A Simple "Thanks" Goes A Long Way

Ever wonder what is the best way to sign an email? I am sure it is not something that keeps you up at night, but I bet every once in a while, when you are nearing the end of a painstakingly crafted email of great importance, you might take more than a minute or two thinking about the best way to sign off.

The good folks at Boomerang, a company that says it “helps its customers focus on email that matters, when it matters” through tools that “allow for reading and responding to messages faster and more decisively than before”, were also wondering the same thing, so they analyzed over 350,000 email threads to discover the closings that yield the best response rates.

Boomerang discovered that we should all end all of our emails with one simple word whenever in doubt: thanks. Of all the emails Boomerang analyzed, those that signed off with some form of “Thanks” received a response 62% of the time. Emails without some form of “Thanks” received a response only 48% of the time.

In fact, “Thanks in advance” received the overall best response rate with 65.7%. And of all the closings that Boomerang analyzed, “Best” was actually the worst with the lowest average response rate of 51.2%.

Closing with gratitude, especially thanking someone in advance for their response or further action requested in the email, seems genuine, and of course, appreciative.

So, as with all advice, take it with a grain of salt and don’t simply start signing off every single email with “Thanks”, but when in doubt, remember that just about any form of genuine thankfulness seems to get the best response rates. 

Picture by Burst via Pexels

It's Not The Money's Fault

Have you ever heard people say that some of the richest people they know are also some of the unhappiest? I argue this is because of one of two reasons. The first is that money may not be the actual route to happiness for that person. If the true key to your happiness is the approval of your parents, or finding true love, or having a child, if you don’t have that one thing, all of the money in the world is not going to provide you with the happiness you seek.

The second reason is the fact that once you have enough money to guarantee yourself financial peace of mind, if you had the ambition and drive to obtain that much money in the first place, chances are you will need some other type of goal to strive for or else you will find yourself feeling unfulfilled.

Now, I know a lot of you out there want to cite the actual money itself and having it in large quantities as the root cause for the unhappiness of the rich, but it’s never the actual money itself – it is either the fact that the money has still failed to fill whatever void in that person’s life they were trying to fill with money, or the fact that the successful attainment of that money has left that person with nothing else for which to strive. As much as those without money want it to be the actual money that is causing those they feel are rich to be unhappy, it is just not the money.

So, the next time you find yourself blaming their stacks of money for the unhappiness of the rich, all the while, not feeling the least bit sorry for them, or if you’re standing amongst your stacks and stacks of money, trying to figure out why you’re still not happy, remember that it’s not the money’s fault.

Mind Your Ands

We are always told to mind our Ps and Qs, but what about our ands? Shouldn’t we also be minding those as well?

It sure seems like many of today’s writers and content creators set out to cram every possible thought into a single paragraph-length sentence. But, this can easily confuse readers and force them to reread sentences over and over to determine which of the writer’s thoughts are joined by which and.

Why do they force so many words into each sentence? I was recently reading a report that got me thinking about this subject when I came across a sentence very similar to the one below:

We reviewed the infrastructure and networks that made up the wireless guest networks and the filtering and segmentation between the wireless guest networks and the wired corporate network and the encryption and authentication in use on both networks.

Look at all those ands in one sentence! Six ands!

When you are writing, be sure to count the number of times you use ‘and’ in each sentence. You should rarely have more than one or two, though in the right context, three ands can still make sense. But, once you approach the fourth, fifth, sixth (or even more) and in a single sentence, it is time to split that sentence up into multiple sentences and perhaps use some other conjunction or phrase.

As an example, see what I have done to our ‘six-and’ sentence example:

We reviewed the infrastructure and networks that made up the wireless guest networks, as well as the filtering and segmentation between the wireless guest networks and the wired corporate network. We also reviewed the encryption and authentication in use on both networks. 

You can see by changing one of the ands to ‘as well as’, and splitting the sentence into two sentences, I’ve essentially removed two of the ands. Also, neither sentence has more than three ands. The paragraph is now much easier to read.

So, when you are writing, please remember to limit the use of ‘and’ to no more than three instances per sentence. Your readers will thank you!

Graphic by William L. Savastano

Sitting Across A Table

How do you determine with whom you will conduct business?

If you’ve spent any time at all in business-to-business sales, especially if you’ve spent any time as a small business owner, you quickly learn that there are some people out there that you want to do business with, and there are some people out there that you DON’T want to do business with.

The key to discovering which is which is developing a standard operating procedure that you adhere to every time when determining whom you are going to do business with and whose business on which you are going to pass.

You want your screening process to be something you can easily follow every time. You want a process that relies on instinct, is still objective enough to make sure you don’t miss out on a great opportunity, but at the same time, ensures you are not beating your head against the wall in a losing, unprofitable situation. You also want your process to be one that you can apply at any stage in a business relationship.

While all of these requirements may make it seem like there is no simple way to create a process that will work, I have discovered an extremely easy process that works every single time. And all it involves is asking myself a single question.

Am I comfortable sitting across a table from this person?

That’s it. No great formula or massive amount of research. In all the years that I conducted business-to-business sales as a small business owner, this simple process was accurate every single time. Now, as a fallible being, I didn’t always listen to the process, but the process still remains completely accurate every single time.

What I learned over the years was that if I asked myself that question about the person I was about to conduct business with and the answer was yes, I’d proceed with the relationship and the business at hand, and it would always turn out well. Don’t get me wrong, there were bumps in the road at times and sometimes the relationships took a little work, but as long as I still felt comfortable sitting across a table from that person, we continued to do business.

But, when the answer to that question was no, no matter how sweet the deal, no matter how much profit there was to be had, every single time I felt the answer should be no, it turned out to be someone that I didn’t, or shouldn’t have done business with. Again, I didn’t always listen to my own answer, but very quickly realized I should have.

