What to do when your computer crashes. It will you know!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

It happened yesterday...  "it" being the most frustrating thing that can happen nowadays...

"it" being the one eventuality absolutely certain to throw off your day and ensure you fall behind...

"it" being the event guaranteed to change you from someone calm, reasonable, the nicest of people, to a mad person whose blue words could make a sailor blush.

Your computer crashed... and you wondered what in God's green acre you had done to warrant such a malady and imprecation. It just wasn't fair...

That's what the computer crash does... and certain too. One of these days you are going to have "the crash"... the only real question is: will you be ready for it?

What every boy scout knows... be prepared.

Cambridge, Massachusetts satirist Tom Lehrer  wrote a song (1953) when I was in first grade, a million years ago. It was called "Be Prepared!". I thought of it for the first time in years yesterday as I surveyed the most important machine in my life just sitting there, non functional, turning me from an acutely productive member of society to drone, in an instant.

"Be prepared! as through life you march along. Be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well, Don't write naughty words on walls if you can't spell".

Yes, I thought of Lehrer and his rollicking, rather sophomoric, school boy humor yesterday... as my world came to a screeching halt. Lehrer at least made me smile... Lehrer, that is, and the knowledge that I was prepared for The Crash.  Here's how you can be prepared too and actually smile as you resolve one of life's most aggravating and irritating problems.

1) Make sure you copy your files.

The most avoidable problem when you work with computers is to lose files because you have not copied them in an organized, consistent fashion. This must be done completely, regularly -- not intermittently, casually, whenever you get around to it. That's the wrong way for sure, completely unsystematic.

Instead,  as I write articles like these, I make a copy of each paragraph as I write it; to do less would be to turn me from copywriter into gambler. And there is absolutely no need for that. To write is silver;  but to copy is gold.

2) Print out details of key data you will need when (not if) your computer crashes. For instance, I have in my computer a list of vital telephone numbers. That's just the thing you'll need when your computer crashes. Make sure to print out a copy (from time to time, too, so that you have readily available the most current details) and have it easily accessible.

3) Get an external hard drive. You just plug it in, back up your data, and then continue with the work at  hand.  It's affordable. Most people and businesses can get by for one in the $100 price range. That's peanuts compared to the actual and psychic costs of replacing data lost because of inadequate protection and preservation. Oh, yes, it's light weight and portable, too; easily connected to any computer where you have data to be copied.

4) Peruse notes of previous computer crises. You do have them, don't you?

Problems occur; the same problems may recur. Are you ready to solve them? You are if you wrote down the problem last time and clearly indicated what you did to solve it. These notes are vital, given the fact that  the problem you have today may not recur for months, even years. Your notes, therefore, are necessary. Never assume you will remember the problem and what you did to solve  it. As soon as you have a  free minute after your computer is up and running, record the solution. This solution should not be left in the computer alone where some future crisis renders it inaccessible; you must print this and keep it in an off-computer file.

5) Don't sit in front of your computer and fret. That won't help.

One of my father's favorite expressions was "a watch pot never boils". Now I know what he meant... to sit in front of a non-functioning computer will only increase your unhappiness and discontent. Instead, if your computer remains on the fritz, turn your attention to other useful things you could be doing whilst you're waiting for help (see below).

If you spend as much time as I do on your computer (easily a consistent 12 hours a day), some other things in your life are bound to be neglected. Make "crash day" productive in other ways. I used the extra time to research a future article and while the computer on which I planned to write it was down, I made considerable progress, thereby infusing some necessary uplift into this "what a revolting development this is" situation.  6) Have a trusted computer consultant at the ready.

As soon as I knew yesterday's computer crisis was beyond my admittedly limited technical skills, I placed the necessary call to my computer consultant Justin Lyttle of Help Desk Services, Hanover, Massachusetts. I received what I have always received from Justin for many years: his prompt, full attention and (despite the fact it was Friday afternoon) the promise he would solve my problem promptly. This he did... arriving at about 6:00 p.m., getting down to business at once, solving my multi-part problem. Within an hour the problem was solved, I was back online, and Justin was on his way.

People like Justin Lyttle are a find. A critical component of what makes you and your business (including your computer operations) successful is ensuring you have just the right competent and sympathetic people like Justin on your team. Never wait to find them until you are frantic. Remember your Tom Lehrer and be prepared; ask business people from your neighborhood who they use... then call up to introduce yourself. Do ALL this before the pressing need arrives.

Last words.

Days of computer crisis are never pleasant, especially if you are technically challenged like I am. Still, if you follow these recommendations you'll get through them as comfortably as possible.  Oh yes, just one more suggestion: keep ice cream in the refrigerator. It helps while away the time and makes you feel better until reinforcements arrive. Ice cream is like that.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com/associates . Check out PC Health Boost ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=xy2CD6AI

'Til computer do us part. What to do with an uncooperative spouse undermining your home business

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Computers have become omnipresent and as such have become the means of liberating people from distasteful traditional jobs and offering the prospect of remunerative home-based employment. But working at home can be difficult.

There are numerous distractions at hand.... pets, children, television -- and the always tempting refrigerator.

Yes, it is easy to get distracted, lose focus, and miss opportunities.

However, these problems and challenges are not nearly as difficult and potentially destructive as this one: the disapproving spouse. Instead of loyal, loving, enthusiastic support you begin to hear the nagging refrain of: "You're spending too much time on the computer." The more often you hear it... the greater your problem... and the more urgent this message.

This is a problem you must solve, for failure to do so leads to estrangement, even divorce... with your computer cited as correspondent. What can you do before you become a highly rated episode on "Judge Judy"?

Request spousal support from the get go

No home-based business should ever be started without at least a discussion between the partners about what this is likely to mean for their relationship. New businesses, home-based or otherwise, need your full attention, extra hours and complete concentration. Your partner needs to know this... and prepare accordingly.

Thus, before you begin on this demanding odyssey, go away for a romantic week-end. Be fresh! Be charming! Enjoy! Your energy level for such dissipations may not be quite this high for months to come. Cavort now.  Refreshed? Revitalized? Its  time to get down to business by, first, making it clear to your partner what you'll need to launch your business and to bring home the bacon.

Item: you will keep regular business hours and during these hours interruptions are not permitted. In other words, unless there is a bona fide crisis, you must focus on the business, the whole business, and nothing but the business.

Spousal agreement to this point is key, for your significant other may well "forget" this clause when there's "just one little errand to run, Pookie." As Nancy Reagan used to say, "Just say no." Once you're weakened on this point, you're nothing more than a marionette on a very short string. Oh, my!

Item: when extra time is required (as it will be when building a business), you will inform your spouse as early in the day as possible. Such courtesies go far towards reconciling a restive, longing-to-be-with-you spouse.

Make it clear what you are doing, why it's important and how  much time you're going to need to finish the project at hand. This kind of communication is imperative to keep your spouse empathetic and supportive.

"You're spending way too much time on that blankety blank computer!"

You've worked hard... you begin to see results... you are thrilled... and then the spouse hits you with this! What a revolting development this is! What to do?

You have 2 options: hear but do nothing... or tackle the issue head on right now.

I recommend Option 2, because failure to respond to this problem now only ensures it will grow fast and become A Real Problem very, very soon.

Sit your partner down, explain that you need their support; that you are doing all you're doing for them... for the children... for the family. Make it clear that you will continue to do what you have set out to do but that doing it will be far better with spousal support than without it. Make this an Academy Award performance... replete with eyes locked together, hand holding, bear hugs... perhaps even a tear or two. It will all be worth it if you'll never have to hear again the words "You are spending too much time on the computer."

