The WikiLeaks Fallout

This week's WikiLeaks fiasco has shed light on a number of completely mission critical issues both to business and to government security.

Regardless of your political views on the various wars that the US is engaged in, a large number of the documents that were released so far by WikiLeaks does endanger national security in the US and for our allies abroad. That sounds like a cavalier point, I understand, but there really are substantially greater numbers of lives at risk both now and for decades to come as a result of these 'leaks.'

It is harder to find capable, qualified, and reliable resources for intelligence gathering as a result. This means that our information will consistently be less than optimal and the very reasons that people object to our involvement in Iraq under the suggested purpose of eliminating weapons of mass destruction can only be repeated as we will be in no better position to consider national and global security threats in the future.

It means that in combat our troops will never have enough of the right information to be able to minimize casualties both to our selves and to local civilian populations caught in the conflict.

It means that we will never have enough advance warning to stop critical threats before they reach our borders with weapons and intent to destroy thousands or perhaps even millions.

It will put our front line border guards and troops at increasing risk of lethal violence as it has along the Mexican border and in our camps in Afghanistan.

It means our allies will have less reason to trust our information or our ability to protect their sources when they try to help protect us.

That's what it does to our national security and that of our allies, but what does it mean for our companies?

Julian Assange and his cohorts have already shown us the thin edge of THAT wedge, haven't they?

The message they sent this week was clear - either permit the wanton use of criminally acquired information to continue to threaten the security of millions or suffer the economic consequences of their personal wrath as they tried to take down both Visa and Mastercard. They have then followed up with a series of attacks on companies who do not loudly call for Assange's release.

No company is safe from their blackmail and extortion, just as no government is.

If your company depends on the transaction support of Visa or Mastercard, or any major credit card processing, and they are targeted for attacks by saboteurs, hackers, and cyber-bullies (extortionists), then your company is directly affected by these cyber-terrorists and criminals.

There is a substantial difference between the argument in favour of Free Speech and the action involved in stopping commerce globally and holding every corporation hostage to achieve personal and political gains.

Free Speech has limitations, just as all freedoms do. I have the full freedom to swing my fist anywhere I want - just as long as it doesn't connect with anyone else or anything that doesn't belong to me. Similarly Free Speech is limited - it cannot be used to bully, extort, blackmail, or any of a dozen other verbs.

Businesses and governments need to take extra special precautions and make their systems secure so that only those who critically need sensitive information are given access to it, and that any sharing of that information beyond where it is permitted to go is punished immediately and to the maximum extent of the law as a minimum deterrent to this kind of behaviour.

That's not to say that these kinds of regulations should be used at whim in order to silence legitimate whistle-blowing on criminal behaviours by those in commercial or bureaucratic authority. Revealing criminal behaviour is a fundamental responsibility of individuals to society and those who have the courage to do so should be heralded. The difference? They had better be right, it had better be criminal, and it had better be worth it, or the damage they inflict to their colleagues, their clients, their shareholders, their fellow citizens and the public in general is far too severe to allow those who simply wish to garner attention, glory and power by selling illegally obtained secrets for fame.

Money doesn't have to be the prime motivator - it's not necessarily the currency du jour in these kinds of exchanges. The acclaim and satisfaction gained by outing sensitive secrets is often all that those who have given groups like WikiLeaks seek. For that brief moment they had their "Gotcha!" moment. For that brief moment they achieved a sense of glory in having socked it to 'The Man.' And for months and years to come, everyone else involved in that arena pays the price, some of them the ultimate price; there will invariably be those who pay with their lives.

As managers, entrepreneurs, investors and executives, we need to stop this pretense of 'open-source management.' Open-Source effectively means, 'open season' as soon as any disgruntled or immature employee, or unhappy customer decides to go hunting. Some times it is not even them - it may be their friends, their spouse, their family, their spiteful ex; the list is limitless.

And now with the excuses wiped away through the power play by Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks followers, businesses, not just government, can no longer hide behind the shield of excuses as to why they don't have to implement a serious secrecy policy and strategy to keep their information, their clients' information, their suppliers' information, and their employees' information secure.

The 'What are the odds' Greek Chorus will be the ones suffering the tragedy while the rest of us avoid it by taking action today to protect what's important.

Secrecy is no longer a word of convenience in business. For serious business people, it's a word of bond in a world of acute risk and chronic danger.

9 Years of 9/11.

9 Years. One day has impacted the world for 9 long, hard years.

It was the day that Osama Bin Laden and his gang of fruitcake followers took the world and shook it like a rag doll.

9 Years later there are those that still believe it was all a government plot, or that it was just a one-shot deal; it could never happen again.

To those people, the thousands of lives that were lost then and since, are meaningless faces on a screen, meaningless names on a wall or in a cemetery or a field of battle.

To those people the inconveniences of modern travel, the cost of our wars overseas, the cost of partnering with our allies to control ‘threats to our national security’, and the cost of housing captured terrorists is all a big waste of money and time. To them it is just a scare tactic to keep them from doing what they want, to whomever they want, whenever they want. It is an impediment to their freedoms.

And in the limited viewfinder through which they see, they are correct.

What are the odds, they say, of another terror strike like 9/11? One in a million?

It’s amazing how often one in a million actually happens.

For some, the condition is called War Weariness. It’s a known phenomenon when a country at war gets tired of being in the state of war. They want to be able to go back to their normal lives and don’t want to be always in the ‘pressure cooker’ of war.

Actually, I’m truly amazed that anyone in this country can have the unmitigated gall to even state that we are at war.

Sure we have troops overseas, fighting like hell to keep us safe, to keep our families from feeling the devastation of losing their loved ones in a hail of bullets or a crumbling, burning building hundreds of feet in the air.

Sure we have a 3 ounce limit on fluids allowed on an airplane.

But the cold hard reality of war hasn’t struck home in this country, and it hasn’t happened for one reason. We’re not taking our defense of our homeland as seriously as we should or ordinarily would in a normal war.

In World War II, there were military checkpoints all through Europe in an effort to defend against foreign agents, invaders and saboteurs.

In the height of the Cold War, one did not discuss company business in open forums, let alone government or national business with people who weren’t expressly designated for those conversations.

Although we had the right to voice our political opinions, we had the better sense not to, as we would never give an opponent that kind of leverage to do us, our families, our neighbours, or our economies that kind of damage.

Today – today all we have is the twin refrains ‘I have my rights’ and ‘What are the odds?’

If you had to pass military checkpoints today, if you and your family only had rationed portions of food, energy and fuel, if you had to live under the kind of strict rules of communication that real wars demand, I can assure you of 2 things: 1) by now you’d have earned every right to feel a sense of War Weariness, and 2) you’d know why your views of the war today are not only out of place, they are a disgrace. They are a disgrace because although we are asking our troops, law enforcement, fire-fighters, and medical experts to keep us safe, we have those among us who mock, ridicule, insult, undermine, and passively or actively endanger them out of a sense of entitlement. It’s their ‘right’ to do so.

It’s their right to harass, insult, impede, and effectively threaten the mourning families of fallen military personnel at the cemetery during the funeral.

It’s their right – but that doesn’t make it right for them to do so, and they damned well know better.

