Scott Griffiths
CEO - 18/8 Fine Men's Salons
Professor - Grazadio School of Business and Management -
Pepperdine University
The University of California Irvine - Chief Executive Roundtable
Member - Luxury Council / Board - The Surf Heritage Foundation
If you believe as I do that life is something special and becomes more special when we squeeze as much nectar from it as possible…then this site is for you.
If you know that to be curious is to be interested, and to be interested is to be interesting; and if you believe that education comes from books and your experiences... then this site is for you.
If you enjoy the arts, cooking, and excellent foods; if you appreciate a handmade super-180 suit, a fine 25 year old Macallan’s with a vintage Cohiba; if you travel to other countries to learn their languages and cultures; and if you believe that business is what you create and build, not just what you manage…then this site is for you.
Along with my team and our readers, I will be posting interesting, intriguing, and useful articles on art, wine, spirits, travel, restaurants, and grooming, along with great recipes for guys and features exploring the subject of renaissance men. This site is for you as interesting and intriguing men…and men on the path to becoming more interesting and intriguing...
In our newest column, Alexa will be offering the advice you need to become an 18/8 man; that man who is well-versed and cultured, who knows how to impress and captivate a smart woman, and who wants to be the best that he can be.
For that special lady that you adore…and adorn - take her to the Hermes factory and let her watch her handbag being made from scratch…am I right Alexa?
Normally I dodge articles loaded with pop psychology. But filling our state of mind constantly with a condition called ‘gratitude’…always good to remind ourselves - Scott
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I’m utterly convinced that the key to lifelong success is the regular exercise of a single emotional muscle: gratitude.
People who approach life with a sense of gratitude are constantly aware of what’s wonderful in their life.
Because they enjoy the fruits of their successes, they seek out more success. And when things don’t go as planned, people who are grateful can put failure into perspective.
By contrast, people who lack gratitude are never truly happy. If they succeed at a task, they don’t enjoy it. For them, a string of successes is like trying to fill a bucket with a huge leak in the bottom. And failure invariably makes them bitter, angry, and discouraged.
Therefore, if you want to be successful, you need to feel more gratitude. Fortunately, gratitude, like most emotions, is like a muscle: The more you use it, the stronger and more resilient it becomes.
Practice Nightly
The best time to exercise gratitude is just before bed. Take out your tablet (electronic or otherwise) and record the events of the day that created positive emotions, either in you or in those around you.
Did you help somebody solve a problem? Write it down. Did you connect with a colleague or friend? Write it down. Did you make somebody smile? Write it down.
What you’re doing is “programming your brain” to view your day more positively. You’re throwing mental focus on what worked well, and shrugging off what didn’t. As a result, you’ll sleep better, and you’ll wake up more refreshed.
Reprogramming Your Brain
More important, you’re also programming your brain to notice even more reasons to feel gratitude. You’ll quickly discover that even a “bad day” is full of moments that are worthy of gratitude. Success becomes sweeter; failure, less sour.
The more regularly you practice this exercise, the stronger its effects.
Over time, your “gratitude muscle” will become so strong that you’ll attract more success into your life, not to mention greater numbers of successful (i.e., grateful) people. You’ll also find yourself thanking people more often. That’s good for you and for them, too.
This method works. If you don’t believe me, try it for at least a week. You’ll be amazed at what a huge difference it makes.
Elon Musk - 18/8 Man
From doctors to bankers, the Medici family was without a doubt the richest family in Europe in their time..
Brand Strategy
“Helping Companies Design their Future”
This blog is not supposed to be finance focused - my Facebook site get’s the bulk of those articles.
My reason for posting this article from Byron Wien at Blackstone is my curiosity for a friend of his that he describes as “The Smartest Man in the World”. Whoever this person is…sounds like he qualifies as an 18/8 Man. If any of you readers know who this person is…let me know. Scott
Yum
With its access to fresh, high-quality ingredients and its devotion to food, San Francisco is home to some amazing pizzerias.
From thin-crust to Neapolitan-style pizza, the pizza options in the Bay Area are varied and plentiful.
