Working The Theodora Succession

If you remember the drama of only a year ago, you will know the wonderment with which I write this post. As I first reported in January, Theodora has been solidly cash flow positive through out this year and has resolved a number of infrastructure issues. As we are moving to the 6-month mark of the year, client churn (which has been our bane) has dropped substantially. We have had a number of significant clients (in terms of complexity of service provided) come on board with our team rising to the challenge to learn and master what the clients need. 

Also back in January, I wrote about how our local team (both Manager M and the Ghana Board) had worked to get a Grant for training, had recruited new candidates, and were training the same. That grant period is coming to an end. The new trainees have progressed substantially. Theodora will be picking up their training stipends because they are starting to genuinely contribute to our work. They have a ways to go before they are ready to handle a client solo. But the fact that the recruiting and training was all done by our internal group, says volumes about Theodora's potential to be sustainable.

So as I absorbed all this, I began to realize that we are no longer trying to prove our concept. We are no longer making the case that we can make credible virtual workers for U.S. business use from a pool of African women with significant disadvantages. We've shown that. Now we are on to the next phase where we need to solidify what we've accomplished and build a base to grow and bring more women into opportunity. 

As luck would have it, I was speaking on a podcast (I will make a post about being on podcasts soon) a few weeks ago where the host, rather than interviewing me, was actually giving the me, the guest, all kinds of ideas for how to create redundancy. Out of this has come a number of projects which we will be looking to implement. Practically, there is way more on the list than we realistically have the bandwidth to work on. So the team and I will need to consider them and be somewhat discriminate in which we take on and how much within each we take accomplish over the next six months. 

Nonetheless, it is a refreshing and exciting place to be at considering all the trials and challenges we've gone through. 

The Mellow Continues And A Gastronomy Update

I have written numerous times this year about the state of 'mellow' that appears to be the latest phase of transition. I wrote about it just 12 days ago. But evidently given my age addled memory, I thought it was a totally new revelation yesterday. I presume in one's late 70's that a Brahma Day which is quite long (A Day of Brahma: One "day" (Kalpa) equals 1,000 cycles of the four yugas. This amounts to 4.32 billion human years. Brahma's "night" lasts for the exact same duration.) gets reduced to about 12 human days. 

Anyway, I was internally remarking at how I am just going with the flow these day. Things certainly happen. I had a client who I thought we were totally good with, go sideways all of a sudden. And yet, I seem to be happy and content despite it. 

I know I wrote during my times in El Campello how much I enjoyed everything going slower. Well that state seems to have now come back to the homeland. Someone who I hadn't seen in quite a while asked me what I was doing. I told him pretty much what I've always done, just not as much of it and not with the intensity of energy as before. 

I do admit that there is the voice that keeps harping that I SHOULD be worried about things. That I SHOULD be more anxious about them. But for the most part I just let that voice rant and am happy in my doing things slowly and intentionally (like even doing dishes).  

A brief comment on cooking. With Wife seriously trying to lose weight, and the limitations of the gout diet, and not having the energy to cook any social type gathering, cooking has been a lot more about how do I take various things I've learned or hear about in the present and integrate them into my daily cooking. It's about all kinds of little tweaks and additions to see how the daily meal can evolve. Here are a couple of examples. 

#1 told me about a popcorn technique where you use a mortar and pestle to pulverize salt while cooking it. I wondered what would happen if I did the same technique with salt and rosemary leaves. It came out nice. Then I tried that same combination of flavors and technique making some pork chops. Result - a substantial increase in the herb flavor in the meat. Now I'm lookiing for other herb/spice combinations to use with this technique. 

I've used a recipe for cooking carrots I got from some source where you put butter, a small amount of sugar, salt and pepper and a small amount of water and then  braise the carrots. Always turns out good. I said to myself, "what if I change the sweetener and use honey? And what if I added a bit of heat for a sweet hot effect?" So I put in some NM Red Chile Powder.  Came out really nice. 

