William Glasser’s Lead Management

by Kim Olver

It seems that every decade or so there is some new fad the runs through the business world in terms of supervision and in the world of diversity management, downsizing, outsourcing, generational work conflicts and the information age, things are even more complicated than ever before.

No longer does a one size fits all leadership model really work. We can’t treat everyone the same and expect that everything will just “work out” somehow. Managers and leaders must have a framework with which to manage their workers in a way that honors everyone’s unique and specific position on the job.

Lead Management is the way to do just that. Lead Management shares the power between management and the workers, thus empowering both groups.

Conventional wisdom tells us that when those in power relinquish some of their power by sharing it or giving it to their employees, they lose something when in actually, they gain.

Think about it. When people rule with an iron hand, they generally instill fear in those who work for them. Do you do your best work when you are afraid? I don’t know about you but I will attempt to comply because I want to avoid negative consequences but it certainly won’t be my best work. The absolute best a manager can hope for with coercion is compliance. If compliance is enough, then coercion might work.

However, I will gripe and complain and quietly wait for opportunities to get even. I won’t have a kind thing to say about my employer and at every available chance will seek corroboration for how I feel from my co-workers, thus spreading an “us” versus “them” mentality.

When leaders and managers seek to empower their workers, they will gain their loyalty. Workers want to give their supervisor their best when they are listened to and respected. Without fear, their minds can be creative and innovative.

When managers are willing to accommodate special requests and it doesn’t interfere with product or service delivery, then their employees will be sure to give back their best in return. Giving away power only increases a manager’s power.

Now, I am not talking about being a total pushover and only advocating for what employees want. As a manager, you have a two-fold job—you are to represent your employees’ desires, opinions and suggestions to management while at the same time communicating management’s issues, concerns and expectations to your employees. This is not an easy line to walk.

You will never get the best from your employees if they don’t respect you. You cannot be a doormat for your employees to walk over. If they believe you have no bottom line or non-negotiables, then they will never be satisfied and always asking for more. You will feel used and abused and the truth is, you asked for it.

As a manager, you must hold the bar high. Expect great things from each and every one of your workers. If you only expect mediocrity, mediocrity is exactly what you will get. Set the standards and lead by example. If your workers see you giving it your all, it will be difficult for them to perform below standard.

You must have production goals you are attempting to meet for either products or services. Always enlist the help of your employees to set the goals, with the underlying premise being continual improvement.

And as a manager, you have the responsibility to create a need satisfying workplace for yourself and your workers. You cannot emphasize one to the exclusion of the other without there being undesirable consequences.

When you focus on production only and forget the human capital, you will end up with resentful, resistant, angry workers. On the other hand, when you only focus on the people end and allow production goals to be compromised; you will have workers who do everything they can to take advantage and to get out of doing the work. After all, if you the manager don’t value production, why should they?

Somewhere in the middle, when you are walking that very fine line between relationships and production goals, you are practicing Lead Management and that’s where you will get the most from your employees.

The Problem with Weight Watchers and other Calorie Counting Diets

By Dr. Joel Fuhrman

Weight Watchers and other similar diet plans have dismal failure rates. To appeal to the mainstream, which presently are eating a diet predominating in “fake” low-nutrient processed foods, they must perpetuate the same nutritional mistakes that lead people down the path to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

The leading cause of death in the modern world today is heart disease. Most people consume a diet rich in processed foods and high saturated fat animal products that guarantees them a future destiny with heart disease. It is this same style of eating that fuels the obesity epidemic. To end these unnecessary tragedies, to get real results in the weight-loss arena and to save lives, we need to eat much differently.

When you support the status quo and attempt to motivate people to consume smaller portions of disease causing foods, you give people all the same addictive foods that caused them to become overweight to begin with. Unhealthy food is addicting. When your diet is still centered on disease causing foods, you will always feel ill and have addictive food cravings. Unless your body is flooded with all the nutrients it needs, you will simply crave more food than you need, and it will be almost impossible to achieve and maintain an ideal weight.