Hint:

Want to impress your spouse and get the cooperation you require? Bribe them. Take some of the money you're making; put it in envelope. Take spouse to dinner... and have the waiter deliver along with dessert. Make sure the cash is accompanied by the briefest of notes saying, simply, profoundly "I love you." Say nothing when this present arrives. Wait for spousal reaction... which should be as surprised and tender (and accommodating) as you could want.

If the business fails.

With the best will in the world and all the time required... with full and complete spouse support your business may fail. Sadly, a very hefty percentage of home-based businesses do. Knowing you, you'll want to try and try again until you've found the winning formula. You're willing to risk again, but your spouse, in the clearest possible way, says "No way, Jose! Been there, done that, got the t-shirt."

What now?

Hand them this magnificent quote from Teddy Roosevelt's famous speech on "Citizenship in a Republic", delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris in 1910:

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood: who strives valiantly: who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Hand this quote, I say, to your spouse and make it plain that you have an obligation, first and foremost, to yourself to carry on, to persevere, and, at last, forge victory from defeat.

This is a crucial moment in your relationship, a moment of epiphany, revelation, resolve.

Now, perhaps for the first time, your spouse truly knows and understands you. Now for the first time they see you as indefatigable, admirable, larger than life, the mate they have always wanted.... and never until this very moment knew they already had.

Sit down now at your computer, for now, at last,  your truly beloved is on your side without cavil or complaint. Expect your favorite lunch to be delivered today computer-side... for now you have, well and truly, the helpmate you require for the success you will both enjoy so very much.


About The Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com/associates . Check out PC Health Boost ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=xy2CD6AI

Important message from the IRS to all taxpayers, ‘tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1999! You pay for everything but you can’t come! Enjoy!’

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. I was thinking of the Honorable Barack today and of how chagrined and irritated he must be these days. After all, having enjoyed the good fortune of drawing the hapless and terminally awkward Mitt-ster for his presidential opponent in 2012 and so walzing into a second term, he has been stymied by events, unable to spend quality time on his Most Important Project, the creation of a suitably grand and gaudy (immediately outmoded white elephant) library and museum which presents him to posterity as a figure of cosmic reverence and importance, a bloated evaluation most of his fellow Americans discarded as excessive and even ludicrous months ago. He doesn’t care about that very much, of course. A giant foot print  in indelible eternity is what he’s got in mind. Sadly, he is having oodles of trouble getting it.

Three scandals roiling His Excellency’s serene self-absorption.

It is said that bad news comes in threes, and I imagine Himself would agree about now. First, there’s the nasty business of how we let down our envoy and all our embassy personnel and other nationals in Libya, thereby awakening to the sickening photo of Ambassador Stevens, one of the best and the brightest, dead, overcome not just by smoke inhalation but by sloth, inefficiency and breathtaking irresponsibility.

This incident makes us indignant; it also makes us ashamed, for we all suspect that we were not ready for the kind of purposeful malice and destructive mayhem our common sense told us was inevitable against our embassies. And herein lies the crux of this matter. Who was responsible? What did they do? And why did it so fail leaving the flower of our diplomatic corps at such naked exposure and deadly risk?

Riddle me this,  Batperson.

You will recall that when the attack on the Bengazi consulate took place, September 11, 2012,  the first reaction from the administration was that it was anything other than what it actually was, a calculated act of terrorism to further satanize that date of infamy, September 11. Ambassador Stevens knew it… and his last message, by cell phone, was “We are under attack!” But the president and his top diplomatic team deemed this outrage merely a spontaneous “demonstration” and acted accordingly pooh poohing its significance… taking their own sweet time to act… our people dying because those charged with their protection didn’t give it…. then lied to cover up their torpid, lethargic, entirely inadequate response.

This is why the Benghazi matter is a scandal… and why the Republicans in Congress smell blood…. and why they’ll continue until they get it. And right they are.

Yet another email scandal… with many more to come.

Let’s get something straight from the start. Email by its very nature can never be entirely secure… can never be entirely private… yours to share with and only with the people you wish to share it with. We are just beginning to understand that email can never be just yours, sacrosanct and that, therefore, anything you use email to transmit is, from the moment you hit the send key, an object which others can access for good… or (temptingly) for anything but. Which brings us to the latest email scandal. It goes like this…

The Honorable Barack pledges that his will be the most transparent administration in history, that all will be clear and plain, open to the good people of the Great Republic, blah, blah, blah. That was Barack #1. At the same time, Barack #2 was urging his friends, neighbors and political appointees to set up at least two email accounts, one suitable for the front page of The New York Times… the other, far more interesting and revealing, packed with the dynamite that makes Americans even more cynical about the government and its wayward ways and gives commentators like me our bread and butter.

Enter two of the most important and potent letters on Earth, AP, the Associated Press.

AP is arguably the most important news gathering service in the world, the people who do the hard work, the grunt work, the work that must be done to get the facts, ma’am, just the facts. People like me rely on them as the oxygen for keeping people up-to-date. Thus, when the Obama people decided to end run AP by setting up multiple email accounts they were not merely thwarting AP, they were thwarting you and me. But the folks at AP, the hero of this drama, are as tenacious and focused as they come. And  when they got word that Obama appointees were being anything but transparent, they went to work with a will, using the Freedom of Information laws to open the secret accounts and bring accountability to all the poobahs who would only divulge under pressure. For of course when asked to open up, they hunkered down. After all, saying one thing and doing quite another is la specialite’ of the (White) House.

Why are the Obama people being so difficult, so obdurate? Not because evidence of any wrong doing has yet been found, for it hasn’t. Rather, it’s the principle of the thing: no one in the capital wants to be above board and honest; whatever they say. They come to win, not to get scout merit badges.

Thus they reserve their God-given right to chicanery, skullduggery, and tergiversations great and small, in the process making a point of doing everything in their power to block the AP, the shining sword of a truth that is so often embarrassing to office holders who have very different agendas.

That is why the Labor Department quoted AP a price of a cool million to research their records and turn over all email accounts of their senior officials. Stay tuned… there is much more to come in this matter… and as for the bomb shells to come from emails already written, I’m licking my chops for they will be rich and plentiful. You’ll never get transparency from this or any other administration, but you can rest assured there will be one delightful email scandal after another, all cheap at a penny a dozen except the one blossoming at the Internal Revenue Service. And that’ll set you back $50 million, give or take a buck.

“So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999.”

It must be fun to work at the IRS. At the Cincinnati office, for instance, you get to function like a petty tyrant, determining whether by ineptitude or political point of view, which organizations get crucial 501(c)3 tax-exempt status and which ones (strangely enough mostly conservative, Tea Party related,) don’t. Ah, there’s nothing like power to enliven even the dullest job.

This is part 1 of the hanky-panky currently under investigation by a committee of the House of Representatives. Part 2 are those IRS party animals who between 2010-2012 managed to burn through $50 million at what must have been the best parties on Earth!

And for this, we need music. We need party music. We need Prince and his strident, pulsating anthem, “1999″. It came out in 1982 and the world was soon dancing to its insistent beat and acid lyrics now so apropos to the current IRS fiasco. “People, let me tell you somethin’/ If you didn’t come to party/ Don’t bother knockin’ on my door.” Find it in any search engine. Then let ‘er rip to just the right music for this delicious indiscretion. Let’s take a look at how well they treated themselves, particularly at one incredible bash held in Anaheim, California in August, 2010. While the Great Recession was hitting hard, these guys were lavishing gilded TLC on themselves, to the tune of $4 million with nothing but the best the order of the day. Here are the facts as exhumed by Representative Darrell Issa’s (R-California) committee.

Item: The IRS didn’t negotiate lower room rates, though that is government policy. But why bother to save? That’s so middle class, dear.

