The 48 Laws of the South

I was sitting in a closing today with my dad and we were waiting on some reprints of paperwork, while chatting with one of the loan officers from the bank. The banker asked if we were going to be purchasing lots of other properties like this one? My dad said yes, and launched into this diatribe of what we were looking at and where and for how much.

I felt this swell inside of me, it was knee jerk, and I had to stop myself from saying, what are you doing?! He doesn't need to know that!
But as I sat and listened I realized that this kind of openness and transparency is what makes small towns small towns and even big towns small towns. It creates all these tiny personal connections, a lot like what linkedin.com tries to achieve, but in person. It's what makes business happen here. It's the lubrication if you will.
I then realized that my time working as a film producer in Los Angeles trained me to be SO cautious about what I say. To rethink everything twice before I said it. Everyone was keeping information from someone else. And why? To feel powerful? To feel more important? To be a douche? If you had a good idea, good enough for someone else to steal then A) You'd be profiting from it as I speak or B) Someone else would have already done it.

I'm definitely going to have to get used to this, but I have a good walking example to learn from. It's definitely a breath of fresh air and it's renewed some of my faith in ethical business practice.