Category Archives: Entrepreneurs

How Star Trek continues to pave the way forward

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As entrepreneurs know, thinking, feeling, sensing and anticipating “the next big thing” is hardwired in our genes.  However, sometimes we go about the wrong way.  Sometimes?

The gist is as I watch Star Trek The Next Generation for the umpteenth time, I am stunned to see the visionary acumen Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek’s creator had.  Gene tapped into the future and in many ways, helped shape our future.

Case In Point.  Everyone knows about flip phones, fad of the late 90s and early 2000.  My original Qualcomm was one and had amazing features for the time, such as recording voice notes without forcing me to send them to my email, as my Blackberry would incurring charges.  The Original Series had the famous flip communicators.

What is even less known are the round storage disks found on the the very last episode of The Original Series.  20 years later, they show up in our lives as CD Roms.  The list goes on and my favorite is the iPad, which mimics very well The Original Series, The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine’s pads.

What’s Next?  This is where we shouldn’t be afraid or ashamed to look to visionaries and see what we can glean from our future needs.  Visionaries with their stories hint at what people will use in the future.  I am willing to bet Steve Jobs watched Star Trek more than once and got an inkling.  The best way to do it is to play the game: “What if…?”  It starts with the notion that we are doing something in a very convoluted and difficult way.  How can we achieve it better?  Henceforth, the CD Rom, the flip phones, the iPad, etc.  One thing to consider is the following, we have only “taken” technology from Star Trek but not its very rich philosophical questions and fundamentals.  We could surely use some of the wisdom expounded in those shows, in light of the current circumstances.

I’m personally waiting for the transporters as I toy with the notion to write a bible of sorts based on the fundamental principles exposed in the many Star Treks.  Remember, philosophy teachers from ivy leagues asked their student to watch Star Trek episodes to discuss them the following day.  Talk about a Prime Directive!  But in the meantime, I’ll go back to reading Steve Jobs’ biography with the hope I will receive some distant future idea we can implement now… as I nurse a sore throat two days before New Year’s Eve!

Common sense doesn’t mean spending millions

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Find real food at supermarketsThis following story highlights the creativity of man but especially how we can get caught up in the systems we created for ourselves.  Case in point when NASA had to engineer a pen that worked in space, meaning absolute cold, no gravity.  After millions of dollars spent, they had their product.  Russia on the other hand used pencils!

A toothpaste factory had a problem: they sometimes shipped empty boxes, without the tube inside.  This was due to the way the production line was set up.  It is very difficult to have everything happen with timing so precise that every single unit coming out of it is perfect 100% of the time.  Small variations in the environment (which can’t be controlled in a cost-effective fashion) mean you must have quality assurance checks smartly distributed across the line so that customers all the way down to the supermarket don’t get annoyed and buy another product instead.

Understanding the importance, the CEO of the toothpaste factory got the top people in the company together and they decided to start a new project, in which they would hire an external engineering company to solve their empty boxes problem.

The project followed the usual process: budget and project sponsor allocated, RFP, third-parties selected, and six months and $8 Million later they had a fantastic solution—on time, on budget, high quality and everyone in the project had a great time.  They solved the problem by using high-tech precision scales that would sound a bell and flash lights whenever a toothpaste box would weigh less than it should.  The line would stop, and someone had to walk over and yank the defective box out of it, pressing another button when done to re-start the line.

A while later, the CEO decides to have a look at the ROI of the project: amazing results!  No empty boxes ever shipped out of the factory after the scales were put in place.  Very few customer complaints, and they were gaining market share.  “That’s some money well spent!,” he says, before looking closely at the other statistics in the report.

It turns out, the number of defects picked up by the scales was 0 after three weeks of production use.  It should’ve been picking up at least a dozen a day, so maybe there was something wrong with the report.  He filed a bug against it, and after some investigation, the engineers come back saying the report was actually correct.  The scales really weren’t picking up any defects, because all boxes that got to that point in the conveyor belt were good.

Puzzled, the CEO travels down to the factory, and walks up to the part of the line where the precision scales were installed.
A few feet before the scale, there was a $20 desk fan, blowing the empty boxes out of the belt and into a bin.

“Oh, that,” says one of the workers,  “one of the guys put it there ’cause he was tired of walking over… every time the bell rang.”

