The Chris George Report

2011-12-14T06:55:00.001-08:00

Today will be the BIG REVEAL of the new video for the very human and powerful story behind the Choose Your Own Life book project. Stories like this one really don't come up all that often and we need to take the opportunity to hear them when we get the chance. What is your favorite life story of overcoming adversity? http://ow.ly/7Z5nN

2011-12-14T06:45:00.001-08:00

How do you let people know when they need a wake-up call in their decision-making process? How would YOU use an app that brought people to their senses in a fun, entertaining, and positive way? http://ow.ly/7Z4Sj

2011-12-08T17:05:00.001-08:00

Have you seen the video for the New Smack App? Anyone YOU know who needs a virtual wake-up call? http://ow.ly/7TAPW

2011-12-08T08:05:00.001-08:00

I've been out to several networking events lately, and am hearing a lot of great feedback about Dr Martha Reed's Smack App project on Indiegogo...

It's a really interesting project and a great way to introduce a fun, new product to the market place. Have you seen this project yet? http://ow.ly/7SXBM

2011-12-08T07:55:00.001-08:00

We've heard your feedback and we're shooting a new project video for Dave Deib's Choose Your Own Life book project today. We really need your support to get this project funded and time is winding down.

It really is a worthwhile book, but clearly something in the project message isn't working. What advice do YOU have for making this project better? What would encourage YOU to either make a donation or share the project with others? http://ow.ly/7SYbN

2011-12-06T11:06:00.001-08:00

FINALLY!!! The NEW Reyactive Chamber FaceBook Store is live and online - please drop by and see our FANTASTIC sales on brand new classes! http://ow.ly/7QF9o

2011-12-06T08:27:00.001-08:00

Another much appreciated donation to announce from Scott Kisicki - our second Thinking Right Side Up donation! THANK YOU SOOO MUCH, Scott! And thank you all for sharing the project which is every bit as important to our success! http://ow.ly/7Qq7P

2011-12-06T08:21:00.001-08:00

This project has a new reward for a $5 contribution that will help it get published and distributed to help people see REAL HOPE! http://ow.ly/7Qprd

2011-12-06T08:19:00.001-08:00

We're in the last three weeks of this project and we REALLY need it to start taking off - PLEASE share and support this book! http://ow.ly/7Qp9a

2011-12-05T14:31:00.001-08:00

Are you ready for a whole new webTV series? Crowd Starts tells you the stories of a lot of great people working on the bleeding edge of technology, business, new products, spirituality, health and more... http://ow.ly/7PzxJ

2011-12-05T09:34:00.001-08:00

New project updates including interview on Author's Corner and a new $5 reward for the Choose Your Own Life project http://ow.ly/7PaMw

2011-12-05T09:13:00.001-08:00

Another wonderful FIRST! Tina Sacchi grabbed our FIRST Thinking Right Side Up reward with her donation this weekend. THANK YOU SOOO MUCH, Tina! http://ow.ly/7P8vo

2011-12-05T09:09:00.001-08:00

The Smack App project on Indiegogo also wants to give a HUGE THANK YOU to Sandra Saenz for signing up for the FIRST Just Smack Me reward! http://ow.ly/7P7XN

2011-12-05T09:06:00.001-08:00

This weekend was great - we had a great start to The Smack App project with several donations which is AWESOME! A HUGE shout out to Sevan Poetry for his donation! http://ow.ly/7P7DB

2011-12-04T20:58:00.001-08:00

Do you know someone who needs THIS kind of an intervention? http://ow.ly/7OoWD

Then check out The Smack App at http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Smack-App

2011-12-04T20:53:00.001-08:00

The Choose Your Own Life project has an update... http://ow.ly/7OoOd

2011-12-03T16:05:00.001-08:00

Have you 'Liked' the new Smack App Fan Page yet? http://ow.ly/7NA6H

2011-12-03T11:00:00.003-08:00

Want to help support something NEW? Check out http://ow.ly/7Nzag

2011-12-03T11:00:00.001-08:00

Wayne Dyer's special includes great examples of people who had every reason to hide behind the excuses in their lives but who made another choice and changed their lives. http://ow.ly/7NzAv

2011-12-03T10:50:00.001-08:00

If you want to know more about how you can change YOUR life, help out THIS project... http://ow.ly/7NzER

2011-12-03T10:45:00.001-08:00

Wayne Dyer's program "Excuses Be Gone" is a great piece that shows us real evidence of why the excuses of 'The Economy', 'our DNA', 'our current situation', etc. have no real power to stop us from living the lives we choose. http://ow.ly/7NzuL

2011-12-02T11:11:00.001-08:00

Do you know someone who needs a virtual wake-up call? Check out The Smack App http://ow.ly/7MOn8

2011-12-02T07:35:00.001-08:00

Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in getting up every time we do - Confucius. Help others get back up by getting this book published... http://ow.ly/7MtEb

2011-12-01T17:41:00.001-08:00

New payments system that only costs $0.25 per transaction period - no percentage! Major change for both customers and businesses coming: http://www.dwolla.com

2011-12-01T17:40:00.001-08:00

Three great projects: http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Smack-App http://www.indiegogo.com/Skid-Road-BBQ http://www.indiegogo.com/Choose-Your-Own-Life-1

2011-12-01T17:05:00.001-08:00

Every cause is actively in need of your support these days, but this one is worth special consideration. http://ow.ly/7LRLy

2011-12-01T17:00:00.001-08:00

Skid Road BBQ deserves your support - can you help them help those who need it most? http://ow.ly/7LRox

2011-12-01T16:55:00.001-08:00

Have you donated to the Choose Your Own Life Project yet? Help those who need hope by supporting this great book http://ow.ly/7LRgH

2011-12-01T16:45:00.001-08:00

The First Donation For The Smack App has come in! THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOO MUCH Sherry Bertram! Every donation counts! http://ow.ly/7LQWy

2011-12-01T09:16:00.001-08:00

Have you seen the latest interview for the Choose Your Own Life Crowdfunding project? We really need your help to get this truly interesting book and story published. Donate today and help those in need see there really is a light at the end of the tunnel.

2011-12-01T08:54:00.001-08:00

Great News! We just helped Martha Reed launch her BRAND NEW Crowdfunding project - The Smack App! http://www.indiegogo.com/project/widget/52311?a=267744

Site vandalism leads to major security overhaul.

2011-11-22T13:51:00.001-08:00

Discovered shortly after 9am this morning, Reyactive identified a problem with the Reyactive Chamber website. The problem included a change where the site was repointed to a historical copy of the site that was many months old. The newer version of the site had also been tampered with so that several of the content pages were invisible, so that when the site was reconnected to the correct content, the menu did not offer all of the correct options.

No data was ever at risk as no client or other sensitive data is ever housed in any Reyactive website, however the vandalism did cause an immediate security overhaul and upgrade as well as the repair of the site, which is ongoing at this minute.

The individual responsible for the vandalism has been identified and their access has been terminated.

Reyactive's extensive network of social media accounts and websites are all undergoing a security audit and overhaul as a precaution, although there do not appear to be any other breaches at the moment.

2011-11-17T09:37:00.001-08:00

Economists in Charge http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/11/15/economists-in-charge/

2011-11-14T21:19:00.003-08:00

Tuesday is Day 2 of Budgeting Basics for Webucator.

2011-11-14T21:19:00.001-08:00

As we ramp up our social media presence and break the century mark in numbers of social media sites we're directly connected to, we're finding out lots of great info business owners could really use. Would you be interested in taking a course that would introduce you to these sites and what they do?

2011-11-14T21:15:00.001-08:00

Had a great meeting with Mukee Okan for her new crowdfunding project. More news on this really interesting book and multimedia project coming in the next few weeks.

2011-11-14T21:14:00.001-08:00

Glenn Beck just donated $55,000 to support a homeless shelter mission. Can you help support this project to help homeless shelters and missions everywhere? http://www.indiegogo.com/Skid-Road-BBQ

2011-11-14T21:13:00.001-08:00

Just posted an update to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih-2Paq0ZeE

2011-11-14T12:36:00.001-08:00

Reyactive is now live on over 90 social media.

2011-11-14T12:35:00.001-08:00

Teaching a course on the Basics of Budgeting today and tomorrow http://www.webucator.com

2011-11-13T21:10:00.001-08:00

New interview with Dave Deib for the Experts Video series http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih-2Paq0ZeE

2011-11-08T16:05:00.001-08:00

Do you know one of the 19% who needs help right now? Support this book http://www.indiegogo.com/project/widget/47526?a=267744

2011-11-08T16:03:00.001-08:00

Looking to help out a good cause? Try a great one http://www.indiegogo.com/project/widget/44795?a=267744

2011-11-07T16:28:00.001-08:00

Do you know a barbecue FANATIC? http://www.indiegogo.com/project/widget/44795?a=267744

2011-11-07T16:23:00.001-08:00

Know anyone who is having troubles these days? Check out this project http://www.indiegogo.com/project/widget/47526?a=267744

2011-11-06T10:51:00.001-08:00

Check out this film project on Indiegogo - it might raise a few questions for you about what YOU see as love: http://ping.fm/zeekf

2011-11-06T10:41:00.001-08:00

The Choose Your Own Life project has its' first donation! Thank you so much! http://ping.fm/rfDb7

2011-11-06T10:38:00.001-08:00

The buzz is building about Skid Road BBQ. Help them help the homeless by watching this video: http://ping.fm/Ir37b

2011-11-02T14:48:00.001-07:00

Thanksgiving is about gratitude and supporting each other, like this project: http://ping.fm/7Wstt

2011-10-27T08:27:00.001-07:00

Amazing story, great cause wonderful product! Please support this deserving project! http://ping.fm/Akydh

Death of Bin Laden, Birth of a New Dynamic

2011-05-01T22:03:00.000-07:00

Official reports from the White House announced tonight with President Obama's speech that Osama Bin Laden has been killed by US Special Forces in a firefight in Pakistan. The major news outlets are covering a lot of the context from a strictly populist view, which helps the country and the world heal from the scarring damage caused by this monster and his henchmen and blind followers.

Here's the security side of the issue that they are NOT covering very well.

Bin Laden was able to carefully manage the tribal leadership of Al Qaeda factions in over a dozen countries to the point that they have been able to significantly destabilize most of those governments. Those governments, however, have never been particularly strongly aligned with any one philosophy, economic model, or loyalty structure as they have always had very tribal, very family/region-centric social and governmental structures.

Often the regions are controlled by the heroin and opium drug lord/tribal lords who harvest, transport and sell what the locals believe is the most significant natural resource and income stream they have at their disposal. In other regions, Bin Laden was able to fund piracy, organized crime, terrorism, racketeering, and money laundering activities that created and maintained power bases and structures among his key allies.

With Bin Laden's death, the US government position is correct - the message has been sent that the US will pursue its' foes until they are satisfied justice has been done. This undoes some of the extraordinary damage that has been done to US military and diplomatic reputations abroad since the Vietnam War by US pull-outs and other missteps.

The other side of the equation, however, is also equally true; that now, as in the aftermath of the death of Arafat and the deposition of Mubarak, and other Arab leaders, there is a new power vacuum that will definitely produce unanticipated consequences, and will muddy, if not destroy any chances of negotiated peace for a long time to come.

Don't get me wrong; I don't believe for a second that negotiations with Bin Laden would have produced peace of any kind for anyone. What it does though, is that it consolidates all the supporters of his viewpoint into one organization that can be more easily targeted and disassembled as a single group. Once the power vacuum created by his death divides the organization into many competing factions all searching for a leader, for a new power source, the resulting ensuing chaos has the capacity to erupt into hundreds of new, aggressive, power-seeking groups, each capable of doing a significant amount of damage to military and civilian targets, each needing infiltration and human intelligence monitoring in order to prevent attacks and catch the bad guys.

On the plus side, none of the groups has a leader currently as skilled, financially well-backed or politically talented as Bin Laden was, and as long as that remains true, their coordination will erode dramatically and internal political fights will help to unravel the organization as a whole.

One must remain particularly vigilant to the potential that a leader could emerge to take up the support of not only those disenfranchised by the death of Bin Laden, but also those who find themselves in the middle-eastern and African countries now in the hot-bed of upheaval and revolution: Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Kenya, Somalia, Rwanda, etc.

The emergence of a new leader for the region must be very carefully monitored, because the right leader could bring peace and prosperity to the region which it so desperately needs, whereas the wrong leader could prove to be a far greater tyrant than Idi Amin, Stalin or Hitler, and would be in a position to inflict the kind of body count to prove it. Unfortunately we have had a very poor history of predicting which path a potential leader will take in similar situations that have arisen in history; this time we must be ever vigilant and far more careful in our support or opposition as what may appear as cruelty to us may be necessary leadership in their position, and what may appear as great leadership to us may be the sounding of the death knell for millions later.

The power vacuum will also mean that over the next 2-3 years, the world will not be terribly safe as retaliatory and power-play based acts of terror and violence are acted out both here in the US and around the world.

It is a great thing that one of the worst mass-murderers in modern history has been removed from his position of power, and has been stripped of his ability to continue to inflict harm on generations of people from around the world. There will be a continuing price to pay for it, though, and it is a price we must be willing to continue to pay if we are to ever truly be safe.

The WikiLeaks Fallout

2010-12-12T14:02:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-09-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-09-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-08-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-08-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-06-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-28T09:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-02-17T20:01:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

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.

The Day The World Stopped Spinning.

2009-12-14T20:30:00.000-08:00

The day the world stopped spinning.

Saturday, 12 December, 2009, the world stopped spinning. For me at any rate.

There are those days that happen in each of our lives when through the experience of being a living, moderately normal human, we acknowledge that the daily progress of change has added a soupçon of challenge each day to our lives more than it had the day before, and that as those morsels of life challenges accrue, inertia and complacency are bestowed not just to our broad shoulders, but to our very souls as well.

If one has any ambition about them whatsoever then this realization only comes to us when all of our forward progress finally comes to a screeching halt over the least of trivialities and usually at a mission critical moment.

That moment when all forward progress stops is usually replaced by that first momentary sensation of regression – the feeling that somehow things are not just slowing down anymore but starting, in effect, to go backwards. And as the momentum builds in reverse we struggle and fight to regain control. Like a driver who has lost their power steering on an icy road, we fight, struggle and wrench the wheel in the earnest demand for supremacy and domination of our environment – we *will* bend it to our will. We will regain control of the car, and guide it safely forward and out of harms’ way once more.

Like the driver, sometimes we are successful and we regain control. We regain the momentum forward and continue on, having shaken loose some of the weighty issues that have led us into a dangerous driving situation. In other cases we lose control and through reaction or over-reaction we actually make things worse, endangering not only us but those who depend on us and those for whom we care.

And then in some very few cases we relinquish control and simply urge the car to come to a quiet rest, neither fighting for control nor recklessly throwing ourselves into a panic of pride and incompetence but rather gently observing the situation and resolving to act rationally when the first opportunity to make a difference becomes available.

A friend recently mentioned that wisdom is gained from experience; experience is gained through learning from errors; and errors occur from making choices. Wisdom, then, comes from making choices and learning from our errors. And one of the lessons is that although decisive action is critical to solving a tenacious and overwhelming problem, more important still is having the patience to make the right decision at the right *time*.

And so we revise our hypothesis and learn once more that the path to wisdom isn’t simply being a decider, nor is it simply observing life, but it is the considered timely action that yields the best results.

And so as the mass and inertia of accumulated challenges have sent my life spinning for several years now, I have observed closely. I have watched the dangers flash by: the dangers of economic instability, career jeopardy, family instability, political instability, and personal safety and well-being – all these and more have slid past me at warp speed, just as the car spins on the black ice.

I have resisted the urge to reach out to that steering wheel and yank it in the opposite direction; to fight the spin and force friction and my will to battle the wild inertia of a spin on treacherous terrain, and by that resistance I have bided, waiting for the right opportunity to act, preparing my response for the occasion when the car has faced the right direction once more and by carefully turning into and then out of the spin I can guide the car back onto the road and actually use the momentum to regain control and guide my car and person safely on my way once more.

I redirected the stress from the challenges I bear to the stress of patience, and in so doing was able to see the stresses of my cares more clearly for what they truly are - the accumulation of thousands of days of cares, worries and frets belonging to choices that have long since passed added together with the worries , fears and hopes of today.

Those past issues were playing far too big a role in defining and directing my reactions to what is facing me now, and like with the driver, they represented distractions and pot holes that could easily tip the balance from a safe recovery to a dangerous crash. Patience allowed me to avoid taking the wrong reaction and still act in a timely manner to steer my life away from the dangerous, risky habit of trying to control for control's sake and allowed me the space to breathe and calmly guide my life to safety and return to forward progress.

By following that fundamental premise of considered timely action, the spinning has stopped and safety and control have been regained. The world stopped spinning for me on Saturday.

I'm still shaken up, worried and concerned that I carried all that extra baggage with me, but now I have a chance to deliver on my promises, achieve my objectives and I no longer have that overwhelming level of stress inhibiting my ability to live the way I want to.

All because the spinning stopped.

Launch Day!

2009-08-31T23:55:00.000-07:00

Launch Day for The Millionaires' Race to 2010.

Today’s the big day! The start of The Millionaires Race to 2010! And there is a *lot* of work to do. Our web site’s still under construction and will be up a bit later with lots of neat new features, but that shouldn’t slow you down from getting started in the Race to 2010! Now’s the time for you to launch yourself into a brand new project that will help both you and your country get back into the innovating, economic growth spurt that we really need to get this country back on track. And we’re going to help you!

Throughout the year we’re going to be landing in cities right across Canada and the US promoting the Race and the income generating projects of our participants. We’ll help you sell your products, your books, your services – we’ll go the whole nine yards on our road trip across the nation(s).

As we stop in various cities we’ll also work directly with a number of you to help make your dreams of success a reality.

So take time today to put your plans on paper, and get to dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s so you can get your project under weigh. And maybe a year from now we’ll be showing you off to the country as one of the continent’s newest millionaires!

Throughout the day today I will be posting new stories, new blogs, new tools and a whole lot more to get you revved up, excited and rolling on your way to financial freedom. Opportunities will be made available to come on tour with us or to help you get rolling, so don’t be shy – check back frequently throughout the day, as new updates will be released all day long!

Cheers and have a great Race Day!

C./

Couponing and Cash for Clunkers.

2009-08-09T20:44:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest lessons I learned about marketing came at the expense of The Hudson's Bay Company in Canada. It's the oldest company in the continent dating back from the discovery of North America, and as one of the very first trading post companies it has been in operation since the year 1670.

It is still in operation today but under American ownership as a result of numerous management mistakes and fiduciary failures which needed to be corrected by someone with deeper pockets and a better management team. I'm not 100% sure that their owners (the holding company that owns Lord and Taylor's) are necessarily that team, but they will certainly do no worse.

How does the Hudson's Bay Company of Canada have anything to do with our government's Cash for Clunkers program? Good question. I have a great answer.