Diets such as this fail over 90 percent of the time simply because they are structured around dangerous foods and do not ensure adequate nutrient intake. Studies performed on subjects undergoing the Weight Watchers program have shown that after 6 months the average weight loss was less than 5 pounds¹.

The reason my approach is so successful is that it is not merely a weight-loss diet. It encourages you to eat large amounts of vegetables, beans and fruits, the most powerful anti-cancer foods on the planet. Food is rated, not by calories but by nutrient levels to encourage recipes and menus that make you disease-resistant. You learn how delicious healthy eating can be, but as a result by eating more healthy food, you can lose the cravings and temptations to eat greasy, sugary and unhealthy food. When you are so filled up with nutrient, fiber and volume, you simply lose your “toxic” hunger and food cravings.

With calorie-counting and point-counting and having to weigh, measure, and calculate amounts eaten, you are following a diet. Who wants to diet and measure portions forever? I enjoy eating. I eat the way I advise all my patients to do, yet I am not overweight. Why? I enjoy eating lots of great tasting stuff and not having to worry about my weight or my health. Intellectually, I know that I am doing the right thing to prevent heart disease and other medical problems from developing in my future. Dieting and measuring out thimble-sized portions of food for the rest of one’s life is not something that fits in naturally and permanently into anyone’s lifestyle. Besides, anything you do temporarily gives only temporary benefit.

A key (and always overlooked) element in my Eat To Live approach is understanding “toxic hunger.” Most people feel abdominal spasm, stomach discomfort, headaches, and weakness driving them to eat for relief. They do not recognize these symptoms as withdrawal symptoms from their nutritionally inadequate diet. When one eats a high-nutrient diet these symptoms of toxicity melt away, and you are put back in touch with true hunger, that mouth and throat sensation that makes even simple food taste great. True hunger leads you to the precise amount of calories that you need to maintain your ideal weight, no more and no less. When you achieve this, you no longer have to try to figure out how much is the right amount to eat; you eat as much as you desire. It is the secret to maintaining your long-term weight control.

Weight Watchers does some sensible things, like encouraging exercise and the consumption of healthier food choices such as fruits and vegetables. However, it is essentially a calorie counting diet with group support which then lets you eat anything you desire. Instead of counting calories, they have counted them for you and grouped foods by points. You look up the point value of all foods, and they tell you how much of it that you are allowed to eat and how many points a day that you can consume.

Consider these typical Weight Watcher’s solutions: “Love strong-flavored crunch? Try some ranch flavored chips or cheddar “Goldfish” crackers. Want something chocolaty? Enjoy a small piece of very rich chocolate or a small fudge brownie. Need a longer-lasting sweet? Opt for butterscotch hard candies or a chocolate lollipop.” This is the solution for you if you are willing to sacrifice your health, maintain your food addictions, and stay a dieter struggling with weight and health issues the rest of your life.

Restricting portions is an obsolete approach with a dismal track record. When you restrict calories you wind up having to eat such tiny portions in order to lose weight. It doesn’t satisfy our desire to eat; it leaves us unsatisfied, hungry and suffering. Our food cravings continue, and we live frustrated, trying to follow a diet. Try to breathe less air for a few minutes. Soon, you will be gasping for air. Likewise, diets that can’t be maintained naturally forever don’t usually work. People lose and then gain, yo-yoing their weight, which is not healthful.

Rethink this dieting philosophy, and you can lose a spectacular amount of weight in the process. My patients lose an average of 15 pounds the first month, and then about 8 – 10 pounds a month thereafter. But even more dramatic is you can gain the health advantages, radically dropping cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar as you lose the weight. The results are impressive and lasting when you choose to Eat To Live.

