[Rain Man]

I'll go.


1. What's the biggest change in your life since 1/1/00? What parts of your life haven't changed at all?

This has been by far my most stable decade. Every past decade saw rampant change, but in this decade I still have the same job, the same house, and the same wife and family (less one beloved cat, sadly).

The biggest change for me has been the growth of my company. On 1/1/00, I was one guy working out of my house. Now I've got a pretty good sized office space in downtown Denver. So probably my biggest change has been from having nobody reporting to me to having roughly 20.

2. What are your top three accomplishments since 1/1/00?

A. Growth of the company (see above). We've gone from being a gnat in our market to being one of the big dogs and most well-known in our field in Colorado. Until this year, we've grown every year, and depending on December's books, we've been profitable every year. Plus, the Small Business of the Year award this year was a coup.

B. House rehab. On 1/1/00, it was still a long road ahead, but in slow patient steps we completed our house rehabilitation and also furnished it pretty well along the way. On 1/1/00, I think we still had some rooms that were empty.

C. Weight and running. A year ago I couldn't say this, but I think I weigh less right now than I did on 1/1/00. And I never thought I'd run a half-marathon, of which I ran 6 in 2009. According to the national formulas, I am actually slightly above average among half-marathoners of my age and gender, too, (51st percentile - barely above average) and I'm very proud of that.

Runners up include:

I was tempted to state that having a good marriage is a top-three accomplishment, but I kind of viewed that as more of an expectation than an accomplishment, so I didn't count it.

Similarly, I'm happy with the travel I got to do this past decade, but it didn't quite make the top three. Going to Madagascar is pretty close, though. I've long wanted to go there, and honestly had kind of thought I'd never make it.

Early in the decade, I was having good success in writing, and won some contests, but it's not quite top-three material. Nonetheless, I was proud.

Good health is another accomplishment that is more of an expectation. However, in mid-1999 I had a big cancerous growth removed from my neck, and was worried that it was the beginning of big trouble. (It wasn't a serious cancer, but hey, it's still the C word.) However, there have been no recurrences in ten years, and the doctor said that if it didn't come back in five years it was probably a fluke. Hallelujah! It's not my accomplishment, but it really, really makes me happy.

It was kind of rewarding to see my former firm burn itself down as they tried to expel my psycho ex-boss, but that wasn't my accomplishment. More of a feeling of redemption.

3. What are your top three disappointments since 1/1/00?

A. Net worth. I had a good decade, but it's not really reflected in my net worth right now. The tech bust, the meltdown last year, and the housing bust all hit me hard. These are my prime earning years, and I had a couple of really good years in 05 and 06, but it didn't translate to the balance sheet as well as I had hoped. I've got to figure out how to save more for retirement.

B. Writing. On 1/1/00, I really wanted to get a novel published and get recognized as a writer. I worked at it and got some good recognition at that time, but when the company took off it all fell by the wayside. I was gaining momentum and dropped the ball.

C. Workload and creativity. I haven't yet figured out how to manage my workload and still spend lots of hours at work. I would have hoped that I'd have that figured out by now. Related to that, I'd really like to move my company and my practice to a more creative and unique space, whereas right now it seems that we're often on a bit of a treadmill, but when you have a lot of fixed expenses to cover each month, it's hard to get off the treadmill to make the other stuff happen.




4. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your personal experience since 1/1/00? In other words, how did the decade treat you?

Probably a solid 8.5 Happy family, good business, good health, got to travel a bit. Pretty good overall.


5. What was your biggest fork in the road since 1/1/00? Knowing what you know now, would you have chosen the other path if you could go back now?

I pretty much ran a straight and narrow path in the 00's. I don't think I had a lot of major life decisions, which is probably somewhat par for the course for a guy my age.

The biggest decision, I guess, was the decision to grow our company as opposed to being independent consultants. My initial plan was to just be a lone eagle, but as business came in, we decided in about 2001 that maybe we should ride the growth. I think that was a very good decision.

(As you'll see, the company was a big factor in my life in the 00's.)


6. Compared to your expectations on 1/1/00, how is your life different on 12/31/09 than you expected? How is it exactly as you expected?

I really never expected to be managing people or running a company. It just kind of happened. So that's very different. And I don't have (or more aptly, make) time for more creative endeavors, which is kind of a disappointment and not something I expected. I was much more active of a thinker in the 80s and 90s.