The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) went through tumultuous financial times in the 80's and 90's like most retailers. They tried to buy a number of other chains in order to diversify their market reach and expand market dominance of the hard-fought department chain consumer market and to reposition their products for re-sale as they went through their product aging cycle/ Clothes that were unable to sell in HBC would be sold at a discount through their lower cost Zellers subsidiary and so on.

So far so good. But things go off the rails in this story right about....now.

The department store industry during this era was faced with a massive change in consumer spending thanks to the evolution of box stores and mass market retail sales clubs. Now the all-in-one stop department stores were no longer competitive on pricing and their product lines were being put in direct competition with good quality, low cost substitutes. Throw in a recession or two in Canada and you have the makings of financial disaster.

Right about then there was a management philosophy that was prevailing over experience and common sense in businesses around the world that hit the company in several key and devastating ways. Over time I'll go into other aspects and applications, but one of them was inflicted on/by their marketing department in specific that applies to this story.

There are certain words that will always draw attention in any piece of advertising: New, Sale, Half-Off. Those kinds of things always get attention and almost always draw in customers looking for a great deal.

The new philosophy at the marketing department was implemented post-haste. Once a month the company would have a blockbuster sale and advertise it extensively using each of those key, top-draw advertising bell-ringers.

Inventory flowed, sales figures climbed, Hallelujah's were said. Monster sales volumes occured as thousands thronged to get the best deals of the season. Profit margins were low, but volume made it profitable.

Then sales trickled off. No one seemed to need the products they had just bought in such massive quantities once the sale wore off. Sales figures for the rest of the month were down, but since they had had such a great sale to start the period, their overall numbers still looked good. The sale to start the next month again was a huge hit - throngs came by the thousands and staff simply could not keep up with demand. Again, a big success and a big sigh of relief as the month started off so well.

But again the numbers for the rest of the month were off. They still were not gaining any real market penetration and the overall numbers were still down as they kept losing marketshare to the box stores and Walmarts that kept popping up all over the place.

Well, if it's working on a monthly basis, let's see if it will work on a weekly basis?

So they did. The big sales started to show up every weekend, tailored to meet the needs of their biggest customers - the families who needed the one-stop convenience that a department store offered.

Again the company was rewarded - the public loved the idea of being able to go get stuff every weekend at huge discounts, and for a few months the volumes on the weekends soared outrageously, even leading the company to believe that they might be able to recoup some of that lost marketshare and start gaining it back.

But the company next noticed a horrible trend - no one was shopping during the week! The customers now shopped only on weekends - literally! Some stores that ordinarily would do $50-100 k in business on a weekday would be lucky to do $1000 for the entire store in total. But the costs of running the stores stayed constant - they still had to staff every department, keep the inventory on the floor, clean the facilities, etc because of the long term rental agreements that the malls they were located in had included in their rental contracts. And the properties were far too valuable to give up. So those stores *had* to lose money 5 days a week so that they could make money on the other two. Hmmmm.....not so good.

And then came the kicker - the consumer had learned the drill. They now knew that HBC would continue to offer these sales days because they had to in order to move inventory and keep from financial crisis from lousy cash flow. Now the consumer could relax their spending and only shop for the quantities they needed in the short term and only on sales days.

HBC's sales volumes plummeted, even on their big sales weekends. And now their customers were trained by the company not to shop the rest of the week either and sales volumes there were almost non-existant. What idiot would pay double for a fridge, shirt, lawn mower or vacuum on a Monday when they could go one day earlier or 5 days later and buy it half-off?

Worse still, they had sold the customers all that the customers would need for months to come in advance and now they didn't need the store anymore. They *could* shop, but there was no incentive that said they *had* to shop.

The company was in panic mode. It was so stressed out it took little time to learn the lessons of the day then and went straight to desperation mode. If the customer was driven by sales prices, then that must be where the solution lay. Now once a month 80% off days showed up. Couponing, discounting, desperation set in. The company was heading straight to disaster.

Sooner or later the day came when their maximum discounts were no longer enough to lure in customers. Combined with crippling overstocking of unmovable inventory the company faced financial collapse. Stores were sold off, the company shrank in desperate cost cutting measures...layoffs, angry creditors...you know the drill.

Again, the question applies - how does this apply to the Cash for Clunkers deal?

Car sales to domestic manufacturers have been sliding for years. The big three did all the financing and discounting deals they were prepared to do and again had spikes and collapses in sales that left them holding millions of vehicles in inventory and empty bags of profit. The solution? A huge discount to drive a selling spree, in this case sponsored by the federal government. And as soon as that incentive ends, just precisely when do you expect anyone will need to buy a car again? The drought that follows the big sale may just be the last nail needed to seal the coffin on our domestic car industry the way improperly planned sales spikes nearly destroyed the oldest company on the continent.

Add to that an energy tax that will punitively increase the cost of gas and a requirement to increase the manufacturing cost of vehicles to meet the arbitrary mileage requirements of new legislation concerning vehicle manufacturing and the pitifully weak domestic industry as a whole faces extinction.

There is no doubt that the industry needs a boost or faces catastrophic failure, but so did the department store industry in Canada in the 80's and 90's. The solution wasn't to spike sales at the cost of future sales then any more than it will be for our car industry today.

The solution is finding the right products that people want to buy and offering them with better wuality and better pricing. Oh, and get rid of the dealerships that are eating up your profit margins and giving the industry a perpetual black eye. Make car buying a thing people want to do, not something people abhorr more than having a root canal and quadruple bypass 2-for-1 special. In other words, run your business properly and you won't need to have the massive sales except when you have surpluss inventory that you need to clear out. Which is what sales were designed for in the first place.

Marketing to sell a Million by September next year.

2009-08-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

I shared a rough outline of what you can do to make a lot of money fairly easily, and a little bit of how it could work. Now I am going to get to one of the two subjects that determine whether you’re going to be successful at it –how to get your customers to notice you.

This is the difference between Marketing and Advertising.

Advertising is sending a message out to attract customers. Marketing is making sure your product and your customers have a great meeting.

‘Sales’ is what happens when that great meeting results in a buying decision.

I do not pretend to have the penultimate sales advice – I’m good, very good, but it isn’t what I focus on. My focus is almost exclusively on Marketing because if it is done properly then every sales professional will tell you that they *love* working for you because 90-95% of their job is done for them. Their leads are all warmed up, the customer already is familiar and educated about the product, the pricing is already structured to be affordable but valued by the customer, all the upkeep and service agreements are all thought out and work for everyone – the complete package is buying-decision-ready. The sales pro then really just needs to tip the scales, collect the orders and keep in contact with the customer to make sure they are happy while leaving the door open for any follow-up orders or referrals.

So if I do my job properly, my team’s job is made much, much easier, and everyone makes a *lot* more money and everyone, including the customer, is a lot happier about it.

So recently I told you to build a product that allows you to share a knowledge base or skill that you have with others who can benefit from it. Whether it’s crafting, cooking, cleaning, carpentry, plumbing, computers, electronics assembly, shopping, history, music, entertainment or anything else, there is an infinite supply of topics that your personal take on could be of value and interest to others.

I also told you that you could format it in a way that you could give courses on how to do what you know how to do. Those courses could add a whole new revenue stream and introduce your products to whole new audiences.

I then told you that a second product in that field could just be what you need to go over the top.

But I didn’t tell you how to do the Marketing to get it in your customers’ hands.

Here’s one approach you could use – remember, just like I described in my earlier blog, there are literally thousands of ways to market your products and services. This is just one example.

Let’s say you’ve written a book on negotiating contracts. It’s pretty safe to bet that not *everyone* you meet in a department or book store is going to want or need to read that book.

Who does need that information? I can think of dozens of groups that would benefit tremendously from it and from a presentation that tailors the interpretation of the book to their needs. Chambers of Commerce, union reps, sales professional development associations, business students at university and college, law students, legal firms, insurance companies, realtors, and many, many more groups and organizations need that kind of information. So do the spouses who run the households, by the way. They do all the negotiating within the family, with suppliers for services and products for the home, work out the insurance policies and coverage, negotiate and organize schedules, and so on. Ever notice that no one has set up professional development days for those who professionally manage our families and our homes? We might want to work on fixing that. Just a thought.

So if you targeted each of those groups above in each neighbourhood near where you live then you should be able to build a pretty decent list of groups that would be interested in hearing what you have to say.

Your next step is to put together the most enticing invitation you can possibly come up with for each group. You want to find a way to present to them and get paid for doing it. Send invitations to every member, to the Chambers, to the local media, to any relevant people. Send reminder notices as the days get closer. Do follow up calls to anyone who calls to ask info about the event. Try and get on local radio or TV to talk about the event. Send letters to the editor and articles to your local papers discussing what's going to happen at the event or why the subject is very topical and important right now. Once you have the list of attendees, this will also give you the opportunity to sell your product – in this case the book on negotiating contracts.

Or you could combine the two and sell your courses and include a copy of the book for free by factoring your profit margin into the cost of the course.

You could also team up with others in your neighbourhood or subject matter and sell the courses or books in package deals to widen the reach of customer base and minimize your per presentation costs by splitting it between the various presenters.

So let’s take some specific examples and do the math, shall we?

Your local Chamber of Commerce has a list of member companies, usually several thousand long and for a nominal fee or free you should be able to send an invitation to all member companies as a special opportunity just for their members. Out of that list, if you have a successful invitation, you should probably expect to get about 5% response rate or at least 50-150 calls, of which you’ll probably close about 1/3 as sales. (These numbers I’m using are industry standards for moderately successful mail campaigns.)

That means that you should be able to expect between 16 and 50 sales by inviting your local CoC. Assuming each other group listed above produced similar results, then you could roughly multiply that number by the number of groups you invite. If you invite 10 groups, you’ll probably end up with approximately 300 paying customers for an event or a book sale.

If you make $25 in profit from each sale, then one event should have a single payout of $7500 or more in your pocket before taxes.

If you want to earn $1,000,000 on that basis, you only need to host 134 events.

If you were able to make as much as $50 in profit per sale, you would only need to host 67 events to make your target income.

That means having an average of a little more than one event per week.

That’s the kind of schedule that most people can handle.

Sure, most of the events will probably be out of town because you’ll run out of local options fairly quickly, but think about it. The only day you really have penciled in each week is the one you deliver your presentation on. Everything else in your life suddenly became a *lot* more flexible.

And don’t forget the $7,500+ per week incentive.

See, what happens here is that you find your customers in an environment in which they see your product for the value it brings to them. If you try and pitch a pool cleaning company to a branch manager at Intel at the office, I can guarantee they won’t be interested. If you pitch them the same option at a pool supplies or patio furniture retailer you are far more likely to get the sale. It’s the same potential customer – but the environment, the circumstances, the sales logic are all completely different.

It’s the ability to meet the customer’s needs that matters. In one environment, they don’t need a pool cleaner. In another it’s a perfectly natural fit. In one case they see no value at all – how is a clean residential pool going to make the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer more profitable? But in the other environment the value makes sense – it’s safer and healthier for your family, it frees up more time to spend with your family, it’s less expensive, better quality…whatever the benefits are, this is where they make *sense.*

By attacking your market in the right environments, where it is natural to the customer to want to do that kind of business, they are already interested in making a buying decision. From there on you add to it by adding in opportunities to reach out to new kinds of customers as well, blending both traditional customer types (busy working business pros for example) with entirely new markets (launching the first PD days for household managers) and offering new products to extend the sales cycle while you’re at it.

In one fell swoop you’ve managed to sell to your traditional client base, a new client base, and to sell add-on revenue.

And if you’re lucky and smart enough to combine your events with those of a couple of other people whose products match up well with yours, then you can shave your costs down and increase your profitability. Of course the more profitable each event is, the fewer events you have to have to achieve your objective of $1,000,000 in new revenue this coming year.

In another blog I’ll start sharing some tips and tricks on how to increase your profitability per event in order to make your goals easier to attain – I just wanted to give you the basic outline of how this can work for now.

Of course there are any number of challenges with this approach. What happens if you don’t like public speaking? You could split the proceeds with someone who is – you write the content, they deliver the show. What if you can’t sell to save your life? Same thing. You split the proceeds with someone who can. What if you can’t write very well. You deliver the show, and have someone work with you to write what you know.

There is usually a way to make this idea work for just about anybody, if you really want to try it, but as I said before, it’s nowhere near the only way to go to accomplish your dreams.

Find your own path and borrow from what you can learn here to make your path more rewarding and productive. That’s what we’re here for.

The Unreachable Stars.

2009-08-05T23:45:00.000-07:00

Of course life always catches us when we least expect it. The rainy day fund is always sucked dry just before it actually rains, the insurance on the other driver's vehicle lapsed two days before the accident, the money runs out before the month does - whatever the circumstance, the point remains the same. We are often subject to those whims and fates that are just a tad oustide our circle of immediate control.

We often ask for it by the lives we lead. I know *exactly* why I have a back problem - I went asking for it by doing a lot of things no sane person should put their backs through during those early years known as 'the invincible years.'

This week has been little different. Work is work - the hours are long, and the pay is perhaps not what one would like, but it's my job and I'm proud of it. My projects always beckon, and I always wish I had more time for them. And home had the blissfull scenario of having a rush job to prevent an attack of seasonal bugs and rodents from deciding to invade my home which ate up my entire weekend outside in the hot, hot sun.

But what sustains me, outside of the love of my family and friends, is my ever-insatiable quest to achieve my dreams by helping others. Seems weird, probably, I know, but it's true nonetheless.

Most of my friends are doing reasonably well and the best help I can give them is a friendly smile and a sincere interest in their lives and well-being. Some deserve a shoulder and warm hearted word to help them keep their world together during their truly heartbreaking trials.
And others, like me, aim to reach for the stars, and so by striving, change them.

It's not just ambition, and it's not idle pride that drives them. There's an element of curiosity, true, but in reality we strive to accomplish something worthwhile, something greater than ourselves.

No matter whether lasting a moment in time or an eternity in stone, there are accomplishments and achievements that stand out in a life, in a lifetime, in an era. I fully believe that in each and every person lies the ability to accomplish those kinds of achievements but I also know that the vast majority of us never really take the chance to achieve them.

I read recently where 8/10 people plan to and desire to write a book. Of those people, less than 20 % will try, and of that 20% less than 20% will complete the book, and less than 20% of those will ever send their work to be published. That means that less than 0.0064 % of the population will ever write the books which they have in their hearts desire to write and see it through to publication.

How many other dreams in society are left un-reached for? How many advancements in society are left unachieved because they were never started? How many lives will be lost because no one tried to solve the unsolvable enigmas of science? How many lives could be changed if more people reached the unreachable stars?

So you're not a Carpenter...so what?

2009-07-30T02:06:00.001-07:00

I get asked by businesses how they can add revenues and 'pick up business.' I'm always amazed that the answers aren't obvious - offer something new that will attract customers or that will get your current customers to buy more often from you.

Ok, smartie pants. I know, "That and a buck will maybe get you a cup of cheap coffee."

No, really. Here's an example.

Suppose you own a restaurant. Most restaurants have a certain seasonality to their customer base. If you run a restaurant near a university or college, then your season depends on when the students are in town. If you operate near a major employer, then your traffic is going to depend on their financial health and their work schedules. If you work out doors, you are dependent on the weather. in other words, you have high and low periods, and you want to find a way to generate more sales in the low periods too.

Fair enough.

I can't count the number of times I've seen this stat, but I know it to be true: The cost of getting a sale from 1 new customer is 7 times as much as getting a sale from a retourning customer.

What that means is that you must advertise, discount, promote, introduce, etc. in order to get a new customer. A returning customer already knows about you and knows what they are most likely to want to buy from you before they start.

So if you want to grow your customer base, it only makes sense to encourage your existing customers to bring new customers with them, thereby doubling your sales and introducing new customers to your business. It's far cheaper and faster than trying to go get new customers from scratch. Honest.

So how do you do *that*, then?

Simple - give them something new when they bring a new customer on board and give them the best experience they've had with you and your sales will go up.

And yes, 2-for-1's do work to a degree, but that doesn't create buzz or lasting interest. It only creates a temporary boost at a dramatic cost.

No, I mean come up with a new product that your existing customers will go nuts for and encourage them to bring in new customers to buy them too.

For restaurants you could try a new cocktail of the week special and a course on making cocktails and a recipe book to sell with it.

For clothing stores, have a retro fashion show and sell a book on your store's history of fashion, along with a whole rack of retro clothes for sale. It'll clear out old inventory, and bring a feeling of belonging to the store to its customers.

For electronics stores sell an E-book on how to wire electronics gizmos when you get them home. We all know those stupid instructions booklets are utterly useless!

The list is endless - really.

The question isn't can you get more sales, the question is what are you prepared to offer to get them? Are you simply going to do a couponing, or are you going to give the customer something they'll remember, talk about and come back with friends to buy something else from you next time?

How to make a Million Dollars.

2009-07-30T01:42:00.000-07:00

So you've been patiently reading along, waiting for the day when I tell you step by step how you make a lot of money in less than a year, preferably more than a million dollars, right?

Ok, I will. First, know that this is not the only way to do it, and I have about a hundred other ideas that are every bit as likely to make a lot of money on any given day. This is just ONE way to do it so you know I'm not full of crap.

If you've read any of my prior blogs in preparation for the Race to 2010 and you actually filled out any of the Baselines then you should already have a good idea or two of what skills or knowledge base you may have that others might find interesting. That's your starting point, right there.

The trick is to find a way to share that knowledge or skill with others, this way you can share it over and over again, getting paid each time for the benefit of your talents or expertise.

You can give courses, you can make a DVD/CD-ROM, write a book, develop a website - whatever fits your personality, skills and budget. Then you sell that product to the people who'll use it (and pay for it!)

Simple, right? So why isn't everyone who does that kind of thing filthy rich?

Usually it's a combination of not knowing how to sell their product, where to sell it, or what kind of product is needed by the consumer. Basically it's inexperience in running a business, not in your product itself.

Here's one example:

A carpenter who lost his job building houses in the current economy could write up a book full of step by step instructions on how to make things - bird houses, composters, shelves, armoires, furniture, dining room tables, cabinetry - whatever floats your boat. Then have them published by an on-demand publisher who will charge by the book. You find them online and go for one that gives you the most tools and lowest priced copies for the most minimal investment on your part. You should be able to find it for $50 or less.

Set up a demonstration booth just about anywhere the public passes by that you can legally set one up. Hopefully where you think a lot of potential customers would be likely to be. Have copies of your books and sign up sheets for your courses available for sale and start raking in the dough. You should be able to sell 10-50 copies a day in a reasonable location while demonstrating, plus sell the demo products and sell another 5-20 training class fees per day as well.
If you make $25 profit per book and another $25 per class and another $200 in demo product sales, then you're looking at approx $1450 per day, $7250 per week, $350k per year. Or better.

If your book sells well online or you get a sponsorship to do your demos in home reno stores across the country then you can expect that number to climb quickly.

If you can put together a second book you could add another $700-$1250 per day right there, and you'd be heading up closer to the $700k mark very quickly.

See where I'm going here?

