Why am I doing this?

Why am I doing this?

The legendary sports columnist Allan Malamud (1941 – 1996) called his long-running column “Notes on a Scorecard” for the writing style he employed in it – short, often single sentence comments followed by three periods. These generally appeared to be simple observations of sporting events, public figures or ongoing trends, and were usually far more subtle and insightful than they appeared to be on a cursory reading. For 22 years they were required reading for all Los Angeles sports fans. I started reading Mr. Malamud’s column as a boy in grammar school, and continued every day until his untimely death in 1996, and it’s only fair to say that I learned more about writing (and sports, too) from him than I did from most of the people employed by my various schools to actually teach me these things.

I don’t expect my comments in this blog to be as interesting, or nearly as well written, but it is in honor of Mr. Malamud that I have chosen to call it “Notes on a Business Page.” Well, that and the fact that I’m planning on using it to share my thoughts and observations on a variety of business-related topics with whoever has logged in today. As to why I’m bothering about a blog in the first place, and in particular, one that covers issues already appearing in millions of other blogs, well, that’s a little more complicated…

I never intended to go into business in the first place. My undergraduate degree is in English (from UC Santa Barbara), and I had intended to come back to Los Angeles after college and write the Great American Novel. Unfortunately (or not, depending on your point of view), while the business of writing fascinated me, the business of starving to death while doing so didn’t…

So I got a job as a resume writer, since at the time people still did that for a living, and wrote other people’s stories for a living. It was steady work, and I got to be good enough that they promoted me five times in two years…

Then “Merger Fever” hit Corporate America, and I lost 8 different jobs due to mergers and acquisitions over the next ten years. In the process of trying to find a niche for myself as the resume industry was relegated to the compost heap of history, I got my MBA (from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles) and started learning more about how business in general and management in particular actually work. The result was an accidental tour of American commerce in general, as mergers of century-old companies, the disappearance of whole industries in the new economy, and a woeful lack of regard for career development or personal safety sent me careening through the Service, Retail, Energy, Entertainment, Wholesale, Consulting, Non-Profit and Education sectors…

I’m not exactly sure when I lost control of this career path, but along the way I’ve seen a lot of really strange things, and picked up a few insights that might worth having. I’ve passed some of them along to my students at the Small Business Development Center at Santa Monica College, and used some to assist clients as a management consultant in private practice, but there are still a few things I’d like to get out to a wider audience as I continue down this very odd life experience I appear to be having. Anybody want to come along? This could be fun…