d-mars.com Business Journal 63

Business Journal august 2012

63rd Edition

Inspire, Inform & Educate

BUILDING A BETTER COMMUNITY

INSIDE

STOP Stop! The Life You Save May Be Your Own

By Dr. D. L. Jones “What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking.

Feelings come and feelings go.”

PAGE 15

Procurring The Right Connections

By Cynthia Nevels “Securing Million Dollar Corporate and Government Contracts is Less about Your Product and More about Your Relationships.”

PAGE 17

Dr. Michelle L Edwards, DNP PICC Health Institute “Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.”

- Zig Ziglar

Failure Is Not Fatal, But Failing To Change Might Be!

By Noel Pinnock “As children, we learn at some point that admitting failure means taking blame!”

PAGE 23

Daniel Hoang Daniel & Co., Serving Houston for Over 15 Years

It’s Time For a Business Tune-Up

By Dr. Wendy “Business owners who fail to incorporate quarterly or mid-year “tune-ups” find themselves reacting...”

PAGE 26

Kappa Alpha Psi 81st Grand Chapter Meeting Ron Green, City Comptroller | Randy Bates, Grand Polemarch Wanda Adams, City Council Member | Al Green, Congressman

Dr. John Rudley President, Texas Southern University

August, 2012 3.

Behind The

Journal

Publisher’s Message

Keith J. Davis, Sr.

SR. PUBLISHER Keith J. Davis, Sr. VICE PRESIDENT Kevin Davis

When a train derails on a railroad track, it’s an ugly occurrence; debris everywhere and the ugly smell of molten iron and glass scattering everywhere is unpleasant to the human eye. So is a business that is off of its game in the middle of the year. It’s time to get that business “back on track.” So we decided to send a written reminder to our readers in the form of the August Business Journal full of tools to encourage you to get their business train “back on the success track,” going towards a prosperous year end.

As always, thank you for your continued support of d-mars.com. When you support d-mars.com, you are supporting more than just our company; you are supporting the communities in which we live and work.

Working together, we can succeed in making positive things happen.

EDITING CONSULTANT Sharon Jenkins OPERATIONS COORDINATOR Johnny Ray Davis, Jr. ACCOUNTING MANAGER Eugenie Doualla

CONTENTS

SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Onyebuchi Okoh C.T. Foster Eric D. Goodwine

Partners in Patient Care: The Compassionate Medical Professional, Dr. Michelle L. Edwards .... 4

PHOTOGRAPHY L.C. Poullard Grady Carter Tony Gaines

Daniel & Company, The Jeweler’s Jeweler .................................................................................... 6 10 Reasons Why Friendliness Is A Leadership Necessity ............................................................

9

MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR Andrea Hennekes

NCAA and APR and TSU ..............................................................................................................

10

LAYOUT & GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Ferland Antwine

Things You Need to Know About Online Network Marketing ....................................................... 13 Achieve Total Commitment By Burning Your Boat! ......................................................................

13

DISTRIBUTION Booker T. Davis, Jr. Rockie Hayden

Tips for Hiring The Right People To Service Your Customer ........................................................

14

The Life You Save May Be Your Own ...........................................................................................

15

Six Summertime Survival Tips For Work-At-Home Moms ...........................................................

16

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Sharon C. Jenkins Cynthia Nevels N. C. Manuel John Boe International Mena Freeman Cedric Loiselle John Frainee Glenn Murray Dr. D. L. Jones Alvin E. Terry Errol Allen Jill Hart Helene Mazur Dr. Wendy Sue Richardson John M. Rudley Teana Watson Brent Filson Noel Pinnock Thecia Jenkins Moira Wight

The Marketplace Is Changing. Is Your Business Standing Still?

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17

................................................................................................

19

How Residual Income Works: What You Need to Know ..............................................................

20

Internet Money-Making Explained ................................................................................................ 8

Protecting Assets During Challenging Business Times ................................................................ 12

Procuring the Right Connections

A Setback is a Setup For Something Greater

Failure Is Not Fatal But Failing to Change Might Be ..................................................................... 23 One More Time… .......................................................................................................................... 23 Getting Back On Track .................................................................................................................. 24 Finding Sanity in the Power of the Pen ......................................................................................... 24 It’s Time for a Business Tune-Up! .................................................................................................. 26 In-House Training As A Team Building Exercise ............................................................................ 26 Know Your Rights! Community Outreach Seminars ...................................................................... 28 Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. .................................................................................................... 30 Public Servants African Employees Appreciation Day .................................................................. 32

MR. D-MARS Tip of the Month

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST to stay informed in our community.

Register at www.d-mars.com

“For changes to be of any true value, they’ve got to be lasting and consistent.”

.............................................................................. 22

It’s Just That Simple!

-Tony Robins

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4.

August, 2012

Partners in Patient Care: The Compassionate Medical Professional, Dr. Michelle L. Edwards

By Sharon C. Jenkins

Dr.

Michelle Edwards is a board certified family and acute care nurse practitioner and Founder and Managing Director of PICC Health Institute which launched its first health care center in March 2012.

We had the privilege of interviewing her about her “patient partnership philosophy” in regards to patient care and her medical concerns for the African American community. Join us as we welcome this distinguished health care professional to Houston.

Jenkins: W h y d i d y o u n a m e y o u r

organization Partners in Comprehensive Care (PICC)?

Dr. Edwards: We named our health care company Partners in Comprehensive Care, because it is reflective of the integral components of our core philosophy.

We wholeheartedly believe in the benefits of a patient-centric partnership.

Interdisciplinary teams accomplish more than any single individual or discipline alone. Shared decision-making and respectful collaboration are vital to improved health care delivery and optimal patient outcomes. When we began the journey of identifying the right name for the company, we quickly eliminated terms that were synonymous with sterility, lack of compassion, or discouraged active engagement. There were certain things we knew had to happen to distinguish our center from other health care facilities that provided similar care. We conducted focus groups utilizing family members, college students, and other non-medical members of the community. During this process emerged the name PICC Health Institute: Partners in Comprehensive Care.

I’m pleased with the outcome. Our core philosophy is simply this, it takes a number of individuals to properly care for a patient and we do that strategically in partnership with the patient. We don’t embrace the traditional superior/ subordinate providerpatient relationship, but rather a partnership … a partnership with the patient and with other resources in the community as determined by patient needs.

Jenkins: What services do you provide your patient?

D r. E d w a r d s : We p r o v i d e a

comprehensive suite of preventive care services for men, women and children, as well as chronic disease management for conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, congestive heart failure and thyroid abnormalities, just to name a few.

And for those individuals who are unable to come to our office, we even do house calls.

The delivery of our services is entrenched in our belief that health is not just the absence of disease. As a result, we strive to integrate

not just the treatment of disease, but also the exploration of the patient’s mental and spiritual health as well. We know, not only through anecdotal evidence, but also clinical research, that these factors certainly influence a patient’s overall health.

Jenkins: Why did you start your health care company in Texas?

Dr. Edwa rds: That’s a wonderf ul question. I don’t know if my journey to Texas was more happenstance or a divine intervention. I believe the latter is true. I am a native of Tuscaloosa, a small town in Alabama. After spending a number of years in health care at our local Regional Medical Center, I continued to have an insatiable desire for more knowledge as it related to providing the best care of my patients. That desire eventually led met back to graduate school. Upon graduation, I knew I needed to explore other opportunities outside of my small city. In doing so, I had some invitations to come to Texas. I originally landed in Orange, Texas in 1997. It was my first introduction to the state, and a memorable one at that. In making my move from my home town, I considered two things in making my decision: career opportunities and the opportunities for expanded learning and service. Over time, I came to fully appreciate the impact of inaccessibility to quality health care for many citizens of Texas, and realized that we have a long way to go to optimize this unfortunate truth.

Ultimately, this is where I thought that I could make the most difference.

Jenkins: Please paint a verbal picture of your ideal client.

Dr. Edwards: Hmmm, a picture of my ideal client…I don’t know that I’ve looked at it from that perspective before. An ideal client for me is simply someone who has identified a health care need for which they were seeking care; it is as simple as that.

They don’t necessarily have to understand why the need exists, that’s what we’re here for…to help in the exploration. They do, however, have to want to actively participate in the resolution. I have to say if there is one critical component of an ideal candidate; it would be their active engagement, their participation in the partnership. We have a lot of information in front of us in terms of what we know works and what does not work. Nevertheless, the patient is oftentimes the ultimate decision-maker and determines how that will be transpired or if it will be transpired at all. So the ideal client is someone who is actively engaged in achieving and improving their overall health.

Jenkins: Do you have any areas that you specialize in?

August, 2012 5.

Dr. Edwards: Yes, I spent several years in Cardiology and sub-specialized in the treatment and management of advanced heart failure. I spent a number of years on the national circuit as a speaker for effective management of the challenging disease process. My experience in this area was very instrumental in catapulting me into my own practice. I knew I had to be on the front-end of health care and focus my efforts on prevention. Congestive heart failure can be a very debilitating condition. Despite the numerous advances in cardiovascular care, it continues to have a high death rate and is responsible for negatively impacting the lives of so many individuals. This is particularly true for members of the African-American community. When we explore the general statistics on heart failure, we as African Americans need to read it in a very different light. When we extract data specific to African Americans from the various studies, a very different picture starts to emerge. For example when you look at the global population of patients with congestive heart failure, the typical age of onset is about 60 to 65 years of age. This is why for many years this condition was viewed as disease of the elder population.

However, one of the things that I have seen over the years was finally validated in a large clinical research trial about three years ago. The average age of onset for the same disease process in African Americans was less than 40 years of age, 39 to be exact. And most of us still don’t know that.

Although we make up roughly 12% of the population, we account for nearly 25% of all heart failure cases, have a much more aggressive disease process, and die at a much higher rate. Why is this happening to us so early? It is, in large part, due to the influence of unabated high blood pressure. Clearly, the opportunity still exists to optimize our treatment strategies and encourage aggressive blood pressure management, especially in the African American population.

Jenkins: So what are some of the precursors to high blood pressure? How can parents Institute preventive measures to help their children before they reach the ages of 18 or 19 to prevent this disease?

Dr. Edwards: I n r e a d i n g v a r iou s literatures on the subject, one can be exposed to various speculations to that question. When it comes to African Americans, and I say this with the utmost respect, sometimes there is a misconception that this is our genetic path. I’m not on that side of the spectrum. There is nothing to demonstrate that genetics equals outcome.

It is genetics plus the influence of our environment that ultimately determines outcome. That environmental component is something that you and I and the community can work on to minimize the negative outcomes of high blood pressure.

The importance of a healthy dietary intake, a regular physical exercise program and an active lifestyle, combined with regular health evaluations can not be overstated. Let me start with dietary intake. You will find the precursors for high blood pressure and congestive heart failure to be very similar to the precursors

for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. If we become really skilled and engaged at minimizing the precursors for the onset for congestive heart failure, we will get the benefit of simultaneously minimizing our risks for diabetes, heart attacks and strokes in our community as well. We have to go back and survey what we are eating as adults; this influences the eating habits of our children. Many of the things that we eat; we have eaten in AfricanAmerican community for many years.