In honor of Pizza Week, our friends at Zagat have rounded up the top five pizza joints in San Francisco.
Did your favorite spot make the list?
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-best-pizzerias-2012-6?op=1#ixzz1zIyD8G16
Nothing lasts for ever…
Earlier today we reported that P.J. Clarke’s legendary bow-tie wearing bartender Doug Quinn said he was ousted last night and customers left the popular Midtown saloon in droves.
We’re still waiting for comment from P.J. Clarke’s.
In the meantime, we spoke with a Wall Street veteran who has been going to P.J. Clarke’s for years and knows Quinn.
“I really don’t get it,” he said. ”I think this will be impacting their business,” he said pointing out that P.J. Clarke’s has a solid reputation.
The former Wall Streeter, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, told Business Insider that Quinn is “an unbelievable bartender.”
“He’s widely known as the greatest bartender ever,” he said in a telephone interview.
“I used to bar tend when I was in college. That crowd in there gets deep. He knows everyone’s name. He knows everyone’s drink,” the source said.
He said Quinn could handle the big crowd even when it would get “rowdy” and when it would fill up to the point where “you couldn’t move.”
What’s more is he said Quinn’s efficient bar tending skills made it a great spot to bring a big group.
“I would bring my clerks, 15 or 20 guys, no problem. He’s efficient. He was a machine and I’ve seen him handle drunks many, many times.”
Even if people had not been in the bar in awhile Quinn would still remember their drink of choice, the source said.
“I mean I have friends that haven’t been there in a year or two and he knows what they’re drinking. It’s amazing — like the Rain Man.”
Our source, who said he’s been going to P.J. Clarke’s Midtown location since the early 80s, told us that Quinn has a “huge following.”
“I know his following is amazing. That bar was empty before him. I’m not kidding!”
Quinn has been bartending since graduating from college. He started at P.J. Clarke’s in 2003, according to a New York Times’ story
“When they brought him in to be the bartender, his name just took over,” the source said. ”Any night of the week at 12:30 at night it was pretty deep. It’s an unusual situation. I’m very curious to see if it was the place or if it was Doug.”
If she were a man, she’d definitely be an 18/8 Man. I have no doubt she attracts 18/8 Men. Check out her hilarious rap video. Scott
SEEKING WHERE OTHERS AREN’T | Kermit Lynch at his wine store in Berkeley, Calif.
MORE THAN 20 YEARS AGO, Kermit Lynch wrote what may be the best book on the wine business. Equal parts professional insight and Henry James-inspired travelogue, “Adventures on the Wine Route” was not only much praised but has never been out of print.
Mr. Lynch’s take on all this? “I made a huge mistake commercially; I wrote a book explaining what I do,” he said over a late-morning glass of Muscadet at Balthazar restaurant in New York. It was a classic Kermit Lynch remark: a bit wry, a bit curmudgeonly and a bit true as well.
Oenofile: The Best of Lynch
Mr. Lynch has been a Berkeley, Calif.-based wine retailer and wine importer for 40 years. (In California, unlike most other states, it’s possible to be both.) And while Mr. Lynch has a lot more competition than he did when he started out (including a few importers who have written books as well), a bottle of wine bearing the Kermit Lynch name is practically a quality guarantee.
Although he once imported wines from all over the world, Mr. Lynch now focuses entirely on small, family-owned estates in Italy and France. “You can’t really dig too deeply if you try to cover the world,” said Mr. Lynch, who estimates that he imports the wines of around 150 producers, and is always looking for more. For every 100 producers he visits, Mr. Lynch might add a single one to his portfolio. His most recent addition was the Sicilian winery Riofavara.
Erin Kunkel for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Lynch’s shop
He first tasted a Riofavara wine over a lunch in Sicily with chef Alice Waters and Aubert de Villaine, the proprietor of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. (Mr. Lynch discovered one of his most important producers, Domaine Tempier, in the company of Ms. Waters many years ago at her restaurant Chez Panisse.) The Riofavara wines have been an immediate success, Mr. Lynch said. A little-known Sicilian wine would never have taken off so quickly years ago, he added, but today “people are willing to taste and judge.”
