As in spirit or entity, something that is hard to quantify. You never got that? They love that little loophole in HR. Oh yeah, and prudent risk. But wait, we’ll get to that and the reason I bring them up. First, my day from the beginning. This is important for context.

Wake up at 3:00 am, hit the coffee button, boot up all my computers, then hit the air conditioner.  By now the tip of my index finger is getting tender. Walk out into my yard and jump into my freezing pool, naked. The sensation makes me launch my aorta into my neighbor’s yard, right where he pees to keep the coyotes away.

Back to the house, pour some coffee, sit down at my Mac Book Air and respond to a women named Yulia, from Russia, who wants to be my friend for money. A quick breakfast consisting of two Metamucil crackers and some warm Kefir and I’m off to the Overton trail for a one hour mountain run.

The sun is getting hot by now, so I gotta move it. I have “A Horse With No Name” on my iPhone in a loop so it lasts the whole run. One of the interesting things about peyote is that no matter how many times you hear the same song it always seems like the first. Is it legal yet?

Between the beautiful terrain, the warm sun and getting hit on by an 80 year old gay man, I’m thinking the day is going pretty well.

Now to the point of this blog. At 11:00 am I have a breakfast meeting with a big shot from Scottsdale, who is looking to develop a values system for his company. I’m a bit leery though. It’s not a very big company and he doesn’t hit me as the type who encourages democracy. As my guy Jesse frequently warns me “There’s a lot of thousand dollar millionaires out there.”

Sure enough, this guy is a piece of work. I didn’t notice his sheriff’s dept. ankle bracelet until I was walking back from the restroom. When we’re deep into the details of the project and I start to explain entrepreneurial spirit and prudent risk, well, maybe not so much. To him, those things work in theory but not in practice. All he could focus on was what spirit and risk meant. He said, “I’m cool with that spirit thing as long as it don’t get no teeth, ya get me? He didn’t want to consider risk of any type.

Sometimes I think this values thing gets a little carried away with itself. One place had like eleven. Ridiculous. They had to camp out at Babson for two days, they brought some agency guy in who had priapism the whole time. He was so happy, he could finally pay off his kid’s student loans. Which brings me to my point. You should only have one value: Do the right thing! Period!