I can hear some people say “our parents and grandparents ate it and did just fine”.

The question becomes…did they really?

Much of what we attributed to “getting old” was really the manifestation of poor health as a result of some of the things we are discussing today, much of which could have been prevented. We must take a hard

look at the sodium and cholesterol content in our diets. Sodium has a significant in impact on blood vessel constriction and water retention, we can’t ignore that. We still can still enjoy the delicious foods that our grandparents loved; we just need to become more selective with our seasoning.

Lastly, this generation of young people is the least physically active that I’ve ever seen. Perhaps this is because of all the new technology and video games that encourage a sedentary lifestyle. We’ve have to get our children moving again, and it must start with us.

6.

August, 2012

Daniel & Company,

The Jeweler’s Jeweler, Serving Houston for 15 Years

By Sharon C. Jenkins

S

teppi ng i nto 6222 R i c h m o n d Av e n u e brings a plea sa nt surprise, especially when you enter Daniel and Company, a n upsc a le ma nu facturing company for some of the most prestigious fine jewelers in the world. This Houston based company was founded in 1991

by Daniel Hoang. It is a third generation, full service, high quality jewelry manufacturer.

Hoang’s grandfather was a jeweler for the royal family in his native Vietnam in the 1800’s.

His craftsmanship is known internationally because of its visibility at tradeshows and his reputation in the marketplace.

Daniel and Company offer a full line of fine jewelry, watches, collectible gems, and other fine gifts to jewelers and direct consumers. They also offer the onsite services of a goldsmith, diamond settler, professional watchmaker, and certified gemologist.

Hoang says “Playing around with a lot of bling - bling, of course is very exciting.”

Bring them a sketch of any type of fine jewelry and they can make your sparkling vision a reality. They offer 14 karat, 18 karat, and platinum jewelry as well as an extensive selection of loose diamonds with certification

by GIA and AGS. They also carry “a girl’s best friend” (diamonds) in a wide selection of certified natural and fancy colors including yellow, orange, and pink.

Their knowledgeable, helpful, and friendly associates can assist you on your next purchase of loose diamonds, precious gems, f ine jewelr y, platinum and gold creations, and precision time pieces. Their staff has over 100 years of jewelry manufacturing experience.

You can order from one of their jewelry lines or you can create your own jewelry by choosing the right diamond and setting just for you.

Daniel and Company uses only the most state of the art computerized and laser guided equipment, and they implement

the most stringent quality control in their daily operations. Hoang is interested in keeping this business in the family. He states, “There is really no university that teaches this business. That’s why it’s important to keep it in the family.

It’s an international business. It’s more like a family trade passed down to the next generation. I personally have over 20 years of jewelry experience. It would be a waste of true craftsmanship not to pass it on to the next generation.”

The experience he has acquired over time is the driving force behind his passion. True mastery in every sense is his goal. Every day brings a new challenge and also a new accomplishment to his jeweler’s bench. This is the main source of the joy he experiences in making the fine jewelry dreams of others come true. He compares the jewelry business to the automobile business, citing that a Lexus is a finely crafted automobile, but in no way does it compare to the Rolls Royce or Bentley. They are one of the biggest high end jewelers in the state of Texas and their work is comparable to Tiffany’s or Cartier’s. His business often works with pieces that easily garner millions of dollars on a regular basis, and that’s where he has established a “good name” for quality and timely delivery.

T he cu stomer is “ k ing or queen” when they shop with Hoang. He is committed to his clients getting the most from their investment in their purchase and buying experience. His goal is to maximize their shopping excursion with personalized education, a quality offering, and great customer service. As

a manufacturer, his company skips the traditional markup that comes with a “middleman” and can offer their clients better pricing and a higher quality pr o du c t a t w hole s a le c o s t .

Hoang’s job is to save customers mone y on t hei r pu rc h a s e s .

Taking this into consideration, Hoang wants the general public to know that no job is too small or too big for the expertise of Daniel and Company. Creating items for special occasions such as birthdays, graduations, weddings, are a specialty for them.

Daniel and Company is not like your regular jewelry store, they offer you more for your money and they are super friendly when they do it. Visit them today and you are guaranteed to be treated like royalty!

Their staff has over

100 years of jewelry

manufacturing experience.

August, 2012 7.

8.

August, 2012

Internet Money-Making Explained -

Building A List Of Targeted Prospective Customers

By Moira Wight

O

nce you have spent some time researching your niche and have chosen a profitable one, then it is time to learn the skills to begin building a list. This list needs to be built with the names and email addresses of people who are interested in your niche topic - in other words they are a targeted list of prospective customers.

Building a list of potential customers in your niche area is the single, most important task you need to master to become really successful in creating an online business, and achieving that dream of a laptop lifestyle.

The reason why so many fail in their internet money- making endeavors is because they do not understand how powerful it is to have a list of targeted

customers who know, like and trust what you promote to them.

This process is called relationship marketing and, if done correctly, can be like a tap which you can turn on and off at will to earn an income online.

Understand the principle that you really only want to be building a list of visitors to your site who are interested in what your niche is all about.

In order to get the visitors to your site to part with their details of names and email addresses, you will need to offer them something of value and interest to them. We call this a compelling offer. The easiest way to create a compelling offer is to write a short, special report which has information on a topic of interest and which will solve a problem for your potential

customers.

To find out what issues or problems the people in your niche might be experiencing, you need to frequent the forums where they meet to discuss such issues.

Therefore, it makes sense to visit and get involved in the forums in your niche and ask questions and post comments. Make a list of the questions people are asking in the forums and then find the answers to them. Use your answers to make up a special report. As a result you should be able to construct a short report which may address some problem they are discussing. Once you have created your compelling offer, post a link to it in the forum telling the members that it is a free report which they can access by visiting your squeeze page.

As you can see, it will not be

long before you are receiving some targeted visitors to your squeeze page who will then sign up to your list in order to access the free special report.

Do you recognize the tremendous opportunity which the internet presents to earn an income, but don’t know how to get started? Visit Internet

Money Making Explained and access your free training written especially for newcomers who want the A - Z explanation of how to get started online.

August, 2012 9.

10 Reasons Why Friendliness Is A Leadership Necessity

By Brent Filson

W

e’ve heard it many times, “It’s a dog eat dog world.”

The trouble is, some leaders actually believe it. They conduct themselves like the alpha dog in a pack, holding sway through intimidation. This instinctive behavior helps insure survival in a dog world, but applied to the human world of organizational dynamics, it can lead to disaster.

Alpha dog leadership can eventually turn out to be destructive to the people, their organization, and the leaders themselves. To use another common metaphor, “That dog won’t hunt.”

After all, leaders do nothing more important than get results; and the best results are what I’ve been teaching for more than two decades, “more results faster, continually.” An alpha-dog leader might chew up people to get more results and get them faster, but I submit that it takes a far different personality trait to engender the “continually” aspect of the imperative. That trait isn’t the despot modeled by so many leaders, it’s ... well, friendliness.

Having a friendly attitude as a leader means eschewing the alpha-dog way of leadership. It means being gentle, kind, helpful, and cordial in your relationships, even in times of anger and stress -- ESPECIALLY in times of anger and stress. Here are 10 reasons friendliness gets far more results than an alpha-dog way.

We stay in control.

Apha-dog leaders seek to control others. But they misconstrue what control really means. In truth, such leaders are really out of control much of the time, since they’re at the mercy of their emotional outbursts and the reactions of others to those outbursts. In leadership, the best way to control a situation, i.e., the best way to get great results, is to put the people in control. Don’t constrain them through shortterm compulsion but liberate them by playing the “longer game.” Unleash their initiative and creativity by allowing them to make free choices, and they will be under your “control” in more profound and effective ways than the alpha-dog leader could imagine.

People respond more openly and positively to friendliness. Humans seek happiness; and friendliness is a

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great way to spread happiness.

It enables you to communicate much more effectively because it bonds you with others in ways that anger, coercion, intimidation can’t. And that bonding is the stuff that great results flow from.

We are modeling good interactions, bringing the future into the present. Whether leaders know it or not, their words and actions are carefully watched by the people they lead. People have an instinctive need to model those words and actions; or if they disagree with them, speak and act in opposite ways. By radiating friendliness, leaders are being the means that are the ends in the making.

We make real issues relevant factors, not false issues like anger and intimidation.

Friendliness tends to clarify issues; intimidation, because it is associated with fear, obfuscates them. So often intimidating leaders make themselves and their tormenting ways the issue.

Whereas the real issues should be, how do we get results, how do we get more results, how do we get faster results, and how do we get “more, faster” continually?

The fear they provoke is like crack cocaine, temporarily stimulating but addictive and in the long run destructive to the leader and the people.

With friendliness, we set the agenda. “A good offense is the best defense” applies with friendliness. You should be on the offense with friendliness, displaying it even in challenging circumstances when it may take an act of disciplined courage on your part. This helps you set the agenda in terms of how people respond to one another in these circumstances. Of course, your friendliness will not affect some people who may be determined to subvert your leadership no matter what your attitude is; however, friendliness can, like the clearing of brush-lines to contain a forest fire, keep rancor from spreading deeply into the organization.

We increase the chance that others will support our cause. The truth is that leaders can’t motivate anybody to do anything. The people make the choice to be motivated or not. Friendly leaders have the best chance of creating an environment in which the people make that choice. As Abraham Lincoln said, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince

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him that you are his sincere friend.

Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really a good one.”

Our opponents can be put off balance. As a leader, you’ll often have people working against you, spoiling for a fight; and when they encounter a friendly attitude on your part, they may be thrown off balance in benignly effective ways.

Furthermore, your friendliness can encourage others to take up your cause against them.

With friendliness everybody has an opportunity to win. Unfriendly leaders often win battles but lose wars. They may compel others to get on board; but if those others do so out of compulsion and not genuine conviction and motivation, the fruits of any victories can become ashes. Most people welcome friendliness -- even if they disagree with and even dislike the leader.

Furthermore, our friendliness can prompt the people we interact with to reflect on their own character, a prerequisite for their choosing to be motivated.

In an environment of friendliness, all parties have an opportunity to achieve something positive.

Fr i e n d l i n e s s i s f i re prevention equipment against your burning bridges behind you. An opponent may seem to be your opponent today but in the future you may need him to be your partner in implementing changes. Friendliness gives us an opportunity to have productive relationships even with those who oppose us, enriching both the present and the future.

Getting results through friendliness can take a lot less energy than getting results through coercion and intimidation. Friendliness isn’t an absolute necessity in leadership. I’ve seen great leaders who were terrific curmudgeons.

It’s just that unfriendly people have to go through a lot more trouble getting people motivated.

Two caveats. One, friendliness can be mistaken for weakness.

