During the lunch meeting with Alexander and his business associate, I felt like someone had pressed slow motion on life.

They were deep into “strategic projections,” “supply-chain optimization,” and “equity rebalancing”, basically, a three-hour podcast no one asked to subscribe to. I’d heard enough of these conversations to build a small MBA program, but even I have limits. My brain tapped out somewhere between “operational liquidity” and “market positioning.”

Still, I ...