Tag Archives

10 Articles

The Customer Experience and Business Continuity w/ Charlein Barni

Posted by presspass on
0
Business
The Customer Experience and Business Continuity w/ Charlein Barni

Join me Thursday, March 9/23 at 1pm EST on the VoiceAmerica Business Channel!

As a result of COVID, there is allot more talk and interactions between teams – internally and externally – with regards to Business Continuity, Disaster Planning, and the like. But what doesn’t seem to be talked about very much, if at all, is the customer experience, I speak with long-time BCM and customer experience specialist, Charlein Barni, about BCM and the customer experience.

We talk about:

1. Defining what ‘customer experience’ means,

2. Defining exactly who is a customer (more than you might think),

3. Internal and external organizational views and interactions,

4. What org’s sometime get wrong about the customer experience,

5. How important organizational culture is to the customer experience,

6. When an experience ends…,

7. Measuring engagement with customer experiences and how engagement is often misinterpreted,

8. The BCM lifecycle and what it contains,

9. The most important part of the BCM lifecycle when it comes to the customer experience, 10. Measuring customer experiences…and much, much more.

It’s obvious Charlein is passionate about BCM and the customer experience. Don’t miss her insights as she talks about a topic not often broached in BCM. Enjoy!

Preparing4Unexpected-AFullick.jpg

BCM & Risk Mgmt.: A Well-orchestrated ‘paso doble’ for Resilience

Posted by rstapholz on
0
Business
BCM & Risk Mgmt.: A Well-orchestrated ‘paso doble’ for Resilience

Join me June 9, 2022 at 1pm EST on the Business Channel!

Business Continuity and Risk Management must work closely together, like two people in a well-orchestrated dance; a ‘paso doble’. I speak with Business Continuity and Risk Management expert Federica Maria Rita Livelli about how these two disciplines need to work in parallel to maintain synergy and unity.

In this episode Federica discusses:

1. Defines the likeness between disciplines and how they assist each other

2. Discusses strategies and resources that link the two disciplines together

3. The importance of the Business Impact Analysis and the Risk Assessment

4. Understanding the business

5. The resilience that can be created between the two

6. A holistic and harmonized approach to BC and Risk Mgmt.

7. Tips for practitioners to foster an ‘…environment… based on shared risk…culture, values, trust and collaboration’…and much more!

Enjoy!

Preparing4Unexpected-AFullick.jpg

Am I Planning for Success or Disaster? Business Start-up and Taxes

Posted by rstapholz on
0
Business
Am I Planning for Success or Disaster? Business Start-up and Taxes

Many times the accounting or tax professional is the last person an entrepreneur speaks to when starting a business. When in actuality the tax professional is first person you should consult when starting a business. This episode will discuss the importance validating your business idea, developing a business plan, and selecting a structure (Sole-Proprietorship, Corporation, LLC, or Partnership) for tax purposes. Proper planning and guidance in each of these areas will help you to succeed in starting and operating your business. You will see the importance of proper accounting and payment systems, so you can take the right steps and make a profit faster.

Questions to Ask When Buying a Business

Posted by presspass on
0
Business
Questions to Ask When Buying a Business

Each year I learn about disasters that occur when my clients or others either buy or start a business. Why do these disasters happen? Many times the problems start because of consulting the attorney and the banker, but not consulting their tax professional. Why is it necessary to consult a tax professional when starting or buying a business? With good planning and discussion tax issues can be avoided and tax liabilities can be minimized by working with a tax professional even before buying or starting a business. If you wait until tax season to inform your tax professional, you could then be facing a large tax bill.  And, the ability to take advantage of any additional tax deductions for the start-up year is greatly reduced.

When you consider buying a business, there are many tax and accounting questions that have to be asked. You need to consult tax professional not working for the current business owner. This is even more necessary if you have been working in the accounting department for the company you are looking to buy.

Some points about buying a business you need to consider are:

  • What type of entity is the business you are looking to buy?
  • If the business is a corporation, will I be buying the stock of the corporation or the assets of the corporation?
  • What type of business entity is best for my situation?