My blog is purposely not about politics and finance per se (my facebook site covers these items). However, for the interesting and intriguing man, subjects that explore human nature; human behavior; and the game called life, some articles, such as this will be posted to the blog. Enjoy. Scott
Thirty-five years after Alvy Singer obsessed over the universe’s inevitable expansion in “Annie Hall,” Woody Allen is still grappling with the transience of life in his films. In “To Rome With Love,” which opens June 22, he co-stars as a reluctantly retired American opera director who tries to resurrect his former career by convincing his daughter’s future father-in-law—an Italian mortician who happens to sing well in the shower—that he could be a star.
The movie, the director’s 45th feature film, also marks Mr. Allen’s first appearance in front of the camera since 2006’s “Scoop,” in which he played a magician-turned-amateur-sleuth. “I’m too old now, is the problem. I like to get the girl,” said Mr. Allen, a spry 76, adding that his lack of credibility as a romantic lead “is a sad, terrible pill to swallow.”
In the film, the classic neurotic male role that a younger Mr. Allen would have snapped up for himself is that of Jack (Jesse Eisenberg), an architecture student who falls for Monica (Ellen Page), the charmingly crazy friend of his girlfriend (Greta Gerwig). Ms. Page’s character complains of “Ozymandias melancholia,” a bogus diagnosis inspired by a Shelley poem about an eroding monument. (Mr. Allen invented it for his character in 1980’s “Stardust Memories” but says he suffers from it, too.)
To distract himself from the fact that even great art will eventually fade into the past, Mr. Allen tries to stay focused on the present, making movies—one a year—watching sports, practicing clarinet and spending time with his family. He’s currently preparing to shoot his next movie in New York and San Francisco. In his editing room on New York’s Upper East Side, he spoke about why he’s making so many films in Europe, how he picks his actors and why his characters don’t text. An edited transcript:
How did you decide that you wanted to set your recent films in London, Paris, Rome or wherever?
Well, the Italians call and say, “We want to pay for it.” It’s strictly economics. It started with “Match Point.” I wrote that film, and it was originally going to be about a family in New York, in Long Island and Palm Beach. But it was expensive to do in New York. And they called me from London and said, “Would you like to make a movie here? We’ll pay for it.” And so I said, “Yes.” It was very easy to anglicize it. From then on, other countries call up and invite me to make movies, which is great because they don’t invite me in the United States. What happens in Europe, in South America, in China and Russia—all these countries call me and say, “Would you make a movie here if we financed it?”
One of our finest minds
Author Malcolm Gladwell appeared at SHRM’s 2012 annual conference in Atlantatoday to talk about generational diversity and how Millennials are different from previous generations.
The gist of his argument is that we’re in the middle of a fundamental shift in how people communicate with each other, and this has spawned a new type of social organization.according to Susan Avello at HR Virtual Cafe.
He focused on the differences between Occupy Wall Street and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.
OWS didn’t have a leader and it didn’t even follow a single set of ideas. There was not real structure to it — just a “general assembly” system. Everybody in OWS had a say, but there was a complete lack of organizational hierarchy. It was one big social network.
Gladwell explained that the civil rights movement as set up by its leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a classic hierarchy, according to John Hollon at TLNT. It was “disciplined” and “centralized,” with one person in charge and a distinct strategy set by the leadership team.
Is the OWS-style social organization effective for a movement? How about a business?
Companies have long been built around hierarchies. Some may be more bureaucratic and others may have less management layers, but there has always been someone — or a group of people — in charge. They’re there to present a vision, and help their workers achieve those goals.
In the end, it was that total lack of hierarchy that prevented OWS from prompting large-scale change, according to Gladwell.
“One form is not better than the other,” said Gladwell. “They’re two different forms with very different sets of strengths and weaknesses … Networks may start revolutions, but they can’t finish them. Our job is to remind Millennials of the importance of hierarchies as well as networks.”
