Monday, July 5, 2010

I’m 63 and I’m Tired” by Robert A. Hall | Build Business Profits

I’m 63 and I’m Tired” by Robert A. Hall | Build Business Profits: "I’m 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I’ve worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven’t called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn’t inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there’s no retirement in sight, and I’m tired. Very tired.

I’m tired of being told that I have to “spread the wealth” to people who don’t have my work ethic. I’m tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I’m tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to “keep people in their homes.” Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I’m willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.

I’m tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy of Zimbabwe , the freedom of the press of China , the crime and violence of Mexico , the tolerance for Christian people of Iran , and the freedom of speech of Venezuela . I’m tired of being told that Islam is a “Religion of Peace,” when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family “honor”; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren’t “believers”; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for “adultery”; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur’an and Shari’a law tells them to.

I’m tired of being told that “race doesn’t matter” in the post-racial world of Obama, when it’s all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U.S. Senators from Illinois.

I think it’s very cool that we have a black president and that a black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.

I’m tired of a news media that thinks Bush’s fund raising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama’s, at triple the cost, were wonderful; that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress; that picked over every line of Bush’s military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his; that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn’t vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.

I’m tired of being told that out of “tolerance for other cultures” we must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and mandrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in America , while no American group is allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia to teach love and tolerance. I’m tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore’s, and if you’re greener than Gore, you’re green enough.

I’m tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don’t think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I’m tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.

I’m tired of illegal aliens being called “undocumented workers,” especially the ones who aren’t working, but are living on welfare or crime. What’s next? Calling drug dealers, “Undocumented Pharmacists”? And, no, I’m not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and it’s been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I’m willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person, who can speak English, doesn’t have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military…. Those are the citizens we need.

I’m tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years and still are? Not even close. So here’s the deal. I’ll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we’ll compare notes. British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in fear.

I’m tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums are bipartisan. And I’m tired of people telling me we need bipartisanship. I live in Illinois , where the “Illinois Combine” of Democrats has worked to loot the public for years. Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama’s cabinet.

I’m tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of both parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I’m tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor. Speaking of poor, I’m tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn’t have that in 1970, but we didn’t know we were “poor”. The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.

I’m real tired of people who don’t take responsibility for their lives and actions. I’m tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I’m darn tired. But I’m also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I’m not going to have to see the world these people are making. I’m just sorry for my granddaughter.

Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on! This is your chance to make a difference.

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Thank you Robert!!

Steve Pohlit

Business Consulting, Executive Coach
Turnaround/Crisis Management
Temporary CEO, CFO, Controller Services
International Business Resources

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About: Steve Pohlit CPA,MBA has been the CFO and COO of major domestic and international companies. Steve has extensive business ownership experience having purchased and started off line and on line businesses. Steve offers his business building experience to companies and entrepreneurs with business coaching and business consulting. His focus is on building business profits and net asset value at above average rates. All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

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Sunday, July 4, 2010

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Google Launches Real-Time Blogger Stats

Google Launches Real-Time Blogger Stats: "Google has introduced a full-featured stats dashboard for its free blogging service, Blogger."

Nuclear Explosion Could Be A Practical Solution For The BP Oil Spill

(You are invited to share your comments along with mine. Just follow the read more link at the end.)

Special Report: Should BP nuke its leaking well?

Nuke the Gulf?

Reuters

July 2, 2010

His face wracked by age and his voice rasping after decades of chain-smoking coarse tobacco, the former long-time Russian Minister of nuclear energy and veteran Soviet physicist Viktor Mikhailov knows just how to fix BP’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

“A nuclear explosion over the leak,” he says nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. “I don’t know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is solved.”

A nuclear fix to the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea and BP execs say they are not considering an explosion — nuclear or otherwise. But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to die.

For some, blasting the problem seems the most logical answer in the world. Mikhailov has had a distinguished career in the nuclear field, helping to close a Soviet Union program that used nuclear explosions to seal gas leaks. Ordinarily he’s an opponent of nuclear blasts, but he says an underwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico would not be harmful and could cost no more than $10 million. That compares with the $2.35 billion BP has paid out in cleanup and compensation costs so far. “This option is worth the money,” he says.

And it’s not just Soviet boffins. Milo Nordyke, one of the masterminds behind U.S. research into peaceful nuclear energy in the 1960s and ’70s says a nuclear explosion is a logical last-resort solution for BP and the government. Matthew Simmons, a former energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and the founder of energy investment-banking firm Simmons & Company International, is another calling for the nuclear option.

Even former U.S. President Bill Clinton has voiced support for the idea of an explosion to stem the flow of oil, albeit one using conventional materials rather than nukes. “Unless we send the Navy down deep to blow up the well and cover the leak with piles and piles and piles of rock and debris, which may become necessary … unless we are going to do that, we are dependent on the technical expertise of these people from BP,” Clinton told the Fortune/Time/CNN Global Forum in South Africa on June 29.