Item: Some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including basketball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night.

Item: 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about “leadership through art”. One might well wonder what that was all about.

Of course the muckety-mucks that made these decisions are long gone; the current muckety-mucks have pledged “never again”. But we the people know better, don’t we? We know that the next scandal will be deju vu all over again. “But life is just a party/ And parties weren’t made to last.” Except, of course, at the IRS.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is an author, consultant, marketer and has written over one thousand articles on a variety of topics. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com/associates . Check out Member Snap -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=gp3TcaqO

‘Some of these days, Oh, you’ll miss me honey… your big fat mamma!’ ‘Dr.’ Leslie Berlowitz’ nonexistent doctorate roils one of the nation’s most respected institutions and the ‘little people’ get their revenge.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. Remember Leona Helmsley (1920-2007), widely known as “the Queen of Mean”? She had the great good fortune to marry one of the Great Republic’s richest men, hotelier Harry Helmsley… which she thought conferred on her God’s permission to belittle, disdain, demean, denigrate all the “little people” of her big bath towel empire; oh, and skip taxes, too, a point of view with which the IRS did not concur…

… and so sent her to the pokey where she tried to bribe her cell-mate to do her prescribed tasks. She vowed not repentance (that was definitely for the “little people”) but revenge. And so she left her dog Trouble a twelve million dollar fortune (later reduced as excessive by the court to a mere two million), and so burnished her well-earned reputation as the unchallenged sovereign of gratuitous nastiness, “unchallenged” that is until now, for “Dr.” Leslie Berlowitz, (born 1944), gives even Leona a run for the money and that really is saying something given Madame Helmsley’s mastery of the stinging put-down and designed-to-hurt insult. But even here “Dr.” Berlowitz excels.

The scene of hurtful outrage.

Appalling though this is, you have probably lived every one of your days in complete and total ignorance about the august American Academy of Arts and Sciences, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a comfortable walk from where I am writing you today. It occupies spacious digs on five leafy acres in one of the most desirable areas on Earth, hard by Harvard and its unparalleled ability to lift the hitherto obscure to universal prominence and acclaim. Once there, and not a minute sooner, your invitation to membership in the Academy was sure to be in the next post and so it had gone on since this pantheon of certified worthies was established in 1780 by three of the American Revolution’s greatest leaders, scholar-patriots John Adams, John Hancock, and James Bowdoin.

This was their noble mission, “To cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” Since then, and upon this laudable basis, over 10,000 fellows have been inducted, including Thomas Jefferson, John James Audubon, Washington Irving, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Willa Cather, T.S. Eliot, Edward R. Murrow, Jonas Salk, Eudora Welty, Duke Ellington… whilst among the distinguished foreign Honorary Members you find M. le marquis de Lafayette, Charles Darwin and Alec Guinness. It was an unmatched constellation of the legendary, the immortal, and the merely great and celebrated.

In 1996, “Dr.” Leslie Berlowitz became the Academy’s 45th president, with an endowed chair, the William T. Golden Chair, granted to give the lady a suitably comfortable place to ensconce her embonpoint. Only problem was… as reported by The Boston Globe, June 3, 2013, she had falsely claimed — on documents submitted to federal authorities on grant applications and elsewhere — that she had an earned doctorate in English from New York University, which she certainly did not, according to NYU sources.

But “Dr.” Berlowitz was a woman in a hurry, and she wasn’t about to let lack of a simple sheepskin hold her back. No way! So… she invented a character called “Dr.” Leslie Berlowitz. Here was a woman of consequence who put the actual woman with her comparatively meager credentials in the shade. These included a master’s degree from Columbia University and her duties as an administrator at NYU. There are questions about both of these.

Her master’s from Columbia, absent any subsequent doctorate, suggests what is known in the trade as a “terminal master’s”. Here people who are told they are not doctoral material are given the distinctly inferior consolation prize of the Master of Arts degree and advised to go back to Dog Patch whilst their more favored classmates advance to the eminence of the earned Ph.D. Odds are this is what happened to “Dr.” Berlowitz.

As for her work experience at NYU, it too is questionable and under scrutiny. NYU sources said that what “Dr.” Berlowitz claimed on her resume and the facts do not add up. NYU employment records show that she held a different, lesser job title in one case and held another job for far fewer years than stated in another. It was, in short, a pattern of prevarications, misrepresentations, and deliberate deceits.

On this basis she presented herself as a candidate for President of the Academy and was selected. Incredibly, no one on the selection committee seemed to ask about that all-important doctoral dissertation. She was now “Dr.”  Icarus, with her own Daedalus (the Academy’s quarterly journal since 1955), and she flew high… for 17 increasingly dazzling, opulent years.

Item.  Her total compensation package for 2012 was $598,000, 3 times what her peers in similar organizations were paid; far more than most college presidents.

Item: She always dined first class as a matter of course, and of course always flew first class, economy being a word she never countenanced.

Item: Her staff kow-towed and catered to her, picking her up at her superb residence overlooking the scenic Charles River, returning her thither of an evening.

It was exactly the life fictional “Dr.” Berlowitz would have had. OK, she must have constantly rationalized to herself, I lied. But I deserve everything I got. I earned everything. This must have been her constant belief, refrain, and creed. As such it certainly trumped the petty fact that she was every single day living a lie. Results, after all, were more important than mere honesty and integrity. And it must be said, she was a titanic worker, the ultimate micro-manager.

As such she had two key constituencies crucial to her success: her board of directors and her staff. She succeeded brilliantly with the first and miserably with the second… and herein lies the crux of the matter, the reason “Dr.” Icarus has fallen and will fall further.

The Board of Directors, seduced, enfeebled, hobbled, clueless.

In theory the designated CEO of any nonprofit organization is subservient to the Board of Directors. In practice, however, every CEO works overtime to ensure that the Board of Directors is subservient to her. This ensures her power, her position and, most important, her pay and perqs. Here “Dr.” Berlowitz excelled as we can easily see. When, for instance, a “palace revolution” brought on by staff complaints of her abusive and abrasive treatment almost brought her down just about one year after her appointment, the Board sustained her… and “Dr.” Berlowitz got the message: romance the Board morning, noon, and night. It worked.

So did doing everything possible to ensure her board candidates were elected… Thus when the current scandal broke, the Board was her poodle… immediately issuing a statement of unqualified support; only very slowly and with obvious reluctance distancing themselves from the “Dr.” who had catered to their every wish and whim… something the Board had valued above all, including the humane values they were in business to promote.

“Dr.” Berlowitz would take care of everything, and if a few of the “little people” complained, well, you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. And so we arrive at the “little people”, the Academy’s staff, in constant turnover humiliated, ignored, angry, aggrieved., resentful, smoldering. Their moment in the drama has now arrived…

Right from the time when The Boston Globe broke the first news it was obvious that Academy staff past and present, with their appalling stories of how mauled and mistreated they were, would be a factor as important and influential as her misuse of a non-existent doctoral degree. And here “Dr.” Berlowitz did herself in, treating the staff with constant disrespect, no day complete without its hurtful quota of abuse, snide commentary and disparagements, all public, all played out before their colleagues. Thus did the malice and contempt of “Dr.” Berlowitz turn the ancient Academy into a snake pit of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.

In this pernicious environment, “Dr.” Berlowitz, micro-manager, ruled all. Not a paper left her office that she had not seen. Thus, when she claimed that her negligent staff was responsible for the misuse and misstatement of her bogus credentials, there was a gasp of disbelief at the Academy; the “doctor” had brass, no doubt about it. She had spent decades lying; if one more lie, more or less, was necessary to prevail at this crucial moment in her dissembling career, so be it.