In fact, friendliness can BE weakness if it manifests as a way of avoiding challenging people to do the hard things to get great results. In leadership, friendliness

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has a clear function which is to people achieve constantly improving results. This entails your challenging people to do what they often don’t want to do. Anybody can be nice to them and let them do what they want.

But a leader must continually be challenging people to struggle mightily for extraordinary results.

If friendliness doesn’t help you fulfill that function then it’s simply a lifestyle choice, not a leadership tool, and ultimately in terms of leadership, a weakness.

Two, even if you do use it as a strong leadership tool, you certainly can’t be friendly 100 percent of the time. If you try to be, you’ll find yourself becoming a rather one-dimensional leader. One of the most difficult accomplishments facing any leader is simply being who you really are Especially under pressure.

To force-fit friendliness in a situation where you might not ordinarily exhibit it or to use friendliness to manipulate people into conforming to your wishes is not the best leadership uses of friendliness.

It may be a dog-eat-dog world; but by progressing in the Way

of friendliness, leaders can invest their lives and this world with moments of beauty and meaning -- and get more results in the bargain.

The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. Eand for more than 20 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com

Advertise TODAY in d-mars.com Business Journal Call Us TODAY! 713.272.9511

10. August, 2012

NCAA and APR and TSU: A Stick to Force Colleges to Help Student Athletes Graduate

By John M. Rudley, President, Texas Southern University

T

he NCA A is run by a collection of committees made up of members who are from different universities that supposedly operate under the same constitutional notion that the association is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Since the association represents a m a j o r i t y v i e w, t h e n t h e promulgated rules represent the majority opinion. Thus, even the penalty structures and consequences for coaches, students and institutions that violate rules, are agreed upon by a committee of our peers, of the people, by the people and for the people. It may not be so surprising that much like other parts of the real world, the voices of the larger schools, the BCS schools, the wealthier schools, seem to carry more weight than those of us designated as Historically Black Colleges/ limited resource institutions.

My experience with the NCAA staff is that whatever complaint one registers, the response in essence has been traditionally, “Since you are a university President, you have personally

committed the infraction, and your staff is responsible and accountable only for carrying out the practices that you have agreed to as a member institution.” The majority rules and those who may object are not generally heard.

On the surface the NCAA’s goal is noble: to have student athletes graduate at a six-year graduation success rate (GSR) that is above 50%. It is in the implementation that it becomes problematic. If an institution does not reach this goal, according to current NCAA guidelines, it must suffer with penalties (a big stick) that further erode the athletic program, especially for cash-strapped historically black colleges. This erosion occurs by (1) reducing the number of scholarships that can be offered in a sport, (2) reducing practice time, (3) public notice of academic failure and/or (4) selecting from a list of additional “drop down menus of penalties” including post-season bans and reprimands of coaches.

This standard of NCA Amember schools graduating student athletes at a six-year graduation success rate (GSR)

that is above 50%, though wellintentioned, does not take into account the unique history and experiences of Texas Southern University. For the past 30 years, until 2009, Texas Southern was an open admission university whose mission was to accept students, primarily of color, who may be unprepared for college according to admission standards at Ohio State, Stanford, Northwestern, the University of Texas or Texas A&M University, but nevertheless deserved a shot at a college education.

A meric a n educ ators-f rom the Ph.D.s who study the inner workings of local, national and global education systems, to the local level classroom teachers who work with students on a daily basis-will all assert that most of the predominately black elementary, middle, secondary or high schools in this country still turn out student bodies where most graduates will require two or three remedial courses in the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic if they choose to go on to college. Texas Southern, in 2008, changed its open admission policy, effective fall of 2009, requiring students to have earned a C average in high school. With that decision Texas Southern University started the slow process of forcing unprepared students with a C- and below, to attend community college first before seeking entrance to Texas Southern.

Because of Texas Southern’s 30-plus year legacy of honoring our institution’s mission to educate the under-prepared, the six-year graduation rate for Texas Southern has been 11% for many years because it simply could not provide the missing component that ensures that students would stay in school. I believe that in my first year at Texas Southern perhaps its entire freshman class of approximately 1,200 students required remedial courses, a reality which was five times the average number of students needing such help at other Texas universities (240).

I apologize for t he long introduction to the topic of the NCAA’s Academic Performance

Rate (APR), but the context is important to understand the difficulty many historically black colleges face in immediately implementing the NCAA’s new APR standard. That history led me to head up a special NCAA sub-committee of the Committee on Academic Performance, (CAP) to make recommendations to develop some relief from the immediately planned changes.

I’m proud to say that Texas Southern’s athletes are today graduating at a 44% six-year graduation rate-four times the rate of the regular student body at 11%. Hey folks, this historically black college is responding to the wishes of the NCAA to work hard to make sure our athletes are students first. That is what the APR is really all about, a way to force major cash rich institutions to not just use up black athletes and throw them away after their athletic eligibility is over, but to make sure that they also graduate from those institutions. Did you know that some of the nation’s big-time athletic programs that possess athletic budgets larger than some American cities have the following graduation rates of non-athletes in comparison to athletes: Ohio State 78%

for non-athletes and 82% for athletes; Stanford 95% for nonathletes and 94% for athletes; Northwestern 94% and 96%; and the University of Texas-Austin 84% and 74%.

Indeed, some of our historically black colleges are meeting the 50% APR test as can be seen in the same comparison of non-athlete and athlete six-year graduation rates. For example, Florida A&M’s non-athlete graduation rate is 19% and its athletes graduate at a 50% rate; Southern University, 27% for non-athletes and 55% for athletes; Grambling University, 27% and 64%; Alabama State 24% and 63%; Mississippi Valley, 27% and 42%; Jackson State, 40% and 54%; Prairie View, 32% and 63%; North Carolina A&T, 38% and 55%; Alcorn, 38% and 68%; Howard, 69% and 68%; University of Maryland Eastern Shores, 32% and 90%; Kentucky State, 25% and 39%; Hampton, 54% and 67%; Savannah State, 35% and 48%; and Texas Southern 11% and 44%.

The APR is a snapshot for a particular year and each year the HBCUs’ numbers change, which is why even though TSU is below 50% now, we will be above 50% for 2012 and 2013. As a

August, 2012 11.

matter of fact, Texas Southern will receive an award this month from the NCA A for having made the greatest improvement in APR, yet we still must pay the price for past transgressions from the 2009 football program.

For the record, Texas Southern has made the corrections in our management of the athletic program by developing an entirely new athletic compliance office and hiring four people who are led by a former NCAA official over compliance. Our athletic director is on top of the university’s effort but was saddled by errors not of his making. Since the APR is a snapshot of a particular academic year, many programs go in and out of the CAP committee all the time for having a below 50% rate (currently a 925 APR).

Within the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC), in football, the following universities have suffered penalties: Alabama A&M, 2004-05; Jackson State, 2009-10, 2008-09, 2007-08; Prairie View, 2004-5; Southern Universit y, 2009-10,2006 -7, 2005-6; and Texas Southern, 2009-10, 2008-09.

In case you do not get my point, let me say it this way, the majority rules at the NCAA in the formulation of rules for participation and penalties and after all, Texas Southern and other Historically Black Colleges are to be more like Mikey, like the majority traditionally white institutions in America, like Villanova, Northern Kentucky,

Ohio State, Texas, Stanford and Yale and well, like everyone else.

Forget about segregation. Forget about our mission, which is so very different from Stanford’s or UT’s.

And that is not going to happen.

Texas Southern is going to continue fulfilling its mission, by living up to the principles upon which it was founded which is that every child deserves an equal opportunity to an education.

Transforming students, many of whom have been written off by society, into college-educated, gainfully employed, tax-paying citizens has been a long-standing legacy of Texas Southern and other HBCUs. I recently met a member of Texas Southern’s class of 1952. The 84 years young, former chemistry student went on to teach chemistry at Rust College, Mississippi Valley and Hines Community College, all of which are located in her home state of Mississippi. This alumna was proud of her legacy, and also proud of the fact that another esteemed graduate of Texas Southern, Barbara Jordan, was once her lawyer before ascending to the U.S. House of Representatives.

This graduate’s story underscores the fact that black colleges have a history and mission that is indeed vastly different from their white counterparts. HBCUs are not going to forsake this mission, nor should they, as it is one even more critically important today than even in decades past. This

means, these institutions will continue to work with young people who may not have the academic benchmarks to attend traditionally white institutions.

This also means the APR must be re-examined so that the spirit of the initiative coincides with its lived application.

The APR , the big stick being used to beat universities into better graduation rates for student athletes, is a “pulled out of thin air” calculation by a professor at a small, non-big time athletic program that was designed to estimate or approximate a six-year graduation rate. The apparent justification for the APR system of holding universities’ feet to the fire is to graduate the poor, in most cases, black athletes who were complaining that they played for big time programs, but could not fashion a grammatically correct sentence.

That’s fine; the big, mega buck programs whose athletic budgets are larger than some HBCU’s total campus operating budgets and who attract mostly African American athletes from the same substandard high schools across the country, just like the HBCU’s, should do a better job of graduating athletes of color.

Check this out, the SWAC (Sout hwestern At h letic Conference) is one of the two largest Black College conferences in America, the other being the MEAC (Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference) which includes Florida A&M, Howard and North Carolina A& T. In the SWAC conference, in basketball alone, eight of its 10 black colleges, are below the mystic 925 APR calculation. Thus, these programs have either lost scholarships, playing time, been publically criticized, or all of the above. Not good!! As a result of the APR bashing the public thinks that Black colleges are not doing a good job in graduating its student athletes. Alabama State, Grambling State, Jackson State, Mississippi Valley, Prairie View A&M, Southern University-Baton Rouge, Arkansas Pine Bluff and Texas Southern are all suffering from this additional criticism which furthers the perception that Black colleges are inferior even among African Americans who have been allowed the privilege of attending traditionally white institutions.

It is interesting and perhaps tragic that the NCAA would adopt an APR formula calculation that assigns two points to each athlete, one for being academically eligible when he arrives on campus and one if he stays in school after the first semester. For example, there are 18 members of a basketball team and the APR is

the total number at a given time divided by the total possible points for the team. Two players leave after the first semester, with one leaving who was still academically eligible because he passed a minimum of 6 credit hours and another left because he did not go to class and just dropped out.

The calculated APR is then 916 which is below the 925 that the NCAA committee is using to call HBCU’s on the carpet for not being like Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Stanford, The Ohio State and other big time programs.

The APR calculation allows students who leave the Kentucky basketball program for the NBA to receive an exception from the calculation which is a rule that the big universities pushed and received. If an HBCU athlete goes home and drops out because his father needs him home to take care of his single parent girlfriend who has had a second child, this counts against HBCUs. I assume that with this disparate treatment between the have and have nots, I did it to myself as a president of a member institution.

As you can see, it only takes a few athletes to drop out or underperform in the classroom for Black colleges to get into trouble.

