YO BRO IT’S ME LITTY

A natural extension of my gig is actually going out and playing sports. In fact, a passion for sports might as well be a job requirement to work at Sportsvite. These days, I’m playing on three softball teams and I’m also in a Tuesday night wiffle ball league. I feel like my buddy Blake Remer, who has played in more consecutive (rec sports) games than Cal Ripken Jr.

Last Wednesday I had one of my most memorable and interesting rec sports experiences on the Great Lawn in Central Park. I wrote about it immediately on the Sportsvite company blog. BTW, I’ve been spending lots of time writing on that blog lately so if YBIML doesn’t give you your L-hoops blog fix go check out wRECk Sports.

If you clicked on over and read the post about my experience with the High Times Bonghitters I mention a TV personality who asked to join our team via Sportsvite. His name is Roger Clark and he is an assignment reporter at NY1 on the morning show.

Here is a YouTube clip of Roger reporting from Shea!

Throughout my quarter life I have often asked myself this question. It’s important to have dreams and lofty goals and I’ve always tried to set my expectations high. As my nanny has often said, “Brian, it’s your America”.

In my youth I wanted to grow up to be a pro baseball player. It wasn’t about the glory or the fame, just the simple fact that I would get to play ball every day of my life. Once I realized my fastball topped out in the low 70’s I figured I would use my noggin and become a finance monkey. But after a few books, a discouraging experience with Ameritrade, and a couple of uneventful internships on Wall Street, I lost most of my interest in the markets.

At times, when I have doubted my career path or second-guessed my future I would fall back on the kind of life I wanted to have. That meant that I had no specific idea of what I wanted to do or be but I knew I wanted to be entrepreneurial, creative, self-employed, innovative, successful, rich, happy, etc.
Recently, and perhaps naturally, some of my experiences have helped clear my vision of my ideal future. Here it is.

When I grow up I want to own a minor league baseball team in a warm-weather climate. I’ll handle all the business deals and marketing, come up with crazy promotions, mentor the young players, develop an amazing website for all our fans in other galaxies, serve Red Hot’s, and will most definitely be the teams #1 fan (but not annoying like Cuban).

Once a year I get the bug and drop everything I am doing to travel the world. I’ve been to every contient, every world wonder (both natural and man-made) and every perfect beach. Regardless, my favorite places continue to be La Jolla Cove, Byron Bay, Negril Beach and my backyard at the family crib on LI. It never gets old or tiring and in fact is the one true activity that keeps me young.

I admit it’s a life in progress, and hopes, dreams and goals change but it’s certainly great to have something to look forward too. While i’m not sure if I’ve ever have had a path in life it does seem like if i keep on doing what I’m doing alot of this can and will happen.

I still remember trying to connect my new Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop in my dorm room the first week of college (all the way back in ‘99 - yikes) and having the nerdy dude on my floor help me figure out how to connect the Ethernet cable to the dongle to the computer. The first thing I probably did was login to AIM. I may very well have spent more time chatting online (and writing away messages) than any other single activity I did in the dorms for those first few months of school. Then one day somebody told me about Napster and I spent ALL of my time downloading music. Having a seemingly unlimited music selection to download and store on my computer blew my mind away.

Most people my age probably had a very similar experience to the one that I mention above. If we could turn back the clock to the fall of 99 and ask the younger, skinnier, less burnt out Littyhoops about his thoughts on these services I would have told you

1) I will never pay for music ever again because it’s already free
2) I’ll always use the internet to “chat” with friends and stay connected to them

My point here is that these trends were super obvious to me back then. Yet, eight years later we still have music executive at the major labels fighting to turn back the clock and fight a losing battle against technology with things like DRM, weird restrictions and inefficient lawsuits by the RIAA. Meanwhile, online chat has become both ubiquitous and a commodity (how AOL managed NOT to take over the digital world with this is beyond me) but it still doesn’t seem to get the love and attention it deserves.

I often say that I would dread being a senior media executive at a big media company. The industry continuously gets flipped upside down by new technology. It’s impossible to correctly predict trend after trend after trend. Yet that is exactly what media executives have to do, and when they predict wrong they are gone. Throw in the fact that experience and age often hurts them because it distances them from the oblivious college kid who naturally “gets it”. (Incidentally, this is exactly why I entered the digital world…I was too impatient to build a career and this was the one industry that allowed me to be an irreverent know it all from Day #1.)

So as I often try to make sense of the new services, trends and technology in the digital world I look to college kids to see what they are doing and how they are acting. Luckily, my younger sister Wartney is a recent college graduate and my digital guinea pig/focus group. In fact, as I think about it, the majority of conversations I had with her in 04-05 was why she spent so much time on this Facebook thing. Having her rack her brain trying to articulate the meaning of a “poke” must have been as annoying as when people ask me why I still cry when St. John’s losses!

So, you may be asking, what are the kids doing today. I would recommend you find out for yourself but here is my take on it…

Facebook is for fun. The emphasis is on social and not on networking. As you get older and less social Facebook is less fun. Zuckerberg and his posse better figure out how to make facebook a bit more useful to your real life, and get people to use it in that way, or it’s going to become a more glorified match.com.