The Dirty Little Secret about “The Secret”

Have you been wondering why so few people ever really become rich? With scores of wealthy “gurus” teaching throngs of eager disciples how they too can become filthy stinking rich by following “the secret” path to unleashing the Law of Abundance, you’d think we’d be in the midst of a great economic boom rather than riding the tail of a deep recession that is still trying to figure out which way to go from here.

Well here’s the truth – the dirty little secret about The Secret. It’s all BS! Well almost all of it anyway. Abundance really is a reality, but the whole premise taught in The Secret is a complete red herring.

For as far back as recorded history goes, men have been trying to coerce “the gods” into giving them what they want. Believing that if they could just offer the right sacrifice, chant the right words, or follow the right formula, all of their dreams would come true. But for most, that illusive pot of gold continues to remain just out of reach right there at the end of the rainbow.

And all too often, those rare people who do seem to live the dream end up either lonely, paranoid, addicted, or all three. Where is the happiness that they expected to come with all that abundance?

You see, the problem with The Secret is the motivation behind it all. And the reason most wealthy people are still unhappy is because of what they wanted it for; the same reason the poor want it. It’s all about themselves – their comfort, their security, their fun, their power. And it just doesn’t work that way!

The real truth of the matter is that we are all on this planet for one simple purpose – to learn how to put others first, to learn to live the golden rule each and every moment of our lives. And there is just no secret formula or “law” that will enable you to coerce the Almighty and circumvent that purpose. (Note: I use the name Almighty as a generic word to identify the Power that controls the universe. Please read whatever name you prefer – God, Allah, Yahweh, Nature, the Universe …)

“Altruism” is the single word that embodies the golden rule, and is the fourth arm of the Cross of Prosperity. But the problem, the reason so few live a life of true abundance, is that they fail to accept it as a way of life. It remains a “feel good” notion reserved for after their own needs are satisfied, or stays limited as an obligation to surrender one tenth of “their” increase, rather than becoming their very reason for being, their ultimate life commandment if you will.

True Abundance is reserved, not for those who practice some secret formula, but rather for those who purpose to pass it all on, who create a colossal vacuum of giving that the Almighty can’t wait to fill! Everything they do is with the intention of serving better and more efficiently.

This is why social entrepreneurship is the ultimate business model. Social entrepreneurs
• Make charity the reason for doing business, not an after thought
• Revel in the joy of having a purpose bigger than themselves
• Benefit from customer loyalty and employee pride other businesses can only dream of, and
• Have a cash flow limited only by their vision of how much they can contribute

So why do so few people ever get wealthy? And when they do, why do they fail to realize the happiness they expected it to bring? It’s because so few ever experience the paradigm shift that takes them from egoism – taking care of themselves first – to altruism – putting others first. This shift, or conversion, usually doesn’t take place until the former view causes enough pain to start a search for something better. Though our cultural and religious heritages all point in this direction, it’s still counter intuitive, and not until faced with failure are most of us ready to surrender our instincts for self-preservation.

The Almighty is constantly seeking to bring us to this place of purpose, even if it takes pain and failure to get us there. This is the reality that proponents of The Secret fail to recognize.

So yes, we do exist in the presence of unlimited Abundance. But that does not mean that you can manipulate it to serve you own purposes. Real and balanced abundance comes to those who embrace their true altruistic purpose for being. Are you ready? If so, then maybe starting a social enterprise will be your path to fulfilling your purpose.

Transactional vs. Transformative Cause Marketing – Part 2

In this second of our two part series, Joe Waters explains how Transformative Cause Marketing may be the key to getting your social enterprise noticed.

What is Transformative Cause Marketing?

Before I tackle transformative cause marketing I want to clarify that I’m still talking about cause marketing, not cause branding or corporate social responsibility. Cause marketing is a tactical activity between a nonprofit and a for-profit and that doesn’t change. What does change is the focus, role and purpose of cause marketing.

