Under Pressure: The "Black Death" of the 21st Century

As an employer, you want your team members healthy, happy and full of passion for what they do. It?s the best way for them to work at their peak and for everyone to win. Unfortunately, for more than one-quarter of American workers, being satisfied at work is anything but a reality.

In a recent poll by the American Psychological Association, one-third of Americans are living with extreme stress. In 74% of respondents, the primary source of that anxiety was their jobs. In fact, workplace stress has become so prevalent in this age of layoffs and long work hours, that this psychological condition has been nicknamed the Black Death of the 21st century.

Okay, maybe the people who work in the office of official nicknames are being a bit over-dramatic, but nevertheless, stress can be dangerous. It?s been linked to:

  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Depression
  • Burnout
  • Workplace injury
  • Back problems

All of the above complications lead to absenteeism, turnover, decreased productivity and increased medical, legal and insurance expenses. That, in turn, stresses you out!

The good news is that you can lower the level of anxiety for your team members and yourself. As Dave teaches in EntreLeadership Master Series and in his new book, EntreLeadership, there are a number of ways to keep your team members far away from freak-out mode. Here are a few to get you started.

The Right Fit

Have you ever been in a job that just wasn?t a good fit for you, but you tried to make it work anyway? It?s miserable and nerve-wracking. The same holds true for your team members. If they?re not the perfect fit for a position, they?re going to dread coming to work. The end result will be that they won?t stick around long, whether it?s their decision or yours.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, says it?s as simple as making sure you have the right person in the right seat on the right bus. It allows everyone to do their best work. At Dave?s company, each prospective team member goes through at least four interviews. They are also required to take a personality test to make sure their style fits the job.

Your Team Matters

Dave?s friend, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, wrote a wonderful book called Thou Shall Prosper. In it, he says God is inordinately pleased when we are obsessively, compulsively consumed with the needs of others. That?s an easy one to understand as far as your family, friends and customers go. But do you apply this principle to your own team members? Are you doing what?s best for them? Love your team well; treat them like family, and they will act like family.

Communication

You know the old saying, ?No news is good news?? It?s awesome if you want to build a culture of distrust and frustration. In fact, according to a Deloitte?s 2010 Ethics and Workplace poll, 46% of those surveyed cited a lack of transparent communication from their leadership as the main reason for dissatisfaction at work.

Communication is the lifeblood of an organization and the grease that keeps the gears moving. Everyone feels better when they know what?s happening. Make it a habit of over-sharing with your team members, whether it?s good news or bad. When they know what?s going on and what?s being accomplished, they?ll feel like part of the team and trust their leaders.

Financial Wellness

Another leading cause of stress for your team members is personal financial problems. In fact, it?s the number-one reason workers lose focus and become less productive. Those who are in financial trouble spend up to 20 hours a month worrying about their problems while on the job.

That?s why Dave requires each prospective team member to submit a personal budget before they are hired. He wants to make sure they can live on what he is paying for the position. As a leader, he believes it?s his job to serve his team well by making sure they can take care of their family and meet their obligations with what they are paid.

An additional sure-fire way to decrease money worries is by offering a Financial Wellness benefit. This program teaches your team member to take control of their money and make it work for them, eliminating financial stress.

Recognize Them

People, no matter how young or old, yearn for recognition. Telling someone they are doing a good job can instantly put a smile on their face. Look for opportunities to brag on your people. Do it in front of others, especially those they care about, and it?s three times as powerful. A word of warning, though: Your compliment has to be sincere. Cheap flattery will get you nowhere. In fact, it demotivates instead of inspires.

Making your company an awesome place to work, where stress is low and motivation is high, creates an atmosphere of winning for your team and the business. Then, you can kick that ?Black Death? out of your office for good!

No leader should lead without these principles. It?s what your team members need to see in you, and what you want to see in them. Learn more about the EntreLeadership Live Events, and put Dave's 20 years of proven business principles to work for you.