To the pastor who wants to burn the Qu’ran – you’re old enough, and experienced enough to know better.

To the politicians who want to set timelines for withdrawals and draw-downs – do you honestly think the enemy sets timelines for when they plan to give up? You’re smart enough; you know better.

To the politicians and bureaucrats who allow themselves to be duped into ‘economies and efficiencies’ by cutting our human intelligence budgets because ‘our friends and allies’ have it covered; to you I have one question: When your child is planning on getting into trouble, do you hear about it from your office friends in time to stop it? They probably have kids in the same school, and their kids are honest, right?

They are our friends and allies, but we all know better than to rely on someone else to do something we know we need to do ourselves. It’s good for us if we are all involved so that we don’t let anything slip. That does mean, though, that we need to be involved; we need to be there too.

To the bureaucrats and politicians in this field, they have heard this for their entire careers but have refused to live by it, refused to implement it. To those men and women, in this day and age – you know better.

You know there are enemies of the state. You know there are child molesters in the streets. When between one out of three, and one out of four kids is sexually assaulted before they turn 18, and it is most often by someone they know very well, the excuse that it ‘couldn’t happen to my kid’ doesn’t fly. Similarly, when you know that many foreign nations’ have openly explained that they are actively attacking our electronic and communications infrastructure and our economic base by targeting utilities and private corporations for economic sabotage, you know better than to tell the public they are safe. You know better.

You have the right to say anything you want. You know better than to do it.

9 Years after 9/11 I look at the responses I see to quotes from our leaders about tolerance, respect, calm and deliberation and I see people frequently responding with whatever they feel they have the right to say, and often it is with flippancy and dismissive permissiveness that they feel they are entitled to attack those who have kept us safe.

I saw no military checkpoints. I saw no food and fuel rationing. I saw no massive increase in military equipment manufacture. I saw no emphasis by companies to restrict communication to restricted personnel lists. I saw nothing more than the Patriot Act and the 3oz rule. Sure the Patriot Act had some serious infringements on a private citizen’s rights and freedoms. But it’s not like the restrictiveness our own nation experienced in World War II.

There were no internship camps where all Muslims were forced to go.

The complaint about racial profiling? Do you remember what that even was? Are you seriously comparing today’s racial profiling techniques of law-enforcement with those of Hitler’s SS? You know better.

There were no anti-insurgency agencies generated since 9/11 to infiltrate and attack domestic groups in the same scale and scope as were in place in the days of the Hoover.

There was no fear of Agent Smith in his black suit, black loafers, crisp white shirt and dark glasses, his military style-brush cut, walking into your place of business or home to ask you some very serious and very unpleasant questions to determine if you were loyal or subversive.

I’m not advocating that we go that direction either. I am saying that the level of discussion has been raised to the degree of intrusion as if that were in fact what has been happening. It isn’t. It wasn’t. It hasn’t been. And we all know better.

We know better than to whine and wimper and throw fits about how hard done by we are by having to defend our nation. We know better.

It’s time, 9 years after 9/11 that we started to DO better. It's time we started to stop letting our feelings of entitlement dictate how we act and speak, and start recognizing that we may have the right to touch a hot stove burner, but we know better than to do it.

We have the right to burn the Qu'ran but only a complete insensitive idiot with no better sense than an ornery mule would be dumb enough to do it.

We have the right to protest military funerals, but we need to rise above that and stop the callous, disgusting and sabotaging self-agrandizement that allows us to do so.

We have the right to disagree with the former President or the current President on how they handle the issues of our national security and our economic policies; but we need to rise above simply calling them a 'nutsack.'

We need to not only know better, we need to do better.

Or we also know we're going to see more 1 in a million chances happen. And that won't make anyone feel better.

Hackers from Iran Make Announcement

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8906081424

Whether the article referenced above is legitimate and verified or not, it's hard to argue that at the very least it isn't being considered by governments, crooks, and terror organizations around the world.

And clearly they are not just targeting government websites, but corporations as well. After all, economic sabotage is a trick thousands of years old.

It's critical that business people, private citizens, and governments get their heads on straight and stop treating this like something you can deal with by a strategy of ignorance, ie if you ignore it long enough, it'll go away.

It's too serious, too important, and affecting too many businesses, people and countries for that.

If you want to learn more about how you and your company can start to protect yourselves from these kinds of attacks, and from incidents like the hostage taking that is working itself out live right now at the Discovery Channel HQ in Maryland, near our national capital, then you really need to sign up for my Business Self Defense seminars.

I know it's a commitment - a day and $295 of your money are a lot to ask you to set aside in this economy, but the consequences of ignorance, in this case, are extremely severe. Please help me build our national ability and your personal ability to resist and defend against this kind of threat.

C./

Chris Cayer.

News article about ongoing social media threat.

Just a note folks - this is being used not just to target individuals, but also companies. Companies are especially valuable targets as they usually have access to MANY users information, both internally and customer info.

http://www.zdnet.com/news/spam-scheme-spreading-via-facebook-chat/461066?tag=nl.e550

What does SIEM mean to you?

What does SIEM mean to you?

Go ahead - guess. No, don't Google it, cheater. What do YOU think SIEM stands for?

I'll wait.


Give up?


Ok - SIEM stands for Security Information and Event Management. It's how your computer network infrastructure handles electronic threats like hacks, viruses, denial of service attacks, catastrophic failures, etc.

And the question, then, of what SIEM means to you suddenly becomes a lot more important than 4 weird letters strung together.

Most technology pros probably won't know what they stand for either, so don't worry about it if you are one of the millions of business pros who didn't identify it right off the bat. You're not alone. And that's the real problem.

The latest quarterly report I've read from Gartner leaves me with some major eye-openers.

SIEM technology is based on two separate but complementary technologies: SIM Security Information Management, which deals primarily with log management and compliance reporting, and SEM Security Event Management, which deals with real-time monitoring and incident management.

According to Gartner, the largest driver of investment in SIEM technology has been in the US, and mostly because of a need to meet compliance requirements for SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) and PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations.

In other words, companies are doing it because governments are forcing them into it, not because they recognize the dangers in the marketplace and are trying to protect themselves, their companies, shareholders and clients from the threats at large.

The other point that is derived from that is that most investment then will be in the SIM technology, not the SEM or the SIEM blended technologies needed to handle these threats successfully.

This is validated by the increased spending on monitoring employee communications and browsing habits.

Sure, that's a valid and worthwhile expenditure, but if you are ignoring the prospect of someone who is not an employee attacking your infrastructure, then you're missing the missile while looking for the package that has more than 3oz of water.

And that, in a nutshell, is why the crooks love to attack companies. They know no one pays any attention to what they're doing because they are too busy keeping themselves distracted with make-work projects and ineffectual pilot projects.

Companies like yours may not know what SIEM stands for; I can assure you the crooks that live and breathe stealing from companies certainly do.

For more information about SIM/SEM/SIEM technology and the Gartner Report go to http://www.ciradar.com/Free-Resources/Free-Analyst-Reports.aspx.

The Merit Network.

As I am working hard on building a variety of new websites one of the sites that is undergoing tremendous overhaul is my http://www.yerpod.com site. As many of you know I have been putting off this project because it needs a lot of bandwidth that I haven’t had ‘til now.

