Mr. Wonderful. Oh My! Shark Tank

Mr. Wonderful on @ABCSharkTank sometimes speaks with forked tongue. I am a regular viewer of Shark Tank, ABC’s hit show that lures budding entrepreneurs onto the set to, at times, do battle with the rich and famous. If you pay attention, you can learn from the presentations and reactions. But on more than one occasion, two plus two doesn’t add up to four. Case in point. The January 24 episode introduced a musician hawking a pill that potentially could keep a person from starving to death given an unforeseen bad situation. This presentation had its issues, among them, as the sharks so vehemently pointed out, were no research, no testing, no FDA approval, and on and on. They got quite upset with this guy. Enough already. I focused on one point Mr. Wonderful targeted. I’ll paraphrase it. “How can I make money with this product? A person will buy it one time and that’s it.” The implication here – if the product doesn’t generate repeat sales, it can’t make money for the investor. Wait a minute. What about hammers? There are plenty of them on the market. I bought one once. But I don’t buy a new one every month. They’re still on the market making money for someone. The size of the target audience determines a product’s success given adequate marketing. Here’s another Mr. Wonderful pronouncement, “You haven’t got a business, you only have a product.” This statement, or a version of it, has been shared quite a few times. Implying what? My conclusion – so what? In a past episode, a Rabbi presented a plastic sound diverting...

Its A New Year

It’s a new year. How cold is it here in Raleigh? It has been a while since my last post. My blood work and CT scans all came back negative. So I continued with the walking. I was on the blood thinner Xarelto for nine months due to the DVT in my calf. When my doctor took me off the Xarelto, I thought I would try to do some mild jogging, which I did. The trochanteric bursitis in my right hip would not tolerate it. It hurt a lot! I kept walking and trying to increase my pace. The walking did not bother the hip too much. Over the months I got down to a 10:40 pace. At that point I tried jogging a little during the walks. At times the hip was OK and at times it hurt like the devil. After doing a lot of reading on the subject and speaking with other sufferers, I refused to try an injection. Today I am able to jog 20 miles a week at about a 9:00 to 9:30 pace.  The bursitis seems to be getting better very, very slowly. I don’t want to push it. My weight has a lot to do with the slow pace. I weigh in now at 176 lbs. That’s a far cry from my racing weight of 148. One of these days I hope to get back to racing. I cannot seem to lose weight unless I can run 40 – 50 miles a week. If I can reach that distance goal, maybe I can get the weight off. If I can lose the...