Mitch’s Blog

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it, but I have another blog that’s more for marketing and personal observations called I’m Just Sharing. I mention it because it gives a different perspective on things I think are either fun, troubling, important, or my just wanting to try to sell something.

What’s funny about this is that I know a lot of people who have multiple blogs. Many people like to mix between pure business and fun blogs; some people have all fun, and some have all business. Many are topical. Actually, I have another blog, totally personal, that I’m not sharing with anyone, and I’m presently running a blog for my high school class reunion later this year (see the blogroll), even though it should have been last year; talk about procrastination!

Blogging is a good way to keep in touch with people, get your views out, and show your proficiency. But there is one thing I’d caution against, which is not to start one if you don’t think you can sustain it. Nothing worse than going to someone’s blog and seeing that they haven’t written anything in a year. Sure, every once in awhile a person has a legitimate reason for ending one, but if you have a blog and have only written three times,… looks bad.

So there you go; I hope you enjoy the other one as much as this one.

What is Meebo? It’s a chat application that one can add to their website so that, if signed in, others can write a live message to them and talk to the person who owns or manages the website. In my case, I’ve added the widget onto my main page, so if there are visitors they can talk to me if I’m signed in, or leave me a message if I’m not.

I figure that, for business purposes, this could turn out to be something quite interesting. Some people don’t want to pick up the phone, some people may not want to send email, but if they see I’m online at the time they just might want to talk to me that way. Hey, it’s worth a test, and if it’s a success, then it’s all good, and if it’s not, then I remove it and move on. But we have all this technology to help us do business, so we might as well try it out from time to time.

Anyway, if you get an opportunity, visit my main page just to see it, and if you’re in the mood, send me a message.

It’s launch day for my new ebook Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool, and the special introductory price is only $9.95.

Just so anyone who read the previous post on this topic knows, this link is different than the other one. It went to a pre-launch page that will be gone in a day or so; this one goes directly to the book.

Now, a sidebar. One of my goals for this year was to write a book. This isn’t the book I was planning on writing, but it counts. One never knows in which direction a goal will take them; sounds a lot like the laws of attraction to me. Now let’s see how sales go.

I’ve written a new ebook titled Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool. Going to that page will allow you to put your name on a mailing list for the launch, which will be on Monday. Who’s the book for? Well, check out the page!

For many of you who read my blog, this may seem like a departure from my normal topics, but I also own a business called SEO Xcellence that builds websites and optimizes them as much as possible regarding their internet presence. The new book isn’t long, but it will give information to those business people who either don’t have a website or have one but aren’t doing anything with it.

So, take a look, and invite your friends to take a look.

Sometimes it takes a hammer to make someone do the right thing, and unfortunately, if you ask me, that’s the wrong reason.

In this case, I’m talking about Walmart and its reversal of what was initially a bad decision in trying to take back money it paid for a woman’s health care. The quick detail is that a woman named Debbie Shank was injured in a car accident some years ago when a truck plowed into her car. She worked at Walmart stocking shelves, but had their health plan. Her injuries were so severe that she was permanently brain damaged, had no short term memory, and is now in a nursing home. Even after a lawsuit and settlement, her husband had to divorce her so she would qualify for long term health care benefits from her state. After the lawsuit, in which they were awarded $1 million, and after the lawyers take, the family was left with $417,000. Anyone who knows anything about health care costs can calculate that amount would have only covered a few years at best. Oh yeah, as a sidebar, her son was killed in Iraq, and she can’t even remember that.

Welmart has a policy which has, in fine print no less, a rider that says if anyone receives money from a lawsuit, Walmart has the right to take back all monies they’ve paid towards that person’s care. In essence, they went after this family for $470,000, which this family didn’t have. It went to court, and it was ruled that the family had to pay back around $285,000, which they still didn’t have. The husband was desperate, and the story ended up on CNN.

That’s when it got ugly for Walmart . This is a company that likes to tout itself as America’s company, employee and home friendly, and those who heard the story didn’t take kindly to it. I even told my wife a couple of days ago that I couldn’t see myself going back to Walmart if this was how they were going to treat people. I understand rules and regulations, but I hate sneakiness and I hate bullies. I also don’t like rules that have no room for individual review; if ever there was a case that needed one, this was it.

In the end, earlier today Walmart announced that they would not be pushing this family any longer in trying to collect the money. They apologized to the family and pledged to see what else they could do to help. They finally did the right thing, but for the wrong reason. They’re trying to protect their reputation; just how much did they care about this while they were dragging the family through court, making them spend money they didn’t have?

Still, the husband can now relax, take comfort, and go back to worrying only about his wife (I know, former wife, but that’s only a technicality). The powers that be at Walmart have finally done the right thing. And Walmart can hope that this story just goes away.

