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Negotiation Tactics and The Poison of Emotion
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“Don’t take it personally… it’s just business.”

No doubt you have heard these words spoken by an opposing party to a business deal. Many people have heard these words, and they usually followed a bone-crushing blow from the other side. As if to make any wound acceptable, they remind you they wouldn’t do it on a personal level, but only in a business context.

As if the two are separable.

The reality is, personal and business are really not separable, and this is why: when you negotiate a deal, you do not negotiate with a retail shop, or a construction crew, or a brand of product – you negotiate with a person. And that makes it personal, every time.

Because negotiations are personal, there usually are emotions involved. Humans are emotional creatures; in fact, we are the only emotional creatures. We are unique from the rest of the created world in that we have wills, intellects and emotions. These three trademarks of the human psyche are integral to any negotiation, and the more value involved, the more these three human traits play a role.

When emotions take the stage in a negotiation, things can get skewed very quickly, and what began as a logical journey to a reasonable conclusion becomes an intense entanglement of anger, pride, and despondency.

When people get angry, they let reason go to the wind. “Okay, fine,” they say, “if he is going to treat me like I’m stupid, I’ll make sure he knows I’m not.” Then an unwise, unproductive decision is made.

When a negotiation becomes a showdown of who can prove they are getting the better deal, there’s a battle of pride, and the two sides just continue to try to top the other and the negotiation goes nowhere.

When someone feels like the breath was just knocked out of them, like when the opposing party downplays or even criticizes what the other party thought was the most valuable element of the deal, a hurt, dejected emotion surfaces and there is an underlying resentment from there on through the rest of the process.

Emotions are poison to negotiations.

A skilled negotiator who understands how to apply effective negotiation tactics will do all she can to leave emotions at the door… and lock the door behind her until an agreement is reached.

In many negotiations, emotions are expected to arise, and some situations almost guarantee them. When two people who have lived in their house for thirty years, reared their children there, made lifelong friendships with the neighbors, and remodeled the home with their own blood and sweat and tears, realize they are at a point where they must sell, they are not going to sell easily. You can bet these folks are going to have some serious emotions when accepting an offer to buy their home. They are selling a part of themselves and may need some serious motivation, which could be an irresistible, bullet proof, over-asking price offer from a buyer.

And this can mean a tough negotiation ahead.

High octane deals can create problems, but there are negotiation tactics to deal with them. Here are a few to consider:
- Understand the other party may be putting on a front
Some of the nicest, most pleasant people become monsters at the negotiating table. Why? Many reasons. For one, certain people believe you are supposed to be rude and hard-nosed in a negotiation. Yes, they are wrong, but telling them about it is useless. The important thing to remember is you must absorb the abrasiveness and harsh language with grace. Let them be as assinne as they want, but don’t let it affect you. Even if you are burning inside because the buyer just told you the mural your friend painted on the building side will be painted over as soon as the recording ink dries, DON’T LET THEM KNOW IT. Emotion is fine; expressing emotion in a business dealing is weakness.

You must be strong whether you feel it or not, because it is not so much how you feel that counts, it is how the other side perceives how you feel.
- View everything from the standpoint of fair market value
The fact that you hand planned those deck boards and involved your kids through the whole project really doesn’t matter. It may make the deck more valuable to you, but it doesn’t to your buyer. A deck is worth what the fair market value for decks is. Nothing more. In a similar way, the fact that it took you a full year of pursuit to secure that particular client doesn’t affect the value to the buyer of your business. The client is worth the fair market value of their revenue generation for the business. Nothing more.

Leaving personal emotions out of the deal will help a negotiator to view the value and transferability of his assets properly, and encourage a healthy and balanced negotiation.
- Have a third party do the negotiating
Usually big corporations involved in mergers and acquisitions and buy-outs employ the services of an attorney or attorneys to handle the negotiations. This is partly because of the technical know-how required in complicated deals, but it is more than that. Corporate execs know that to have an outside, neutral person to handle the dealing removes any personal element (or at least most of it) from the negotiations. The attorney’s job is not on the line, nor is his standing in the company. But the executive’s is, and there is power in removing those personal elements which can make a party weaker.

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Source by Rhett Kniep

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January 25, 2020
The Life of Ezra Pound by Noel Stock

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A review of The Life of Ezra Pound by Noel Stock must begin by acknowledging the phenomenal achievement of its author. It is comprehensive, detailed, forensic, appreciative, critical and illuminating, a massive achievement of analysis, research and insight. At around 200,000 words it is also a commitment, not for the fainthearted or for anyone with only a passing interest in either poetry or the history of the twentieth century. But it is also something else, something that, despite the magnificence of its scholarship, provokes this reader to focus on issues that are external to the text, itself. But more of that later: first, the book.

Ezra Pound was undeniably one of the greatest figures of twentieth century literature. Unlike his illustrious contemporaries and friends, however, Joyce, Eliot and Yeats among them, his name has seemed to slip from the mainstream since his death in 1972. I read his great achievement, the Cantos, when I was at college. I did not understand them. In some ways they feel less like a work of poetry than a lifetime achievement, a creatively conceived and sometimes over-presented commonplace book into which fell, in poetic form, a distillation, a reflection or sometimes mere mention of whatever disparate material that Pound obsessed over at the time. The Cantos were Pound’s creative life, but we must not forget the massive amount of other material, his journalism, music, prose and economics, for want of a more accurate word.

