65 minute listen
Portsmouth
In this week’s episode, I interview John Ready in our offices in Portsmouth, NH. John is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Ready Seafood, the largest lobster processor and distributor in North America. Hear how he progressed from winning a business plan competition in college to becoming a global seafood leader in this hour-long, unedited podcast.
What I am Reading / Listening to
I am a huge fan of Peter Attia, a San Diego and NYC based physician, athlete, race car driver, and world class thinker. He has a special interest in high performance, life span, health span, and subjective well-being. His work focuses on how these concepts are influenced by our lifestyle, our physiology, our psychology, and our nutrition (including plant-based medicines). His relatively new blog / podcast is called The Peter Attia Drive Podcast and I highly recommend it if you are interested in, and want to be challenged by, his nontraditional (yet evidence based) thinking. I love the way he characterizes his blog: “The blog I’d like to read.” Listen to it here.
Entrepreneur Owner-Manager Quote
“I was ignorant and it’s easy to be brave when you’re ignorant.”
- Cam Brensinger, Founder and CEO of NEMO Equipment, Inc. on how he grew his company in the early days..
Energy Creation
APPRECIATE
It is axiomatic that the antidote for fatigue, depletion, irritation, and resentment is “appreciate.” The verb “appreciate” has several meanings. It can mean for example, to fully comprehend or understand something, to admire beauty or a craft, to increase in value, or in the sense we have in mind here, to give gratitude.
High performing Entrepreneur Owner-Managers are frequently Givers (in the Adam Grant sense). By definition, Givers give their time, their positive energy, their treasure, their emotion—and they get depleted. World class advisors to EOMs make the same investment and incur the same depletion, particularly if they are as caring, hard-working, and conscientious as our Bigelow team. That caring and giving can of course contribute a lot of good for our friends / clients. But over time, without rejuvenation, it also wears us down. For the most part, the work, the clients, and the people we work with energize us. But every once in a while, it’s refreshing to take a collective deep breath to Appreciate—refresh, rejuvenate, re-plete—so we renew our energy to give our clients the attention and commitment they deserve—and we expect of ourselves.
This past weekend, the entire Bigelow Firm did just that. We stepped away from the cold winter weather of New England and traded it in for some warmth and sun on the tiny pink and green island of Bermuda. Not only did the time away allow us to step back a bit and appreciate the change of scenery, it also gave us a chance to deepen the connections between us.
Spouses and significant others came along and were an important part of Appreciate. There was no agenda and no plan except for one Firm dinner reached by ferry, which turned out to be filled with tall tales, laughter, and a few war stories. The casual atmosphere gave us the opportunity to get to know the non-work side of each other, and the life partners and significant others definitely contributed to that increased understanding.
The outcome, more than merely boosting our Vitamin D count, was understanding a bit more about what makes each of us tick and a tighter connection through knowing a little about life outside of work. We remembered our sense of purpose and community. All that combined to allow for a refresh on Appreciate as we walked through the door the next morning.
What do you do to intentionally refresh, or rejuvenate? I am interested in hearing from you.
Blog edited and produced by Amanda Telford.