So these are the kinds of things I do on a daily basis. Just taking various things I've learned over time or are introduced to and putting them into my daily routine. 

Bon appétit.

Return Of Deal Lust

There are times when something comes back that you thought was long gone. And in coming back you find yourself surprised. You think, "I thought that was dead. I didn't know I still had that in me?" And you find yourself deep into doing something that used to define who you were but had been put to the side for a different reality. 

So it is that de-I 'DEAL GUY' seems to have been resurrected. 

Who is 'DEAL GUY'? 

Back in the day, in a much earlier iteration of my career. I was a 'DEAL GUY'. I was the person who would put together multi-million dollar purchases and sales of businesses. It was a heady activity. And truthfully, humbling and frustrating as well. You were dealing with a 'lot of money'. Things never went as planned. You could work for year and have a transaction crater earning nothing for all your work. 

But there was no denying the adrenaline that flowed as you navigated the ups and downs of trying to make a transaction happen. The really interesting thing of putting deals together as an intermediary is you had no real control. All the decisions were made by the principals, the buyers and the sellers. But your job was to 'Make It Happen'. And you did your best. You used every bit of knowledge and tricks you'd learned to pull the transaction together. You did this (hopefully) for the good of your client, but also because your own financial well being depended on it. But there was also a lot of ego, and excitement (and disappointment) associated with dealing with large transactions that had large fees (fees paid to you!).

Why I bring this up is I find myself back in this mode, filling this persona once again. The short story is I have been helping a client try to exit their business for over two years now. Originally, I was to help them pass the business to their son. But their son had some kind of mental breakdown and simply walked out on the company, the deal, and his parents. Harsh. 

So we had to build a plan B. This was hard for the couple selling. We also had poor financial information so I had to get an fractional CFO in to get things straightened out. That took a year! The husband of the couple wanted to sell it to a couple of insiders/employees. We made them a proposal based on the numbers we had at the time. They took forever to get their act together and start following through. In the meantime, we finally got the financial information we needed and 'Surprise' the company is doing way better than we thought. So the price we offered to insiders is a real bargain. 

However, the insiders have refused to put down a non-refundable deposit. So we told them no exclusivity. I immediately start looking for other buyers because the real value is about a third more than what is being offered to the insiders (and we are talking millions of USD here). And as luck would have it, we are introduced to an extremely qualified buyer and are aggressively pursuing discussions with him. 

Oh. And as an added fillip. I make no fee if we sell to the insiders but I make a BIG fee if we sell to the outsiders! You don't think I'm back in DEAL GUY mode? It is like Shane, the classic Western with de-I in the title role.  

Working On Mellow

Nothing has really changed since my last transition report of April 17. Pretty much all things are moving along as they would normally. But I did have a hiccup with my mental state of gratitude and being at peace. I found myself getting caught up in details and feeling self-critical about either doing this, or not doing this. It took me a couple of weeks but I've managed to get back into the flow of Trust and Gratitude. It truly does lead to a much better frame of mind. And, honestly, almost all of the issues that arise all seem to work themselves out. This doesn't mean that I don't do anything. I certainly do things. I just let the worry flow rather than grab and jump on it with full vigor. So good on me for that.

 

Warmth Returns

Since we returned from SE Asia in early April, the weather has been unseasonably cold. My friends tell me that while we were gone in March, the opposite was true. The weather was unseasonably warm. 

Typically in late April, things are warming up here, and by early May it will be downright hot. We've had many a year when by the end of the first week of May it was problematic to plant in the garden because the heat made it difficult for new plantings. Based on this I confidently scheduled the change over of our heating system to our evaporative cooling system on April 21.

Oopsie 😬

The weather has been super cold since then. The highs barely in the low 70's often in the 60's. The lows in the 40's. As a result our house has been extremely cold, with us sleeping with three or more blankets on. Not fun.