Now that I can get to it, I’m making big changes, not only to the look and feel, but I’m also building in a lot of new content. In the next week or so when it gets its’ face-lift, you should see a lot of neat, cool features and interesting and engaging content.

One of the projects I’m working on is called The Merit Network. The Merit Network is a channel of Yerpod that will show content and shows about things that earn the exposure based on Merit. These are the people, places, events, skills, talents, and moments which are outstanding at what they are or do.

As I travel across the country and the planet doing what I do, I’ll post the best of what I find there, in video, blogs, articles, photos, and interviews.

Now comes your part. What exceptional people, places, events, things, etc. do YOU think deserve some exposure?

Comment, email, or send smoke signals about what you think DESERVES to be recognized as having Merit and I’ll try and get it up on the site on my next visit through town.

C./

Chris George

Better and Cheaper by the Basket

For those of you who haven’t heard, there’s a trend in groceries that is literally sweeping the nation.

A few months ago I was turned on to a website for a group I’d heard tidbits about for a year or so called Bountiful Baskets. It’s a food co-op that operates in a variety of states and is growing literally every day with new sites, new states, and new offerings.

To find out more about them you can go to their website http://www.bountifulbaskets.org.

The site is sparse and doesn’t really give you an appreciation for what you’re getting for your money, so here’s how it works. You make a ‘contribution’ per order of between $15 and $25. You show up at a site you select near where you live at a designated time, usually very early, on the next Saturday morning. When you pick up your order you get one laundry basket of fruit and one laundry basket of vegetables. These things are usually pretty full to the brim, and there’s often surplus that you can get as well.

You'll get an assortment of each - a head of lettuce, probably some tomatoes, onions, garlic, potatoes, zucchini, yams... who knows what you'll end up with, but you are sure to get some staples and some unusual treats thrown in. This week we got a box of Champagne Grapes included in the mix. Those are the tiny little ones with explosive flavour.

The co-op uses your contribution to order directly from farms and growers to get you the freshest food possible.

You can also order what are called specialty packs and cases, depending on what’s offered at the time. Right now it’s things like pears and an Italian Pack, but they also offer 5-packs of specialty breads, boxes of specialty cookies, granola bars, and other things.

You won’t know the exact contents of your main contribution order or the specialty packs, but the value is always undeniable. I have started to make Saturday mornings my main food shopping time and immediately compare what I got for $15 and what the stores are charging the same day for the same foods and I know I’m saving $35-60 each time I place an order.

For fresh food, straight from the farms, at amazing prices, check out http://www.bountifulbaskets.org and see what I mean.

The All New CGR! New Look, New Opportunity!

Welcome to the New Chris George Report!

In keeping with the times, I'm updating The Chris George Report to bring you more content. You can read all about it on the new About The Chris George Report page, but basically I'm aiming to bring you, my readers, more tools, more opportunities, more threats, more analysis, more art, more food - in short, more ME.

So let's get this show started, shall we?

Remember how Competitive Intelligence is about finding unique opportunities or threats that you WOULD NOT ordinarily find?

Today’s feature is about an OPPORTUNITY I’ve found to make building and monetizing your own membership site a whole lot easier and more affordable than you would ever expect.

First – what is a membership site? A membership site is a site with content that is available only to members, usually only to members who pay a subscription fee of some kind. The idea is that you add content regularly, and that content is of value to your members, enough for them to happily continue to pay the regular subscription fee when it comes due.

Next, how does this apply to you? The vast majority of people have a skill set or knowledge base of data that other people would love to have, but quite simply don’t. Whether you’re an outstanding cook with great insights and recipes or a professional-grade woodworker with fantastic plans for furniture and cabinetry, most everyone has something they’re good at, and good enough at it that other people would be willing to pay a nominal fee to keep up with the latest and greatest in that subject.

This means that you probably have something that people would pay to see, hear, or read that you can offer them regularly.

One group of friends I know is building their own animation site, where they produce new shows and their members pay a small fee to see them.

Many public speakers, trainers and subject matter experts would love to have a way to take their expertise, distill it into video clips, podcasts, and articles that their customers can get regularly; and a membership site is a great way to do it.

Most membership sites though are very hard to get up and running. They can be costly, time consuming to program and edit, and then comes the problem and cost of promoting it. Their developers may not be up to the job, there may be problems in interfacing with PayPal or the merchant account transaction software. You may have to shop around to get a shopping cart software package too. All of these steps are big hurdles for the ordinary person or business pro to get through in order to get a regular paycheque from interested buying consumers.

Until now.

I’ve found the solution.

Recently I started researching getting my own membership site online. Sure I’ve had experience building them for others before, so it helped me a lot in figuring things out and where to look for better information, but it opened my eyes to a number of tools to make the job a lot easier, and taught me about a lot of major traps to avoid.

Since I know that having even a few hundred subscribers a month can add up to thousands of dollars in regular revenue for any subscription site, I wanted to share my research with friends and contacts that can use an ongoing source of income that is in their complete control!

If you want to know about a completely easy, straight-forward way to add lots of regular income to your bank account (and in this recession, who doesn’t?) then please email me chris.cayer@reyactive.com and I’ll be happy to share all the details with you (free, no catch, otherwise it wouldn't be much of an opportunity, would it?).

Reyactive News

Today I’m busy trying to get the copy banged out to get my website up and running for Reyactive. I have to tell you I am uber excited right now. I am hiring a salesperson to rock out selling my courses and later to add on selling my book deals too. I think this is going to be golden, with an opportunity to really help business people get on top of the skills and training they need to be able to protect their companies, their employees and their clients from the very real threats out there.

Every day the news gives us more and more examples of how the bad guys are getting the upper hand.

Today it’s a $1500 cellphone hack. Friday it was news about epic fails in security from network access exposures.

What’s the massive risk that will be exposed tomorrow?

The world of business is getting more dangerous and less profitable for the vast majority of companies. You see that in the flat hiring numbers, the increased overtime percentages and the weak economy.

It’s only sensible that businesses take the opportunity to beef up on those skills that will get them the level of protection they need to be ahead of the curve from the bad guys.

I’m wrapping up the final stages of designing my all new Seminar on Business Self Defense. It’s an introduction to what’s really happening with real life examples of brand names that have already gone through it. These are companies you know, in situations your company may soon face, if it hasn’t already.

The website, the Seminar, the training courses, articles, blogs, travel, and art… it’s a busy time over at Reyactive. But it’s never boring!

Smart, Fast, Busy and Lucky.

Smart, Fast, Busy and Lucky.
The 95 MPH life from 10,000 feet.

So I’ve mentioned on Facebook and Twitter that my life has undergone some extraordinary changes in the last 4 months. I know I haven’t outlined them all. No Facebook page or tweet string is going to get you all those details, and better yet, the changes seem to be getting faster and more emphatic as each week goes by.

Let’s start with living situation. At the end of April I moved out of my mom’s house and in with Tracey. There’s no ring on a finger yet, but I did ask permission (to ask the question) from the relevant parental authority figures on our recent trip to Iowa. Now I’m waiting on getting my business up and running and getting a trip to Arkansas in before the important question is asked of the most important person.