Virtually any area of knowledge or talent or skill can be reproduced and sold. It's how you manage the selling and the quality and value of the product that makes you the money.

I can help you figure out your product, help you design a serious marketing and sales strategy to make it profitable, and help get you launched on your way to making some serious cash - but you have to take the first few steps.

My plan for saving Education.

2009-07-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

This is my plan for saving the education system. It's doable, implementable, and financially attainable all on its own and it will save the US education system more than $13.5 Billion each and every year.

Whether at the state, province, regional or national levels, the outcry for finding a way to cut the cost and improve the quality of education in North America has never been more vocal and more profound than it is during the current economic crisis.

As always, bureaucrats threaten to cut back on teachers and textbooks instead of looking serious cost factors in the eye or to address key areas of mismanagement in the schools, boards, and education departments.

Sure it’s easy for me to be an armchair quarterback – anyone could challenge my credentials to jump into this debate. I have no kids, I’m not in school, I’m an adjunct professor but not currently teaching any classes – frankly, what could I contribute to the discussion?

The answer is “Quite a lot, really.”

One of the biggest complaints that schools have is the complaint of not having enough textbooks. California looked at having everything go electronic before remembering that one poorly timed rainstorm could destroy not only a laptop computer but a region’s ability to learn.

The reality is that textbooks today seem to cost a lot of money as they are selectively applied to different districts, so no savings seem to be generated by the scale of the markets involved. Plus, different schools have different wear/use/purchase cycles, so buying en masse doesn’t seem to work too well.

But wait a minute… is that really the problem?

No, it isn’t. The problem is that textbooks often cost over a hundred dollars per student per course and the material included does not necessarily address everything covered in that particular course. Often it does not even cover all of the core elements as outlined in the course curricula.

So if the textbooks don’t quite match exactly what we’re looking for, and they’re very expensive, it begs the question, “Can we handle this a better way?”

Suppose that we have staff in each of these boards and departments of education whose sole purpose is to develop and test curricula and teaching tools throughout the year. I know, crazy thought, but suppose that that was something that happened in these boards and departments of education – that we have qualified training and educational experts designing training and educational curricula and training materials; hey, it could happen.

So supposing this were true… Wouldn’t they have to know enough about the material they were working with to be fairly thoroughly knowledgeable about the subjects?

Would it be possible…I mean, just throwing it out there… possible, that *they* could be writing the textbooks? I mean, since they are also writing the curricula and training materials, is it really that big a leap to add in a few salaries for people to actually *write* the textbooks in-house so they include the material covered by the curricula and the curricula covers what’s actually in the textbooks?

OK, ok, I know. Radical thinking here. But how does that save us any money at all, you could ask?

Good question! I’m so glad you did! Now here comes the exciting part! We can have the textbooks printed through a print on demand publisher for $3-10 a book instead of the hundred+ dollars a book that most textbooks cost today. And! Get this… other education departments that want to cut some costs can literally eliminate hundreds of unnecessary curriculum developers and board/department staff by simply buying the materials (at a small surplus for the benefit of the department doing the work) and save both the cost of the textbook mark-ups AND the staffing costs!

But wait! There’s more! Oh, is this plan good or what???

20/20, various news shows, and numerous other witness anecdotal evidence sources have demonstrated that a large number (700 in one NY district alone) of staffers in some of these boards and departments are employees who have been removed from the classroom or other positions for, diplomatically speaking, a number of darned good reasons. And yet the boards and departments are legally unable to fire them and do not want them in the classrooms either, so they are paid full salaries to either not work or to make work.

Why not *put them* to work? Supervise their research and writing of curricula, textbooks, training materials, or other productive elements of the training and educational lifecycle and either they will save you money and do something useful or they will demonstrate their incompetence for the job, insubordination to authority, or other actually fireable offences.

Either way you win. You either stop paying for people who shouldn’t be in the industry or you get some work out of them before they drive us all bankrupt. The key is to supervise them thoroughly, but if you do that one thing, the rest of it actually works.

You save on unnecessary salaries. You save on the purchase price of textbooks. You gain productivity and save on salaries for people who shouldn’t be in the system to begin with…
If a state has 1 million students in it and they have even 3 courses a year for which we can save $90 each on textbooks per course then we can save each state in the Union an average of $270,000,000, or nationally that works out to more than $13.5 Billion (with a B), just in textbooks alone. *Guess at what the salary savings would be on top of that.* Go on, guess.
Suppose that over time we were able to convert upto 7 courses per student per year that way to print on demand published books designed, written and published by the board or the department of each state? We could save $30 Billion or more, right?

How many more teachers could we afford to put into classrooms? How many teachers’ aides? How much better will the quality of education be if it actually covers what the curriculum says it should in the first place? How much more, better, more useful material can be included for the price than we get out of traditional textbooks?

How easy is it to update it and come out with a new edition when it’s print on demand technology?

How easy is it to resolve the tricky classroom issues of copyrights of existing textbooks by having textbooks whose copyrights belonged to the board or the state?

How much more directly can the training materials reflect the needs of the classroom when they work directly with the teachers teaching from the work of their colleagues in the boards?

How great is it that we can finally find a way to either get rid of administrative deadwood or put it to work doing something useful for a change under direct active supervision?

My textbook plan isn’t a cure for all of the ills in the education system to be sure, but does it make any sense to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Do I Feel Lucky?

2009-07-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

Do I Feel Lucky?

(A Competitive Intelligence Blog.)

Over the last 7 days several news stories have emerged about key breakthroughs in deciphering major encryption patterns – one was a cypher system developed at the founding of our nation that had not been broken until now, and the other popularly reported story was the fact that with at least a 44% accuracy rate that the Social Security system of assigning numbers to applicants can be deciphered with extraordinarily minute amounts of personal data (all of which is freely and publicly available).

In most respects this news doesn’t have the slightest impact on the day to day lives of the average American, and no one is really paying a whole lot of attention to it.

As far as competitive intelligence goes, most American corporations aren’t paying any attention to it either.

As I delve into the subject more and more as a way to teach, explain and identify tools, opportunities, and risks from competitive intelligence research and analysis, I keep tripping over elementary steps that I haven’t had to carry out for years that are now ever more important than before.

Here’s one of them…

Much has been made of the ending of the Cold War as the basis for substantially reduced need for human intelligence activities and substantially reduced pre-employment screening and interviewing. This in turn has led to substantial reductions in the kinds and quantities of in-house mentoring and supervision that used to take place to both develop talent in-house and to protect individuals and companies from potentially disastrous hires.

Since we’re no longer looking for ‘Reds under the Beds’ or any of those traditional misnomers for those relatively harsh hiring restrictions in place during the peak of the Cold War, theoretically this should have saved us millions, even billions of dollars nation-wide, creating immense prosperity, and in some ways it did. It can be argued that the 80’s and 90’s represented periods of unprecedented growth as a result of the freeing of the employment restrictions and the reduced costs of hiring and monitoring and supervision.

That argument, though, falls flat very quickly when you also include the point that was predominant with every insurance salesperson and presentation that has ever been made in the last 25 years – the baby boomers’ retirement savings plans were the primary source of that economic boom, not the ‘peace dividend.’

Now how does this tie in to the news stories about breaking cyphers and encryption systems?

One of the key things that happens to be in the news today is the requirement of employers to do adequate background checks to make sure that employees, new and long-term are all legally allowed to work here. This is to help minimize risks involved in hiring illegal immigrants and undesirables like terrorists and criminals on the run.

To facilitate this activity employers have been given access to double blind systems that the government offers to submit SSNs to that the government can then read in order to determine a worker’s authorization to be here.

Now that the SSN encryption system is broken, even partially (and 44% odds are pretty darned good ones for gambling with) any organized crime syndicate can replicate with substantial ease the SSN’s of citizens from across the country, living, dead, missing, or adjusted so as to pass this inspection methodology in spite of itself by taking publicly available data and using it to generate false identities and documents.

It also means that corporate id theft is liable to explode in the coming months and years.

Imagine if you will that you’re a crook out to make a big heist and make it look legitimate.

You take the name of a corporate executive from the articles of the Wall Street Journal. You look online for that executive’s biography and become familiar with the details of their career and their personal background from freely available public sources. You even get your hands on the last 4 digits of their social security number from a number of sources as organizations, companies, and government agencies often use them as usernames or identifiers for their employees and customers.

You feed any of this information into the algorithm that spits out the rest of the individual’s SSN. Once you have this information, you generate the relevant correspondence trail that creates new legal documentation of the identity and get yourself a new SSN card, a new driver’s license out of state, new unused credit cards, a new passport even.

You then set up a business in a non-extradition country in your new name as a ‘division’ of the company that the real person runs, but whose ownership is not the originating company but the ‘new’ you.

‘Your’ new company does business buying and selling on the credit or at least the good name of both the original person and their original company. Everyone thinks that you’re them. You have credit, you have clout, you have power. And when it all goes away, you even have a scapegoat. You walk away with the assets and profits, and they’re left with insurmountable losses and fraud and perhaps even criminal records in a variety of countries established in absentia.

If you think this could not happen, think again. Even without the benefit of legal documents from SSN generated false identity documents, NEC as a corporation was taken for billions over a period of 5 years on a very similar trick. Now we’re going to see it happen with legal documentation supplied by the government to make it harder to fight.

Good competitive intelligence is the tool that gives you access to where your risk factors stand at any given time. It helps you to track transactions, suppliers, competitors, customers, and most importantly irregularities in other companies’ cash flows and investment/revenue patterns.

BI, or business intelligence tends to rely primarily on customer tracking – monitoring what customer purchasing trends are telling you only tells you so much. Hoovers, Dun and Bradstreet and the other notable credit and corporate analytics firms only are able to offer you high-end overviews, not detailed data that comes from long term relationships in the marketplace for companies that aren’t yours and aren’t doing business with you, but are doing business with your competition for the first time in a country or region or product line you’re not keeping your eye on.

With international credit reporting rules that will prevent/impede distribution of this kind of data, your good name and your company’s good name are on the one hand protected, but on the other hand grievously exposed to abuse by those who aim to circumvent the right and honourable ways to do things.

This is why BI alone is not enough to capitalize and defend market trends – competitive intelligence is a required asset, not just a piece of suggested reading material for those long hotel nights on business trips when you wanted something to read to put you to sleep.

And last but not least – about that peace dividend? More and more evidence is coming to light that whereas the good guys ramped down their intelligence infrastructure, the bad guys ramped theirs up and unleashed it on the global marketplace. There is mounting evidence to suggest that the biggest players in the oil speculation market that affects everything from the price of gas to air travel to basic groceries and heating and cooling utilities costs are not the middle eastern oil countries but the oil speculators who get their information from ‘ex-intelligence services’ personnel connected to organized crime and national energy supply firms in various countries.

The beneficiaries of this data have made huge gains over the decades by using progressive political gains to open up new markets for speculative investments and playing those gains against structured speculation in the oil and gas markets and consumer goods markets. Once those markets reached saturation of demand, the speculators yanked their investments out at a tremendous gain and put their money in currency plays to devalue national currency markets simultaneously generating windfall profits and ungluing whole national economies. This encourages world leaders to listen to their political views more seriously or face massive economic consequences.

Evidence of this kind of predatory economic attack has been mounting for years and the economies of Great Britain, Italy, the US, France and others have each been systematically targeted and attacked by these speculative investors, and evidence of their information sources has until recently been merely a matter of surmise. Under the Peace Dividend it clearly could not have been an intentional attempt to undermine national economies or security, right?

As new evidence is coming to light in the wake of the current global economic downturn, we’re starting to see patterns of behaviour, information pathways, human linkages, and human intelligence networks emerging as the bases of these problems. And none of them are people working for the good guys.

The question you have to ask yourself now is this: Are you prepared to enter the global business marketplace blind, uninformed and handcuffed by lack of critical data, or are you keen to find profit-making opportunities by undermining global networks of crooks, bad guys and globally savvy competitors?

The question is… ‘Do I feel lucky?’

Well….. Do you?

Welcome Notes:

2009-07-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome Notes:

This particular note is for my new readers. Even if you are not one of my new readers, but one of my returning friends and guests, I still think it’s worth reading, so I beg your patience as I introduce what the objective of this outlet is all about.

Obviously it’s about whatever crosses my mind as important, but I’m sparing the world at large the need to weed through *everything* I’m thinking about to get to certain specific topics.

This blog routinely deals with several key subjects that cross my brain and my research on a daily or almost daily basis – Competitive Intelligence, Business News, Risk Management, Marketing, Personal Achievement, and yes, Art. And most of those subjects have found a focus in one of my projects, The Millionaires’ Race to 2010, which you will hear about a lot if you become a regular reader, which of course I hope you do.

First a quick word about the Race, why it’s important and why it belongs here as a regular topic:

The Race, or The Millionaires’ Race to 2010, is a social marketing project designed to be a proactive step we can all take to both turn the national economies around and provide individual success and financial security in this era of economic turmoil.

The idea is to help people connect with each other in ways that stimulate action in developing new ideas, new businesses, new revenue streams, and new relationships to help solve the hurdles that impede success.

Those of you who know me, know me well enough to know that I categorically *hate* phrases like the one above because they usually mean these kinds of empty promises of hope and miraculous successes that you see and hear in late night TV sales pitches.

The truth is that there is a reason why this particular phrase is so positive – the reason is that it’s actually happening. It’s working. A little more each day as people hear about it and start thinking about it and getting more comfortable with it, and finally start getting into it and getting their hands dirty making it happen. There is real momentum starting to percolate with it.

This brings us back to why this project belongs here in this blog about business subjects, personal achievement and art. It belongs here because it is designed to further all of those subjects together by uniting them in a common focus.

It’s a story about each of us growing and achieving important things personally and together. It’s about the trials and tribulations of growing new businesses. It’s about art, graphic design, events, community, entertainment, haute couture and bas couture; it’s about t-shirts and about advertising. It’s about making all of these subject ingredients into a single gourmet meal of rich tastes, flavours, and experiences, all of which I devoutly encourage you to share with us.

But for all of the Race’s good points and contributions, it does not represent everything that’s happening on these subjects, nor does it show you everything I’m thinking about or encountering on these subjects. There are many serious, important stories and ideas that I will be raising to your attention here. Some you will see are derived from my analysis of mainstream news, some will be based on my independent research, and some will have distinctly *other* sources and provocations.

And then, every so often, I’ll talk about art – whether it’s art I’ve encountered, the art of great friends, or my own art projects and experiments.

At the end of the conversation, these three main foci of discussion, business, achievement, and art, all do have three things in common – me, and the power to inspire, and you. I just get to relay the info and the goodies. The inspiration is the end result. The glue that holds it all together and makes it work? That part is you.

This whole experience or experiment depends entirely on you. If you aren’t reading, participating, enjoying, becoming energized by and discussing this stuff then the momentum stops with you. The entire momentum to evolve, achieve and inspire positive change grows and stops with you.

With great inspiration comes great responsibility – to judiciously act so as to achieve and inspire further achievement in turn. Sounds a little bit like ‘Pay It Forward’, doesn’t it?

So this is it – this is your opportunity to bare witness and be a part of the great things of our era. And when the next era gets their kick at the can, let’s leave them whistling and applauding in appreciation and awe at what we achieved independently and together. There may be 7 World Wonders, but nothing says we can’t make it more and leave our mark on history too.

So new readers or returning, I welcome you alike to join the cause, build the momentum, and create the wonder with me.

They say the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step – but I have a car and work for an airline. I can be there in a couple of hours, plus or minus the security lines at the TSA and finding a decent parking spot at the airport. With the technology of today the milestones are closer, faster, and more attainable then ever before.

We don’t need a race of presumptively nomadic traveling aliens to build our pyramids, we don’t need a millennia of communal effort to carve the titanic statues of our time, and we don’t need to find a group of medicinally inclined heavily medicated people moving obnoxiously large rocks into circular formations without any explanation for it at all in order to leave a legacy of achievement for future generations to oooh and aaah over.

We do need a common purpose, a goal, a focal point of common understanding and agreement to leave a lasting monument to the world for inspiration and motivation for generations to come.

But great things need a great foundation too. To build that foundation we need to start with our own achievements, our own successes, both individually and collectively and then build on those together.

Which brings us back to this outlet, this blog and this community of friends, readers, colleagues, and contributors. It all starts here. With you.

Personal Baseline

2009-07-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

Personal Baseline:

Now that we’ve gone through and assessed what your financial baselines are, we’re going to delve a little bit into your personal baseline for a while.

So what is a Personal Baseline anyway?

This is what you bring to the table in terms of your personal strengths and weaknesses. Are you healthy? Are you strong? Are you happy? Are you crazy?

Go ahead and seriously think about how healthy or strong you are in each of the following areas of your life and what you bring to a new business venture. Be brutally honest here, as if you aren’t this will come back to haunt you. It *always* does. And then have 2-4 of your best friends do the same critical analysis of you and see what their responses are and how they relate to yours. Again, a score of 1 represents a critical weakness needing immediate corrective action and possible deal-breaker, and a score of 100 represents in the top percentile of the world or better.

Physical Strength
Physical Health
Physical Stamina/Endurance
Mental Health
Personal Energy Levels
Happiness
Risk Affinity
Family Relationships
Personal Relationships
Pet Relationships
Education
Primary Life Experiences
Secondary Life Experiences
Primary Career Experiences
Secondary Career Experiences

Where are your weak points here? Is your marriage or relationship a little shaky? Would it survive you working a lot of overtime hours over the next year to accomplish your dreams?

Do you have young children at home? Will they be a distraction or an asset?

Are you currently happy and full of energy or somewhat depressed and nervous, shy of taking on any kind of risk at all?

Do you have a friend who needs you to help them through a rough patch? Do you have friends who want to help you succeed?

Do you have the will and endurance to go the distance in a time-sensitive environment? Do you need a more quiet and contemplative environment and pace in order to be productive?

Do you have an academic expertise in your chosen subject matter? Do you have extensive practical experience? Is this something so new that no one else has any more expertise on the subject than you do?

Do you have the physical strength to do the job? Some jobs/projects require physical strength and stamina – firemen, acrobats, landscaping, construction, etc.

Did you learn what you know of this business at work or through life experiences? Was it hands on learning, or academic? Do you have all three that apply, giving you an extra advantage by being so well rounded?

Are you currently suffering any health factors that could become a serious problem? How are you treating them or preparing to minimize their impact? Do you have adequate insurance? Is there someone who can step in for you if you became ill at a time critical point?

What are your Personal strengths and weaknesses? Because these also play a huge role in whatever you decide to do to chase your dreams. They impact the how, the when, and the why of each of your decisions both for your business and for your life, so they are critical not just in the decision of what to do, but what tools you need to do them, or do them better.

Having huge areas of strength here will be of unmistakable value to anyone who possesses them, and any weak points here will need to be addressed and covered off before you get too far down the road or any one of them could conceivably lead to serious, even critical problems.

I’ve raised the subject, now you need to delve into your reality and really hammer out some serious answers here. Then take this Baseline and compare it to your other baselines again. What synergies do you see? What elements from one baseline complement elements from the others? And what about your weaknesses? How do they fit into the picture? Do you see any patterns emerging? Any ideas fomenting?