This harsh reality further limits the opportunity for another black child to attend an HBCU on an athletic scholarship. As for the overall effect on the quality of the HBCU athletic programs, a loss in practice time is levied as well as an announcement that our teams cannot compete in even our conference championship. If you did not think that it was difficult to recruit quality students to black colleges before the NCAA’s big stick, just think of visiting a prospective athlete who has gone on line to see that your team is an APR patient.

Taking students who could be written off by society and transforming them into contributors to society who have jobs as a result of college attendance and who pay taxes, is and has been a long-standing mission of Texas Southern.

My meeting with the NCAA committee to explain Texas Southern’s poor APR included reporting the fact that I was not around in 2007, but with my arrival in February 2008 I was responsible for 2009 and 2010 during which we completely revamped the compliance function and added new staff. As a result of these measures, Texas Southern University has received an award from a different NCAA committee, for the institution that has had the greatest improvement in APR for 2010.

This preamble is necessary

if one is to understand or even think it’s worthwhile to see the world of the NCAA and its rules governing the conduct of a historically black college. When the Academic Performance Rate was enacted six years ago, all colleges were told it was a pilot program and as such, from my conversations with Black college officials, many Black college Presidents, athletic directors and compliance officers were caught napping when suddenly, the pilot became gospel. These “limited resource institutions” (as they are labeled by the NCAA) did not have the staff support that could keep them abreast of the new APR rules, and consequently HBCUs simply did not understand the impact on their programs.

Originally the NCAA ruled that the APR should move to 930 by 2014 for all schools. After some discussion, the Executive Committee allowed us to review the impact on the HBCUs, or the limited resource institutions (LRI) as we are labeled, and make recommendations for any alterations to the policy. The 50% graduation rate is already being met by a number of our schools in many of our sports, and it is our goal in all of our sports. I met with a number of HBCU presidents and determined that our athletics programs would be best served by extending the time we have for implementation of the new 930 rule another two years with full implementation pushed to 2016.

The issue has never been a belief that student athletes at HBCUs should not or could not achieve the 50% graduation rate. It has always been that at extremely resource strapped institutions it is difficult to have all the support systems in place that are necessary to help student athletes achieve those goals.

Finally, TSU has “done it to itself ” as well by being contributory negligent, that is, driving down the NCAA highway and seeing an accident ahead and not avoiding it but plowing directly into it and blaming someone else. Texas Southern will suffer through the 2009 to 2011 mistakes in hiring the wrong coaches and not beefing up its compliance staff early in 2008 upon my arrival, and I take full responsibility for this mistake.

I have learned a harsh lesson in dealing with the NCAA and coaches and compliance officers and faculty representatives, and the stick hurts when you are a historically black college.

TSU

12. August, 2012

Protecting Assets During Challenging Business Times

By Mena Freeman, Contributing Writer

S

mall businesses are the engine of the economy, and when the economy sputters they often feel it first. In the current climate of uncertainty, many small businesses have drastically cut expenses and tried to make their operations as lean and efficient as possible.

But even if a small business owner can’t control the marketplace, he or she can take steps to protect their key assets: the people the business relies upon.

Details Matter To Customers

A recession tests customer loyalty, as people cut back on spending and carefully weigh their options for even necessary purchases. For businesses that are cutting back themselves, it may be easy to let attention to the details of customer service slip. But this is the time that details matter most, whether it’s taking the trouble to send a holiday note to your mailing list or offering special incentives to prized patrons. The key to their loyalty is to let them know they matter to you.

Appreciate Your Employees Of course, you want your employees to know they’re important, too. You need their knowledge and experience to navigate the uncertain times. The recession might mean sacrifices for everyone, but it is also a time to make sure valued workers know how much they are appreciated. Even small gestures, like movie tickets or a night at a local restaurant, can keep morale steady.

Supplement Benefits, Not Costs You may want to consider enhancing your employee benefits package. A “Voluntary Payroll Deduction” (VPD) program is one of the simplest ways employees can purchase additional, personallyowned permanent life insurance.

A VPD program can usually be set up using your existing procedures for payroll deduction.

A life insurance agent would then meet individually with each employee to explain the benefits of life insurance and the ease with which it can be purchased. All products purchased through VPD are employee-owned and paid for, with virtually no direct out-ofpocket cost to you. Adding a VPD program can be a smart way to supplement your overall benefits package, without draining your budget.

Note: Employee participation in a payroll deduction insurance program is completely voluntary.

Si n c e t h i s p r o g ra m i s n o t intended to be subject to the Employee Retirement Income

Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), employers cannot contribute to, or endorse, this program.

Protect Yourself As the owner of a business, you are the most important piece of the puzzle. And especially during difficult times, it is important to think about how the business would function without you.

One thing that can provide a greater sense of security is a comprehensive life insurance policy. It can be tailored to fit your needs and ensure that those who rely on you every day would be provided for.

So when you think about protecting your assets in this economy, consider your human assets first.

This educational third-party article is being provided as a courtesy by Mena Freeman. For additional information on the information or topic(s) discussed, please contact Mena Freeman at 713-624-6426.

Agent, Mena Freeman New York Life Insurance Co.

August, 2012 13.

Things You Need to Know About Online Network Marketing

By Cedric Loiselle

T

he internet has definitely made everything simple. With the help of online network marketing, you can start a business without spending too much. All you need to do is figure out the type of products that you want to sell, and the different ways on how you can be successful with it. Take note that most of the people nowadays are always in front of their computers. This is the most convenient way to advertise your business to interested consumers. There a lot of ways on how to earn from this, if you are interested to learn more, here are some things you need to know about online network marketing: The first thing that you need to do is browse the internet and look for companies, such as Network Marketing Elite that can give you an idea on what to do in this particular field. Try to observe how they do it, by looking into the products they sell, and ways on how they market it to the public. This is the best time to learn from the experts, so try to sign up to different companies or tutorials online that will help you learn more. This is also an ideal time to ask questions and inquire about their past experiences - that way, you will learn from the mistakes that they have committed in

the past.

Try to narrow down all the things that you are interested in, so that you can decide on the business that you want to open. Don’t rush things; allow it to come out naturally, so that you can come up with a good decision. Online network marketing is done through the internet, so if you want it to be successful, you have to make sure that you put in a lot of effort to make things work.

To draw more clients to your website, make sure that you come up with a good name to represent your business. This will create an image that will help you reach out to interested clients.

Look for a wholesaler who can provide you with your products. Make it a point not to buy a lot if you are just starting, so that you won’t waste your money on stocks that you can’t dispose of anymore once purchased. You should also make sure that shipping arrangements are settled, so that delays won’t happen. That could be an inconvenience for both you and your clients.

Hire a good web designer who can help you set up your website. It should contain all the necessary information that a customer needs, and it should be attractive,

Achieve Total Commitment

By Burning Your Boat!

By John Boe International

D

o you allow fear, anxiety and worry to dominant your thinking?

Having self doubt or a lack of commitment is emotionally draining and erodes your effectiveness. A truly committed person does not have the luxury nor the time for the self-indulgence of negative thinking.

No great achievement has ever been accomplished without a plan and a commitment to see it through. There is magic in commitment!

In battle, the ancient Greeks developed a well-deserved reputation for bravery and determination. They were successful because they were well trained, well lead and most of all, well motivated. The Greek commanders were master motivators and knew how to instill commitment and prepare their soldiers for victory. For you see, once they landed on enemy shores, the Greek generals would give the order to “burn the boats.” Imagine the psychological impact on the soldiers as they watched their boats being set to the torch. Once their boats were burned, they realized that the only

way they were going home was by conquering their enemy - there was no turning back.

There is a great deal of power and wisdom in what the ancient Greeks understood. In your career you are not asked to commit to battle, but make no mistake, commitment is required. Your battles are not fought on enemy shores but within the confines of your own mind. There is a need to commit to self and to career.

Until you have made the decision to be fully committed, there is hesitancy and the opportunity to draw back.

The moment one defiantly commits oneself, magical things happen. The true underlying motivation for all success is a deep and unwavering commitment to the task at hand. If you are being pushed around mentally by thoughts of fear, anxiety and worry, it’s time to “burn your boat” and become fully committed to your career.

John Boe, based in Monterey, CA, helps companies recruit, train and motivate top-quality people. To view his online Video Demo or to have John Boe speak at your next event, visit http://www. johnboe.com or call (831) 375-3668.

so that it can lure more people to look at your offers. Don’t put too much colors or pictures, because it can be overwhelming.

When designing a structure, make sure that it matches the theme of your business.

Getting yourself involved in online network marketing is a good thing, because it will help ou earn money. If you don’t know how to go about it, you can always

tap the help of experts. Going through this is a good way to start a small venture.

Article Tags: Know About Online, About Online Network, Online Network Marketing, Know About, About Online, Online Network, Network Marketing, Make Sure Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory. com

14. August, 2012

Tips For Hiring The Right People To Service Your Customer

By Errol Allen, Contributing Wrtier

H

aving t h e right

p e r s o n n e l interacting with your customers is crucial to long-term business success.

Customers expect a certain level of service, so it’s important to have the right person in contact with your customers. Here are a few tips on hiring the right people to service your customers: 1. Hire Attitude - While it’s most common to hire for experience, I believe that attitude should be top priority.

Customer service requires one to have a mind-set of service. This mind-set brings with it a belief for the need to always be ready to serve, to go the extra mile to make someone else happy. When interviewing prospects, make inquiries regarding what gives the prospect the feeling of fulfillment at the end of the workday or in life in general. Listen for references along the lines of helping, serving or resolving issues.

2. Hire Energy - Having serviced customers myself both on the phone and face to face, I know that providing great

customer service requires energy. It’s important to stay upbeat throughout the day as one’s lack of energy is very noticeable to the customer (yes - a lack of energy is very noticeable over the phone.) Notice how your prospects enter the room, how they greet you, their sitting posture during the interview and the pace of their responses to your questions. These are all tips as to the level of energy that they will bring when interacting with your customers.

3. Hire Good Ears - One’s ability to listen well is another required trait for being successful at customer service.

Good ears helps one to listen for what’s important to a customer. When developing a solution for a customer’s need/want, good ears are critical as they allow you to ask good questions in response to the reasons the customer provides for seeking to utilize your product/services. They also assist in filtering for the real issue when the customer is upset. The need to speak should be secondary to the need to listen.

How well does the prospect listen during the interview? When you are leading the conversation, does the prospect wait until you complete your thoughts before speaking? Do their responses/questions indicate that they are actively listening

when you speak? Do they maintain eye contact during the conversation? These are indicators of one’s listening ability.

4. Hire Thinkers - I often look back on my career in customer service and think about how often I had to be quick on my feet when working with customers. Not every situation is routine and oftentimes it’s necessary to formulate resolutions quickly.

The ability to determine what is required in these non-routine situations (which requires a lot of #3) and then create a plan of action is key to retaining customers.

Customer service personnel must be able to think their way through these situations in order to create the best solution for both the customer and the company. Give situations and scenarios to your prospects that require them to devise a plan of action.