Pound was one of the founders and movers of literary and artistic movements: Imagism and the Vorticism among them. They were perhaps not the most enduring of directions. He was American but seemed more at home in England and then Italy, neither of which chooses to honour his achievements on their soil. But what is strongly felt about this man from the start is his conviction of, perhaps his obsession with his own genius. He was utterly sure he would contribute to the arts and perhaps even change their direction. He seemed to consider his legacy immortal, even before it had been created. He felt he was something new, original and enduring. And all this when apparently no-one even wanted to read his material, or formally give him time of day. And not only did he seem to deny his failures, he didn’t even seem to register them. The limitations were always somewhere else. In the early years, he thus seemed like a self-publicist, with is achievements acknowledged before they were achieved, like a modern self-published author who writes five-star, best-seller reviews of his own work. Nowadays, that surely would never do!

But eventually, perhaps by sheer dogged application alongside considerable talent, Pound received the recognition he thought he deserved, though perhaps never in our own contemporary, blunt instrument yardstick of success – sales. Certain academics loved him. Others did not. He himself had high hopes of a Nobel Prize.

Noel Stock includes copious quotations from Pound’s verse, always with critical assessment, sometimes with criticism. The Cantos were so far reaching in their intellectual coverage that it may appear from the outside that no-one without the full gamut of requisite skills would understand them. And given that these skills comprise, amongst other things, a knowledge of Dante and medieval Italian poetry, Confucius, Mencius and Lao-Tze in the original Chinese, troubadour songs in their original langue d’oc, Noh theatre texts in Japanese, Pound’s own experimental English, besides knowledge of the Classics and their metres, one might presume that there might be few modern readers of his work. This is probably accurate. But there is more to the modern shunning of Pound’s work than its overtly elitist intellectual demands. And it is here that this review needs to diverge from literature, poetry and indeed Ezra Pound, himself, to address the related concepts of fascism and racism.

The main reason why today Pound’s name remains passé is his espousal of fascist ideas and his overt antisemitism. He went to live in Italy. He regarded Mussolini as rather a good thing. In Italy at the time he was hardly alone in this belief. He adopted Hitler’s aggressive antisemitism because he was fundamentally opposed to capitalism, if it meant what he saw as a banking and economic system dominated by Jews, the foundation of this belief being a bank owned by the Rothchild family. He also took to broadcasting pro-fascist propaganda (in Italian and English) on radio during World War II.

Normally, my reviews are consciously detached. I try to review the book, not myself. Likes and dislikes are, to me, wholly nebulous and indefinable and even passing whims that are always less significant than considerations of communication or achievement of ends. In the case of The Life of Ezra Pound, the subjective “I” must be included, since our appreciation or not of this poet’s writing now seems to depend wholly on our individual take on his politics, despite his being be neither analytical or pro-active in his views, as this biography clarifies. In some ways, his politics were as transient as his current interests, as expressed in the meanderings of the Cantos. But what now can we make of Pound? Should we even try to understand him? Is dismissal the preferred option? I would say that he is worth the effort. Not the use of “I”! And this is not because I think Pound is a particular genius, overlooked or even readable. And I certainly do not see his actions as pardonable! And here I beg your pardon for making this book review become something personal, something about me and not about the book, but I assure you it is relevant. Please exit here if you are wary of the personal.

I remember in the recent past a well-known British television presenter saying on-air that the music of Wagner was not played in her household because of the composer´s antisemitism. I remember another celebrity saying that antisemitism was the flavour of Wager´s age, and that rejection of the composer´s work on those grounds alone ought to prompt a similar rejection of everything artistic or otherwise that came out of mid-nineteenth century German culture.

In the not too distant past I re-read Adam Smith´s Wealth of Nations. In my review I concentrated on those aspects of the analysis that might contradict the completely neo-liberal interpretation of the work. I was perhaps wrong to do so, but I wanted to challenge the idea that there is just one way to read Smith´s notion of free trade. Embedded within Smith´s thesis, however, are assumptions about human progress and worthiness. The Hindoo, the Mussulman and even the Catholic have their place in history and civilisation, but the heathen is judged to be a primitive sub-human. I do not recall Smith referring to ´The Buddhist´, but that may be my own failure of memory. In today´s politics, how many of the neo-liberal, perhaps neo-conservative supporters of their own notions of Smith´s concepts of free trade also regard those not associated with an organised great religion as both uncivilised and sub-human? And, given that the assumption appears to run throughout the work, should that alone disqualify Smith´s views on other subjects or his contribution to economics? Another position that almost dominates sections of The Wealth of Nations is that there is no economic activity that is or could be greater than the total that describes the state. How many of these same free marketeers would share Smith´s oft-stated revulsion of the very idea of a transnational corporation, which he regarded as necessarily market-distorting and almost automatically corrupt? This is recognized in antitrust and anti-monopoly legislation, but how often is this side of Smith´s work quoted? My point here is that we can choose to be selective, and usually do.

I am tempted here to introduce the composer Anton Webern into the argument. A member of the second Viennese School, Webern espoused the atonalism of his associate, Schoenberg. Webern was perhaps the artistic opposite of Ezra Pound, being prone to destructive self-criticism and a desire for an extreme succinctness of expression. But Webern, like Pound, thought that fascism might be more sympathetic towards “high art” to which he aspired than the mechanisms of capitalism that concentrated on what it could sell. He thus initially espoused fascism, eventually to his own and his associates´ cost.

After this considerable diversion, there is eventually a moral, and that is to beware anyone touting answers, especially those based on interpretations of the past in anything other than its own terms. Which brings me to Brexit! It might seem quite a jump, but it does follow. Trust me!

I have recent personal experience, albeit apocryphal, that suggests the prime motivation among the British working class leave voters who surely swung the referendum result was “getting rid of all the foreigners.” I use quotes to emphasise that this was expressed to me personally and verbatim, with stress on the “all”. I had just finished The Life of Ezra Pound and I felt immediately a strange yet strong link with Pound´s antisemitism, which was founded on nothing less than trying to find someone to blame.