This time, however, the lady is sore beset on all sides… by past and present staff who have bided their time and are tumbling over themselves to tell the now attending media about their particular woes… by Board members who begin to see how to get peace and quiet they enabled their creature to outrage their core values and the clear mission of the Founders… and by state and federal authorities set to discover whether and how “Dr.” Berlowitz broke the law and may be deserving of a punishment long days coming. All that will come out in the wash as further details emerge.

For now her petted directors have put her on leave, whether with her bloated stipend or not was not announced. “Dr.” Berlowitz, of course, will fight, and pertinaciously, too, for every penny and privilege until her effete Board says, “basta”,  whereupon Miss Berlowitz, as the world will then know her, will no doubt take a copy of her book on management and climb the great steps of Harvard’s Widener Library, there to read from her business insights found in her deliciously titled tome ,”Restoring Trust in American  Business”: Then to belt out Sophie Tucker’s anthem for brassy dames everywhere, dames who will do anything, absolutely anything to prevail.

It’s “Some of These Days”, first recorded in 1911. Go now to any search engine and listen to these acid lyrics, perfect for Miss Berlowitz and her affecting case of chagrin and rue :

“Some of these days/ You’ll miss me, honey/Some of these days/ You’re gonna be so lonely.

You’ll miss my hugging/ You’ll  gonna miss my kisses/ You’ll gonna miss me, honey/When I’m far away…

Gonna miss your big fat mamma, yo’ mamma/ some of these days.”  It might even work…

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of over 20 print books, 2 ebooks, and over one thousand online articles on a variety of topics. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com/associates . Check out Surveys Paid -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=pq334y8a

‘Have I told you lately that I love you?’ Father’s Day 2012.

15.06.2013 | Author: Howard Martell | Posted in family

Author’s program note. All families have lore, that is things which its members believe to be true but may only be a figment of their collective imagination. “Remember the time when….” And everyone does, whether that recollection is real or not, whether the matter took place as recalled or not. Because on such memories the very idea of family, the most important institution of all, is built. This is such a story. I will swear on a stack of Bibles every word is true… although that may not actually be so. That doesn’t matter…  it’s family gospel… and therefore precious.

Here is a piece of Lant family lore… I believe it will resonate with you and make you smile.

“Allemande Left”.

My parents loved to square dance, and just because I was born (February 16, 1947) saw absolutely no reason why they should stop doing so… even if they just couldn’t find a baby sitter. “Shirl,” he probably said, “We’ll just take him along. It’ll be just fine. He is 3 after all.”

And when you’re healthy, happy, still on the sunny side of 25, in love, hankering to promenade… why then you do the thing most calculated to cause sensible elders to exclaim, “Donald Marshall Lant, have you got a lick of sense?” And he’d look sheepish, of course, but it was worth it. Because he’d got to swing his purty li’l partner, and no one — absolutely no one — could take that away! And the memory was sweet…

Lulu Belle and Scotty.

Myrtle Eleanor Cooper (1913-1999) and Scott Greene Wiseman (1908-1981) were known professionally as Lulu Belle and Scotty. Cute, perky, wholesome to an almost nauseating degree, they were one of America’s major country music acts of the1930s and 1940s. An astonishing 20 million rabid fans used to tune into the “National Barn Dance” on WLS-AM in Chicagoland to listen and forget the cares of the day.

Thus, when the chance came not just to hear their favorites on the radio but to see them and dance live to the music they loved, why then the mere fact no baby sitter could be found was not going to be an obstacle. And so the three of us piled into a car that worked at all only because of my father’s alchemy and nimble fingers… we were going to square dance… and with Lulu Belle and Scotty no less.

“Roll away with a half sashay.”

My parents were sociable people. They liked people and people liked them. And so when the three of us arrived, there would have been the kind of high energy greetings, quips and cracks which distinguished the boys (and girls) who had won the war. “Don, you dawg. Still driving that hunk of junk?” “Shirley Mae, you look soooo  good.” “And who’s that cute little guy you brought? No baby sitter, huh?”

The caller.

Then the most important person of the evening appeared and moved with just a hint of swagger to the mike. It was the caller, and there could have been no square dance without him. And didn’t he know it? Thus, as he took control of the mike, he took control of everyone present… and so everyone paid rapt attention to every word he uttered. He was a grand figure… very often with deep roots in Appalachia where so many of the square dancing traditions had begun.

If so, he was spare of figure, lean, even gaunt. He believed in Great Jehovah, stern God of the Old Testament, the Great Republic, his right to moonshine, what was suitable for a man… and a woman. He could be courtly; he could be forbidding and even cruel… but at a square dance he was all suave condescension.  And he knew, with Louis XVIII, that punctuality was the politeness of kings… and so this monarch of the evening started on time, every time. “Evenin’ folks. Are you ready to swing your partner?” The yells were raucous, resounding, ear-splitting, all shouting at the top of young voices that they were indeed ready to obey his every command.

And so the music began, a shot to your expectant brain and toe-tappin’ feet. We can easily imagine it to be one of Lulu Belle and Scotty’s greatest hits, “This Train Is Bound For Glory.”

“This train is bound for glory, this train. This train is bound for glory, this train. This train is bound for glory, Don’t carry nothing but the righteous and the holy, This train is bound for glory, this train.”

(Find it now in any search engine. Its insistent sound is waiting for you now.)

In the hands of such practiced masters as Lulu Belle and Scotty this traditional American gospel song (first recorded in 1925 by Wood’s Blind Jubilee Singers) became a rollicking rendition perfect for square dancing.  But first, there was the little matter of what to do with… me! And here is where we see so clearly the difference between 1950 and today…

Sitting at the side of the dance floor would have been elderly ladies (reluctantly) past their capers… (still) hopeful gals (wall flowers)… and boys too fastidious about their possible partners… or folks just plain shy. In short, all my ready-to-soar parents had to do was see who was sitting out this figure, and the baby sitting problem was solved.

I helped them out, so family lore has it, because I had (God’s honest truth) a smile to die for and party manners which have not deserted me to this day; no whimpering like certain friends and relations I could name. I was glad to go, glad to enjoy, glad to see them so happy… and if I could brighten the lives of others not quite as happy, why so much the better. It was what one did at a party, and I aim to please.

Blithe, unworried, pleased to follow the strict and intricate commands of the caller, my parents danced on whilst I, having partied enough for one evening, slept the sleep of the just, contented.

And so a handful of happy hours passed until Lulu Belle and Scotty played their signature song.  It was a ballad, not a square dance and the caller, with whatever degree of reluctance, gave way to the waltz that demanded two people locked in an embrace, eyes only for each other. “Have I Told You Lately That  I Love  You”, composed  by Scott Wiseman, “Scotty”, and released in 1945. (Find it now in any search engine.)

“Have I told you lately that I Iove you Could I tell you once again somehow Have I told you, with all my heart and soul…?”

Well, Dad, I’m tellin’ you now.

Thanks for always taking me with you.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today.
Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martellhttp://HomeProfitCoach.com/associates . Check out Shoe-In Money -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=ul7z48tV

‘Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me,’ but only if you give them R.E.S.P.E.C.T

17.06.2013 | Author: Howard Martell | Posted in general interest

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant .

Author’s program note.  I wrote this article because of the appalling news emanating from one of the greatest institutions of the Great Republic, namely the American  Academy  of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1780 by three of the titans of the American Revolution, scholar-patriots John Adams, John Hancock, and James Bowdoin, its purpose was laudatory, important, visionary… nothing less than the dedicated uplifting of the new nation so that it would direct, inspire, and improve itself and all the world.