Simple coaching techniques anyone can use

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Picture, Nick Zart

Here are some tools you can use with and outside of coaching.  Some of them are free, some of them are available for purchase.

Meditation.  Here is a topic that is so often misunderstood.  While some view meditation in the strict sense of Zen Buddhist, rigid, static, striving for that illusive spontaneous self, other see a way to relax.  The bottom line is that meditation helps you connect back with your self, take scope and regroup.  It’s a must for anyone wanting to reclaim their runaway life and none other than high up successful executive and business owners know its merit all too well.

You can start simply on your own by devoting 15 minutes every day by yourself, with yourself.  Find a secluded spot in your home.  If you can, buy yourself something to shield any lights away from from you.  I found MindFold to be particularly effective and anyone can actually build one from scrap.  You can also use noise cancelling headsets, such as Boses Quiet Comfort or others.  Once comfortably seated, close your eyes, and start by observing yourself.  Observe your breath.  Don’t be disturbed by thoughts coming into to your mind.  Simply, in a detached way, let them slip away.  They are not you, nor do they define you.  The are just thoughts.

Binaural Beats:  Binaural beats are interesting and for those who have been reading this blog, I wrote a little about it a year or so ago.  What they do is put a tone in one ear and another one, slightly off-tune in the other in order to balance both hemispheres.  This allows you to go into deep states of relaxation, meditation and even concentration.

The Monroe Institute pioneered this type of work and perfected it over the decades.  Their CDs are available.  Mark Certo hails himself as a sonic alchemist and worked closely with the Monroe Institute.  His CDs called The Tranquility Training Method (TTM) are fantastic and I’ve particularly enjoyed them.

Soul Contract Reading.  The new tool I added for my practice is called Soul Contract Reading.  The system, also called the Holy Numerology of Moses goes back to millennial and has been “reintroduced” in order to facilitate this forward momentum the human race is experiencing.  By phonetically translating each letter to its Hebrew equivalent, a number and “energy” is given and put on a chart.  This charts helps you understand why your life works the way it down and how to make full use of it.  My initial reading was so fascinating and intense, I felt this would be an amazing tool for coaching.

Listening to your heartbeat is very helpful, so is your breath.  After sometime, you will find that inner peace many speak of.  In these states, everything becomes relative and problem solving is done with great ease.

Those are the basic free, if not at least affordable techniques anyone can use.  Still, nothing replaces a certified, professionally trained Coach.

How corporate America went wrong

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The title should really be: How Corporate America Went Wrong, shifting attention from customers to investors.

The gist is the difference from a few decades ago with how major corporations conducted their business and now is striking.  Ultimately, their ever tightening relationship with investors has shifted their focus away from the essential client base.  It’s easy to understand why companies act the way they do, when they pay more attention to investors instead of the customers who buy their products, services go down.

It’s natural for companies to need more money and turn to investors.  Consumers should benefited from this.  But companies saw they could have more profits and headed down the wrong road by relying too much on investors, giving them too much leverage.  The result over the 80s and 90s was that companies courted investors more than their current base clients, alienating themselves.  It’s a naive representation, but its makes the point.

It’s a tricky line between spending time and energy on your clients, while seeking investors.  Investors can bring the much needed extra cash for a company but they come in with demands, sometimes without understand the business.  Case in point, the 12 billion dollars IPO for Groupon is hardly justifiable.

So What Can Be Done?  It will be difficult for corporations worldwide to come back to intelligent management, while rebuilding a sustainable way forward.  If a company focuses on customer service, which has been on a constant deterioration for the past decades, while showing investors it is taking care of business, it will win both.

Why has Apple done so well with only 15% of the smart phone market share?  Its cultures is translated into its products.  It walk the fine line (so far) between being innovative, delivering quality products that are needed and listening to what customers want.  Who cares about a fraction of the market when you pay a premium for products that work better than the competition?

What Can We Do?  The most important role will come from consumers who need to exercise intelligently their use of their credit cards.  By buying form the smaller, yet more competitive company that offers the same service with better products and who still vies for your attention is one way of keeping competition alive.  It sends the message loud and clear to those companies who cater too much to investors demands that go against their customer base.  In other words, once it gets too big, choose another company!  We wouldn’t have monopolies and little to no use for laws against them.