Perhaps we should not judge Wagner, Adam Smith or even Ezra Pound using the moral perspective of our own time. For if we did that, and rejected any espousal of either racism or religious bigotry, how much of our human past would we retain? And, given the above Brexit opinion, is the moral perspective of our time significantly different from that of the 1930s, or even the 1850s, or 1770s or indeed any other time in our conflict-ridden blame game of history?

The Life of Ezra Pound is a forensic biography of a poet. It describes a life lived in its historical and cultural context. Like all books committed to communicating its subject, it is a masterpiece that takes the reader way beyond the confines of its subject and thereby achieves a permanent relevance. Revisit this past. We must never deny it existed or forget its consequences. But it reminds us that as individuals, communities and societies, there is no rule that precludes the repetition of error. And neither is there any rule that insists that a current moral ground need be any higher than any other existing folly, contemporary or past.

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Source by Philip Spires

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January 23, 2020
Minimalist Cooking – Kick the Marketer Out of the Kitchen

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Minimalist cooking is about simplicity. It is about reducing everything from ingredient lists, shopping trips, anxiety, social fears and more.It is about not letting these tyrannies and the greatest overarching tyrant of all, the marketer, from sucking the lifeblood out of something that should be life affirming, a source of great fulfillment and above all else fun. Remember that it is the marketer who tells you that you have to be the provider of perfection at the dinner table otherwise you are a bad parent, a failure, someone who should be shunned by strangers and disowned by your children. Haven’t got that expensive spice in the rack? Well, you’ll just have to lose a couple of hours driving to the store, guzzling gas, polluting the planet, raising your blood pressure and exhausting yourself to the point where you will enjoy neither the cooking, the eating or the socializing that should all be the highlights of a day. Alright, that was a little over the top but the point is important. We really do need to get out from under the Marketer, he is not our friend.

Banishing the marketer leaves room for all sorts of other stuff, exciting stuff like your own thoughts and decisions. The marketer would have told you that you had to have a rice cooker because that is the only way to cook rice and, more importantly, that your social group would have regarded you as an abject failure if you didn’t have one. Now you can make a decision firmly based in logic. Marketers hate logic. Are you going to be cooking rice more than once a week? If so a rice cooker would be a good purchase, once a year and it would be best to muddle through with a saucepan. It is not complicated. Incidentally, if some in your social group does regard you as an abject failure for sticking with the saucepan it is probably time to subject them to the process described.

Now, try this process with the stuff that currently takes up shelf and cabinet space in your kitchen. Do you really use that pasta strainer often enough to justify the space it takes up? Do you need fifteen saucepans and five frying pans? or a tool for every single kitchen related task that you may or may not do in your lifetime? Throw the excess out. On second thoughts don’t throw it out, give the rice cooker to your friend who does cook rice everyday and take the rest to the local thrift store.

Now, extend this process to your cooking ingredients and you are well on the way to having a minimalist kitchen. Kick out the marketer and the rest will follow. Space will appear in your kitchen as if by magic but perhaps more importantly a space will be created inside your head for you to fill as you please.

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Source by Steve A Wolfe

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January 23, 2020
Fugazi – 5 Dollar Shows, 10 Dollar Albums And 1,000,000 Dollar Passion

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Few bands in recent years have enjoyed the critical acclaim that this influential rock band has received. Formed in 1987 by the remnants of crucial hardcore bands Embrace and Rites of Spring, this band has reached the title of underground legends. This reputation is not the result of their evolution of hardcore punk and their experimentation with several other musical genres but of their ethics and ideals. This essay’s purpose is to expose one of the best bands of the American underground. Fugazi is composed of vocalist and guitarist Ian Mackaye, vocalist and guitarist Guy Picciotto, bassist Joe Lally, and drummer Brendan Canty.

To start to chronicle Fugazi’s history, one must first look at their hardcore roots. Ian Mackaye was the vocalist of the iconic and often called “definitive” hardcore punk band Minor Threat formed in 1980. Minor Threat has a legendary status in the punk scene because of their music, their ideas and their approach. After Minor Threat disbanded in 1983, Mackaye went to form Embrace in 1985. Meanwhile, Guy Picciotto was part of Rites of Spring, often called the “first and definitive emocore band,” formed in 1984. These two influential bands were part of the movement known as “Revolution Summer,” an attempt to change the punk scene to more melodic music and introspective lyrics; several hardcore bands from the 80’s had attracted a lot of violence and intolerance because of their aggressive music and raging lyrics. The two bands were short-lived, and their members joined other groups. Ian Mackaye then formed a trio with Joe Lally and Colin Sears, who left and was replaced by Brendan Canty. Fugazi is a Vietnam acronym for bad combat scenarios that stands for F*cked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In. After a few shows they decided to add Picciotto into the mix and continued playing for several years.

Fugazi are very difficult to classify and labeling them into a single genre is nearly impossible and, in some ways, insulting. Their music integrates elements of punk, hardcore, noise rock, and even soul, with innovative rhythms influenced by funk, jazz, reggae and dub. In fact, they have been categorized as post punk and post hardcore by many critics because their music is an evolution, progression and reaction to hardcore punk. This band is also notable because of the interlocking guitars of Picciotto and Mackaye, which stay in a balance as equals, unlike most bands that have a leading guitar and a rhythm guitar. Also, the contrast in both guitarists singing styles is fascinating. Mackaye’s hardcore roots make his singing be way more straightforward and anthem-like while Picciotto prefers a more abstract way of singing. Their experimental sounds have influenced many bands, like At the Drive-In and are regarded as one of the best bands of the last twenty years.

