Articles - Geoff Blades

You Hanging In There?

It’s a getting a little gnarly, isn’t it?

The political landscape is fractured like the desert after a quake.

Violence is erupting worse than a summer blockbuster.

Abuse is spewing to the surface from many fissures; Church, Scouts, the global pedo network showing their heads.

Stock market is swelling and dropping, perhaps closing out.

You Doing OK?

In times like these we can all get tossed around, can’t we?

Some of us are directly affected.

Most of us are whipsawed by the media storm.

I’ve trained myself to block out that noisy global catastrophe.

But like I’m sure many of you, some people around me are being battered by the storm.

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2:53

That’s how long an average worker is productive each day…

Out of an 8 hour day, 2:53.

That’s a yield of 36%.

64% Waste

Imagine a production line that was operating at 36% yield.

Where 64% of the inputs were wasted.

That’s the average workday.

The average life.

It’s not just routine jobs either.

In fact, someone sitting answering phones all day is certainly far more productive than most professionals.

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Victoria Keeps Her Secrets

Epstein…

No comment.

People are better off that way.

Those of us without eyes wide shut know where the stink hole goes, don’t we?

How quickly our society forgets.

Predators Everywhere

For a while we’re outraged when another Weinstein snakes around.

But quickly we get back to our little screens forgetting like Spacey we demand a constant stream of beautiful boys, and girls.

We pretend not to know how they do it.

That the casting couch existed long before the latest crop of pervs and pedos.

In our society that vehemently fights for women’s rights…

We tune into the fashion shows ogling our super women prancing around in their shiny heels and underwear.

No care how they got there.

Nor how many others were picked over and left elsewhere.

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Get More Energy

How many of us would like more energy?

With more energy, what more might be possible for you?

How much more might you get done?

Better might you feel?

What’s more important to living your ultimate life?

Life Is Energy

No energy…

No life.

Yet how we build and consume energy each day is still considered a mystery…

What’s the right amount of sleep?

How do you best fuel and hydrate the body?

What ways do you build and deplete energy?

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Raise Your Fund Smaller, Slower, Harder…

“Why would I want that?” a top hedge fund manager asked.

“Exactly,” my partner replied.

“So why are you going at the capital raise that way?”

Boom!

Or not…

More like fizzle for most new managers raising capital.

They start off hot.

Coming from a big firm, feeling like winners.

They’ve made it.

Crushed it.

Kings of Capitalism, and all that stuff.

Emboldened to build their firm of dreams.

Others Soon Burn It Down

Don’t let people who gave up on their dreams talk you out of yours is a common self-help phrase.

It’s cheesy, but it well captures most people.

And most investors.

How many really want to be working for their old shop, versus building their own?

Risk averse.

Fearful.

How many go for what they truly want?

Let alone, how many are standing there beside you yelling…

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Bye Buy Morgan Stanley…

You’re meeting with a potential client.

They love the team.

Are really into what you’re talking about.

You’re delivering them massive value but something stands in the way.

“Our House Bank Is Morgan Stanley”

What do you say?

How do you blow out that “objection?”

There’s lots of ways to get it wrong.

You start talking about how much Morgan sucks…

When everyone knows they’re great and your not-client is already invested in them.

You talk up yourself and how much better you are…

When your not-client already thinks they work with the best.

So, what do you do?

How do you blow out the objection?

And perhaps Morgan too?

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“You Should Be Honored By My Lateness”

Last name ever

First name greatest

Like a sprained ankle, boy, I ain’t nothin’ to play with…

Drake raps in Forever.

It May Not Mean Nothing To Y’all

But understand nothin’ was done for me

So I don’t plan on stoppin’ at all

I want this shit forever, man—ever, man—ever, man…

Yeah I’m about my business

Killing all these rappers you would swear I had a hit list

Everyone who doubted me is asking for forgiveness

If you ain’t been a part of it at least you got to witness

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2020: No Hope. No Choice. No Fun

Combating Trump

2020 is a joke.

A sad, old, angry, only kindof funny joke.

