100 Business Days Out: Day 26 - Blustery

I was in NYC on Monday and as I woke and looked out the window I thought of those who on Thanksgiving morning have to hold and control the strings of Garfield, Snoopy and other inflatable balloon/floats. It was one of those mornings. The rain was coming sideways and the wind turning the $10 street vendor sold umbrellas inside out at will. If it had been January in San Francisco I would have not thought about it for a moment, but it was May in Manhattan and spring so wanted to raise the temperature by another ten degrees and allow the perennials to legitimately bloom and not worry about the next frost. Symbolically, the segue could not have been better. The weeks, the month, my first quarter of my 100 business days out, have been full of much bluster like from those who have sat across from me at breakfast, lunch or dinner, and proposed off the cuff or sometimes more thoughtfully, without follow-up, their ideas, dreams, proposals, or business plans. There are lots of blusterers in the marketplace. Knowing the difference between those who have something to follow through on and those who have not becomes a skill. It also becomes a skill to suppress one’s emotions and not allow yourself to realize either the high of the moment or the low of realization that the phone call or the “next meeting” never comes. To the blusters; please either stop or just hold it to yourself until either you have yourself covered by your partners, know what you can really offer, or just don’t say anything at all. Fortunately for me on this Monday, the people who I met with were 180 degrees away from blustering. They were the real deal, honest, forthright and people who I would want to associate with going forward.