Just as famous as their groundbreaking music are their ethics and ideals. They’re one of those hard-to-find bands that, while keeping their DIY punk ethics, still achieved mainstream success. They normally charged form $5 to $10 per show and insisted that their shows be open for everybody, age notwithstanding. They don’t sell merchandise like posters, pins, patches or t-shirts because they thought that having a person managing merchandise involved more costs and they wanted to keep the prices of their albums and shows at a minimum. At their shows, Fugazi encouraged the underage fans to wear black exes on their hands to stop them from consuming alcohol, particularly, a tradition created by Mackaye during his days at Teen Idles, a band older than Minor Threat. Much of Fugazi’s reputation comes from word of mouth. They had the reputation of powerful, cathartic shows and an eagerness to play anywhere. Another famous characteristic of Fugazi is that they, unlike most bands from their time, discouraged slam dancing, fist fights, and moshpits during their shows and are ready to stop playing and ask the problematic people to step out with their money back so they can continue their show.

Fugazi have proved to be one of the most revered bands in the American Indie and Punk scenes because of their contribution to music. Just the fact that they never sold out when they had a myriad chances proves how valuable their music was for them, an admirable quality. In this conformist and corporative world where sounds are synthesized and copied to manipulate the masses, those underdogs that rebel against the mainstream and seek to achieve musical pleasure are the ones that are worth listening to. Many bands have taken Fugazi’s example but no band will ever compare to the greatness that was Fugazi, the band that could.

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Source by Juan Diego Alvarado

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January 23, 2020
Book Review Of Millionaire Fastlane

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Book Review of Millionaire Fastlane by M.J. Demarco

This book is one of the best books on Entrepreneurship in which the author lays out five commandments to be on the Millionaire Fastlane. According to the author, until and unless the business complies with the five commandments, they are not destined to be successful. These commandments are:

Commandment of Need, Entry, Control, Scale and Time (NECST).

Commandment of Need:

Millionaires affect lives of millions of people by adding some values to their lives and hence are millionaires. If the marketplace does not care about your product or service then it is not going to add value to the marketplace and it is a failed venture before it takes off. So, every business should first figure out if there is a need for the service or product your business is going to deliver or not.

So, we have seen test products being sold for free to test the water. All they are doing is trying to figure out if there is any demand or not.

People often start business with wrong reasons. They are good at something and very skilled and open a business about it. But if the marketplace does not care about it, it’s going to be a failure because marketplace is a selfish place. It does not care what you want, what you have, how good you are. All it cares about it is what is it for them. If it adds some value to their lives then they will buy it otherwise not. So, it’s a big eye opener for me and could be for so many budding entrepreneurs.

Commandment of Entry:

This is the second commandment to successful business. If the barrier to entry is very easy it means millions will be doing the same thing and you will not have the ability to scale your business but rather will have to decrease the price and compete those millions. Usually war of price harms all the parties. For example if creating a website and writing a blog and generate income is your business then there is not enough barrier to entry unless you try to add something extra value to the marketplace which not anyone else has added yet. An example which the author gives few times is when he thought about starting Limo business. He found it failed both the first and second commandments. There was no need for one more limo business and barrier was very low to enter into this business.

Commandment of Control:

If you have no control over your business and you have given entire authority to another party, you are doomed to failure.

Many entrepreneurs start a company and then hire a CEO or CFO to completely take control of operation or finance. They know nothing about what is going on and that is the recipe to failure. Especially when entrepreneurs do not have any basic financial knowledge like what is loan mortgage, how to calculate simple interest but hire an expert to help them make decisions. Since they themselves cannot take a second look at the decisions made by their advisers, chances are that they might screw up and entrepreneur will have to bear the loss.

One of the examples given in the book about the benefit of controlling the business is given as the following. If you are a doctor working at a private-care facility it’s natural to think that you are on the fastlane because your magnitude (price/unit) is large and that will increase the net profit and hence wealth. But, the control of the private care facility is not held by the doctors but by the owner. So, it’s him who is on the fastlane not the doctor who depends on his intrinsic value to increase the wealth.

Commandment of Scale:

The author gives an example of a burger stall outside a supermarket. No matter how much the owner tries, he cannot scale his business and reach out to customers outside of the supermarket. So, this business violates the commandment of scale. But an e-store that sells some product in the internet has unlimited number of customers and hence has the capacity to scale his business to unlimited level. However, if the entrepreneur can create franchise of any burger store then he has the ability to scale and will be on the fastlane.

The author gives an example of a quote by the billionaire Mark Cuban who said it only one business to be successful. So, it’s important that we undertake projects which can be scaled up. In baseball terms, take swing for home runs not singles. If you do decide to play singles, you have to replicate the effort many more times.

The Fastlane wealth equation is:

Wealth = Net Profit + Asset Value

Net Profit = Units sold * Unit Profit

The leverage is created by the units sold. If you are selling burgers on the supermarket lot, you are limiting the leverage and hence you are on the speed limit of 15 mph road. Also, you cannot increase the price of the burger so the unit profit cannot be controlled as well.

So, either you have to be able to reach millions of people to increase the Units Sold quantity or sell at very high price to extra wealthy clients to increase the unit profit values.

Commandment of time:

Time is the scarcest resource we have. Most people spend money frugally and time freely. That according to the author is exactly the wrong way to the road to wealth. Time is limited and money is abundant. Only difference between successful and unsuccessful people is the way they spend their time. The former value each moment of their life and spend it to increase their self-worth. The latter waste it on fulfilling their immediate desires like watching TV series, indulging in games etc. for long period of time etc.

As per the author, fastlane is not an easy path but sure it should be a fast way to earn wealth.

As a fastlaner, our goal should be to automate the travel. If you have a business which requires you to dedicate each moment of your life all the time and always have to trade time for money, it’s a job masked as a business. It’s a money tree that never grows.