Dig deep, compare and contrast, and at the end of the day realize that these baselines don’t judge you, they offer you insights and are some of the best self-help tools money can buy without having had to spend a dime.

So get cracking, figure things out and check back with me and the Race to 2010.

Play with what your strengths are and smile at all the ‘wicked-cool’ things you can do with them now that you see them in black and white (or multi-colour if you’re filling this out in crayon.)

Y’all come back now, ya hear?

Available Credit Baseline

2009-07-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

Available Credit Baseline:

Ok – so we’ve talked about what you owe, now we’re going to spend a little time discussing what you could owe.

Optimally we’re hoping that you won’t need or want to owe anything to get whatever project you want to start off the ground. It would not be realistic or comprehensive enough for me to address everything else in terms of what your strengths and weaknesses are if I didn’t also address this subject too.

You will probably need some kind of credit at some point in this process. Whether it is to facilitate cash flow, or to qualify for transaction processing services, or to rent facilities and offices, or for any other relevant business purposes, you’ll probably need some kind of credit.

Some people have unique access to large pools of credit regardless of their personal credit rating. Whether through family or social sources, this access to extraordinary credit is a resource that is available to some, and perhaps to you, and should not be discounted out of hand. Credit can be a very powerful resource if used correctly, so it deserves a lot of respect.

Others are in a credit trap where their personal credit sources are as dry as the desert or as maxed out as a Michael Bay movie is with big bangs.

Then there is the subject of having access to investors, the sale of shares, bonds, or other investment plans to address. The opportunity to raise funds from sources other than your personal bank account would give you access to resources beyond your current means, and allow you to reach ever higher for the brass ring.

The resource of personal credit sources and business investment sources all come with fundamentally the same problems – nothing is free.

By that I mean so much more than just whatever the credit terms are. Sure I believe banks and credit card companies deserve their profits, but that’s not what I mean.

Credit is a slippery slope. It is entirely too easy to have a level of credit debt that you can handle under normal circumstances but that suddenly and completely wipes you out when emergency or unusual circumstances strike.

More emphatically, these days it is becoming more and more regular for those circumstances to have nothing to do with you or your credit worthiness but on the lending institution to be able to stay in business themselves.

In an environment where banks and lending institutions are failing or receiving bailouts to cover off for appalling unparalleled mismanagement and extraordinarily poor risk management, basic credit can be a very dangerous thing as it can be recalled at any time should your institution sell off your account to another institution, be purchased by another bank, or go bankrupt, or in some cases, simply change policies.

Where even applying for credit can have an impact on your insurance rates, it’s critical to make sure that whatever credit you have you treat with unusual care and discretion.

Pay extraordinary attention to the fine print. Whatever it says will be used against you in the future, and you can count on that.

In reality, this particular piece isn’t going to tell you *how* to get credit or *what* to do with it, but it’s here to make you account for the total amount of credit you can reasonably call on if you need it.

Here are some of the areas of credit you can look at if needed. I am *absolutely NOT* recommending you to use any of them, but you should be aware of them and how to access them if needed.

In this baseline the rule of thumb will be like this: Rate how much money or purchasing power you believe you would be able raise from each source of credit on a rating of 1-100 where 1 represents the idea that just asking the question will result in a Bernie Madoff-like audit and investigation and a rating of 100 means you can get credit to purchase major brand name retail chains with a low down payment just on your good name.

Ready? Here we go:

Pay Day Loans:
Credit Cards:
Personal Loans:
Personal Line of Credit:
Business line of Credit:
Mortgages:
Home Equity Loans:
Car Title Loans:
Construction Loans:
Small Business Loans:
Regional Business Start-Up Loans:
Government Loans/Grants:
Other Business Grants:
Private Investment:
Public Investment:
Bonds:
Private Stock Sale:
Financial Advances:
Supplier Advances (Suppliers may be willing to let you have product on spec.):
Insurance Loans (Many insurance policies allow you to borrow against the policy):
Retirement Savings Loans (same as insurance loans):
Industry Specific Loans:
Family Loans:
Ability to get Co-Signed Loans:
Other Loans:
Total Credit Capacity:

Obviously that’s not an all-inclusive list, but it should remind you of a variety of credit and investment options that you can use to raise funding for your venture.

Again, I’m positively *not* recommending any of them – buying on credit is what we’re trying to get successful enough to avoid having to do, but you may encounter a need for it at some point on this project.

Sometimes credit offers you an opportunity to leverage a number of other bonuses if used correctly. Frequent flier miles, cash rebates, interest free periods, tax rebates/deductions, and numerous other incentives exist for various credit options. All of those bonuses exist on the statistical likelihood that you will sooner or later slip up and get charged an additional fee for something or to reward referral business. In other words, the credit companies are betting against you making your payments on time, and statistically they are proven right far more often than not. Just something to keep in mind.

I’ll get into credit strategies some other time, for now it’s just worth seeing what your credit strength is today and to compare it against your credit strength a year from now.

So take a good look at what your credit options are – see what the clauses are on your credit cards, what your interest rates are, what your service fees are, what your credit rating is, see copies of your credit reports from all of the major reporting agencies. Basically, get familiar with what your real ability to get credit is.

It also helps to know what’s on your credit file with the reporting agencies because this information is often looked up by prospective employers when you’re applying for a new job as part of a comprehensive background check. Take the time to fix any errors that you see, and keep an eye out for suspicious transactions that could be telltale signs of identity theft or erroneous reporting.

And when you’ve done all of that you’ll know exactly where you stand on your credit, and that’s a pretty good thing to know.

Until next time,

C./

The Power of People - People I'm Proud to Know.

2009-07-07T22:53:00.000-07:00

The big trick to making a success is always reliant on three key questions: who, how, and when. In almost all instances I can document, and as explained repeatedly by key success figures of our era like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, it tends very much to happen most successfully when it all comes together at once – the perfect triumvirate.

That’s why this Race is getting to be so exciting for me. I’m already seeing how individually so many of us can be successful by helping each other be successful. Here’s a quick example of how the light bulbs are going off in my head and the ‘Eureka!’ is erupting from my lips:

This weekend I ran into a young lady that I’ve met several times in the last 5 years. She works as a server at a local watering hole I visit with friends and family every so often. The place has a very special musical vibe and history that goes with it, and the staff treats us very much like family – and we truly appreciate it. Who.

So Saturday night, Independence Day, the bar owner didn’t know whether it was going to be a big turnout or a small one, so she kept a full staff for the bulk of the night, and our poor server really had no one but us to wait on the whole night long.

Before long we asked her to join us, and had a number of long chats, during which time I mentioned to her a little bit about my Race – the Millionaires’ Race to 2010, and how I’m trying to help as many people as possible acquire their piece of the economic security and prosperity pie.

As I explained how others are working on bringing people together along political bases in order to fix political problems from the ground up, I pointed out that I’m trying to bring people together to fix economic problems from the ground up. I don’t care what someone’s political beliefs are, what their religious outlook is, what their social status is, what kind of car they drive – none of that.

Ok, I do care – if you’re raising money for Osama Bin Laden then you’re not welcome, to put it mildly. But whether I agree with you politically or not has no bearing on whether or not I want to see you lose your job, become unable to look after your families, lose your retirement income or lose your health insurance. Same goes for religion and any of those other silly social delineations that become hot button issues in political fora. I want the nation (in this case both the US and Canada) to be successful, and I want us all to be proud of how we achieved it.

Kristen, our server, seemed to really like the idea, and shared with me that she has her own custom T-shirt design business that she operates as a sideline. How.

Already the light bulbs are starting to go off. Just this past week I was discussing with another Racer the idea that as our individual businesses start to take off, and we start our speaking tours, we were going to need some custom T-shirts and golf shirts for sale at our events. Both Tracey and I are writing books and going on a series of speaking tours in the coming year and will be looking at having a variety of branded products to sell at the engagements. But so will another dozen or so of our Racers.

So I’m having lunch today at a restaurant near my office and my waiter has a very professional, calm, attentive, and active personality. He’s in great shape, tall, and exhibits strong leadership qualities with both customers and other waitstaff. His carriage indicates strongly that he’s someone who is always on the go with another project so I stopped him at one point and asked him flat out – was he doing other projects than this particular gig?

Surprise, surprise, usually the answer is yes. This summer he took time off those other projects and was only working the one job as a kind of vacation, wind down time, but yes, normally he was on the go, working another job and playing in a band. A band that needs T-shirts but has venues. When.

Kristen came to mind instantly as a great match – the band could give her a place that she could sell her shirts, and the band could have some custom shirts designed to sell for the band too. And those who are doing advertising for their businesses or events could have the band write or perform the music for any of their advertising.

Then I remembered that I have a couple of Racers who are Life Coaches, whose role and sole purpose is to help you accomplish what you set out to do. They prod you when you need it, suggest alternative strategies when you hit the wall, and help you organize and prioritize your life so that you have a balanced approach to get the most out of life, among many other aspects of their expertise, these people are your mentors in a life where real mentors are hard to find.

The thought of structuring an event hosted by our Life Coaches to inspire you, teach you, engage you, energize you, organize you, and unleash you on the world – that sounded like a fantastic idea! Especially if you add in some live music, meaningful guest speakers, powerful new books, and a host of specialty products and shirts that help to carry the feeling and spirit on in the days and weeks to come as your efforts at achieving success unfurl. Add in ongoing life coaching to help make sure you get to your goals and the package sounds better and better.

Each participant made stronger by the event, each participant made stronger through the networking at the event, each participant made stronger with follow through after the event and each participant contributing to the success of those involved in hosting the event. Each of us spreading the word about the opportunities discovered at the most positive experience of the year. Each of us there to boost each other up, helping each other grow, build, succeed.

Extraordinary individual success fueled by extraordinary team success. The universal answer for win-win.

Then there’s the web designer who is looking to go out on their own who could help to build e-commerce sites and promotional sites for other Racers and the events where the authors who use print-on-demand self publishing houses to get great low-cost options for getting their products out there. There are the artists who are looking for an opportunity to get their work shown or to find suppliers who can get them different, unique or less expensive supplies.

Extraordinary individual success fueled by extraordinary team success. The universal answer for win-win.

And if you’re reading this, you too can be a part of it. Jump in – the water’s great. And the party’s getting better by the minute!

What Does Hope Mean To You?

2009-07-07T17:18:00.001-07:00

Today is a unique day. It’s my first day of blogging after the whole Canada Day/Independence Day celebration week. It’s also a day when I’ve started to do a lot of work on getting some of my projects completed and ready for publishing. It’s also a day when I have accumulated a lot of work for a series of blogs that will be coming to you over the next few days. It’s also a day when I am starting to seriously promote this blog site and the Millionaires’ Race to 2010 that’s starting this September.

But it’s more than that, really.

I mentioned that Glenn Beck has been working on his 9/12 Project with the idea of bringing together people from all political perspectives to work together to find consensus and solutions to our biggest social and political challenges. Regardless of your personal politics, the idea that we can work together from a grass roots basis to do what we know the current slate of politicians of all parties won’t offers me real hope on the political and social side of things.

As I have started to introduce the Race to people I meet I am getting a lot more hope as well because I am finding a lot of fellow citizens who want to work together to build economic hope in spite of what the bureaucrats and politicians are throwing at us and telling us to swallow.

And what is so important to me is that this hope is being fueled not by nice words, friendly faces, and idealistic speeches, but by people making real connections to do real things in the real world with real consequences and real impacts.

The more I am working on getting this Race underweigh, the more I am convinced that everyday people can overcome the worst economic challenges our countries have seen in 100 years, and that we can do it individually and collectively all at the same time. It just needs a spark.

Like the way we came together after the global famine in the 80’s, the farm disaster of the 80’s, 9/11, Katrina, the Tsunami, and other disasters, we can come together now and make a significant, lasting impact on the economies of our continent and, in turn, the world.

It may sound trite, but the world is a mess. We are a mess. And, yes, We Are the World. One by one we make a difference. One by one we join together to solve these problems, but we don’t stand alone. We stand united.
We stand united against tyranny. We stand united against injustice. And we stand united against suffering. But we also stand for something too.

We stand for Democracy. We stand for fairness and equal opportunity. We stand for the right to do the best we can with what we have. We stand for ethics in business. We stand for personal and corporate responsibility.

We stand for something.

Whether social, political, economic, or any other issues are the ones that drive you, I diffidently suggest that the best way to address them is to find one of these social projects, like The Millionaires’ Race to 2010 or the 9/12 Project, or any other opportunity out there, and help your fellow citizens bring your country back from the brink of disaster and raise it up in the kind of hope that can be quantified, measured, and finally believed in.

Financial Baseline, Part Deux!!!

2009-06-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

Financial Baseline, Part Deux!!!

Credit – what you owe, and what you can get your hands on will often determine a lot of very valuable pieces of information for you in coming up with the right idea for your plan to achieve success over the next year in the Millionaires’ Race to 2010.

First, let’s work with the baseline components of what you owe. Now take a deep breath….let it out slowly. Wash, rinse, repeat. Deep breath…. You’ve got the idea.

See just about everyone gets stressed out to one degree or another when you start to talk to them about their bills. I do, I’m sure you do, so as soon as we can take the stress out of the equation we can get down to business and get your debts taken off the list of stresses driving your life.

Some of you will be in debt positions that, quite frankly, would scare Freddy and Jason into permanent retirement. Others will only have more nominal debts, but perhaps have insufficient income to meet those and your basic needs. Others still may have no real debts to worry about, but no credit to speak of either. No matter what your circumstances, we’ll walk you through this part and at least get some clarity on your options and see if there isn’t a good idea on how to get out of the credit trap.

Once more, we can look at specific numbers here if you’d like, or we can go back to that 1-100 scale we were working with where a ‘1’ would indicate that you’ll be bank rolling Trump in his next major project and probably don’t qualify for the Race, and ‘100’ where whole continents fear economic disaster with the sheer mention of your credit/debt load. Notice, it’s good to score low here.

Current Liabilities:
----------------------------
Credit Card Debt:
Payday Loans:
Short Term Personal Loans (due in 3 months or less):
Utility Bills:
Telecommunications Bills (Cell, land lines, cable, internet, etc.):
Insurance Bills:
Medical Debts:
Current Car Payment:
Child Care:
Rent/Mortgage Payment:
Installment Loans (student/personal/other):
-----------------------------------------------------------
Where you feel your Current Liabilities rank today:
----------------------------------------------------------

These are all the bills that you have facing you with a payment due in the next 3 months. If you have to face it now, that’s a current liability in my books. Notice I didn’t add things like gambling debts. That’s your own dumb fault.

Long Term Liabilities:
---------------------------
Remaining Mortgage Balance:
Remaining Car Loan Balance:
Remaining Installment Loan Balance:
Anything else that takes longer than 3 months to pay back:
Annual Land Taxes Due:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Where you feel your Long Term Liabilities rank today:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

If you could knock off any 3 bills permanently without having to replace them, which ones would they be? Why those particular bills? What about those ones specifically brings you stress? And how much money would it realistically take to make sure you basically never had to worry about those bills again? Really? Is that all it would take to solve those stress factors? Really?

So as we go through this project, the Millionaires Race to 2010, you really don’t even need to reach that much just to make your quality of life measurably better. And sure, we’re in this Race to win long term financial security, but in reality what we’re after is the ability to not have to worry so much about the necessities of life.

If we can solve those problems, we can reach our ultimate goal of financial freedom too.

So think about your liabilities not just as problems you face every day, but as measuring points against which you will be working to succeed and fix in such a way as you will never have to worry or face again the rest of your lives. Imagine a life without your biggest three financial stresses – and realize that it can be just a few months away.

I’ll get into the issue of available credit another night this week and how to benefit/maximize that as well, but for now see your liabilities for what they are – the stepping stones to your life without them a year from now or less.

Goodnight, God bless.

Business Risk Management Lessons Post Katrina.

2009-06-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

Business Risk Management Lessons Post Katrina.

Katrina was an expensive mess of a natural disaster compounded by human negligence, inexperience, greed, and political bungling, but from it we’ve obviously learned a number of things because the next few natural disasters we’ve faced as a nation have been handled much more responsibly.

But from all the lessons we’ve learned from Katrina, personal, governmental, and corporate risk mitigation has universally taken a back seat in all of the policy and budget discussions to date. It’s almost to the point where no one wants to believe that it could happen again, or that it could even be worse.

And yet…

Researchers from LSU have discovered that the coastline of Louisiana, which has been noticeably shrinking for the last decade is on an almost unalterable course to lose as much as 4-5,000 square miles of coastline by the end of the current century, or an area about the size of Connecticut. Their research, according to the paper published in the Nature Geoscience magazine, shows that not enough sediment is being deposited by the Mississippi and the Atchfalaya rivers to replenish the sediment being eroded from the coastline by the ocean. Combined with rising oceanic water levels, much of the Louisiana coastline will be flooded over the course of this century, they claim.

This research largely echoes a number of other risk assessments for Louisiana and parts of Texas that the Army Corps of Engineers and various independent research groups have concluded. Since this seems to be a general consensus, one key logical question is therefore presented: what are we doing about the implied risk to life, economy, and environment?

If you know that the incidents of hurricanes has been steadily increasing in recent years, ocean levels have been rising, according to people who claim to know and measure such things, and that we cannot prevent catastrophe from striking again this century using our current strategy of rebuilding in low-lying coastal areas – if you know all of this is going to be punctuated with a wall of water over 20 feet high serving up wanton destruction just like it did with Katrina, what, precisely, are YOU going to do about it?

Yes, I said ‘YOU.’ As in you, my reader. As in you, the tax payer whose tax moneys went to the rebuilding efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi whose complete investments will be destroyed sometime in the next 90 years, if any of our researchers’ work is validated. As in you, whose friends, family, neighbours, and businesses will feel a financial and personal impact when those investments are needed again and again because our business and government leaders refuse to take action to mitigate the future risks.

What actions can they take? Should they take?

It’s a very long list, but the start of it is to recognize the real and present danger and long term risk that that and other regions of the country currently face of catastrophic disaster and start seriously thinking about it.

But to keep things clear and concise here, let’s limit this down to an individual example. Let’s suppose that you own a small petrochemical refining plant near the Louisiana coastline that has somehow managed to survive the various hurricanes thus far. Fair enough?

So you have about 300 employees who will, on average, live within 20-60 miles of your facility. Your contribution to the GNP is probably somewhere in the range of $12-15 million annually, and your company would be responsible for local and state taxes in the neighbourhood of $250,000 annually.

Your company would probably be one of only a handful of suppliers in your market space, so your contribution to your customers is significant, but not completely irreplaceable.

Now imagine a 20 foot wall of water hitting every building within 20 miles of your facility. At least 40% of your workforce would be homeless or worse. Your facility would be flooded, causing serious potential of a critical leak into the local water system – an environmental hazard whose cleanup costs would be directly attributed to you.

You would not be able to meet your current contract requirements for months to come and any inventories would be unsalvageable.