Chiefsplanet has been a wild-card factor, too. This place is the source of most of my social interaction, which is not something I would have predicted on 1/1/00. Back then I was on the Star board but was pretty new to the concept of electronic interactions. The only real-life interactions I have are with coworkers and with my wife's real-life friends, and if I had a birthday party I'm not sure I could invite enough real-life friends to avoid embarrassment. I'm really hoping some of you will show up at my funeral when I die, because otherwise my wife will have to hire some people to look sad. But I really like this form of social interaction, and it works well for my style, and I consider you all to be good friends.

Other than that stuff, my life today is not far from what I would have predicted on 1/1/00.

Perhaps another surprise is simply the stability that I've had. Historically, I've had a history of doing stuff for about five years and then moving on. That didn't happen in this decade.


7. What are your three strongest memories of the 00's? Three best memories?

Strongest:

A. 9/11, like most people. I got a call from my dad to turn on the TV, and those first images are seared into my mind as I watched a helicopter circling the north tower and started thinking to myself, "Why am I not seeing the other tower?" and then calling out to my wife to come when the second tower went down.

B. I got to go into the main tomb of the Great Pyramid by lucky happenstance. We're in the heart of the pyramid, just my wife and me and two other people, and it's heavy in there. No other way to describe it than heavy. It's way smaller than you would expect, and you know the power of where you are, and oddly, there's a big ventilation fan in there to suck out the humidity of visitors' breaths, and it made this loud hum that was otherworldly. You would normally think that a fan noise would be annoying in a place like that, but it added to the experience in a rather bizarre and mysterious way.

C. Carrying my cat around the block one last time so he could check stuff out before taking him to be put to sleep. Best friend a guy could have, and as noble and worthy a creature as ever walked the earth. Life isn't fair sometimes. I buried two grandparents this decade, and I respected them immensely, but dang, that cat was by my side for a dozen years of thick and thin.


Best memories:

I'm a fan of travel, so travel moments tend to trump other stuff.

A. Going to dinner with my wife on our cruise on 06 or whenever, and we were all dressed up in tuxedo and ball gown, and more relaxed and happy than at any other time this decade. I want to retire on a cruise ship.

B. We had an afternoon wandering around Saqqara on our Egypt trip that was just surreally cool. The vision of driving up to the Step Pyramid that rose out of the desert like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey, walking around at the site itself and absorbing the history, walking through unreal desert to other sites, finding a human bone at one point as I slid down a hill, even stopping for sodas at a totally isolated shop out in the middle of nowhere. Looking in one direction and seeing pyramids on the horizon, and then turning around and seeing pyramids on the other horizon. It was amazing and it was spectacular and it was hard to believe I was there.

C. In the early part of the decade I faced a lot of abuse from my former firm, which at the time was a lot bigger than mine. Without going into detail, it was nasty stuff and the person running that firm is a nasty person. At the culmination, a big contract came up from a big client that had been the breaking point of my relationship there. It was my client at my old firm, and my boss had tried to extort it from me in exchange for a partnership vote, threatening to veto my partnership if I didn't give him credit (and the bonus) for it. When I left, he got to legally keep it since they were under contract to that firm. He's a lying, cheating, stealing, lying thief. After fighting over it for years, the client eventually made a global contract and put it up for bid, and we won it. It was a huge victory for the firm, and it was a huge personal redemption for all the blood that I had shed over it.

Runners up:

In South Africa, we went to our tent and there were zebra and nyala grazing next to it. And it was a great tent with a great view across this great valley, and it was just ... great.

Small business of the year award. Hearing our name get announced, and then getting to go up and accept the award. That's really, really cool.

We had a day in Madagascar that we call "The Perfect Day". Hard to describe, but it was perfect in every way, and was a very blissful moment. It wasn't the visual experience that South Africa was, but it was memorable because there's a very rewarding feeling in going that far, to a place that remote, and not only pulling it off but having it be a great experience.

My psycho ex-boss's firm recovered from the self-inflicted burning like that woman in the bathtub in Fatal Attraction. We had a big contract in 2007 that we really enjoyed, and so of course they pursued it hard when it came up for bid in 2009. Guess who the two finalists were. I was on pins and needles waiting for that decision, and they picked our firm. Huge, huge win - it was a big contract, it was a contract we really enjoyed, and it was one more ice pick in Freddy Krueger's chest.