It’s normal to work more than 80 hours per week in the starting phase of a business but it’s not normal to work like that for the rest of the life which is a normal for most of the people working normal life. One of the famous quotes from the book which is often used outside as well is about how most of the people define as normal. Normal is to wake up at 6 am, fight traffic, work 8 hours or slave 8 hours Monday to Friday, save 10% and repeat for 50 years. Normal is to believe that stock market will make us rich and fastest car and bigger house will make us happy. The definition of normal is corrupted by the society and we are conditioned to believe that. In short, the author believes, normal is modern day slavery and that’s why only few have the courage and the intelligence to come out of normalcy and drive on a millionaire’s fastlane.

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Source by Manju Pradhanang

Views: 0

January 23, 2020
Lip Biting Habit – The Psychology Behind Our Habits

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Lip Biting from this articles perspective is the constant chewing on the skin inside your mouth, often referred to as cheek biting or cheek chewing. This is a repulsive habit and like many habits can be very difficult to stop. This habit likely started out from feelings of stress or anxiety. It might also have started if you had a teeth brace and the metal would catch on the skin of your inner cheek and would tear a thin layer of skin off, not doing any real harm. However, this would mean you would roll your tongue over the lose skin and then want to bite it off. You use your fingers to push the skin towards your teeth and bite the excess skin away. Quite oddly, this is actually quite pleasurable and so you continue to bite more skin away.

Whether you are lip biting due to stress, anxiety or just perceived pleasure, you have created a relationship between the thought you are having and the action you take. You see, the mind and body are linked. The mind affects the body and the body affects the mind. If there is an outer situation that you feel to be dangerous or painful, your subconscious mind will trigger an emotional response. Your body will naturally tense up and then you will feel even worse. These automatic reactions and trigger responses are programmed from a very early age, perhaps when you were learning to walk and you kept falling over. You hurt yourself when you fell over and so you felt pain. This then created a relationship and neural-pathway in the mind.

Neural-pathways are elongated neurons in the brain that connect one side of the nervous system to the other. Basically they are created when we perform a task. The neural pathway gets stronger when we repeat the action. We perform a task for the first one or few times using our conscious mind (present thought mind) and then as we repeat it goes in our subconscious mind (auto-pilot mind). The action has become familiar and the subconscious mind takes over and acts on auto-pilot. The subconscious mind is where our habits are stored.

There is a relationship between the feeling of stress or anxiety, and the action you take when lip biting. This relationship is known as Pavlovian Conditioning. This was discovered and named after Ivan Pavlov, a famous Russian physiologist He would ring a bell at the exact time he would feed his dogs. Then after a while he would ring the bell and the dogs would come running salivating. This proves the relationship in the mind of an outside situation can affect the mind and can then affect the body’s reaction to that situation. This same concept is why when you feel stressed, you automatically start lip biting without you even knowing it. It is embedded in your subconscious.

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Source by Dave Kennedi

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January 22, 2020
Importance Of Cash Control

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Cash is a vital component of any profit-generating organization. An organization’s assets generate revenue, which in turn generates cash inflows. These cash inflows are used for several purposes: to pay creditors, compensate employees, reward shareholders, provide asset replacement, and provide for growth.

Cash is unique because it’s the single asset that is readily convertible into any other type of asset. Therefore, it’s also the most widely desired asset. However, cash is also the asset that is most susceptible to fraud and abuse. Therefore, management has to ensure that adequate controls and safeguards are in place to eliminate any unauthorized transactions with cash.

Fortunately, there are ways management can safeguard the cash generated by its organization. Each of the following methods will help an organization prevent losses due to human error or theft:

o Monthly bank reconciliation

o Segregation of duties over cash handling

o Accountability for cash shortages

o Authorized cash disbursement

o Internal audits

Monthly Bank Reconciliation. Monthly bank reconciliation will help ensure that the amount of cash generated by an organization is consistent with bank records. In addition, an independent review of the reconciliation by management will provide an additional safeguard. Independent verification of bank reconciliation acts as a check to make sure the reconciliation was done properly and ensures there is no abuse of the organization’s cash.

Segregation of Duties Over Cash Handling. Every organization must make sure that there is adequate segregation of duties over cash handling. Separating the duties of cash receipts and disbursements prevents an individual from committing and concealing embezzlement.

Accountability for Cash Shortages. Management should hold supervisors accountable for cash shortages. If supervisors know that they’ll be held accountable for a cash shortage, they’ll be motivated to keep a close eye on how cash is used within their departments.

Authorized Cash Disbursement. Management should allow cash to be disbursed only through checks issued by authorized signers, which will provide a method for tracking cash usage. In addition, your organization should require signatures on all checks in order for them to be valid.

Internal Audits. Every organization should arrange to have internal audits conducted on a regular basis. Whether the auditors come from an internal audit staff or an outside auditing firm, auditing an organization’s accounting system can identify how effective and accurate the operation is and whether or not any improvements need to be made.

ESTABLISHING A QUICKBOOKS CONTROL ENVIRONMENT

QuickBooks allows more than one user to access company files. (Conceptually, an unlimited number of users may have access to the company’s data files, but only five users may work with the data at the same time.) When multiple users will have access to the company’s QuickBooks data files, it generally is necessary to create a control environment that protects the data from unauthorized use. For example, some users may not need access to sensitive payroll data, while others may not need access to accounts receivable and sales information.

One of the best ways to prevent errors when posting transactions in QuickBooks is to limit access to specified users. If passwords and access permissions are not assigned, users have unlimited access to all areas in QuickBooks. When setting up QuickBooks, one user should be designated as the QuickBooks Administrator.

The QuickBooks Administrator has unlimited access to all areas of QuickBooks and assigns passwords and access permissions to other users. The name and password for the QuickBooks Administrator can be set up by selecting “Set Up Users” from the “Company” menu. The QuickBooks Administrator must be set up before any other users can be set up. Although QuickBooks does not require the use of passwords, the QuickBooks Administrator should set up and use a password since anyone logging in to the company’s QuickBooks files as the administrator has full access to all areas in QuickBooks. After setting up a name and password, the QuickBooks Administrator should click the “Closing Date” button in the “User List” window and enter the date through which books are closed in the “Accounting” preferences dialog box. The administrator can also password-protect the closing date (requires single-user mode). When this feature is enabled, QuickBooks requires users to enter the password before they can make changes to periods that have been closed.