The living together thing has been really very good. I need to get a few more things settled, get my income up to snuff, and start paying my share of the necessities, but that’s definitely in the works and I should see some major improvements there in the next 90 days. The relationship with Tracey is great and very easy going. The biggest stress factors are, and have consistently been from outside things, not relationship things, and it’s a wonderful, loving place to be in my life right now.

I should explain – the reason my income is a bit strained is because in the last 2 weeks I’ve made a major change in how I earn a living.

I quit US Airways officially last week. I tried to hold out for the 2 week’s notice but discovered that for that to count I had to work the last day of the two weeks and I already had my other job to do, so I didn’t leave there quite the way I wanted to, but maybe that was fate stepping in to make the break a clean one. I’ll admit, I met a lot of really great people who deserve more out of life than they receive because of the heart and soul they put into everything they do both inside their jobs and out.

I had been trying to climb the ladder at US Airways almost from Day 1. The whole reason for joining the company had been because they had a widely held reputation for promoting from within. Unfortunately it didn’t work out for me and over the last 4 years I had wound down all of my savings trying to keep my head above water while waiting for an opportunity to solidify at the airline for me.

In the last 6 months in particular I had spent a lot of time interviewing and applying to various companies outside of the US Airways group as well, and nothing quite materialized there either. For a variety of reasons there just did not seem to be a match.

I can honestly say, though, that by comparison to those friends and contacts of mine who were unemployed over that time period, thanks to Tracey’s extraordinary help and my own efforts thrown in, I received far more interviews, and far deeper consideration by employers than most everyone else – except the people who actually got the jobs, of course.

Still, it led me to consider why my job search wasn’t going the way I wanted it to, and the answer became obvious very quickly. I didn’t fit the mold.

See jobs in the current marketplace all are structured to make a very specific fit – someone has the exact keywords on their CV, they have the exact years of experience, and the exact educational requirement listed, and as long as it plugs and plays exactly like that, hiring managers are happy with it. For those who exceed those requirements and have a variety of skills and experiential aptitudes, hiring managers and recruiters actually are afraid that the candidate will get bored. They get the impression that adaptable people are adaptable because they desire high change environments. Adaptable people, on the other hand, become so because they develop skills to be able to fit in better with any environment. See the difference? Good, because most managers don’t.

They fill the position quickly and move on, with the hope that if the position was written up well enough, then a letter for letter match is the best fill for the position and so they won’t have to fill it again a few months from now.

As I saw this scenario playing out before me over and over again, I also started to see it happening to others who had a similar resume. Varied background, but having long tenures at each position. Depth of experience, but missing the keyword du jour. Adaptable and quick learners, but missing 10% of the applicable tool experience. These all were and are death-knells for our resumes. Not because anyone had any doubts that we could do the job, but because the manager assumed we’d get hired out from under them to do a much more challenging and rewarding job very, very soon.

The answer became obvious. No employer would hire me to do what I was good at as an employee, no matter what I brought to the table in experience or ability because they would all worry that something else would take me away when they needed me.
Every one of them believed I was eminently employable and should be hired, often by their own company, just not as an employee.

Hired, but not as an employee. Hired as a contractor or consultant. Hired on a business to business basis.

I needed to start my own business.

At last, the penny dropped and I started to mention and develop my plans. As soon as I started to mention them, I instantly started to get offers, and one of them came from David T. Fagan.

For those of you who don’t know, David is the former CEO of Guerrilla Marketing. If you don’t know who or what Guerrilla Marketing is, you should Google them. They are one of the best known advertising and marketing firms in the history of business marketing, and their owner, Jay Conrad Levinson is responsible for many of the brands that we all know like we know our own names. The Pillsbury Doughboy, Allstate’s ‘Good Hands’, Tony the Tiger, United’s Friendly Skies, Morris the Cat, and The Jolly Green Giant, to name just a few.

David helped regrow Guerrilla Marketing and still helps today. Guerrilla is still one of David’s best clients. David decided that he needed another opportunity, though, where he could do more than help rebuild a brand recognized and respected in more than 41 countries worldwide. He needed to help others gain the kind of success that he brought back to the Guerrilla brand.

With a new business organization philosophy in hand, David launched two new thoughts as part of his new business, and started it off with a book he co-wrote with Jay Conrad Levinson – Guerrilla Rainmakers. With a little luck you can see that book available online and in stores early next week. Guerrilla Rainmakers details David’s new philosophy and shows the reader in specific steps what it takes to lead a business successfully.

David launched his new company a few months ago and pulled me onboard starting just a week and a half ago. My role is to bring things to successful completion – to direct personnel and resources to the meeting of David and his clients’ needs.

David wasn’t looking for an employee, either. We’re working together on a contract basis, and David is a fulltime client. I also have built some contract training relationships, most notably with Webucator.com which led to my trip to Toronto this month and an online course I delivered in March.

Between the two of those contracts I am already making more than I was at US Airways, but still not nearly enough, and not yet able to have that self-assurance that should one of the contracts have some down time that I would be able to roll with the punches.

Tracey and I sat down and I explained my idea to her, my idea for starting a real business and for making a real effort at developing my own income streams.

Last Friday those dreams really started to solidify with the registration of my new business, Reyactive LLC. For those of you who know me, play with the company name and you’ll see the association fairly quickly I’m sure. I figure if it worked for Harpo…

Reyactive will be the overarching home base for several different revenue streams. This mirrors my model for consistent profitability that I developed years ago and never had the chance to take for a spin.

First, Reyactive will publish my books and the books of other authors. As many of you know, I have several books that I need to wrap up and get out into the world, and Reyactive is going to help me do that. Not only will we publish the books, but I will hook the author up with national exposure through radio interviews in markets across the country, list their books for sale in all the major selling sites and line up book signings for them as well. I will help them promote their books by teaching them real book selling strategies I’ve developed and learned that will help them make their books more profitable and extend the awareness of their books across the nation.

Second, I’m going to give courses on my books and on a variety of subjects with which I have a credible expertise. I’ll also deliver courses on how to maximize your frequent flier benefits including everything from miles to elite status on all the major airlines. The way I figure it, most of us can earn tens of thousands of miles a year more than we are right now, largely for doing what we’re already doing. We also aren’t taking advantage of the frequent flier statuses available at the major airlines so we’re costing ourselves comfort, money and hassle for no good reason.

Those courses will be starting as soon as July, so I should start seeing an additional income surge as of August. Between contract training and proprietary training I will have a very flexible and profitable revenue stream here and be in a position to help an awful lot of people do what they do better.

Third I have the opportunity later this year to launch several radio shows, both here in Phoenix and nationally. I’m going to be working with the stations to nail those down and start acquiring sponsors and booking guests over the next month, so look for news there as well. As many of you know, I have started writing articles for Examiner.com, and of course I have my blog. I will be adding more articles and more blogs in the coming months as well with different topics so you should see a steady stream of different material from me as time goes by. The third arm then is going to be my media arm, starting with radio and web and expanding from there.

The fourth income stream will be from consulting. I don’t expect to have many concurrent clients here; only a few will suffice nicely to meet and exceed my revenue goals for the remainder of the year. With David Fagan as my first consulting client, and several others waiting in the wings, things bode well here too.