Your workforce would be strenuously depleted as they sought higher ground out of the devastation, and you would not have access to reliable power or communications networks like phone or internet for days or weeks to come.

Suppliers would not be able to deliver your next batch of supplies, and even if they could, you’d have nowhere to put them.

Your landlord or bank loans, however, would still require payment at the end of the month. Your utilities may not accrue more debts, but they’ll sure charge for everything they think they can get away with. With the emergency run on cash at any operating local banks, you will have access to virtually no credit to manage cash flow, and basic resources will be rationed in small quantities.

Your costs continue to mount, but your revenues become nigh on impossible to achieve.

You are headed straight for bankruptcy along with your 300 employees whose lives have just been dealt a truly appalling blow.

Or… you could look at the option behind door number 2.

Suppose you recognize that your facility in Louisiana is at a certain degree of risk. Sure it’s an ideal location for the refining of chemicals based on the supplies pouring in from the Gulf, but as we mentioned above, it’s subject to some pretty serious risks too. So you want to find a way to minimize your risks without dramatically increasing your costs. What do you do?

For starters, you need to know where else you can develop your products in the case of a natural or other disaster. Is there a suitable site you could buy 200-300 miles inland? Could you rough in the guts of the facility over time, maybe run a smaller scale operation there as a secondary output facility?

Is there another area altogether different that you could set up a secondary facility in a lower risk environment, again, running it in small scale, or simply establishing it over time so the cost impact would be minimal to any one year?

Could you contract the facility out for a few years to pay for it while the imminent risk is a little lower so that it is paid for and available when you need it down the road?

Do you have a financial planning instrument that will help you to set aside a war chest or emergency safety valve for the very rainy and windy day when you desperately need it, and is it ironclad secure?

Do you have an insurance contract to cover emergency environmental cleanup costs in the event of a natural or other catastrophic disaster? Can you count on that insurer to make good on their coverage?

Do you have an evacuation and relocation plan for your company and your employees to get everyone out safely and maintain your company as best as possible for the duration of the disaster?

Do you have an ironclad communications plan in case of catastrophic utility failure?

Do you have suppliers who could handle a drastic change in your supply contracts in the event of a disaster or are they also subject to the same disaster’s whims? Do they have a disaster recovery plan?

In reality, is it necessary and cost-beneficial to be located where you are to begin with, or could you gain tax and other advantages of equal or greater measure by relocating your company out of harm’s way?

I know full-well these questions lead directly to the inescapable conclusion that a costly backup plan is necessary to keep your company, family, and employees happy, safe, and profitable during disasters, but since the cost is so much higher when disaster strikes and you are unprepared, it only begs logic that some basic preparations are necessary so you can roll with the punches under the worst circumstances we can honestly prepare for.

Which leads me back to Louisiana, post-Katrina. This is not the approach being taken in Louisiana today. Oblivious to the facts surrounding the expected loss of land mass in the state over the next 100 years, ignorant of the warnings that the revised levies are not strong enough to handle another very serious weather-maker, ignorant of the flooding impact from hurricanes of recent memory, Louisiana’s businesses are relying fully on the State and the federal government to make all preparations and take all necessary precautions.

Just like those brave if completely ignorant souls who live in Tornado Alley in trailers who refuse to adapt to the eternal reality that their trailer homes will inevitably feel the wrath of a tornado leaving them destitute once more, businesses and citizens of New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole are ignoring reality and are not taking those steps needed to ensure their long term survival and prosperity. The billions of dollars going into the local economy there have gone to rebuild, but not to rebuild better, smarter, and with an eye to surviving and withstanding the future. And that cost, as inevitably as a tornado will strike Tornado Alley, will be resurrected as a new cost once more in the event of the next weather-maker to hammer the Gulf states.

The lesson, though, is not just for the poor citizens and residents of Louisiana, but for the world – prepare. Save yourselves the worry, the hurt, the lost lives and lost fortunes by preparing, each according to the risk you reasonably face. If you live in a desert, prepare for power outages and drought. If you live in the north, prepare for blizzards and power outages. If you live in the Pacific Ring, prepare for earthquakes and volcanic activity. If you live in the flood plains, surprisingly enough, prepare for floods.

Either way, prepare.

2009-06-29T22:14:00.000-07:00

Financial Baseline:

The Race to 2010 is closing in a bit as we now are down to the dying days of June, and so the next phase in terms of building your new revenue stream or business is becoming more relevant and significant.

Now the point of the Race is to take people from any walk of life that isn’t a millionaire and help them to reach millionaire status by September 1st, 2010. That’s the whole point of the exercise, and of course helping you to make that leap in fully legal, responsible and realistic ways.

So last time out I had you look at your skills baseline – this was to help you identify and start ruminating about some of the things you’re best at, and where you might need a little extra help to reach your goals.

This time out I’m doing the same thing, but from a financial point of view. Today we’re going to take a look at your Financial Baseline and see what your starting point is. Taking a recap of this a year from now should make a big difference in your life and the lives of your family and friends as well, not just because we certainly hope you’ll be in a much better financial situation, but because you will be able to clearly see how your step by step growth has progressed and brought you the success you’ve always wanted. The feeling of accomplishment when you reach your goal will be worth every ounce of sweat.

But for all of that to be relevant, we need to have a really honest look at what your financial baseline is *today.*

Today we’re only looking at what your real, usable resources are on relatively short notice. Sure, if you really wanted to you could try and yard sale or E-Bay the entire contents of your home, but it’s not a reasonable proposition, and you’d probably end up losing too much value on your possessions because of your need to sell exceeding your customers’ need to buy.

So financially here we’re looking for different things. One thing that may surprise you is how much you can actually accomplish with only a few bucks. To give you some inspiration, here are a few things you can do that will provide you with your own product to sell for less than $200.00 (I’m assuming here you have access to a fairly current computer and basic transportation of some kind at least. If not, that may add a bit to your cost out the door.):

a) Publish a book through a print-on-demand publisher for $50 and have your book sold on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and half-a-dozen other key book-sellers’ sites. It can even be someone else’s book that you have the license to publish and you just publish it and promote it, taking a share of the royalties.
b) Build an online radio station. Some legitimate licenses for prerecorded music can be as little as $75 a year and a lot of the software you might need is available legally for free online as shareware. As you sell advertising and gain listeners you can afford to upgrade later. But product out the door is available pretty darn cheap, especially for talk radio.
c) Design How-To-DVDs and CD-ROMs and sell them through your own website.
d) Start an electronic magazine.
e) Do event photography at clubs and social events, posting the pictures in low-res online and offering to sell the good quality photo prints to the people in the picture for $5-$10 each by promotion at the venues to your website the way they do on cruise ships.
f) Start a residential cleaning company. Sounds odd, right? I have a friend who built her home cleaning business into a multi-million dollar business in a little over a year and a half. It made so much money she closed her primary (profitable) business of fashion design in order to focus strictly on the cleaning business.

There are literally hundreds of ideas to fit low budget start ups like these, and the only primary advantage that higher amounts of financial resources offer you is the advantage of greater flexibility or choice.

In the final analysis, does it really matter as long as you are doing something you love and are getting richly rewarded for it?

Now your financial resources do give you options and choices, so there is a very real, and very good reason to take a look at what your resources are before you get going, and more than just to set a baseline for future comparison.

It also should help to make you honestly aware of whatever liabilities you currently face and probably will face over the coming year. Being aware of the liabilities is important because it gives you the heads up you need to be able to plan on how to deal with them, but plans are only good if you get a chance to implement them. If you don’t do anything with plans, all you have is a wasted sheet of paper.

Let’s get started shall we?

Ok so I’m going to break this next part up in sections to make it easier to put them together and get some indicators out of it. For the purposes of the baseline I’m going to put things in a range of 1-100, with 1 being ‘awe-inspiringly bad’ and 100 being ‘so good you shouldn’t be on this list.’ Once you’ve done all this in subjective numbers, I’d really very strongly recommend that sooner or later you go back through and do this with live dollars-and-cents amounts. It’s very telling to see the difference between where we think we are, and where we *really* are in real dollars.

Current Assets:

Cash:
Savings:
Convertible Bonds:
Accounts Receivable (people who owe YOU money):
Saleable Inventory (Stuff you already have that you could sell quickly):
Bonds:
Stocks (share certificates):
Mutual Fund Investment Assets (Not your retirement savings plan version – just straight investment stuff here.):
Other Soft Assets (easily sellable):

*Total Current Assets*:

Current assets are all those things that you can very quickly turn into cash (without owing anybody anything afterwards). Hopefully this is the pool of assets that you’re working with for the Race.

Capital Assets:

Vehicles:
Your Home:
Major Tools:
Other Hard Assets (harder/longer to sell):

*Total Capital Assets*:

Now lawyers are going to complain and whine that my distribution of current assets and capital assets doesn’t meet their definition, and probably not the definitions of the tax code, and you know what? That’s fine by me. What we’re looking for here is what you can reasonably get in straight cash value when you sell whatever you have. Notice I did not include household goods, your family jewels, whatever you can sell in a family bake sale, and definitely not whatever’s stuffed away in your garage. Later when we get really technical we can use the specific language that the beagles and the bean counters worry about instead.

So if you take a look at those ratings you gave yourself for the total current assets and total capital assets then you should have a reasonably good idea of what you actually own and can get your hands on if you needed to.

Next up we’re going to take a look at what you owe – your liabilities, and your available credit.

But that’s for tomorrow’s blog.

For tonight your homework is this – you’ve seen what your skills baseline told you about what you’re good at, what you know, and what you have talents for. Tonight you’ve seen your resources at hand, and tasted a couple of nibbles about the kinds of things you can do to earn a million dollars with them. Do you see an opportunity yet? Do you have the creative juices starting to flow? Are you mixing these into an interesting cocktail yet? Take a single sheet of paper and fill both sides of it with combinations of your skills and your financial resources in terms of ways that you could earn more money with them. Think about how to mix and match them together and tomorrow we’ll continue and finish off your financial baseline so you have a little better picture going forward.

The other thing to keep in mind is that I am going to start trying to post as often as I can from now until September 1st, both about the Race to get you ready and energized, but also with those informative pieces that I want you to think about in terms of business, and society in general.

I will be adding in a variety of other things to the conversation as well. In the next week or two I plan to finish a specific art project I’ve been working on called The Heart Stone. Once you see it, you’ll know why.

In the mean time, before I bid you good night good friends, a favour, if you please. Hug an icon. They seem to need a little extra support these days.

Super Blog: The True Cost of Doing Bad Business

2009-06-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

The True Cost of Doing Bad Business.

I have spent some time showing you some of the perils that the business world faces knowingly, or as I advocate, mostly in a state of abject negligence.

Today is a different day.

Today I am going to give you a blog that will identify 3 of the many areas of loss and cost that stem directly from doing Bad Business. Whether from negligent mismanagement or direct intent to make money from less than respect-worthy methods, the costs of Bad Business can be calculated, and have an impact on everyone – taxpayers, employees and consumers alike.

Already as I write this blog, I know that this issue alone merits its’ own treatise, one that I will pursue in the moderately near future. Already I can hear the thousands of managers’ screams as they realize that I do indeed call their decision-making into question. And already I can hear a percentage of those screams die on the lips of those same managers as they also realize why their decisions were wrong, and what can be done to fix them today, and going forward.

Prior to the election in November, 2008, several key business leaders were interviewed on TV and the general consensus was that a percentage, to the minds of the interviewees, substantially less than 9% of managers were competent at their jobs.

That statistic made some headlines and was duly forgotten in the following weeks’ news.

Here’s what it told me: somebody HIRED 91% of their managers as bad managers and has yet to fix that problem. Actually, the vast majority of companies hired 91% of their managers poorly and that majority of business leaders have never addressed their hiring problem.

Why would most companies be satisfied having sub-par management? Sub-par *anything*???

The answer is that they believe that the cost of doing *better* is too high and that consumers will not tolerate the price increase.

How often have we heard that line? The line that “margins are low, so we can’t afford to bump the price up in order to cover massive cost increases for new projects” is always used when it is convenient for someone’s purpose to not have to do something, but it never seems to come out the next week when the same executive announces their forward thinking project that might just get the company to the forefront of ideas that they happen to like.

In reality, the line has nothing to do with the facts in hand. Bad business decisions cost companies far more than all the deliberate damage inflicted on them by competition and criminals combined. Fixing the bad business decisions actually saves you money – it doesn’t cost more. It is faulty logic to argue against fixing bad business decisions because it *costs too much* to do it right.

And because you’re fixing a bad decision in no way necessitates any relationship to pricing. If the cost of fixing a bad decision is $1,000,000 but the savings from doing it right will be $6,500,000, where is the price increase needed? It is inherently flawed logic, and a fallacious argument.

Don’t listen to the line any more. Listen to facts and you make up your mind as to what the right steps are to get your company back on the pathway to success.

So here are just a handful of examples of situations you have probably heard of where bad business takes place. See what the true costs are, and see if your company suffers from any of these bad business decisions:

1) Employee Turnover/Talent Management.

There is an old adage in recruiting circles and HR departments that goes something like this – There are no bad jobs, only bad bosses. The number one reason people choose to look for other work is because they work for a boss that they do not get along with or do not respect. If you see an employee turnover every once in a while, that would not be a problem – sure there are bound to be some personalities and work habits that just don’t mesh. But when you see high employee turnover rates like 30%, 40%, 50%, 80%, you know that there is a real problem with the manager(s) in question and with the company as a whole.
But how does that cost a company money? Isn’t it keeping the cost of employee salaries low? Doesn’t that keep a minimized employee benefit payment, a more flexible workforce, and sometimes generate government retraining subsidies as cost off-sets? Isn’t a high turn-over rate sometimes a good thing?

Yes, it does all of those things, but it comes with a monstrously high price tag hidden in the weeds. And no, high-employee turnover rates are not good things. Here’s why:

Recruitment costs. Let’s say that you have a fairly low employee turnover rate, all new employees are successful hires, and all of them are quick learners, getting to full productivity in a little over 4 months. Let’s also say that you have a turnover of about 30 employees per year, with an average salary of only $20,000 per employee.

It usually takes a good month of training for employees to get up to speed, and that training involves their supervisor’s time, trainers’ time, administrations’ time, and so on. A variety of national estimates have indicated that the average cost to recruit an employee from opening the position to making the hire costs on average between $2,400 and $7,000 per employee, so we’ll take that on as well.

If you screen 100 candidates to fill each position, and it takes on average 6 weeks for the position to get filled then the cost of the presumably bad employees that were let go, combined with the learning curve costs of the new employees, recruiting costs, candidate interview and screening costs, and everything else rolled in, it’s costing you more than $1,000,000 each year to maintain that, according to Gevity, a company in the recruiting costs management field. And that’s estimating under optimal circumstances.

Gevity then goes on to estimate that if you improve your employee retention rate by just 40% then you can save between $400,000 and $665,000 per year, based on that limited example above.

Now let’s take a more representative sample of the worst case offenders. These are companies that each year turn over 500-1000 employees a year or more. The costs multiply very rapidly, and using the same principle the average costs to the offending company climb to a massive amount. In this example, Gevity’s calculator estimates that improving their employee retention by 40% could save that offending company more than $325 million dollars a year.

If the government retraining subsidies don’t at least pay you that much money, and you don’t save enough money to make up the difference, then you’ve made a pretty bad business decision.

If you would like to see how your company’s employee turnover rate is affecting your business, drop on by their website calculator at http://www.gevity.com/tools/recruiting_cost_calculator.html

Not to mention that you’re burning your bridges with your local community. You can’t measure the impact of negativity created by that volume of negative experiences as former employees are unleashed on your local marketplace. The challenges in recruiting new talent or top level talent only multiply when you’ve created a bad reputation as an employer. The old adage of ‘watch your step on the way up the ladder – you never know when one day the person you stepped on may become your boss’ applies surprisingly often.

These ex-employees may use your product or service – they may in fact be your customers as well as your former employees. Would you react happily to the company that just terminated you? Probably not. Nor would your family. Nor your friends. Word of mouth advertising works both for and against you, so as an additional incalculable cost of bad management on an HR side, you also have a cost in terms of sales and marketing that has just become tougher because of the initial bad HR strategy.

The next related cost-point comes when we start to talk about networks. There are some advantages to having experienced, career-loyal employees in your company. One of them is the size of the network they develop within your company, your client base, and your suppliers. They know how to find solutions when other, newer faces can only throw up their hands in defeat. They know how your company works when it’s at its best, and how it collapses when it fails. They know what needs reinforcing, and what can be exploited for more success. If you keep flipping employees, you don’t have those networks at your disposal. Because that corporate memory just walked out your door on the last firing spree or because of their own dissatisfaction with the workplace environment.

2) Innovation.

I cannot count the number of companies I have worked for, done business with, or encountered who have done ‘the corporate line’ of putting up motivational posters to encourage employees to submit ‘great ideas’ to save or make the company more money. Each year, almost as a token measure, the company takes one or more of these ideas and implements them, makes or saves a few extra bucks and declares this their spirit and corporate culture of innovation. In reality it is a spirit of condescension almost like none other. Here’s why:

The company has no more value for the employee than the 15 minutes of fame that it took to select an idea in the first place. Sure, there may be a token bonus, but in reality the modern corporation doesn’t truly reward innovation. The number of promotions or long term contracts signed as a reward or incentive that I have heard of could be counted on the opposable thumbs of one elephant.

It doesn’t happen, even if it means the company is now able to make millions in additional revenue. To put it in context – if one of your sales people increased their sales volumes by $1,000,000 a year or more, they’d be getting one heck of a commission cheque and a pretty sizeable bonus.

If one of your employees comes up with a $1,000,000 idea and you’re giving them a $100 bonus, you’re not rewarding innovation, you’re encouraging people to take their ideas outside the company where it’ll do them more good.

Innovation is more than just good ideas…it’s the building of an ongoing iterative process. The evolution of a corporate memory is what helps the evolution of small ideas to grow into game-changing ideas. It’s also what keeps you from paying for the cost of bad ideas tried over and over again.

So how does this apply? Here’s one solid example out of literally hundreds I can offer you that far too many companies are ignoring to their own cost:

In House Software Development.

So many major corporations and smaller firms contract others to supply the tailored software they depend on for their mission-critical operations these days. For years now I have been able to call company after company and, while on hold, discover that their applications were unavailable and they were waiting for some other company to fix them. Downtime, non-productive, profitless,wasted time.

Or that their latest, brand new software actually didn’t do what they needed – they couldn’t fix errors on an account, didn’t have the functionality to do obvious job-related tasks, did not have a tool to get information that they had access to previously under their older, manual system, and so on. You know exactly the kinds of problems I’m referring to if you’ve ever had a question about a bill, needed to make a payment to a supplier, tried to find out if a Christmas gift was available at your local store, or wanted to get some obvious help about assembling or using or troubleshooting a product you’d just purchased.

This answer never seems to make sense, which ironically does make sense because the software they are using to do their jobs was built for something else and only highly tweaked for their use. And when it breaks, they have to go back to the original company to get it fixed at usually higher than desired rates.

