Leo MacLeod’s Blog

I was walking back to the hostel in San Francisco, climbing a long street that overlooked the bay.  On this October evening, the air was unseasonably warm and I had just walked around Golden Gate park.   I encountered two men putting their backs into trying to force a fiberglass shower enclosure through the door frame.  I stopped to see if I could help.  The heavy set man and his weasely son, originally from Ukraine, had purchased the enclosure without checking the dimensions.  They were glad for some help, but after 45 minutes, it was clear that no strategy was going to shrink the enclosure to fit.  The son resorted to trying to take apart the door jamb, at least enough to slightly widen it.  They don’t make door jambs like this anymore.  Mortised and tenoned, dovetailed with wood like iron.  It was impossible to dissemble any of it. An hour later, the man, obviously the head of the household, called for a break, inviting me up to their flat for a drink and something to eat.  A gallon sized bottle of vodka came out and he poured liberally into small juice glasses.  His wife, a round, pleasant woman, brought out bread and goulashes.  His daughter, meek and dowty, avoided my eye contact while we drank and ate.  But as the drinks multiplied, the man was obviously trying to match me up with his daughter.   I felt like part of a bad movie script.  I drank my vodka and thanked them.  When I reached the door, the enclosure was still half way through the door.  When I walked by the door the next day, the fiberglass shower was still there.

Arizona was like another world.  Red sandstone buttes and a blazing sun.  Big sky country.  In Flagstaff, I contacted a high school friend from New York, Ernie Gomez, who was now a geoglist looking for oil and mineral deposits for large multinationals.   We went to Baskin Robbins for ice cream and then drove to the Grand Canyon.  “Well, there it is,” he said.  I walked over to the edge and can’t remember how long it took me to catch my breath.  The feeling of seeing a very large mountain is nothing like seeing a very large hole.  It was so vast that my eyes took a few seconds to focus and grasp the scale of this phenomenal void.  I felt both drawn to the edge and overcome by fear at the same time.  We took a two hour hike down the canyon to a place called Indian Gardens, an oasis in a universe of rock and dirt.   On the way down, we passed people on mules, saddle sore, with pained expressions, waddling up the skinny path.  Someday, I’ll do deeper, I thought.

In Phoenix, the youth hostel was in a church.  We slept on the floor and it was there I met my first foreigners, an wiry Irishman named Patrick and an Norse named Sven.  Sven was over six feet with piercing blue eyes and a great reddish brown beard.  Sven was so characteristically Norwegian, he played a Viking in a movie. He was an electrican by trade, a local councilman at home and a world traveller by heart.   He purchased a Dodge Dart when he landed in North Carolina and drove out west.  I worked day labor at a construction site during the day and listened to his stories of world travel back at the hostel.   We decided to travel together, which I found a great relief.  I was getting tired of strange people picking me up–latent homosexual insurance salesman and not so latent gay men looking to get lucky.  Was this what Kerouac had to endure or was the game just getting too old?  Sven and I drove to San Diego in his Dart.  Stopping at a roadside grocery store for a styrofoam cooler, ice, beer, bread, cheese and tomatoes.  We sat alongside an irrigation ditch somewhere in rural California, close to an artichoke farm, drinking beer and eating sandwiches.  This was travelling right.  We made our way into San Diego during rush hour traffic.  The Dart’s transmission slipped as he accelerated.  At one point, we realized we had to cross over five lanes of traffic in 100 yards to make our turn off.  Sven, in true Viking style, turned sharply into traffic and sailed his vessel off the freeway.   Somewhere, somehow we parted ways, but the freeway exit was my last memory of him.

Someone asked me tonight how long I’ve been in Portland and what brought me here: thirty-two years ago, hitchhiking across the country. My intent wasn’t to settle in Portland or anywhere on the West Coast. I just wanted to see what was out here, beyond the Hudson Valley of New York, beyond the boring towns and cities of Maine. My eldest brother, George, had gone first in true Kerouac style. Back in the late 60’s, early 70’s. He would call occasionally from the road, exotic places like Boca Rotan and Eugene, Oregon. Later, he told me every city starts to look the same from a YMCA. So, I made a point of going to every art museum in every major city I visited: Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco. He also told me never to leave my backpack. Watch especially when you are in a restroom. But I never suspected how it would eventually be taken from me. The road is nothing if not unpredictable. That’s the allure. Yes, I had plans. Sitting in the Bangor Public Library reading early accounts of travellers riding the Canadian Pacific or Canadian National passenger trains from Montreal to Vancouver B.C. That was my plan, get to the West Coast, as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. I mapped out my course, traveled down to the Hudson Valley where I made my final preparations, buying a new (Alpenite) green backpack, down sleeping bag, change of a few clothes, some shoes, journal, books and a camera with plenty of film. When I look up from my computer right now at my life and I see how much crap I’ve accumulated. In fact, my life is all this stuff around me, somehow representing my past, my interests, sentimentality, business, and just stuff I don’t think I can live without. In 1976, it was much simpler. I long for sometime when I can divest myself of stuff and expenses and responsibilities. Maybe you can’t once you arrive at this place.

