These days I’m sitting at home thinking about jetting off to Florida and entering the fantasy land of Disney World. We could walk around meeting the characters in Toy Story, travel to the past, or visit countries from around the world. Of course, these experiences are not the real thing but theme park adaptions of them. While we can’t have the real-world experiences of Disney World, there’s a new, and in some ways better, version of theme parks that I can experience at home.
When I was the Head of Banking at Amazon Web Services, I was able to peek behind the curtain and learn how Amazon really works. While there are some things Amazon keeps close to the chest, I was surprised that many of the most wonderful things about Amazon are available to the public.
This is a guide to the open secrets at Amazon that you’d hear during orientation or at a high-level customer meeting. Amazon makes these things public to build stronger relationships with customers, and since almost everyone is an Amazon customer, you can find them all online. But you’d only know about these things if you had a friend at Amazon. So I invite you, my friend, to examine some of my favorite secrets.
Here’s a recap of our ski trip to Breckenridge from 2018. There were some hiccups on the trip, like the way the Griswalds had some hiccups in the movie Vacation,(1)BTW, National Lampoon’s vacation was based on director John Hughes’s magazine article Vacation 58: If Dad hadn’t shot Walt Disney in the leg, it would have been our best vacation ever. but it was still the Best Vacation Ever.
When we got to the JetBlue Terminal at JFK, I was feeling really good. I’d planned this awesome trip for my wife Abigail, our two kids, and some of our best friends to go skiing in Breckenridge Colorado. We’d been planning this trip for months. I even found an affordable rate on the flight to Denver during Christmas week, which was quite an accomplishment. Even though it landed at 2 in the morning, we were going to be fine. That night we were going to stay at the Westin right next to the airport. As we sat down to eat our overpriced but surprisingly tasty cheeseburgers, my wife Abigail said, “What’s the confirmation number for tonight’s hotel?”
Footnotes
| ↑1 | BTW, National Lampoon’s vacation was based on director John Hughes’s magazine article Vacation 58: If Dad hadn’t shot Walt Disney in the leg, it would have been our best vacation ever. |
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I’ve always thought that free time was the best thing in the world. What could be better than staying at an all-inclusive resort and sipping margaritas with nothing to do? But free time can be painful if it’s in the wrong context. Don’t believe me? Think about your last trip on an elevator.
Here’s one of my favorite speeches. It’s the story of how a woman named Amelia Earhart flew around the world. You may think you’ve heard it before but it’s unlikely.
I haven’t been posting much because I’ve been focusing more on refining my speechmaking with Toastmasters. You can see many of my speeches along with video. If you’d like to join my Toastmasters group, contact me.
Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
In 1937 Amelia Earhart was the most famous aviatrix(1)Aviatrix = female aviator. in the world. She was the first female passenger to cross the Atlantic by plane, the woman who’d flown higher than anyone else in the world, and whose solo flight across the Atlantic made her into female Charles Lindbergh. Then, on July 2, 1937, Amelia’s plane disappeared on its way from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island.
So imagine my surprise in 2018 when I was watching TV with my sons. A woman named Amelia Earhart told us that she just finished her flight around the world. This, of course, was a different Amelia Earhart. Amelia Rose Earhart was born in 1984. Her parents told her she was a long lost relative of Amelia Earhart, wanted to give her a strong female role model, and figured that no one would ever forget a woman named Amelia Earhart.
It was hard growing up with the name Amelia Earhart. If I were named Charles Lindbergh I bet people would spend a lot of time making flying jokes like, “Have you flown over the Atlantic any time soon.” And I would spend a lot of time saying, “Ha that’s funny. I haven’t heard that one before. I am Charles Lindbergh the dentist.”
I started looking into people who had unique names or uncommon names. I found this wonderful movie called The Strange Name Movie. They go around the country finding people with unusual names like James Bond or Harry Potter or Paul and Linda McCartney.(2)I’ve got pictures of all of them in the video. But many of these people, like Harry Potter, were going along through life when this giant truck of name Wizardry crashed into him. Now he can’t order a pizza without people snickering. But what about people that know what they’re getting into, like Donald Duck Jr. When he was dating his wife, he said, “Don’t marry me if you don’t want to name your first son Donald Duck III.”
Which brings me to Amelia Earhart. After people asking her for years “Are you going to become a pilot?” or “Are going to fly around the world?” In 2004 she started taking flying lessons, in 2011 she realized she could get sponsors to help her fly around the world, and in 2014 she flew around the world.
Some people looked at Amelia Rose Earhart and said that she was taking advantage of the name. But the Amelia Earharts are very similar. Both got women excited about doing the impossible. Both Amelias used the media for publicity and funding. But Amelia Rose Earhart wanted to do more. She started the Fly with Amelia Foundation to help 16-18 year old girls become pilots. While over Howland Island where the original Amelia disappeared, she gave out the first $120K of scholarships. And in a true finishing touch, Amelia Rose Earhart won the Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award.
So clearly she’s the heir to the legacy of Amelia Earhart. Plus, she’s the long lost relative of our initial aviatrix. But wait, there’s something I left out earlier. I told you that Amelia’s parents told her that Amelia Earhart was a long lost relative. About a year before the flight, she hired a genealogist and found out that they weren’t related.
