The Belly and the Members

by Aesop



The members of the Body rebelled against the Belly, and said,
"Why should we be perpetually engaged in administering to your
wants, while you do nothing but take your rest, and enjoy
yourself in luxury and self-indulgence?' The Members carried out
their resolve and refused their assistance to the Belly. The
whole Body quickly became debilitated, and the hands, feet,
mouth, and eyes, when too late, repented of their folly.

Moral: As in the body, so in the state, each member in
his proper sphere must work for the common good.

Col. Laird John B. Cutty Kt
*johnbcuttykt*


P.S. Sojourn in a major European city!
http://citytrips.goldwingbuildings.eu

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Are You Reaching Your True Potential?

by Chris Eaton
Network Marketing Expert & Visionary Entrepreneur



A few years ago, a friend of mine and a passenger were in Europe driving on the Autobahn, the superhighway across Germany. Unlike American freeways, the Autobahn has no speed limit. You can travel as fast as you want to drive.

My friend was so excited as he pressed down onthe accelerator and took the car up to 80 miles an hour, then 90, 100, 110. He felt like the king of the road, zooming past people left and right.

A few minutes later, another car streaked down the freeway. This car was the exact same model as my friend’s car, but it blew by him like he was standing still. That second automobile must have been going 170 per hour.

The passenger traveling with my friend laughed and said, ” See; your’re not going as fast as you can. You’re just going as fast as you will. “

Think about that: My friend’s car possessed tremendous potential. It too was capable of going 180 miles per hour. The manufactacturer put in the potential. How fast my friend drove didn’t have anything to do with the car’s capability. In other words, the potential was not lessened just because he chose not to use it. And simply having the potential on board did not affect his future.

So the real question is: Are you willing to break free from your self-imposed limitations and start stretching to the next level?

Chris Eaton - Network Marketing Expert & Visionary Entrepreneur

Col. Laird John B. Cutty Kt
*johnbcuttykt*


P.S. Are you dreaming of a holiday in a castle?
Check it out http://www.goldwingbuildings.eu





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Coaching Tips for the Top

Take Control of Your Schedule
by Brooke Ingram


"My schedule is crazy, my workload heavy, and the demands of my job and family unrelenting. I am doing everything I can to just stay above water and not drown."

Sound familiar? Is it true for you or your employees? What are you doing about it?

"I keep doing it - I just need to get through the next few weeks and then things will slow down."
or
"Some things just are not getting done - there's no way I can keep up."

If the craziness is no longer working for you and you are looking to regain some control of your schedule here are some tips to help.

It is impossible to manage your time if you don't know how you are spending this limited resource. Start by assessing your time utilization.

1. For the next week document how you spend your time. Write down all of your activities and the time committed to each. Include everything - scheduled and unscheduled events, commuting, meals, e-mail, TV, conversations at the coffee pot, etc.

2. After completing your documentation ask yourself the following questions
a. What did you actually spend your time doing?
b. On what did you anticipate/ expect to be spending your time?
c. How do you feel about how you are actually spending your time?
d. What action will you take from what you observed?

Now that you have a good handle on what's filling your schedule let's look at habits you can develop to help you regain control of your time.

1. Sitting on e-mail is a huge time waster. Build blocks of time into your schedule to read and respond to e-mail. If you have a handheld device first respond to a message by asking yourself "is this urgent or could it wait until later?" Chances are it can wait.

2. Do you have an assistant? This person can be your right hand and a key to your success. Learn to ask for help and cultivate a good working relationship with your assistant.

3. Take care of yourself. Having control of your time takes energy and stamina. Pay attention to what you are eating. Have breakfast at home and resist that pastry at the morning meeting. Get away from your desk even if you only walk to the bathroom or kitchen to wash your hands. Better still go outside for a walk around the block.

4. Develop a routine. Get up and go to bed at the same time. Arrive to and leave work at the same time. Schedule coffee with colleagues. Schedule dinner with you family. When developing a routine look for balance between rigid and flexible. Sticking to a routine requires discipline but it can also be taken too far.

It all makes sense and seems easy enough yet taking control of your schedule is going to require time and effort. This investment is worth it if you are truly tired of the craziness. The pace of business will continue to increase. Take control of your time right now and develop the habits that will support your success today and in the fast paced days to come.