Over the years, over 10,000 fellows have been inducted, men and women whose dedicated commitment and unremitting labor have changed the world — and your life — over and over again. Thus have we all been the beneficiaries and should know it, the better to extoll its undeniable virtues and signal achievements.

Sadly, scandal now rocks this venerable institution in many ways, but all these ways, every single one, point to one person, the Academy’s 45th President, the woman who called herself “Dr. Leslie Berlowitz,” a prestigious title she bestowed on herself, when her desire for advancement subdued her integrity, judgement and the loyalty she should have felt towards the Academy which raised her high and rained riches, respect, deference and trust upon her, only to be repaid with deceits, prevarications, misrepresentations, and shame.

This lamentable result was the product of two breathtaking, supremely arrogant decisions made by “Dr.” Berlowicz; first, that she would forge her professional credentials, including the all important doctoral degree and, second, once that bogus degree (and exaggerated employment history) had worked their dark purpose, securing her the lucrative plum job she desired (with its 2012 compensation package yielding $598,000), immediately set about the business of threatening, cowing and controlling her staff, thereby creating an atmosphere of fear, angst, perniciousness, and menace.

Thus what should have been the most liberal, progressive and humane institution of the Great Republic became instead the very symbol of hypocrisy, cant, insincerity and dissembling, the corroding antithesis of what its august founders and generations of lofty members desired and worked assiduously to achieve. What’s more, aided by the somnolence of her Board of Trustees and an incurious world, this rogue made awesome progress from the moment in 1996 when she became the Academy’s president until just the other day in June, 2013 when her web of lies and shoddy practices unraveled on the front page of The Boston Globe, her treatment of the staff ensuring maximum indignation, ribald comments and fascination about how she had gotten away with it all for so very many years.

All bad things come to an end.

Then one day “Dr.” Berlowicz woke up happy as a lark, the world her oyster, another day of proven chicaneries ahead, opened The Boston Globe and… ran smack dab into Nemesis, the goddess of “what goes around, comes around.” And she stood there in her luxurious robe and bunny slippers discovering that God indeed moves in mysterious ways… and now He had come for Leslie. Her jig was well and truly up and no amount of self deception could disguise that crucial fact. And so she became a candidate for that amazing grace that “”saves a wretch like me.”

How had this happened, after so many years of bountiful misrepresentation? Who blew the whistle on Leslie? I can’t tell you for sure, but I’ll put my money on a member or members of the Academy’s long suffering staff, people who had endured the slings and arrows of the lady’s outrageous fortune. They had suffered in silence, but that silence was now broken and on the front page of The Boston Globe no less.

The rage of the “little people” had begun at last and over the next days these folks tumbled over each other with their personal stories of how Madame Leslie, now naked before the world, had humiliated them, shouted at them over trifles, belittled them, demeaned them, denigrated them, so making their lives just as miserable as possible. In such ways, she had established an environment as dark and fearful as any gulag. It was in fact just about as bad as it could be. All because Miss Berlowicz had forgotten one little word… a word Aretha Franklin knew was key for successful staff relations, indeed for any human relationship… and that word was respect.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

A 1967 hit that changed America, the anthem of uncompromising righteousness and determined purpose.

On February 14, 1967 Aretha Franklin, about to become a household name and a symbol of the “new woman”, got up and sang her way into history…. telling men and reminding women in sharp words that could not possibly be misunderstood, “What you want, baby, I got it/ What you need. You know I got it.” This song radiated confidence, clarity about the objective, a determination to stop taking it… and to fight back. It flew high, it was adamant, it was insistent, it was pure energy and unflinching determination… Thrilling! Magnificent! Empowering!

Go now to any search engine and listen to it carefully. Its potent magic has the undeniable power to turn back the clock to days when you were young and still finding your way… but you knew upon hearing it, even for the first time, that you would succeed… seizing the respect to which you were entitled but had to be always vigilant to ensure and enjoy.

“Yes, respect, all I need is respect.”

Like all business executives, owners, and managers “Dr.” Berlowicz had a choice to make, to treat her staff with decency, courtesy, and, yes, kindness… or not. She chose the dark side of the force, in the process outraging one past and present staff member after another. It worked for a time, a long time, because no one wanted to get on Leslie’s notoriously unpredictable and abusive bad side, which might well result in embarrassing chastisement before their peers or even instant dismissal.

Thus she got away with one unacceptable behavior after another, her irresponsible board acting like Rip Van Winkle; perhaps unsurprising since Washington Irving was a fellow of the Academy at one time.

However, every time she dressed a staff member down, engaged in caustic commentary at their expense, or otherwise belittled and demeaned a staff member she was planting Satan’s teeth, in due course to become a minefield of destruction and woe, destroying all of “Dr.” Berlowicz’ carefully contrived schemes of flagrant and unremitting selfishness.

Do not make her mistakes. Instead do the following, all of which comes under that crucial category of R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Honor thy staff. Recognize that you and your staff are two crucial aspects of the same team. Each of you has a distinct but related function. You are not master but leader. Your staff is not composed of so many servants but that many necessary and vital supporters. Only on this basis can there be sustained success.

Know thy staff. Each has his strengths and weaknesses. Your job is to learn these, understand these and, where possible, minimizing weaknesses while maximizing strengths through timely, pertinent education and instruction.

Listen to thy staff. Each member of your staff, even the most junior has an opinion about how to make your organization run better and more efficiently. You are not now and will never be the sole repository of information that improves your operation. And never pretend that you are. Instead keep all means of beneficial communication open with the staff, solicit their ideas, consider them carefully, and reward such participation and ideas lavishly.

Critique thy staff softly. Praise thy staff loudly. To build the best of teams, the team that deliver success soon and bountifully, you must identify problems and their perpetrators… critiquing them thoroughly but always gently. Remember, you want to improve not demean, enhance not dismay. This process guarantees success. To achieve this success earlier and more thoroughly praise more often and more widely. Always accompany such praise with tangible rewards ranging from free cinema tickets to a free trip to Paris. You are the fountain of honour. Act like it.

“Dr.” Berlowicz’ outrages.

We now know from voluminous media reports that Miss Berlowicz outraged each and every one of these crucial points and is, therefore, suffering public disgrace, obloquy, and anger accordingly. She is a marked woman and will be for the rest of her life, her very name a by-word for cruel and hurtful exhibitions, misuse of her high position, and remarks always calculated for maximum pain. In  this way, she is a veritable model of what not to do and when not to do it. How different so many lives would have been had she lived by the points listed above.

Had she, she would have earned the trust, admiration, and even love of the staff, to each and every one of whom she could say along with Aretha,

“I ain’t gonna do you wrong because I don’t wanna/ All I’m askin’ is for a little respect…”

And she would have got it, deservedly, for when you treat your staff with R.E.S.P.E.C.T “thy staff, they comfort me.” (Psalms 23 verse 4) and so goodness and mercy shall follow thee…. and you will find true success.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of several print books, ebooks and over one thousand articles on a variety of topics. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com/associates . Check out Shoe-In Money -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=ul7z48tV

In the Red Drawing Room, June 14, 2013…… At ease, at home, all thoughts of you.

19.06.2013 | Author: Howard Martell | Posted in general interest

Author’s program note. When was the last time you ensconced yourself in a favorite space and wrote a letter with your own hand, from the heart to a friend long distant, unseen perhaps for years, but still fondly remembered, loved, a letter which confided all, withheld nothing, touched every emotion, and above all allowed the bliss of deep remembrance, all pretense gone, just you and your dear correspondent, a joyful connection so important to be renewed, too important to hurry.