Why am I writing this?  First, I came to the US in the 70s when it was business treated you very, very differently.  Second, I’ve been through a few weeks of dancing to the tune the corporate futility.  My Internet provider speed was well below advertised.  As I started shopping around, it was clear Verizon, the only other “choice” didn’t have a user friendly site where you could get all the information needed before buying.  I guess they think I will just buy without checking the competition out.  As I started shopping for a new cell phone, I went through a similar rigmarole with the big three, and found Metro PCS to offer the best bang for your buck.  See here for this story.

I’ve also been motivated seeing the increasing complexity around internet services.  Apple’s current services is nothing compared to what we’ve come to expect form them.  iTunes had one department that didn’t speak to the Mobile Me one who had no contact with the online store.  I ended up with 3 accounts, an iTunes, website accounts, Mobile Me and a series 1 iPhone that would loose passwords forcing me through a series of futile and utterly frustrating procedure of resetting my password.  To add to it all, none of these passwords could be the ones I used in the past year… You know why, right?  Security!  Certainly, this is not what we expect from Apple and I am no criminal.

And the list goes on and on as America finds itself like a young teenager at the end of a big bash with a buzz and wanting more without knowing how, desperately clinging to how it used to be.  It is safe to say, little to no corporations have given any thoughts as to: “What if our product doesn’t sell?”.  Microsoft invented decades ago the reach out, embrace and choke approach which eventually sterilized competition.  And putting myself in their shoes, I can almost understand these people running those corporations.  They have gone through school that give high degrees based on template solving.  And why not?  After all, it’s the next CEO’s problem…

In the meantime, you have a desperate political scene fighting for relevancy giving us two clear message.  The government will take care of you, on the one hand and work more, on the other.  How about we reclaim our power. which we temporarily gave away?

In the meantime, you can watch this if you need courage, you’re not alone…

Maneuvering the iPhone plans from the big three

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This is going to be a different post but my Blackberry, affectionately called Crackberry due to a crack on the screen is finally walking on its last leg.  The tracking ball fell off the other day, which spells the end of its usability.

The gist is the problem with Blackberrys is once the track ball is gone, your cell phone is close to worthless and can’t maneuver it leaving you stuck.  If Blackberry’s fame is email, without hosting your own servers or using theirs, it’s a corporate tool.

iPhone Plan Hell.  If you think shopping for an iPhone plan is easy, think again.  First you need to see if you really need to have an iPhone, then decide which one and finally which three carrier makes the most sense.

Which iPhone.  You can currently get 3 iPhones as of December 2011, the 3GS, the regular 4 and the very cool 4S.  The difference is the 3GS and 4 don’t have the famed artificial intelligence SIRI the 4S has.  The specs are not the same but a regular user won’t feel much difference between all three.

All iPhones come with a 2 year contract, although AT&T is the only one that offers the 3GS, which you can get for free from Apple, if you sign up for a 2 year contract.  All three offer the 4 and 4S.  Sprint and Verizon use a same technology iPhone, while AT&T a different one.

OK, But What About The Plans?  Sit down, brew yourself a cup of tea.  It will take time to decipher them.  Verizon has the most confusing website and wants you to buy without seeing the complete price first, so avoid it.  Their chat service is slightly better.  AT&T trails behind as far as the complexity of explanations and Sprint has the clearest descriptions.  As of December 2011, Sprint is the only “unlimited” carrier, meaning you should be able to use it’s web without being throttled (slowed down).

Here is a recap of the most basic service plan you can get for an iPhone 4S.  Numbers are per month:

Sprint

Single line: $80 text, web, nights 7, unlimited, 700mn talk time, AAA 10%, roughly $80 per month, roughly $90 without AAA.  Activation fee (?)

Family plan: $150 with the extra iPhone, any mobile unlimited from any carrier, 1500mn talk time and same as above for both lines, AAA 10%.

Verizon

Verizon insists you buy voice and texts seperatly from data.

Single line: $30 will get you 2gb of data, $40 450mn mobile Verizon calls, $10 text 1,000 verizon to Verizon, $70, $100, activation fee $35

Family plan: gives you 700mn for $100 or 1400 = $120, the same data per line for $60 2gb altogether for $200

ATT

The basic plan: text and cell phone is $20, $40 will give 450mn of calling landlines how you would know is your guess, free AT&T mobile to mobile, and a neat feature not seen in a while with roll over minutes, $25 gives you 2gb ($10 for additional gb), $95 per month, with an activation fee of $36

Family plan: $150 will add another line, with 700mn land line calls, 2gb per, not shared.

