Author: Lloyd Graff

I got started in dog rescue about four years ago when I adopted my beagle, Penny. She was bought by a dog rescue at an Amish dog auction in Ohio, which is similar to  a machinery auction. Animals used for breeding are numbered and auctioned off to the highest bidder with selling points like “four healthy litters last year!” and “breed in demand!” The Amish are well despised in the rescue community for their treatment of dogs, which to them are akin to cattle. Penny’s feet were splayed wide and raw from the chicken wire she had lived her life on, and…

My father had an expression he often used when the phones were quiet and business was snoozing, “It’s time to start ‘dogging.'” He meant it was time to get on the phone and start connecting with people. Time to make something happen. Lately, I’ve started “dogging” again and the cool thing is that it’s working better than the Internet, prospecting, or that old stand-by, “hoping for something good to happen.” Besides making some deals, I’ve learned stuff by talking to clients or “would be” clients. Here are a few nuggets I’ve learned recently. ******* There is some really terrific technology…

The election is over. Thanksgiving is in three weeks. Basketball and hockey are rolling. So it’s time to start thinking how 2015 might be different. What stands out for me is the sense of disgust and futility amidst what in most years would be considered terrific economic figures. This election was all about “pissed off,” not ideas. Pessimism seems to reign. I know I feel it in my own business, even though the numbers for the year show a big improvement over 2013. I think for the people I work with the angst also exists. Why aren’t people happier? I…

With its creaky infrastructure, tight labor laws, and famously large bureaucracy, India has never been the easiest place in the world to do business; The World Bank ranks the country 134th out of 189 countries in its “ease of doing business” rankings. Since becoming India’s prime minister in May, Narendra Modi has vowed to change this reputation.* On Thursday, Modi announced a series of reforms to India’s labor laws, including one allowing employees to tie their Provident account—a government-supported payroll funding scheme—to their personal bank account. This will make it easier for people to hold onto their money when they change jobs,…

We are all in this world economy together, and for most of my life the basic rule of money was that it would lose value year after year because inflation would always take its 2-4% nibble. But it is starting to look like that rule, that seemingly immutable act of the god of the economy, has been turned on its head. The Europeans led by the bone rigid Germans and the limpy wimpy head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, are dragging themselves into deflation. The Japanese, with their country of old people, have been in deflation for almost…

I hate the word “Steady.” We call our customers and politely interrogate them about their machinery needs. We often ask them a simple question, “How’s business?” The answer we often hear these days is, “It’s steady.” “Good,” we respond. But what I’d really like to say is, “What the heck does ‘steady’ mean?” “Steady” is one of the most meaningless words in the English vernacular. It is a dodge, a way to say “it’s none of your business so I’m going to politely tell you to mind your own business.” I’ve never seen a steady business. Each day is a…

Baseball season is finally almost done, and it’s time for the greatest athletes in the world to take the NBA floor. In honor of the upcoming basketball season, I am reviewing former NBA coach Phil Jackson’s fascinating biography, Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success. Many basketball fans know a little bit about Jackson’s unconventional techniques for getting his teams to win. Jackson’s book fleshes out the methods and philosophy he used while he coached and gives the reader inside baseball, or in this case “inside basketball,” into what actually happened while coaching the Bulls and Lakers dynasties and when he…

The stats tell us a lot about the economy, which is erratically bouncing along. Housing starts are up 6% over last year in the latest figures, but multi-family is jumping up 17%. In Palo Alto, California, this week, visiting my daughter, I’m getting a birds-eye view sipping my coffee while listening to the buzz and hum of construction tools in Silicon Valley. There is an occasional single-family house going up, but there are hundreds of apartments, hotel rooms and condos being built down El Camino Real, which bisects towns like Palo Alto, Mountain View and Cupertino where Stanford, Google and…

Lockheed Martin thinks it can make fusion power a reality within a decade ONE of the clichés of nuclear-power research is that a commercial fusion reactor is only 30 years away, and always will be. Hence a flurry of interest—and not just a little incredulity—when, on October 15th, news emerged that Lockheed Martin, a big American engineering company, has a new design for a fusion reactor that it reckons could be in use in a decade. A team at Lockheed’s renowned Skunk Works, where its wilder (and often secret) ideas are developed, reckons fusion is ripe for a rethink. Attempts to harness…

My impression is that business is slowing a bit in our machining world, though IMTS exhibitors moved a lot of iron. Auction prices have trended softer for the last several months. The recent Belden sale brought prices considerably lower than I had expected during the summer when the company was taking bids from auctioneers. The recent mini collapse of oil prices has sent gasoline prices under $3.00 per gallon in low tax states like New Jersey. While this is something to be thankful for ahead of Thanksgiving, the oil patch is suffering from heartburn, adjusting to $80 crude. Break even…