The original design team has usually moved on to other projects by this point and is no longer available to build a tailored solution so new faces and players come to the table to reinvent the solution (wheel) at the last minute. The cost usually is prohibitive so updates and upgrades are delayed until they absolutely must be incurred. Once those updates, upgrades, and the ever infamous ‘patches’ are installed, there is inevitably a period of costly disaster while the bugs are worked out. And when it’s all done, it still falls far short of what is truly needed to do the work at hand. The company just couldn’t afford all the bells and whistles.

The productivity losses are astronomical, overtime always soars, and customer dissatisfaction…don’t get me started.

And yet…. No one company I have ever spoken to about this has ever realistically considered that the millions that they pay to outsourced coders and software architects could instead be paid to IN-HOUSE staff instead.

*WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! Radical Thought Ahead!*

Have you ever costed out what it would take to build your key applications in-house instead of contracting it out? You wouldn’t have to pay consultancy rates, for starters, or pay for someone else’s development costs and overhead – these would all be costs you would control.

You wouldn’t have a budgetary constraint based on another firm’s timelines and productivity cycles, either.

Oh, but what would you do with all those staffers once the project was finished? You would have to let them go, right? And what about our overhead and development costs? Won’t those be much higher?

WRONG.

That’s where every single bad management decision on the subject starts. The truth is that the same staff would be needed to start right away designing the next iteration of the software, or a new application to innovate a new solution, or design your new online purchasing security features, your new building access controls, your new viral marketing campaign, your new HR database, your new management application tools, your new office automation software, your new organizational management products, or any of hundreds of other projects. You’re not building a team to build a singular product – they’re building an infrastructure for you going forward with an array of corollary products you will benefit from for years and years to come.

Think about it. How many different computer software applications are you forever negotiating new contracts with day, after day, after day?

Sure, they’re on a variety of subjects, platforms, etc. but aren’t your project managers for these projects and in-house interfacing employees often the same people?

When you’re facing needs from a variety of different departments simultaneously, it’s easy to say that your answers always have to lie outside your company, but if you incrementally build an in-house development department you can cut the extra costs and increase your resulting productivity and satisfaction with the tools you end up with and build your capacity to plan, design, and implement software and technology development as you go. You can even design the CBT (Computer Based Training) modules in-house with the people who built the real thing and know best what it is designed to do and what it cannot do.

What you end up with is a unique advantage that your suppliers can’t offer – you own all the rights to your technology projects, and you can resell them to others if you feel like it. Either way, you don’t have to pay anyone else any licensing fees of any kind. You have no availability issues in terms of mission-critical timelines, as you already have the staff on hand, so your downtime, lost sales and overtime costs are much more controllable.

And if ever there comes a day when you feel that you will not need to develop new technologies for your own purposes, you now have a widely experienced and potent team that can design software solutions for others as an additional revenue stream for your company, while simultaneously subsidizing the costs of your development teams for any future in-house requirements you may have. This one idea alone can actually end up not just saving you millions, but making you millions.

In many ways it’s like renting or paying a mortgage. Hiring consultants is ‘renting.’ Developing in-house would be ‘having a mortgage.’ When you’re done with the rental, all you have are expenses. When you’re done with the mortgage you have assets you can sell, and your on-going costs drop dramatically.

As with a mortgage, this only works as a long-term plan – it can’t suddenly crop up overnight and solve your financial woes, but down the road it pays off over and over again.

3) The Company War Chest.

Every famous personal finance advisor is spreading the word about how much money it takes to keep you afloat during the current financial hard times, and their advice ranges from suggesting you have 8 months of income set aside as liquid assets to 2 years, depending on how long they feel it will take to out last the market and regain your earning level in the event of an involuntary loss of employment.

They also suggest you keep your credit purchases to a relative minimum, and keep them paid off and current, while negotiating any liabilities into long term loans at historically low interest rates.

They suggest you purchase long term value capital assets like a home that will provide value for a long time and will also force savings and investment in tangible hard real-property.

In other words, save your money, spend within your means, set aside for big purchases, save for rainy days and emergencies.

And corporate entities should not be following this same mantra…….why?

If companies used the same basis that people should for building a safety-valve war chest, then 10% of their annual revenues would be set aside as an investment, and after 6 or 7 years (with compound interest/investment income) they would have an account that had a whole year’s worth of revenues as investments producing additional income as a *just-in-case* fund.

They would never again have a financial crisis they couldn’t reposition through. They would never again have to rely on a government bailout.
They would never again have to rely on the exorbitant cost of revolving credit for their routine operations and purchases.
They would never again be vulnerable to catastrophic organizational failure.
They would never have to worry about chasing down investors to fund ventures – they could make that decision for themselves based on having the war chest on hand to do the job.
And their financially weaker competitors would be far less likely to want to engage in anti-competitive behaviours knowing that them can out last them and survive anything they can throw at them.

Also…by that point, if the company decided that their primary market had run its course or become too competitive to be profitable, they could liquidate all of their assets and still be profitable doing nothing more than managing their investments. The worst case scenario is the company is in a position to always be profitable from that day forward.

And corporate leaders don’t like this level of security and profitability because …. they prefer reporting periodic losses and lower than necessary profits? They prefer having to beg banks and investors to buy their big capital investments for them and get charged more for the privilege instead of being able to pay for them in cash? They prefer being at catastrophic risk of failure when the supply of credit dries up and interest rates skyrocket like they did in the late 70’s?

Really. Hmmm.

It’s not like the money isn’t being used to generate profit – that’s its’ primary purpose in a savings plan.

I’m still waiting for an honest answer as to why this would be a bad idea.

The reason everyone gives is that they don’t have the money to go around to be able to save 10% of revenues, especially when profits are less in than 10% margins.

So….the difference between that answer for companies, and the same answer from people is….precisely….what?

If it is not acceptable for a person to not get on top of their financial security planning, then why is it any more acceptable for a company who has employees and suppliers dependent on their financial stability and liquidity to shirk their fiduciary duties?

Good financial management is one of the cornerstones of running a successful business. Savings needs to be factored in to cost structures for companies just as much as it does for people. This just isn’t something that’s negotiable. How much to save, when to save, how to save…all are negotiable and discussable. Not saving at all isn’t.

For long term success we invest in retirement savings so that when we get to a point where our earnings from active employment tail off we don’t lose one thin dime from the quality of life we aim to live. Companies need the same kind of foresight, because as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow, there will always be ups and downs in the business world, and no company should be left holding an empty bag in front of the nation begging for alms as a result of challenges they could have foreseen and protected against.

People, companies, and governments have a lot to learn, remember, and respect about the value of having a full treasury when you happen to need it.

Bad Business decisions make companies pay for the same mistakes over and over again, and usually are the first things defended as budgetary line items. Bad managers will often find hundreds of excuses to defend bad decisions, even to the point of making them sound perfectly logical by using theoretically opposite options; e.g. “Either we hire those consultants at that rate or it’ll cost us so much more to do it in-house.” Where superior managers thrive is in their ability to see past those tricks and teach their employees to think about those decisions in ways that actually make sense; e.g. “If we build an in-house department for that we can not only have them here for this project, but we’ll also have them available to work on these 6 other things we’ve wanted to do but never had the budget for before. Amortized over seven projects it’ll save us millions over hiring it done by outsiders.”

See beyond today and the decisions that take the responsibility off your shoulders the fastest, and start seeing the decisions you will genuinely be proud of and heralded for 10, 20, 30, 50 years from now. Start the Smart Business Revolution at your office and earn your company the strength it needs to not only be the best at what it does, but to be the best for a long, long, long time to come.

If you only take information in condensed volumes like soup, try these snippets on for size:

Hire people who are better than you at their jobs, not people you can replace in a pinch.

If you have a disposable workforce, you have a disposable company.

The wheel’s already been invented. Is that good enough for you, or is that just the starting point for your innovation going forward?

Stop paying for the same mistakes over and over again. Fix the bad decisions and move forward.

Are you allergic to new ways to make money? If not, consider how each decision you make is a potential opportunity to make more money today, tomorrow, and down the road.

Invest in making your company good for more than just today. Invest in being the best for years to come.

Save, for crying out loud, save!

And if you only follow one recommendation from this issue, please let it be this one: if you don’t have the money to do something right, where are you going to get the money to do it over? And over? And over?

Promise me you’ll think about these every time you see someone exercising their right to make Bad Business decisions, and feel free to send me some examples, even examples of your own. We’ve all made them. The only question is have we learned from them?

Race to 2010 - What's in it for You.

2009-06-16T20:19:00.000-07:00

Race to 2010 – The Upside.

So you want to be a millionaire, right? And that’s not enough upside for you? Ok, ok, ok, I get it. Why, if you’re going to do all the work in the first place, do you need to register for the Millionaires Race to 2010? What do you get out of joining the Race?

Quite a bit, actually.

See, one of the things that is going to really benefit you is the fact that this Race is going to be promoted across all the web networking sites I think will be helpful, drawing thousands of readers to hear about the competition, the participants, how we’re doing, the progress we’re making, our trials and foibles, what’s working for us, and what’s holding us back. Your stories will be motivational for many, humorous to some, and saddening to others, but at the end of the day you will be presented to thousands of loyal interested readers day after day for an entire year. Some of our participants will be part of our periodic video blogs and webcasts, many others will be interviewed on air for our podcasts, and as attention is raised for this, we’re going to gain exposure on TV and radio stations across the continent, and perhaps even around the world.

And unlike normal media, this one is talking to only those interested enough to keep tabs on a purely voluntary basis – the readers choose to be a part of your adventures. They’ll choose to talk about you with their friends. They’ll choose to follow your successes for years to come. They’ll choose to support you to reaching your goal.

What you’re gaining by being a part of this project, then, is to be part of a Power of Choice project.

You are choosing to work towards your successes in life. They are choosing to support you to achieve your goals. And in the process many, many others benefit by new products, services, and jobs generated throughout the entire economy. This is all about the power of your choice to join the Millionaires’ Race to 2010.

Another thing that’s going to benefit you is the participants-only sites where you will get direct access to helpful resources, tips, other participants’ stories, information and tools from industry and financial management insiders, special research reports on various industries, and much more. Not bad for free, hmm?

And over the next year I and my team, and your fellow registrants will be working at a furious pace to help each other achieve our goals, including finding more things to make this a richer, more fun, more exciting, and more rewarding experience. There may even be some special tools and resources offered by sponsors that become available in the future.

But most importantly this experience is going to build you a network of other successful and talented individuals in a way like no other can. This isn’t reality TV – this is reality unleashed.

Have you ever seen the interviews of those competitors from those reality TV shows who all say they love their fellow competitors and will always keep in touch, friends for life, etc., yadda, yadda, yadda? Compared to being in the crucible of a real make it or break it financial environment for an entire year, these reality TV stars haven’t even tasted the kind of loyalty that’s generated in what we’re doing.

We’re building a stronger generation of financially secure, fiscally savvy, highly networked, employment generating, socially responsible, extraordinarily talented and experienced people from across the continent.

Or you could stand alone and do it your way. Your choice.

2009-06-16T20:16:00.000-07:00

The Latest in Credit Card Hacks.

Corporate Identity fraud has been exposed once more in the scale in which it exists: 1 in 7 companies currently meets the most minimalistic of processing security standards that the major credit cards arbitrarily came up with to avoid government regulation, or so says Jordan Robertson of the Associated Press. The rest don’t even come close.

For his whole article feel free to wander over here: http://ca.lifestyle.yahoo.com/family-relationships/articles/archive/cp/home_family-weak_security_opens_door_to_credit_card_hacks.

Here’s the problem – the North American market has tried desperately to use the excuse that the consumer is willing to pay for the titanic cost of global business fraud and money laundering in exchange for ‘low-cost,’ ‘speedy’ transactions.

The reality is that this not only exposes us to vast amounts of personal, corporate, and governmental risk, it funds exactly those criminals that we have whole departments desperately trying to forestall, not the least of which is the Department of Homeland Security.

The reality is that when 911 happened it didn’t take long before Osama Bin Laden’s net worth was estimated to be about $300 million USD. The reality is that our federal and local law enforcement officers discovered that local groups were using credit card frauds, identity theft and other scams in order to raise funds for overseas terror groups to continue to fight against us by raising the money right here in the US through these kinds of crimes. The reality is that the technology involved in the encryption used by those that are PCI compliant is so weak that it is broken daily by professionals hired by organized crime to pilfer the resources of anyone using the banking and credit system. The reality is that we are allowing our financial system to pay the bad guys to inflict damage to us.

CNN has reported that since they started tracking it in 2008, the US economy alone has lost over 3 million jobs, a large number of those in the financial services field. The reality is that the same people who thought extending their investments into risky derivatives, NINJA loans, Ponzi-schemes, and so on, were and are the same people telling you that you don’t need to worry about the level of security on your transaction processing.

The reality is that this is the same level of encryption planned for your health records when they become electronically filed as explained by our President and the new Secretary of Health.

The reality is that companies are being taken out of business entirely because fraud is perpetrated against them and their clients, often in their own names, by these kinds of hacks and other identifiable and preventable causes, and that the jobs that these companies would otherwise be offering in a fair and reputable marketplace would be in companies that were experiencing growth, that would not have needed to be lost, that were not lost by the general economic downturn.

It is identical to walking to the center of a major business center or shopping mall, putting a blindfold on, spinning around and around, and wherever you stop, pointing a finger at whatever store is in front of you and saying that’s the store that’s closing today because of unrestrained fraud perpetrated against them, and that we’re ‘ok with that.’

And here’s the next line of logic I want to leave you with: if you’re at all listening to the news these days, you have had to have heard about the increasingly strained relations with North Korea. You may or may not have heard or remember that part of the concern about their situation is that they are the world’s number one source of fake US currency, which they use to float their country’s finances. As most major global banks will not have anything to do with them, they spend this money through shadier institutions with much shadier contacts and clients than we’d like to know about. They also produce fake credit cards by the score for exactly the same purpose. They also have nuclear weapons and are currently threatening us with them. So…..where’s the money coming from for this threat?

This begs the question, then, which is more important to you? The lies of the (same) bankers and financiers who tell you it’s too expensive and time consuming to fix (that are also responsible for our current financial mess), or the cost of a prospective nuclear winter caused by a regime we know has the weapons and the ‘crazy’ genes to do it?

And the follow up question, of course, is what do we plan to do to fix it? And are we ready to let them put our health records and biometric data (used in secure documents like passports and social security cards) in the same hands?

Are we really ready to finally admit that, yes, Virginia, there really is a Bad Guy?

Race to 2010- Building an Idea

2009-06-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

Race to 2010 – Building An Idea, Part 1.

For those of you who haven’t heard, I’m launching a race to prosperity for anyone in Canada or the US who wants to join in- this will be the evolution of the biggest number of new millionaires in either country, all from normal, honest, responsible, and profitably managed revenues.

No MLMs, scams, Ponzi-schemes or other things that avoid reality – we’re going to make money the old fashioned way. By earning it.

Now everyone I know is happy enough to hear that, but the ultimate question is *how*? If it was so easy, everyone would be rich, right?

Actually it is reasonably easy, but it does take a few things to accomplish, and we’re going to deal with those over the next few blogs, but we’re starting today with the first thing that makes or breaks the whole deal – and that’s matching the right opportunity with the right person.

Think of it this way: you’ve seen American Idol, right? How many perfectly good singers have been ousted from that competition because they picked the wrong song for their voice and talent level? I mean you like their singing and all, but seriously, the wrong song can make almost any singer sound like William Hung on a bad day.

The same identical thing applies to revenues and business opportunities. If it isn’t the right market, or the right timing, or the right thing for you then it would be a lousy match destined for failure. So Key #1 is to select your condiments wisely.

Some people have an absolute knack for picking the right things for them. Others just stumble into the right opportunity at the right time. But for those of us involved in this project we need to get it right the first time so we can get the best head-start we can.

So how do we do it? How do we figure out which opportunity is right for each of us? How do we find opportunities to select from at all?

Good questions. Here are some of the answers…

First off you need to decide a few things like are you comfortable being your own boss? Do you work better alone or in groups/teams? What are your most marketable skills or talents? And most importantly, what are you NOT good at or most want to NOT want to do yourself.

If looking after taxes is not your forte, for example, and you are petrified of doing them and can’t look a solid number in the punctuation marks then you need to recruit some talent that can help. These can be paid staffers, they can be companies you hire to look after the details, they can be involved via a variety of other arrangements too but at the end of the day you do need to keep an eye on whatever they produce to make sure you’re neither being ripped off nor paying for inferior quality work. The quality of the work and its’ value to you are the things you need to weigh in determining which talents and expertise you need to support you on this journey.

Now obviously we’re not yet at the point of picking out employees or companies or partners to help us as we haven’t figured out the products or projects involved yet either, but you do need to start thinking about it because this kind of thing will help you to focus on the kind of project that best suits your work/lifestyle by helping you find compatibilities between what you want to do, and what’s available in your pool of opportunities.

So let’s say you’re doing this seriously and you get out a sheet of paper, a pen, and maybe a few hi-lighters or coloured pens to underline things as we get to them. I’ll suggest some skills and you see if they are things you think you’re reasonably good at. Go ahead and give yourself a rating from 1-100 for each one. If you think you’re particularly good, swing that number closer to the 100 range. If you think that this is something that only with divine assistance could you master at all, then you might aim closer to the 1 range. If you know nothing about it at all, feel free to give yourself a ‘0’ or a N/A (Not Applicable) if you have a skin sensitivity to low numbers. (It also wouldn’t hurt to have 3 or more of your friends rate what they believe your abilities or skill levels are at these things to give yourself an idea of whether your perception of your abilities is justified or how well your friends know about your talents):

Writing:
Researching:
Math:
Science:
Acrobatics:
Mechanics:
Carpentry:
Plumbing:
Electrical Work:
Carving:
Drawing:
Drafting:
Painting:
Landscaping:
Gardening:
Cooking:
Mixology:
Sewing:
Shopping:
Cleaning:
Organizing:
Typing:
Graphic Design:
Interior Decorating:
Comedy:
Poetry:
Sports:
Philosophy:
History:
Acting:
Video Editing:
Animation:
Accounting:
Tax Planning
Photography:
Economics:
Audio Editing/Recording:
DJ-ing:
Computer Programming:
Electronics Assembly/Repair:
Training/Education (of others):
Public Speaking:
Motivating Others:
Event/Party Planning:
Crafting:
Identifying and Coordinating Colours:
Performing Music:
Writing Music:
Journalism:
Politics:
Media Analysis:
Foreign Languages:
Engineering:
Physical Therapy:
Nutrition:
Travel:
Animal Training:
Animal Riding:
Juggling:
Escapology:
Magic Tricks:
Massage:
Group Coordination:
Project Management:
Money Management:
Sales:
Psychology:
Trivia:
Security:
Locksmithing:
Martial Arts:
Yoga:
Coaching:
Game Design:
Animal Training:
Industrial Design:
Architecture:
Masonry:
Chemistry:
Astronomy:
Brewing (Wine, beer, sodas, spirits, etc.):
Transcription:
Travel Planning:
Marketing:
Physics:
Personal Beautification (cosmetics/hair care, etc.):
Product Development:
Professional Networking:
Negotiation:
Law:
Charm:
Wisdom:
Common Sense:

Take a few minutes to review the results and see how those skills and talents you have the highest scores in fit together. Think about it over the next few days and let your mind wander about how to combine each of your skills to do different things. Any surprising results? Can you see any patterns? See anything that jumps out at you as a potential idea? Anything come to mind from one of your friends’ suggestions? Are there any skills you think you can improve on quickly that would combine well with other skills you already score highly at?