And I didn’t just ask myself this question at the beginning of the relationship. I made sure to ask myself this question throughout the relationship at key points and milestones. When the answer to the question was yes at each of these later points in the relationship, I would keep doing what I was doing and the relationship would remain positive, and most importantly, profitable.

But, when I asked this question at later points in the relationship and the answer was no, I had to ask myself a second question and make an important decision. When the answer was no, I then asked myself if the answer was, for whatever reason, ever going to be yes again.

If I felt that I could change that no into a yes, I then would set out to do everything I knew I needed to do – everything I possibly could to change that no to a yes. Sometimes the customer would be responsive and we would move forward, other times, I’d notice the answer was not changing. 

Once I realized that the answer to my question was never going to be yes again, I’d reach out to the customer and let them know that it was time for us to find a mutually beneficial settlement as to what they had paid, the work that had been delivered, and that it was time for us to part ways.

By following this simple process, which stemmed from me asking the question of whether or not I was comfortable sitting across a table from someone, I always find myself in a position where when I do actually sit across a table from that person, our relationship is square and mutually beneficial.

Photo by HO JJ via Pexels

A Practical Guide For The Recently Unemployed

It has happened to virtually all of us at one point or another in our career - we find ourselves unemployed one day. Sometimes it comes as a shock, and sometimes, we probably saw it coming, but either way, it never gets any easier. But, if I have learned one thing over the decades, it is that each time we find ourselves unemployed, we have actually been handed an amazing opportunity to better our careers and ourselves.

Three years ago today, I found myself in just that spot and I used what life threw at me that day as a catalyst to improve a number of things in my life, including my career path. I’m not saying that I have all the answers, nor am I saying that my advice is the only advice you should listen to when you find yourself unemployed one morning, but I thought I would compile the lessons I learned being let go to perhaps help someone else out there who ends up in the same situation.

So, take a deep breath, know that everything is going to be OK, and whether you were let go from your job today, last month, or know that it might be just around the corner, I hope at least some part of my experience will help you on your journey.

Click here to read A Practical Guide For The Recently Unemployed.

The Problem With The Value And Faith We Put In Paper And Electronic Currency

If you reach into wherever it is that you keep your on-hand cash and pull it out, there are four things that you should keep in mind:

• You have exchanged something of value to you in order to obtain that note, and you should have a good understanding at all times of just how much of that valuable thing you traded for that note
• From the time you exchanged that item of value for that note, there has been and will always be continual fluctuation in how much of that valuable thing each note is worth to you and others
• The actual note in your hand only has a perceived value, granted to you by others who also believe in that same perceived value, otherwise all you hold in your hand is a piece of paper
• Without an exchangeable value other than its perceived value, all of the value you put into that note could completely disappear instantly…yes, instantly!

No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, no matter how you earn your money/dollars/notes, and no matter your age, location in the world, or your socioeconomic conditions, these four things apply to you. Pretty scary, isn’t it, especially that part about the value of your notes disappearing instantly, right?

There was a time in history when all of the paper currency in the world, whether issued by a bank or a government, was exchangeable for, and therefor backed by, a stockpile of precious metals somewhere. The value of the paper money in your hand was tied to the value of gold, silver, or some other metal that was under lock and key somewhere, and any time you wanted, you could go and trade in your paper money for that tangible precious metal. Today, however, this is no longer the case. And that is why whenever we are dealing with paper currency, we need to remember those four things above.

But, how did we get here, and why? That’s the trillion-dollar bill question, isn’t it?

Sadly, the answer is very simple. It all boils down to the fact that governments need your value through either your labor or your money, in order to operate and exist. That means that governments need to provide a currency that can be used to perpetuate their economic system and provide the means to take value from you. But today, there are far too many people, there is far too much potential value, and there is far too little precious metal to have paper currency tied to actual tangible real-world assets any longer. In short, the world’s governments and their economic systems need far more value in paper money than all of the already-mined precious metals in the world can provide.

Following the chaos of World War II, the 44 Allied nations came together and agreed that in order to create economic stability, they would all peg their paper currency to a gold standard and that each of their gold standards would be tied to the U.S. dollar at an exchange rate of one ounce of gold for 35 U.S. dollars. This created a scenario in which these nations and their central banks could exchange U.S. dollars for gold on demand. This system worked well and helped fuel the economic growth that would ensue for the next 25 years.

But that amazing growth would yield a problem by the 1970s. The Allied nations’ populations and economies had grown so large that the amount of U.S. dollars in circulation had far surpassed the amount of gold the U.S. held in reserves. This meant that if the world’s governments cashed in their greenbacks, there would not be enough gold to pay everyone their stored value. Fearing that this would cause a run on U.S. gold and result in economic collapse, in 1971, the U.S. government removed the gold standard from U.S. currency, allowing the central bank to just print money that has no actual real-world, tangible value except for what we perceive in our minds as a collective. No longer could the world’s governments exchange U.S. currency for a fixed amount of gold. Instead, the value of each piece of currency would be tied to its perceived, or market value.

Let’s think about that for a second. When banks and the U.S. government first started printing paper money, the value of that paper money was tied to a precious metal like gold or silver, but that meant there could never have been more paper money out there in circulation than the amount of physical precious metal the bank or the government had on hand. That also meant that at any time, you could walk into the bank or the right government office and demand precious metal in exchange for the paper currency in your hand.

Do you see how this system of paper money based on a precious metal stockpile makes perfect sense? People no longer had to carry cold coins in a purse or large amounts of gold bars on a carriage, but instead, just had to carry light paper currency in their pocket.

But now, people can no longer walk into the bank or a government office and demand something of real-world value in exchange for the paper currency in their pocket. Today, all you can get for that paper money in your pocket is other forms of paper currency, or worse, a balance on the bank’s or government’s electronic ledger.