The QuickBooks Administrator is the only user who can:

o Set up other users.

o Change other users’ access permissions.

o Set up a company file using the “EasyStep Interview.”

o Change company information (such as company name, address, fiscal year, tax year, tax form, and federal identification number).

o Change company preferences.

o Condense data.

o Import and export data.

o Apply for QuickBooks Merchant Account Services.

Note: Since the QuickBooks Administrator has the ability to password-protect the entire company’s files, has access to all accounting functions, and assigns access to all other users, the company should carefully consider whom to select as administrator. The person selected should have an understanding of the importance of this position on the internal control of the company. Some companies designate the controller or Chief Financial Officer as the QuickBooks Administrator because those individuals normally do not have direct interaction with the software.

The QuickBooks Administrator can set up additional users and specify the areas to which each person has access. To do so, select “Company” from the menu bar and “Set Up Users.” Then click the “Add User” button in the “User List” window. Assign a user name and password for the new user. Even though QuickBooks does not require the use of passwords, each user should be set up with a password that must be used when logging in to the company’s QuickBooks file. (An unlimited number of users can be added, but only five can have access to the company’s data file at the same time.)

After setting up the user name and password, the administrator then specifies whether the user will have access to selected areas of QuickBooks or all areas of QuickBooks. The user should not be given access to all areas of QuickBooks since that permission essentially establishes a second administrator allowing users to access the following:

o Sales and accounts receivable.

o Purchases and accounts payable.

o Checking and credit cards.

o Inventory.

o Time tracking.

o Payroll and employees.

o Sensitive accounting activities such as bank transfers, general journal entries, and online banking.

o Sensitive financial reports.

o Changing or deleting transactions.

o Changing closed transactions.

Note: Even if users need access to most of the preceding areas, they should not be allowed to change closed transactions.

Rather than giving users access to all areas of QuickBooks, the QuickBooks Administrator should give users access to selected areas. In that case, the QuickBooks Administrator specifies whether the user should be given no access, full access, or selective access to each individual area listed in the preceding paragraph. If the user is given selective access in a particular area, the QuickBooks Administrator also must specify whether the user can (a) create transactions only, (b) create and print transactions and forms, or (c) create transactions and create reports.

Sensitive Accounting Activities. Users generally should not be given access to sensitive accounting activities. Such activities include:

o Maintaining the chart of accounts.

o Working in the account register for balance sheet accounts.

o Reconciling accounts.

o Making journal entries.

o Using the “Accountant’s Review.”

o Transferring funds between accounts.

o Using online banking.

o Creating budgets.

o Printing registers.

o Condensing data.

Even if users are given full or selective access to sensitive accounting activities, they cannot create financial reports (with the exception of the “Payroll Report”) or change or delete previously recorded transactions. Those permissions must be assigned separately, as discussed in the following paragraphs. The QuickBooks Administrator generally should be the only user with access to sensitive accounting activities.

Sensitive Financial Reports. Users generally should not be given access to sensitive financial reports (such as the balance sheet, profit and loss reports, budget reports, cash flow reports, income tax reports, and audit trail reports). That access allows users to create all reports and graphs available in QuickBooks. However, even users with access to reports cannot change or delete transactions included in the reports. That permission must be assigned separately, as discussed in the following paragraph. The QuickBooks Administrator generally should be the only user with access to sensitive financial reports.

Changing and Deleting Transactions. Even if QuickBooks users have full access in a particular area, they cannot change or delete transactions in that area unless they are given that permission in the “Changing or Deleting Transactions” window. For example, a user with full access in the sales and accounts receivable area cannot change invoices or sales receipts unless they are given permission to change or delete transactions. However, even if users do not have permission to change or delete transactions, they can change or delete transactions they entered in the current QuickBooks session so that quickly identified data entry errors can be corrected. Users that are given permission to change or delete transactions can alter transactions only in areas in which they have access. For example, users that have access to the inventory area but not to the payroll area cannot alter payroll transactions even if they have permission to change or delete transactions. The QuickBooks Administrator generally should be the only user with permission to change or delete historical transactions.

If a user is given permission to change or delete transactions in areas in which they have access, the “Changing or Deleting Transactions” window also asks whether the user should be able to change or delete transactions recorded before the closing date. The QuickBooks Administrator always should deny users access to such transactions by selecting “No” in response to that question. Even when “No” is selected, users can view prior-period transactions in QuickBooks areas to which they have access. If “Yes” is selected and the administrator sets a password, the user will be required to enter the password.

Viewing Data. QuickBooks allows the QuickBooks Administrator to limit a user’s access to creating sensitive financial reports or creating and printing sensitive reports. Companies can use this feature to allow the Controller, Chief Financial Officer, or another person independent of the accounting function the ability to oversee the accounting operations. Because many companies frequently have small accounting staffs, this increased oversight can mitigate some of the risk to the system of internal control created by having limited segregation of duties.

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Source by Leigh Ann

Views: 0

January 22, 2020
e-Marketing Strategy: 7 Dimensions to Consider (the e-Marketing Mix)

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What is e-Marketing?

e-Marketing is still quite a controversial subject to talk about, since no one succeeded to unify the various theories around it; however there is one thing upon which there is no doubt – that e-Marketing first appeared under the form of various techniques deployed by pioneer companies selling their products via the internet in the early 90’s.

The frenzy around these new marketing techniques created by e-tailers and supported by the internet rapidly gave birth to a new dimension of what we knew as Marketing: the e-Marketing (electronic Marketing).