In 20 years, Dave has grown his company to a national winning brand with more than 300 team members who have impacted millions of lives. His company has been named one of the ?Best Places to Work in Nashville? four years in a row. EntreLeadership is how he?s done it and how you can do it too. Get your copy of the new book now!

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Source: http://www.daveramsey.com/article/under-pressure-the-black-death-of-the-21st-century/lifeandmoney_business

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Time Of The Season To Be Bullish

The stock market makes most of its gains each year in the winter months. What are the odds for that strong historical tendency to overcome the current worries and uncertainties? No guarantees, but the winter months tend to be positive regardless of surrounding conditions.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/10/14/time-of-the-season-to-be-bullish/

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Google's Greatest Weakness: An Insider's Perspective

"I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG  ) for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies ? is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right."
-- Steve Yegge, Google senior engineer

With Big G fresh off a stunning third-quarter success, you might think that's the most important line in Yegge's epic rant about Google, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN  ) , Facebook, and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT  ) , but it's not. Google has one great weakness hidden in its corporate culture. If Yegge's post is any indication, Google's already recognized this shortcoming and might soon overcome it. That's great for Google shareholders, and it could be very dangerous for its competition.

The key differentiators
"There are probably a hundred ? ways you can compare" Google with Amazon, Yegge says, "and Google is superior in all but three of them." Being really good at just two or three things can make or break a company, at least over the short term. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos "realized long before the vast majority of Amazonians that Amazon needs to be a platform," Yegge explains. Amazon's massive cloud infrastructure, and the outgrowth of its business model, came about because of this realization. Without it, Amazon might still be a popular online bookseller with a huge, efficient computer system.

Platform dominance
A platform is basically a consistent structure that ties together multiple services in a unified way. This makes it easier for other developers to create layers on top of it, and it makes it easier for users to have a stable experience. Later, Yegge says:

The problem is that [Google is] a product company through and through. ? We don't get Platforms, and we don't get Accessibility. The two are basically the same thing, because platforms solve accessibility. A platform is accessibility.

Android app developers always seem to be complaining about how hard Android is to design for. Despite nearing a 50% smartphone-market share, the Android Market offers less than half the app variety as Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL  ) App Store, and both operating systems were released around the same time. If it's less accessible to developers, it becomes less accessible for users.

In spite of the occasional beatings it's taken for maintaining rigid control over iOS, Apple's managed to make its proprietary environment far friendlier to legions of developers. That's platform success. Accessibility can create a virtuous circle, encouraging further adoption and increasing brand loyalty. It's led to huge gains for Apple, which earned two out of every three dollars earned by the entire smartphone industry in the second quarter. Google's returns from Android are -- to put it mildly -- a little harder to quantify.

The challenge of a wired world
The need for intuitive and interoperable platforms rises as the world becomes more technologically interconnected. Yegge understands this and has explained it well. People need accessibility when it comes to technology. There were tablets before the iPad, but they weren't successful because earlier tablets tried to make a complicated interface smaller. After the iPhone's success, the ideal became instead the expansion of an intuitively simple interface designed for small devices. "When software -- or idea-ware for that matter -- fails to be accessible to anyone for any reason," Yegge says, "it is the fault of the software or of the messaging of the idea. It is an Accessibility failure."

The platform is the message
"A product is useless without a platform, or more precisely and accurately," Yegge says, "a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product." Google+ is his primary example. Reports of major traffic declines on Google+ quickly followed an astounding activity spike after the service opened its doors. Google+ was envisioned as the central hub for Google's services, but none of those services was developed on, or integrated into, a platform. It's not accessible enough. I have several friends who signed up for Google+ after the recent Facebook changes, only to throw up their hands in resignation after failing to understand it. Yegge explains why Google+ doesn't (yet) have the same appeal as Facebook: "Facebook is successful because they built an entire constellation of products by allowing other people to do the work. So Facebook is different for everyone." Facebook is a platform. Think of it as the Windows of the Internet. Windows would have failed if no one had written great programs to run on top of it.