And, if the fact that paper currency is no longer tied to anything of actual real-world value is not scary enough, the next step, which is already well underway, is to transform that paper money into electronic numbers on an electronic balance sheet somewhere in the cloud.

Imagine a planet where the governments of the world convince us all that the cost of producing that actual paper currency is just too high, and even worse, completely unnecessary now that we have this beautiful digital world in which everything is stored on electronic ledgers and we can all carry around little plastic cards in our pockets instead of that costly-to-produce and now completely unnecessary paper money. Oh, and don’t even get them started on producing coins! It costs a nickel to make a penny now. How impractical is that? You humans don’t actually want to carry around coins any more, do you?

If you don’t believe this is where the governments of the world are taking us, think a little about how you transact now compared to ten or twenty years ago. How often are you using actual paper currency versus those plastic cards in your pocket? How many of your bills do you pay with a paper check, and how many do you simply pay online?

See how this is all progressing along nicely for the governments?

And what is the problem with the governments doing away with physical currency all together? Well, the biggest problem is that people will no longer have the ability to hold currency outside of the electronic system - meaning no one, ever, will be able to hide currency from the government's greedy hands.

Then, all it will take is for the government to sit at a keyboard and it can have complete access to the value of everything you own. Remember how earlier we talked about you exchanging the value of something for that currency? Well, once all currency is electronic and there is no way for you to hold that value in something tangible, then it can all be wiped out, entirely wiped out, with just a keystroke. That’s everything you have worked for your entire life – gone in an instant.

Couple this with a current movement to get everyone on the planet an electronic ID by 2040 and every single person on the planet and their electronic currency will be reachable by governments and global governing bodies like the UN at any moment, anywhere in the world.

Can't wait to see the black markets this creates for alternative currencies! We'll be using commodities as currencies to barter with each other outside the government's ever-watching eye like it was the Dark Ages again. How many chickens for a sword?

Think of what this will do to the price of precious metals. That is, if the governments even allow us to own precious metals any longer once they do away with all physical currency.

While we will have to see where governments and technology take us, unfortunately, there is very little we can do about the tangible real-world value in our paper money, other than exchanging some of it for precious metals while we’re still allowed. The main thing to remember each time you look at those paper notes in your hand is to ensure that your portfolio of assets is as diverse as possible.

Never keep all of your value in eggs, and never keep all of those eggs in one basket.

Photo by The Digital Way via Pexels

Hours 38 to 40: Profit And Your Personal Finances

Once upon a time, when I was working with a consulting company that billed its customers hourly for their time, its CTO offered up an amazing perspective on profitability for its team of consultants during a team meeting. He explained that when it came to generating profit to put back into the business and to fund increases in employee compensation and benefits, the company’s consultants needed to keep in mind that while the company leadership appreciated everyone’s hard work, it was important to ensure that they billed a full 40 hours a week because all of the company’s profit projections were based on a 40-hour billable week.

He went on to explain, approximately of course, that it was hours 1 to 37 for each week that covered the cost of the expenses, but it was hours 38, 39, and 40 that yielded the profits the leadership put back into the business, and for that reason, while consultants might feel that billing close to 40 hours a week was close enough, it was, in fact, actually not.

This lesson in hourly billing and profitability not only resonated with me when I heard it, but still does to this day, because it makes me think of the very same concept as it applies to personal finances as well. While most people would never look at it this way, their personal finances are very similar to the financial models this consulting business and its CTO were addressing that day.

Much like this consulting business, and any business for that matter, each of us as individuals also have expenses that when deducted from our income, yield either a profit or a loss. If you get paid hourly and only work 37 hours per week, but your expenses take up your full amount of pay, which you anticipated being for 40 hours per week, you actually are going to bring in less money than you need to cover your expenses. While this comparison is quite literal, the same holds true for however you are paid, be it hourly, salary, in lump sums as a consultant, or any other way.

The bottom line is that you should always know exactly what your expenses are and should always ensure that your income never falls below the amount of those expenses no matter what you do. In fact, you should always strive to ensure your expenses are as small of a percentage of your income as possible. You should view the difference between your expenses and your income as your profit, and without profit, you cannot reinvest in the things in life that you enjoy and that are important to you and your loved ones.

Your personal profits are the money you use to pay for things like vacations, education, luxuries, or whatever other experiences or items you and your loved ones enjoy. By looking at this money left over after paying your expenses as profit, you can very easily identify and dedicate your efforts in ways that increase that profit.

So, the next time you feel 37 hours is close enough, or spending just a little more than you earn is no big deal, remember that without profits, you will have nothing to reinvest in your life, and what is the point of all of that hard work if all you ever do is just cover your expenses or dig yourself deeper into debt?

Photo by Meditations via Pixabay

Don't Be A Rhino At Work

Are you a rhino at work? Do your coworkers reference bulls and china shops in the same sentence when they describe what it is like to work with you?

Now, when I say rhino, I’m not talking about you physically storming through the halls, leaving twisted and mangled bodies in your wake, but I am talking about how you treat and speak to the people with whom you work.

Granted, some of us are more soft spoken, or out spoken, than others, and some of us are more imposing, or less imposing, but I am specifically talking about those individuals who time and time again end up rubbing their coworkers the wrong way and leave the rest of us marveling at what they just said, how they just handled a given situation, and more so, at how they just do not recognize the intimidation, uneasiness, and generally unwelcome environment that circles around them as they storm through the office.

The best way to tell if you are a rhino at work is to listen to yourself when engaged in conversation with your colleagues, your bosses, and your subordinates. There should not be stark differences in the tone and intensity of your conversations between the three. The same voice and tone you use for your bosses is the same voice and tone you should use for your colleagues and your subordinates. 

Also, look around at others in the office when you are engaged in conversation. Are people purposely looking away, looking down at their desks, or trying very hard to avoid eye contact with you? Are people shaking their heads or shifting uncomfortably in their chairs? Your office conversations should not make people who overhear them feel uncomfortable or uneasy, nor should they make people not want to work with you.