I am writing such a letter here, now, each word to be savored, no word rushed, each one carefully selected to revive a precious friendship, so important, so cherished, a connection I cannot lose, lest I lose part of myself, for memories of you, of us, are the finest memories of all … and I want them, all of them for here is love, and love I must have, or be but a fraction of a man.

Thus I am spending this evening in a special place, with you, a special person, my friend, the only requirement is for sweet sincerity, for we have known each other too long and with such intimacy of expression and purpose to proffer anything else, and as our memories are vital, so must they be honest and true, as I pledge mine shall surely be.

The sound.

The music I have selected to caress us is graceful, elegant, written sharply at knife point by the most fastidious of masters, no superfluous note, annointed by the most discerning of monarchs to enhance his court, the grandest and most civilized on Earth.

It is Couperin, Francois Couperin, the Grand Couperin (1668-1733), composer, teacher, harpsichordist, court organist to Louis XIV with the precise title “ordinaire de la musique de la chambre du Roi”. Tonight he plays for us, “Les Barricades Myste’rieuses”, “Les Concerts Royaux,” “Le Parnasse, ou L’apothe’ose de Corelli.” Find them now in any search engine, close your eyes. We are together again, at last, just the two of us, the years erased, a memorable evening at hand, to the deep satisfaction of us both.

Pray, dear friend, walk in… for no one is more welcome here than you, and we have so much to recall…. and not an affecting moment to lose.

7:42 p.m. in the Red Drawing Room.

It is the hour when there is beauty within and beauty without. The rains have ceased, outside there is deep, lush, lavish green, splashed with dazzling sunlight, the more radiant because destined to be so soon gone. It is pastoral, bucolic, verdant to excess. The shutters are open, the barest breeze stirs the air. It is quite perfect… quiet, serene, the mood enhanced by the courtly rhythms of Couperin whose every well considered note improves even perfection.

This is the scene moving towards oblivion, soon to be a gracious memory. And then that sun is gone, the shutters closed, the night at hand, as we turn inward, to the Red Drawing Room and to each other, joyous, complete, where we most wish to be, together, in soul, in mind, in heart. And we are happy…. alone in  a world of our constructing and unfettered imagination.

“Too much with us ,late and soon.” (Wordsworth)

We like to think, may actually believe, and are quick to say that ours is the most anxious, harassed and pressured generation ever, as if that perverse distinction was a merit badge. Perhaps. However as I scrutinize the Red Drawing Room, first the pictures, then the signed photographs I must disagree with this characteristically egotistical assessment of my peers.

There are seven Old Masters in the Red Drawing Room, each featuring a single individual contorted by life and life’s exigencies. Behold the stately and elegant picture of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by L.F. Doell, a painter of Germanic precision whose meticulous exactitude deserves to be better known.

To look at this striking picture, with its confident look of condescension and unquestioned superiority you would suppose His Royal Highness (1784-1844) hadn’t a care in the world. But that would be a gross mistake for he had a lifetime of troubles, for all that he was reckoned the handsomest prince in Europe, his sole competitor his own brother, Leopold Georg Christian Frederick, later elected the first King of the Belgians (1831), a set of whose very chairs grace this room. Here is the most brief rendition of his persistent and recurring woes…

When he succeeded to his miniscule patrimony in 1806 it consisted of three even smaller duchies, even in good times by no means sufficient to meet the urgent requirements of fashionable royalty. But he succeeded in bad times, when his duchy was occupied by Napoleonic troops and was under French administration. It was not an auspicious start for the man who called himself Ernest III, for there is nothing quite as pathetic as a prince with neither a principality nor a penny.

But there were more ructions, disappointments, and even for this supremely arrogant and self-absorbed prince events that must have touched his soul, if he indeed had one. His 1817 marriage to Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg was unhappy because of flagrant infidelities that broke the heart of his wronged lady whose untimely death at 30 was a tragedy for her children, a mortal sin for her errant and callous spouse.

Perhaps because he could not bear to see this very model of outraged virtue, he exiled her, removing her from his sight and causing his two sons, Ernest and Albert, to hate, loathe and despise him… which in no way prevented him from pestering Albert for money when he married his cousin who just happened to be the wealthiest woman in the world, and as Queen Victoria was sovereign of the greatest empire on which the sun never set. It was all most edifying, a clear moral tale, but it made for gloom and self-pity. Happiness was never a consideration.

But happiness, you see, must always be a consideration for us poor mortals and not just “a consideration” but “the consideration”, the sine qua non that turns mere existence into la dolce vita, the life worth living. And that is why M. le duc of Saxe-Coburg Gotha is here, on the wall in front of me.

It is because he discovered, perhaps too late for the actual man, that being master of three duchies and not just two is not good enough; that marrying the suitable princess to burnish his noble luster instead of loving the woman who loved him is not good enough… that sixteen quarters of noble heraldry instead of sixteen quarters of true affection is not good enough and can never be the basis for the substantial life, the life of joy and contentment, the life that goes beyond oneself, that takes the larger view.

Yet have too many of us and even I betimes have given up everything, yes unto and including our very soul, for the insubstantial evanescence of tawdry things which can never be enough, no matter how ardently desired and joyfully praised upon achievement and possession. There has to be more, must be more… and that is why Ernest of Saxe-Coburg Gotha in all his exuberant panache selected me to sustain and harbor him for my lifetime, because of course, each object in this and my every other room selected me, not as the uninitiated suppose, the reverse.

But, friend, I feel sure you are smiling now, and broadly too, at such a notion of fanciful conceit. I remember how once you told me that you believed in the verities of the material world, nothing more, a world where people purchase pictures, not vice versa.

That, of course, is why you need me and the wizardry and magic that permeates the Red Drawing Room, a place where visions are born and horizons broadened… just by stepping across the threshold where we shall find each other… and peace.

Author’s dedication. It is my pleasure to dedicate this work to my friend and colleague Lance Sumner and his two children Rochelle and Joshua upon the occasion of their first visit to the Red Drawing Room, June 21, 2013. May its undeniable magic and allure remain with all of you forever and a day, always a happy memory.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of several print publications as well as ebooks and over one thousand online articles. Dr. Lant is also and art collector. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com/associates . Check out Info Cash ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=tt5nIAcW

Tax-Savings ALERT – Your BIGGEST Deduction is AT-RISK

here’s a little more information about the Tax-Alert Email I sent you on Thursday.

First, a few words of background…
In Chapter 7 of “Home Business Tax Savings Made Easy,” I introduce you to: THE biggest tax deduction Congress has ever provided to small and home- based business owners – “authorization to deduct, as a Business Expense, 100% of ALL health-related expenses – for you AND everyone else in your family.” 
Taxpayers without a small or home-based business cannot get this deduction. Their deductions for health costs are very limited.

But since YOU DO have a small business, you can probably qualify, almost automatically.————————————————————- If you are not taking advantage of this special tax break you are passing up tax deductions so big that they usually produce up to $5,000 or more in extra tax refunds. ————————————————————-

Now, here’s the issue…

The Affordable Health Care Act (“Obamacare”) requires some important changes in how we “administer” the health expense reimbursement program that gives us this huge deduction. It’s called Health-cost Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) – also sometimes called a “Section 105 Plan,” because that is where, in the Tax Code, this deduction is authorized.

The Affordable Health Care Act is so massive in size that the President had to hire four speed-readers to read the Bill and brief him on its contents before signing it into law.

Its impact clearly reaches well beyond providing health insurance for the uninsured.After an untold number of experts have plowed Through that new law (or set of laws) for months, we are now seeing it’s widespread ramifications.
Among the many startling, often negative, and perhaps unintended, consequences of the new law, I see direct, negative impacts on the HBB owner’s biggest of all tax breaks – the HRA Plan.