These are only a few of the questions a prospective business owner must get answered before signing any papers to purchase a business. The answer to these and many other questions will determine how the buying and operating of the business will affect your tax situation.

I highly recommend scheduling an appointment with an Enrolled Agent, like myself  for a Free Business Discovery Session, when you consider either starting a business or buying a business. By consulting with me now, you will save on tax payments and tax headaches later.

Am I Planning for Success or Disaster? Business Startup and Taxes

Posted by presspass on
0
Business
Am I Planning for Success or Disaster? Business Startup and Taxes

Your have the idea. You have the skill of a trade for which you are passionate. You believe there is a need in your area or on the internet for your services. Where to begin is the BIG question. What kind of business structure should I have? A sole-proprietorship? An LLC? A Corporation? A Partnership? To whom should I go visit first, an attorney, the banker, or my tax person?  To often when starting a new business the prospective new business owner goes either to the attorney and/or the banker first and never considers their tax person. Many times the tax person does not learn of the business until the time comes to file the tax return. In fact, the first stop when looking to start the business should be to the tax preparer’s office.

For example, when a client or potential client comes in or schedules a video conference, we sit down and have a free discovery session about their business idea. We want to help you own a business that will bring you the joy and freedom you deserve. From the beginning, you will learn the correct steps to become profitable faster.

First, you will need a business plan to document success for your business. The plan will identify you unique elements for success. Second, what business structure will give you the most benefits and protection? By analyzing your goals and understanding the tax advantages and disadvantages of each structure you will be able to know whether you should be a corporation? LLC? or Sole Proprietorship? Third, we will help with the heavy lifting of startup for your company, including tax registrations, Federal ID numbers, assistance with bank accounts and more. Fourth and most importantly, you will need to manage profits. We help to implement your accounting and payroll systems, so you can fully understand the status of your business and know when to make adjustments.

A customized success plan designed just for you will help you to take the right steps from day one and put you on the road to making a profit.

Harmonizing Work & Motherhood: Can We Afford Not To? By Dr. Kas Henry

Posted by Editor on
0
Empowerment
Harmonizing Work & Motherhood: Can We Afford Not To? By Dr. Kas Henry

Harmonizing Work & Motherhood:  Can We Afford Not To?

 

Women are an integral part of the global work place.  They are parallel thinking multi-taskers alongside their sequential thinking male individual taskers. Men and women solve problems differently and women are more prone to natural collaboration and seeking assistance.  A good balance of both male and female perspectives to ideas and solutions are needed for business success and the brain function studies seem to affirm that much needed gender balance.

 

Research shows that

  • Fortune 500 Firms with women Board members outperform their peers by 53% greater ROE
  • Women make up half of the U.S. workforce and comprise $5 trillion in purchasing power
  • Women make up a majority of the single parent households with children in the US
  • 80% of all US healthcare decisions are made by women
  • 70% of all major financial decisions in the US households are made by women

 

 

 

 Women are daughters, mothers and wives.  As such they are the care givers of their families. They are required to juggle work, family, social obligations and taking care of themselves.  Women are considered “stay at home” and “not working” when they are not employed for wages but expend energy working for the family from morning till night for no pay.  When women work for wages, they take on a second job, a job outside of the home.  This job may not pay equal wages for equal work when a male and a female perform that same job, even in developed first world nations like the US.  In a system like the US, women are actuarially valued to be higher risk for healthcare as those naturally endowed to give birth.  So, we create a perfect storm, placing women to juggle work, life, family while making lower wages and paying higher insurance alongside making majority of the financial decisions and carrying a greater financial burden.

 

 

 

Other nations like Canada places high value in motherhood and gives mothers time off to care for their new born and support the family.  Those countries value early mother-child bonding and strong family as a foundation for building a stronger society that is socially engineered for lasting and prospering.

 

  

 

 

Then there are other nations across the world, like India, that cannot even assure the safety of the woman in the workplace where women could be sexually assaulted by her co-workers.

 

This is the spectrum of women in the workplace in our global economic environment.