Col. Laird John B. Cutty Kt
*johnbcuttykt*


P.S. Are you dreaming of a holiday in a castle?
Check it out http://www.goldwingbuildings.eu





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Fun in the summertime!

Most people are busy planning their summer holidays.
Our offerings have been greatly expanded.

Did you know that we now have 15,000 houses in 17 European countries? There are still sufficient choices now. Whether you choose a lovely lazy holiday on the beach, an active hiking, golf or cycling holiday or a dazzling sojourn in a major European city, you can find it at Belvilla.

Col. Laird John B. Cutty Kt
*johnbcuttykt*


P.S. Are you dreaming of a holiday in a castle?
Check it out http://www.goldwingbuildings.eu




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Happy New Year 2009! - Bonne année 2009! - Frohes Neues Jahr 2009!

Dear friends, I wish You all a Happy New Year 2009!

Let's face it... we've never seen anything quite like this dodgy economy before. Economists are suggesting that you'd have to go back to post-war 1947 to match this while others suggest it's more like the great depression of the 1930's.

Perhaps you know someone who has lost their job ... their home or you're concerned about the prospect of one or the other happening to you? And if we thought that 2008 was bad, all the indications are that 2009 will be worse still. Let's be honest, it's not a pretty picture out there. But don't panic.

Doing business online has always made sense because of the low delivery costs, but during this economic squeeze internet marketing has suddenly become more attractive than ever!

The big question is where do you start? The answer is of course that you need to own your own product and understand how to market it (a quite a bit more besides).

The best way to help your fellow man and this economy is to go for it and help yourself. Want to do your part to help the economy, just stay focused and don’t believe anyone that deters you. I am so excited for this year.

"The secret to success is finding out where everyone is going and getting there first." - Mark Twain

May 2009 be a year with good health, happiness, prosperity and your best year!

Col. Laird John B. Cutty Kt
*johnbcuttykt*


P.S. Are you dreaming of a holiday in a castle?
Check it out http://www.goldwingbuildings.eu



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10 Great Low-Tax Places to Retire in the U.S.A.

Full-time work is often taxing. Retirement shouldn't be. Picking a retirement location with low taxes gives you more cash to spend exploring the surrounding scenic beauty, taking in the local nightlife, or hoarding your hard-earned dough for future expenses. Kicking less money up to Uncle Sam also helps retirees on fixed incomes better cope with food, gas, and utility costs.

Americans will spend more on taxes in 2008 than on food, clothing, and housing combined, according to Tax Foundation President Scott Hodge. This year, Americans worked 74 days to pay their federal taxes and 39 days more to cover state and local levies, the Tax Foundation calculated. There's not much you can do about the federal taxes if you want to live in the United States, but the state and local tax burden varies considerably by location. The most expensive state and local taxes are typically sales and excise taxes (14 days' pay), property taxes (12 days' pay), and income tax (10 days' pay).

To find low-tax places to retire, U.S. News cranked up our Best Places to Retire search tool. We sifted through more than 2,000 U.S. places to find locales that have relatively low taxes but also offer amenities important to retirees like a reasonable cost of living and fine recreational and cultural choices. Many of the low-tax retirement havens have no state sales tax, like Billings, Mont., or no state income tax, like Sioux Falls, S.D. There's nothing like zero tax to make your retirement dollar go further.

One low-tax retirement gem, Stafford, Texas, a suburb of Houston, eliminated its property tax in 1995. Texas is also one of seven states with no income tax. (The others are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming.) Stafford also has the lowest sales tax in the Houston area.

Seniors looking to maximize their fixed income may also want to give Manchester, N.H., a look. There is no sales or traditional income tax, but New Hampshire does levy a 5 percent tax on interest and dividend income above $2,400 annually ($4,800 for couples). Residents ages 65 and older pay tax only on amounts above $3,600, and that's outside your retirement accounts. Withdrawals from retirement accounts are not taxed in New Hampshire.