The fifth revenue stream is my art. I’m taking time to get some key pieces finished and will start seriously promoting some of my good stuff, not just the trial balloons you may have seen before. I’m working on a couple of new sculptures, some truly unique paintings, and more of my gem and 3-D floral art. I’m expanding my gem art to include other 3-D subjects beyond trees, adding new fish pieces, cacti, and other subjects. I will also start planning a true Art Event for collectors. More details on this later, but I think I have a real winner here.

So you see, Reyactive has a very active role in representing who I am and what I do. It gives me the forum to be able to help people be more successful while also giving me the opportunity to help myself share those skills and knowledge strengths with others.

And it also gives me a job from a boss who knows my talents and is willing to take a gamble on my depth and breadth of experience. Instead of just looking for a job that I could do well, I am creating a job that fits me. And the pay should be a lot better too.

This month I also got to travel to Iowa to meet Tracey’s family. It was lovely meeting her Clan, and getting to know her friends and some of the background detail of her life. I also got to meet some of the fuzzy people who make up her extended family too, which is always a treat for me.

We went up for Tracey’s friend Kim’s wedding. The wedding was delightful, the weather, not so much. I think someone was standing nearby holding a large magnifying glass over top of us so the sun could, with focused radiation, not just beat the last living breath out of us, but actually begin to melt human tissue. Certainly the suit I wore was both a blessing and a curse, simultaneously causing and hiding massive heat and humidity induced perspiration.

Fortunately poor Kim and Heath didn’t have to stay out much longer after having met us as we were near the end of the crowd to pass through the receiving process, and I can only hope that the very next thing they were enabled to do was have something cold to drink in a highly air-conditioned environment.

Certainly their idea of mixing the sands of the family members together during the ceremony held a lot of symbolic interest, and I regret deeply having had the overwhelming compulsion to hope that they’d hurry that part up in order to get everyone out of the heat.

The heartbreaking news that Heath’s mom had passed shortly after the start of the reception was truly saddening. Clear right from the first moment, every person there, whether they were close friends, or like me newly minted, felt for Heath and his bride and for the whole family. It’s easy to talk of the circle of life, and I’m sure they’ve heard that enough to last a lifetime, but seeing it right there in front of you in a single occasion is decidedly impactful, even to the casual observer. I definitely wish Heath and Kim well in their new journey as bride and groom and I’m sure Tracey would echo my sentiments when I say I can’t wait for them to get the chance to come down to Phoenix so we can show them a good time and get to know them better.

Although I have shared a lot of news with you, I know it’s only the tip of the iceberg. I hope you’ll all stay strong and keep up with my news as it unfurls in the weeks and months to come.

As I’ve often said, at least I’m not boring.

Cheers for now,

C./

The Economic World War

The Economic World War.

Terrorism, kidnapping, fraud, spies, crooks, blackmail, natural disasters, murder, stolen identities, betrayals, secrets, drugs, prostitution, extortion, piracy, politics, and special interests – the War on Business has all the elements of the most gripping drama or thriller and plays out with new chapters live every day.

These are not just threats faced by our governments, they are faced by every day people and every day businesses, from local farmers to the biggest multinational corporations.

This isn’t about defending companies by arguing against issues of corporate responsibility. If anything, this is an argument to show that corporations have even more responsibilities than they have accepted in the past 30 years.

Businesses today can no longer justify hiding behind the curtain of ignorance as to what the real dangers and threats to their success and survival are. Those threats are hanging over their bottom lines but also over the livelihoods of their employees and the tax revenues of the nation.

No longer can the justification for all things business be the answer to the question, ‘What is the value-added of this?’ The global business model of sell, sell, sell, attack, attack, attack is on the tipping point of extinction. Just like the lemmings that lead the pack over the cliffs, modern leaders of all political and business stripes are leading us all into the path of economic extinction.

Survival is more than just what ‘sells,’ and survival of the fundamental basis of being able to do business is what’s under attack. And once that foundation crumbles, so too will unravel the tangled thread of the government funding formulas that depend on tax revenues, so the implication that these are just business issues is also out of context with reality. This is a threat to our entire social fabric from businesses to private people to governments; we’re all under direct attack whether you can see it or not.

Our entire economic structure is under constant attack by multiple opponents with weapons we have never seen before, technologies we’ve never had to deal with before, and alliances that can be timed with an egg timer.

Sean Sullivan, a security adviser at F-Secure, an Internet security firm, was quoted in an article recently as saying, “Last year there were more online bank robberies than there were actual on-site bank robberies."

The Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans lost about $559 million to Internet thieves in 2009. And the unreported internet theft rate is estimated at over 4 times that much, and that is only the amount for private individuals, NOT corporations!

The most recent estimates I could find for the losses to the European airlines due to the volcanic activity in Iceland already far exceed $4 billion USD and are climbing daily with each new set of interruptions caused by the spewing ash clouds. That doesn’t reflect the impact on US or other carriers, just the EU airlines. Combined with the climbing costs of jet fuel, increased energy tax costs, oil speculation, arcane air traffic control systems, medieval international travel industry structures and regulations, international terrorism threats, heightened government enforced security regulations and protocols, reduced business travel and other direct, immediate challenges, the survival of every air carrier in the world, and literally millions of employees’ livelihoods is in real jeopardy. People won’t just see fares go up if the airlines collapse; they’ll see their ability to travel anywhere evaporate in a flash. Need to fly from New York to Chicago? Try a $1600 ticket in coach that you have to book 4-6 months in advance on for size. Sound outrageous? If you only have a couple of very financially weak airlines left, there won’t be enough seats to be able to go anywhere for less.

As if that were not enough, organized crime has targeted airlines as a weak link in the area of credit card fraud. It has also targeted virtually every other form of call center operation where a reasonably large amount of credit can be used and by one means or another converted into transferable liquid assets.

Online dating sites are also a hotbed for organized criminals to steal your money, your identity, or your social network resources. They lurk online pretending to be there like anyone else looking for romance only to steal everything you have, including your already fragile ability to trust a potential romantic match.

Companies trying to do ‘ethical business’ by employing African farmers to produce crafts and goods for fair trade sale here in the US and abroad are being put at increasing risk as their employees are hunted and targeted for kidnapping for ransom schemes by gangs of criminals, pirates, and thugs. No longer is it enough to pay a fair wage – now companies must also provide security forces and bodyguard services for local and traveling employees and their families.

The piracy issue along Africa’s east coast with shipping of every kind of product from oil to consumer goods and military equipment is another threat both to the supply of product in key markets but also to the lives of the employees of the shipping company, and to the livelihoods of each company involved in the products’ supply chain.

Leading directly to the crash in 2008 Goldman Sachs was taken in a corporate identity scam for over $600 million and has since had to admit over $1 billion in additional losses from scams, loose fiscal management and gross negligence in researching the bona fides of the companies they invested in and their ability to make good on the investments.