 

No doubt, women have come a long way in the workplace, but there is more to be done and much continue to remain a conundrum. Women not staying in the workforce and leaving to raise families while be unemployed or under employed is not healthy for business or society.  Attracting, developing and retaining women in the workforce is important for the organizational succession plan.

 

How do we support women in the workplace?  How public policy, employers, co-workers, families and society as a whole come together to create harmony of work-life-family where women can bring their best to each situation is of utmost importance today, then ever.  Because, today we have a female workforce that is more educated than their male counterparts and we have more families with single mothers across the world.  How we support working women is the foundation for how we are preparing to groom our future generations being raised by these women.  

 

As the millennial generation and Gen Zs come of age, we are also seeing more men comfortable with the stay at home role as women with their better education become the primary bread winners.  The approach to dealing with the Women in the workplace will also need to be applied to the gender reversal we see emerging. Please join me and my guests, Allison Robinson and Christine Coyle of The Mom Project, to explore how best to harness the value of women and mothers in the workplace and continue to build that into the optimal approach for supporting families.

Unleashing the Feminine Energy to Shaping Our Tomorrows By Kas Henry

Posted by Editor on
0
Empowerment
Unleashing the Feminine Energy to Shaping Our Tomorrows By Kas Henry

Mother Earth.  Mother Nature. Mother Land. Mother Tongue.  All that nurtures and sustains our very existence as well as communication is referred to as ‘Mother” because as a human society, deep down at the core of our souls, we know that feminine power is undisputable.  Female power is necessary for shaping all that is around us.

  As a Hindu child, I was raised to believe that being a woman is powerful and comes with great responsibility.  Responsibility to nurture and support a family.  Be the energy and vitality that anchors both home and society.  For Hindus, God is part male and part female where the female aspect of God is called “Shakthi”, translated in English to mean Energy.  Therefore, the strength of a woman is expected.  The energy and strength of a woman brings each of us into this world. Without women, there is no life and most species will become extinct, including humans.  Given this undisputable fact, I continue to contemplate why women’s rights and women’s empowerment is something we have to take on as a cause?  Why is it looked upon differently than a Man’s given right?

 

I had the added advantage of being born and raised in Sri Lanka, a nation that gave to the world its very first female head of state from a modern democracy, Sirimavo Bandaranaake, in 1960.  Women were heads of households and women can be heads of states was my childhood reality.  However, as I grew older and travelled the world, I began to realize that was not the case everywhere.  I began to realize there were those who were into empowering everyone including women and then there were those who controlled everyone including women.  

That meant, I as a girl growing into a young woman, needed to learn how not to give over control of my very being and take charge of my journey in life.  A gift of life given to me by my God, who embodies the female energy, cannot be surrendered to insecure human beings who saw their path to success as controlling others.  Instead, I needed to seek the mentorship and support of enlightened human beings to help me fully reach my full potential.

Being an empowered woman means owning one’s journey and empowering others, both men and women, along life’s journey.  It is not about looking at anyone as the enemy but treating everyone as fellow travelers with a shared purpose of leaving this place, any place, better than we found it.  Empowered women ennoble others.  They bring out the noble qualities in everyone they touch.  Empowered women shape their path by continually transforming themselves and those around them.

Growing up in South Asia, it was engrained as part of our basic education that serving others in our free time is not optional or resume building but duty to society.  We were taught that our civic duty is what earned us rights in a democracy for self-determination.  This meant, I had the opportunity to engage in educating and empowering women as the pathway to empowering families and communities.

Basic literacy, finical literacy and other means of empowerment were activities I had the honor of participating in.  I must admit, those activities prepared me more for life than anything else because it gave me the opportunity to learn empathy, walk a mile in another person’s shoes and partner with them to strategize a better future.  I found my humanity and calling in that process.

With a young Dodderi Village girl during University Vacation where I spent the summer building a school and teching.  Dodderi village is located in the State of Karnataka, India.