• One-off promotions are replaced with strategic signature programs that are proactive, brand-centric and long-term.
• Multi-platform programs reflect the shift from a transactional to relationship mindset between partners.
• Raising money and building awareness becomes secondary to an overarching priority: accomplishing the nonprofit’s mission.

Transactional vs. Transformative Cause Marketing – Part 1

In this first of a two part series, resident expert Joe Waters discusses the differences between transactional and transformative cause marketing.

What is Transactional Cause Marketing?

Transactional cause marketing is a marketing strategy that’s defined by:

• One-off promotions that are generally reactive to opportunities in the marketplace.
• First generation partnerships that have a short promotional cycle.
• Single platform programs.
• Dominance of transactions over relationships to maximize immediate giving.
• Promotions that aren’t central to or defined by the brands of either partner.
• Primary goal is to raise money and build awareness for the nonprofit partner.

8 Natural Ways  to Lower Cholesterol

By Dr. Joel Fuhrman

The American Heart Association estimates that 102.2 million (almost 50%) of adults in the United States have total cholesterol levels above 200 mg/dL, placing them at risk for cardiovascular disease – elevated cholesterol is one of the most important risk factors for heart disease.

In the Framingham Heart Study, deaths due to heart disease were absent in subjects with total cholesterol levels below 150 mg/dL, but as cholesterol increased above 150 mg/dL, heart disease rates began to increase. A high nutrient diet is by far the most effective method of reducing cholesterol while avoiding side effects.

 
After just six weeks of following a high nutrient diet, subjects’ LDL cholesterol decreased by 33%. No other dietary intervention was nearly as effective. What about cholesterol-lowering drugs? Drugs are not as effective for reducing cholesterol as a high nutrient diet. After six weeks of taking cholesterol-lowering statin medications, cholesterol levels decreased by 26% compared to a 33% with a high nutrient diet. Statins have many side effects and are associated with liver dysfunction, acute renal failure, cataracts, diabetes, and impaired muscle function.  Furthermore, not only will a high nutrient diet lower cholesterol, it will also decrease heart disease risk by improving other factors such glucose levels, blood pressure, and body weight.

The safest and healthiest strategy for reducing cholesterol:

1. Eat a high nutrient, vegetable-based diet with plenty of raw vegetables and cooked greens.
2. Eat berries and pomegranates. The antioxidants in berries and pomegranates, such as anthocyanin and punicalagin, are especially effective in improving both LDL and HDL cholesterol.
3. Avoid trans fats and minimize saturated fats. High cholesterol and heart disease deaths are more closely associated with saturated fat intake than any other part of the American diet.
4. Avoid refined carbohydrates. Refined carbohydrates have been found to be just as damaging to the cardiovascular system as saturated fats.
5. Eat at least one ounce of raw nuts and seeds daily. The phytosterols found in nuts and seeds lower blood cholesterol by blocking both cholesterol absorption during digestion and the re-absorption of cholesterol produced by the liver. Plus, nuts have additional cardio-protective effects that have yet to be discovered.
6. Limit your intake of animal protein to at most 6 ounces per week. If you have heart disease or significantly high cholesterol, avoid animal products altogether. Animal protein consumption directly increases heart disease risk.
7. Eat beans daily. Beans are packed with resistant starch, soluble fiber, and phytochemicals which help to lower cholesterol. A 19-year study found that people who eat beans at least four times a week have a 21% lower risk of heart disease than those who eat them less than once a week.
8. Have 1 Tbsp. of ground flaxseed each day. Flaxseeds contain beneficial omega-3 fats, lignans, flavonoids, sterols, and fiber. Clinical trials show that daily flaxseed consumption reduces total cholesterol by 6-11%. Try adding ground flaxseeds to smoothies or sprinkling them on salads.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. is a board-certified family physician, New York Times best-selling author and nutritional researcher who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods.  Please visit Dr. Fuhrman’s website Member Center to learn more about super immunity, get recipes, and more.

You Want A Full Time Income – How Many Websites Will It Take?