There are many definitions to what e-Marketing is, the simplest and shortest one being formulated by Mark Sceats: e-Marketing is Marketing that uses the internet as manifestation media. A working definition is that coming from a group of CISCO specialists: e-Marketing is the sum of all activities a business conducts through the internet with the purpose of finding, attracting, winning and retaining customers.

e-Marketing Strategy

The e-Marketing Strategy is normally based and built upon the principles that govern the traditional, offline Marketing – the well-known 4 P’s (Product – Price – Promotion – Positioning) that form the classic Marketing mix. Add the extra 3 P’s (People – Processes – Proof) and you got the whole extended Marketing mix.

Until here, there are no much aspects to differentiate e-Marketing from the traditional Marketing performed offline: the extended Marketing mix (4 + 3 P’s) is built around the concept of “transactional” and its elements perform transactional functions defined by the exchange paradigm. What gives e-Marketing its uniqueness is a series of specific functions, relational functions, that can be synthesized in the 2P + 2C+ 3S formula: Personalization, Privacy, Customer Service, Community, Site, Security, Sales Promotion.

These 7 functions of the e-Marketing stay at the base of any e-Marketing strategy and they have a moderating character, unlike the classic Marketing mix that comprises situational functions only. Moderating functions of e-Marketing have the quality of moderate, operate upon all situational functions of the mix (the classic 4 P’s) and upon each other.

1. Personalization

The fundamental concept of personalization as a part of the e-Marketing mix lies in the need of recognizing, identifying a certain customer in order to establish relations (establishing relations is a fundamental objective of Marketing). It is crucial to be able to identify our customers on individual level and gather all possible information about them, with the purpose of knowing our market and be able to develop customized, personalized products and services.

For example, a cookie strategically placed on the website visitor’s computer can let us know vital information concerning the access speed available: in consequence, if we know the visitor is using a slow connection (eg. dial-up) we will offer a low-volume variation of our website, with reduced graphic content and no multimedia or flash applications. This will ease our customer’s experience on our website and he will be prevented from leaving the website on the reason that it takes too long to load its pages.

Personalization can be applied to any component of the Marketing mix; therefore, it is a moderating function.

2. Privacy

Privacy is an element of the mix very much connected to the previous one – personalization. When we gather and store information about our customers and potential customers (therefore, when we perform the personalization part of the e-Marketing mix) a crucial issue arises: that of the way this information will be used, and by whom. A major task to do when implementing an e-Marketing strategy is that of creating and developing a policy upon access procedures to the collected information.

This is a duty and a must for any conscious marketer to consider all aspects of privacy, as long as data are collected and stored, data about individual persons.

Privacy is even more important when establishing the e-Marketing mix since there are many regulations and legal aspects to be considered regarding collection and usage of such information.

3. Customer Service

Customer service is one of the necessary and required activities among the support functions needed in transactional situations.

We will connect the apparition of the customer service processes to the inclusion of the “time” parameter in transactions. When switching from a situational perspective to a relational one, and e-Marketing is mostly based on a relational perspective, the marketer saw himself somehow forced into considering support and assistance on a non-temporal level, permanently, over time.

For these reasons, we should consider the Customer Service function (in its fullest and largest definition) as an essential one within the e-Marketing mix.

As we can easily figure out, the service (or assistance if you wish) can be performed upon any element from the classic 4 P’s, hence its moderating character.

4. Community

We can all agree that e-Marketing is conditioned by the existence of this impressive network that the internet is. The merely existence of such a network implies that individuals as well as groups will eventually interact. A group of entities that interact for a common purpose is what we call a “community” and we will soon see why it is of absolute importance to participate, to be part of a community.

The Metcalf law (named after Robert Metcalf) states that the value of a network is given by the number of its components, more exactly the value of a network equals the square of the number of components. We can apply this simple law to communities, since they are a network: we will then conclude that the value of a community rises with the number of its members. This is the power of communities; this is why we have to be a part of it.

The customers / clients of a business can be seen as part of a community where they interact (either independent or influenced by the marketer) – therefore developing a community is a task to be performed by any business, even though it is not always seen as essential.

Interactions among members of such a community can address any of the other functions of e-Marketing, so it can be placed next to other moderating functions.

5. Site

We have seen and agreed that e-Marketing interactions take place on a digital media – the internet. But such interactions and relations also need a proper location, to be available at any moment and from any place – a digital location for digital interactions.

Such a location is what we call a “site”, which is the most widespread name for it. It is now the time to mention that the “website” is merely a form of a “site” and should not be mistaken or seen as synonyms. The “site” can take other forms too, such as a Palm Pilot or any other handheld device, for example.

This special location, accessible through all sort of digital technologies is moderating all other functions of the e-Marketing – it is then a moderating function.

6. Security

The “security” function emerged as an essential function of e-Marketing once transactions began to be performed through internet channels.

What we need to keep in mind as marketers are the following two issues on security:

– security during transactions performed on our website, where we have to take all possible precautions that third parties will not be able to access any part of a developing transaction;

– security of data collected and stored, about our customers and visitors.

A honest marketer will have to consider these possible causes of further trouble and has to co-operate with the company’s IT department in order to be able to formulate convincing (and true, honest!) messages towards the customers that their personal details are protected from unauthorized eyes.

7. Sales Promotion

At least but not last, we have to consider sales promotions when we build an e-Marketing strategy. Sales promotions are widely used in traditional Marketing as well, we all know this, and it is an excellent efficient strategy to achieve immediate sales goals in terms of volume.

This function counts on the marketer’s ability to think creatively: a lot of work and inspiration is required in order to find new possibilities and new approaches for developing an efficient promotion plan.

On the other hand, the marketer needs to continuously keep up with the latest internet technologies and applications so that he can fully exploit them.

