GoHuman Blog

Then, a few weeks ago, John Friend, the founder of Anusara, confirmed accusations of sexual misconduct, financial corruption, drug use and sexual misuse of power. Since then, the number of certified teachers that have handed in their resignations has skyrocketed. Still, the most devout Anusara-lovers blindly defend their leader and their style of yoga.

It’s like watching people go through the five stages of grief right before our eyes:

• Denial and Anger: Blaming accusers for slandering their teacher and type of yoga
• Bargaining: A handful of senior teachers within the community have pleaded with John to resign his seat as a teacher, and with their students to stay put while they figure something out
• Depression: Status updates like “When will this all be over?”
• Acceptance: More teacher resignations

It might sound callous to say this, but somewhere along the line, way too much stock has been put into John Friend, who, after all, is just a mortal. The tricky thing with yoga is that these teachers are not only teaching a physical activity, but one that is associated closely with philosophy and ethics. Historical yoga texts mention the yamas and niyamas as being paramount to asana. In fact, asana is just one of the Eight Limbs… a stepping-stone on the way to enlightenment. Students, understandably, expect their teachers to practice the philosophical aspect of yoga – but many simultaneously develop an unhealthy devotion towards their teachers. Why? Where does this start? Is it the students’ doing or the teachers’?

There is definitely a type of personality that readily gives up their power to another. But there is also a clever manipulation of philosophy, paired with charisma, that some teachers use to assert their power over others. A friend’s life coach would lure in her students by telling them she was the only person who could “wake them up,” and if they didn’t agree with what she said, it was “the ego interfering.” People craving peace, acceptance and community throw money, time and dignity at those promising to deliver… and an unhealthy relationship develops.

In the end, I can only comment on my personal experience with Anusara and its teachers. One thing that stuck out to me throughout my own teacher training was the saying “Your greatest teacher is within.” A lot of responsibility comes with this concept, which is probably why many choose to instead give over that responsibility to someone else. Regardless, I cherish this saying, and I appreciate the few teachers who have really given me the space to nurture that belief in myself.

I believe there shouldn’t be an imbalanced relationship between teachers and students; rather, a mutual respect, a sharing of information, and then a parting of ways. We students need to figure out for ourselves how to integrate the information we learn in our training, and the only way to do so is by stumbling, walking or soaring out of that classroom so that we can grow, independently. Otherwise, we will continue to outsource our power.

This is also why I believe teachers must always remain students. We are organic beings — continuously shifting, growing, changing — so what resonates with us will also transform us. I’ve always been skeptical of any practice that was overly simplified and finite. The human body, let alone the mind, is an incredibly sophisticated instrument. Scientists admit that the more they know, the more they realize they don’t know. So why would we, as yogis, trust in one teacher so completely that his undoing unravels us? For me, this whole Anusara scandal has been a reminder to once again check in with the only teacher I know I can truly trust: myself.

All of this is a great start, but we NEED YOU to complete her assistance program! Without donations, our mission cannot succeed. So take a moment and sign up for free on GoHuman.com, mention BFR, and we’ll donate another dollar for Dawn on your behalf!

After you’ve done that, visit BFR’s site to donate more towards Dawn’s cause, and view updates on all our successful families and events. BFR thanks the GoHuman community for your continued support.

If your presence doesn’t make an impact… your absence won’t make a difference.

My motivation in launching my own café was quite different. I was doing a very stressful office job and found it hard to get food that was not sweet, stodgy and unhealthy. I wanted to make light, healthy food available to office workers without giving them a guilt trip if they wanted something a bit more indulgent.

Outside that, my dream of running my own business was of being able to make my own rules, work my own hours and pay other people to run the café when I wasn’t there.

I drew up what I thought was a robust business plan and spent about a year making plans and adding up figures. This advance planning led me away from the idea of a shop selling only smoothies and shakes – I saw that if the business was to survive I would have to expand the concept to include a wider range of food.

I bought some books about running a café and I also worked a few days on a voluntary basis in a busy café. The book that became my bible was Start and Run a Sandwich and Coffee Shop by Jill Sutherland. This book, written by a woman who gave up a career in PR to launch a successful coffee bar chain, details all the steps you need to take in advance of the launch of your café.