I know it can’t all be roses and sunshine at work, but your coworkers deserve to be treated fairly, reasonably, and with respect. People should not have to endure conversations that make them feel belittled or intimidated. There is just no place for this type of behavior in today’s business environment.

So, be sure to listen to yourself and take note of the reactions of those around you when you are engaged in conversation with people at work. By doing so, you can make sure that you are not your office’s rhino.

Photo by Casey Allen via Pexels

The Death Of Our Coastal Towns

When you grow up along the sparkling Southern California coastline, one of the most difficult things you can do is attempt to solicit sympathy from anyone in the world. Beautiful beaches, moderate temperatures, amazing quality of life, and a pretty chill attitude across the board, all make everyone in every other part of the world think you’d never have a care. For some, it is a life of economically based privilege, but for most, it is a life of hard work that yields worthwhile rewards.

But, when you grow up in the beautiful little coastal towns of Southern California, one of the most-desired places to live in the world, one of the saddest things you witness year after year is the eventual and permanent transformation of those towns into a place that is unrecognizable from the one you loved so dearly while growing up.

Towns grow, landscapes change, small businesses close and city governments change from focusing on maintaining an enjoyable life for citizens to attracting more tax revenue and tourism dollars.

Local, long-time residents are pushed out as they seek to re-find the quaint little towns that have been pulled out from underneath their feet by the passage of time. Streets and neighborhoods are transformed from sleepy, cozy, little burgs with character to bustling, big box, trendy cities with urban flair. And sadly, avoiding busy areas filled with tourists grows from a summertime chore to a year-round endeavor.

But perhaps the worst aspect for those who grew up in this paradise is watching these beloved towns commit cultural suicide. You see quaint downtown streets lined with small houses and mom-and-pop shops where locals congregate turned into multi-story urban apartment complexes with underground parking garages and first-floor brand name retail outlets. Cultural uniqueness and flavor is slowly and methodically replaced by uniformed, trendy urbania.

So, if it’s not the residents who want this change, then why is town after town falling victim to this urban sprawl? It is a two-pronged attack from the government-industrial complex. City governments that need to bring in more revenue to support a growing population and urban developers who want to make the most profit from increasingly valuable coastal land are joining forces, and there is no doubt that, willingly or not, they are destroying the character of Southern California’s coastal towns.

I call it cultural suicide because residents of the community that serve in local government or own or work for the development companies are committing the act of destroying these cities from within. Whether knowingly or not, these people are killing the culture and character of the communities that surround them.

The suicide starts with one or two local businesses, spreads down the street, begins to consume entire neighborhoods, and then, eventually spreads throughout the entire town. Local governments seeking more revenue raise the rents on government properties, forcing the local businesses that occupy those government properties to shut their doors or move. Increased rents on government property lead to increased rent on private property, and the local businesses that occupy those private properties shut their doors or move. The government land is sold to make even more revenue and the private buildings are gutted and torn down, then replaced with bigger, more sterile buildings with less culture but more space that can be rented at a higher cost to larger corporations that can afford the higher rents. This urban sprawl spreads like an incurable virus until its host no longer resembles its former self.

I recently read a fantastically written article from a locally focused online news and interest rag called Thrillist that really drove this point home. The article was about a well-known restaurant at the Santa Monica Airport that was forced out of business by the City of Santa Monica as part of that local government’s efforts to close the iconic general aviation airport and its businesses. The forced closing of the airport and its businesses, like this restaurant, will deal a definitive blow to the local culture and long-time patrons of these businesses as the city guns to fill up its coffers with the inevitable millions it will gain by selling the land on which the airport sits to developers who will no doubt sweep in and build yet another array of those multi-story earth-toned, wood and metal accented, five-story apartment buildings with underground garages and first-floor name brand retailers that I mentioned earlier.

And much like the Los Angeles of old that we only see in movies, old photographs, and our dreams, the airport that has served local aviators from Hollywood stars to the most anonymous among us, will soon be just a memory. The restaurant, called Typhoon, had a single owner, a local businessman who spent a good portion of his life serving amazing cuisine, supporting the local jazz scene, and providing a place that pilots around the world will still talk about for years now that it’s gone. Why did is this restaurateur call it quits, even while his establishment flourished? The City of Santa Monica raised his rent by 200% because they wanted him, his long-time patrons, and the culture and flavor of the Santa Monica of yesteryear gone. To them, it is a small price to pay to keep the city government afloat.

The city needs money and urban developers are chomping at the bit to get that airport land, and sadly, in Southern California these days, that is all that matters to city government and urban developers. Local culture, flavor, long-time residents, long-time family businesses, and the heart and soul of the communities can all be damned!

And this is just one establishment inside one historic Southern California coastal town and iconic location. This is just one of many thousands of places that are, or soon will be, long gone, never to return.

One such other iconic feature of these costal towns that is changing forever is the pierside main street that once housed local mom-and-pop restaurants and a slew of boutique specialty and surf shops. And nowhere has Main Street and its surrounding area gone through a more gut-wrenching overhaul than in Huntington Beach, or Surf City as it is called in the onslaught of tourism marketing materials.

Those of us who grew up in Huntington Beach from the 50s to the 80s enjoyed a colorful and diverse row of one-story shops and restaurants that lined a quiet little street that was overly busy only a few select hours a week and during the peak of summer traffic. We enjoyed small mom-and-pop shops and a quiet local scene of local surfers and beachgoers. But then, the big construction cranes and land developers came in and the Main Street and surrounding area that we knew and loved was changed forever. Today, the quaint little pierside area we loved is gone, replaced by multi-story condos, brand name retail chains, and sprawling hotel complexes.