5. Hire Curiosity - Asking questions is a major component of customer service as it helps one to develop the best product/ service solution for the customer. Curiosity is a good trait for customer service personnel to possess. Look for people who have questions about your company - where it’s headed, what can the prospect look forward to if chosen for the position and even questions about your history with the company.

6. Hire Team Players - When

performing my customer service duties, I found that more often than not, that my actions impacted someone else within the company. It was important to remember to not to negatively impact others when providing service to the customer. You can determine your prospect’s team player level by listening for group activities when you ask about their interests. Does their work history indicate group participation?

Include group scenarios in your interview sessions that induces the prospect to talk about how each group member is impacted by the decisions of one person.

Customer service personnel can make or break your company. To insure that your customers receive great customer service, take the time to hire the right person to service your customers. Hire people - not just experience. Remember, the right people, delivering great service, create loyal customers, which leads to referrals, which creates long-term success.

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August, 2012 15. your critics immobilize your life’s progress.

Stop feeling guilty. Feeling guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you messed up and don’t do it again.

Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you. Negative people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. In life, people will always be people.

They only have control of your destination if you allow them.

The only person who can stop you from achieving success in life is you. Whatever people say about you or think about you is powerless until you decide to digest them.

Stop keeping score. So what, you’ve been hurt, used, abused, lied to and lied on; stand in line. Life is full of people who wake up every day with the intent to get over on somebody else. When you go through life keeping score on those who have hurt you, in essence what you’re doing is allowing those individuals to arrest your happiness and incarcerate your

The Life You Save 5.

STOP May Be Your Own!

By Dr. D.L. Jones, Contributing Writer

1.

Stop making decisions on how you feel. How you feel is how you feel.

What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. Feelings come and feelings go. We are emotional people, both men and women.

We have all said from time to time “I don’t feel that.” Making

important decisions based solely on how you feel will often lead you to making the wrong decision. Life decisions should be calculated and thought through with a clear and objective frame of mind. Consulting with someone with an objective and unbiased disposition can only help in times of uncertainty.

Stop worr ying. The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. The Bible says ‘as a man thinks in his heart so is he.’ Whatever you focus your negative thoughts on will likely come to pass. Worrying is like paying interest on a debt you don’t have.

Stop speaking negatively about yourself. If you want a prosperous life, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always speaking those negative thoughts

2.

3.

about what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most negative thoughts are far from reality. Ninety-nine percent of all negative thoughts are simply make-believe.

Stop criticizing yourself.

Criticizing yourself is pointless. Criticizing others is half-witted. Whatever you do, someone else will always do it better. However bad your failed, others have failed worse.

Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Criticizing others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Stop letting

4.

6.

7.

joy. The best remedy for you is let go and let God deal with the perpetrator. Vengeance is mine says the Lord!

Stop worrying about your plan. The more your worry about any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong.

The world changes constantly.

Many people give up on their plan because they get impatient.

Every day the world changes, noting stays the same. After a month, things will be different.

After a year, there’s a good chance that nothing will be the same as it was when you developed your plan. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force you to think through until the end. Once you start, you may need to adjust your strategy, but never throw out the plan because things around you change.

Stop letting people use you. If you haven’t had anyone come into your life with an ulterior motive, just keep living. People never cease to amaze me. Everybody has a game and it’s their game they want you to play. The second you realize a person is coming at you with “GAME” remove yourself from that person. Don’t pray that the person goes away because users never go away. You must put users out of your life!

8.

9.

16. August, 2012

Six Summertime Survival Tips For Work-at-Home Moms

By Jill Hart

S 1

ummer is one of the most difficult seasons for entrepreneur moms. Juggling work with kids who need extra attention and outside playtime can make for some stressful days. You want to have fun, but you also know that the demands of business require your attention. Here are a few tips that will help you get through the summer and stay sane in the process.

These tips will help you enjoy your summer and get things done.

Look For Ways To Add Passive Income. Spend the time to c r e a t e t h a t ebook or program that runs without you.

Another way to create passive income is to get more involved in affiliate programs. Find programs that fit your audience and then offer these great products to them. They’ll thank you for it and you’ll make a little extra cash.

2

Enjoy Your Freedom. In this day and age you can work almost anywhere.So, this summer don’t stay inside - hit the park and bring your laptop. Head to the beach and write or proof documents there. Be sure to keep a running list of documents that you’ll need access to or take advantage of an online document service such as Google Docs so that your files can be reached from wherever you are.

3

Keep Marketing.

The summertime can make you want to kick your feet up and relax, but don’t get lazy - and don’t believe the hype.

Yes, it can be slower in the summer, but it doesn’t have to be.

You can be out there marketing and growing your business while others lose ground.

4

Prepare for Summer Storms.

Make sure you have back-ups of everything.

Consider an online back-up system such as Carbonite or Mozy in addition to flash drives.

If you live in a state that is prone to storms (such as Florida), consider a generator in case you are with outpower. Make sure you print out important contact information such as client information, passwords, etc.

5

Balance Your Schedule And Rely On Your To-do List.

Prioritize the work that needs to be done.

Keep in mind as many work-at-home moms, your kids will be around more and even if they are older kids, this can difficult and you can lose your focus. But proper planning can help. So, start the summer off right by scheduling out your days - allowing some flexibility - and getting things done.

6

Treat Yourself To Training.

Summer is a great time to get the jump on extra training or attending networking events to grow your business. Since many businesses do slow down in the summer, many offer incentives and discounts. Find a program that fits your budget and schedule and go for it!

About the Authors: Jill Hart and Diana Ennen are the co-authors of So You Want To Be a Work-at-Home Mom. Jill is the founder of Christian Work at Home Moms www.

CWAHM.com and loves to help women find success from home. Diana Ennen is the President of Virtual Word Publishing, www.virtualwordpublishing.com. Diana has worked from home for over 25 years and is passionate about PR, Publicity and Marketing & helping others start their own virtual assistant business. Article is free to be reprinted as long as bio remains.

August, 2012 17.

The Marketplace is Changing, Is

Your Business Standing Still?

By Helene Mazur, MBA, CFP

I

f you are in business today, you are well aware that the market is experiencing a noteworthy transformation.

While business owners generally have become quite anxious, I have observed many business leaders taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude.

With uncertainty all around, silently praying for things to return to the way they were may feel like the safe thing to do, but as a leader it is time to get back into the driver’s seat.

There is an opportunity right now, to systematically reflect and adapt, and, it is time- sensitive. If ever there was a moment when strategic thinking and planning mattered, it is now.

No matter how recently you created the set of business strategies you are currently working under, if any of the key assumptions

www.ppdbusinesscoaching.com

you used have changed, it is time to reassess the marketplace and your business, and pull out a drawing board.

Strategic planning is not something that should be done alone. Collaborate with staff, business partners, respected clients, and other stakeholders. Engage a business coach if it helps you to move forward faster and with more confidence.

To secure the future of your business, the following four steps will get you moving in the right direction.

Revisit y o u r purpose Start with the Foundation and your values.

What is important to you? If you had it right before, make sure it still holds true in the rapidly changing world.

If your ‘reason to be’ is no longer compelling to you and your team, the business

1

STEP

is not likely to succeed in a challenging business cycle.

Revisit y o u r Assess products Products as e r vni c eds and Services and most importantly- talk to your clients. Have needs shifted?

Your product and services may be difficult to buy if they don’t save time, money or add great value even in a down economy.

Which of your products and services are really working, and which ones aren’t? Now is the time to focus on productivity and efficiency. If you are wasting time, energy or money on non-productive products or services, it is time to let them go. What more can you do to expand upon the winners?

Are there other markets that you don’t serve today who could benefit in the

2

STEP

current economy from your most successful products and/or services?

There are major shifts occurring in economics,

3

STEP

Understand

the Trends

politics, globalization, demographics, and technology. For every trend you can identify, there are potential risks and opportunities for your business. Listen to what your clients, your colleagues and your competitors are talking about. Take the time to assess what the trends mean for your business. Identify

one or two initiatives that will increase the likelihood that your business will be around in three years.

4

STEP

Streamline

Processes and

Maximize Potential

Eliminating inefficiencies, maximizing productivity and applying more of the potential already in your business will help you get by on less when all of your assets count. Which of your business processes deliver inconsistent results-sales, customer service, production, other? Optimizing the workflows and roles and

responsibilities of your team is critical to minimizing expenses and keeping your clients coming back.

D o n’t h e s i t a t e t o ask tough questions at a vulnerable time, it is when good leadership and strategic thinking make the difference.

About the Author: Helene Mazur, MBA, CFP, Business Coach and Team Facilitator, is the President of Princeton Performance Dynamics.

Her practice specializes in strategic thinking and planning, one-onone coaching, leadership development, time strategies and communication workshops.

18. August, 2012

August, 2012 19.

Procuring the Right Connections Securing Million Dollar Corporate and Government Contracts is Less about Your Product and More about Your Relationships

By Cynthia Nevels, Contributing Writer

I

n t o d a y ’s u n c e r t a i n economic times, business expansion calls for more suppliers to rethink their business development strategies.

No longer will email or a phone call suffice in increasing sales.

Research shows businesses that invest in their personal customer relationships tend to extend their survival rates.

Small businesses are not exempt due to lack of resources. Small business owners have full plates and they find it difficult to squeeze in an extra hour to shake hands with strangers but some business owners find this effort to be rewarding. Corporate and government procurement conferences happen all across the United States. The attendance for conferences has dwindled significantly over the years.

The fundamental cause for the decrease in attendance is unknown but some business owners report these events yield little to no return on their time invested or the costs are prohibitive. Procurement conferences are hosted by third-parties and government agencies to serve as a catalyst for economic development – a means for connecting contract decision-makers with vendors.

However, women business owners have found tremendous success in attending procurement conferences. Helen Callier, President of Bradlink, LLC a multi-million dollar support services firm in Dallas and Houston, Texas shares, “I never

miss an opportunity to connect with a procurement manager at procurement conferences.

Bradlink’s sales and marketing data indicate that attending procurement conferences is a must.” In today’s economy where executives are searching for ways to save money and redirect resources, more small businesses are turning to cloud technology to manage their procurement processes and customer relationships.

Companies like Smazit.com, Zoho.com or Salesforce.com all provide resources to manage relationship data and to analyze the numbers but they do not offer a way to replace personal interaction.

On Thursday, June 28, 2012 from 8:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m., Mountain View College, in partnership with the Dallas County Community College Diversity Office, will host the 2012 Supplier Diversity and Innovative Small Business Conference for the North Texas area. The economic development conference is the first annual event created to serve as a conduit for business development in the southwest region of North Texas. “Economic development in North Texas is important to building sustainable job growth, better neighborhoods and stronger communities. Mountain View College is the link between opportunity and growth in the southwest region. We want our local businesses to be successful,” states Patricia Webb, Executive Dean of Continuing Education, E c o n o m i c a n d Wo r k f o r c e Development. Innovative minority, woman, disabled and veteran owned businesses will connect with corporate supplier diversity managers at this unique event filled with information workshops, expert panelists and investment community leaders. The kickoff presentation will be delivered by Kenneth “Coach” Carter who will share his thoughts on Unleashing the Power of Creation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “I am so excited to be a part of the 2012 Mountain View College Supplier Diversity and Innovative Small

Business Diversity Conference.