She was devastated. She felt like her whole life had been taken away from her. She was thinking of just scrapping the whole flight. Why do it if she wasn’t related to Amelia Earhart. But then, after some serious soul-searching, she realized that the original Amelia Earhart could only take her so far. Having the same name got her to fly and she found out she loved it. It inspired her to take on this fantastic trip around the world. But now it was up to Amelia Rose Earhart to finish the journey.
Amelia Rose Earhart inspires me. We’re all born with gifts and challenges. Some things that look like challenges are can be made into gifts and vice verse. Here’s the story of a woman who started with a name that was incredibly hard to live up to and used it to inspire others. She grew into the name and surpassed it. She completed the goal of the original Amelia Earhart—the flight around the world—77 years after it started.
I’m a devoted husband and father to an awesome family. For work, I’m a currently an Executive Director at JP Morgan Chase focusing on Product Tooling. I’m a Product Manager who looks at the goals of the business and uses technology to deliver those business and customer goals. In the past, I’ve driven transformational change at Citi, AIG, and Amazon Web Services. For more information about what I do at work, please visit my LinkedIn profile.
I collect stories. There are so many amazing things happening every day. I need to spend some time writing them down before they slip away. Some of these ideas are so powerful that they hit me like a bolt of lightning. It’s my job to capture that lighting and put it in a bottle to share it with you. I want to capture that feeling that Archimedes had when he had an insight sitting in the bathtub screamed “Eureka!” and ran naked down the street. I know that I’ll rarely if ever make it there, but that won’t keep me from trying!
Here’s some of my latest posts:
And here are some of my posts about AI and ChatGPT:
Here are some highlights from 2024
One of my favorite topics for the last few years is writing about AI. I explored it from a number of different perspectives:
ChatGPT has helped me quickly turn ideas into complete blog posts and respond in real-time to things I’ve encountered. This year, it made it easier to explore a range of interesting topics like:
With ChatGPT, I learned to capture the small, wonderful moments of my life in writing. It’s like catching a lightning bug in a jar—preserving fleeting beauty to reflect on later. I was able to write about appreciating the sunrise, visiting a classic movie theatre owned by Netflix, and how to turn a nighttime drive into a light show.
Finally, I spent some time writing about self-improvement. Some of my favorite pieces were about the importance of asking for help and practicing self-control. Surprisingly, I even learned a valuable lesson about communication from AI—it’s programmed to respond with honesty, helpfulness, and harmlessness, qualities we humans could aspire to as well.
I wanted a place to put all the stuff I think is awesome. Growing up, I always wanted to have a great library in my house. I remembered the excitement when I learned that I could buy the entire collection of The New Yorker in bound volumes and put them in my house. I’d imagined that I would collect great encyclopedias from the past to peruse whenever I pleased. They would live in mahogany bookcases that looked like they’d belonged to JP Morgan. Then I realized that a New York City apartment doesn’t have the space for a physical library. So I did the next best thing. I’ve created a virtual library that includes lots of the things I enjoy, like my favorite books, words, and humor. You can check it out on the menu at the top of the page.
I have officially become a Grumpy Old Man.(1)Try to read this piece in Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man voice. It’s too easy for people to find things online. Back in my day, things were different. People should work hard to discover things. Kids today can just Google things online and pull it up right away. There’s no adventure anymore. There’s no joy in the hunt.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Try to read this piece in Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man voice. |
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When things get boring, I try to add some dramatic flair to everyday activities to spice them up. When I worked at Citibank, I’d picture myself as an adventurer. I’d imagine I was a quest to solve a large complicated problem, getting clues from various people on the way. Sometimes I’d come across a treasure chest with some tool in it. I wouldn’t know exactly what the tool was for, but I’d file it away in my toolbelt for later use. I didn’t do it every day, but something fun came up every month or so. It made daily tasks more interesting and provided motivation for my team. I learned that I can add excitement and drama to things that aren’t inherently interesting by changing the way I look at them.
Human beings want more of everything. We are on a hedonic treadmill that says, “What I have now is OK, but I really want more—more stuff, more money, and more friends. That would make me happy.” From a societal perspective, the hedonic treadmill has some benefits. It keeps us on our toes and moves society forward. It also gives lots of people jobs. If people didn’t want more Oreos, no one would have jobs selling Oreos at the grocery store, or stocking the Oreos on the shelf, or making new kinds of Oreos.
I don’t know exactly when I took the red pill.(1)Red pill and blue pill: I’m referring to the red pill in the movie The Matrix. Neo takes the red pill to see the world for what it really is. He had a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill, which would have left him in blissful ignorance. It’s much easier to talk about a time when I’d taken the red pill and was talking to someone who hadn’t. I was at the Whitney Museum of Art with my friend. We saw the exhibit fruits, vegetables; fruit and vegetable salad.
Footnotes
| ↑1 | Red pill and blue pill: I’m referring to the red pill in the movie The Matrix. Neo takes the red pill to see the world for what it really is. He had a choice to take the red pill or the blue pill, which would have left him in blissful ignorance. |
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