How are all these items related? Companies are being attacked financially and those costs are always passed on to the consumer. In this case, doubly so as we have seen not only the cost of doing business rise, and therefore the supplies of consumable goods decrease, but we have also been tasked with bailing out troubled companies through our taxes and through international loans to our government that we will have to repay from our taxes and whose interest payments will also be paid from our tax dollars. That means fewer services can be funded for things the country needs because a large portion of our budget will be dedicated to paying back the debt we have incurred to prop up troubled companies. And in every case the reason why the company is being attacked is because it is vulnerable, and it is always vulnerable because it keeps making bad decisions based on bad or lacking information. The right information can be used to predict problems before they manifest themselves as billion dollar disasters.

How could someone predict the impact of a volcanic eruption in Iceland, you may ask? Easy. According to the Global Volcanism Program more than 60 volcanoes erupt each year. Most of the dormant and active volcanoes on the planet have been identified and documented, excluding those under the oceans, which is a whole other topic. Although no one would be able to forecast the eruption of any individual volcano, it really is not challenging to deduce that some volcanic activity somewhere could get out of hand at any time– we have more than enough evidence in recorded recent history to accept that as given fact. Looking at basic geography, laying out where the most active volcanoes are and where other dormant volcanoes could have the most impact, an impact management plan can be designed with features to handle most of the worst and medium case scenarios involving an eruption.

This is not something governments are solely responsible for doing – companies each have to have their own response plans ready for natural disasters of every kind – fire, flood, power outages, ice storms, earthquakes, hurricanes, twisters, sinkholes… the whole 9 yards. Without it, every company is simply a sitting duck waiting to be served up on a platter with orange sauce.

Disaster recovery plans get pooh-poohed with that awful expression, “but really…. How likely is that?” Let’s see… this year alone? 1 major, ongoing volcano eruption, 6 or more major nation-changing earthquakes, 1 climate changing oil-spill, 1 record-breaking winter, 1 record breaking spring flood… and that’s just off the top of my head. How likely is it? It’s time to get real. These ‘unlikely’ events happen every day. It’s actually far more reasonable to ask yourself when will they not happen instead.

Count the number of incident free days as opposed to the number of incident days and you just might get the shock of your life.

And that’s just the short list of natural disasters, not including the 4 major mine disasters globally we’ve witnessed just in the last two months. Take a minute and think about the additional list of human incidents including terrorism, crime, political upheaval, and so on that create incident days as well.

Add in domestic and international financial collapses and currency fluctuations and add those to your list of incident days while you’re at it.

Throw in supplier shortages, power outages, computer viruses, employee strikes, credit crunches, internet attacks, computer network failures, IRS audits and other familiar incidents and add those to your list of incident days too.

How likely is it to have an incident day, really? How exposed are you really? What do you think?

It’s not good enough to have an incident recovery plan. You have to have some measure in place to reduce the number and lessen the impact of the incidents you do encounter. You have a responsibility – to your investors, to your suppliers, to your employees, to your creditors, and to your community to do what you must do to protect your company from incidents and to maintain long-term profitability.

Not to mention the fact that you deserve the extra flexibility, peace of mind, additional time in your day and stress reduction that comes from having a proactive incident prevention plan. Just like every medical person says we should do more to prevent injuries and illnesses by being proactive about our health, so too do we need to be proactive in looking after the health of our companies.

I hear no end of excuses about why companies and individuals don’t have to look out for sources of threats. ‘What are the odds? One in a million?’ Sure. And your company handles 40+ million transactions a year, so 40 times a year your company is in jeopardy of total collapse, and apparently that number sits well with you. 40 times a year your company could be exposed to the one individual who would do the one thing that would bring your company to a screeching halt. Not to mention the millions of potential cheap opportunists who really could care less about your company, they just see an easy target to steal from. Or the organized criminal enterprises who make their living from doing that one thing you don’t think anyone would ever do to you.

Yip, one in a million odds. Funny how often that million comes up to bite you in the butt.

And you still aren’t motivated to do anything about it?

Or how about the ex-employee that launched the virus that took out your network for 3 days last year and the months of headaches it caused trying to clean up the mess afterwards.

Enough.

Enough, I say. I’ve had enough. Enough of the excuses. Enough of the put downs from people who ultimately end up unemployed because the company they worked for didn’t see one more disaster, one more incident coming.

Enough excuses from the people who are paid to know better. Enough passing the buck. When you personally get into a financial jam, you can blame the economy, you can blame your job loss, you can blame anyone you want, but the responsibility for fixing the situation always stays the same regardless of who is to blame. The buck always stops with you.

The same is true with companies, and with governments.

It’s not the unions’ faults our governments spent too much. The governments had to agree to the union contracts in the first place. The governments had to grow big enough to be at risk of financial collapse during a disastrous down market.

It’s not company’s fault that the pirates stole their ship – the pirates did it. The fact that the company sailed an unprotected ship in pirate infested waters had absolutely nothing to do with it, I’m sure.

It’s not the airlines’ fault that the volcano in Iceland erupted and air travel has been interrupted time and again since then. And having routes that allowed for no alternative options built in with the governments, airports, and industry partners in question, having no back up crews and aircraft to reaccommodate to in a crisis as part of the financial plan and no means to use them to solve the backlog due to air traffic congestion has absolutely nothing to do with it either. Nope, no company or government responsibility there. No need for governments and industry to work together urgently to come up with a real working plan to solve the problem that could affect travelers and global economies for the next 2 years.

Enough. This isn’t rocket science but managing a company is a lot more than adding a three letter title to the end of your name and having an opinion. Managing a company involves a prime responsibility to that company, to its’ owners, to its’ employees, to its’ customers, and to its’ community. That responsibility is more than a vague mission/vision statement or company dream – it’s an every-minute-of-every-day-with-no-days-off-and-always-on-call fact.

Fact – there are Bad Guys out there.

Fact – natural disasters happen.

Fact – suppliers can fail.

Fact – employees can make mistakes.

Fact – governments can change the rules.

Fact – wars happen.

Fact – other countries’ governments actively try to conduct economic sabotage; that’s attacking companies they see as vulnerable, companies like yours!

Fact – equipment fails.

Fact – competition competes.

Fact – technology changes.

Fact – interest rates change.

Fact – money supply changes.

Fact – currency exchange rates change.

Fact – stocks go up and down.

Fact – you’re responsible for being proactive in defending and leading your company through all these situations. Your job is to ‘deal with it.’

And here’s one more fact – if you don’t have a competent Competitive Intelligence resource then you don’t have enough facts to do your job.

And last but not least… the number of companies with any Competitive Intelligence resources at their disposal? Precious few, perhaps less than 100 in the whole country, and fewer than 400 in the whole world.

Company after company spends fortunes getting the latest and greatest Business Intelligence applications, assuming that this is in fact a comprehensive Competitive Intelligence resource.

Business Intelligence, involving tracking trends for customers and supply chain info is great and helpful, but it’s still only 10% of the story that makes up Competitive Intelligence.

Business intelligence tells you nothing about Organized Crime’s roll in your industry. BI doesn’t proactively predict a management plan for natural disasters like volcanic eruptions. BI only goes so far.

Competitive Intelligence goes so much further, and without it you can’t have enough information to make your decisions, to guide your company in the current business environment.