The killer mobile app is chat. Blackberry messenger is amazing and addicting and releases awesome endorphins. The next generation of cell phones will all have some form of chat that will trump text messaging, twitter (will never get past the nerds) and even voice. People will be connected 24/7 to those that they want to be connected 24/7.

The web is becoming more mobile in general. Email and facebook and fantasy sports will take place over a smart phone and not on the computer. Kids don’t want to move past their pocket for this information.

Audio, video and design production costs are dropping faster than a Ching Ming Wang sinker. Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop and Garage Band are all intellectual video games and not complex software for youngsters. They teach themselves how to use this software and then actually use it. I’m not sure how this will transcend past the film and music business but it will.

The “people web” is a narcissistic joint. Everybody wants to be glamorous and they work meticulously to craft their ideal images on MySpace, Facebook, blogs, etc. This here blog is a perfect example. Ask anybody who knows what a mopey, sarcastic, dispassionate slug I really am. Littyhoops is way cooler than Brian Litvack! Everybody wants more friends, more followers, and more face time and the web satisfies this craving.

Nobody is scarred. Yes, sometime in the future somebody is going to find a photo, comment, video or email that you don’t want them to find. But this holds true for everybody. So it won’t be as big of a secret when you run for President and there are facebook pictures of you with a two foot bong because odds are that there are facebook pictures of them with that same binger!

E-commerce is the forgotton giant of the web. Kids spend online like it’s the most convenient thing in the world and that’s because it is. Although margins aren’t that high I’m bullish on e-commerce as it seems like people are buying just about everything over the web. Yes, identify theft and credit card problems will arise but those will also be solved. Long Amazon.

DVR is awesome but will soon be extinct. It’s annoying to have to record a show before it is on television. We want to watch any show, whenever we want, on-demand and on any platform and for free. Whichever media company allows people to do that is going to win.

So that’s my rambling for now. I would love to hear what you think. I dedicate this post to da kidz. As I’m writing I thought of this Kanye song for some reason.

We wasnt supposed to make it past 25 but the jokes on you we still alive
Throw your hands up in the sky and say we don’t care what people say

I’ve had recent conversations with some of my friends who have expressed both their eagerness and frustration to advance their careers. In the current professional environment moving up often means moving on. Unfortunately, most people don’t have jobs that allow them to naturally explore career opportunities within their daily routine. Furthermore, it always seems to be most difficult to find new opportunities when you most desperately are seeking them out. Working on a resume, scanning job boards and making semi-cold calls in your spare time when you are drained from your current “dead end” job just plain sucks.

In this post I’m going to attempt to make some sense of the concept of networking. I first learned about networking as a student at the Michigan B-school. The seminars, speakers and conferences they offered on career planning through the OCD stressed networking to a seemingly nauseating degree. But I began to realize that getting to know the recruiter at your favorite company could be as effective as studying extra hard for your finance exam (and I was always looking for an excuse not to study). I shunned the traditional interview process and networked heavily to find my first job out of college at Official College Sports Network and a few years later used my networks to learn about Sportsvite. I now consider networking to be 15-20% part of my current job and my career. Spend that much time and it becomes second nature. Here are some networking techniques that have worked for me and that you may find valuable.

Craft Your Story
It startles me, and I’m sure my fellow NYCers can attest, how often strangers strike up a conversation by asking “what do you do?” Socially, I’m kind of turned off by this question as the person always seems to be chomping on the bit (what is the bit?) to judge. But professionally this question is a lay-up. It’s your job to make you job sound fascinating (whether it is or not). I can answer this question by saying that I am an entrepreneur or I work for a digital start-up or that I’m helping to create a social network for athletes or that I’m a blogger, or that I have a book club, etc. Occasionally, the person asking the question will relate my answer to another person they know and before anybody even realizes it we are all networking away.

Even if you are a lawyer or an accountant it’s not hard to put a spin on your gig to make it sound interesting or important. Tie it into your personal interests or let it lead into a conversation about what you plan to do next with your career.

My point here is that you should always be networking. Incorporate it into every interaction and everybody you meet and you’ll be astonished by how far that will take you and how easily it will be to connect with others. It also will become second nature to the point where you don’t even realize you are networking.

Figure Out What Your Friend Do
The easiest people to network with is your friends and their friends. One of the keys to networking is to get people to like you so that they will want to help you. You already have a good relationship with friends and should feel comfortable conversing with them so you automatically get to skip the feel each other out process. So probe a bit into their career and brainstorm together how it might tie into your career. I’ve had tremendous success getting hooked up from friends. My big sister works at the NHL and is always generating leads for me. I can even play the sibling card if I need her to go out on a limb for me. Through Ellstein, I’ve talked business with two of his friends from high school, his roommate from Australia and a co-worker. There is a dude from Michigan who I have known socially for years but never all that well. A few months ago we realized we work in a similar industry and grabbed lunch. Last week he made two incredible valuable introductions for me without me even asking. Rob’s brother is going to intern at Sportsvite this summer. Rob is super appreciative but I’m pumped up as his bro has been great on the phone and following up and seems like a perfect fit.

