The health hazards of skis and throwaway lines in memos, and house prices dropping 83%
And how to increase sales without fancy sales funnels or phone calls
Oh the best-laid plans of mice and men …
The last two months of the year are frustrating - it’s too cold to bike.
So through November and December, I’m chomping at the bit for Mother Nature to give us an almighty dump, so’s I can get out on my skis.
Two weeks ago, she finally did. Yay! I’m gone …
Nordic skiing is unique exercise, in that different parts of your body are complaining of opposite kinds of abuse. Your core is sweating heavily, while your face and (for a short while) fingers are screaming Frostbite Alert!
It’s exhilarating, so I tend to go flat out. Got out 4 times in the first week, once as the sun was setting, once as it was rising.
Saturday morning, I wake to feel just enough soreness in the ball of my right foot to notice when resting, but not enough to notice when you’re going about your day.
Ah, ignore. I go out skiing again in the afternoon, no pain at all.
By bedtime, however … I can barely walk. And by Sunday morning, the foot was ballooning to the point that I couldn’t slide it into a shoe without screeching.
I’m a typical male in that, I resist going to see a doctor. But Monday morning, after 2 hours of sleep from the pain, I cave.
Turns out my GP doesn’t do Mondays.
Wife dropped me off at an urgent care facility (the only one still open in this end of Ottawa, all the others have permanently closed their doors).
Spent 7 hours there - 3 of those were just waiting to be registered. But hey! Emerg at the Montfort would’ve been longer.
What they say about the health care system breaking? It’s true. (I’ve seen that urgent care place max out for the day as early as 1pm.) BUT … at least I got to see a doc.
Acute inflammation of the metacarpal joint. Naproxen and ice. The doc’s parting line was … Try to remember you’re 61 now?
Gonna be a while before I get out on them planks again.
My father-in-law regaled us with another story over New Year’s.
This one was less adventurous in the how-to-get-yourself-creatively-killed department, but entertaining nevertheless.
Fast forward from the 16-year-old in Flin Flon to the 30-something senior electrical engineer at CNCP Telecoms in downtown Montreal.
He’s working in this rickety century-old building that housed all the company’s switching gear for telecommunications across Canada.
(Read: ALL of Canada. Everything went through this place.
Some senior manager comes to him and says, We need a new building for all this stuff.(Waving arm.) Write me up a report we can push in front of the Directors. You should find what you need in here. (Waving his arms to a room full of stacks of documents.)
You’ve got two days. Board’s meeting next week.
Billy-the-30-something-kid starts mining the stacks of documents … and quickly realises it’s all useless.
Senior manager pops in. You making headway?
Says Billy: Depends. Do you want a building or a report?
Manager: Huh?
Billy: This stuff is all verbiage. No numbers. The Board will want numbers. So unless you just want a report, gimme some numbers, or some people who’ve got numbers. Then I can give you a report that will actually get you your building. Otherwise … (waving hand at roomful of crap) … the Board will stick your report up someone’s electromagnetic-radiation-devoid cavity.
(My father-in-law can boil any problem down to brass tacks lightning fast. A sharp brain and 22 years of Flin Flon wilderness skills will do that for you.)
Two days later, the memo’s done, and in the hands of the Directors with time to spare.
But Billy-the-engineer-kid had made one teeny-weeny miscalculation.
Nope. Not that kind of miscalculation. The numbers were all good.
At the bottom of the 2-page report … (2 pages - told you, brass tacks) …
… he’d added a throwaway line along the lines of:
Furthermore, this building is a death trap. A fire on one floor, this whole place goes up in smoke, and you can kiss your switching power (and company) good-bye.
(He might have used slightly more professional language than that, but not much.)
A day later, he’s summoned to the CFO.
Mr Bigwig Moneybags sits him down, pushes Billy’s own memo across the table to him, jabs his finger on the throwaway line at the bottom … and, leaning forward nose-to-nose, says:
Says WHO?