Many retirement locales offer tax perks specifically for seniors. Nashville-Davidson County, Tenn., the home of country-music (and state) capital Nashville, for example, was the first jurisdiction in the state to allow homeowners ages 65 and older earning less than $35,390 in 2007 to freeze the amount of property tax due on their primary residence in the year they qualify, even if tax rates increase later. The frozen dollar amount will rise if the owner sells or makes improvements to the house. If the house drops in value and the current taxes become lower than the frozen amount, homeowners pay the lower amount. And like New Hampshire, Tennessee also doesn't tax earned income, just dividends and interest.

Low-tax towns don't have to be dull. Doral, Fla., is home to the Doral Golf Resort & Spa, which hosts a PGA tournament every year. And Henderson, Nev., Las Vegas's less glittery cousin, is only a short drive from the Strip, Hoover Dam, and Lake Mead. Businesses often flock to tax-friendly cities. And thriving local economies are sure to help retirees find second careers and start small businesses. The business-friendly tax structure of Spokane, Wash., is key to attracting prime technology jobs to the area. After work, retirees can stroll along the Spokane River, which runs through the center of town, or hike in the nearby mountains.

Some cities, like Cheyenne, Wyo., try to slash their budgets rather than increase taxes. In October, Cheyenne Mayor Jack Spiker announced a hiring freeze on nonessential personnel, a reduction of out-of-town travel, and a review of equipment expenditures. "Just like taxpayers, the city needs to tighten its financial belt during these times of economic uncertainty," he says. By leaving vacant positions open until the end of the year, the city estimates it will save $3,160 a month per entry-level employee and $5,050 monthly for each vacant mid-level position.

Perhaps the most tax-friendly state for retirees is Alaska. The geographically largest state in the union is the only one without any kind of income or sales tax. The city of Juneau levies a 5 percent sales tax, but seniors ages 65 and older who have lived in the city for at least 30 days and plan to remain indefinitely in the state can get a Senior Sales Tax Exemption Card for a $20 application fee. Those over age 65 may also be eligible for a senior-citizen property tax exemption on the first $150,000 of assessed value. All Alaska residents with at least one year in the state also receive annual Alaska Permanent Fund dividends. The payout was an unusually high $3,269 in 2008, but even more typical dividends have been nothing to scoff at, ranging from $827 to $1,964 over the past two decades. This dividend may be taxed as income on federal tax returns.

Here are 10 great tax havens for retirees:

Billings, Mont.
Cheyenne, Wyo.
Doral, Fla.
Henderson, Nev.
Juneau, Alaska
Manchester, N.H.
Nashville, Tenn.
Sioux Falls, S.D.
Spokane, Wash.
Stafford, Texas

More: http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/10-great-low-tax-places-to-retire.html

Best wishes,

Col. Laird John B. Cutty Kt
*johnbcuttykt*

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Marketing in the World of the Web

Bemes, clouds and MySpace: Welcome to the brave new world of retail.

By TOM HAYES and MICHAEL S. MALONE
Retailers will eventually recover from the consumption tailspin that threatens this holiday season. But quite apart from the recession, there are other, profound changes underway in the retail sector. As the evidence mounts about the power of social networks to reconfigure individual behavior, the crucial question facing industry is: How to leverage this phenomenon into actual profits?

The second generation of Internet ("Web 2.0") companies such as MySpace, Facebook, Linked/In and YouTube exploded upon the scene three years ago. Today, MySpace and Facebook together have more users than the entire U.S. population; and the online community concept is already becoming a powerful tool for everything from creating customer loyalty, to assistance in product design, to a sounding board for company strategy.

Corporations from IBM to Toyota and Johnson & Johnson have been rushing to establish their own affiliated social networks and bind their customers ever more closely. There isn't a smart company today that isn't implementing some kind of online community, wiki or blog strategy.

But companies with millions of members of online communities are now asking: What next? How do we sell them products and services, or mobilize them into massive de facto R&D, manufacturing and sales departments? We have been studying the challenge and have concluded that very few of the traditional techniques of classical marketing (call them Marketing 1.0), or even of eCommerce (Marketing 2.0) will work in the world of social networks. A very different set of tools, concepts and practices is needed. Call it Marketing 3.0. Here are five:

- From loyalty to attention. Before you can win consumer loyalty, you have to capture and reward consumer attention. Old propositions -- network television's tired offer of 22 minutes of canned sitcoms in exchange for eight minutes of untargeted commercials -- won't cut it. Consumers are demanding a better deal.

