gizmo that creates US dollars. Did you know it's not federal, and there's no reserve? (White man speak with forked tongue.) But I'll leave further discussion of that for another time. This entry has gone on too long already.