I have a very keen sense of what most of my friends do and I’m always trying to figure out how we can help each other. In the last few years I’ve “networked” with Rich, Ellstein, Hillman, Rosen, Anand, Hal, Abelson, Wolk, Bersin, Krasman, Colby, Parsa, Ross, Zablow, Cohen, Gaffney and Charo and others. Those are many of my closet friends and on the surface it might seem like our careers have very little in common.

Aggressive Doesn’t Mean Annoying
While networking is very important it often gets lost in the shuffle in your day to day routine. This can get frustrating when you are waiting on a contact to help you out or get back to you. If a person doesn’t return your call it often means they are just too busy or need a small nudge. Tastefully, shoot people reminders. Be patient. Understand that their world doesn’t revolve around you. I’m great at blowing off college students who are seeking interns at Sportsvite. I don’t respond to their emails as quickly as other emails. I’ll sometimes miss calls with them if my day is hectic. I guess I realize I don’t have to handle these relationships as preciously since the relationships is tilted so far in my favor. The potential interns that are pushy in following up or sending reminders instantly win my favor and I’ll usually end up being more responsive to them.

The few times that I haven’t been aggressive in following up I usually end up feeling sheepish months later when I now need to contact somebody but don’t have as good a relationship as if I had connected with them earlier.

Do be smart about how you engage people. Try to share information with them that they might find useful. Don’t make them feel like they have to do anything for you. Rather, make them feel important and helpful regardless of how effective they may be. Ask them questions about their career…people always like to talk about themselves or about things that they know well.

Networking Should Be Part Of Your Daily Job
It’s important to build good relationships with all of the people you are currently working with. Let’s do a little mental exercise. Try to flash forward ten years. Besides being 15 lbs fatter, you probably envision a career path and a position that is far different than your current job. Now think about how much time you spend with the people you work with right now. There is a chance that the 20 people you work with now will be at 20 different companies in the future. Having good relationships with all of those people will create new opportunities….when you need to find new opportunities.

When I worked at CSTV I often initiated conversations with executives by asking them if I could buy them lunch or trying to learn more about what they do. Some blew me off. Most were very impressed and even somewhat flattered that a young kid wanted to learn from them. It was interesting to chat with them when I was at the job. It’s more interesting now as many of those people are at new jobs and I have maintained great relationships with them. There are between 20-25 people I speak to from CSTV and they all have a pretty good understanding of my ability and interests. The first revenue deal we ever did at Sportsvite was with CSTV. The first few advisors I brought on at Sportsvite were former CSTV colleagues. You get the point.

Explicit Networking Groups/Conferences
Sometimes it makes sense to network for the explicit point of networking. I play somewhat of an active role in NextNY, a tech and new media group in the city. Last fall I organized nextSports, a digital sports media conference. I’m planning another event for this summer. Rosen is involved in The Museum of Jewish Heritage. It’s Board members (Marc goes to the meetings) is absolutely unbelievable, some of the most powerful business people in the world. Charities and foundations are also a great way to network. It allows you to meet other successful people and build relationships in a more informal setting.

I have this blog for a variety of reasons but trust me that networking is one of the biggest. When I want to build credibility quickly I’ll send them over some relevant blog posts that give them a quick peek into how I think or how I express myself.

Help Others
It took me awhile to get how this works. Why help other people if they can’t directly help you? I now realize that connecting people helps the person who made the request, hopefully helps the person you are connecting them too and allows you to gain a tad bit of “social capital”. Do this enough and before you know it there will be a whole host of people who you have helped. At some point it comes full circle and they will help you. Even if it doesn’t, you’ll have so much experience networking that you’ll know exactly how to frame your request and connect with the people you want to contact.

My friend Charlie is amazing at connecting people. In fact he’s founded nextNY and has thousands of people reading his blog. He’s now launching a website called Path101 that is all about helping people figure out their career path and discover opportunities.

Charlie was one of the first people I emailed when I got back from my travels and I wanted to enter the start-up world. At the time he was working at a well-known venture capital firm and I had just discovered his blog. He wrote me back almost immediately wanting to know as much about why I would leave CSTV as offering his help or advice. He told me to come to the new networking group that he had just created. I did. A few months later he got me a coveted interview for the exact job that he was leaving (it’s a two year rotation). A few months after that he tipped me off to Vin who was working on a project called Sportsvite.

Charlie never expected anything back from me (except for me to give it 110% in dodgeball) and didn’t even stop long enough to allow me to say thanks. But you better believe I’m always looking for ways to help Charlie out and I’m pretty confident at some point I’ll hook him up. Now realize that Charlie probably has that same relationship with hundreds of other people like me just in NYC alone and you can imagine the advantage he has in starting his new company!