And the laugh is on us.

Is this the best they can do?

Bring Each Other Down?

It’s been laughably obvious since the beginning how this will go down.

So obvious I shut up talking about it.

I’m just as bored of myself saying—

Obviously the Dems will just tear each other down, and the one left standing all the way left, Trump will easily finish.

…As we are of seeing them doing their little public displays of disaffection.

No top Democrats I’ve spoken to see it any other way.

One said to me last week, I wish we’d followed your advice and run this goat…

DoA

How did the Democrats get so DoA?

Where are the great hopes like Barack and Kennedy who stand to drive us forward?

Trump is obviously a highly flawed candidate.

So why is it so hard to find a candidate who can actually beat him?

He’s easily beatable…

But only by a beater.

The Dems have put up some two dozen no choices.

They can’t even stand up their own not-fun-party let alone take Trump down.

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Goldman Doesn’t Need Rainmaking Bankers

Top bankers are born, not made…

He didn’t use those words, but that’s what one of Goldman’s top execs implied.

We talked about if Tiger was born to play.

Or did honing his craft from 6 months old make him a champion of the game?

That said, he was right, Goldman doesn’t need this.

It’s Too Easy To Win…

When you’re the market leader.

The business card pulls the sale.

You attract top talent.

Long, deep relationships.

Enormous resources.

Market dominance.

Some celebrity execs.

Talking up recent deals.

It’s a winning formula, but no top franchise endures that way.

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“Bankers Aren’t Valued For Efforts”

Back in San Francisco I worked with a rockstar associate.

This guy would crank all night.

Be in all the details.

Leave rapid fire, all over it sounding voicemails.

15 years later he’s a middling senior-ish banker.

Bullet Points Aren’t The Job

When I was the Business Unit Manager (yes, BUM, aka staffer) at Goldman…

I got the inside scoop on what the business is really about.

In that one year by far I learned more about the banking business than the rest combined.

Stepping back from the day-to-day of being a banker…

I was responsible for managing bankers seeing clearly what was valued.

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They’re The Same Fisherman

A teacher told me a tale about two fisherman.

One was just a lowly fisherman.

He grew up by sea, his father was a fisherman, so too was he.

The other was a successful merchant.

One of the richest and most respected men in the kingdom.

Through a twist of fate he lost it all.

His business collapsed.

Wife left.

Friends jumped ship.

Desperate. Broken. Nowhere to turn.

He turned to sea.

Oh, that’s tragic, one might think.

How awful it must be to lose it all.

Yet, as the storyteller, perhaps Seneca, was pointing out…

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Massive Shame In Banking

At Goldman it’s called the Junior Banker Problem.

Specifically, junior bankers lives get destroyed.

Banks have tried plenty things to solve it.

It’s all pig lipstick…

Because the root cause of the Junior Banker Problem is…

The Senior Banker Problem

Because few senior bankers get their job is selling.

They fail to build winning processes and skills.

The best they know is to wind up the printing press producing those awfully big, boring banker books.

Burning down forests and junior banker lives…

They run around having “Great Meetings.”

Mostly failing to drive results.

They produce too little value for the firm.

Too little success for themselves.

And after all those years in the business, still fail to succeed.

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Wake Up. Get Up

That’s the second step in the Ultimate Days System.

It’s real leading edge, isn’t it?

Life-saving…

A Game Of Seconds

I mock myself, but I’m also being semi-semi-serious.

Wake up. Get up.

Is a real basic tool for getting your day started right.

Yet many of us also know how hard it can be, right?

Laying there hitting snooze.

Thinking about all the things you’ve got to do today.

Claws reaching for that device we cradle at night.

Those precious few seconds, those few bad moves, our day is already shot.

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Many Bankers Don’t Get Their Job

I didn’t get it.

For years at Goldman I still didn’t get the job.

I was good at doing it.

But I still didn’t get what the business was really about.

Making Money…

In some ways I’m naive.

And I may have been a total dimwit starting at Goldman.