If you are a CEO or an aspiring CEO, I feel this event will give you the networking, ideas, and inspiration to take your goals to the next level,” stated Coach Carter.

Contract opportunities are often not easy to understand or find. One opportunity my firm was awarded this year was due to a connection with a vendor derived from a government procurement conference. Conference attendance can be the added bonus your business development strategy needs to help boost your company’s bottom line.

Supplemental Section Conclusion Artura Taylor, President of Taylor Distribution Group a woman-owned multi-million dollar distribution firm shares ten reasons why it is important for small business owners to attend procurement conferences: 1. Procurement conferences foster mutually beneficial partnerships between diverse suppliers and attending corporations, academic institutions, and / or government agencies.

2. Procurement conferences

provide direct and sometimes oneon-one access to the key decisionmakers with insight on how to do business with that particular agency or corporation.

3. Procurement conferences offer support, training and development of minority, woman, veteran/service disabled, and HUBZone businesses that you cannot find elsewhere.

4. Procurement conferences facilitate personal networking, relationship building, and enable smaller diverse companies to have a higher profile and compete on a level playing field.

5. Procurement conferences are a key factor in leading to industry innovation, thereby driving leading-edge competitiveness, economic development and growth in communities.

6. Procurement conferences provide an important opportunity for participants to collaborate on best practices in fostering the inclusion of diverse businesses.

7. Procurement conferences most often include an interactive trade show where attending entities can meet leading diverse suppliers face-to-face.

8. Procurement conferences help to identify, develop and

increase spending with certified diverse suppliers.

9. Procurement conference workshops provide the knowledge and tools to cut through the vast amount of information and understand how to penetrate the market quickly and profitably.

10. Procurement conferences help to connect suppliers that are not certified, connect with certification agencies and collect the answers they need to become certified quickly.

Cynthia E. Nevels has owned and operated her business management consulting firm, CynthiaNevels.com, for 11 years.

She’s the host of The C-Radio Show and she’s an adjunct professor at Mountain View.

Cynthia developed the Advanced Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management Certificate program. Her first career was as a technology recruiter and consultant with Siebel Systems (now Oracle) and Keane. She is the author of Financial Bailout: A Guide to Creating Your Own Financial Rescue Plan and Navigating Your Way to Financial Security During a Recession.

20. August, 2012

How Residual Income Works: What You Need to Know

By John Frainee

A

re you stressed out by your paid-by-thehour job? Do you feel like you’ll never make a substantial income? Then you should take some time to learn how residual income can help you relax and increase your profits at the same time. Are you ready?

Linear Income vs.

Residual Income The Definition of Linear Income With linear income, you do work and get paid once. Pretty simple.

Like many of you, I was raised as a kid to produce linear income.

I was told by teachers that the way to make a living was to go to college, get a steady paying job, and support a family. All of that is great, but the “steady” part led me to believe that I had to make a linear income–doing the work that would pay me once for the effort involved. I believed that the only “steady” paying jobs were the ones where income was immediately realized yet low in compensation.

So, I took up several jobs where I was paid by the hour with no chance of a reoccurring income.

I’d work for my $10 per hour and then consider the transaction finished.

Many years later, I’d discover something entirely different– something called residual income.

This proved to be pretty exciting.

The Definition of Residual Income With residual income, income is generated on a reoccurring basis after the initial effort has been expended. This is a bit more complicated to learn and implement.

I first realized the power of residual income when I started working part-time from home.

I had written a few pieces online that were earning some advertising revenue - long after I finished the work. These small victories showed me the value in trying to obtain residual income. Although, at that time, I didn’t know what to call it.

Yesterday I listened to a podcast

by Dan Miller, author of 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal. In it, Dan explains that he vastly prefers residual income as opposed to linear income. He is always evaluating new opportunities to see whether they would provide him the reoccurring income we’re talking about.

The only problem with residual income is that the income

sometimes takes months or years to be fully realized. Linear income, on the other hand, often has an immediate payout. This is not always the case for residual and linear income, but I think you’ll find it is often the case.

How to Make More Residual Income The podcast by Dan Miller got me thinking about ways I could start making more residual income. Also, I started to question whether or not I should only seek work that pays on a reoccurring basis. How might I make that transition? What’s a good balance?

Differentiate Between Your Linear and Residual Income Opportunities The first step in making more residual income is to list all your job opportunities–current jobs and potential ones–and determine if they are linear in nature, residual in nature, or a little of each.

For some of you, listing your jobs is going to be easy, as you only really have one income source.

For those of you who are selfemployed at least part-time, you might have a handful of different types of jobs to bring in money.

Just write down everything.

Next, go down your list of jobs and identify as many residual income opportunities as possible.

You might find that the potential opportunities you’ve identified lead to even more ideas.

Eliminate Some Linear Income Opportunities I work in a variety of different capacities online. I won’t bore you with all the details, but some of the work I do provide linear income while other work provides residual income. Writing a product review for my website can produce residual income, while writing a non-linked article for another website produces linear income.

If you ever decide to learn how to make money with a blog, you’ll find that the Internet holds many residual income opportunities– but you can also find yourself with a lot of linear income opportunities as well. This is what happened in my situation, and now I understand that in order to succeed in the longterm I’m going to have to continually evaluate whether an opportunity is residual or linear in nature. The point here is that I know I need to let go of a few linear income opportunities in order to take on the residual ones.

By the way, if you’re interested in becoming a professional

blogger, I’d recommend checking out Blogging Your Passion University (founded by Bob Lotich of ChristianPF.com and Jonathan Milligan of CPACareerCoach. com). It is currently helping me identify the most important blogging practices, and know it will help you as well.

Transition Income Models Very Slowly If you’re like me and want to transition from a completely linear income model to a mostly residual income model, I’d recommend making the transition slowly. The last thing you want to do is jump ship into the icy seas of a risky business venture. Test the waters first.

For example, if you have a fulltime paid-by-the-hour job and want to start experimenting with making some residual income, perhaps you should cut your hours down to part-time if you can afford it and get your feet wet by trying some residual income opportunities. Once you’ve successfully created a reoccurring income, it will be easier for you to pursue even more residual income opportunities.

Remember That Linear Income Isn’t Bad By no means am I saying that linear income should be avoided at all costs. After all, if you can find a high-paying job you love that compensates you based on a linear income model, go for it!

There are still a select few linear income jobs I still hold that provide excellent income. But I’m going to ensure I don’t overwhelm myself with jobs that pay only one time–I prefer those opportunities that provide reoccurring income!

U l t i m a t e l y, y o u h a v e t o determine how much of each form of income is right for you.

Everyone’s ideal work situation will be different, so figure out what best suits your time and talents.

Are you as excited about residual income as I am? I truly believe that if you try and focus on working on projects that will continually provide an income, you’ll live life with less stress and with more money in your wallet.

What residual income opportunities do you have?

Brainstorm some ideas in the comments below and let’s explore this topic together.

20

Years of

AUGUST

Black History Facts

1619 August 20 Twenty Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship. They were the first blacks to be forcibly settled as involuntary laborers in the North American British Colonies.

and art.

1936 August 9 Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin.

1957 August 29 Congress passed the Voting Rights 1641 Bill of 1957, the first major civil Massachusetts was the first colony rights legislation in more than 75 to legalize slavery by statute. years.

1797 August 30 1963 June - August A slave revolt near Richmond, Civil rights protests took place in Virginia, led by Gabriel Prosser most major urban areas. August and Jack Bowley, was first 28 the March on Washington postponed and then betrayed. was the largest civil rights Mo re t h a n 4 0 b l a c k s we re demonstration ever. Martin Luther eventually executed.

King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

1818 August 18 General Andrew Jackson defeated 1964 July 18 - August 30 a force of Native Americans and Beginning in Harlem, serious African-Americans to end the racial disturbances occurred in First Seminole War. more than six major cities 1831 August 21-22 1965 August 11-21 The Nat Turner revolt ran its The Watts riots left 34 dead, more course in Southampton County, than 3,500 arrested, and property Virginia. damage of about 225 million dollars.

1861 August 23 James Stone of Ohio enlisted to 1970 August 7 become the first black to fight for There was a shootout during the Union during the Civil War. an attempted escape in a San He was very light skinned and Rafael, California, courthouse. was married to a white woman. Implicated in the incident, Angela His racial identity was revealed Davis went into hiding to avoid after his death in 1862. arrest. Davis would be acquitted of all charges on June 4, 1972.

1920 August 1-2 The national convention of 1983 August 30 Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Guion (Guy) S. Bluford, Jr. was Improvement Society met in New the first black American astronaut York City. Garvey would be to make a space flight on board charged with mail fraud in 1923. the space shuttle Challenger He was convicted in 1925 and deported in 1927 after sering 1992 August 3 Jackie Joyner-Kersee was the first time in prison. woman to repeat as Olympic 1922 - 1929 Taken from http://christianpf. These are the years usually assigned heptathlon champion. com/how-residual-income- to the Harlem Renaissance, which Taken from www.fs.fed.us/people/ works/ marks an epoch in black literature aasg/calendar/timeline.html

August, 2012 21.

22. August, 2012

A Setback is a Setup for Something Greater

By Glenn Murray, Contributing Writer

W

e’ve all had dif f icu lt experiences in life. “If there weren’t problems we wouldn’t have jobs,” is a common phrase heard in corporate America. But some setbacks, especially emotional and deeply personal ones are the ha rdest to overcome.

While adversity is a common reality, we don’t have to allow it inside our homes, invading our lives and controlling our thoughts. Challenges are best met head on. Adversity and hard times can be a ver y over whelming opponent if you allow them to be. “Allow” being the key phrase, what you allow inside your mind you become.

So how does one get back “on track”? There have been countless books, DVD collections, and television shows teaching the masses what it means to bounce back. Small

fortunes are spent (and amassed) in the business of “bouncing back.” But without spending money that probably would create more challenges. Here are some tips to help “steady your ship”.

Thoughts Determine Action: Remember “what one thinks they become” sounds simple but if it were, there would not be a need for inspiration.

Positive thinking however is a decision to leverage the solution and apply it.

Some prefer prayer, some use affirmation, and others meditation. It all reinforces that the mind is a powerful tool used in combating the challenges that cause stress and eventually may lead to illness. A great example of using the strength of the mind is author D. Michelle Stokes, who suffered the ultimate setback. Stokes l o s t h e r m o t h e r, h e r grandfather and another close friend along with her coaching job all within

the course of a year. On levels of personal and professional setbacks, this pretty much is the ultimate in losing things that are precious to you. Stokes’ background in coaching basketball helped her deal with the losses in a way that would best be described as amazing. She captured her emotions and her prayers and her experiencing in dealing with difficult losses in life and on the court in a monthly journal. The amazing result was that her journal became the book “E xperiencing Grace.”