 

The true wealth of a society is not measured in currency or material assets, but in how the women of that society are treated.  Be it education, healthcare, career choices, or life choices, when women are not free to make their own choices, the underlying society is not free and it is not truly capable of realizing its collective potential.  Should women get equal pay? Should women have the right to make their own choices with regards to their own bodies? Should women be punished when their bodies were violated? Should women’s reproductive health matter? Could women pursue any career they want without hazing or retribution? If these questions are asked in a society, it is an indication of that society not yet being free in the factual sense of the word.

 

Supporting women, empowering women and celebrating women is not solely dependent on the men in a society. Good and strong men already do this because they know that they need a strong woman by their side to face their own challenges. Alongside these good men, we women should stand shoulder-to-shoulder and pull each other up.  We can never forget that we hold our destinies in the palm of our own hands.  This week, my guest will be Traci Campbell, the Founder of BIBO, an organization focused on recognizing empowered women, celebrating their positive social impact and laying the foundation for a collaborative effort to magnify the goodness to make it contagious. Please join me on the show and call in with questions.  This is our world and it is our lives that we are transforming.  Let’s get engaged!

Know your Self Interest, Then Shape Your World By Dr. Kas Henry

Posted by Editor on
0
Empowerment
Know your Self Interest, Then Shape Your World By Dr. Kas Henry

The life we sustain by our choices are our own. This is nowhere truer than in a capitalist democracy where our choices drive the market and our civil society through our vote and subsequent participation in the democratic process.  A functional democracy that intends to be sustainable cannot be treated as a spectator sport by the citizens.  It is very much a contact sport that requires educated and fact based active participation if it is to benefit the voting citizens. At the core of that participatory democracy is an empowered citizen population that understand their own self-interest.

Each persona’s self-interest is not one-dimensional because it needs to address the interest of a person in the four functional roles, namely
• Worker
• Consumer
• Investor
• Citizen
If we want high pay as workers, we need to understand that we cannot have all our goods and services free or cheap.  If we want high return on investment form our 401K or Pension, regardless of the morality of the organizations delivering those high returns, as citizens and consumers are we willing to accept the cost of profit making by way of pollution in our water supply or the sub-prime crisis that leads to our job loss and home foreclosure?

It is true we come into every situation for a purpose, but just like Goldilocks realized, we need to exclude the extreme choices of “Too Hot” and “Too Cold” to find what is “just right” and then pursue it while balancing our self-interest.  Such is the case when shaping public policy.  Stakeholders start in extreme positions and with dialogue, facts and consensus building a workable balance could be established for progress to happen.

Please join My Guest Bukola Bello of Vision Mai LLC and me to engage in this very important conversation so we get it just right. We need to harmonize our multifaceted self-interest to build a solid foundation for a sustainable democracy which is the underpinning of our empowered lives.  The rules of engagement for our lives are shaped by the public policies in play. Let’s make sure we lay down these policies just right so we can build on it!

 

More Here!

Anybody’s Dog By Ariel & Shya Kane

Posted by Editor on
0
7th Wave
Anybody’s Dog By Ariel & Shya Kane

Anybody’s Dog – By Shya Kane
An excerpt from How to Have A Match Made in Heaven: A Transformational Approach to Dating, Relating and Marriage

As my wife Ariel and I boarded a small airplane in Ft. Lauderdale bound for Eleuthera in the Bahamas, I noticed the other passengers who would be flying with us. Some seemed to be Bahamians returning from shopping trips, while others were retirees. There was a family with two small children and I enjoyed watching their young boy animate his Spiderman action figure, jumping it from his sister’s shoulder, flying it from seat to seat. I also noticed a man in his mid–30s talking loudly to his wife. Dressed in casual attire, they were obviously going on vacation. Since there was only one seat on each side of the aisle, Ariel and I sat across from each other and this couple sat in front of us.

The plane prepared for take–off and I watched Ariel gaze out her window, fascinated by the view from her little portal into the world. As I turned to look out of my window, I saw that the man who had been so loud was now fidgeting in his seat while his wife did a crossword puzzle. As we sat on the tarmac before take–off, I heard him say, “Joan, this flight is going to be just like our honeymoon. Look at this plane—it’s so small.”