I was all set to go – however, I reckoned without the effect of the Great Recession. People are spending a lot less than they used to and as a result I have to work more hours than I had ever anticipated.

Surprisingly, this doesn’t make me too miserable. I enjoy actually doing the job of running a café more than I had expected to, and one of the biggest surprises is how much I love chatting to the customers.

I meet a much broader range of people than I did in my last (office) job. I have some fascinating conversations with customers and staff. I hear gossip and local news, before it hits the newspapers.

If I were to detail the hours I spend not just in the shop, but driving around the cash and carries and markets (in search of the best quality, best value food) – not to mention the meager financial returns – it would put off anyone from starting a business.

Yet, I have no regrets. My new life is more physically demanding than any other job I have done, but much less stressful. I hardly ever get angry. In my previous job I was angry almost every day.

A couple of things have helped me cope with the challenges of launching a small business in a recession. The first is the support of friends and family.

Another thing that’s helped is my love of adventure sports – even though I haven’t had time to do any for the last couple of years. In the past I’ve enjoyed skiing, snowboarding, windsurfing, hiking, camping and back-packing. I’m no Bear Grylls, but having trudged through deep snow at high altitude in Nepal and battled with winds on a windsurf board, if I now have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the fruit market and then carry heavy boxes down to the basement, I can pretend I’m doing extreme enterprise building. And when things go wrong, instead of throwing my hands up in despair, I think: “How am I going to get out of this one?”

As a small business owner, you learn to enjoy the challenges. Each one teaches you something new.

For example, when I first launched The Flavour Co I was making the smoothies using pre-bagged frozen fruit ordered in bulk from a supplier. The delivery cost a flat fee of £17, no matter how big or small the order was. At that stage our sales were quite small. One time I paid almost £85 for a bulk order of frozen fruit, and after the boxes had been dropped off I noticed that the sell-by date was due to expire in 10 days time. I phoned the supplier to complain. He said there had been a big mistake and that the order would be replaced – but it never was.

Instead of making a big scene, I decided to start buying fresh fruit in bulk and getting the staff to freeze it. This was much cheaper, tasted fresher and meant that my staff always had something to do even when the shop was quiet. It also saved a load of plastic.

I often see discussions on social media about “what characteristics you need to be an entrepreneur.” I don’t think there’s any blueprint. Everyone has the potential to be a good entrepreneur.

Rob Law, who invented the Trunki ride-on suitcase for kids, had a rough ride from the business “dragons” on the BBC TV business start-up programme Dragon’s Den in 2006. Since then, 900,000 Trunkis have been sold, in 62 countries.

In a magazine interview last year, Law said: “Being rejected in the Den was the least of the setbacks I experienced. My advice to entrepreneurs is to see every hurdle as an opportunity to develop resourcefulness and character. Once you leap over the first few they start to seem smaller.”

Or in the words of the Roman poet Horace (65-8BC): “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.”

It is my hope that for at least some of our GoHuman user community, the GoHuman blog may be a source of ongoing “luck” for which you have been waiting (and preparing).

As we wrote about in 2009, Goldman Sachs started an initiative called “10,000 Small Businesses” in which they’ve set aside $500 Million to assist small businesses operating in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Long Beach, New Orleans and New York (but it’s spreading to other cities).

Why is Goldman Sachs doing this?  We think we called it correctly in 2009, but we also wanted to alert you to the fact that regardless of the self-serving nature of the gesture, opportunities still exist for you to benefit.

So, please, if you haven’t already: have a look, apply, and come back and comment here and let us know if it’s worked for you. We’d love to know!

Thomas Jefferson said “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” Well, you’ve worked hard …. Good luck!

As a result of this situation, a complex and convoluted system was developed, in which banks packaged mortgages and sold them.  In reality, a mortgage is nothing more than a pile of paper.  These piles of paper were bundled into neat little packages and sold.  Small packages were bundled into larger packages.  Many were sliced up and regrouped into new packages, some riskier than others.   It became a giant game of paper shuffling.

So who bought these packages?  Well, they were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to investment banks and to investors around the world.  These packages were turned into mortgage backed securities and became part of investment portfolios.  The mortgage backed securities were cut into slices (called tranches).  The tranches were repackaged and resold as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).  And the system chugged along.  The banks lent money for mortgages.  The mortgages got packaged and sold everywhere – on Wall Street and on Main Street.  It is highly possible that people even unwittingly bought slices of their own mortgage.