Locals once spent lazy weekend mornings beachside having breakfast and enjoying early dinners. Now, if you’re a local resident, there is a good tourist-filled four or five months in which you don’t even bother trying to get down there, if you even bother trying at all. For those of us who grew up in the area and spent a good chunk of our childhood there, it is so sad to no longer be able to enjoy the places you love because they are either so crowded, or worse, just gone.

Locals who have had enough can do little but move on to quieter areas or quieter towns and hope that the government-industrial complex will not overrun their new home just as quickly. And this pattern is going to continue to spread and grow. Trendy urbanites will rush in and the long-time residents who built our coastal towns with years of hard work will rush out, heading north, south, or inland, attempting to recapture their quaint little towns somewhere else.

For now, we watch the mom-and-pop shops come down, and watch the ever-taller, ever more sprawling hotels, retail centers, and apartment and condo complexes go up, remembering a time when our towns belonged to us, the folks that built them.

Photo by William L. Savastano

Remember To Reward Yourself

When the conditions are just right on a Sunday morning – cooler temperatures and, even better, a cloudy day during one of the Non-Summer months – at 8:00 AM, you will find my wife and I walking through the turnstiles, just about to head up to catch the monorail into Disneyland via Downtown Disney. This Sunday morning ritual that we try to undertake at least once a month for nine months out of the year is one of the most enjoyable non-working experiences of my life these days.

Once inside the park, we undertake a loosely standardized regiment that consists of a good amount of walking, a number of our favorite rides, and thanks to the off-time and early morning, not a lot of standing in line. A normal Sunday sees us head right to Small World, followed by stints at Pirates, the Haunted Mansion, the Jungle Cruise, Indiana Jones, the Rivers of America boat ride as well as Star Tours. Sometimes we deviate and walk along Main Street or head over to walk at California Adventure, occasionally going on a ride or two on that side instead.

Usually by 11:00 AM, the park has filled up a bit and the clouds have either burned off and/or the temperature has increased enough that we’ve had our fill and are ready to move on to our next activity. Sometimes we have lunch at Downtown Disney, sometimes we have breakfast in the park, and we were even known to pay the inflated cost for the all-you-can-eat BBQ at Big Thunder Ranch before it was closed to make way for Star Wars Land. And while you may think this is some attempt for us to relive our childhoods, it is, in fact, almost the opposite. Our childhoods didn’t involve a lot of trips to Disneyland – definitely many fewer trips than we see kids in our neck of the woods making these days.

See, if I can make it to Disneyland nine times in the course of a year, in that year, I will have walked through the gates into the theme park more times than I did in the first 18 years of my life. While I am forever grateful for all of the people who worked hard and sacrificed to make those trips over the course of my first 18 years possible, the true bliss of these Sunday morning walks and rides is the sense of accomplishment we feel in the fact that we can now go there so often.

I whole-heartedly believe it is important for each of us to work hard and accomplish as much as we can to benefit not only ourselves but also those around us. It is important for each of us to discover what we have to offer an industry, a market and/or an employer, as well as the people in our lives. But I also feel it is just as important for us to take a step back every once in a while, put down all the electronic devices, and do something that allows us to feel rewarded for all of that hard work. These Sunday morning trips to Disneyland are just one of the little rewards we give ourselves over the course of the year.

I encourage each of you to not only work hard and find your niche in this world, but to also find something you can do to reward yourself for those accomplishments in a meaningful way. Find something that not only brings you joy, but also provides motivation to keep up the hard work – the motivation to keep driving yourself forward to surpass even more of your goals. Always remember that while hard work and dedication is paramount to your success, if you don’t take the moments to enjoy the fruits of your success, then you just might miss the point of all of that hard work. 

Photo by William L. Savastano

It's Time For A New Choice!

So, I was thinking today…now that I feel I have diverged pretty significantly from the Grand Ol’ Party and many of its high-ranking officials who refuse to join the fight to keep “that woman” Hillar-ious Rodham out of the White House, should I consider myself to be an Independent? If I decided to seek office, would there be an (I) next to my name now instead of an (R)? I know that despite how muddled the party lines are right now, if I ran for office today, I’d have to choose either a (D), an (I), or an (R), right? And yes, I know there are a host of third-party designations out there to choose from, too, but we all know how their runs for office turn out. I’d truly love to call third-party candidates more than a novelty at this point, but here we are.

There is definitely one thing I can tell you for sure, and it’s that there won’t be a (D) after my name any time soon, if ever. I believe in small government, personal responsibility, personal accountability, immigration laws, tightly controlled borders, and not only no new taxes, but repealing existing ones. I don’t believe in wasteful government spending, the minimum wage, socialism, mandated insurance, and Ponzi schemes like Social Security. I believe in completely eliminating fraud from government spending. I believe in work for welfare, right to work laws, capitalism, free markets, restrictions on abortions, and the right of religious organizations to choose which forms of birth control they offer, or none at all, if they so choose. I believe in saluting the flag, that most police officers are good folks trying to do their best with the difficult circumstances our lax society has created, the right to protect your family with firearms, and above all, that it should be the responsibility of each one of us who is capable of working to go to work and handle our own shit instead of relying on the government and taxpayers to keep us sheltered, clothed and fed. I am entirely against affirmative action and other reparations for things that happened in the past that had absolutely nothing to do with me. I do not believe in the notion of “privilege”, but actually believe that every single human being of sound mind and body on this planet has the same exact abilities as every other human being, and should be treated exactly the same, regardless of skin color, birthplace, views on religion, etc. And no, I am sorry if you think so, but that is not what (D)s believe. I don’t believe anything is, nor should it be free of cost. And I believe that we should all have to pay the same percentage of taxes, regardless if we make one dollar or one billion dollars a year. So, yeah, no question there about the party to which I DON’T belong!

