What’s Cooking?
April 4, 2008
One of the things many people don’t know about John Bostick is that he has a great love of the culinary arts. I was fortunate enough to attend a cooking class at Jungle Jims in which John was the guest chef.
The class, entitled “Get the Winter Cold Out with Hot Thai Food and Beer,” was held at the Jungle Jim Cooking School on April 2nd. Within a 2 hour timeframe, John and his team of helpers created a multitude of Thai dishes including an appetizer, soup, a side dish, two entrées, and a dessert. Students were provided a recipe syllabus to follow along with, as each dish was prepared. The menu for the evening included the following:
- Shrimp Sticks with Savory Dipping Sauce
- Kaeng Jud Thao Hu (Bean Curd Soup with Meat Balls)
- Gai Yang (Marinated Barbecued Chicken)
- Taeng Kwa Brio Wan (Sweet and Sour Fresh Cucumber)
- Jasmine Rice
- Beef Panang Curry
- Sticky Rice with Fresh Mango
Students not only learned how to prepare the dishes, but were also provided ethnic background on how food was prepared and served. An example of this would be that restaurants in Thailand do not have knives at the table because they have a belief that food should be prepared in bite sized portions for the guest. As each dish was prepared, John also provided interesting information and helpful hints about the ingredients. He talked about how to buy garlic – “it should be tight with no sprouts.” He prefers to use “the purple kind from Mexico.” “When using garlic, it’s better to chop or slice than to use a garlic press.” “Using a garlic press can change the flavor of garlic in dishes as the oils are extracted.” If students had questions about a particular ingredient, John is excellent on providing informative answers. He is extremely knowledgeable on the composition of the food item and provides suggestions on different ways to include the ingredient in other dishes.
After each dish was completed, a generous sample was provided to each student for sampling. Each one was flavorful and delicious. At the end of the evening, students were anxious to sign up for another class as it was truly an enjoyable experience.
Those interested in attending one of John’s classes should check out the Jungle Jim website (www.junglejims.com) under Cooking School. The Spring Quarter Class Brochure will be posted in the near future.
Applying Exponential Principles to Personal Growth
March 14, 2008
I recently had an opportunity to listen in as our CEO, John Bostick, spoke to and fielded questions from Xavier Professor Tim Kloppenborg’s project management class. John captures an audience’s attention with his wisdom and propensity for great story telling. And he’s not afraid to share the hard lessons of his experience founding and running multiple multi-million-dollar businesses. This talk, although about project management and the trade offs of time, scope, and budget, hit so many inherently valuable life principles.
John reads voraciously. I’ve known this. Over my four years at LUCRUM I’ve listened to John apply lessons to his life and our business taken from content that he’s read and shared with us. Today I found the source of his motivation.
John described a very simple principle that he called the principle of exponents. I’m not sure that’s the clearest title, but the concept became as clear as day as he explained it. In essence, the principle is that if you spend 15 minutes each day improving yourself you will become exponentially stronger in character, will, knowledge, and understanding than the average person over time. Not that your goal is to be better than the next guy, but to become a generally stronger person with more to give.
John broke it down like this. If the average person can read, say, a bit less than a page a minute, then in 15 minutes that person can read about 12 pages. If the average book is about 350 pages long, then a person can read about a book a month. That is 12 books a year. Read three books purely for entertainment purposes (because all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy). Read three personal growth books, like Covey’s 7 Habits, or Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. And then read 6 books about the business and profession you’ve built your career on. 12 books a year, every year, and you will have come a long, long way in a relatively short amount of time.
Then John graphed the principle on the chalkboard, and it looked something like this:
At point 1, both person A and person B graduate from college and enter the workforce. The graphs measure personal growth over time as the two people apply growth principles and life lessons learned. Person A out of the gate begins reading about his business and profession, networking into relationships that will help forward his career, takes entrepreneurial chances and learns some great lessons. Person B doesn’t.
