Hi,

Apologies for the long lag between newsletters. I can only take the modern plea of being busy. The last part of 2018 and early 2019 have been gangbusters and I’ve largely kept my head down doing work.

Being winter I’ve been getting my ski days in. Sometimes I get lucky on the trips I schedule, and March 3 at Breckenridge was one of those times. I think they called 18” of snow that day. Whatever it was, it was fluffy all day long. And that first run of the day--when I had first chair--was ecstatic. It certainly was my best run in the last two seasons. My wish for all of you is that you have some moment like that this year.

Best,

David

Have a big model that nobody really understands, yet is critical to your work?
Trying to raise debt or equity capital?
Need a model to get a corporate approval to move forward with your project?
Need to add capabilities to your current model?

I have numerous sample models and am happy to help you understand your options for improving your analytic tools.

Curious? Contact me for a demo.

Nudgemail: My Secret Weapon

Peter Drucker once said that the key skill for knowledge workers is know what to do. And for me, the key is what to do next. Organization systems are a big topic, so I want to focus on one small piece: email.

I use email a lot and it’s a key to my organization system. And one critical tool I use to manage email is Nudgemail.

First, we have to talk about the pronunciation of “nudge.” This is not the word which rhymes with “judge” and meaning a gentle push. Instead, the Yiddish “nuhdzh” rhymes with “could” + the “G” from “George.” Leo Rosten says it’s from a Russian word which means to fret or to ache dully. Other sources say it’s similar to nudyen to bore and from the Polish nudzić and that it’s related to nudnik, which I was certainly called as a child. Here it’s used as a verb, and it means to pester or nag. Like if your mom keeps telling you to take out the trash you’d say, “Quit nudjing me!”

And after all that, even though I know it’s from the Yiddish, when I use the Nudgemail service I still think of the word that rhymes with “judge.” I think that’s because it just doesn’t look proper written down. William Safire, in his old brilliant On Language columns from the NYT, quoted Abe Rosenthal (Executive Editor of the NYT 1977-88) regarding the spelling as saying “It’s a word you say, not a word you spell.” That happens often in Yiddish, with its use of Hebrew letters and atypical accenting. You can try to write it, but it loses much of its power.

Nudgemail is simple. You send an email to a time in the future. The magic of the system is that they send you the email back to you at that time.

Mechanically, you can do things like:

• Send to a day in the next week: monday@nudgemail.com or mon@nudgemail.com, etc.
• Send to a time in the next 24 hours: 8a@, 1p@, etc.
• Push it off for a week (or month) or two: 1w@,
• 2months@ Send it to a particular date:4jul@nudgemail.com
• Full instructions are here

I use this in many ways.

Day-based emails

1. At 6:30am each day I get a flood of items that I wanted attention on for today. For example, today I have 10 email reminders. They broke down like this:

• Three were from meetings I was trying to schedule by email. How do you remember to follow up if they don’t respond? My solution is to BCC a copy to “fri@nudgemail.com” and I know that on Friday I’ll see this again and either know that this was done or that I need to follow up. As luck had it, all of these were successfully scheduled in the last few days and I was able to quickly delete the Nudgemail.
• One was a reminder to read the ebook I downloaded. I’m already into it so that was easy to delete.
• One was an item that had to wait until someone who had been sick was better. Now I can try again on that! I immediately nudged it to 9a@nudgemail.com (9:00am today) when I can call about this.
• Finally, five items were things I wanted to do today and over the weekend. I quickly nudged one to 8a@nudgemail.com, two to 4p@nudgemail.com, and two to tomorrow: sat@nudgemail.com. Nudgemail is great for kicking the can down the road!

2. Intra-day emails.

Often I’ll want to check in on something again quickly. So I send a new email or forward an old one to 1h@nudgemail.com and I know I’ll get a reminder in an hour.

3. I also use this for recurring items: e.g. reminders for quarterly tax payments to jan1@, apr1@, jun1@, and sep1@.

I find this profoundly helpful and hope to turn some of you gentle readers onto it as well!

While I consider financial modeling a functional skill rather than anything industry specific, I have kept a particular eye on wireless telecom for nearly thirty years. As a wise man once said, for wireless telecom you need three things: money, technology, and spectrum. Allnet Insights keeps track of who own which spectrum.

Part of why I like Allnet is that it’s a one-man shop, just like I run. Brian Goemmer has done an amazing job of organizing and visualizing this complex information.

If you’re into spectrum, you should get his newsletter. His last issue detailed AT&T’s millimeter-wave holdings in depth (with some info on T-Mobile and Verizon as well.) Allnet has the info, so these are sure to be valuable newsletters. Want to sign up? Use this link: http://eepurl.com/bADE4b

.............................

Brian Goemmer
President

13514 SE 57th St Bellevue, WA 98006
O: 425-522-2142
C: 425-351-3113
brian.goemmer@
allnetinsights.com
www.allnetinsights.com