For the most part, all of my beliefs and disbeliefs would automatically qualify me for that (R) after my name, but here are some of the things with which I have a problem; an (R)-controlled congress that passed a budget with MORE spending in it than the previous (D)-controlled congress, (R) politicians that pass special interest- and personally-driven pork projects like they were a (D), a political party that cannot produce a decent presidential candidate any longer and whose leadership refuses to support the nominee its members have chosen to run for President, a party that is so mired in socially conservative issues that it is continually losing ground at any chance of appealing to anyone other than the most staunch social conservatives. Contrary to many (R)s, I do believe we are having a negative impact on our environment, especially our oceans and the planet’s water system. I believe the government should play a role in protecting the environment, but I also believe our government, especially when in the hands of (D)s, goes about it in a completely inefficient and misguided manner.

So, what letter do you choose to describe yourself if you’re not a particularly religious person, but believe people definitely have a right to be one, yet at the same time, do not have a right to force their religious views on others? What letter do you choose if you don’t care what consenting adults do to each other in the privacy of their own homes, think there should be a separation between a religious marriage and a legal marriage, that legal marriages should be between whoever anyone wants, yet have no problem with a football team praying before a game or newly arrived students being taught English before anything else? What letter do you choose if you understand that most people in the world who practice religion are good people, but that there are some who commit horrible acts in the name of their religion? What letter do you choose if you think it is a horrible mistake to not factor those people’s religious beliefs into understanding why they are committing those horrible acts? What letter do you choose if you believe we are fighting a large number of radical Islamist terrorists, yet understand that not all Muslims are terrorists, nor are all the terrorists we are fighting Muslim? What letter do you choose if you understand that sometimes the government needs to listen in on people’s conversations to try to find the bad guys and have no problem with them listening to yours, yet still will be upset because they are wasting tax money in doing so?

Then, while dealing with all of these questions, I also have to keep in mind something that is a huge flaw with our existing primary system, in particular the Taxifornia (R) primary. If I don’t register as an (R), I lose the chance to vote in the (R) primaries here in the grand state of Taxifornia, and will only have the option to vote in the (D) primary. Me voting in the (D) primary is about as stupid an idea as me having to choose between Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez to be my new Senator. Then again, since I live in such a (D) state, our primary seems to always land so late in the cycle that our (R) primary votes are mostly symbolic anyway. By the time the damned (R) primary rolled around this time, Taco Bowls was the only person still running. I waited two years to vote for Ben Carson, and I never got the chance.

So, with no chance of considering myself a (D) because of where that party stands on just about everything, and a growing number of issues that I seem to be parting ways with the (R)s on, is it time for me to consider myself an (I)? I took a little time to research exactly what the common perception and understanding of an (I) voter is these days, and it didn’t necessarily provide me with a cut and dry answer.

Wikipedia describes an (I) as “a voter who does not align themselves with a political party. An independent is variously defined as a voter who votes for candidates and issues rather than on the basis of a political ideology or partisanship; a voter who does not have long-standing loyalty to, or identification with, a political party; a voter who does not usually vote for the same political party from election to election; or a voter who self-describes as an independent.”

Well, while I don’t always align completely with the (R), I definitely am more closely aligned to that letter than either of the other two. But, at the same time, I vote more on my conscience and my fiscally conservative views than anything else, regardless of what political party seems to be blowing that way at the time. Then, again, I definitely have more of a long-standing loyalty to the (R) than the other two. Over time, I have identified far more often with the (R). When I look back, I do usually vote for the same political party in election after election, though when there has been a better (I) choice, I have gone that way – case in point, Ross Perot.

Yet, as for that last point, I am definitely having a harder time self-describing as an (R) these days, but realistically, I wonder if that is because the party’s presidential primary and general election strategy was so lacking this time around. I think, too, that a good deal of the problem I have with blatantly slapping that (R) at the end of my name is due to the fantastically-successful campaign the (D)s have conducted in this country since 2006 to create a social stigma around that (R).

Meanwhile, I feel that the (I) means you vote with the (D)s about as often as you vote with the (R)s, but other than a few propositions here and there for which I might align more with the (D)s based on fiscal principle, I hardly ever vote with the (D)s, especially when it comes to any politician with that (D) after their name. The only time I EVER voted for a person with a (D) after their name was for Willy Jeff in 1992, and have I regretted the shit out of that ever since, especially now, since that vote helped play a role in enabling the crooked monster to rear her head today!

And thus, after contemplating and researching, I find myself in the same quandary now as I was in the beginning of this letter-based party alignment self-analysis. If you divide the political spectrum into just a (D) and an (R), then I would have to choose (R). But, if you provide the third option of an (I), I fit a little less into that (R), especially on some key social issues. And when I weigh all of this, no matter how I look at choosing a letter for myself, I really feel like I need a new choice.

And wanting a new choice brings me back around to what I like to call my core beliefs and wanting my new choice to be based upon those beliefs. My core beliefs are in fiscal conservatism. That means I believe in small government, less spending, lower taxes, strong capitalism, personal responsibility, work for welfare, controlled immigration, and the bottom line as the top priority, including government staying out of social issues to help reduce the cost to taxpayers. If I look at the person running, or the measure being decided, each and every time, I vote for the person or measure that is going to make the most financial sense, first for me, then, for the country. And this tells me that even though the (I) was created to give us an alternative to the (D) and the (R), I still am not comfortable slapping any one of the three at the end of my name right now.

So, in conclusion, the rules and politics can all be damned! It’s time for a new choice! To misquote Uncle Moe, “I was born a fiscal conservative (anyone who knows my grandfather can attest to that), and I will die a fiscal conservative”, regardless of what party or non-party seems to most closely align with those views at the time. So, for now, I will refuse to adhere to one of those pre-existing letters and go with my own choice, (FC) for Fiscal Conservative.

William L. Savastano (FC-TA). Done, and done.

Oh, and yes, the TA stands for Taxifornia, the state in which I was born and pay through the nose for the privilege of living.

