To get where we want to go with an article subsequent to this one, I need to tell you a story. Do not be frightened. Reminiscing can reveal things you haven’t reminisced enough to get full value from an experience. It can also be fun to step through stuff you think you have always known but have not thought through sufficiently to reveal new ideas and uses that can be immensely profitable. This is the process by which great ideas are discovered - thinking through great ideas you are already familiar with.

I once knew a man named Junior in a small town. He was the uncle of a friend of mine. As far as I know he never did a day’s work. He would observe some local situation. He would have a drink in one of his favorite bars and start a discussion about the situation. Or vice versa.

After observing and talking or talking and observing he would go away and think about it until he came up with a money making solution or not. His solutions were primarily win-win. So people usually listened to him and discussed things with him. I knew him because he was the uncle of a friend. I remembered him, though, because of a phrase he used whenever he began working toward a Second Level Opinion. I made a habit of incorporating the phrase into my own thinking. Often when someone discussed a thing, Junior would ask, “but, what does it do?” The other reason I remember Junior is that I was often involved in one of his solutions. That is, I was the one who did the work. And Junior always paid. OK, the work was harder than the money was worth sometimes, but, I did the work and I got paid.

And I learned. I learned to think through simple things I already knew to get to complex solutions I did not already know. Fortunately, I had already learned to respect anyone from whom I could learn a lesson. Junior became my favorite consultant, negotiator, “bar fly,” broker, and pseudo uncle.

Mind you, Junior had no formal education. But, he taught me a lot. I had a lot of formal education. And experience. When I met Junior, I had two degrees, eight years of college and eight majors, four years experience in communications and electronics and six years experience as a systems analyst and systems programmer in the dynamic world of defense spy satellite systems. So, another thing I learned was that an “uneducated” person could often teach an “educated” person a thing or two.

You would, I hope, be surprised to find how often the question, “what does it do?” can be used and how much can be learned from its employment.

Wherever you are, Uncle Junior, thanks for all that hard work you finagled me into doing. And the beer wasn’t bad either.