——————————————————————– I was unable to accept “as reality,” that you and my tens of thousands of other small-biz followers might actually lose this invaluabletax deduction.

So I “donned the hat” of one of my former careers – investigative reporting – and began searching for a legal and honest way protect our Congressionally approved HRA deduction.

I FOUND IT, and will brief you next week! ———————————————————————

to explain the PROBLEM, what it MEANS to you, and to reveal the easy SOLUTION toprotecting this DEDUCTION, and to protecting YOURSELF.

I will host a live web-briefing, which I will repeat three times, on different days and different times of day, so that all of you may attend one of them. (Attend only ONE – same info covered in all three).

DATES AND TIMES:

    TUE. evening, Jn 25 at 6 pm PDT; 9 pm EDT     Register athttps://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/218477986
    THU. mid-day, Jn 27 at 10 am PDT, 1 pm EDT     Register athttps://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/334933338
    SAT. morning, Jn 29 at 8 am PDT, 11 am EDT     Register athttps://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/247561346

Register NOW, then, PUT IT ON YOUR CALENDAR!

This briefing is another free service of Ron Mueller and the Home Business Tax Savings Learning Center.

Creating Tax-Smart Home Business Owners,

                Ron Ronald R. Mueller, MBA, Ph.D., author of “Home Business Tax Savings, Made Easy!” www.HomeBusinessTaxSavings.com

P.S. HERE’S HOW TO MAKE $10,000 IN AN HOUR — If this web briefing takes ½-hour (as I intend), and if it Adds or Protects $5,000 worth of YOUR tax REFUNDS, your ½-hour time investment (attending the webinar ) will have PAID YOU at a rate of $10,000 AN HOUR

P.P.S. PLEASE FORWARD THIS EMAIL to every small- and home-based business owner you know. Actually, send it to everyone you know. Some may get into a HBB when they hear this Information! Seriously.

 For more information on how I can help you and your business grow check out this link

http://revenuesplus.com/t15.cfm?id=21658

Critical Mistakes Newbies make that DOOM their success

Every day we have the pleasure of welcoming new Members to our program. People arrive with different levels of skills and experience.

In nearly 20 years of business, we have answered THOUSANDS of Support tickets from our Members. We watch some people succeed while others do not. Some get this business right away, others take longer. We feel our job in this training is to get you on the right path early and keep you there. We want you to be Members for life, not for 30 days. Our goal is to help you make money online and guide you to the tasks that will put you on the road to profit.

This lesson introduces you to the most common mistakes new people make that contribute to their lack of success.

You may with print this lesson and post it near your computer. It’s very easy to get distracted and lose focus, hopefully having this information at your finger tips will put you on the path to being one of our Top Sellers.

Common Mistakes made by New Members

1. Never starting the online training levels and never attending a LIVE Bootcamp Training Session. We have 8 basic lessons to get you on track and 50+ more with advanced learning topics. The focus of each and every one of these lessons is to help YOU learn what to do to make money online. To add to your learning opportunities, each week George Kosch provides LIVE training for nearly two hours. This live training allows you to ask questions, watch on screen as George shows the exact steps you need to generate leads, build traffic and make money. We record this training so it can be watched when convenient for our Members, or re-watched for review purposes. The Top Sellers in Worldprofit attend the training, if YOU want to be a top seller you must attend the training – then DO what it taught.

-To see the Summary of ALL the lessons in the Bootcamp Training, on left menu select HOME BUSINESS BOOTCAMP then select BOOTCAMP LEVEL SUMMARY. -To know the date and time of the next LIVE Home Business Bootcamp Training, check the MESSAGE BOARD when you login, you will see this at the top of the page,

2. Fiddling with their site to make it “prettier and perfect”. All Silver and Platinum VIP Members get a website included in the Membership. The site we provide is designed specifically to generate leads and is fine just as it is. Yes, you do have the ability to change it, add code, affiliate programs, etc but don’t spend a huge amount of time on this. You came into our program to make money. Please understand that it’s the TOOLS, RESOURCES and ADVERTISING included in your Member area that is going to generate your traffic and your earnings. For those of you who are taking the TRAINING mentioned in Mistake # 1 you should now understand this. When you first join Worldprofit, leave your site as it is for now. Make some money using the resources we offer and when you are a more experienced marketer THEN start modifying your site.

3. Promoting your website and NOT the Landing Pages. If you have been following the training you would understand why you should NOT be promoting your website and SHOULD BE promoting the Landing Pages. You would know how to find the Landing Pages and you would know where to promote them. If this is a surprise to you do this. In your Member area, on the top menu, select TRAINING, then watch the very first video posted there. It says: “BOOTCAMP MUST WATCH VIDEO FOR BEGINNERS.” Landing Pages have ONE purpose: to get you Associates and build your mailing list. George explains this along with where to promote these Landing Pages so you get Associate sign ups and this leads to sales!

4. Not understanding how the Worldprofit System works. OK, I know I sound like a broken record here, but this is so very important. If you have been doing the Bootcamp Training Lessons you should understand how our system works. Here’s a summary in it’s most basic form.
As a Member, you use the tools and resources we provide to sign up free Associate Members into the Worldprofit Program. It does not cost anything to be a Worldprofit Associate.  When those Associates login they are greeted by our Monitors. The Monitors assist the Associates to watch a video overview of our program, then make them an offer to encourage them to upgrade from a free Associate Membership to a paid Silver Membership. If YOU referred that Associate and they pay to upgrade YOU get the commission. Are you starting to see how important YOUR promotion efforts are, and how very important the Monitors are to you? DRIVE traffic – and let the system work for you. Of course our system offers you much more than this including other sources of income but this is the basic process that you need to understand when you are first getting started.

5. Not doing the Promotion. So you have watched the Basic Training video right? You have attended or watched a recording of George Kosch’s bootcamp training. What does George say over and over and over again? You MUST promote consistently to see results. We provide you with the tools to promote, the places to promote and a way to track your promotion. To see results you MUST promote consistently to trusted sites. In your Member area under ADVERTISING/TRAFFIC section on the left menu you will find the Landing Pages, the Safelists, The Exchanges, and the Ad Tracker. We have lessons on each of these topics as well to assist with your understanding. For people new to doing business online you are sometimes amazed at how much promotion you must do to get results. This is a reality of ANY business, you must constantly promote to reputable places to get traffic and see sales. The good news is that you are not on your own. We provide you with a list of recommended places, advertising aids, and stats trackers to monitor your results. The rest is up to you, it’s your job to do the promotion, every day if possible. Your sales success is 100% dependent on your promotional efforts.

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Delicious new developments in the riveting matter of ‘Dr’ Bogus Berlowicz as finger pointing escalates at the abashed American Academy of Arts and Sciences.And don’t we love it?

Author’s program note. Funny how memory works. I hadn’t thought of this incident for years… it concerned one of my grandfather’s construction projects. He had to eject a nest of rats and so took the simple expedient of using a dollop of gasoline and a match. Those rats moved alright, with record speed. But on its way out, one threw back its head and bit the vermin behind, a good, deep gouge.

I like to think Rat #1 was repaying Rat #2 for any number of irritants and exasperations. And that’s what’s happening right now at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, whose august members, trustees and staff are engaged in an epic rendition of academia’s most cherished activity… the art of finger pointing, a recherche’ skill refined over a lifetime and kept for just such a moment as this.

The objective is plain, to prove beyond any doubt whatsoever that you are righter than right, as usual, and that anyone who disagrees is next door to a certified moron, never mind 18 books and a Nobel Prize. And on this basis, the infants terribles destroy the harmony and quiet disdain that ordinarily defines their sand box.

