Putting Acorns In The Ground - A Time For Cooking

 Maybe it we are hard wired from millennia of living a life where you had to plan for the days of scarcity when things were either cold or dry. But despite the fact that I live in a privileged world where I can get food no matter the climatic season, I find that in the late summer and early fall I am processing food like crazy, getting it in the freezer to prepare for the winter ahead. In my own mind, I am not doing this because of the cycle of harvest. But, I suspect that is just me rationalizing it to myself.

The Hunt

Of course, one of the most primal of activities associated with this activity is the hunt. You go out. You find the prey. You kill it. You bring it home. You smoke, dry, or cure it in someway so you have nourishment to carry you through. 

These days, of course, the hunt is a bit different. Your fearless primal hunter, de-I, gears himself up, prepares himself mentally. "Be one with the prey. Think like the prey. Act like the prey." And he heads out to the area where experience has told him there is the best possibility of a successful hunt, the best hunting grounds. It is an area spoken of with reverence in the lore. It is.

COSTCO

It does not disappoint. In no time at all, our fearless hunter has bagged 30 pounds of packaged protein using is trusty Visa Card. Coming home I break it down into individual portions, wrap and put into Ziplock bags, carefully organized in then in the freezer. Ah! The feeling of being back with nature. 

However, there is actually some food preparing being done.

Pulled Pork

One 10 pound piece of pork shoulder, brined for 24 hours

I have waxed rhapsodically about my Yoder smoker

Which in harmony with our theme of 'back to our primal roots' takes the intense concentration and craftsmanship as turning on an electric light.

But who is to complain when 13 hours later you have this!

Grilled Chicken

I like to have food that is already cooked in the freezer and decided to split and grill a chicken using the brick weight mechanism for enhancing the cooking time.

Marinade

I have been playing around with yogurt based marinades and have very pleased with the results. It seems to tenderize the meat more and get more flavor imparted. I use a wide variety of flavor combos. I did a Middle Eastern/North African inspired flavor for this one. But my favorite so far has been using Southeast Asian flavors.

I actually had to do some really cooking effort! Chicken needs a good long cooking time so I rigged up a way to get more indirect heat to the bird.

It turned out very good. (of course I forgot to take a picture. This is de-I. I have a reputation to maintain).

Make Use of Everything

The smoked pork shoulder has a big layer of fat and skin on the top of it. Normally, after smoking, I throw this away. But, I reasoned, I never do that with chicken. I make cracklings out of them. So I decided to do the same. Came out great.

I like to take a bit of them, crisp them in a frying pan before adding eggs and green chile.

On Having Dodged The Bullet

 Deterioration is the constant companion of the aging. In almost all aspects of your life, you see that you are not what you were. This is normal. It is the trajectory of life. 

If you are at all self-aware, you have been watching this happen to others. You compare yourself. How far am I along the path? When will the eventual 'key event' take place? 

The 'key event' is some kind of injury or illness that causes you to be sidelined from your normal activities for a long enough period of time that you overall state (particularly your physical state) deteriorates significantly. If you are able to overcome the injury or illness, you find, despite work, you are unable to get yourself back to where you were physically. This accelerates the trend of deterioration leading eventually to death. This can take longer or shorter depending on the overall health and physical condition of the person. 

It was in April when I feared the 'key event' had occurred. I talked about it in this post. I didn't mention it during the posts in Spain. But it was there. Although I had overcome the pain, my leg strength had diminished substantially. And I had lost a lot of conditioning. Was this it? Was this the 'key event'?

When I got back to New Mexico in July, I made a concerted effort to get back to hiking. I was so way out of shape and my leg was not what it was. I found a new routine that allowed me to get out despite my schedule with calls so early in the day. I found that the extreme heat was not bothering me that much so I could go later in the day when it was more likely for me to have time. Slowly but surely I added a little more distance. 

Now I am much further along than I would have hoped. I have no illusions that I am going to be back to something of 5-years ago. But I am definitely a lot stronger. I really feel like I dodged the 'key event' bullet.

This time.

Decision! - Transition Next Phase Launched

 I think. Actually, I'm pretty damn sure.

Given Wife and my track record over the last few years as we've made massive efforts to figure out if we could live outside the U.S. with all the gyrations on what we could or could not do, I would expect anyone following this blog to take the statement of 'Decision' with more than a grain of salt. But somehow this time if feels different. 

The effort to move abroad or spend substantial time abroad in a place that was like living in one location, had pretty much been dismissed as result of the many challenges. Examination of moves within the United States also were rejected after deeper evaluation. Even moving within Albuquerque to something smaller proved to be unsatisfactory when looked at critically. So as Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stated, "When you have eliminated all which is impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." For us it is staying put, working a bit to pay for travel, and keep traveling as we have been. There is a good chance we will do the two to three month stays in a location, but that will remain to be seen. 

What I can say is this feels very different than what we've gone through since 2019. If feels right. And we are moving on things. We are looking at all that needs to be done to get our house really up to snuff; the deferred maintenance that slowly accumulates when you are not sure where you are going to be. Already we've talked to various vendors of services and purchased items like a new mattress that we'd been putting off. 

And (😂), despite the complaints of the last post, I booked to inside the U.S. trips for us; a trip to Charleston, S.C. in October, and a trip to Lafayette, CA and the #1's for Christmas.

We are actually thinking of doing some remodeling. Heck, we haven't torn down and rebuilt a piece of the house for almost a decade! Time to find another deal to do to pay for it all!

