Best Advert for Starbucks

My weekend read was "How Starbucks Saved My Life" by Michael Gates Gill. Gill is the son of renowned New Yorker writer Brendan Gill and he was a creative director at J. Walter Thompson Advertising where he was employed for over 25 years. At age 53, he was downsized from work and after that an affair ended his 20 year marriage. He was later diagnosed with brain tumor which further complicated things for him.

Gill had hobnobbed with Queen Elizabeth, Hemmingway,T. S. Eliot and Jackie Onassis, took up a job at Starbucks as a barista-in-training to come out of his looming poverty and negativity. The book details Gill's job and his interactions with his Afro American colleagues at the Starbucks outlet. How he overcomes his prejudices about race, work and human relationships forms the story.
The flashbacks are a little distracting to the flow, but nevertheless are essential to depict two different worlds that Gill was part of.
On the whole it is a sweet memoir, written by a very gracious employee of Starbucks. It is best endorsement that Starbucks could have ever thought of and every Corporate would like their employees to write such books. In the bargain, Gill would have also made a tidy sum from both his publisher and Starbucks.

Sales!

Could not post any entries in the last couple of days as i was running after numbers..Thats my job as a Sales Guy. Come to think of it, sales is a job which rewards only the positive results and not the efforts. Nobody appreciates your efforts unless they translate into orders. It is a binary game: either your win the order or not! You are a hero if you get the order and a bum if you lose. No in betweens!

Dialogue!

"You don't write to say something, you write because you have something to say" - I don't remember from which movie this dialogue is from :)

Business Cycles

Recession is a part and parcle of business cycles and unavoidable. What the Governments and businesses should be worried about, is the length of recession. How long will this phase continue and what's the solution?
BusinessWorld outlined the following three solutions in its issue dated March 24th for saving the US economy, which has inturn has its effects on the Global Economy:
1. The Federal Reserve floods the Financial System with Liquidity
2. The Federal Govt bails out homeowners
3. The Federal Govt bails out lenders
If the India's UPA Govt. was in charge of US too, they would have used all the above three options as it is an election year. Without battling an eyelid, the Govt in India has written off loans to Farmers worth USD 15 Billion. Maybe the US needs to outsource running its economy also to India.

George Monbiot, a columnist with the Guardian has an interesting take on recession. Read his article, "Bring on the Recession" at http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/06/09/about-george-monbiot/

Loosing Hair? Someone is very happy

My well-wishers are prodding me to do something about my receding hairline, though I agree with www.baldrus.com that God created a few perfect heads and on the rest he put hair.
Did you notice the number of advertisements for treating hair loss? I just counted them in today’s newspaper and was surprised to see 6 ads which promised to grow your hair back.

People are paying thousands to hair loss specialists when they might be suffering from genetic male pattern balding for which there is no cure other than expensive hair transplants or painful hair weaving procedures. Most of these specialists suggest treatment such as laser therapy, Minoxidil, 'special' shampoos & nutritional supplements – How safe are these treatments and what is their efficacy?

The Other Steve

Does anyone remember or know Steve Wozniak?

Steve Wozniak was the cofounder of Apple along with the other Steve we all know. I just completed reading his autobiography iWoz. Wozniak states that he “solely” designed and engineered the Apple I and Apple II from the ground up. But, he credits Jobs for all the sales and marketing of those products. Wozniak was not actively involved in Apple after its IPO success but amply reaped the benefits of co founding the company. What comes across in the book is that Wozniak believed early on that excellence in product design will make people drool over the idea of owing the product. Here is what he has to say about Steve Jobs: “He is really great at looking at new technologies and choosing the right ones, the ones that will succeed”.

One question: When everyone is talking about open platforms and collaboration, Apple still controls both sides of the equation- hardware and software (eg: iPod+iTunes). Is it the perfect way to do things?