Some brands are starting to flirt with better exchange rates: Virgin Mobile gives a minute of free phone time for every minute of advertising a customer accepts. Ryan Air recently announced it would offer $15 coach tickets from the U.S. to Europe, subsidized by passenger attention to advertising and in-flight sales pitches.

Smart marketers will of necessity become obsessed with customer attention in the way they once obsessed over customer loyalty. The shrewd brands will create elaborate attention-rewards programs, and incentives to break through the noise and make that critical initial connection.

- From crowds to clouds. Once you get that attention -- once you generate heavy traffic to your site, gather a large league of "friends" on MySpace, or spawn a dedicated following on Twitter -- how do you monetize the crowd?

Smart brands are turning their crowds into "clouds": organic, self-forming and often self-governing communities of interest. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Frito-Lay and Harley-Davidson use their clouds as feedback loops to get better faster by obtaining good, timely, often brutally honest customer insights. And the members of clouds can become true believers; they don't just watch your commercials, they make them.

Right now, few companies are emotionally equipped to wring the best benefits of a cloud, because the most valuable voices out there usually belong to the malcontents. In the old model, customer-service departments aimed to placate or jettison disgruntled customers. In the cloud model, the idea is to cultivate and reward them. That's not an easy transition.

- From places to spaces. Consumers are increasingly organizing themselves into new communities -- not just the big generic social communities, but myriad idiosyncratic slices of narrow, passionate interest (i.e., BlackPlanet, Inpowr and MomsCafe).

These new market spaces, or "meganiches," may seem small, even strange at first. But when they're efficiently targeted, they can be highly responsive, lucrative and loyal. Well-established meganiche Web sites include Gamefaq.com for video gamers, Dpreview.com for digital photography aficionados, and Howardchui.com dedicated to mobile phone zealots.

With this shift toward self-organization by consumers, national advertising campaigns as we know them will increasingly become a waste of time and money for many companies. The trick for brands is to cohabit social spaces with these consumers. Social media, and its verb form, "friending," requires entirely new forms of advertising: bottom up instead of top down, personal rather than public, and subtle rather than full frontal.

- From memes to bemes. In the Age of Broadcast, good advertising could occasionally manufacture memes of tremendous social impact. Think of "Where's the Beef?" or "I can't believe I ate the whole thing." If you can't recall an irresistible or effective turn of phrase of late, it's because it is exceedingly difficult to spread a meme in today's fragmented media environment. Marketing 3.0 is now the science of devising and managing directed business memes: call them bemes. Bemes are sent by members of social communities to each other and typically contain a reward or exclusive offer, which, when redeemed, also results in a reward coupon for the sender. This encourages members of social communities to propagate a "viral" ad. One well-documented beme was "The Subservient Chicken" from Burger King.

Brute force marketing won't work inside social networks. The best online marketing now takes place among people who know and trust each other. Consider how rumors work. Like a rumor, a beme is a bit of useful information that rewards each person who passes it along. Want to be a sensation? Create a beme that consumers willingly accept and share with others.

- From silos to simultaneity. Too many retailers today persist in believing that online shopping is merely a virtual extension of real world shopping. That is a big mistake.

Rather, online and offline need to coexist, and we need to rethink how they relate. For example, to their surprise, companies like BestBuy (which even encourages customers to shop the aisles but buy online from in-store kiosks) and Macy's are discovering that physical retailing is a perfect way to move units online. That is, the physical world has become the showroom for the virtual realm.

Retailers now must reimagine a world where consumers experience products in stores but ultimately buy them on the Web: Stores are for experiences, the network is for inventories. And what in turn prepares potential customers for what to look for in stores? Online communities.

All of this suggests that Marketing 3.0 is not only different from its predecessors, but actively undermines them. If your marketing program fails to adapt to this new world, it won't just become irrelevant -- it will actually work against you.

Mr. Hayes, a former vice president at HP and Applied Materials, is the author of "Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business" (McGraw-Hill, 2008). Mr. Malone, a columnist for ABCNews.com, is the author of the forthcoming book "The Future Arrived Yesterday."


To your success,

Col. Laird John B. Cutty Kt
*johnbcuttykt*



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