But my sense from 20+ years around the business is that many bankers still fail to get their job is selling.

A great aspect of working at Goldman and some shops is it’s a team culture.

At least up until the senior ranks, it’s all about what we’re doing together in best serving our clients.

That’s a powerful mindset for delivering your best service…

But it leaves many bankers confused what the business is actually about.

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“Take It To The Limit”

“You need to think smaller,” her boss said.

5 minutes later my friend was typing into google, When do you apply to business school?

3 years later she graduated HBS.

Today she’s building big.

There’s Nothing Easy

About dreaming big.

Waking up every day eye on the prize.

Taking actions that keep breathing it life.

Plenty of people pretend to encourage thinking big, but few do.

Even fewer teach you how.

All alone at the end of the evening when the bright lights have faded to blue…

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Most Bankers MASSIVELY Underpaid

After the credit crisis there was lots of noise about banker compensation.

For good reason, people questioned bankers’ role and how much they’d been paid.

There’s certainly lots wrong with compensation in our society, including…

How Many Bankers Are Underpaid

Fact is…

Most bankers didn’t join the industry expecting little reward.

If you’d told them decades ago, give your life to this and one day you’ll be making 0.25X, many would have chosen a different path.

Of course relative to the average worker bankers are ridiculously paid.

But relative to others providing such massive value to our society as reading lines or catching balls, not so much.

Nor relative to what bankers give to get paid.

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Technology Setting Free Boobs

You may have seen an article on the app DeepNude.

Another massive leap in technology the app uses an artificial neural network…

To remove the clothing in any photo of a woman.

Turns Out They All Have Boobs

It doesn’t take artificial intelligence to see women have boobs.

But with enough computing power you can better imagine what they look like.

No longer do we have to so desperately await the next iPhone hack to see celebrity boobs.

Or go to strip clubs.

With 50 bucks and the press of a button, all boobs are free.

Boobs, Promised So Much

Push up bras ruined boobs.

Promising so much, revealing less than.

Technology ruined them more.

Fake boobs.

Sexdoll boobs.

Insta “model” boobs.

Porn infested, boob injected Internet.

Technology promised so much, yet what boobs we’ve become.

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“Why Don’t I Feel I’ve Made It?”

I see it time and time again.

No matter what success we achieve it’s hard to feel like we’ve made it.

There’s Always Something

We are yet to do.

Or make happen.

A problem that first needs to be resolved.

We might be like Atlas having hoisted the world on our shoulders.

But maybe we shrugged a little on the way up.

Still not good enough.

When I Get Rid Of The Shrug…

Then I’ll be happy.

When we’re no longer bothered by this.

Worried about that.

Concerned for what else might happen.

There’s too often something that stands in our way.

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Can Ambitious Leaders Afford So-So At This?

There are lots of ways leaders quickly fall.

When you’re standing on the pedestal it’s easy to lose your footing.

People are constantly analyzing you.

Looking for cracks, figuring out if you’re really who you stand to be.

All Eyes On You

In the presidential debates just one question can end a candidate.

And the stakes can often be this high in business too.

A CEO speaking poorly on a shareholder call.

Failing communicating to the Board.

Delivering the wrong message to employees.

Sometimes leaders mess up badly and fail quickly.

But most the time we fail by leaving opportunities on the table.

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Another Glorious Fakebook Birthday

My Fakebook birthday is always a nice surprise.

It’s like some of us men on our anniversary.

We completely forget until we wake up to the well in that case less pleasant surprise.

Just Like Any Other Day

I’m getting on with my day.

Making it ultimate.

And then it starts…

With a text message, “Happy birthday!”

Then I remember, ha, of course it’s my Fakebook birthday.

I punch the air.

Celebrate

After all these years you’d think I might remember my Fakebook birthday.

Maybe even do something about it, like change it.

But I let it go on.

As I wrote about on my last Fakebook birthday I gave up telling people, “No it’s just my Fakebook birthday.”

Birthday wishes bring so much joy to people.

And of course I love people celebrating every day.

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