Gulp.
Ummm … says me?
Moneybags gets up, goes over to a filing cabinet, slides open Drawer #2, pulls out another file, and dumps it in front of Billy.
These guys say different. Here’s their number. Report back. You’ve got 24 hours.
The file was by the company’s realty arm. It was an annual infrastructure survey. It acknowledged fire risk, but stated that any fire would be contained to one floor.
Sure, said Billy …
… sure, if you don’t have an elevator shaft up which the fire would spread like smoke up a chimney. So much all that fancy switching gear. Bye-bye Canadian telecoms.
This time, it was the big boys who gulped.
Two years later, CNCP’s switches were in a brand spanking new facility.
Billy the Kid had a stellar career installing microwave repeater towers across Canada. (Driven past some of them along Highway 7.)
In his 50’s, he’d get a lucrative golden handshake. Then his adventures continued for 2 years in Manhattan, installing a fibrotic comm systems for the New York Subway system. I still have a photo somewhere of my wife propping up our 6-month-old girl at the window of his 45th-floor apartment, looking out over Central Park.
He’s 85 now. His adventures are a bit less pleasant, and more of the senior medical ailment variety. But he still finds projects and problems to solve. Over New Year’s, he and I were staring into the guts of two 60-year-old Elna sewing machines. He bought the pair of them for $15, and knew that they were repairable.
Who’s currently making me think:
My electronic vice is YouTube.
Lotsa good vids about Bitcoin, AI, free speech … lotsa good vids of Rush, The Cult, Metallica … what more could a boomer want on a Friday evening?
But occasionally, just occasionally … someone says something that grabs me by the throat.
The latest? Jeff Booth.
Fellow Canuck, investor, AI and Bitcoin junkie. Doesn’t have his own channel, but he’s constantly talking with podcasters and YouTubers in the Bitcoin space. Here’s one good one:
And the grab-me-by-the-throat idea?
In a free market, over long enough time horizons, prices naturally fall to the marginal cost of production.
Which, in fact, is not really new, at all. Ask any economist worth their salt, they’ll say Yeah I know that.
The point is … if it’s true …
… why aren’t prices falling?
Simple. Because we live in a world where markets (and currencies) are manipulated, not free.
If that makes me sound like a loony conspiracy theorist, well … so be it.
Jeff Booth provides some interesting illustrations. How expensive is the calculator app on your smartphone?
Answer: It’s free. But when the iPhone came out in 2007, you had to pay a few $’s for it.
How expensive is it to take a photo?
Answer: It’s free, on your smartphone. (You might pay a few $’s for cloud storage.) But back in the 70’s, when everything was on film, you had to pay to get them developed.
Jeff bought a house in 2020 for CAD$1.2M. Today it’s worth $2.0M.
Huh! Not free! Why the difference?
Because the time horizon is longer, and real asset value much higher for houses than it is for photos and calculator apps.
And because the Bank of Canada has been massively inflating the CAD$ (for decades, but particularly since 2020), increasing the CAD$-denominated prices of real assets.
Had he paid for the house with Bitcoin in 2020, it would have cost him BTC300.
To buy it today? BTC50. One-sixth the price. Because Bitcoin can’t be inflated.
What I’m currently doing:
For the last 4 years, I’ve been freelancing as a content- and copy-writer for hire.
Still doing a bit of that, but no longer pursuing it. Going to get increasingly hard with the likes of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.
Here’s what I mostly do now:
Partner with business offer owners, who have sizeable email lists and low-ticket buyers (whom they struggle to convert into high-ticket buyers).
I get them new high-ticket buyers from their existing list, with a few emails and a google doc. That’s it.
No fancy funnel, no fancy sales or checkout pages. Maybe a phone call if the new buyer.
I do all the up-front work, my partners fulfils to the new customer, we split the profits.
It’s easy found money.
Til next time,
His Weirdness, King Pope Gandalf the Fun