To conclude, we have seen that e-Marketing implies new dimensions to be considered aside of those inherited from the traditional Marketing. These dimensions revolve around the concept of relational functions and they are a must to be included in any e-Marketing strategy in order for it to be efficient and deliver results.

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Source by Otilia Otlacan

Views: 0

January 22, 2020
My Wife Constantly Criticizes Me – The Hidden Truth to Why She Does This and How to Fix It Fast!

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Are you stuck in a marriage where you’re helplessly saying my wife always criticizes me? It’s troublesome, to be honest downright annoying.

But the truth is that you created the environment for this to happen, and now you have to create the environment where it WON’T happen. But you’ve got to do it right or things can just get worse…and fast!

What To Do When You’re in a Marriage Where You’re Saying My Wife Constantly Criticizes Me

There’re really only a few good reasons why you’d be saying my wife constantly criticizes me. The great part is that nearly all of them lead to one major problem, which means that there’s really one major fix. It’s getting this fix right that can be the sticking point.

So what are some of the reasons that your wife is constantly criticizing you? Let’s go through them now…

Reasons Your Wife is Criticizing You…

Resentment – Many times criticism stems from resentment. It’s basically a passive aggressive way of her telling you that she resents you. Jus think about when you resent someone, how every little thing can bother you about that person.

And when resentment rears its ugly head the weapon of choice is usually criticism.

Lack of Respect – Now this one can be a bit tricky and here’s why. Your wife may not have respect you for different reasons. But it’s very likely that the reasons that she’s put forward aren’t really the true reasons at all.

Most of the time when a woman doesn’t respect you, she’ll try to tell you that it’s because you’re not doing enough of the stuff like buying flowers, and being sweet and lovable. But usually she doesn’t even realize that this is NONSENSE, and basically completely opposite of the real reason.

The real reason that a woman usually loses respect for her husband (barring that there’s no abuse in the relationship) is that you’ve lost your MAN status in the home. In other words you’re no longer the captain of the ship that she NEEDS in order to have that respect for you.

Your wife, by the very nature of her DNA…going way back from her ancestors in the caves MUST have you being the alpha male in the home, or she cannot respect you and therefore…

She’s Not Attracted to You – In a nutshell, it all comes down to attraction. It may sound hard to believe, especially when the problem started out as “my wife constantly criticizes me” that it would come down ultimately to attraction, but it does.

If your wife resents you it’s because you’ve lost your manhood status. You’re no longer the alpha male that she needs in her life. If your wife has no respect for you, it’s for the same reason. How can she have respect for you if you’re not evoking the very qualities that she needs in a man? If you’re not being the man that she needs to have, then she’s basically by nature got every right not to respect you any longer.

If she resents you and has no respect for you, then she cannot be attracted to you. And the fact is that a wife that is attracted to you will move mountains to be with you. A wife who is ultimately down to her core attracted to you, will worship the ground you walk on. You’ve seen this with your own eyes, every time you’ve seen a woman who was with a jerk, or an ugly guy.

The fact is that she respected and was completely attracted to that guy, because HE was a MAN who exuded ALPHA MALE status. Become that guy and you’ll no longer be saying my wife constantly criticizes me!

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Source by Jason T. Nelson

Views: 0

January 16, 2020
The Renegade Network Marketer Review – Is It Worth?

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From what I’ve I noticed so far, all the big names in network marketing and internet marketing, after years of experience, of failed attempts, frustrations and lessons learned have found the formula for online success. Years of work have been rewarded with many, many millions of dollars, but also with recognition as an experts in the field.

Thus, people like Jonathan Budd, Ann Sieg and Mike Dillard have created their own systems that put their business on autopilot. Among these, I found one that caught my attention and I tried it myself..It is Ann Sieg’s system, The Renegade Network Marketer.

First of all, what is the Renegade Network Marketer?

Well, this system is a big win for the MLM industry, as a result of several years of efforts, failures and tries. Ann Sieg has managed to create something that totally changes your perspective on network marketing.

The Renegade Network Marketer e-book you undermine all your beliefs about how we should think and recruit new people in a MLM business. Ann Sieg explains in her book all the mistakes that 97% of the network marketers do and introduces a new concept: Atraction Marketing.

What does this mean? Instead of running after people and trying to convince them to join “your unique business opportunity”, you better attract people to you. Now,you don’t jump on every prospect you find,you go to a well-defined categories of people who are already interested in what you have to offer. Actually you give them what they want!

Very important, this e-book explains you how to use the huge power of the Internet to build your business and especially how to build yourself an image of an expert in the field. So, it is more important to promote yourself, to appear as someone who offers solutions and then to sell.

Once you bought the eBook you get life acces to The Renegade System.

This system is very effective and very useful, especially for beginners in online marketing, because it contains many marketing strategies very well explained: articles, banners, blogging, social networking, email etc.. With these strategies you learn how to to generate traffic to your blog or website and then turn it into sales and money.

And the most interesting part of this system is that it offers you the opportunity to promote further the ebook, but also to join as an affiliate in other auxiliary programs useful for online marketing. So you can have multiple sources of income at the same time.

The system also includes some very important bonus: the book “7 great lies in Network Marketing” and a free report Virology. 7 major lies in Network Marketing tells all the truth about MLM, things that don’t work and that you bring you only failure and frustration but also the solutions to these problems.

I personally think that the investment I made, buying this system, it’s well worth because of all these valuable resources that teach you how to build your network marketing business from zero and how to develop yourself as an expert in online marketing.

But I must say that all these materials, the system and all the trainings in the world will not help you if you don’t act!

The experience of an internet marketer could be summarized in this scheme:

EDUCATION- MASSIVE ACTION- PERSEVERANCE = RESULTS

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Source by Dascalul Radu

Views: 0

January 14, 2020