Networking Is Part Of Your Job
You may be reading this post and saying to yourself “yeah, this all makes sense but I need to find my next job like NOW”. Hopefully, you have been networking for years so it’s easy to open new doors. If not, start doing so today. If your network is small figure out how to expand it. Try to meet and have a substantial conversation with one new person a week. Work on your own pitch. Make sure your resume is updated. Figure out what events you need to be at within your industry. Engage people who are successful and ask for “informational interviews” (this takes all the pressure off since you are interviewing them so they get to feel smart). Soon enough you’ll be where you want to be.

There is no secret to networking. It doesn’t always work out exactly how you want either. When I came back from my travels I expected to find a new opportunity within a matter of weeks after one round through all of my contacts from CSTV. It ended up taking me four months to finally land at Sportsvite. But as long as you stay persistent, expand your network, and follow up something has to eventually work out. My buddy John is a great example of this. When he is ready for a new opportunity he makes his rounds again and again until the right opportunity appears. He’s driven, aggressive and persistent and he spends as much time banging down doors as he probably does working at his job (once here realizes he is on his way out). He’s hit a home run three straight times with three great jobs. Yeah, he kind of drives himself crazy as he puts pressure on himself to find the right gig but it inevitable works out. As Coach Schiano likes to say, “keep chopping wood”.

Final Words
I have no final words. Hopefully, this helped. If you want to talk more specifically about tactics that I like to use or tell me more about your situation, please hit me up. I find the topic of career path, networking and understanding other people’s motivations and interests to be great conversation. Also, if you have something to add please write it in the comments section. I’m sure other people will find your advice useful. Good luck!

A buddy of mine wrote this very interesting and insightful email to a group of friends on his business trip to Dubai. Dubai often catches my interest in the News but until reading this I didn’t really understand what’s happening over there. The extreme wealth seems almost comical and US news reporting on anything Arab often feels contrived. I edited down his email to keep his post anonymous but if you are interested to learn more or have any questions I’d be happy to hook you up with him.

I don’t normally write emails about the places I’ve been for work or pleasure, but I probably should, especially for the more exotic locations like this one or Beijing, Singapore etc, but it’s too late on those. This stop in Dubai, albeit for 2 days, is worth writing a little something about; as someone who’s addicted to traveling and fortunately to have a job that allows me to see some great places, I feel obligated to at least shed some light on what its like on the ground here, not just what you read.

The United Arab Emirates is the second Arabic country I’ve ever been to, Morocco being the other, but let me be clear, this is NOT Morocco. Morocco is probably the only true third world country I’ve ever visited and an experience I’d never take back though I could have done w/o the stomach issues and the sickness that ensued thereafter. The UAE is an “emerging market” and then some - it’s modern, expensive and the people tend to be very sophisticated and western educated and VERY wealthy (nice to be sitting on oil). You come to Dubai and you see what wealth derived from the abundance of oil can do to a country that invests back in its own infrastructure. Is surreal to see these huge buildings, incredible hotels and highways that link it all together…in the middle of the desert. I was told that temps reach as high as 130F during summer here, no exaggeration.

Quick observations: The local dress; more so than in Morocco, the woman who are “more” religious are fully covered, they wear sunglasses b/c its eternally sunny here (85 degrees today) so you literally see none of them which is cruel to the heterosexual male tourist; the men wear white robes, for the most part, with the kiffiyeh covering their head. Mostly the red/white checkered kind that you saw Arafat wear (though his was black/white). It was explained to me during lunch yesterday by an ex-pat from NY running a new start up hedge fund out here, that each of the robes and headwear differs based on where you are from: Quatar, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, Iran, UAE etc. In Morocco, the poverty was evident everywhere you went, people were dressed in scraps in many places in the inner cities I visited, here the woman will be wearing nice fabric and have huge rings on their fingers which I found funny. The men are all well groomed and neatly dressed; quite a difference.

They refer to Israel in the news here as the “Zionist” entity, never using the word “Israel” and Jerusalem is referred to as “Occupied Jerusalem.” Can’t say this is very surprising but something you notice when reading “The Gulf News.”. As a Jew with a very Israeli name I thought I might see some resentment, I haven’t.

My meetings: I’m here for business and yesterday, after a 6.5hr flight and a little delay from Heathrow, I arrived at the airport, was escorted by the Marhaba (or welcome service; marhaba means “welcome” in Arabic) through customs and had a car waiting for me provided by the first fund I was to visit. I had no issues getting through customs, I thought that maybe my Israeli stamps might matter, but I don’t even think they checked. This was good as I didn’t want the headache of going through a Q&A with customs officials. My meetings took place at Emirates Towers and the DIFC which you can view here.

