I’ve never been a fan of the conventional wisdom about never doing business with friends. I think it should actually read something like, “Never do business with your friends if you’re really bad at what you do.”

Now I’m not bragging and saying I’m good at what I do. I’m simply saying that my friend Trent is pleased with the job I did on his logo and we remain friends. In fact, when I handed him a batch of different ideas, he asked me to change one color and put a trademark symbol on the logo you see above and call it a job. Could not have been easier.

Anyway, if you need to buy or sell a building and you’re in the Chicago area, consider hiring him. Though I think he only deals in commercial real estate, so you’ll want to use the blue zoning tool and leave the red and yellow ones at home.*

*That’s a SimCity joke, and I’m not sure it applies to the new SimCity because I haven’t played it, but it would have killed when SimCity 2000 was popular.