This is why the late William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925-2008), renowned for his puckish commentary once famously said “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

What is happening these fascinating days at the American Academy proves his trenchant point… that is why I cannot get enough of this scandal for it shows the best at their worst.

The facts.

In early June, 2013 The Boston Globe broke the story that the 45th president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Leslie  Berlowicz, who wore her doctoral title like a papal tiara, did not have the earned doctorate in English she claimed New York University had conferred; rather that she had bestowed it on herself which even the most fastidious must admit is faster than the tedious business of working for it. And as Leslie was a girl in a rush, she made the perfectly rational decision that so much tiring effort was for the little people, not titans of moving and shaking like her. No other course of action made any sense at all.

Thus she applied to be President of the Academy (1996) the revered institution founded in 1780 by three heroes of the American Revolution, John Adams, John  Hancock and James Bowdoin, their goal the constant betterment and improvement of the Great Republic.

Her lies were equal to the task at hand, for they secured her the bountiful objective of her schemes, including princely remuneration which in 2012 reached $598,000, a height which even Madam Leslie may have thought acceptable for such a paragon as she (but probably didn’t).

She had gambled, she had won, she had proved her superiority and tactical skills, including leveraging her bogus credentials on one false document after another (including grant applications to several agencies of the federal government) to get still more. She had a proven system of success and she worked it with a will. Never mind that she was sole beneficiary or that she brought shame to one of the Great Republic’s most respected institutions. The important thing was that she survived and prospered.

Thus, I give you Stephen Sondheim’s 1971 masterpiece, “I’m Still Here” from his aptly named musical “Follies”. So apropos are the lyrics to the developing scandal at the Academy and Madam Leslie’s clear objective to beat the rap and even keep her golden goose, no other tune would do.

Go now to any search engine and listen to its bold, bodacious, brassy sound and its unmistakably clear message of what it takes to survive. I prefer the version by Elaine Paige, a diva always worth hearing. Ironically enough the many talented Sondheim was elected a Fellow of the Academy in 2008, very much during Berlowicz’ salad days. No doubt Madam Leslie appreciates his often wicked cool lyrics and smooth harmonies, though this may not be her very favorite.

“I should have gone to an acting school, that seems clear; Still someone said ‘She’s sincere,’ so I’m here.”

Latest disclosures, further evidence the Board was asleep at the switch.

A short refresher course in the whys and wherefors of nonprofit organizations is now necessary. These organizations, hundreds of thousands strong, are the bedrock of our society, crucial to the way we live and the quality of our lives.  Almost all are tax-exempt, that status being conferred upon application and review by the federal government.

The power to act and the responsibility for acting resides in what is either called the Board of Directors or Board of Trustees. These people are elected by the Board for either their prestige, management skills and business acumen, or their useful contacts and ability to give donations themselves or connect them to others who can do so.

Executive power is delegated by the Board to the individual variously called either president or executive director. This person is responsible to the board for all actions and may or may not have full membership on the board as the organization’s by-laws dictate.

This executive serves at and may be removed at the pleasure of the Board with or without cause. Thus, in theory, the executive is the creature of the Board, every action open to periodic and regular review either by the full Board or by an executive committee appointed by and responsible to the full Board. Within this framework, the Board rules all… at least in theory.

In fact, as glaringly occurred at the Academy, the President , Madam Leslie, subverted the governing structure and systematically replaced their power and authority with her own, leaving directors progressively disengaged from the governing process for which, remember, they remained completely, legally, responsible. How had this inversion occurred? In a nutshell it was because the Board had largely disengaged from the governance of the Academy, thereby creating a vacuum which  Berlowicz was only too anxious to fill.

“I’ll do it” was her policy and governing objective… achievable because she micro-managed just who was elected to the Board, an essential project to which she gave unstinting attention, especially when after just one year in office, she was taken to task by the Board for abusive behavior to the Academy’s long-suffering staff. She survived — just — no doubt resolving “never again.” Her decisive influence over the Board made her regime of control and contempt not merely possible but inevitable.

And so…

In 2004 “Dr.” Berlowicz persuaded her compliant Board to add her name to the roster of more than 200 newly elected members of the Academy — 6 months after the original election notice, thus making it look like Madam had been voted in to the exalted Pantheon along with everyone else. It was a lie, of course, but by then altering reality was her speciality and by 2004 her skills in this department were peerless.

For instance, as reported in The Boston Globe, several former employees claimed that Berlowicz worked early and late getting just the right candidates for election; “right” being defined as people Madam liked and admired, always blocking those she felt would be inimical to her regime of falseness and favoritism. This included even seeing all the ballots before they were tallied… a device reminiscent of political machines for whom voting the long dead and gone was child’s play.

Academy spokesman Ray Howell pooh-poohed any such concern saying that while Berlowicz did have access to all ballots, no one need worry since she “was responsible for making sure the election process was administered appropriately”. Mr. Howell, no doubt, was speaking in the ironic mode, tongue firmly in cheek. Thus, he follows the party line and stays “loyal”. After all, he has a job to protect, and Berlowicz has not resigned or been removed — yet.

And so it goes as one revealing feature after another of her menacing regime seeps out. How she ordered the word “welcome” effaced from the Academy’s front door to make sure hoi polloi would understand this nirvana was not for them. How starting three years ago she began closing access to the good people of Cambridge to the 5.1 acres of wooded grounds which the Academy leases from Harvard University. The City of Cambridge intervened to retain the status quo and a place for a pleasant saunter.

How the Academy in her regime has blocked access even by qualified scholars to manuscript material of George Washington (who once lived nearby in Cambridge), Thomas Jefferson, and Founder John Adams, and many others thus outraging the very basis of the Academy as a place of unfettered research and the free dissemination of useful knowledge.

Why did the Board put up with it all? One guess.

With a rap sheet as long as your arm, why didn’t the Board act to save the mission, its soul and self respect? Money… that’s why. Miss Leslie, you see, was a prodigious fund raiser, skilled in adding generous plutocrats and zillionaire entrepreneurs. Boston Scientific Corp. cofounder Peter Nicholas, who became a Fellow in 1999, gave $2.4 million between 2006-2010 when the Academy raised $39 million.

John Cogan, a Boston investment executive who joined the Academy in 2005, gave $1.9 million. Gershon Kekst, Wall Street communications tycoon, elected in 2006, gave a million.

There were Fellows, of course, who talked darkly about the evil influence of cash and how these folks were NOKD (“not our kind, dear”) but the well-heeled had always been welcome. After all one of the cofounders, John Hancock, was the richest merchant in Boston.

Thus had Leslie played her cards better, foregoing the delights of demeaning her staff and affronting anyone and everyone, she might have gone on to scale the invigorating slopes of power, riches and sweet control, her lies known but tolerated because of her undeniable fund raising skills. But moderation was never her metier. And so she is now on paid leave whilst her Board dithers to a decision about what to do, though that should be obvious to even these tabby cats.

A person of eminence and known integrity should be appointed to review the case, thence to make recommendations for reasserting the Board’s legitimate and legal functions. I recommend Margaret Marshall, recently resigned Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, a woman well respected, who conveniently lives within walking distance of the Academy and knows it well. After all she’s been a Fellow since 2001.

As for Madam Leslie, I can hardly bear to think of her retiring from the scene, golden parachute in hand. But perhaps she’ll survive to fight another day. After all that is the point of Sondheim’s gem,

“Good times and bad  times, I’ve seen them all/ And, my dear, I’m still here.”

And that, for once, is nothing but the truth. It’s a start.

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. at www.worldprofit.com, providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martellhttp://HomeProfitCoach.com/associates . Check out Info Cash -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=tt5nIAcW