"The Golden Rule of Platforms, 'Eat Your Own Dogfood'," Yegge writes, "can be rephrased as 'Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything.'" Microsoft knew this because its existence was built on a platform -- first MS-DOS, then Windows. Apple's platform is its ideas as much as its systems, but its systems are designed to run the same way every time. Google is still, at its heart, an advertising company. Being a platform wasn't necessary before, because everything came from one product. Now that it's expanding -- into analytics, business productivity, daily deals, Web browsers, operating systems, and even cell-phone production through its Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI  ) purchase -- Google needs a platform. It needs a way to make everything work together. That's the promise of accessibility, and that's what keeps Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon so involved in their users' lives.

The easier it is for people to have a consistent, accessible, and intuitive experience -- whether they're developers, businesses, or consumers -- the more appealing that experience will be, and the more likely they are to adopt more products that continue that experience. A platform makes it possible, and it starts inside the company. Google has a number of amazing products, but it needs one more: a great platform. I think Yegge just gave his bosses a wake-up call.

Google might understand the need for more intelligent business, but there's one company poised to capitalize on that importance in a major way. You can find out more about its vital link to the next era of business success in our free report.

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Source: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/10/15/googles-greatest-weakness-an-insiders-perspective.aspx

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Do You have Debt Problems

If you have piles of bills and not enough money to pay them, the future can seem very bleak and hopeless. You may have gotten in debt because of a job layoff or unexpected bills. Or, was it just plain stupidity? Before the stock market dropped, were you riding high on a wave of prosperity [...]

Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2011/10/14/do-you-have-debt-problems/

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Street Vendors Near Zuccotti Park Are Losing Tons Of Money


Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street protesters are steering a ton of business away from a portion of the 99% they say they're representing. Namely, the small businesses who operate in the Financial District. 

“Let them leave soon,” Abderrahim Marhraoui, the owner of a Halal food cart since 2003, told the Wall Street Journal. He said sales are down as much as 80% and he may return home to Morocco if sales don't pick up soon. Other vendors estimated a 30 - 40% decrease in sales in the past three weeks. 

Stacey Tzortzatos, owner and manager of Panini & Co. Breads, says she can't even pay her expenses. “My regular Wall Street suit-and-tie people don’t want to come,” she told the Journal. 

Instead, she's invested $200 in a new lock for her restroom, and is handling flooding from overflowing toilets because so many protesters have been using the Panini & Co. restroom. 

While some business owners are sympathetic, many are just frustrated that their normal clientele are staying away, and protesters aren't buying their food. (Instead, Occupiers take advantage of catered lunches in Zuccotti Park.)

Now that the movement is spreading across New York City and around the world, more small business owners will surely feel the same. 

Read the full Wall Street Journal article here > 

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/Sfi7G3Ig_VA/street-vendors-occupy-wall-street-2011-10

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UPDATE: 24 Arrested At Citibank; Dramatic Video Shows Woman In A Suit Getting Arrested


citibank

Today some Occupy Wall Street marchers went directly to banks.

According to Alex Silverman of CBS New York, 17 24 were arrested for trespassing inside the LaGuardia Pl. Citigroup location. Another 2 were arrested outside for disorderly conduct.

This idea of being more confrontational with banks will help the protesters get more attention, but going to random retail outlets, and being a nuisance inside the part where the ATMs are is going to be pretty ineffective.

Several people have pointed out that the purpose of going to the bank was to withdraw accounts (as a protest) so characterizing the entry there purely as a demonstration does not seem to be accurate.

This video of a women in a suit -- who may or may not have been there to protest -- is making the rounds is also pretty dramatic.

SEE ALSO: These charts explain why protesters are so angry >

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/ObiITTAMbMg/17-arrested-inside-this-citibank-during-occupy-wall-street-march-2011-10

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How To Pick The Very Best Loan Company Online

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Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2011/10/15/how-to-pick-the-very-best-loan-company-online/

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