Putting it very bluntly, relying on Business Intelligence to run your business without any Competitive Intelligence to put it in context and add validation is like building a mile long bridge using only a paving machine and no engineer. You might get a nice finish to your top coat of asphalt, but if there’s no actual properly engineered bridge under it, then it’s not terribly safe to drive across, is it? How safe are your decisions? Do they have CI behind them or just BI?

And will they stand up to the tests that natural disasters, national enemies, natural competitors, organized crime, economic predators, and others will throw at them day after day? Or are they just a band-aid to get you through the day with the hope that tomorrow you won’t have to deal with them any more?

When your country comes under the overwhelming plethora of attacks that I listed above, generally the country is at war with somebody. When the whole world is engaged in these kinds of all-out fights, that war turns global and we call that a World War. As we have discovered throughout history, the strongest alliances are the most likely victors in these kinds of conflicts, but inevitably the whole world loses because of the conflict. It then usually spurs tremendous industrial growth and innovation in its’ wake.

Here then we have all the root elements of a global war but between businesses. It’s also a war between businesses and criminals, businesses and other countries, and between businesses and Mother Nature. In truth, this is the first Economic World War.

Whether you want to be in it or not, you don’t get to have a say any more than the civilians impacted by the prior military conflicts of past World Wars had a say in the impacts to their families and lives. Everyone everywhere IS affected. Whether you’re in a Communist country outside of the Capitalist markets of the West or whether you’re a head of industry in the largest free-market in the world, it doesn’t matter. You are both impacted by this. Your governments, commodity supplies, prices, employment, retirement, health care treatment options, tax levels and family structure are all affected by the Economic World War, so putting your head in the sand, your fingers in your ears, and a sock in your mouth really isn’t doing you any good at all.
Your company is at war, and just like any war, you can give up now and let the enemy do whatever it likes, you can hide behind a bigger company or government and see if they can protect you, or you can stand up and fight.

You now know that you have many, many opposing forces to deal with, many of which you cannot detect at the moment. You need better resources, you need better information. You need better intelligence.

You need to know who your enemies are and you need to know which of your allies could sell you down the river tomorrow in the name of their own survival.

You need Competitive Intelligence, and you need it now.

Families even need their own version of it in order to plan their careers, finances and lives, so it isn’t just a corporate monolith issue here at play. Those same economic forces that are duke-ing it out in the global marketplace are the same ones that will tell you you don’t have a job tomorrow, so you’d better believe you have a vested interest in this stuff too.

CI is a big deal but its’ only as valuable as you’re prepared to make it by using it.

Buying important data and then not reading it, not using it to make better choices, not implementing those resulting choices… it won’t matter how much you spend on CI. If that’s the way you handle it, no amount of CI can help.

This is an Economic World War. You’re not a spectator any more, and this isn’t a spectator sport. This is a fight for your financial life and for your personal and economic freedoms. You can have all the legally enshrined freedoms you want, but if you have to give them up to someone stronger in order to survive, then what freedoms do you really have?

Think this through.

It will make all the difference in your investments, your employment, even with the amount of time you get to spend with your family. It isn’t just big picture here; you, of You Personally Inc., have a say in how this war unfolds. This is your time to act. Now. Not tomorrow, not next week, not after the next market meltdown. Now.

The time to stand and be counted isn’t when they start handing out the medals and ribbons and honours of distinctive service. The time to stand and be counted is when those honours are earned.

Now is your time to earn a better future, to stand up and fulfill your responsibility to your company, your colleagues and employees, your suppliers, customers and community. And most importantly, now is the time to stand up and fulfill your responsibility to yourself.

Build your company’s resources, tools and defenses by building your company’s Competitive Intelligence resource access. Use that intelligence to make better decisions. Hire the services of those who can meet your company’s real needs, not just what the latest trend data says would be a good idea.

Survive.

Plan for better days by planning for the bad ones too.

Educate yourself on all the data you’ve been missing by not getting enough of the right data in the first place.

Train your employees and colleagues to always look for opportunities to gain that data and use it proactively to prevent your firm’s vulnerabilities from being exploited.

Fight the fight that needs fighting. Win the Economic World War.

Travel Industry at Risk of Collapse in 2010-2011.

Major media have printed the tallies and have come to the conclusion that more flights have been cancelled in the last 2 weeks than in the 2 weeks following 9/11.

I need to admit here that I do work in the travel industry as my day job, but I’m not identifying with whom, and I’m not singling out any one element of the industry as being any harder hit than another. I’m not advocating government bailouts, and I’m not advocating investors flee the industry out of negative speculation.

What I am doing is providing an infrastructure and economic analysis of what has happened and what that means to both the US and the world economy as a whole.

The insensitivity of government funded insurance companies having monster bashes at big-time resorts notwithstanding, since 9/11 the travel industry, both business travel and tourism based, has been ever so slowly recovering these last 8 and a half years.

Oil prices drove airlines into cutting service levels and raising fares and ancillary revenues from the ever un-popular checked bag fees and on-board meals.

The economic downturns have curbed consumer and business travel spending to events and travel venues by massive degrees. Las Vegas is a comparative ghost town with over 50% of the flights there dropped from service in the last year or so alone.

Other tourism destinations like Laughlin and Reno are even harder hit while major airlines have generally curbed or stopped service altogether in some cases.

Mexico had the distinction of adding the H1N1 scare to the travel reduction causes as last spring the entire Mexican tourism industry unraveled.

Cruise lines are reporting massive reductions in the number of passengers this year, and even the perennial given, time-shares have become ever more available to rent as owners are unwilling or unable to travel.

The weather this winter in Florida has had a big impact on their tourism industry as well as their farming industry, producing a coordinated double-barreled attack on the Floridian state economy.

Between the industry losses from those who are unable to afford to travel, and the losses from those whose travel was curtailed by weather or business economic constraints, and those whose travel expenditures had to be refunded to them because of the weather, it’s pretty safe to say that the travel industry has lost perhaps as much as 40% or more of their revenues for the months of November to March.

Think about that number for a minute.

It’s a generalization, but it’s a reasonably educated guess.

Remember, if the airlines don’t bring in the passengers, then the hotels don’t get to resell the hotel rooms and don’t get the ancillary revenues they depend on like restaurant takes and guest services. And if the passengers don’t make it to the destination then the local retailers don’t do any business and the local entertainment venues have no customers. And if there are no travelers then there are no tourists filling up the local eateries, renting cars, or connecting to cruise ships. Connecting train and bus service loses passenger base, destination weddings get cancelled, conventions and events fail or cancel, and so much more.

In one fell swoop, the massive snow storms in Washington, D.C. leveled the boom on the national economy while we’re still in one of the largest economic downturns in a century.

The natural reaction is for everyone to tighten their belts yet another notch, stay home and save that family holiday for another year when things get a little rosier and everyone can see a little light at the end of the tunnel. And for most people, I’d advocate that approach to keeping yourself solvent in a crisis; but…on a national economic level the result of that belt tightening is going to have extreme long term consequences.

