You Can Take Him Out, But You Can't Dress Him Up

Last week I had to put on my only pair of big-boy pants and drive into Cambridge for a meeting with Lemelson MIT, Blue Hills' most lucrative client. Since Anne works at MIT, this was a routine matter for her, but driving into the city is always a white-knuckle experience for me. More to the point, this was the first business meeting I've had to attend in at least 13 years. Since my previous two jobs didn't require business attire, all of my "nice" clothes are 20-25 years old. I only ever wear shorts and T-shirts during the summer or jeans and flannel shirts in the winter. Fortunately, Greater Boston is not a fashion Mecca (and, hipsters aside, Cambridge is even less so), men's styles don't change drastically over time, and nobody cares what a 60-year-old man looks like as long as he makes the effort to conform. The main problem is not so much that my "nice" clothes aren't very nice, but that they don't fit very well because my girth has expanded over the decades. 

If my new profession is going to require more meetings, though, I'm going to need to buy some new clothes.

I am tickled that MIT is paying me, a person with only rudimentary education and no science training whatsoever, to write technical articles for a lay audience.

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Hard to believe that it's time for Curio City's July numbers already. The first really substantial Blue Hills activity renders my usual QuickBooks report meaningless...but, just for yucks, here are the numbers for Kraken Enterprises:

July

Total income: +396.6
Payroll: +1,508.9%

Marketing: -12.2%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +89% (+$149)

Actual Profit/Loss: -$18

2017 YTD

Total income: +74.1%
Total COGS: +7.1%
Payroll: +297.2%

Marketing: -22.6%
Net Income (Profit) vs LY: +205.1% (+$4,359)

Actual Profit/Loss: +$2,234

Pretty amusing, huh? Excel says that Curio City ended July short by $1,100, but the YTD is still running $1,200 ahead of LY. Curio City is still $3,800 in debt, though, and I'm not entirely confident that it will ever dig itself out. Ultimately, I might have to poach some of my Blue Hills revenue to pay off the Amex before I can close Curio City next fall. 

(I should mention that, for the first time ever, I didn't pocket all of the payroll. My wife is officially a sometimes-employee when she takes income under the Blue Hills name, and I actually wrote out a paycheck for her this month. This is particularly funny since all of Blue Hills' business comes from her contacts and reputation.)