This is your first Baseline, your Skills Baseline. Keep this page handy for the next year or so – I assure you that you’ll want to see how this changes over the next year. In fact, if you stick with us over the coming year, I pretty much guarantee you’ll see big changes on that sheet when you take it again next year.

We’re going to do a few other Baselines over the next few weeks or so to round out the picture of total resources you have at your disposal to start this Race to financial independence. We’re going to look at your Resources Baseline, your Professional Network Baseline, your Personal Network Baseline, your Financial Liabilities Baseline, your Personal Liabilities Baseline, your Risk Tolerance Baseline, your Health Baseline, your Time Management Baseline, your Creativity Baseline, your Problem Solving Baseline, and anything else that occurs to me that might help you to get a solid foundation for making this the most successful year of your life…so far.

And if you want to, feel free to send me a copy of your results at theciguy@ymail.com. Whatever insights I have at this point I’ll be happy to share, and that’s true for all registered participants going forward. Again, this thing doesn’t officially start until September 1st, but you, my wonderful devoted readers, are getting a head start, so sign up, send in, and get cracking.

But for now I leave you tonight to finish working on your Skills Baseline. We both have some homework to do and some dreams to fulfill.

T-Mobil’s Latest Competitive Intelligence Failures.

2009-06-11T21:52:00.001-07:00

T-Mobil’s Latest Competitive Intelligence Failures.

June 6th stands out as an important date on the calendar now. That’s the date that, verified by T-Mobil and reported by the IDG News Service, ( Source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166348/tmobile_confirms_stolen_data_is_genuine.html ) hackers posted elements of information on the Full Disclosure message board that came from larger files and confidential documents they had copied from T-Mobil’s databases and financial files. No, according to T-Mobil, nothing stolen directly impacts customer privacy or financial security, but for those who study and work in the competitive intelligence field, this breach offers dark insights into how T-Mobil handles both its’ security and its’ public profile.

Turns out, the hackers have had no takers for the information so far, leading me to believe that the hackers in question were relatively new to the business of black-hat corporate/industrial espionage, otherwise one would have presumed that they’d have had a client *before* hacking T-Mobil. These were simply perpetrators of a crime of opportunity, and mercifully that’s all it appears to be. Because despite T-Mobil’s claims that the information, while confidential, poses no risk of loss to them or their customers, I can assure you that this is far from the truth.

Inside corporate information is the backplate of verification that someone is an insider with the company – it’s how you test the bonafides of other employees. You can only test them with those things that other employees would know but no one else would. The fact that rogue newbies can hack your financial files and databases means that just as easily those in the business of organized crime and corporate identity theft can similarly penetrate your defenses and cause much greater harm because they know what they’re looking for and how to get it. And worse still, what to do with it afterwards to cause the greatest amount of harm.

T-Mobil’s response has been predictable – repair the security breach so that door cannot open that way again and minimize the public concern about the impact on personal privacy and financial issues. But that doesn’t go nearly far enough to protect them from future attacks or to protect the country’s telephony infrastructure from attacks by the real professionals who are actively attacking and creating vulnerabilities to exploit later at their whim.

Now I could be simply fear mongering here, but let me give you an example of what I’m referring to that occurred in the same time-frame so you can appreciate why what I’m saying is *not* fear mongering:
( Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/webhost_attack/ )

On June 7th an attack on one of the larger web hosts in Europe resulted in the total destruction of over 100,000 websites, including thousands of small businesses, many of whom rely on those sites for nearly 100% of their revenues. If one of our major utility providers suffers catastrophic loss of revenue or electronic infrastructure damage, or other major financial damage, the ripples will affect the nation as a whole in the same way that the AIG and bank losses did in 2008/2009.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that T-Mobil’s financial files and databases had not just been copied, but had been destroyed. In a worst case scenario this could lead directly to requiring T-Mobil to have their books audited in order to verify the missing data. Their financial plans and any projects dependent on them would also be jeopardized and contracts might not be able to be let on key acquisitions and expenditures until the data was reconstructed from scratch. This would undoubtedly cost the company several million dollars just for the audit, and then potentially several million more for the project cost overruns and delays.

The data involving key personnel could also have been stolen allowing a NEC-like corporate identity fraud (see prior post in the article from 2008) case potentially costing T-Mobil billions of dollars.

Or the data could have been quietly corrupted causing unknown reporting errors which could influence share pricing and credit and bond ratings.

The scope of potential damage is staggering. And the minimized response that T-Mobil has offered subsequently shows a tremendous lack of expertise and experience and delineates them as a potential target for ever more strenuous attacks.

Worse still, T-Mobil has not taken the situation seriously enough to turn this attack into an opportunity to show off their thorough security responses and their strength at proactively handling threats to not only limit loss of investor and consumer confidence but to actually improve and increase it and thereby strengthen brand loyalty. They also have the opportunity to take the decision to launch a division that will actively target electronic threats, block their attacks, and bring them to justice by partnering with local and global law-enforcement on a proactive basis instead of purely responding to the damage inflicted by hackers who could be operating outside of US legal jurisdiction.

A competitive intelligence expert already working for T-Mobil would have the connections with the other players in their industry and law-enforcement as well and would be able to build consensus among the whole industry to fund a neutral task force or entity whose sole mission is to catch the black-hats and put them out of business.

And this example would be all the information they’d need to be able to make that happen and give the industry and T-Mobil in particular, some bright, shiny gold stars with the public and investors for making their world a better and safer place.

News Junkie News

2009-06-11T21:51:00.001-07:00

I think it would be safe to say that I am a bonafide news junkie, and it would also be safe to say that I used to sit, glued to my chair staring without blinking at CNN whenever something momentous was happening. Now that TV news has uniformly transformed into this stew of talking heads, I sit, pained, through each agonizing hour hoping to catch a single news story worthy of the name from any source that I may trip over. The complete dissolution of the CNN news service on a journalistic basis causes me personal anguish each time I so much as pass by the channel while browsing for something worth watching.

So I bring to you, with constrained enthusiasm, a link to a news source of at least moderate value as an amalgam of stories from around the world that seem to be mostly devoid of talking heads:

http://www.dhs.gov/xinfoshare/programs/editorial_0542.shtm

This is a site provided by the Department of Homeland Security that directly references the source of each article it summarizes, so you can both get more details on a story you’re interested in and also validate where the information comes from.

The articles are updated daily and there is a 10-day archive that you can browse through so you don’t miss anything important.

And most importantly of all, there are no talking heads to assault your senses and insult your intelligence.

The New Rush to Outsource.

2009-06-09T23:09:00.000-07:00

The New Rush to Outsource.

Companies are scaling back their workforces in a drastic effort to cut costs in a market with exceptionally weak demand. In order to accomplish that result while maintaining the flexibility to handle orders as they come in, companies are returning to outsourced workforces and temporary/term staffing sources.

With the available talent pool of recently unemployed specialists filling the ranks of the companies in this space, the opportunity to pay for executive or specialty talent that ordinarily wouldn’t be available is a temptation most managers are far from trying to resist.

But this process has not had a great history of working as a general rule for a variety of reasons. For starters, although costs associated with specific production or customer call volumes seem to be substantially reduced, substantial information is available that demonstrates the phenomenal impact on customer dissatisfaction and drastic changes in consumer spending trends that result from this kind of management decision.

In fact it can fairly easily be demonstrated that the outsource model usually has a value in a fairly short term to help balance some crisis financials, but its’ long term damage usually far outstrips the short term gains if this decision extends beyond a few months to a year.

The costs of hiring, training, supervising and developing human resources in your company almost always far outstrips the costs of outsourced employees but the loss of internal experience is a cost that can be measured in terms of crucified morale, high employee turnover rates, low customer satisfaction, high complaint ratios, lower profit margins, lower productivity, lower quality services and products, less innovation, lower consumer and employee loyalty, and in many other areas as well, basically leading to reduced capacity to compete and survive.

Now I can already hear my phone ringing with the calls from the executives at outsource call centers saying my article is flawed or unfair – hang on. I’m not done yet.

Outsourcing is a great opportunity to bridge dynamic growth and contraction in industries that either have highly seasonal or strongly periodic workflows, and also works extraordinarily well when used in layered productivity organizations where between each layer of outsourced experts is another layer of internal players who mesh the parts together and can maintain the quality control equation necessary for success. One example is using creative outsource teams in different time zones to have continuous creative flow on time-sensitive projects.

Where this differs from what is being done today is that today’s drive to outsource is coming not from routine cyclical expansion or contraction within a specific industrial or sales cycle, but from response global economic contraction as a silver bullet to cut costs. The consequences and differences in application should be obvious. Should be, but companies haven’t slowed down the rush to outsource, and the future financial impact extends our projected recession ever further into the future.

Outsource, by all means. But do it for the right reasons in the right way or suffer the consequences.

The Corporate Security Myth (Article from 2008)

2009-06-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

The Corporate Security Myth.

Ed. Note: This article was released last year to highlight and re-introduce the concept of corporate vulnerabilities to the kind and scope of threats that are currently out there in the business world. I thought that if I am going to begin a thread on this blog about corporate security then where better to start than to give it the kind of introduction this article provides. I hope this article gives you the inspiration to stay tuned for the subsequent articles on this subject, and to invest in the time it takes to give your company an honest analysis to see how vulnerable it is to this kind of threat.

The Corporate Security Myth.
October 26, 2008.

Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, in many cases millions of dollars, investing in corporate security in the interest of preventing both internal and external causes of business losses and critical business process interruptions. Generally speaking, they do offer businesses some very basic infrastructure and legal protection, but in real terms the vulnerabilities most companies have far outweigh the minimalist standards of security that those same companies have employed in recent years.

In many respects the decline of effective corporate security has dovetailed remarkably closely with the West’s decline in national security standards post-Cold War. The Peace Dividend was spent not just by governments, it seems, but by business entities as well. Unfortunately, just because the old Soviet Union ceased to exist does not mean that there are no bad guys left in the world, and individual criminals and organized crime have leapt into fields of criminality far more profitable than drugs, prostitution, smuggling, or simple theft. Stealing from businesses is now the number one crime in the world by dollar value according to interviews I have had with law enforcement and intelligence officials over the last few years. And the number one thing being stolen from companies is…. their identity.

Identity theft is not just a crime against average Americans or the general public – it is the thin end of the business wedge being used today by organized crime, disgruntled ex-employees, and it is also a very real vulnerability for national security from threats from terrorists and foreign powers, and it is being applied in ever more comprehensive strokes against businesses worldwide.

Consider the example of NEC of Japan. This past winter a handful of executives of a particular company were charged with a variety of crimes stemming from their theft of the identity of NEC Corporation – with a global impact of more than $5 billion. By pretending to be NEC Corp., they foisted massive costs of returned defective products to NEC on the real company while retaining the profits garnered for selling it in their name, all with NEC being none the wiser. They entered into massive amounts of debt on NEC’s behalf to finance their unauthorized plans, and left NEC holding the bag for it. They ruined NEC’s reputation for quality around the world by selling bad, cheap, knock-off products and leaving the real NEC to clean up the mess. And it went on for several years before anyone even had their first hint that something was wrong. NEC’s credit rating was affected, its’ public image was tarnished, it’s relationships with retailers around the world was damaged – a truly unexpected calamity caused by an otherwise unrelated external threat.

Consider the case of CardService International, a leading credit card transaction processing firm, who a few years ago was the target of very serious identity theft. Rogue invalid companies were started as executive search firms who would place ads on major employment search sites like Monster, CareerBuilder, Workopolis, HotJobs, etc. They would advertise positions for companies, in this case CardService International, and collect resumes from prospective applicants for those positions. Only after a few weeks, applicants would begin to call after not hearing back about their applications. The phone number in the ad was for the HR department at CSI, but CSI had never heard of the position, let alone any of the CV’s that the applicants had sent. By the time CardService International had discovered the scam, it was too late. Tens of thousands of prospective employees had sent private information in response to the recruiter’s requests including things like phone numbers, addresses, social security numbers, and all other data needed for a ‘pre-screening employment verification/background check.’ The staff hours needed and legal costs involved in trying to solve or minimize the damage from this scam for CSI’s purposes alone were astronomical. Consider, then, that this was not just happening to CSI at that time, but to dozens, perhaps hundreds of other companies simultaneously. And just as someone started to figure out the scam, the recruiting company would ‘go bankrupt’ and all trace of the ownership and staff would disappear, only to reappear with completely different and new recruiters under different names in different cities, repeating the scam from scratch over, and over again.

As a side note, the media have only just recognized this threat to personal identity theft this past weekend with a number of articles based on a theoretical test performed by a research group in the UK. They still have yet to seriously report on the actual accounts of this kind of fraud already reported to law enforcement around the country and around the world.

Neither of these scams, in fact, had anything to do with the companies in question. NEC could not have known what was happening purely through internal or external penetration threat security measures. No one went to CSI to hold them up at their building. These identity theft scams happened in virtually complete isolation from the companies whose names were used to commit major fraud. Current business security methodology has no viable means of protecting companies from this kind of security risk, and it is far too rampant and widespread for companies to ignore. One unofficial estimate of the losses/costs sustained by CSI for that particular example included more than a dozen professional staff deployed for more than 6 months with extensive over-time and almost a year and a half of fruitless legal costs trying to serve papers on the defunct and disappeared perpetrators. Assume that each of those professionals were paid at least $40,000 per year. That amounts to more than $250,000 in costs alone, plus the legal fees, court costs, and public relations mess. Interviews with staff also indicated that a number of applicants for those positions were purchasing reps in charge of their firms’ credit processing service purchasing decisions, and many of those had immediately put a replacement contract up for tender in order to drop CSI as they no longer felt that CSI was a safe service provider for financial transactions, even though no transactions had in fact been involved and CSI was not responsible for any wrong-doing. The impression left with applicants was that CSI was not serious about protecting its’ business reputation for security, and therefore would not be serious about any of its’ other security measures. The impact on sales, customer confidence, employee confidence, and potential real recruiting efforts is virtually incalculable.

These two examples only serve to illustrate that every company is just as vulnerable to the same kinds of dirty tricks, scams, and frauds and a host of other threats of varying scales, none of which are corporate leaders ready to deal with yet. And when the day arrives that the company hit by these scams is yours, will you have enough spare resources left to handle the impact? What happens if it hits you at the same time as:
- A major audit?
- A manufacturing strike?
- A critical supplier drastically limits your credit?
- You are in the middle of negotiating with a major new client or a new round of financing?
- A major company executive passes away?
- A major network virus destroys your company’s ability to respond?

Can you be sure your firm will survive it? Is your corporate security effective against these kinds of frauds and criminal threats, or is it still only part of the corporate security myth?

The Millionaires' Race to 2010- A Starting Point.

2009-06-09T23:06:00.000-07:00

The Millionaires’ Race to 2010 – A Starting Point.

Last week I told you why you want to be a part of this economic revolution. Now I’m going to give you a starting point to get ready to participate in it.

This whole effort is to build virtually indestructible legs of economic prosperity in our two countries, and to provide personal economic security through initiatives designed to teach us all how to build wealth responsibly while building new jobs and prosperity for our communities too.

Clearly we can’t just wait for governments to make the world a more prosperous place for us. It isn’t going to happen that way. Our neighbours and families are hurting, divorces are at highs we’ve not ever contemplated before, our employers are on shaky ground, consumer spending is down, consumer savings are only starting to make a moderate comeback, but the average household has a long way to go to be safe in the event of an economic disaster. We don’t need to let this happen, and we sure don’t need to let it continue.

That’s the motivation behind the Millionaires’ Race to 2010.

Now we’re getting into the details of how to make this happen. We’re going to have people from all walks of life and all kinds of interests. What subjects and approaches interest one person, will be of zero interest to someone else, so to make this successful, concentrating on only one kind of business or methodology as a means for generating a million dollars in a year is dumb. What’s going to happen instead is that I’ll put a bunch of ideas out there, but I’ll also give regular advice, inspirational stories, and most importantly I’m going to use my competitive intelligence background and expertise to show you how to find and generate opportunities in the kinds of things *you* most get a kick out of or are best at.

I’ll share those management insights I have about what makes a great company or a great manager, and I’ll share stories of where those techniques have worked for others. I’ll also point out some of the worst pitfalls to avoid and where you can find resources to help you figure out how to advance your own projects.

And here’s your first installment…

A million dollars is an amount of money. I could have picked an amount of $10, 1 billion dollars, or anything in between. But no matter how much or how little money we’re talking about, the money itself doesn’t define how it gets made or spent.

For those of you who don’t want the stress and strain of building a traditional business, you don’t have to. I can show you how to take knowledge you already possess and turn it into massive income. Or you can take your talent at crafts and art and, placed in the right environment, and on the right products, you can achieve successes you’ve never imagined. I can list dozens of things here, but that’s the littlest part of the equation. *What* you do matters, but not nearly as much as how and when and where. But very clearly, building a traditional business is *not* necessary.

For those of you who thrive on the idea of building your own businesses, boy will you be in for a treat. The opportunities you’ll see will make the difference between going to one of the shows on buying your own franchise and having the success of your life doing something you want to do instead.

Start setting aside some ‘what’ ideas if you’d like – it’s usually what gets us all inspired in the first place. At the end of the day, though, be ready to see opportunities as they arise. And I assure you, if you’re reading this blog, you’ll see a number of them.

And that’s your first secret to making bucket-loads of money – it isn’t only about having a great idea, it’s about acting on an opportunity in a timely manner. INC Magazine, for instance, profiled Paul Graham as their idea of a start-up guru because he’s started more than 145 companies, each targeting solutions to opportunities that the new company addresses.

What opportunities do you see today? And what opportunities will I show you in the coming tomorrows?

About A Competitive Intelligence Report

2009-06-09T23:04:00.000-07:00

About A Competitive Intelligence Report – June 9, 2009.

The current business environment underlines the penultimate need for the best, most accurate, and compellingly useful information that business leaders can get. The modern business relies on information in the exact same way that our political and military leaders depend on information – it helps them to make the best decisions they can to protect their companies, minimize their competitors’ advantages, and to help them maximize the opportunities available to them.

As this need for cutting edge information has been paired with technologically advanced solutions for developing, acquiring, exchanging, and analyzing information, companies have concentrated their resources on maximizing their ROIs from these sources. This pattern matches exactly the pattern ascribed to our national defense and intelligence spending where our efforts concentrated ever more on technologically acquired intelligence support from satellite feeds, internet scanning, communications intercepts, and so on.