My “plans” hit a wall when I took a Greyhound bus into Canada. At customs, the officials boarded the bus and removed me and another guy. I sat in a crummy, windowless paneled room in a concrete building waiting for my interrogation. I could hear the other guy spin a story about how he was an animation illustrator for movies and had to get up to Quebec to finish a project. He was allowed back on the bus. I was called in and sat across from a French Canadian man in is forties with a pencil thin mustache and an accent that seemed fake. He seemed bored, as he smoked and asked me my purpose for traveling in Canada. I chose the truthful path: just taking a train to get out West. With my long hair and backpack, I apparently posed a threat to the national economy, as they suspected I would simply not leave, collecting unemployment and using their free health care system. “We will arrange for someone to take you back to the U.S.” Dejected, I got in a generic sedan, in which the driver drove 100 yards over the border and left me to hitch hike 35 miles back to Plattsburg, NY, the nearest town at 5 PM. It started to get dark, as cars whizzed by me. It probably didn’t help that I slumped and hung my head. Eventually, I jumped on a bus going back to Plattsburg. I spent the night in a cheap hotel, eating pizza out of a cardboard box, re-thinking my grand plan to go out West.

I woke up on a train pulling into Denver. The sun was just catching the Rockies, black rock poking out of the bright yellow snow of late October. Later, I would ride through towns like Durango, the aspens standing like golden sentinels below the looming mountains. The air seemed thinner and the colors more saturated, the images popping like a Viewmaster image. Sharp foregrounds, midgrounds and backgrounds, like I was on another planet. But my first sight was of the Rockies far in the distance from a train I rode from Chicago the night before. People told me the mid west was forgettable and after the ride from Cleveland to Chicago, with rows of corn fields that became a drunken blur, I chose to believe them. I loved Chicago, my first big city after NYC, but I was anxious to get out West. Hitchhiking out of Chicago proven impossible. Cars quickly accelerated on to the on ramp with no where for them to pull off, even if they wanted (which it didn’t seem like it did). I lived with the small fear that I would not get picked up, but like a turtle, my backpack contained my portable life. Later, I would sleep in parks or between freeways (not a good night). But at this point, I still had money in my pocket and a train seemed like a good investment. I would sleep through the midwest and wake up in Denver. Indeed, as I leaned back in my chair to sleep, I was awakened periodically by the conductor call, “Des Moines,” “Topeka” and other featureless cities that only appeared to me under the harsh light of streetlights and the swirling blackness of the night. I never had the sense that I had missed something by going that way.

Denver was clean with wide streets and people that looked like they came out of a movie set. Not beautiful or distinctive, just the opposite. Wholly unforgettable, generic, like stand ins. Still, the thin air and blue sky were electrifying. I loved the feel of the sun on my face and the youth hostel I had located was a small Victorian, nicely furnished with real beds. Unlike my first night in Chicago, staying at YMCA hotel, a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, the city right outside my window and the door, scarred with abuse and broken locks and multiple latches that barely held off someone trying to enter my room at 2:30 at night. No phones in the room, and in 1976, no cell phones to call for help. Just a fusleage of ancient locks and hope.

Organic, powerful and free word-of-mouth marketing grows exponentially with each retelling. You can’t match it for return on investment. Effective word of mouth is customer-driven, not company-driven. Customers alone decide what’s worth talking about and buying, creating their own blogs and buying groups. The moment a marketer tries to join the party, the power of word of mouth withers. Is there a way to market word of mouth without destroying its integrity?

Read my full Daily Journal of Commerce column, http://djcoregon.com/news/2009/10/12/boost-business-by-marketing-word-of-mouth/

A tremendous amount is riding on the proposal: You’re either in or out. So, how do you produce a winning proposal that will get you to the next round?  Read my full DJC column at http://www.djcoregon.com/articleDetail.htm/2009/07/14/Tips-for-preparing-a-profitable-project-proposal-Companies-that-respect-the-RFP-process-are-on-the-r

There’s significant value in client surveys | May 12, 2009
Author: Leo MacLeod
Daily Journal of Commerce, “Building Business”

When you spend every day intimately involved in the intricacies of your craft, you can forget what it’s like not to know. It’s difficult to re-acquaint yourself with the “beginner’s mind.” The problem is your audience often doesn’t know what you are talking about. When you are marketing a project, you can lose that vital but tenuous connection with your prospective client by not closing that gap. Read the full column at Daily Journal of Commerce, http://www.djcoregon.com/articleDetail.htm/2009/04/14/Eliminate-the-knowledge-gap-Find-success-by-ensuring-that-connections-are-made-during-discussions-wi

“It’s time for firms to get choosy in their work”
POSTED: 04:00 AM PDT Tuesday, March 10, 2009, Daily Journal of Commerce
BY LEO MACLEOD

It may seem counterintuitive, but now is the time to be choosy about what work you pursue. When times were good, many firms chased work that may not have been the best fit for their capabilities, didn’t reflect a strategic focus or were just poor business deals. It’s tough to say no to any project, especially one that doesn’t take much effort to land. Read more at http://www.djcoregon.com/articleDetail.htm/2009/03/10/Its-time-for-firms-to-get-choosy-in-their-work-Businesses-that-become-more-focused-will-be-better-pr

Many firms try to make up for a lack of work by turning out more proposals. Focus instead on better proposals, tailored to the specific needs of the client and their environment. WIFM. Show you have done your homework and understand the project better than anyone. Don’t make them connect the dots between past projects you’ve done and their project. Critically look at how well your proposals answer their concerns, not just your story. Brush up on presentation training, conduct mock interviews. This is all great training that will make you stronger when the economy improves.