I met with about 7 people there, 5 of which were Arabic, and all very intelligent and obviously hard working and successful. Western educated, perfect English for the most part and a pleasure to sit with. 3 hours go by and the MP takes me to lunch at a Lebanese restaurant where I was the only one not dressed in the outfits I mentioned above. I thought I stood out when I was in China! Interesting experience, great food. Any suggestions I made to the MP was greeted with: “consider it done!”. You don’t get this in the US or UK very often. Second meeting was with a South African and a Brit (not too cultural) and the final meeting, which ended at 7:30pm (mind you I arrived that morning on about 3 hrs sleep on the plane) was with a Brit and a local. All very interesting, I’d ask lots of questions and get very direct answers. As meeting were winding down I’d ask questions about the local economy, growth and other things just as a curious outsider. Nothing like talking to people on the ground and that’s why I’m here for my firm and why my boss was here three weeks ago doing much of the same. There is no substitute being “onsite” as we like to say; a big reason I have traveled so much this year and will continue to do so going forward.

Growth: I’ve never seen so many cranes in one place in my life - 25% of the entire world’s are here in Dubai, that’s not a lie (my facts come from the Big Red Bus Tour I took this morning). It’s unreal to see how this place is building itself up. Skyscrapers that you thought only existed in NY and Hong Kong are popping up here, everywhere. The Burj Dubai Tower will be the tallest building in the world when complete, a European company (not disclosed) just bought the 158th FLOOR and apparently the interest is sky high for more. They are building it so that, should anyone else try to build higher, they will easily be able to build even more floors. 30% of the building has already been sold/rented I believe its now 159 stories and won’t be open in 2009. There are 3,000 workers working 24/7 to get this done at the order of the King. Burj el Arab, the worlds only self-proclaimed 7-star hotel is built on a man made island. I’m sure you’ve seen this before, its so exclusive that you have to pay $150 just to walk in (I took some pics, but didn’t need to enter). They have created other man made islands here, one of which you can see from space; the only other man made thing you can see from space is the Great Wall of China (another place I was fortunate enough to see this year). You get the point, this place is exploding. 80% of the people here are ex-pats; 20% are actually from the UAE. There is such a need for workers that you see a lot of people coming in from neighboring countries, India and many other places. The royal family, in order to try and grow the local population gives people 50,000 dirham ($13,000) to marry local to local, 70,000 dirham per child from local family and payment for education going forward. Those who work here have no income tax, the royal family pays all taxes, that would be nice.

Religion: the work week here, for those who don’t know, is Sunday-Thurs, Friday is the holy day - today. From 1-4pm everything is closed except the hotels; TV’s show the Imam’s (their version of a Rabbi/Priest) at the local mosque on every channel; the only time we see this is in the US is during the State of the Union (or other significant event when the President speaks); this is how it is every Friday here. Pretty interesting to be here on such a day.

Safety: I’ve never once felt in danger here, that was not the case in Morocco as I got into some hairy situations. In fact, the locals have been extremely hospitable and the service is excellent. This morning I get into the elevator and in comes three fully dressed Arabic men in a very tight space. They all smiled, said hello, and wished me well when I got out. They probably didn’t think I was Jewish, but just another of many situations I’ve been in here where I was pleasantly surprised by how the situation went. I’ll be the first one to admit how anti-arab I can be, but that really relates more to the terrorist pieces of sh*t all over the world, their sympathizers and sponsors. Trust me, I’m not booking a trip to Tehran any time soon.

Off to Israel tomorrow and can’t wait; the tour of the Middle East continues. See most of you sooner or later…

Last summer Sportsvite decided to partner with the NYC Corporate Athletic League and Zenbu Media to develop and organize The Battle For Manhattan. The event is an NYC athletic competition that consists of different sports events that promote the goodwill and spirit of New York City.

Sportsvite wants to make it easier for adults to play sports so we figured there is no better way than actually organizing a sports event in our hometown. You can visit the website at www.battleformanhattan.com or read the Sportsvite blog to learn more about the event. Events are always a bit chaotic in the first year but the Battle is shaping up nicely and I can envision one day having a big NYC color war and even having the event spread to other cities.

Thursday night we are having a kickoff party at Honey (243 W. 14th Street - btwn 7th and 8th Ave) from 7:00-10:00PM. I will be there for awhile and so will athlete captains Troy “Escalade” Jackson, volleyball star Dain Blanton, and 400M world record holder Kevin Young. If you are around stop by for a drink. Afterwards, I’ll be going somewhere to watch the Sweet 16.

The first event is a 5K run through the Hudson River Park that takes place this Sunday at 10am. I was planning on training for the run throughout March but instead decided to sit on my ass and eat lots of junk food. I will participate in the other sports (basketball, indoor soccer, volleyball) that all start next week. You can the schedule of event.

Please hit me up if you have any interest in participating in the run or playing in any of the sports events and I’ll hook you up nice. Are you can always go the regular route and register for the event on the website. Also, check out the Facebook page.

The event has received some great press lately with an article in Time Out New York and blurbs on Fox News, Crain’s Business, the Village Voice and the New York Post. We’ve also been lucky enough to find great sponsors in Crunch Fitness, Awake Energy Drink, The New York Post and CustomInk. It should be a great event so jump onboard.

