There’s a man in my (business) life who has been there for the past ten years. You may know him as Ed Nusbaum, or less likely as @edaz on Twitter. But you probably don’t know him as the other principal Stealthmode Partner. Today’s his birthday, so I’m putting the spotlight on him. He may hate me for this (he prefers to work quietly behind the scenes, leaving me to be the glamorous spokesperson and public persona for Stealthmode Partners), but it is about time he gets some recognition.
He is the guy behind the scenes who makes our endeavour run while I jump up and down and get on and off airplanes. You can’t find him on our web site, but he designed it (so it would complement my blog) and maintains it. He’s not on my blog either (until today), but he set it up for me and once in a while he also quietly fixes some of my typos and formatting, makes sure everything works correctly, and stops me from doing dumb things with it.
“Hey Ed, I need this widget on my blog! Can you help me put it there?”
“Why? So your blog will load more slowly and make it harder on your readers?”
“Hey Ed, can we put ads on my blog so I can monetize it?”
“Why? So you can make a grand total of twelve cents a year and lose some of your credibility? Besides, based on all of the free blogger passes to events and conferences that you have already gotten, this is already one of the best monetized blogs in history…”
He also quietly runs one of the largest technology networks in the country, the Arizona Internet Professionals Association (its announcement list has over 12,000 subscribers). He does that largely gratis. Likes he takes care of all the details for our monthly Stealthmode Entrepreneurs Roundtable Dinners, which are also gratis.
Like me, he believes in the win-win business philosophy, by which we grow our own business by growing the entire technology community in Arizona. Everything we do is focused on that.
One more thing: he keeps me supplied with candy. He knows that I love chocolate, and every time he comes to my house (where I sometimes work when I am not at Starbucks), he looks at the candy dish. If it looks low, he quietly re-supplies it.
And this year for Christmas, he brought my gift over while I was out of town in Half Moon Bay. “Did you find it?” he asked me when I got home. I told him I hadn’t. “You will when you need it,” he said.
I’m not very aware of my surroundings sometimes, because of my continuous partial attention. But one evening (on one of those very rare occasions when I didn’t feel like eating out), there it was: about fifteen pounds of pork chops and steaks, each one individually seasoned, wrapped, and placed in my freezer so I could easily eat at home by tossing them on the George Foreman Grill. And the companion piece: about fifteen pounds of assorted chocolate candies, sitting out in plain view, carefully chosen to reflect my tastes.
I could go on longer, but you get the picture. Ed is the best partner I could ever wish for: a person of integrity, intelligence, and compassion. So I had to write this for him on his birthday. If you don’t know him yet, I hope you get to meet him soon!