But the comparison doesn’t actually stop there, unfortunately. Because our military, business and political leaders also cut back on those professionals in their companies and in their consultancy ranks whose sole purpose was to validate, verify, network, and develop human intelligence to protect and advance the needs and goals of their respective organizations, there now no longer exists a safeguard against false information, missing information, or faulty analysis.

Militarily and geopolitically I give you the result as 911 and the subsequent global conflicts arising from that dreadful event.

Economically I give you the ascendancy of corporate identity theft as the #1 crime in terms of global financial value, and I also give you the lack of safeguards protecting us against the kind of collapse more than adequately demonstrated by the current recession.

Companies who do not have the kind of access needed to validate their electronically garnered information through established human intelligence sources are destined to suffer overwhelmingly caustic failures in terms of competitive disadvantage and lack of preparation for sudden and dramatic fiscally punishing project failures.

Over the coming weeks I will begin to show my readers what kinds of information companies are missing with some concrete examples. This kind of information is critical to companies, and those companies that will be referenced in the articles would stand to benefit greatly by having the information before it is released to the general public through my report or suffer potentially costly consequences from ignoring the threats raised. To be fair, I will start by showing opportunities being missed by companies within specific industries. I will show telltale signs that competitive intelligence analysts actively research to determine the validity, nature, magnitude, and scope of the opportunities I raise as conversation pieces. After that, the kid gloves come off. World….you’ve been warned.

Business is a single foundation block for all of those things that spark public debate. It is no more and no less important than the other founding stones of countries, nations, communities. It is the basic unit of a nation’s economic engine, the basic unit in career identity, the basic unit in personal financial status, the basis of the tax revenue system, and therefore the financial engine of the government. It provides the necessities and luxuries of society with unparalleled risks, and unimaginable rewards. Our job, our responsibility is to minimize those risks where possible and maximize the benefits and rewards not just today but for the long term benefits imbued in personal, community, regional, and national senses.

Without a balance between the progress of technology and the ever-relevant human contribution then inevitably disaster will only accelerate and broaden in its’ scope, frequency, and potency, testing to our limits as a society to adjust and recover.

Special Treat...

2009-06-09T22:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight was an inspired night. You're getting not one but 5 blogs tonight, with more bonus blogs coming later this week. So much for the 2 blog a week limit, eh? Maybe I'll need to go on a 12 step blog program....

The next four blogs all deal with a variety of business issues, and included in that is the latest one on The Millionaires' Race for 2010, which I highly suggest you sign up for so you can join those of us who are trying to build a brand new pillar of economic security and stability by building wealth and jobs from the ground up.

But as I get the photography done I'll also be adding a blog on art projects i'm working on later this week or early next, and I'll also be adding some blogs on some other issues you may find interesting.

But in almost all cases, this week's blogs are all done on a forward looking basis. It's about what you can expect from this blog going forward - the kind of detailed, analytical information and projects I'm working on every day.

You will also be getting some other perks soon. I'm working on adding periodic podcasts and interviews as I get them in audio and perhaps even video formats, so look forward to hearing my pesky voice and seeing my mobile mug on your computers some time soon.

Ok... so enough of the addendums for now....here come the blogs.

C./

(P.S. - Please make sure you sign up for any updates on the blog and for the Millionaires Race to 2010. Tell your friends and colleagues - we want this to be big enough to change the fortunes of nations - get on board now!)

The Millionaires' Race to 2010...

2009-06-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

The Millionaires Race to 2010!

Ok… So rather than have it buried under the main story, this week this IS the main story. I’m getting so excited about this; I could just about explode into cascading fireworks all on my own.

Ok…for those of you who missed it, last week I announced the Millionaires Race to 2010. This is a project I’m starting to be able to help as many people in the US and Canada become millionaires as possible by September 1st, 2010.

This isn’t just an exercise in mass greed and depravity – it’s an effort to generate prosperity across both countries in a time when prosperity seems out of reach, debts seem insurmountable, national and business policies seem hell-bent to bankrupt us all of every generation, and foreign players are gaining ground on being purveyors of the true American Dream. This is to generate hundreds, maybe thousands of new businesses and jobs around the continent in some of the toughest economic times this country and the global economy have faced in the last hundred years.

So how exactly is this going to take place? That’s the point of tonight’s blog.

Each week I’m going to blog at least once about the Race, giving you updates about how it’s going, how far the participants are getting, what the resources we’re discovering are, new business models and plans that you can use to get started to fuel your own ideas, and so on.

This Race is going to be a whole toolkit on how to really, really, make honest money doing something worthwhile. I’m not making any recommendations to join any multi-level marketing groups, buying into franchises, investing in Madoff-like Ponzi schemes, investing in tax avoidance scams, or any of the other drivel and nonsense you find percolating over every website.

What you are going to find here will be real, honest to goodness business plans submitted by me or to me for your benefit. No one from the Chris George report is going to be making any money from anything you do by joining the Race (unless we partner with you on some specific project, of course)

As everyone gets on board and encounters some great resources for building revenues or cutting costs, we’re going to add those resources to our discussion.

As time goes by and those involved get further into the project, we’ll try and get some key experts to write in guest blogs on things like practical tips for keeping more of the money you make, debt management, charitable contributions, etc.

We’ll also get some blogs and comments from key suppliers you may want to chat with who can help you get certain parts of your ideas off the ground. No these won’t be endorsements, per se, but often times one of the hardest things for people trying to make money is to find those resources in terms of suppliers or coaches who can help them make things happen.

Successful people are never islands unto themselves. They are all capable of certain amounts and qualities of individual accomplishment, but in order to get and stay competitive they all rely on teams of experts, specialists, and helpers to get them ready for the fight. I’m going to try and bring you the best people, companies, organizations, and coaches out there to try and get you the best team of supporters I can find to help make what you’re doing as successful as I can.

This blog will be your coordination center for all those who want to help you be successful, and in turn we hope that you will be as free with any resources and help you encounter on your path to success that your fellow participants could benefit from by letting us know. Tell us what wonderful news you get; tell us when someone does you a favour that really saves the day and what led up to it. Tell us where you had your challenges and your victories, so others can avoid the pitfalls easier and help you with the challenges you’ll be facing down the road as well.

Getting started is easy – post a comment, send me an email, let me know you want to be a part of this great revolution in the North American economy and then stay tuned, because as the days and weeks go by you will see more and more concrete things you can do to get ready to start taking your own fortunes into your hands and making the world a more prosperous place.

And the grand prize? You may just be one of the continent’s newest self-made millionaires this time next year.

A Few Words of Advice to The New Cyber Security Czar…And the Race to 2010!

2009-06-03T00:12:00.000-07:00

A Few Words of Advice to The New Cyber Security Czar…And the Race to 2010!

"Every time we were beginning to form into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tried to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it was for creating the illusion of progress whilst producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization." Petronius (AD 166)

The quote above was the preface to an open letter you can see at any time on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) website. The letter was written by former Under Secretary National Protection & Programs, Robert D. Jamison. Jamison has since been replaced in the new hierarchy by Deputy Under Secretary Philip Reitinger. This is the governmental division established in January of 2008 by President Bush to coordinate national defense and protection of our technological infrastructure, in particular the .gov domain and just about anything the government handles in the public domain.

A year later we hear numerous reports about the creation of yet another government cyber security infrastructure and the appointment of yet another cyber security Chief. This follows, according to numerous reports, more than 20 previous efforts by the government over the last few years to reorganize, reshuffle, and recreate the government body with responsibility for keeping our electronically run world safe.

The truth is, the scale of the problem is, not as former Under Secretary Jamison put it, ‘monumental’, but more accurately securing our technological resources under a single authority is nigh on organizationally impossible.

I relate this experiment to the example of the amalgamation of the small, localized advertising agencies into the monoliths of teetering global consultancies that, while dominating the global ad market, are forever on the verge of financial rack and ruin. In the nineties a select few ad agencies started buying and merging with every agency they could find. If you really want an erudite and comprehensive, if long winded, dissertation on the subject then go read Goldman’s book, “Saatchi and Saatchi.”

The result is that the monoliths can always produce volumes of work, but they’ve more or less lost the creative competition that their clients made extraordinary efforts to acquire in the first place. In advertising agencies that creative competition is their only raison d’etre. Similarly, by amalgamating all of the cyber security personnel into one organization you accomplish the goal of saving duplication of resources and provide singular levels of matching security across all applications, but you sacrifice the ability to respond to and prepare for threats flexibly and you also lose the competition between colleagues to find better and better ways to enhance security. You also lose the advantage of having multiple systems of defense by restricting implementation to only those that suit the purposes of the monolith – the one-size fits all approach.

This means that all they have to do is beat your one standard and they can replicate their success across any barriers you’ve erected because they know how you think.

So my first piece of advice to the new Czar? Delegate. Delegate back down the chain to establish functional zones of protection that share techniques and technologies with each other but that have a certain autonomy so that they can achieve successes independently and hold each group accountable independently.

My second piece of advice is to minimize the number of government organizations that have been replicated already to do the same thing a dozen different ways.

Ok, so that sounds like contrarian advice but hang with me for a moment; my intent is to develop mid-level authorities and capacities coordinated by a singular, central authority. The reiteration of competing authorities all imbued with presidential authorities to rule the roost is quite a different thing altogether. Negotiate, coordinate, and delineate responsibilities with and between your corollary agencies sensibly. It is not the time for a power grab and to establish political empires – this is far too serious a time for that.

And now, dear readers, how this applies to you… I bet you’ve been waiting for this since the beginning of the blog, right?

One of the biggest challenges that will face the new administration is their promise to make all medical records electronic within the next few years so as to create financial efficiencies and improve medical responses by offering consolidation and coordination of medical records in a single government authority.

In plain English, to crooks, terrorists, and wrong-doers, it means that they (the government) are creating one of the biggest targets for personal and government data theft in the world. The ability to steal, hack, adjust or delete electronic profiles of biometric data (the same thing used to make sure your passport says you’re you) will be the primary target of some of the most unsavoury individuals in the world. And the data they’ll be stealing or attempting to steal will be yours.

The good news as that there are thousands of trained professionals working on solving the problem of cyber security worldwide. The bad news is they need millions of people working on it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year because the size of the problem is that immense.

The action you need to take, therefore, is this – until we can solve the problems with the security of the data and facilities we have today, we really shouldn’t be creating yet another oversized, value-rich target for our enemies to attack. We need our government to stop and think about the impact of dumping all of our records into one big box, wrapped up with a bow sitting on the window ledge with a sign on it saying “Steal Me.”

Even if the best result should happen, suppose errors *might* be made. Just…suppose…. Have you ever had to try and get an error off your credit report? Just how easy do you think it’ll be to get an error off your government run medical records?

Call, write, email, send smoke signals, light the Bat-light – but let your government know how important it is that they develop a real plan for the security of our national electronic resources, and then, and only then, can they begin the next monolithic task of exploring a national health records project.

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Race to 2010...
I promised that each blog I write I’ll try and include a good news story to go with the more demanding articles. Today is perhaps a more personal story on that front, but it remains, nonetheless a substantive one.

See I have a plan. I have a plan to bring success and resources to as many people as I can. Ok…we can exclude the crooks, phonies, lazy useless jerks, et al, but for moment, the rest of us know who I’m talking about.

One of the key things about building a successful business is building on a strong product or service with a variety of corollary revenue streams. For lack of a better description, building a diversified portfolio of revenue streams that reflexively also encourage the sales of the business’ primary products and services.

This is not the same thing as simply adding more fees to what you already do without changing or improving the offering to your customer. For all intents and purposes, that’s just playing with the price, and in every case I’ve ever analyzed it always comes back to bite you. A*L*W*A*Y*S.

No what I’m referring to are those services or products that make your customers want to come back to buy from you again, even when your main product or service isn’t quite what they’re looking for.

But suppose you’re not a business owner… what good does that do you? Maybe you never wanted to run your own business, maybe it’s the last thing on your mind. Fair enough. Relate it to whatever income you have. The theory applies equally.

Suppose you work at a job with an hourly rate. You can work overtime or pick up shifts from a colleague to make a little extra for a while. You can have a bake sale, you can sell some crafts, have a yard sale, do some handywork for a neighbour, or pick up a second job. Maybe you could have your car wrapped with advertising or rent out a room or your family cottage. You could invest in property or something else. But the more often your corollary income reflects a way for you to increase your rate of pay from your main revenue source, the better the results will be.

NOW WAIT ONE COTTON_PICKIN’ MINUTE!!!!!

This is NOT an endorsement of conflict of interest. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The objective *must* be a situation that is a win-win with all the appropriate ethics, morals, etc at play. Otherwise, again, you’ll just be asking for trouble.

So those of you who are business pros, that whole batch above means absolutely squat – you’ve seen it a million times before, right?

Wrong. The point here is that I am working on the final details of a plan to help several thousand people do just that – build new, strong, stable primary and corollary incomes (and no, I don’t mean MLM marketing!!!!!)

I’m looking for a “few good men and women” who want to see a concrete, tangible, verifiable plan to build wealth at a pace and volume that *they* dictate (within reason). I’m hoping to have a few thousand registered by the end of the summer, and by the end of the fall we should see some stunning results already, if I’m right.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. I’m not promising anything that doesn’t involve hard work, some extra hours, and a little getting outside of your comfort zone. I’m not promising a plan that’s entirely free – you *can* sink as much money as you want into it, but I won’t get a dime for whatever you’re doing as a result.

But what I am promising is that I will make my best effort to show you how to make money like you’ve never seen, in legal, honest, traditional business models – no fly-by-night crap, no “you must by 27 videos just to join, no scams, no BS.”

And better yet, I’m going to post the guts and details of the plan on the blog over the coming posts in between other good news stories. Free.

Now Glenn Beck has the 912 project, which is a marvelous effort to bring Americans of every political stripe together to achieve political community and shared discourse in this country.

My goal is to help Americans of every political and financial stripe to achieve financial success through positive shared discourse in this country. I was thinking of calling it the 913 project as a result but then thought better of it. Sorry Glenn, I tried.
Then I thought of the way Americans and the west pulled together to win the race to the moon. The technologies and prosperity that resulted from those efforts has its fingers and feelers right through today. Your microwave popcorn, GPS navigators, satellite radio, and so on, all have their origins in that monumental social push behind NASA.

So here is what I think my goal should be. I want to raise as many millionaires as possible (legally, taxes paid, all the good stuff) within a 1-year window. So, starting September 1st, I will launch the new race to financial success and see how effective it was by the following September 1st. And if it works out like I hope, then we’ll try and top it each and every year after that until Americans and Canadians alike have achieved financial success individually, collectively, and nationally. By which point, hopefully, I’ll have written myself out of a job.

So get ready, world! We’re laying the ground work for the Race to 2010!

Chris George.

The Best Reasons Why You Need To Join This Blog.

2009-05-31T22:59:00.000-07:00

What you don't know...

What you don't know about what's happening in the big bad world at large can easily be dismissed as something you probably don't need to know about after all. But what you don't know about what's happening in your own lives, in your own business, in your own community, in your own country, and eventually in your own world is all tied in together, and it's a lot more important to you than you're giving it credit.

Right now one of your neighbours just had their identity stolen.

Right now there are professionally trained software engineers designing applications for organized crime to access, retrieve, amalgamate, analyze, corrupt, damage, use and abuse data about companies and executives from across the country and around the world. This data is being used to blackmail and extort the same executives that are running our major corporations; the same ones our government is bailing out at tax-payers' expense, and hundreds of others besides, in countries all over the world.

The data is being used to replicate identities and credit profiles of individuals just like your neighbour....just like you.

The data is being used to create fake versions of the worlds' most trusted brands so the company you *think* you're buying from may in fact not be them at all.

The data is being used to create pattern analysis for everything from electricity and utility usage rates schedules, to key products' logistics and delivery routes, which in turn is being sold to terror networks and enemy intelligence services. This data is being used to specifically target key infrastructure points here at home where electronic assaults are taking place testing to find out just what it takes to bring our infrastructure to its' knees at the touch of a few keystrokes. The data is being used by miscreant investors to artificially exploit price changes in energy resources like gas prices.

The data is being used to create false identities for illegal immigrants - providing the opportunities for them to live and work unnoticed, unchallenged, undetected. And these are not the generic well meaning illegal immigrants just trying to make a few bucks to send back to their destitute families, either.

The data is being used to launder financial resources not only of our nation's enemies, but of our international competitors abroad, making their financial transactions harder to monitor and our ability to compete with them dramatically ever more challenged.

I had a colleague recently explain to me that reaching certain levels of security on a particular project was not completely necessary because none of their customers would ever be likely to deliberately break the system my colleague was developing. That all changed once I pointed out that it didn't take thousands of potential accidents to produce a negative impact - it simply took one hostile, skilled, and motivated individual to bring their company to rack and ruin.

You see we live in a world of rapidly multiplying information, where information overload is no longer a theory, but a fact of life. To deal with that fact we have relied on our news services to provide us with more and more succinct information down to the point where today we only pay attention when they're voicing opinions in ear-splitting decibel levels.

It has become noise. Background noise. Like the noise of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, we have tuned out our receptors for the tell-tale elements of data that warn us of true impending disaster, true risk. So on occasion we take at face value the words of the talking heads as the gospel of the appocalypse and react accordingly only to discover that we missed not only the correct path of action, but the opportunities to turn the pending disaster into a rousing success.

And buried by that background noise is the sound of opportunity after opportunity knocking. We hear bad news by the minute, good news only by the year. Yet it surrounds us; it inspires us - it drives us to create, invent, invest, develop, design, promote, build, and begin with new opportunities every day. Every day new restaurants open up in every city, and most towns. Someone materializing their dreams of owning their own restaurant or small business; or developing a new product that they are about to unleash and unveil to the world to improve the lives of people just like you and me. Someone is developing a new medical technique, writing a new book, saving someone's life, rejoicing in a new birth. This *IS* Opportunity. And you will no more hear about it in the mainstream media than you will about your own birthday.

You are missing out on the top threats to your business, your investments, your retirement, your family and personal security, your community, your beliefs, and your country.

You are also missing out on the top resources, accomplishments, innovations, new developments, and opportunities that could change your life, you career, your country forever.

Join this blog. We'll start getting into the kinds of meaty details you will know you want to read more about. By minimizing your risks, analyzing your situation, and discovering opportunities that only we're seriously discussing can you improve your ability to achieve and sustain success.

To share one more important point before I close this inaugural blog:

From here on out I aim to make sure that both risks and opportunities are shared here as equally as possible. I'm not writing this blog with an eye to scaring the public into a panic - I'm writing to show you how to protect yourselves from unnecessary risks, how to find opportunities you never knew existed, and how to achieve your dreams and goals faster and easier than you ever thought possible. It's a synergy developed by recognizing the bad and dealing with it, and also identifying the good and maximizing it.

This is the ride of a lifetime. Cruise along with us on The Chris George Report - come aboard, we're expecting you.

C.G.