The book did more than just provide Stokes with the mind shaping thought enhancing outlet she was looking for but also has helped countless others.

Her writings and timely passages have led her to travel the world as guests of inspirational speakers.

The lesson with Stokes and with all of us is that loss is devastating and once we embrace that, the recovery

can be fulfilling because it gives us a testimony that will impact countless others in ways we’ve never imagined. Your thoughts are your most powerful weapon in the quest to overcome adversity.

Seek out and surround yourself with positivity: It doesn’t matter your f ina ncia l situation, inspiration is eit her a click or a short trip to the library away. Some of the best information and inspiration I’ve received I found without spending a dime. Also this is the time positive people assist in your change in attitude; those people differentiate themselves by providing you the words or actions to help make your roughest days take a turn for the positive. Those people speak to you and move you in a way that you instantly recognize their action as your own personal message.

You have to have it within you f i r s t (rememb er

thoughts determine actions) to get up from any malady. Positive seeds planted by someone else, however small or large, will certainly help. Another exercise in positivity is projecting that which you want to receive. Kick start your own positivity, find your favorite inspirational quotes and create a list.

Make it a habit of seeking out one inspirational quote per day. Before you know it you’ll begin to become the resource you seek.

Equipping yourself helps you to grow into what you want to become even faster.

Recognize that “a ha” moment. Recognize that your downtime may be prepping you for a huge breakthrough. It’s in the darkest moments that purpose and preparation are found. This may be your bounce back moment.

You have to recognize what put you in your current position, what actions and responses to other actions

landed you where you sit at this moment. Analysis isn’t really effective unless you use the data. What are you doing to analyze your situation at this moment?

As stated earlier there is no simple solution, every story is different. You have to look at these points as helpful suggestions.

There are many more that can be written. The first step is always looking yourself in the mirror and understanding that the time is now. What is it that you want to become? What hurdles to do you have to scale? It starts with you, it ends with you. Setbacks will always be there, and they are not the end but only a chapter in your story.

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August, 2012 23.

Failure Is Not Fatal But One More Time . . .

Failing to Change Might Be!

By Thecia Jenkins

By Noel Pinnock, B.S., M.P.A., C.A., CCC, Contributing Writer

Three-time Grammy® award winner, Donnie McClurkin’s, We Fall Down lyrics are definitely on target with this month’s edition of d-mars, partly, because he was able to successfully capture the essence of catching, correcting, and learning from the power of failure or the errors of our ways.

McClurkin wrote: “We fall down but we get up… we fall down but we get up, for a saint is just a sinner who fell down but we couldn’t stay there…”

The incomparable William Shakespeare is infamous for saying, “To err is human.”

The verb “err” means to do something wrong; to make a mistake is “to err”.

“To err is human” because all people (“humans”) make mistakes. Unfortunately, we are programmed at an early age to think that failure is bad and this belief prevents individuals and organizations, alike, from effectively learning from missteps.

As children, we learn at some point that admitting failure means taking blame!

How can we respond constructively to failures w/o giving rise to an “anythinggoes” attitude? Executives when asked, reported how many of the failures in their organizations are truly blameworthy, their answers are usually in single digits – 2% to 5% but when asked how many are treated as blameworthy, they say (after a pause or chuckle) – 70% to 90%. Amy Edmondson and Mark D. Cannon (Harvard Business School) writes: “It hardly needs to be said that organizations (individuals) cannot learn from failures if people do not discuss and analyze them. Yet this remains an important insight. The learning that is potentially available may not be realized unless thoughtful analysis and discussion of failure occurs. For example, for Kaiser [Permanente’s] Dr. [Kim] Adcock, it is not enough just to know that a particular physician is making more than the acceptable number of errors [in misread x-rays]. Unless deeper analysis of the nature of the radiologists’ errors is conducted, it is difficult to learn what needs to be corrected.

On a larger scale, the U.S. Army is known for conducting After Action Reviews that enable participants to analyze, discuss, and learn from both the successes and failures

of a variety of military initiatives. Similarly, hospitals use “Morbidity and Mortality” (M&M) conferences (in which physicians convene to discuss significant mistakes or unexpected deaths) as a forum for identifying, discussing, and learning from failures. This analysis can only be effective if people speak up openly about what they know and if others listen, enabling a new understanding of what happened to emerge in the assembled group.”

You see, hindsight is always 20/20 but in order to realize the power that is produced in failure we must first be able to acknowledge it; second, analyze it; and third, learn from it. German theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein once stated, “We can’t solve yesterday’s problems at the same level of thinking we are at when we created them.” In order to get back up, as McClurkin exhorts, when we have fallen down requires a change in our beliefs as well as in our thinking because when we change our beliefs, we change our thoughts, and when we change our thoughts; we change our feelings and when we change our feelings; we change our actions. At the end of the day, top of the morning, it’s about taking action after the error, failure, short fall, opportunity for improvement (OFIs), or whatever word or phrase you find acceptable in your lexicon.

Those that catch, correct, and learn from failure before others will succeed but those that wallow in the blame game will not.

Now that we know that failure is not fatal, let’s examine what life looks like after one does encounter this inevitable dynamic through the lens of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a vital force in the failure recovery process. It is vital because we can’t carry stones in our pockets and expect to run at optimal speeds. Again, Shakespeare wrote, “to err is human” but he also stated in the same breathe that “to forgive is divine.” Forgiveness is reciprocal my friends because to receive it one must give it and to accept it is to move your life progressively forward. After all, we fall down but we can’t stay there…we have to get back up, but getting back up doesn’t end the process it simply begins the process of catching, correcting, and learning from the force that made us fall in the first place. So, there you have it…get at it and rediscover the power in failure, remembering that FAILURE is not FATAL but FAILING to change might be…

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A

little boy who did not speak until he was four years old or read until he was seven, a high school basketball player who was cut from the team, an artist that sold only one painting to a friend and yet completed eight hundred pieces of art; and a senior citizen who was angry that his social security check was only $105.00 set out to become an entrepreneur at sixtyfive. What do these individuals have in common? They possess the emotional competency of optimism, the ability to pursue goals despite obstacles and setbacks.

What have you encountered in the past year? Perhaps a layoff, a failed relationship, a rejected manuscript or foreclosure. Well, this year is not over and if you are reading this you are still among the living and that means you can still back on track The first step to getting back on track is recognizing that the steps you have

taken are not taking you to the desired destination. Persistence is key, however, steadily moving forward in a direction that is not yielding the desired results is insanity. Be willing to be flexible and adapt to the current circumstances.

Secondly, take stock of your strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps you are excellent at handling the technical side of your business, but are struggling with the day to day running of the business. Now might be the time to delegate or hire a virtual assistant or bring on an intern to free you to pursue what comes naturally to you. And finally, recognize that you are not perfect.

You are human and part of the human journey is experiencing setbacks, failures and disappointments that can derail you.

Persistence and optimism will get you back on track.

Now get yourself back on track and walk in your purpose just like Albert Einstein, who was thought to be mentally disabled and went on to be awarded the Noble Prize; Michael Jordan, who was let go from his high school basketball team and went on to become a basketball legend; Vincent Van Gogh, one of the greatest artists in history who only sold one piece of art during his lifetime yet completed over 800 pieces of art because he believed in his craft; and Colonel Sanders of KFC, who was turned down 1009 times when seeking financing for his company. The world is waiting on you!

24. August, 2012

Getting Back On Track

By Alvin E. Terry, MBA, Contributing Writer

A

s you look back on the progress t h at you h ave made since the beginning of the year, have you accomplished what you projected in your business plan? Have you achieved your gross revenue projections for the New Year? Was your business plan realistic enough to put you on the right track? Or, did you just pull those numbers out of thin air? Did you do your research? Did the “economy” perform as you had wished, or were you surprised? Did situations in your personal life influence you more than you had anticipated?

Were you surprised by the market share that your competition gained? These are just some of the questions that bring home reality in the world of business.

The experiences that we encountered this year are unique to each of us as individuals. I have had mine too. Those experiences that we all have are inextricably interwoven.

Since my main focus is on the art of doing “business”, I will highlight the activities that are supposed to make us better in our quest to be successful. Turning your dreams into reality requires a lot of work, not hard work, but a focus on the tried and true basic guidelines that we

all read about. If you read books about business and you should, you know that these words are repeated countless times across the spectrum.

These words of wisdom have been echoed before.

Whether you have practiced these guidelines and principles correctly may be directly reflective of the results that you are experiencing today.

As practicing business professionals, you should have established a projected sales revenue for the entire year. With the correct market research coupled with historical performance data, your assumptions should be a roadmap in which to operate your business. Your individual business plan or business model should have milestones and benchmarks to track the progress along the way. Someone has to be the bean counter in order to help navigate through the maze you are encountering with every step. In growing, persistence is an everyday thing.

If you are perplexed about why you are not on track with your projections and cannot pinpoint the reasons why, then you may need to consult with an outside source. Whether it is a consultant or mentor, an extra set of objective eyeballs on the situation, always helps. Sometimes it may be an adjustment in the way in which you are looking at things. Sometimes it may be that you cannot see the forest for the trees, meaning that as you are caught up with the daily operations of managing the business, the bigger picture of

keeping on track and guiding the business down the right road may become blurred and out of focus because you are standing too close to focus.

I know that there is a lot to do, been there, done that, still doing that. It never ends unless you just do it. Embrace the proper people and engage the proper mind set is the key.

If you would like to contact me for other words of wisdom about business or real estate, I may be reached at alvin.terry@rocketmail.com or directly @ 713.392.9107. Good Luck and Be Prosperous!

Finding Sanity in t he Power of t he Pen

By N. C. Manuel, Contributing Writer

I

t is difficult enough to keep a sound mind and remain stress free as an ordinary citizen, in a world plagued with so much pain, sorrow, death, despair, catastrophes, economic crisis, and a million other things that makes one want to throw in the towel. But what does one do when given the punishment of a lengthy sentence to bear along with the everyday problems the world delivers to everyone else who is not incarcerated? How can a person walk out of prison after more than a decade has passed, with a sound mind, and still become a productive member of society. Once the person is released and the stress of trying to

start over all becomes too much to bear, how can they deal with this stress in a positive manner?

These are the questions many men and women serving lengthy sentences in prisons all across the nation ask themselves every day.

It is so easy to succumb to the darkness and despair that lives inside the walls of prison and not too many make it out with a sound mind.

The truth is being given a lengthy sentence will put anyone’s sanity to the test. With many prisons being nothing more than places that warehouse criminals with no plans to rehabilitate, only the strong survive and the weak are preyed on. Prisoners become

victims of dehumanization instead of being rehabilitated. This type of environment can and will affect a person’s mental state not only while they are incarcerated but upon their release as well.

There is one coping skill that many prisoners rely on to help them escape the insanity and monotony that exist inside of prison. This coping skill is writing.