8. What is your prediction of your life on 12/31/19 (ten years from now)? What will be the same and what will be different?

For the most part, I'll go more with what I hope than what I expect, and I guess I think they're not all that different. I'm optimistic enough to think I can affect my destiny.

I'd love to continue to have a happy marriage and my health, first and foremost. It's trite to say it, but those two things are the foundation for everything else. I need to give them more time than I did in the past decade, and can't take them for granted.

After that, I'd like to see the company continue to grow and thrive. In ten years, I'd love to have offices in two other cities, which would mean more travel for me, but that's not unwelcome. I'd also like to see the firm doing some different things - being truly thought of as a "thought leader" in some areas where we're recognized as national experts - and being innovative and cutting-edge to the extent that we really don't have competitors. The question will not be who to hire, but whether they can afford to hire us. I've got some really, really cool ideas for this, and hope I can pull some of them off. The nice thing is that it would also pull me off the treadmill feeling that I've had for a while. I have the luxury of being the first in my company to step into these waters, and hope that I can be a trailblazer for others to follow.

I'd like to be published, both fiction and nonfiction, in a prestigious manner, and I'd really like to rediscover my old hobby of wargaming, which has been idle for far too long. I need more fun. I'd also like to see some of my real-life friends more often.

I love my house and see no reason to move other than my nomadic instincts, but hopefully the company expansion will appease that. I doubt that the house will be paid off in ten years, but there's a chance, or at least we'll be close. And that will be huge.

On a tougher note, my wife and I still have all four parents, and all four are headed downhill. I'm not sure what's going to happen this decade, but I suspect that there will be some loss there, and it will be painful. Not much way to avoid it, though.

On a travel note, I'd like to visit Brazil (and maybe Peru), Timbuktu, and Russia and Finland as my top travel goals in the coming decade, assuming my wife is interested. I'd also like to do a Transatlantic crossing by ship. Alternate goals would include New Guinea or Borneo, Japan or China, Antarctica (though this will likely wait until retirement), and Romania/Bulgaria/Albania. Maybe Turkey, too. Geez, I want to go everywhere. Just give me a destination.

At some point, I'll want to retire, which means selling my company. In the next decade, I want to keep positioning us for that, which means growth, profitability, and development of the next generation of staff. In a perfect world, I cash out at the end of the next 10-15 years and then work as an employee at the firm for another five years to complete the transition. Then it's off to a blissful retirement.


9. What are the three most important events in the outside world since 1/1/00?

I'll probably propose a different order, though I suspect most lists will be similar.

A. The Internet and mobile communications. This is Number 1 in my book, though it was getting a good start before the decade began. Think about the changes being wrought by this fundamental change in how we interact with each other. Physical storefronts are being replaced by electronic storefronts. Chiefs fans from around the world get to know each other, with myriad benefits. GPS and mobile phones have revolutionized something as mundane as driving. E-mail and texting is ubiquitous. Knowledge is at everyone's fingertips now. Entire industries have been fundamentally transformed - music is the most obvious example, but others too. With this technology, we continue to move away from buying hard goods and toward buying creativity, which is something that can offset the negative trends occurring in traditional manufacturing. This technology is changing our lives dramatically and will continue to do so, and the 00's will be seen as the decade where it went mainstream.

B. I think the meltdown of this last year has bigger implications than just a recession. I think there have been a lot of shenanigans and cooked books fueling an overrevved economy for the past couple of decades, and I think the demise of a lot of American industry bodes poorly for the future. Combine that with the unprecedented retirements we'll be seeing, and there's going to be a huge burden on Working America in the next decade, and with fewer good jobs to support that burden. The population is stabilizing, which means less natural growth, less home appreciation, and net withdrawals from the stock market. I think the meltdown was a rather spectacular introduction to a long-term slowdown of the American machine and the American Dream.

C. 9/11. Duh. However, there's been conflict ever since the first borders were drawn, so I think this is just the modern version of the Barbary Pirates or Biafra or Vietnam or The Hundred Years War. This too shall pass, though I hope it doesn't end up with some radioactive cities.


And that, my friends, is my decade at a glance. Hopefully your decade also rated a high score, and your future decade will be just as bright.