Clinton was picking up on an idea mooted by Christopher Brownfield in June. Brownfield is a one-time nuclear submarine officer, a veteran of the Iraq war (he volunteered in 2006) and now a nuclear policy researcher at Columbia University. He is also one of a number of scientists whose theories rely not on nuclear bombs — he did toy with that thought for a while — but on conventional explosives that would implode the well and, if not completely plug it with crushed rock, at least bring the flow of oil under control. “It’s kind of like stepping on a garden hose to kink it,” Brownfield says. “You may not cut off the flow entirely but it would greatly reduce the flow.”

BLASTS FROM THE PAST

Using nuclear blasts for peaceful ends was a key plank of Cold War policy in both the United States and the Soviet Union. In the middle of last century, both countries were motivated by a desire to soften the image of the era’s weapon of choice.

Washington had big plans to use peaceful nuclear explosions to build an additional Panama Canal, carve a path for an inter-state highway through mountains in the Mojave Desert and connect underwater aquifers in Arizona. But the experimental plans were dropped as authorities learned more about the ecological dangers of surface explosions.

The Soviet program, known as Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy, was launched in 1958. The project saw 124 nuclear explosions for such tasks as digging canals and reservoirs, creating underground storage caverns for natural gas and toxic waste, exploiting oil and gas deposits and sealing gas leaks. It was finally mothballed by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.

The Soviets first used a nuclear blast to seal a gas leak in 1966. Urtabulak, one of its prized gas-fields in Uzbekistan, had caught fire and raged for three years. Desperate to save the cherished reserves, Yefim Slavsky, then Minister of Light Industry, ordered nuclear engineers to use the most powerful weapon in their arsenal. Read more…

Article Courtesy Of:

Steve Pohlit

Business Consulting, Executive Coach
Turnaround/Crisis Management
Temporary CEO, CFO, Controller Services
International Business Resources

Social Media Services
New Digital Media, Inc.

Twitter

Facebook

Linked in

MySpace

727-587-7871

Email

About: Steve Pohlit CPA,MBA has been the CFO and COO of major domestic and international companies. Steve has extensive business ownership experience having purchased and started off line and on line businesses. Steve offers his business building experience to companies and entrepreneurs with business coaching and business consulting. His focus is on building business profits and net asset value at above average rates. All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information

Use Accurate Data To Build Business Profits

While working with a coaching client on site in Orlando, Florida I observed packed parking lots, traffic jams around Millenia Mall and filled restaurants. My comment was ” they have not heard there is a world wide recession!”

We discussed why the area seemed particularly crowded. The number one reason seemed to be that the new Harry Potter attraction had just opened at Universal Studios and it seemed be a huge draw. So now I knew that my observation of the market could be distorted by a special event.

Later that day, I was invited to join a group at a very popular “upscale restaurant”. This place is very near Tiger Wood’s home. My definition of an upscale restaurant is one where the dinner check for two including tip is in the $200 plus range.

After a marvelous dinner, I met the owner. I had a comment and a question. My comment was about the wonderful dining experienced I just finished. I assured him I really enjoyed it as did the business people dining with me. My second remark was that his business is actually an economic indicator…a barometer of how well people are doing. Given that I asked how his business was doing on a comparable basis with last year.

Comparable analysis in business is where you compare the same period this year with the same period last year. In this example I was asking about business this year to date vs last year. He told me his business was down 30% and that the “upscale restaurant market” was down 40%. He felt good as he was fairing better than the competition. I was not feeling that good about it considering the economic slide began accelerating in 2008. This means the numbers in 2009 used as a comparison have already been on a decline so the decline in 2010 is particularly disturbing.

I mentioned to my client and his key person in Orlando that I would send them a list of what I would recommend this restaurant business owner do to strengthen the business. I decided these 7 Steps could help many other business owners so I am using my blog for the action plan and I will email my friends to let them know about these ideas for their Orlando restaurant owner friend.

Top 7 Steps For Strengthen Sales and Profit In The Restaurant Industry….Actually Applies To Most Businesses:

1. Know your customer! People coming thought the door and buying should be acknowledged with an email or card and possibly more. How do you do this? You need to have their contact information and specifically an email address and now ideally their cell phone number.

Here is an idea on how you do that: Buy them a drink or a dessert in exchange for their information. Here is the key: when you identify a particularly important person, the owner comes to the table, welcomes them and offers to buy their dinner in exchange for the cell phone number so they can be alerted for a very special event. Now before you say this ticket could be $200 or more I ask you how worth it is to have the cell phone number for key text messages with VIP’s and I mean people whose net worth is in 8 figures. This is huge

2. Have a plan. Your financial plan should be an annual target that can then be detailed to a weekly plan.

3. Know your numbers. Traffic and sales by time of day. Track your trends. Use this information to market to your list. Invite them to slower times using incentives.

4. Use all proven marketing tools to help grow your business. These include direct mail to targeted zip codes and ads with a “hook” in publications your target customer reads and other venues like radio, participation at key charitable events, local/regional festivals that are for your target audience, on line promotions and more.

5. Have your on line credibility in place meaning a website and social media presence

6. Use a referral marketing system. Reward people for inviting their friends and colleagues.

7. Monitor the variances from plan in all areas of your business. Nothing is excluded: payroll, food costs, utilities….the gold is in the detailed analysis of the variances.

Now You Know…Success Is In The Details. Failure is almost always a result of not consistently following the steps that have been proven to lead to success.