I don’t sleep well or enough. I’m at my computer many, many hours working and communicating with the world. I never really thought much beyond my own sleep habits; now I am.

A survey released Monday by the National Sleep Foundation found that people average six hours and 40 minutes of sleep a night on weeknights, even though they estimated they’d need roughly another 40 minutes of sleep to be at their best. Roughly one-third of those surveyed said they had fallen asleep or become very sleepy at work in the past month.

That’s not all. People are also trying to squeeze in more time for themselves and their families; the average wake up is at 5:35 a.m. and it’s followed by about two hours and 15 minutes at home before heading out to work, with the average bedtime being 10:53.

Of course, I don’t hit those figures. When I’m home, I usually get to bed by 3AM (though I’m trying to get better at that lately) and I usually wake up by 9:30. When I’m on the road, I try to get to bed by 1:30 so I can wake by 7:30. In both cases, I usually try to find time to catch a short nap just to give myself a boost.

Hopefully most of you are rested enough to work as well as possible. People on the survey said they often get drowsy at work, and sometimes fall asleep. I know that how one eats can have a negative effect also; not eating breakfast or eating too many carbs throughout the day can make you lethargic, and I’ve had to learn how to eat much differently when I’m on the road than I do when I’m working from home.

All of us have to learn how to relax, and do only as much as we can so we can still get our full rest. We all don’t need the same amount of sleep, but it’s still recommended that we try to get 8 hours. Heck, when is the last time I actually slept 8 hours? I’ll have to ask my wife.

I’m going to be writing my next newsletter on privacy, and I wanted to mention something about it now, ahead of time.

In essence, there is no such thing as privacy anymore, especially as it pertains to work. More and more companies are penalizing employees for behavior outside of work, and that’s scary. A friend of mine mentioned that there are many things he doesn’t do on Facebook because his employers have access to his profile, and he can’t take any chances in what they might do to him if they saw something inappropriate there. I work for myself, and kind of understand that type of thinking, though my profile is limited to certain people, but I also feel that some things aren’t appropriate being attached to me on that site.

No one gets a free pass anymore on what they say or what they do. In many cases I think it’s fair; no one should be allowed to say a bunch of hateful things about a group of people and still feel they can work with those people as if nothing had happened. And if others are mad at them for those beliefs and thoughts, well, those are the consequences for bad behavior. In some cases I don’t think it’s fair; just because you decide you want to smoke outside of work in a place where smoking is allowed, even inside your home, shouldn’t give any employer the right to determine that you’re not of enough quality to work for them, even if they pay for your insurance.

Basically, be prepared folks; cameras are going up everywhere, you can find almost anything about anyone in the internet, and listening devices are cheap. Be on your guard, and your best behavior, especially if you’re dependent upon someone else for your money.

Okay, here’s the initial story; I’m not sure if this link will work, so I’ll highlight it, just in case.

Ten Filipino nurses resigned from the Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Center in Smithtown, NY, at the same time. They said they left because conditions were dangerous, they’d brought their concerns up to management, believed nothing was going to get done, and resigned, without notice, because they believed if they gave two weeks notice the company would find charges to hit them all with and take away their licenses. And now, they find themselves under indictment by the Suffolk County DA’s office for endangering the welfare of a child and endangering the life of a physically disabled person.

I’ve got mixed emotions on this one. On the one hand, people should be able to do whatever they feel is necessary as it pertains to themselves. There’s never really been a law that says a person has to give notice, but healthcare can be a different animal. When nurses decide to go on strike, there’s little that can be done other than hiring temporary nursing staff and hoping to recruit some of them to work for a facility. I guess the difference is that, in that situation, management knows the strike is coming and is ready to put a plan in place. These nurses complaints weren’t new, but they felt things were getting critical, and they didn’t anything to happen to them. I don’t know anything personally about this nursing home, but I have seen other situations where management in nursing homes and hospitals have been underhanded enough to try to ruin someone else’s career; I can understand the fear.

On the other hand, this rehab facility has mainly children in critical conditions, and having 10 nurses just up and leave without notice will immediately put a strain on already short finances, possibly put patients in danger because the remaining staff, already overworked, will have to put in even more hours, which obviously isn’t good for anyone.

Still, criminal charges? I’m thinking that’s a bit much. A review by the state board found that no patients were liable, but that doesn’t seem to have altered the DA’s mind any. But it begs the question as to just how much responsibility does anyone have after taking care of themselves first, and I don’t mean moral responsibility. For instance, in some communities in California, they’ve tried to pass laws which says police can arrest anyone they suspect might have information about a crime because witnesses in those communities aren’t usually forthcoming in telling law enforcement what they saw. Thing is, there’s no enforcement because the police have no clue who to arrest, nor the manpower to do it. During a tragedy, does a person have the responsibility to save others more than they have in trying to save themselves? Are we all expected to take a bullet for the person standing next to us if we happen to see the shooter and they don’t?