Here’s what you can already see coming down the pipeline in the coming year: airlines don’t have a big profit margin on their overall operations. No airline has the ability to absorb a 40% whack during a peak travel season, especially not when they are still reeling from a series of economic disasters including 9/11, extraordinary fuel prices, and international business travel collapse. By definition a company that might have between a 4% and a 7% profit margin is going to hit economic crisis when they suddenly lose 40% of their revenues over a 6 month or longer window. And when a company can’t handle that kind of crisis – it gets sold to someone else or it closes its’ doors. Here and now you can tell that one or more of the major domestic US carriers is going to be crippled as a result of this year’s weather and will face economically forced industry consolidation or final bankruptcy.

Similarly Las Vegas is in dire straits. Not just the resorts that were already in financial distress as a result of the state of the economy, but the city and the State of Nevada as well. The state and the city both depend on the revenues generated from the tourism industry, and a 40% or higher cut in those revenues is going to cause state-wide economic crisis. If you recognize what the destruction of the car industry did to Detroit, you’re about to see the same thing happen to Nevada unless something dramatic happens to change things there. And that’s a scary prospect.

Mexico’s tourism industry is still recovering from the lingering impact of the H1N1 issue last year on this year’s new travel bookings, and with the earth quakes in the Caribbean, Haiti and Grand Cayman in particular, the Caribbean is also in dire straits. Jamaica is still suffering from the negative publicity surrounding the high crime rates there, as are the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations. With 20-40% reductions in tourist dollars coming to their struggling economies, those nations will be pushed to the brink of disaster as well.

Major, successful sports franchises are almost universally offering reduced seasons-ticket prices and reduced single and multi-game package prices to lure customers who are not renewing as readily in the current financial downturn.

This means there is also a corresponding reduction in spending on team merchandise, advertising revenues, and sponsorships, even in an Olympic year.

All of this means again fewer people traveling to games, fewer hotel rooms being booked and reduced revenues at venues and retailers.

The final point? Expect to see hotel chains consolidate or go under too, as well as thousands of restaurants, retail outlets, and entertainment venues. Musicians, artists, waiters, servers, bar staff, taxis, limousine drivers, wholesalers, cashiers, stock clerks, retail managers, cleaners, call center employees and so on are going to hit the unemployment lines this year as a result of this winter’s economic wallop.

And when you do want to go somewhere next time? You can already expect the prices to be a lot higher once the number of suppliers drops to practically none.

So for those of you who think the travel industry’s troubles don’t affect them because you don’t really travel anywhere, give it another thought. When California, Florida, Arizona, Hawaii, Alaska, St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania, and Nevada all have a massive economic disaster on their hands due to suddenly and dramatically decreased tourism and travel revenues and the state governments lose 12-40% of their income and sales tax collections when they are already having a hard time making ends meet, think again as to whether travel impacts your life. When the Federal government loses an equivalent amount of its tax revenues on the same basis, think again about whether the state of our national travel infrastructure has an impact on you and your family. When costs for shipping goods, mail, skyrocket or the cost of seeing loved ones goes back to the rates of the 1970’s and 80’s where it was 2-5x what it is today, think again about the impact of the travel industry on your life. Even if you don’t happen to travel.

Barring some extraordinary market turnaround, that’s where we’re headed, and apparently even winter weather alone can take us there. It might be time for us as individuals to think a little more about the role travel has in our lives and how we as citizens plan to handle it going forward.

Those who have been following my blogs will note that the last few months I have been very quiet.

Shortly after my last blog about the world not spinning anymore, the world instead erupted with volcano-like qualities.

Life has NOT been boring.

Work in the travel industry during the last several weeks has been a nearly Herculean feat, trying to reaccommodate hundreds of thousands of global travelers affected by horrific weather, massive extra holiday traffic, flooding at major airports, new security issues and regulations, enhanced screenings and extraordinary lines – it’s been a zoo with a LOT of extra hours.

Christmas itself was an unqualified disaster – I’m not sure how I could have screwed it up more, looking back at it now. It started off with exhaustion so bad that I seriously considered going to the hospital just to get some sleep and fluids in me. That led to my system being run down to the point of developing laryngitis and a flare up of whatever bug it was I had this past fall. And I still have some of those effects lingering today where my breathing is somewhat restricted with even the slightest exertion.

I spent most of Christmas bouncing through it doing my best to stay conscious, let alone paying any attention to my family or respect to the holiday that was being observed.

Those are still just excuses though as I had a responsibility to my family (Tracey and my mother) to handle it better, plan for it better, and treat the holiday and them with more respect.

That’s the bulk of the bad news in a nutshell. There’s more in the aftermath of Christmas, but that’s just an extension of the original problems.

The good news is every bit as momentous.

I’m very close to making an announcement regarding a change to my work environment. I don’t want to jinx anything, but there are a number of opportunities that I’m looking at and that stand a good chance of becoming offers. I’m not letting up my foot off the gas though… this year I’m making a serious change, and it will happen sooner rather than later. I still have a Race to finish. :)

In fact I've already started to make a change in some ways. I have a new contract position with a training company that looks like it will fill in some down time with much needed revenue and networking opportunities.

My art projects are taking some shape and getting some acclaim. The two shows last year have showed that my gem-media trees are very popular and I will soon be adding a new line of gem-media fish that I'll show off in my next show in February.

My 3-D floral works are slow to materialize but I expect to have a spectacular field of 3-D flowers painted some time this spring.

I’m now working with a couple of other artists to bring regular art events to the greater Phoenix area – we’re going to add a whole slough of special new art features and special events that you *really* won’t want to miss. I don’t want to give anything away but I have about 6 special events that will *REALLY* rock Phoenix and I can’t wait ‘til I can release the details.

I’m still working on my websites too. The master site is going to rock out some time this spring. You’re going to be amazed by what you’ll be able to see and do once I get it rolled out. For instance, you’ll be able to….oh…no…mustn’t…tell… you… the … secret…yet…

My books are still being re-written for the umpteenth hundredth time. Call me a perfectionist, I can take it. But this year really is going to be different as I have a whole new network of people I’m working with to get them finished, produced, published and distributed, along with a kick-ass speaking tour to go with their release.

Just so you don’t worry though, I will also be releasing a few white papers this year as well. They can be released much more easily and you’ll get your hands on some cutting edge info, tools, and analysis that you’ll *wish* you had had before. The business world is in for some earth-shaking news when I let those out of the bag, and you will have the first kick at that breaking news when it comes out.

My new games are still in development – again, I want to make sure they aren’t just good, I want to make sure they reinvent the industry. Those of you who know me, you know I’m bringing the “boom” to games – whole new ideas in magic, skills, weaponry, plot-lining, character development, advancement, world view, monsters, traps, religion… the whole concept of gaming is going to be bounced on its’ ear when I’m through. Since I put them back into development their release is obviously delayed, but I’m so confident that the product is getting better and better that I know you’ll be thrilled with it when I’m done.

I have a start on a release for my Necromancer Bob series, and I have a whole other series that I'm starting to hash out the details for this week. You will probably see one or the other unleashed by the end of the year.

I'm working with some friends of mine in music and comedy as well as a few in video production to launch a couple of special live entertainment events for Phoenix as well, which will probably get some media coverage and maybe a little national and international exposure. Maybe I'll share those details with you soon too. Maybe. We'll see.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, so keep posted and I’ll try to keep up and keep pushing the limits of what I can accomplish.

2010’s going to be fun.