FINALLY, this weekend we are having highs in the 80's with even a day or so toward 90 predicted. Lows are in the 50's. I can at last put on shorts and open our windows. And we are now safely inoculated against Viking Expeditions from Sweden as they have a hard time surviving in temperatures above 80.

What? You Can Do That? (An AI Novice Adventure)

#3 works for a company that makes heavy use of AI. So she follows AI things closely and has strong opinions on the reality of the promises promoted by the AI universe. 

I, on the other hand, am the equivalent of an AI pre-schooler and am much easier impressed (or pissed off as the case may be). When I tell 3 of one of my revelations, I usually get a big eye roll.

Having come back from a big trip and having no major travel planned again until the end of summer, I am throwing myself into my 12 year now saga of fantasy fiction writing. Here is the backdrop for the AI involvement.

In the current iteration of writing (Book Seven), there is a technological event that is brewing to create a transportation system beyond anything this world has ever seen. However, the world I've created is sorely lacking in metal or fossil fuels that could be used to construct the vehicles or power them. During the course of past books, the power part has been solved. There was now the challenge of what was this system to be made of if not metal. I recalled all the current man made materials that have become prevalent in our manufacturing culture. Could their be a way for my characters to devise artificial materials from things found in their own environment? Fortunately a base concept in my writing has been the movement of my characters to and from Earth. So it would totally make sense for them to go to Earth to learn about these.

Great idea, but one problem. I don't know anything about man made materials so writing something that made any sense whatsoever seemed quite the stretch. This is where AI came in.

I made a query for the tool I am using. I described the backstory of the world and the reason for the trip to Earth and asked where they would go to get the information they needed. Lo and behold, I got back not just sites of where important work was done, but descriptions of the environments where the work was done and how the discoveries were made. It even made suggestions for how I could have my characters move from one place to the next and observe the differences in the environments.

I decided to go deeper and explained how the 'wizardry' of my fictional world had to do with experts who could 'see' the underlying cosmic energy that makes anything happen (think String Theory). I asked how these 'Savants' might take the information gained from Earth's development of man made materials. To my surprise, it developed a story line whereby the Savants would observe the energy patterns underlying the molecular rearranging that leads to man made materials. Then it suggested they would find materials on the home world and would create energy patterns using their 'wizardly' abilities to do the molecular rearranging. It even threw in some theoretical examples using various plants. 

This was WAY BEYOND anything I had imagined. I happily bookmarked the conversation for reference later as the AI tool advised me. 

The following week, I was deep into writing and I went back to check the thread only to find that only the initial query was saved. What the &#@%!  Going to the AI tool, I asked what had happened. I got a bunch of mealy mouth excuses and some remedies that didn't work. This is not the first time I've had an AI tool do things for me and then come back and say 'Sorry. That actually doesn't work.'

Nonetheless, I have the basic information I need and am writing away.  

Can These People Be Serious?

I try to stay away from politics and our general social situation in my posts because if I didn't I would just be filling these pages with paragraph after paragraph of rants. But two recent things I saw simply put me over the edge. 

First - "Republicans concerned about their electoral prospects in November are considering reducing the capital gains tax to help with the affordability issue."

When I first read this, I thought it must be some kind of joke. But no, this is evidently a serious proposal. I ask you, do you think that the people who are most affected by rising prices of things like gasoline and groceries are even remotely concerned with what the capital gains tax rate is?

Last I looked, you pay your capital gains tax when you sell some significant asset like a house if it is not your primary residence. Our when you sell securities out of your investment portfolio. 

Do you think the person who is working at your grocery store is giving a sigh of relief that they can sell off some of their investments and not get hit up with such a high tax bill?

Seriously, this is the most inane proposal for affordability relief that I think I've ever heard. 

Second - "Major bank records record profits and announces it will be laying off one thousand employees"

We are making more money than we ever have but no, that is not enough. Because we need even more. More - More - More. Screw the workers. Screw every human being (except the super wealthy). We need to make MORE!