You Can Choke On A Jolly Rancher Lollipop!

Good morning.

It feels great to be alive.

Yesterday would have been a hell of a day to have had a camera crew following me around.

Monday’s are my busiest work day of the week where I cram calls and pitches and face to face meetings in because I already have the morning partner meeting.

To get in the right frame of mind yesterday I did a 6:30 AM high intensity class down the street on Coronado at Sweat Circuit. The gym is owned by Liz Merill who I know because she reads my blog and has always invited me out to do one of the classes. The gym is VERY popular as Liz is super friendly and fit with the latest software to keep things humming along. I was really happy to see they use ‘Hello Walla’ to run the gym which is a portfolio company (local) of Social Leverage. Yesterday was just my second session at Sweat Circuit. The early morning classes are for the serious fitness people (and it turns out surprisingly athletic bloggers). I am the least fit person at the gym at 6:30 AM but can mostly keep up…until the free weight circuit.

Yesterday had an incline bench press so I swapped the two 25’s on the barbell for two 10’s and felt ready for my sets. During the third set I got a little squirmy and of course Liz caught this as I almost choked myself putting the barbell back on my final lift. She did not laugh and point, but I know I would have.

The rest of the day was uneventful until my last Zoom of the day with my partner Matt and Austin Rief (founder and CEO of Morning Brew). Social Leverage is an LP in his seed fund and we were catching up on some ideas and companies. I was sucking on my red jolly rancher lollipop much like Kojak did back in my childhood which of course is just weird for a 58 year old guy on a Zoom. Anyways, after the Zoom Matt called me and heard me chomping on the lollipop and start to choke.

Matt said ‘are you choking’?

I tried to say yes but nothing came out so I hung up and started to panic a bit as I could not breathe. I bent over and started banging my back and wheezing and coughing and headed down the stairs to look for Ellen. I could not yell for her. On the stairs down I kept banging on my back and luckily the small piece of candy that was lodged in my throat dislodged and I caught my breath. Pretty scary.

When I called Matt back he said, ‘ya, I looked at my wife and said Howard hung up on me, I think he’s choking’.

I said, you were this close to all my fund carry and we had a laugh and another Howie story which seem to happen way too often.

Matt and I ended the day meeting up with the team from Equabli, a fund 4 portfolio company, that was doing an offsite in San Diego. I told my story to the group and we all laughed but there were at least three others that had similar stories, none with a Jolly Rancher lollipop though.

Anyways…enjoy your day and chew your food!