I’m traveling to Tampa this weekend for a family sports vacation or something of the sort. On Friday, we’re going to the first round of the NCAA tournament. For those of you who have never experienced an opening day at the tourney it is quite the trip. By the middle of the third game of the day (there are four games) you feel like you’re overdosing on college basketball and not sure if you love it or hate but you know you never want it to end. On Saturday, I’m checking out Legends Field to get my first look at the 2008 Yankees. I used to love to go to spring training as a kid and collect autographs. That’s right I scored a Brien Taylor autograph in his first day in a Yankee uniform. I’m not longer a kid but I’m dying to get a signed Joba ball! Then on Sunday it’s back to Bracketville for two second round games. I was hoping to get in a few rounds of golf to start next week but doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen anymore as this thing called work is getting in the way.

For the third of fourth year I’m running da PLAYA POOL SON. It’s a player auction for the tournament where you add all the points your players have throughout the dance. The key is to get high scorers on teams that will go far (most total points). We’ve even created a wiki to update the scores.

On Friday I will be live blogging the day through a hot new service called Twitter. It’s a service that’s all the rage if you’re a tech dork. I’m not going to give the lame explanation or maybe I will - it’s like facebook status updates + IM away messages through your mobile device. You can follow along throughout the day on the Littyhoops Twitter Page or through this widget below. If your ambitious and sign up for twitter you’ll also be able to follow my updates via SMS through your cell phone.

Finally, how great would it have been if Duke lost. Belmont could have been the new Appalachian State!

The summer after my freshman year of college I had an internship in finance at Neuberger Berman. A few weeks into the internship I was pretty sure I had figured out the market so I opened an Ameritrade account and put a few thousand dollars into play (savings from my high school job). The first stock I bought was 10 shares of Red Hat. I was high on the idea of linux and the stock was cheap. Amazingly, it went up about 15% the first week. My greed and inexperience got the best of me. I upgraded to a margin account so I could trade option contracts with the goal of turning my 2K into ten grand by the end of the summer. Within four months I was broke. I had wiped out all of my money on risky out of the money contracts. This was the summer of 2000. I wasn’t the only one losing money that year. I chalked it up to a lesson learned. Soon after I lost a great deal of my interest in finance as I realized there wasn’t such a thing as easy money.

The bad taste never really went away. It seemed to me that the market was kind of frivolous and is just a gentlemen’s excuse to gamble. I realize it is much more than that but I can never seem to get past those feelings. It’s hard for me to connect with a business that’s mission statement is the same as its only business objective: making money.

Don’t get me wrong. This concept is also the financial industry’s greatest strength. The brightest minds are attracted to Wall Street with one specific goal — to figure out how to make the most money. They are usually very successful and therefore very rich. My goal at Sportsvite is to leverage new media to make it easier for people to play sports. If all goes exactly right we’ll be able to sell advertising and create a commerce opportunity for our members. You don’t have to be a quant to tell me who is going to make more money.

Wall Street always figures out new and creative ways to create tremendous value. There are just too many geniuses working too hard at it. If the US worked as hard at philanthropy and science as we do at creating new derivitives and financial vehicles we would have solved the ansewr to life by now. I’ve read about the junk bonds and leveraged buyouts of the 80’s, watched the dot com boom and IPO’s of the 90’s and have tried to understand the hedge fund and private equity markets during this most recent boom.

I’ve watched over the last few years as the market went bananas. I saw friends collecting bonus checks that were higher than most corporate CEO’s salaries. I watched hedge funds take over the best office space in New York City and private equity firms raid industries and financially engineer incredible profits. I saw low-lifes show off how well they were doing in “mortgages” with flashy watches and wads of cash. People were getting filthy rich. It seemed like there really was easy money to be had.

But every once in a while shit gets F****D up and it seems to me like we’re in the middle of a shit storm that is only going to get much worse. Like most people I was in denial that we’re now in a recession. I was hoping the credit crunch was confined to real estate and financial institution. I have a friend at UBS who works in real estate finance. He has had a front row seat to witness a disastrous free fall in his industry (real estate loan generation, lending and financing). He’s been telling me that it’s going to get bad but I refused to believe it. But today I had my “Aha” moment. Bear Stearns, one of the most prestigious investment banks of the last century, went belly up in just a matter of days without much provocation. Another friend, who is a trader at a hedge fund, wrote to me that

“Bear’s stock is the most disturbing chart I have ever seen, from $158 a year ago to $4 today. Employees lost their shirts with this company. INV banks usually pay bonuses in stock options, now the options are worthless. I heard of one guy who was worth 15mm in stock at beginning of the month (stock trading at $77), now he is only worth 500k. It is very sad.”

I read this and I’m worried. There was no catastrophic event at the firm or humungous trading scandal. Bear just had lots of bad credit and the street started whispering that Bear was in trouble. Before anybody knew what to do there was a run at the Bank as everybody rushed to withdraw their money and refused to trade with Bear. This wasn’t a conspiracy. This is exactly what happens when a Bank goes belly up.

It seems to me like there are lots of other financial institutions with similar predicaments and similar shitty assets and it’s only a matter of days before those banks go belly up. Yeah, the Fed is trying to save the economy but it doesn’t seem like their actions have been doing much good lately. The Fed isn’t a miracle worker. I admit that most of this monetary policy is beyond me but when the Fed starts doing highly unusual and unprecedented action it doesn’t seem all that comforting.