Clearly, with the passage of time, person A experiences personal growth at a rate that far exceeds person B. 10 or 15 years down the line we might look at person A (point 2) and talk about how lucky that person has been in his life and career because we’re looking at a point in time. If we look at history, though, person A established a pattern on day-1 that guaranteed the trajectory of personal growth if it didn’t all but guarantee personal success.
And all that from just 15 minutes a day.
Tell us: how much do you read? How do you apply habits to guarantee personal growth? We’d love to hear about them.
- Andy
Sphere: Related ContentLUCRUM: 15 Years and Counting…
February 16, 2008
Today’s the 15th anniversary of the founding of LUCRUM. Wow, that’s seems like a long time ago! At the same time, it also feels like yesterday! Our industry is a great industry because it never gets boring. The idea that we can problem solve in our customers’ business using some of the latest technology and techniques is still as rich in opportunity as the first day we were in business. I still remember that first day. I called about 20 different customer/prospects that I knew in the regional marketplace with the announcement that I had formed a new consulting company called, “Client Server Associates.” We were going to focus on the new paradigm of developing business software outside of the mainframe on PC’s and their network servers. It was a very “bleeding edge” concept at the time, and as you know, the rest is history.
It was also very “new” to think of business cycles lasting only a few years instead of the normal 7 year cycles. In fact, I was brash enough at the age of 33 to tell customers that the cycles were going to be “months-long” instead of years long. Boy, was I ever disruptive! In today’s economy, the switch from “build product and the market will come” to “mass customization of all products and services” has created such a huge market in business consulting and developing software solutions. I’ve skied out in Utah this season a few times and the ski “ticket” is now an RFID card that “swipes you” when you go through the turnstiles onto the ski lift! No more checking your ski tag! They also allow for you to go to their website and see how many ski runs you made and what the vertical feet added up to! Another benefit for the avid skier! Our whole world is going to change over the next five years in leveraging the RFID technology, mobile computing with Blackberries and other platforms, as well as the whole concept of “predicting” what the customer wants and suggestively selling or recommending your services in a way that you think they “really know you.” The fact is, they really do know you! “Predicting” needs and requirements is a big portion of the “data management” strategy of any company. They won’t be able to do this themselves in most situations since most companies don’t have an “inventive and build” culture. This is where LUCRUM is going to leverage our strengths and brain-power to provide these kind of services for the market. It’s going to be a very interesting “next 5 years!”
Happy Anniversary! JB
And We’re Off…TheFutureValueofBusiness.com
February 13, 2008
I am now mid way through my 3rd week here at LUCRUM, and it is amazing. I have spent the last 2 weeks getting to know my co-workers, developing an initial needs assessment, and working on putting my stamp on the company’s marketing efforts.
First and foremost has been the launch of this blog. Everyone I have spoken with is extremely excited about the project - though it represents a considerable shift in approach. It will be interesting to see this web log come to life. There should be no shortage of interesting content. I am just hoping that I can keep up.
One co-worker, Andy Erickson, got so excited about the project following a conversation we had on my first day, he launched his own blog to compliment this one. Already he has developed a following here in Cincinnati, and I look forward to having him contributing to the content of thefuturevalueofbusiness.com
It’s not just Andy. Seemingly everyone here at LUCRUM is excited about joining the blogosphere. From Sales to HR, Marketing to Finance, Developers, Coders, Project Managers, and more - people are really interested. My challenge will be turning that curiosity into action - i.e. content. I believe I am up to the challenge.
I am particularly interested in reading posts from the leader of LUCRUM, John Bostick. John is truly a renaissance man. He has started numerous successful companies, traveled the world, given lectures in China, and climbed Mt. Rainier. He even teaches classes in wine and gourmet cooking at Jungle Jim’s here in Cincinnati. He is extremely well read, very articulate, and a true man of vision. I am certain that he will author many interesting posts in the days ahead.
The best part is that it does not stop with John. There are so many people with so much to share. This is going to be fun. If you are interested in hearing our story, and telling us yours, I hope you will subscribe to the site either via RSS or email. Both are available on the home page and can be set up with just a few keystrokes.
My name is David, and I blog (among other things) for a living.
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