Immediately that got her attention. She anxiously said, “Do you really think so, Ted?”

“Oh yes, the ride will be exactly the same—just as rough, maybe even rougher.”

She put down her pencil and grabbed his hand. I could only imagine what the airplane ride was like after they got married but this one was actually smooth and calm all the way to the island. Later, as we waited to clear customs, we chatted with them and learned that they were Joan and Ted Johnson from Seattle and that they planned to scuba dive during their vacation. Diving, he said, was a passion of his but we got the impression that he was more comfortable with the sport than she was.

A few days later, we were sitting in a restaurant at twilight. As we were watching the sun slide into the Caribbean, the Johnsons came into the restaurant and they stopped by our table to chat. Ted regaled us with tales of swimming and coming across 6–foot–long barracudas (fish with notably large teeth) and how one of them “postured aggressively.” Expansively, he told us of the dangers and how he had threaded his way through the treacherous waters. It was very interesting to watch Joan in the background during his account. All the while she seemed to grow smaller and shrink into herself.

As they left our table, I suddenly remembered Laddy, a little black mutt I had when I was 14. When my neighbor, Willie White, gave me the dog, I immediately had fantasies that Laddy would be like Rin Tin Tin or Lassie, that he would be my faithful companion, following me, loving me—only me. The problem was that Laddy had an inquisitive nose, an adventurous spirit and he liked people, lots of people. Laddy wasn’t just my dog, he was anybody’s dog. He would happily lick anyone’s face, not only mine. This bothered me in my boyish insecurity until I discovered a trick: Close to home, my dog was secure in his environment and gregarious, but when I took him to new places where he felt less secure, he would stay close by my side and look to me for comfort. When Laddy was attentive only to me, I felt needed, important and loved. But when his attention wandered I felt deflated, smaller somehow.

It was clear to me that Ted undermined Joan’s sense of herself. He wanted all of her attention fixed on him and routinely played on her insecurities as a device to achieve this end.

That evening in the Bahamas, as the last red glow disappeared on the horizon, I looked at Ariel and felt happy to enjoy true love. Our relationship is not built on her loving me…only me. She loves and lives with a sense of wonder and expansiveness and I feel grateful that she chooses to share the adventure of her life with me.

Undermining her sense of well–being so that she “needs” me is a child’s game. Love is not something that is fostered by playing on your partner’s insecurities or pulling on him or her for attention. That type of “love” is about as real and mature as an adult playing with a Spiderman action figure and believing that it actually flies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since 1987, internationally acclaimed authors, seminar leaders, radio show hosts and business consultants Ariel and Shya Kane have acted as guides, leading people through the swamp of the mind into the clarity and brilliance of the moment. Find out more about the Kanes, their seminars in NYC, in the UK, Germany and Costa Rica, the Say YES to Your Life! Meetups their work has inspired, their Being Here radio show or join their email newsletter. Also get information about their five award-winning books.  Their newest book, Practical Enlightenment, is now available on Amazon.com.

More Here!

Relationships Made EASY! By Ariel & Shya Kane

Posted by Editor on
0
7th Wave
Relationships Made EASY! By Ariel & Shya Kane

February 8: Relationships Made EASY! 
It only takes an instant to transform your ability to relate. In this episode of Being Here with award-winning relationship book authors, Ariel & Shya Kane, discover what is at the heart of experiencing magic in all of your relationships, especially the one with yourself.

Listen Live this Wednesday, February 8th at 9am PST / 12pm EST on the VoiceAmerica 7th Wave Channel

After this Wednesday, you can stream or download this episode and over 500 episodes on a wide variety of topics from our archives here

You can also listen to Being Here on the go! Stream or download new and archived episodes to your smart phone or mobile device with these applications:
– Podcasts app for iPhone 
– Stitcher Podcast app for Any Device
– VoiceAmerica app for Apple
– VoiceAmerica app for Android

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)

RSS
Follow by Email
Facebook
fb-share-icon
Twitter
Tweet