In fact, it seems like the Fed is doing all they can to prevent a total breakdown of the US economy. Here’s the reason why (according to gigaom.com they had to step in and are guarenteeing 30 billion dollers in liability.

Bear Stearns is the second-largest prime brokerage firm in the country, with a 21 percent market share. As part of the prime brokerage business, hedge funds would use their stock holdings and borrow money, many times the value of their stock from Bear Stearns, and then redeploy it in the markets. Bear Stearns, thanks to its stellar credit rating, could easily raise gobs of money that it in turn loaned to hedge funds. They had built up a portfolio of around $136 billion of these assets.

In the days leading up to the financial crisis, the hedge funds had started to get worried about the credit worthiness of Bear Stearns and decided to pull their money. Now had Bear Stearns gone bankrupt, there would be a lot of hedge funds out there being forced to dump their stocks into the market just to meet their obligations. In other words, the downward spiral that would have ensued would have become a vortex that would have sucked down entire financial markets.

This frightens me. They’ve cut the interest rates incredibly low and that can’t be good for inflation or the value of our crappy dollar. In Baseball, many pitchers suffer serious arm injuries after sustaining minor injuries to other parts of their body. A bad toe can alter a pitcher’s delivery and throw off their mechanics which ultimately results in extra strain on their arm until they blow out an elbow or a shoulder.

Even if the Fed can stave off the collapse of other financial institutions, the US economy won’t be able to hold up with all this pressure. Investment banks are at the core of the US economy and provide liquidity and credit to all industries. If they are damaged our economy is damaged. It’s that simple. Other global economies, that are flush with capital from oil profits and emerging markets, are looking at the US’s skittish financial system and have no interest in investment. How can it not get worse? How can our economy not tear? Does the Fed really have HGH?

I came home from work today and devoured as much information on the market as I could find. The traditional news media gave me the standard frustrating and un-insightful jargon. (The fact that I can’t read the wall street journal without a subscription is rediculous to start with). It’s as if they don’t see the ripple effect of this hokusi wave and are just focusing on Bear Sterns as an unfortunate outlier. The dow actually was up for the day! Is everybody really drinking the cool aid? So I headed for the blogs. I found a few interesting posts like these on informationarbitrage.com and on bigpicture.com. Overall, I was surprised at the overall lack of attention and panic these events have received.

I called my dad tonight who is my voice of reason when it comes to understanding world events, especially concerning politics and the market. I told him it’s time to sell sell sell. He’s has positions in oil and has been doing pretty well over the last few years as oil continues to rise to seemingly unsustainable prices. My dad just chuckled and seemed to think this was rock bottom, was confident in the Fed, and overall didn’t seem all that concerned. I am.

I work in digital media. For me not to think that this market will affect my industry is ridiculous. Less credit and no financial stimulation and media will become stagnant. Advertisers dry up. Valuations for attractive start-ups plummet as deflated stock prices make it harder to justify acquisitions. Some startups are already having trouble accessing the capital that they have recently raised because of faulty credit swaps. Please explain to me a scenario how this is not going to happen…in every industry.

A few months ago I put a small amount of money back into my Ameritrade account that has been inactive for eight years. I closely follow many of the major digital media companies and wanted to get some skin in the game. I have yet to make a trade as I just can’t seem to pull the trigger on a transaction. Whenever I’m close I just get an overwhelming feeling of doubt that I haven’t done enough research or understand the market well enough.

But I’m ready to pull the trigger tomorrow. I’m going to short the Dow, short Lehman Brothers and look into shorting every other bank that doesn’t have a commercial bank or extensive cash reserves. If you want to know where the speculators are betting check out the activity on put options. I’ll also start to look at other credit companies (cars, credit cards, etc.) and see if there are other disasters waiting to happen. Maybe, I’ll take it to the next step and figure out which industries are prone to disaster as soon as their credit lines dry up.

As I’m writing this I realize I’ll be one of the bear’s who isn’t doing the economy any favors by going short. But hey, if that’s the way I feel that I can make the most money… Maybe I have a career in finance after all!

If you have yet to figure it out I’m a bit of a college hoops fan. Therefore this week is usually one of my favorites each year. Here is a blog post from last year about my anticipation for the tournament. I also put together this one shining moment tribute that should give any true college basketball fan goosebumps.

I’m heading down to Tampa with my family and Big Mitch to catch opening round action this year. Last year we were snowed out and never made it to Chicago so I’m super pumped to get the tradition back on track. We’re also catching a Yankee spring training game at Legends field and perhaps a round of golf so this is quite the Litty family excursion.

The four games in one day thing is something all sports fans should be lucky enough to experience. I’m not that well versed on the basketball teams at Siena, Drake, San Diego or Western Kentucky but I guarantee I’ll be pouring my heart out rooting for one of those teams at some point on Friday.