So what was wrong with this system?  Well, back in the days when the banks held onto their mortgages, they had to be careful about who they loaned money to.  They knew that if a borrower defaulted, they were stuck holding the bag.  But once the practice of selling mortgages became commonplace, the banks got careless – and greedy.  They became less concerned about what would happen if borrowers defaulted, since they weren’t keeping the mortgages anyway.  They created risky mortgage products – things like Option ARMs, Stated Income Loans and Sub-Prime mortgages.  And then they sold them.

It was reckless lending practices and risky mortgage loans that ultimately drove up real estate prices.   Eventually borrowers began defaulting on their mortgages and the entire house of cards came crashing down.  Banks began foreclosing on homeowners and home prices plummeted.  It became clear that many mortgage backed securities weren’t neat little packages after all.  They were giant cans of worms.

Many people argue that the Great Recession was caused by too many people taking out mortgage loans that they couldn’t pay back.  And, in fact, it is true that many people DID overextend themselves on mortgages and other forms of debt.  But the people who blame the Great Recession on the people who took on the debt completely miss the big picture.

If the banks had simply made bad loans and kept them, well, that would have simply proved that the banks were stupid.  But they didn’t KEEP the bad loans, they sold them – and they passed them off as having far more value (and less risk) than they actually did.  If a company like Boeing made and sold an airplane that they KNEW would crash, who would be to blame when the plane ultimately crashed?  Would anyone argue that it was the fault of the passengers for getting on the plane?  Would anyone argue that it was the fault of the airline for purchasing the plane?  Of course not.

The situation with the banks is not very different.  The banks created and sold bad products.  The people who are angry with the banks are justified in their anger.  What the banks did was wrong – and we are all paying the price for their greed.

Well, dare I say, there may just be a little bit of extra light on that horizon (please trust me and lay aside your well-earned cynic’s cap for the moment.  Don’t worry, I’ll let you put it back on in a moment).

In a few weeks, the White House will be releasing access to their new website : BusinessUSA.gov.

You can of course go and read what’s there for yourself, but I’ll just give you a few little tastes here.

“Looking to make our government leaner, smarter and more consumer-friendly, the President will call on Congress to reinstate the authority that past Presidents had, over decades, to reorganize the government.”

“…the President’s proposal … [is] … mandating that any plan must consolidate government – reducing the number of agencies or saving taxpayer dollars…”

“For too long, overlapping responsibilities among agencies have made it harder, rather than easier, for our small businesses to interact with their government.  Those redundancies have also led to unnecessary waste and duplication…”

“The President’s first focus under the Consolidation Authority Act would be to make it easier for America’s small businesses – which are America’s job creators – to compete, export and grow.”

“Small businesses often face a maze of agencies when looking for even the most basic answers to the most basic questions.”

“We will also be unveiling a new website: BusinessUSA.gov. This site will be a virtual one-stop shop with information for small businesses and businesses of all size that want to begin or increase exporting.”

Now, doesn’t that sound great?  Yes, yes, I know, most new initiatives sound great.  Don’t put that hat back on yet!

Although I live in England now, I was born in the USA and lived there almost half my life.  I started my long and overly-varied career-path delivering newspapers, and then did my obligatory spell flipping burgers before moving on to Safeway and a variety of other jobs working my way through college.  One consistency: taxes, and greatly resented they were, too.

Since then I’ve come to appreciate the role of government in our lives – and despite the negative factors, my conclusion is that overall, we’re better off (especially in the West) for having them.

However (ok, you can put that cap back on again), I’ve also seen multiple administrations come up with promises and guarantees and plans and political potions – especially with elections approaching.

But … I can’t help but hope.

At GoHuman one of our goals is to help small businesses cut through all the complexity of modern technology and provide a straightforward way for you to communicate with your customers.  We worry about the bits and bytes, so you can just post your services and recommendations from  your customers, and then get on with your business.  I see BusinessUSA.gov doing a similar thing.