Image created by William L. Savastano

Government Mandate Puts Profitable Post Office In The Red

Every single day, except for Sundays, we can go out to our mailbox and receive just about any form of correspondence or package that anyone in the world has chosen to send us. All they need is our address. Let’s think about that for a second. Someone on the opposite side of the world can go to their local post office and, with just our address, have that postal agency send a letter or parcel to our country and that object arrives in our mailbox.

This very same system also provides the ability for anyone in America to send us a parcel or letter, directly to our mailbox, from anywhere in the United States for less than the cost of pretty much any private or third party shipper. In fact, when it comes to letters, it costs the same to send a letter across town as it does across the country. How amazing is that?!

This is called the flat rate U.S. Postal Service, and it lost $5,100,000,000 (that’s $5.1 billion) over the course of its last fiscal year. But the postal service’s losses are not the result of the discrepancy in the cost of service whether your letter travels 3,000 miles or 10 feet, nor are the losses the result of the lack of profitability of it’s service offerings. These huge losses are caused by a congressional mandate that forces the U.S. Postal Service to pre-fund 75 years' worth of retirement benefits for its employees.

Come again? Yes, there is only one entity in the entire country that is required by an act of congress to pre-fund 75 years worth of retirement benefits for its employees…our postal service. What effect has this had on the independent, U.S. government agency? Well, before the congressional mandate, it was profitable and in the black every year, but today, it has lost money the last nine years in a row and is $15 billion in debt.

Once again, government has taken a profitable business and regulated it into the red.

Want proof? Take away the retirement pre-funding requirement and the post office would have turned a $623 million profit last year instead of a $5.1 billion loss. While the good news is that this pre-funding requirement actually will end with this fiscal year, our U.S. Postal Service will start 2017 over $15 billion in debt as opposed to beginning the year debt free, as would have been the case for the past nine years without this restricting congressional mandate.

Government’s job should be to regulate trade, not force organizations to take on vast amounts of debt just to exist.

Photo by Xavier Massa via Pexels

"Can't Someone Else Do It?"

I walk for an hour early in the morning before work everyday in a big, sprawling parking structure. It gives me a chance to counteract all of the snacks I am going to eat that night, provides me with an hour of quiet reading and reflection, and inadvertently, also gives me the chance to witness something very few people who work in a business complex see...an actual person picking up all of the trash that gets left on the concrete floor of the parking structure.

I've been walking in that parking structure every weekday morning for about a year now, and I have seen everything from a rotting banana to a single Cheez-It, to more than a few used Band-Aids, and items that have ranged in size from a paperclip to a stack of empty boxes and packaging material six feet high. One morning, there was even a discarded and obviously used condom. And what amazes me, yet fails to surprise me each time I walk past discarded items like these, is that a member of the human collective - someone who most likely is educated, has enough of a work ethic to hold down a job, and perhaps, like me, began their career in a service job - made the very deliberate and at least somewhat conscious effort to leave that item on the concrete floor of the parking structure and then drive or walk away.

I’m often also amazed at how close some of these items are left to one of the two trashcans that are on every level of the parking structure. While I don’t accept the excuse, I do at least slightly understand the frustration one might have at walking a couple hundred feet to a trashcan, but you’d be surprised at how many of these discarded items are literally within a toss-length of those trashcans.

Seeing these discarded items oft reminds me of that venerable episode of The Simpsons where the haphazard and lovingly ever-clueless embodiment of the stereotypical American, Homer Simpson, runs for Springfield Trash Service Commissioner under the slogan, "Can't someone else do it?" Homer runs on a whim, driven by completely controllable circumstances that spiraled out of control due to his own laziness, driving him to seek revenge by dethroning the sitting Trash Service Commissioner instead of holding himself accountable for his own actions. Homer’s slogan and promise that everyone in the town will no longer be responsible for picking up their own trash thanks to his garbage men naturally get him elected in a landslide victory.

In fact, just about every time I have walked past one of those discarded items on the parking structure floor, I have laughed a bit to myself and asked in my best Homer voice in my head, “Can’t someone else do it?”

I sometimes find myself wondering if the people that leave these items lying there on the floor, whether dropped out of their car while sitting, or dropped before or after getting out of the car, realize that at some point, another person is going to have to come along and pick up their garbage for them. I wonder if they think, perhaps, that the garbage is not picked up by a person at all – that maybe there is one of those magic parking-lot-cleaning vacuum trucks that does all the work. And then, of course, I wonder if perhaps they don’t even think about it at all. It’s just trash, and trash goes on the ground, and they don’t care one bit what happens to it or who it might effect.

Maybe it’s the fact that I spent my formative teenage years working thankless service jobs that ranged from bagging groceries to making cookie dough, to selling children’s clothes, to loading delivery trucks by hand, or the fact that at some point in each of those jobs, I was the one picking up the trash, but I can’t say that I have ever simply tossed trash on the ground and just walked away. I definitely have never thought there wasn’t someone that was going to have to come along and pick up that trash at some point. I’ll spare you the environmentalist lecture on the side effects all that trash has on our environment, but will still lightly touch on the fact that the people that discard these items have to at least realize all the trash lining our roads and highways most likely came from folks like them.

The bottom line is that I have always been aware that whether being picked up by hand or picked up by a vacuum truck or other machine operated by a person, there was in fact, a person out there that would be the one who had to pick up my trash if I just left it lying there on the ground. And I simply cannot figure out why it seems there are so many people out there that do not share this understanding.

I really wish each and every one of the people who toss their garbage on the floor of that parking structure could be there early in the morning when I watch a living, breathing human being have to bend down, take other people’s trash into his own hand and repeat this over and over again. I wish they could see this person who still somehow manages to greet me with a smile each morning being the “someone else” in “Can’t someone else do it?”

"If You're Not First, You're Last..."