As usual, I’m running a tournament pool. I’ve been doing this in some fashion since the 4th grade and hope to be doing it when my youngest grandchild is in 4th grade.

If you would like to join check it out on sportsline — http://littyhoops.mayhem.sportsline.com/e

The password is redmen.

You can read the rules if you are interested in participating.

Two years ago the Mank won the booty of gold and last year a younger girl who was still in school at Michigan won. It’s almost as if my friends and I are getting suckered in our own pool. Some years I fare well and some years my bracket blows up in the first round. I’ve come to realize there’s a good deal of luck involved in picking a great bracket. So instead of studying rosters, box scores and league standings I now just stare at the bracket and pray to the good lord asking for his generosity in letting me go 32 for 32 in the first round.

If you do believe there is skill involved then you can check this article I wrote a few years back while working at CSTV on how you an optimize your chance for success.

Good luck.

I wake up in the morning and I’m usually kind of grumpy. Sometimes it takes me as long as a half an hour to snap out of it. I think it’s just my nature. That instant when my alarm clock beeps is often my most irritable moment of the day. If I try to wake up to the radio or music I’ll end up hating the voice of the host (screw Mike and Mike) or quickly grow tired of that happy vibe song I used to enjoy. I’ve spent my fair share of time trying to figure out a solution. I’m cynical of those progressive-light alarm clocks or bird-chirping nature CD’s as I’m pretty sure they are just Sharper Image marketing gimmicks to pray on poor souls like myself.

Recently, I’ve taken to DVR Sunrise Earth on Discovery HD and having that play on my television in the morning. That worked for awhile but I recently woke up to Manatees swimming the clear waters of Homosassa Springs and can’t get the high-pitched crickets chirping out of my head. It’s more frightening than Imus!

The only solution that really worked in allowing me to wake up all irie was living right on the beach in sunny Mission Beach. Unfortunately, a few years ago that breezy awakening satisfaction lost out to a host of other life decisions like career, family, and the other 99.9% percent of the day and I moved back to NY to once again fall victim to morning grumpiness. I’m no REM expert but waking up in a small apartment facing a walk in the cold and a daunting and overcrowded six train doesn’t help the matter.

You: Um, get to the point already litty, BRO!

So about a month ago I’m starting my daily morning commute by walking west on 69th street to the subway station in the freezing cold and I’m all pissed off as usual. A very old and frail women in a wheelchair somehow caught my eye as she was trying to get the attention of a passerby. Like many true New Yorkers, I’ve trained myself, for better or worse, to be numb to the homeless, needy and distraught humans you encounter on the street. But somehow this woman seemed a bit different so I surprised myself and stopped to ask her what she needed. She asked me if I could push her in her wheelchair down the street to her apartment building entrance that was in the middle of the block. I was walking that way so it was hardly an inconvenience and I figure it would be easier to just do it then to start to try and figure out what the heck was happening. She was overly thankful and in the minute that I interacted with her it was apparent she wasn’t cursed with the same morning mopeyness as myself. Actually, at one point she playfully yelled out “faster, faster” as if this moment was the highlight of her day.

I didn’t think much of the situation. I dropped her at her doorman building and continued on my grumpy way and very well may have forgotten the situation entirely if it didn’t happen again a few days later. Perhaps, I was subconsciously looking for the women. I spotted her as soon as I crossed 1st avenue and offered to give her a ride home. She was a bit confused because she didn’t recognize me but was more than happy to accept the offer.

This time I had a few questions for her. I learned that she goes to the Senior Citizen center (a few blocks away) each morning for breakfast and usually has yogurt and fruit. She tries to walk home but gets tired so she waits in her wheel chair on the corner for a friendly stranger to help her out. Her sister lives on the West Side and was the first female police office in New York City. Her son is an author in Las Vegas.

I saw her again this morning and it almost seemed like she was looking for me or at least expected me to help her out. She offered me a donut that she had taken home from the center but I told her I wasn’t a big breakfast guy. She pointed out that it’s the most important part of the day (perhaps a cure for morning mopeyness!). She told me about her sister and was excited I somehow knew about her son in Las Vegas. She even had me leave her outside her building as it was unseasonable warm and she wanted to enjoy the good weather. As I walked away she cheerily thanked me and wished me a good day.

My mind has a tendency to uncontrollable race with scenarios and questions and this particular interaction has incited the curious george in me. I’m not sure how she gets to the senior citizen center. I’m not sure how long it takes her to find a good samaritan to push her home and if she gets nervous or anxious as she waits for somebody. It’s hard to imagine she leaves her apartment each day knowing that there’s a good chance she won’t make it home on her own, but apparently she does. Seems like a decent dose of courage.

Recently, it dawned on me that maybe I wasn’t asking myself the right questions. At the very least, I was asking too many questions.

The simple fact is that I’ve pushed a women home from the corner of the block on multiple occasions. Each time she cheerily thanked me and wished me a good day. Each time my morning mopeyness was cured and I faced the subway with a smile.

Perhaps it is I that should be giddily thanking her. So here’s to you, old woman.