Finally, I decided to have a look at Metro PCS which claims the best price and to be truly unlimited, unfortunately no iPhones are available.

Metro PCS

There is no contract, you pay on a month to month, whatever day the service bought, you pay the follow month’s day before.  For instance if you buy you phone and service on the 15th, you will pay on the 14th of the following months.

To use their 4G spectrum, Metro PCS has an LG phone that costs $440, the unlimited $60 a month plan, you can add $10 for unlimited international calls for a total of $70.

In the 3G spectrum, there is a Samsung for $141, with $50 regular unlimited, a $60 plan which adds some TV station streaming and you can also get international calls for $10 more.

Family plan: You subtract $10 for both, i.e. a two $60 per month plan becomes $110 a month.

How Much Do I Need?  Therein lies the real problem I suspect Verizon and AT&T want to cash in on as much as possible.  As a rule of thumb, roughly 200 MB will be 10,000 normal emails (no intensive media attachment there), or you could view about 1,150 web pages, or 105 minutes video streaming.  2gb of data will allow you to send about 100,000 emails, or view 11,500 web pages, or 1,050 minutes of video streaming.

Final Thoughts.

How Difficult Can We Make The Plans?  Both Verizon and AT&T score very high on the confusion factor.  Sprint ranks better but I assume it is because they are new into the game and want to snatch the new lucrative market.  Nonetheless, it is very, very confusing shopping for a cell phone plan and it feel carriers deliberately confuse on purpose to make it hard enough for anyone to eventually give up and buy any plan.  The complexity of the explanations is enough to make sure 80% of clients will not understand everything.  Verizon’s website is the worse example.  Maneuvering it was a lesson in futility, luring you “buy” the plans without seeing the complete price.

Unlimited.  Here is another catch phrase that means very little these days.  Unlimited is not really unlimited and so far the only truly unlimited service is Metro PCS and it would seem Sprint, although I’m not sure if they throttle you after a certain amount.  What this means is that when the carrier tags you as a heavy bandwidth consumer, you are throttled.  Instead of getting full speed, they slow you down.  I’m witnessing this with my home internet with Clear Communications.

To make things worse, these findings only apply for this month!  You can be sure that after the holiday, prices and plans will change.  There is really little to no competition in this industry, which we’ve come to see over the decades.  AT&T has the biggest global coverage but Verizon might have you covered in that little tucked away city.  Sprint has a strong Internet back bone and Metro PCS is riding on Sprints network.

Will we see an iPhone on T-Mobile, my current carrier and Metro PCS?  You bet, st some point at least.

Confused yet?  In the end, and for this month only, if you want the latest iPhone, Sprint is the way to go with $80 a month with a AAA membership.  If Android is your choice and coverage is not an issue, i.e., you will say within the confine of big cities, it’s hard to beat Metro PCS prices.  AT&T makes sense for global businessmen and Verizon if you travel to smaller cities within the US.  Watch out for Verizon’s soon-to-come Hotspots.

The Shift’s From Ego to Essence free teleseminar, don’t miss it

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Dear friends,

I’m excited to let you know that The Shift is about to start another powerful free teleseminar with celebrated evolutionary leader Barbara Marx Hubbard and transformational meditation teacher Patricia Ellsberg on The Shift from Ego to Essence.

You will most likely greatly benefit from this call in which they will reveal the keys to shifting from the egoic “local self” to the Essential Self — giving access to divine guidance and the ability to live with grace, confidence, creativity, purpose and joy — particularly needed in these times of great change.  A much needed quality to develop these days.

Please, register for free here:

It’s happening this Monday, November 21st, at 5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern! Don’t worry if you can’t make it live — you can register and you’ll be sent a link to the recording.

Warmly,
Nick

Join me for Global Oneness Day Monday 24

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Dear friends,

I’m happy again to invite you to another top leader summit, the Global Oneness Day on Monday October 24th!

It’s a one-day virtual telesummit featuring 40 inspiring thought leaders such as Ambassador Chowdhury, Neale Donald Walsch, Gangaji, Kenny Loggins, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Lynne McTaggart and many more for free.