By James Martell

Back in 1999 when I first got started in affiliate marketing I had another full time business that I wasn’t particularly thrilled with. I wasn’t making enough money to support my family the way I wanted and I didn’t see that condition changing anytime soon.

So I took a risk and decided to try out this internet thing with hopes that I would succeed and make enough money to quit the full time job. Sound familiar?

I was fortunate in that I was lucky enough to build a stream of revenue that did allow me to work full time on my new affiliate business. Remember that things were different back then and the internet was in its wild, wild West phase and I was convinced that the only way to grow was to build multiple sites and develop a ton of content. At one point I had nearly 90 websites running.

But if you asked me today how many websites you need to make a full time income I would respond with…one.

The Power of One!

I know it may seem counter-intuitive to put all of your eggs in a single basket and I certainly don’t follow my own advice on this subject as I still have quite a number of sites up and running. But if I were to start over today, I would focus on a single site.

Why? For a number of reasons not the least of which is the technology that is available today that wasn’t available five years ago. Think about it for a minute. Five years ago there was no Twitter there was no FaceBook there was no Google Plus there really were no “social media” platforms as we understand them today. These tools represent a huge source of traffic that when combined with organic search traffic can create an enormous audience.

And what if they were all pointing back to a single site.

If you’ve been around for a while think back to all the effort that you have put in trying to promote your various sites. All the backlinking, all the optimization, all the content development…think about every promotion you’ve ever done…and think if all that effort was for a single site rather than multiple sites.

Where would that single site be today?

Pick your favorite site say the one answering questions like does Nutrisystem program really work or whatever.

How many indexed pages would it have. How many backlinks? How big would your email list be? How greater would the sales be? Do you see where I’m going with this?

With a single website you can

* Influence merchants more effectively because of increased sales. In all likelihood you’ll receive more help in promoting their products.

* Streamline your operation by eliminating the need to manage multiple websites. Now you’ll be able to focus all of your time on a single profitable project.

* Focus all of your social media efforts to promoting a single site. No more multiple Twitter or FaceBook accounts to keep track of.

* All content creation, for the site and for building backlinks is now for a single website. Imagine how fast that site will grow and imagine the impression you’re making on Google.

* The more focused you are on a single topic the more authoritative you become.

* With increased traffic comes increased feedback from visitors giving you a much better feel for what is on your audience’s mind.

* More traffic means more sign ups for your email lists. When you have that kind of volume and if you’re using the right technology, you can now segment the list out based on behavior and laser target them for products of interest.

* As your site increases in sales, you can consider selling off your other sites either to fund growth or simply to invest.

Think about it for a moment. This model of single site development closely follows that of a traditional brick and mortar company. How many B&Ms do you know who would open a high end bike shop and simultaneously open a dry cleaners, law office and grocery store? Nobody right?

But that has been the conventional idea of success in the internet marketing world. Put up more sites, add more content and rinse and repeat.

While that model will still work, it’s the one I’m using currently; I believe that the most efficient and most sustainable way to earn a full time living is to focus your energy on a single site.

And the beauty of this is it applies to any niche. You’re not going to be competing against the Amazons and eBays of the world so you could easily earn a full time living with sites that deal with almost any topic or products.

Traffic + Conversion = Money for your charity!

The easiest and least expensive place to build your new social enterprise is on the web.  Whether you are marketing your own product, or affiliating with someone else to market theirs, there is no street corner in the world with greater “drive-by” traffic than you can get on the web.  The trick of course is to get that traffic to actually stop and take a look.  You can pay people to stop and look, and you can pay other people to get them to stop and look.  But by far the least expensive and most predictable way to get their attention is to develop a great reputation, one that will lead them to come looking for you!

And as you know, in the internet world this means you need to become search engine relevant, or optimized.  And this is why the net is full of people both teaching and using a multitude of SEO tricks and gimmicks to get traffic, which then causes the search engines to develop new hoops and hurdles to weed out the gold from the dirt.   There is just no substitute though for being genuine real gold.