What strikes a chord here is that the US government has decided to take advantage of modern technology to improve communications between agencies, and also with small businesses.  These efficiencies should translate through to all parties being able to do more with less. And although I don’t expect to see our taxes decreasing any time soon, I at least have some hope that they won’t be going up as much as they might have – or that we’ll see some real social improvements coming out of the spare funds created.

On the other hand, we might just see more corruption – but at least some of the difficulties of running a small business should be slightly alleviated as the information becomes easier to find.

Fingers crossed, this could be a good thing!

Barry the Plumber?

GoHuman.com has had its share of struggles with associates who are more interested in marketing than sales, more interested in talk than the urgency of driving results.  Counting Twitter followers, for example, instead of GoHuman.com registrations, leaves me asking  “Where’s the beef?”

Put another way: how do you motivate marketing folks to be more bottom-line outcome oriented?

Let’s contrast two nervous teenage boys who both want a chance with the prettiest girl at the dance.

The marketing teenager signs up for dance lessons, updates his wardrobe, follows the latest movies, music groups, and articles on “how to catch her attention,” chooses a hairstyle and an outfit, puts on cologne, brushes his teeth and…  well, you get the point.

In the meantime, the sales teenager asked her to dance, and they are chatting at a coffee shop as he asks her out on a more serious date.

Steven Covey said, “Start with the end in mind.”  Figure out what you want your potential customer to do (with GoHuman.com it’s Register and post on our site). Then find the best time and place to ask them to do it.  And finally, ask them to do it.  Easier said than done, I know.

Some of our marketing efforts started too many steps back from that, with flip-phone contests, Facebook pages and Twitter.  Those are certainly great marketing objectives, but if we’re not asking our potential customers to dance with us we are not investing our limited resources wisely.

We’ll be working with you to find the best ways to dance more and shadow-box less.

The term speculation has been given a bad name in recent years.  Speculators are those “evil” people who profit from the misfortune of others.  They make money by trading paper.  No “real” work is done by these leaches on society.  Right?  They are elites that derive undeserved material gains from hard working members of society.  Right?  They serve no good or useful purpose.  Right?

Let’s first define speculation.  According to Dictionary.com, speculation is defined as: engagement in business transactions involving considerable risk but offering the chance of large gains, especially trading in commodities, stocks, etc., in the hope of profit from changes in the market price. 

Reality Check

OK, that’s a decent workable definition to start with.  So, by looking at this definition, a speculator is someone who is willing to take a large risk as long as the potential reward is commensurate with that risk.  So, is this a problem?  Does the potential to make 10-to-1 or 100-to-1 on your money represent a bad thing?  Do we want people to stop risking their capital?  Do we want to limit profits and therefore discourage people from risking their capital?  I would contend the answer is no.  Furthermore, I contend that we are much better off and benefit tremendously from those “evil” speculators.  In fact, we should thank them.  Thank them for our health, our standard of living and the knowledge we have today.

Got Cancer?

Some of the greatest advances in the treatment of cancer at this very moment are being made possible by speculators.  Not by governments, not by federally funded university grants, not by sucking taxpayer dollars away from productive citizens to be mis-allocated by politicians and bureaucrats.  The free market is coming up with better, more effective ways to treat cancer.  One example is a company called Curis (CRIS).  How is Curis getting all the money they need to come up with these advances?  By now you probably know the answer: speculators.  How?  Well, when markets work, information flows and individuals are allowed to allocate their resources as they see fit.  People are willing to take informed risks with the potential for a big payday.  Casey Research publishes several well written and in-depth publications, mostly involving speculation in early stage technology, energy and natural resource companies.  In their technology publication (Casey’s Extraordinary Technology), the following was written about Curis when it was first recommended:

Curis’ multi-target pathway inhibitor programs may treat a wide range of cancer types with lower toxicity and greater efficacy than chemotherapy, using more targeted therapies.

Highly speculative. The stock’s short-term performance will depend on results from a pivotal Phase II trial expected this quarter. Longer-term performance will depend on advancing pipeline, particularly potential blockbuster CUDC-101. If the company is able to do this, the stock is a multi-bagger. If not, the share price could fall considerably.

Simple translation: This new cancer therapy could be a game-changer in the treatment of cancer; should this come about there is a huge potential for extraordinarily high profits (and tremendous benefit to society); if they fail you will lose most or all of your investment.  This is the classic speculative model.

