The Ground Rules (are that there are no ground rules…)

The pups and I—actually, I think each of us…—are on an adventure.

In some ways it is hard to know exactly when and where the adventure began… Was it when I started in youth work in junior high school, tutoring kids in Spanish Harlem, NYC? Maybe it was after I moved back to NYC to start my “career” following an extended period in the West… Or maybe when I left traditional social work to begin working for a new philanthropist interested in the pursuit of social value through business practice…Or (last one, I swear…) maybe it was when I found myself staring out of yet one more airplane window, looking down at the Rocky Mountains as I was winging my way back East to teach at Harvard Business School—to tell others how to think and act as social entrepreneurs, as investors, as venture philanthropists, as whatever!—only to realize that, “Hey…I should be down THERE—not up here…”.

Whatever it was or whenever the adventure began, I find myself now here:

Five miles down the road from the West entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park;

8500ft above sea level;

with fewer folks within a ten mile circle of my house than lived on my block in SF;

in a log sided house, looking across an open meadow with elk wandering across in the mornings and moose in my back yard in the afternoon;

PLOWING through scores of emails from folks across the world…

Sitting on the phone, talking to asset managers, philanthropists, CEOs of big ass companies and social entrepreneurs managing new social ventures, and god knows who all else…

And I just have to sit back and wonder:
What are we all trying to do here?
How can we do it better?

And when we are each about to die, how can we know we have lived our lives to the fullest, done the most we can and created the greatest value through our having lived—economic value, social value, environmental value…

How have each of us maximized the full, blended value of our having lived?

My adventure has been a total and complete blast…as I hope yours has as well…

But what i know for sure is that my adventure is not over and I have a ton to learn from how others have approached their

challenges
and issues
and opportunities…

So, I figured I would try this blog out as a way to both reflect on my own challenges and learn from others who have been grappling with the same issues in their own ways…

I’ve set this up so other people can respond, comment and talk about what has been important to them—professionally, personally, spiritually and financially—since, quite frankly, it is all about one big, humongous glorious thing:

Maximizing the full value of our having lived—and sharing that value with others, whether with fellow investors or fellow travelers…

It’s all the same…or is it?

That is what I hope to explore on this site…

how we may each live a life of full, blended value—and how we may each best celebrate the struggle of becoming what we are each called to be.

More to come…

Jed