“If you’re not first, you’re last…”

These immortal words, handed down from his estranged father to race car driver extraordinaire Ricky Bobby instilled in him a drive to win because they embody a stark truth about competition – if you are first, you have won, and if you are anything but first, no matter where you place in the field, you have lost.

So, in that context of stark contrast, I have a message for every conservative out there, be you a social conservative, fiscal conservative, or whatever brand of conservative you may label yourself – as it stands right now, if you are not voting for Donald Trump this November, then you are voting for Hillary Clinton.

Sorry, folks! I know you might not want to hear it, and I know you are doing everything you possibly can to justify in your heart and in your mind that this is not the case. Believe me, I am not faulting you for that at all, but whatever your reason for not voting for Trump, when you cast that ballot for the presidential election in November, no matter what box you check instead of Donald Trump, like it or not, you might as well just be checking the box next to Hillary Clinton.

No matter your reason for not physically checking Hillary Clinton on your ballot – the fact that she will never be held accountable for the deaths of four of her operators as Secretary of State during the attack in Benghazi – the fact that she flat out lied to the American people about the reason for that attack – the fact that she lied right to the faces of the families of those four men about the circumstances surrounding their deaths – the fact that she lied to the American people and to the FBI about her email server – the fact that she maintained that personal email server so she could delete and remove from public record any emails she desired – the fact that she lied to us that one time about her landing while her official government plane was taking gunfire. Or, if you want to go with some of the historical facts – the fact that she paid off woman after woman that her husband had either accosted or mistreated with his sexual advances while in office – the fact that her ultra-liberal operations long before her husband ever took office helped to advance the ultra-liberal agenda that has helped lead to so many of the issues that you, as a conservative, probably take issue with today – ALL those backroom deals like Whitewater – and let us not forget about the time that she told us that her and Willy Jeff left the White House poor and penniless, though now they are quite admittedly flush with cash after starting that crooked foundation that has taken in billions of dollars from governments that treat anyone that is not a straight male horribly, even flat out killing them for existing, and taken in millions from pay to play deals that exchanged foundation donations for State Department sitdowns, deals, jobs, and favors.

Geez, that is such a long list! I don’t see how any American could see that list, completely dismiss every single one of those things as being some conspiracy theory or orchestrated attack, then still somehow walk into that voting booth and vote for someone with that kind of track record. I do not see how someone could not see that every single move this woman has made in her life has been an orchestrated effort to end up exactly where she is today – all of the lies and all of the cover-ups, and all of the silence while her husband took blowjobs from interns and other women he manipulated through his positions of power – just so she could end up exactly where she is today – standing a real chance of becoming the first female president of the United States – the most powerful person in the world, most likely for eight years.

Make no mistake, my conservative friends, Hillar-ious losing the election in November becomes more impossible with each passing day. While third party candidates are going to abound by the time November rolls around, unless Donald Trump ultimately drops out of the race, every vote that is not cast for Trump is going to be a vote for Hillary Clinton. I’m not saying you should vote for Trump if you are not. Vote your conscience, but don’t kid yourself about what your vote means to Hillary Clinton when it is not cast for Donald Trump. No matter how much you tell yourself and everyone around you that you didn’t actually check that box, endorsing the track record of our soon-to-be queen, that it wasn’t your fault, that you had nothing to do with it, you and I both know deep down that it is just not the case.

So, please, keep doing what you are doing, working hard to promote your third party candidate and trying to convince Donald Trump to drop out of the race, but if Trump’s still in the race on election day, just remember who you will be helping win the election when you don’t vote for Trump.

As those immortal words, “If you’re not first, your last,” capture so well, all that is going to matter in November is who comes in first – who wins. Let’s hope you are not among those who will have helped elect our new queen.

Photo by Jiri Rotrekl via Pixabay

The Opportunity In Being Let Go

It is a sound that I will always remember - the wheels of my big desk chair as it rolled noisily along the concrete floor of the big, open office space. The sound echoed off of the concrete walls and rows of glass desks. It was funny watching the little heads pop up from their desks and monitors, almost like gophers popping their heads up out of the ground for a look as everyone in the room sought to discover what was making that annoying sound.

It was just me, wheeling my big office chair out of the office for the last time. I’d boxed up the few things I kept at work and all that was left was to wheel my chair, my box and my printer to the car and drive away for the last time.

In American corporate culture, we’re supposed to walk out quietly, move on, and then never speak of these final walks out of a place of employment again, even pretend they never happened. We have all experienced them at some point, though, and if I accomplish one thing by continually writing about them, I hope it will be to assure each and every one of you that experiences something like this that the ending of a job truly offers amazing potential when it comes to taking your career and life to the next level.

One such opportunity that is presented to us when a job ends is the chance to expand our personal network. We meet a lot of amazing people at each job, so each time we leave one and start another, we stand the chance of meeting an entirely new set of amazing folks while still being able to stay in contact with the people from the job we have just left. Add in the fact that you will also secure  some valuable contacts while conducting your job search, and there’s some extra icing on that cake.

So, the next time you are walking out of a place of employment for the last time, just remember to hold your head high and smile, knowing that great things are about to happen for you. The potential to improve so many things you have wanted to improve is the greatest at that point in time. To be cliché, the world is yours to shape and mold as you wish on that day. Don’t forget to enjoy the feeling of freedom, then get right to work finding that next opportunity and ensuring it is your best opportunity yet.

As for me, one of the most amazing things about the day I wheeled that big office chair out of that echoing, big concrete and glass office and down to my car was the fact that I did not wheel that chair out alone. I was flanked by people who were now not only former co-workers, but life-long acquaintances that will always share the memories of our time there together, and the memory of that funny time William noisily wheeled his big office chair out of the place on his last day.

On that last day, when that window closes, just remember that the biggest door in the world has been opened for you – a door that leads to limitless potential.