Chief Prognosticator » 2008 » May
OK, so Britney Spears already stole that phrase when she wore it on a t-shirt, but “being the American Dream” is more than just being a celebrity. The American Dream is, at its heart, about the promise of America and the ability for anyone in the society to pull themselves up and become a success with hard work and luck. As opposed to “old money” wealth — that is, wealthy families and individuals derived from inherited wealth — the American Dream means people from low socioeconomic classes to become successful and wealthy in their own lifetime. This success makes them part of what is called the Nouveau Riche. A French term meaning literally “New Rich”, the Nouveau Riche represent success in its truest form — self made success. From real estate moguls to Silicon Valley types, dry cleaner chain owners to President Bill Clinton, these people used their talents and hard work to come from nothing and create wealth and success made to last. There is even a “Nouveau Riche University” teaching people like you and me how to manage their money and build real wealth from real estate and investments. You’ve heard of the “Millionaire Next Door” right? Well its the same principle — take the right steps, act widely, work hard and you are almost guaranteed to become rich and successful. Its no secret — just things that we usually overlook or are not aware of in the first place. You TOO can be the American Dream.
I wrote previously about Chrysler’s offer to subsidize the price of gas for one year on all new vehicles it sells. The price you’d pay would be fixed at $2.99 a gallon. Over a year, that could mean costs of up to $2000 for Chysler. But just yesterday I saw an advertisment on TV stating the $2.99 gas was for THREE WHOLE YEARS! Wow! That is even bigger! I wonder if it was always that long (and I just misunderstood) or if they extended it. Three years is a long time — gas could be $8 by then. That could add up to over $10000 in savings over the period! Who wants a Chrysler? I do!
Here’s something near and dear to my heart — the scalability of business operations. I see it every day at my company. Right now we are undergoing a huge market upswing in our products and our sales and marketing organization is being flooded with RFPs and RFQs. How can an organization provide quick turn around to proposal requests and scale their business to meet market demands? This is where a solution like Configure One’s Concept™ Product Configurator Software comes in. The Concept™ Product Configurator (Sales Configurator) is a program application which can scale and customize product and service offerings with little setup time. A web-based, platform independent IT solution, the system allows you to create highly customized product offerings quickly and accurately. In my business that would mean being able to reduce our proposal and tender cycle time from 2 weeks to half that or less.
Having a product configurator working for your S&M team means they can quickly create customize offers. This not only pleases the customer (who doesn’t like a quick turn around time?!), but it also improves the quality and reproducibility of your proposals.
According to a study done by Merck Medco, about 50% of all adults in the U.S. who have insurance are on long term prescription medicine. This means they take a medicine on an ongoing basis like that for high blood pressure or high cholesterol. What do these study findings mean and is it necessarily a good thing or a bad thing? Or mixed?
Unhealthy Population
Does this figure of 50% mean that the population is more unhealthy than ever? Looking at the obesity rate for adults (and children) we see that America has never been fatter, so this data support that?
Better Medicine
Maybe this data shows that science and medicine has done a great job of developing medicines which treat chronic conditions (which always existed) and therefore extend life and quality of life. That’s a good thing, if you can afford it.
Sales and Marketing Pressured
This data could just be evidence that the sales and marketing divisions of Pharma companies are getting too good. With a plethora of television, radio and magaine advertisements. Try to think about how many ads you’ve seen this week for ED, Depression, Cholesteral, and Birth Control!
Any business owner knows and understand the value of customer feedback, but how can you get useful feedback on a regular basis? This is where a company like Service Intelligence can help your business growth and improve. Since 1992 they have supported small to medium sized businesses get the honest feedback they need. From customer experience evaluations to mystery-shopper services, they can give you insight into what your customer experiences. Their offering includes other valuable services like employee awareness campaigns and advanced business analytics — real business intelligence you can use.
And if you’ve ever wanted to be a Mystery Shopper, check out their site and see if you qualify! Good luck.
Leave it up to those great folks at the X Prize Foundation to do it again.
First it was their $10 million competition to promote private Suborbital Spaceflight. That contest was of course won by Burt Rutan with his spacecraft SpaceShipOne on Oct.4, 2004.
There has been others in medicine and moon landings (see The Google Lunar X PRIZE), but now there is a really timely one:
The main objective is to create a production-commercial viable car that gets 100 MPG (2.35 liter/100 kilometer). Judging the winner isn’t straight forward — it will be a combination of an endurance race, the viability of the business plan, and the emissions of the vehicle. What a great idea!
When you think of medivac airlifts, what do you think of? Mountain climbing accidents? Interstate pileups? Sure these situations definitely call for emergency airlift services, but actually the service is more common than that. Just take a look at what AeroCare Air Ambulance Service has to offer. A 24 hour emergency and non-emergency ambulance service, available to anyone anywhere in the world, this professional team can get you the help you need in a hurry. Whether you need to be brought to the hospital from the rural countryside or across country to an emergency specialist, AeroCare can help. Their Flight Coordinators even work with your insurance company to pre-authorize expenses! Nice!
I don’t know about you but by the time I was in my mid-20s, I pretty much figured out how mortgages work and the different kinds of them out there. This was also about the time that I took out a 3-year adjustable rate mortgage on my house! But there was a method to my madness — I knew we were moving in before that three years were up.
But with the current mortgage crisis in the U.S, it looks like many people are confused. With so many different types of Mortgages out there for the average consumer to select from, there are many ways to get confused. What is a good rate? Should I go fixed or variable rate? How much cash should I put down? All these questions can be met with just as confusing answers depending on where you look. If you feel you are one of these folks who are not exactly sure which mortgage is right, make sure you do your research well before you are forced to make a decision. Making decisions under pressure gets a lot worse when you aren’t comfortable with the subject matter.
When I think about my home, I think about durability and sturdiness. This is why I try to use top quality materials for not only the construction and finish but also the accessories. For one, I love slate and marble tile. Check out these great marble products from Marble Unique. They are a a direct importer of marble and natural stone from the best places on Earth. From a new stone fireplace to a unique marble statue for the backyard, they have amazing products which will last a lifetime. Now that’s a great investment! Check out their marble columns — a perfect way to show off a piece of sculpture or just for decoration.
How will developed countries deal with limits to CO2 emissions? The Cap and Trade method seems like a good, capitalism-based method to create an incentive to reduce emissions. In a Cap and Trade system, the amount of CO2 emissions would be “Capped” (limited) to a certain annual amount. Companies which emit less than the cap would be able to sell their excess “polluting capacity” to companies which are over the cap (this is the “trade” part). Sounds bad? Well sure, selling pollution rights is bad, but think about the outcomes. There would then be an economic incentive NOT to pollute, namely the ability to make more money. If the total sum of the caps were kept constant (or decrease annually), pollution levels would drop while companies would be able to make money. It’s really the best hope I see for us.