Many adults who turn to writing in prison may have already used this skill as a child. Writing in a journal or diary about the events that take place in their lives everyday, good and bad, is a way to cope. I’ll bet some still use journals and diaries to release some of the stress, anger, and

frustration that mounts inside of them as they serve their time.

Others turn to writing poems, lyrics, novels and letters to achieve the same goal.

Prisoners find power and peace in the form of a pen. Putting ones thoughts to paper allows them to be transported to a place outside of the prisons walls. The places you can take yourself with the stroke of a pen are many. You can find solace in the heart of a loved one through letters, where unconditional love, understanding, and forgiveness lives. You can bear your soul in the lines of a poem. You can create an entirely different world altogether, where the mistakes you made in your life does not exist and the people you may have hurt can’t feel any pain. You can tell your story, a detailed account of all you’ve been through in your life. Or maybe you would just like to vent without receiving judgmental advice that you would normally hear from others when you share your problems.

The wonderful thing about writing to ease stress, frustration, worries, or to escape, is that anybody can use this coping skill, not just people who are incarcerated.

Instead of a pen you may choose to use a notebook, iPad, or whatever form of technology that exist these days. It doesn’t matter; they

will all serve the same purpose.

With these tools you begin the therapeutic process of writing.

Maybe you’re having problems with your spouse because he or she isn’t the same romantic person they use to be. Pick up your pen and let your mind take you to a place of romance through writing a story, poem, or letter. Then convince your significant other to act out your fantasy with you as a way to spice up your love life. Perhaps it is your children arguing over what belongs to each other that is driving you crazy. Sit down with them and write a children’s story about the importance of sharing. This may keep them from bickering over the little things siblings usually fight about. You can even revert back to the days of your own dysfunctional childhood and keep a journal or diary as a way to vent when nobody else wants to listen to your problems.

Whatever you choose to do when invoking the power of the pen, remember the objective is to preserve your sanity and sound mind when insanity and unrest exist all around you.

•(i.e.), C. Manuel is the author of a urban fiction novel titled ‘My Brothers Keeper’ and can be found at www. loveandloyaltypublications.net)

August, 2012 25.

26. August, 2012

It’s Time for a Business Tune-Up!

By Dr. Wendy, Contributing Writer

E

ach year we start the year with exciting plans and goals. Now that half of the year is over, it’s time to check under the hood of your business and assess if the same “beginning of the year” energy and excitement still exists, if you are trending in a direction that is generating relationships and revenue or is your business on autopilot still looking for

direction and guidance.

In today’s age of educated consumers, competitive e n v i ro n m e n t s , a n u n s t a b l e economy and moving technology businesses must know when and how to implement the necessary changes. Business owners who fail to incorporate quarterly or midyear “tune-ups” find themselves reacting to matters that could have been resolved if the proper assessment took place. So, let’s be proactive and check under that hood and see what really going on.

Here are some suggested “tuneup” tactics: 1. Watch and Properly “Assess” Your Spending- In an unstable economy it is vital that you properly assess your business “needs” and “wants”. Ensuring that you have the appropriate business

necessities are critical however do not cut your budget so drastic that it negatively impacts the “customer experience”. During difficult times business owners typically cutback or eliminate their marketing efforts. Instead of cutting back you may need to amp up your efforts. Remember… it is imperative that you Market, Promote then Sell. No one can purchase your product or service if they don’t know about it. If you do need to cut back, look for the best approaches to pulling back such as, marketing tactics that do not yield you desired results or business non-essentials.

2. Experience “The Customer Experience” - A r e y o u r customers being treated as you expect them to? It is always a good idea to experience the “customer experience.” Have you ever called

your office to see how long it takes your staff to answer the phone, are they polite, can they answer basic questions; can they handle a difficult customer? Doing this will give YOU a chance to take a step back and observe the details that make up the experience.

After your assessments ensure that you acknowledge the people that “passed the test,” effectively communicate your observations and let your team know the areas that need to be improved.

3. Automate & Integrate – Do you know what your employees are doing?

Assess your employees’ duties and look for ways to streamline the process. As technology continues to advance, the ability to integrate your efforts becomes easier. Look at various reports and a way to use digital files, look

at your accounting systems, can you easily get downloads from your bank to easily populate your system or can you pay on line and eliminate checks and postage.

Look for ways to eliminate tasks from your operations and sales efforts. In your marketing efforts, can you integrate information from your sales efforts thru to your operations and to your accounting and follow up processes? These are things to think about and assess.

Making the time to tune up your business will assure that you’re being innovative, keeping your business fresh and ensuring the relationship you have developed with your customer is being properly nurtured. If you don’t alter the way you do business, you risk not being in business in the long term.

In-House Training as A Team Building Exercise

By Sue Richardson

W

ith the announcement that economic recovery is going to take longer than first thought, there is pressure on legal firms to be more competitive than ever before. Consumers are becoming more exacting about the services they spend their money on, and are expecting standards that exceed their expectations. According to a report by employment and skills consultants CFE, 73% of business owners intend to maintain their levels of in-house training, while 16% intend to increase the amount they undertake. They believe that expanding the knowledge base and skill sets of their employees will help them through difficult times. However, while it could be argued that knowledge is power, is there something else to be considered?

Can Your Team Work Together?

There is no doubt that, in order to stay ahead of your competitors, it is worth investing in further personal injury training. The Law is constantly evolving, so furnishing your staff with new skill-sets and a deeper understanding of legal changes can only help your staff achieve at a time when success is crucial to your business and furthering your reputation. However, there

is little point in your team being the most up-to-date lawyers on the block if they cannot work together to implement that knowledge effectively and efficiently.

Professional Empathy Legal training can cover both the knowledge base and the teamwork aspects that are vital to the smooth running of your firm. Within every firm, there are groups who will naturally ‘fit together’ and those who won’t. Personal injury training sessions can give colleagues a greater understanding of how the firm operates as a whole and their place within that structure. It can also help employees to understand that professional cohesion is a much better way for a law firm. By recognizing and appreciating the skills and knowledge on offer from your colleagues, you are far more likely to approach them in times of pressure. In many ways, what is required is a degree of professional empathy - the ability to let someone stand in your stead when that is what the situation requires.

Subliminal Reinforcement Team building events have developed their own myths and are often perceived as a way of getting out of work for an afternoon.

However, a good legal trainer will combine

the communication of new knowledge with the application of the team’s strengths and weaknesses. Not only can this be a lot of fun for all those involved, but is also a clever, subliminal method of reinforcing that which the candidates have learned on the course.

As a business owner, your responsibility is to find out where the strengths and weaknesses in your organization lie. You may want to interview your Heads of Department or send out a confidential questionnaire to all your employees to garner honest, constructive feedback. This information, along with your requirements

from the legal training aspect, must be passed on to the trainer. By examining the structures of the relationships and communication in a business, a trainer can best decide how to build bridges where they are needed and transform a splintered group into a fully co-operative and efficient team.

For more information and a training newsletter with course details, visit MASS Training for all of your Legal Training needs. MASS Training provides cost effective, practical and interactive Legal Training Courses.

August, 2012 27.

28. August, 2012

Know Your Rights! Community Outreach Seminars

By Teana Watson, Contributing Writer

A

ttorney Teana Watson has noticed throughout her 21 year legal career the plights that face her community. As a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, Teana has seen how the majority of persons who go before the court tend to be of a certain disposition.

That is, they are young men with darker skin tones.

The criminal justice system is flawed. This is evident when looking at the incarceration rates in Texas. According to a study by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, in 2002, African-Americans comprised nearly 12% of the Texas general population. However, AfricanAmericans disproportionately comprised 41% of the Texas prison population. The truth is, if you are Black you are more likely to either be incarcerated or know

someone who is.

On the other side of the system, there is another disparity that furthers the problem. According to the State Bar of Texas, for 201011, African-Americans comprised only 5% of the State’s attorneys (despite being approximately 1 2 % o f t h e Te x a s g e n e r a l population in 2011). In 2002, African-Americans comprised only 3% of all judgeships in the State of Texas. In Fort Bend County, no minority has ever been elected as a judge.

Teana Watson believes that these disparities can only be overcome through education and community involvement.

This summer, she has started a community outreach program centered on educating youth about the rights each citizen of the United States has, and perhaps more importantly, the

responsibilities that come with those rights.

On nearly a weekly basis Te a n a h a s organized panels of attorneys and even a law student from around the county for open and informative discussions about the law, the criminal justice system, and how both affect the community. To date, Attorneys Felishia R. Young and Tyesha Y. Elam, as well as law student Ali Hasanali have participated in the panels, with others scheduled for the future events.

Topics have ranged from what to do when you’re arrested, your Miranda rights, the effects of making a contract,

the importance of having good credit, having academic integrity, determining paternity, child support, use of social media in law, constitutional rights of students, and selective service requirements.

The Know Your Rights! seminars have been at the Fort Bend Boys and Girls Club and the Missouri City Branch Library. The seminars will also be at 6:00 PM at the Cinco Ranch Branch Library on Tuesday, August 21st, University Branch Library in Sugar Land

on Thursday, August 30th, and the George Memorial Library on Thursday, September 6th. All seminars are free, open to the public, and food will be provided.

Additionally, Teana is doing her part to help change the statistics. She is running for the 434th District Court Judgeship, a county-wide elected position.

This November, please vote for her and help elect the first minority Judge in Fort Bend County history. For more information, please visit her website at www. teanawatsonforjudge.com.

August, 2012 29.

30. August, 2012

Mr. D-MARS would like to thank “Grand Polemarch” William Randy Bates Jr.

and Kappa Alpha PSI, Inc. fraternity for bringing their 81st

Grand Chapter meeting to Houston, Aug 6-11, 2013

O

n August 4, 2012, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. (Kappa Alpha Psi) announced that more than 15,000 delegates will be welcomed to Houston for the 81st Grand Chapter Meeting (“Conclave”) on Aug. 6-11, 2013. Held biennially, the Conclave is expected to infuse $5 million into the Houston economy and leave behind a bounty of community good. The press forum was held at the Hilton Americas-Houston, the Conclave’s host hotel. During the forum, Houston City Council Member Wanda Adams and City Controller Ronald Green presented the customary dignitary gift of a cowboy hat to the organization’s 32nd Grand Polemarch William “Randy” Bates, Jr. Esq., officially welcoming the 81st Grand Chapter Meeting to Houston in 2013.

Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. is an international organization founded on the campus of Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana on Jan. 5, 1911. Since its inception, it has trained over 150,000 men, particularly undergraduates, for leadership roles in their communities and the attainment of a high degree of excellence in their academic pursuits. The International Headquarters is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. MR.D-MARS would like to officially welcome Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity to Houston, and he looks forward to supporting the Conclave as it makes its impact on our city and community.

www.kappaalphapsi1911.com

Grand Polemarch William Randy Bates Jr was recently honored as a Community Hero at the D-Mars Houston Top 50 Black Attorneys Celebration.

August, 2012 31.

32. August, 2012

Public Servants African Employees Appreciation Day with

Sheriff Adrian Garcia

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