The nurses sought legal counsel before they all resigned, which means they didn’t just decide to leave without any forethought. If the nurses get indicted, the lawyer should also get indicted. However, I don’t believe anyone should get indicted. This happened in April 2006 after all; everyone has moved on, no patients were harmed, and, in my opinion, the DA is just grandstanding; it is an election year after all. The bigger question,… I can’t answer that one for anybody else.

Every once in awhile, you have to decide whether it’s prudent to continue a battle or pull back and drop out of one. Well, battle may be a bit strong, but it’s still accurate, especially as we still have soldiers over in Iraq. However, that’s not what this post is about.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve deleted a couple of posts from a long time ago. Both had started causing me grief, but for much different reasons.

One of the posts was causing me grief because, for some reason, it keeps accepting spam that my spam blocker can’t seem to catch. Having one piece of spam here and there happens; having the amount of spam that I was getting on that one post was amazing. It seemed to be an innocuous post at the time, talking about blogging in general; I’m not sure why spam could find its way around it, but it did. So, I decided it was time for that one to go.

The other post was also innocuous, but it was supposed to be motivational. You know, every once in awhile you come across something that makes you feel good. Then you might decide to share it. I’ve posted links and videos here in the past, but this was one of the first I’d ever posted. I never thought anything about it, other than it made me feel good. However, it seemed that many people had a problem with it, that problem being that they wanted proof that the story was real. Personally, I didn’t care because I thought the point of the story was more important than anything else; apparently, I’m not in the norm. Being that it, also, was something I’d posted more than 18 months ago, I’d assumed it would just pass, but some things have very long lives. In the end, I decided it was a story I didn’t really want to talk about any longer, so I deleted it, as I had the other one.

To some, it might seem like I backed down; nothing can be further from the truth. Here’s the thing; as an employer, or manager in a company, you make a decision, and you live with the decision. If things go wrong, you have the opportunity to fix it. However, if the same thing keeps coming up, someone may have to go; that’s just how business is. Outside of the workplace, things might have to be changed up just a bit. Just because you believe something is right, unless you’re prepared to go to the mat all the way, sometimes it’s just better to remove something, either the problem, or yourself. Do you keep the peace, or do you cause even more disagreement.

I choose to try to bring some peace, if only to myself. Too many other, more important things, in the world to deal with. And, especially, in this blog.

I went to a networking luncheon put on today by the Greater Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, of which I’m a member. It was held at Outback Steakhouse in Clay, NY, and I was told it was there last year also, which means it must have been two years ago that I went to the last holiday luncheon because I remember it was at a different location.

There were at least 65 to 70 people there, and that was only because some people who had planned on coming didn’t show up for whatever reason. No matter. As a true networking event, I’d have to say the setting wasn’t great for it. Anyone who’s ever been to the Outback knows how it’s laid out. It’s not really conducive to that large a group as far as walking around and getting to talk to everyone, especially with all those booths set up. It was also hard for the officers of the organization to speak to the crowd at times, because people overall would get so caught up in their own conversations, sometimes with their backs to the speakers (who they probably couldn’t hear that well anyway) that at least 50% of it was wasted time.

However, when we were allowed to do what we came to do, which was to eat and get to know the people at our own tables, things improved greatly. I knew one of the people at my table already, as she works for a temporary staffing company. One of the other two I met runs a communications and copier business; that’s an interesting combination. The other person works with Prudential Realty, but was fascinating because he used to own a couple of Dunkin’ Donuts franchises, and I gained some great insight on why things taste different today than they used to; turns out it’s not just my imagination after all.

Here’s the thing. Getting out and networking is essential for anyone who’s in business. There are all types of associations for all types of businesses, or positions. For instance, right now I’m a member of two Chambers of Commerce, two medical finance groups, a consultant’s group, and a training organization; there are some others I’m sure, but they’re not coming to me. When I was working for hospitals, I belonged to the same two medical finance groups, and two others that had to do with the profession, and sometimes got invited to others that had to do with technical issues I knew nothing about, but were still healthcare related. There are employee groups, mastermind groups, motivational groups of all types,… in a way, I guess one could say that there are even social groups that have a networking component to them also.

In other words, there’s something for everyone, and it’s important that we all partake in something every once in awhile, if only to help keep our sanity. Sure, I meet people here and there, but what turns out to be most important sometimes is learning that someone else either has had the same problems I’ve had, or still have, or having someone ask me for advice on an issue that I had in my past. Any time you get to unofficially either help to guide someone else or learn something from someone else, or just share experiences with someone else, you grow; and growth is what business is all about, if you’re lucky.

So, take some time and go network; the holiday season is perfect for it.