I think the biggest thing about all this for Wife and I is we feel we are going forward. We are not just going to sit in this house and let it and us deteriorate. We are not just going to sit at home and not travel. If a little bit of business work is required to make that happen, that's all part of moving forward. 

It just feels very right.

A Caged Tiger

 That's what it feels like.

No travel. No travel planning. Just staying home. Waiting. Waiting for my new passport. I have requested expedited service. That is 7 to 9 weeks thanks to a State Department gutted by the prior administration, the effects of the pandemic shutdowns, and poor management to begin with. 

I haven't had such a long period without any travel since 2020. Oh. I guess that is only three years ago. It seems a lot longer. 

I may have to plan a trip to somewhere here in the US just to keep from going crazy!

Back To The Future

Once upon a time de-I was a DEAL GUY. I put together business buy-sell transactions for a living. I wasn't in the big leagues. But, I was dealing with many millions of dollars of value with each transaction. There is a bit of an adrenaline rush associated with the Deal Business. The numbers are big. The fees are big. You know you doing something significant. However, along with that came uncertainty and risk. Because you (generally) were not paid unless you successfully closed a transaction. You could have a year's worth of work end up paying you nothing if a seller got cold feet the night before the closing (that actually happened to me more than once).

Ultimately, I found the work shallow. I found that I wasn't really helping people/business owners that much. I found you needed to start working with them much, much earlier if you were going to have them get results that were really meaningful and satisfying. So I changed my career to become a consultant and that is what I did for the last 30-years of my professional career.

Fast forward to this year. I still do some consulting to help pay for my outrageous travel lifestyle. But I've gotten tired of it. Then a colleague of mine asked if I wanted to join up with him to do deals (like I used to) after we ended up selling a business together from one of my consulting gigs. As we talked it through, I realized he would do the part of the work that I really hated. And I was happy to do the work, he had no knowledge of, or patience to do. So we agreed to try and do this kind work again. 

Lo and behold, one of my old clients came to me wanting to sell their business. I said, "You've come to the right place!" We took them on last winter, and last week we closed the deal. We got them a helluva price and we walked away with a nice big fee - the equivalent of two years of consulting work at my part-time basis!

It turns out that working with my partner, I can work a heck of a lot less and produce more income to support that lavish de-I lifestyle. Looks like it's back to being in the DEAL business.

Feeling The Breakthrough!

 What a difference a week makes!

This week we had the single, most significant surge in new business closings ever at Theodora. And it was accompanied by an equal surge in payments from those new businesses. These new closings represent the fruit of better quality work, and a better packaging of our initial value proposition. And the month is not complete! We have quite a few additional commitments and prospects we are working on.

A result of this was an ability to weather a rather unexpected expense combined with our normal payroll out of our regular cash flow! That's never happened before.

I do think a big contributing factor is an improved overall attitude toward the economy by both business and consumers in the U.S. Regardless, I am leaving Ghana with a real upbeat feeling.

Pushing For The Breakthrough

 Theodora Project is just a tad more than three years old. We launched our first training in April of 2020, right into the full force of the pandemic lockdown. 

Setting forth in the teeth of the pandemic was both a curse and a blessing. We were cursed in losing a lot of contributions, my being forced to manage from afar in the U.S., losing resources and supporters in Ghana, having to completely change our initial plan. But we were blessed in being forced to adopt to U.S. business, in having virtual work become far more accepted in the U.S., and a big influx of new self-employed people (our target market) into the market. 

When I last updated our progress in March, I commented on:

• Our ongoing work related to the fighting the cultural differences and how that related to building a sustainable success model
• The challenges of putting into place true succession to reduce the reliance on myself.
• The ongoing dichotomy between what the team is mastering, and the things they still need to work on.
• Our drive to get to breakeven

Before we did our spring Spain trip, I recognized I was in need of a break. I made a decision that I was going to let the Ghana team work on its own unless they absolutely needed me. It was a good test. Upon my return to action in June, I found they had accomplished a major breakthrough related to attention to detail. That may not sound like a lot, but for the kind of administrative work these women do, it is really important. And it had been holding us back. This now allowed us to take on a number of client tasks that provided clear cost savings and income generation possibility for clients. 

They had also done some good work on new client on boarding. We'd had a couple of rough initial weeks with some clients. But the team engaged in active communication and problem-solving with the clients and retained them. 

On the not so great side, we were not able to make any progress toward our goal to get to breakeven. We had some new client additions but we also had runoff from some of our old, angel clients (which is to be anticipated).

Since being back and getting back engaged, I feel the overall tenor is positive. Actually more than positive. I think we are getting close to a breakthrough. Why do I feel this way? I'm not exactly sure. It's a feel/intuition type of thing. As a business person who has gone through multiple start-ups and as sports coach, I have observed that progress/improvement is rarely straight line. More typical are long periods where you work your ass off and don't see a whole lot of progress. Then, suddenly, something happens and things click. Your performance suddenly surges. You advance rapidly until you reach the next performance plateau where the cycle starts again. That's the feeling I am getting now.

We've had a number of new business conversions in just the last couple of weeks. We are have a marketing channel we've worked on for years (Rotary) starting to finally show tangible opportunities. We've had a number of referrals from existing clients. Our August billing set a new record. We are in discussions with a couple of business partners that might open still further new business channels.

There is still a ways to go but the momentum is all in a positive direction.