You can gain access to these leaders, October 24th, or by recording, and be part of groundbreaking sessions that offer profound insights for creating your life and our world based on the principles of oneness.

You can register for free here.

What Is Global Oneness Day?  Global Oneness Day is an opportunity to connect deeply with a global community of changemakers and heart-centered people. You’ll learn practical steps and actions you can take that will benefit your life and help create a culture of Oneness.

Join me and let’s celebrate our oneness together!

Nick

Social media, what are you and what’s your worth?

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How to use Social Media intelligently

USing social media to listen, not just to sell

I admit, I love social media and I get it.  It’s fun, can be a great tool and of course, it’s not very well used most of the time.

The gist is social media is great.  The varieties of social media channels available cater to almost every type of businesses.  The trick is what do you want to use it for and to do what?

IBM Survey.  IBM had an interesting survey of global companies where CEOs said their biggest difficulty is information management and second, social media.  It turns out companies know how to market to the mass but not to individuals.  Companies spend a lot of money advertising to groups of people but they are not good at reaching out and hearing to individuals.

So how do you reach out to individuals?  How do you get individuals to tell you what they want?

It’s not very difficult if you offer something needed and worthwhile.  You need to compete for 5 to 10 minute attention from individuals who are overwhelmed with a hectic pace of life leaving little time to stop and think.  What makes your question or offering appealing to them?  It’s what you offer.  It can be as simple as giving them enough attention to express themselves, something they would like to see or have, something that would actually make their life easier.  Intrigue them, put out reports, let them ask, and ask back, what should the company provide them.  There is plenty to offer but the key is to offer something they need and can use.

In the meantime, social media is a fun game you can tweak to serve your broadcast platform.  It will not work if all you do is tell people to check out your site or your product.  If you don’t get personal, you won’t get much out of it and be just another sales pitch drowned in a sea of look alike.

So here are some questions to get you going; What is social media?  What does it me to use social network?  What is networking?  Why use it and to what end?  After this go talk to your coach and if you don’t have one, reach out I can help you.

The greatest session I had… today

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Tap The Source

Tapping the source for better decision making

Do you know that Smashing Pumpkin song: “Today”?  That’s a little how I feel.

The gist is breakthroughs are wonderful when they happening but what we choose to do with them is where the real work is.  In order for a breakthrough to happen a few things must be in place.  You must be aware that life has been sending you signs, most of you the time, we disregard them until they become too powerful to neglect.  See my post yesterday.

Stepping Into Your True Nature.  There is a great saying in French, chase away the natural and it will come back running to haunt you.  In my case, most of my adult life, I tried to look like the person I wasn’t.  Needless to say, that doesn’t work in the end.  When things got tough, I applied what I had been taught at school… work harder.  That doesn’t work because you will eventually collapse at some point.  If you do, the only alternative is to truly be yourself.  Once you allow yourself to be, it feels great.  The road there is more difficult.

Honoring Your Purpose.  In the end, it’s a case of honoring your purpose in life.  Trying to be what you are not in order to appease those who care about you is counter productive, for you and them.  You must be who you are deep inside, not supposed to be.

Oh, and my personal story?  Today I actually did the type of coaching I feel is the most natural.  At the request of my client, I took out my pendulum and we asked questions.  It felt genuine, comfortable and at the same time, I saw my real face and it wasn’t proud, righteous or anything like that.  It just was.  Yes, some coach would scoff at this, but other MCC will smile.

Indeed Today is the greatest, day of my life… Can’t wait for tomorrow…  The Smashing Pumpkins.

How to live a balanced life anywhere

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Watching the movie: “The Science of Healing with Dr. Esther Sternberg” made me smile.  Western medicine is discovering the virtues of traditional Mediterranean healthy living…

The gist is many of us know intuitively or by having lived abroad that a healthy involves a life/work balance.  That documentary approaches that topic well.  Dr. Sternberg discovers a century old way of living and it health benefit.  In other word balancing work, play, eat, enjoy and rest makes for a healthy life.

It’s interesting to see the paradigm shift currently happening.  On the one hand, there well established business 1.0 companies making a fortune on consumers not living well, eating poor food and treating ailments.  What happens when more people become vegetarians, vegan and eat organic or local produced foods?

It will be a few interesting upcoming years…