According to our resident expert James Martell, the best way to become relevant and get a ton of traffic to your web site, and at the same time never have to worry about being slapped down by Google, is to distribute good relevant high quality professionally written articles. In other words, save your money and concentrate on becoming genuine gold.  He calls this the PAD Technique – Professional Article Distribution.

As a new social entrepreneur, you should set an initial goal of getting 100 unique original articles distributed ASAP.  At first this may seem to be a daunting task, but it really is not as hard as it looks; you actually only need 10 to start with.  Then with some careful execution, each of those ten can be rewritten, or spun, 10 times.  This then will get you your 100 articles.

Next time we’ll talk about how to craft your articles so that they will be found and lead people to your store.  And then in later issues, we’ll show you how to get your articles distributed where they will be seen by real buyers who really want what you are selling.

Is Your Charity Doing More Harm Than Good?

It is an undeniable byproduct of our Christian heritage that America is the most giving nation on earth, both at home and abroad.  But is it working?  Has it done anyone any good?

Google “charity” or “aid” and it becomes obvious that thought leaders around the world,  even or perhaps especially those in third world countries, recognize the harmful effects – dependency, stifled growth, entitlement – that our well intentioned aid has produced.

Here at home, it is even truer today than it was in the 1800’s when French politician Alexis de Tocqueville said that “Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom…. The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.”  Even as our nation teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, our addiction to dependency grows unchecked.  It is no coincidence that over half of our population is considered too poor to pay any income tax.  Our middle class is not shrinking, it is just moving down so that we can all be equal in poverty!

The only ones who benefit from mass charity are those in or seeking power.  This explains why big corporations as well as large labor unions are so often the most ardent supporters of populist political parties purporting economic “redistribution”.  Corporate executives, union bosses, and professional politicians all recognize that a subservient dependent population serves their purposes much better than a free and self-sufficient one.

In the Jewish Torah, Maimonides defines 8 levels of charity.  Among the lower levels are the various forms of gifting.  But the highest, most noble level is reserved for those acts which strengthen the recipient so that he will no longer be dependent upon others.

It is this 8^th level of charity that is the purpose of Social Entrepreneurship Ideas.  By their very nature, social enterprises break the cycle of dependency, creating independent economic points of light that are free to address the social needs they find most impressive, in the way they find most helpful.

• They confirm the Abundance Paradigm
• They serve the greater, rather than the individual good
• They serve the individual, by serving the greater good
• They break the chains of dependency
• They create jobs

So whether you are an established entrepreneur, or just starting your new social business, ask yourself whether your charity is promoting dependency or responsibility, entitlement or altruism, stagnation or growth, slavery or freedom.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick note to wish you all the best on this day when we take time to reflect on all we are thankful for – in between football plays of course!

Here’s perhaps a novel idea.  As you are reciting your “thankful for” list, do you include any of the adversities you’ve faced this year?  It is human nature to try to forget those things, but those may actually be the things we should be most thankful for.

It’s a fact of life that when things are going smoothly, when life seams to be unfolding the way we want, few of us make any changes.  Why would we?  Things are just fine.  Consequently, we never really grow and become better more effective people when we are happy.

In contrast, it is during times of stress and dissatisfaction that we are motivated to seek change.  Pain is our signal that things are not right.  Why else would you want to go through all the work required to start and grow a social enterprise, unless there was something is your world that you felt was not right?  Financial stress.  Interpersonal conflict.  The loss of people and things we cherish.  These all can be used to guide us into a better more fulfilling life.

Just remember, there is only one thing in this world that you can control – yourself.  If you are going to help make this world a better place, YOU ARE THE ONE THAT MUST CHANGE.

So take a moment today to say thank-you for your adversities, for the opportunities you would otherwise never have explored.

For your peace and prosperity,
Vaya con dios,