Doughnuts, my Grandfather, Securing a good seat on Southwest, and Leo Berwick

Keep reading if you want to learn about doughnuts, my grandfather, how to secure a good seat on Southwest Airlines, and an update on Leo Berwick! 

Full disclosure I’ve started writing this post while lining up at the gate as I'm about to board a southwest flight hoping my B47 slot gets me a decent seat!

It’s been 5 months since we launched Leo Berwick and it’s been an amazing ride. I wanted to take a minute to say thank you to the entire team at Leo Berwick, our amazing clients, and the countless friends and family members that have stepped up to help launch Leo Berwick. Special shout out to my amazing wife Rika Tanaka, who’s supported me throughout my whole career but has kicked it into another gear this year. Watching her successfully launch her own business last year while being an amazing mom to our two wonderful kids was definitely an inspiration.

Update: I found an aisle seat/forced my way into it, by politely asking the person that had bags placed on the isle seat and middle next to her to move them :-). On my journey to row 16 of the plane I did pass by someone that was “sleeping” across the middle seat to ensure no one would sit next to her (see attached pic). A particularly strong move since this was in Row 2.

The other picture on this post is a picture of my grandparents who unfortunately are no longer with us. I think about them a lot but it wasn’t until I launched Leo Berwick that memories and lessons learned from them flooded my mind.

Last night Dave Toler, a partner at Leo Berwick and our COO, provided an update on our operations through the end of May. It was awesome to see everything that we accomplished as a team in such a short period of time. He did highlight that we haven’t been the best at sending out invoices for unbilled time and collecting the cash from our outstanding invoices.  A basic concept that I never fully appreciated while working at a large global firm despite the countless emails I would receive about the issue that I would often delete without even opening.

Dave’s comments jogged a memory I have that must be 35 years old. My grandfather was an entrepreneur. He started his first business as a handyman w a pickup truck and a bucket of tools. I had the privilege of watching him build that business into a successful electrical contracting business w dozens of employees. As a young kid he would take me to winchell’s doughnuts and we would pick up boxes and boxes of doughnuts, load them into the pickup truck and spend the morning going to his clients accounts payable departments. My job was to go to each of the AP clerks, give them a box of doughnuts and ask about the status of his outstanding invoices. 

I’m not going to lie, after Dave’s ask to work on our billing and collection processes, my initial reaction was to dismiss it, just like I had done at my old firm. Leo Berwick is doing great and we can float our working capital needs w no issues so who cares was my initial reaction. But on my Uber ride to the airport this morning this memory of me working w my grandfather flashed into my mind and I thought deeper and harder about Dave’s asks and the importance of them especially if Leo Berwick is going to continue to invest in its growth into new locations and hiring of top talent. Just like my grandfather did to grow his business. 

There are countless other memories I have about my grandfather and other members of my family, that are also all entrepreneurs, that I’ll be sure to post about as I connect the dots. 

I suppose this whole post was a long winded way of saying if you don't want someone to sit next to you on your next southwest flight just fake sleep across the middle seat. 

I also need to ask Dave and my other partners if we can get a netjets subscription so Buzzy (my oldest kid see attached pic) can start delivering doughnuts with me to our clients AP departments :-)