Now, consider this: Without speculators, this technology (and many more) to save and improve lives would not have come about at this point in history; nor as quickly as it has.  Should it succeed, those who speculated on Curis in the early stages will see a multiple of their original investment returned to them.  Those with certain kinds of cancer will get treatment that is less invasive and destructive as well as more effective.  Evil?  Not from my point of view.  In fact to me, it is the beauty of free-market capitalism.  Now, do the speculators care about a cure for cancer or just about profit?  I don’t know.  And I don’t care.  The profit motive is funding the research and advancement that has the potential to benefit humankind in countless ways.

Mind Over Chatter

In the interest of full disclosure, as of this writing I am a shareholder of Curis (CRIS) and I am not in any way making a recommendation to purchase shares in this company.  It is extremely risky and I speculated at a much lower share price.  Do I hope my speculation pays off?  Yes.  Do I care that that my money is going to fund a possible game-changing treatment for cancer?  Actually, yes.  Should this cancer treatment come to pass, I will take great pride in my partial ownership of a company doing such incredible work.  However, I would not have risked my capital, at the price at which it was risked, if I didn’t think they have a possibility of succeeding.  Is there potential that my entire investment could be wiped out?  Absolutely.  It has happened many times before and that is the nature of speculation.  The few wins have to amortize the larger number of losses.

It is my hope that the next time the media or an over-zealous friend or family member starts discussing “speculators” in a negative way, you consider this post.  Realize that many of the wonderful advances in health, technology, energy and other areas of our lives are made possible by those willing to take a chance by speculating on a small, early-stage company.  Also realize that for taking that chance, speculators are paid very handsomely for the small percentage of times that they do succeed.  And that’s OK.

I’m a bibliophile. And so is my husband. We have enough books to start a well-stocked library. We sold hundreds to a used bookstore the last time we pared down our collection. Our books gave them a whole new business section. I can’t imagine life without books, books, books. Nothing is better than curling up with a good book in an overstuffed chair.

So naturally I held off getting an e-book reader because I couldn’t imagine reading a book on a cold, hard electronic device and enjoying it. But one day my sister commented on Facebook how much she loved her Kindle because the lighted screen made reading in bed so much easier.

Ah! No more struggling to position the bedside lamp. No more being stuck in one position to stay close to the light. Finally there was a good reason to give an e-book reader a shot.

I absolutely love my Nook.

By the way, if you’ve ever toyed with the idea of writing an e-book, now is a good time to do it. In 2010, Forrester Research estimated that annual e-book sales could reach $2.8 billion by 2015. That’s a huge market!

I’m currently reading Chip Conley’s new book, Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success. Chip is the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, the second largest boutique hotel company in the United States. After 24 years as CEO, he now serves as “Chief Emotions Officer.” I think that’s very cool! It’s about time emotions take their rightful place in business.

He writes in the first chapter:

“I believe the best CEOs are truly ‘Chief Emotions Officers,’ since great companies have great cultures and at the heart of a great culture are healthy emotions. You may not think of yourself as a leader, but you are already leading yourself – and maybe others – on a daily basis.

“This is a very different attitude from when I graduated from business school. Then I believed that in order to become a successful CEO, I needed to be superhuman. But after nearly two dozen years of being a CEO, I’ve learned that the best leaders in life aren’t superhuman; instead, they’re simply super humans.”

While reading this, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the GoHuman community. I believe it’s truly a community of super humans, all changing the way the world works.

Do you ever feel like you’re fishing for customers? Sometimes they bite because they’re actually looking for your services, and other times you snag ‘em through the power of suggestion — a.k.a. advertising.

Let’s take a look at two main categories in online advertising: direct response and branding.  Knowing which one to use in your business can mean the difference between a client ready to buy/purchase (direct response = hungry fish) and one who is only aware of your business (branding = snagging fish).

Direct Response

Direct Response Advertisers are primarily trying to drive a high number of conversions at the lowest possible price. A conversion is an action undertaken by a user that is deemed valuable by the advertiser, such as a sale, purchase, or sign up. Using cost-per-click (CPC), you only pay when a customer clicks on your ad.  A customer searching for your product/service through a search engine (like Google Search) will click on the compelling ad copy which will take him directly to the relevant web page.  A customer searching for your product/service is generally further along in the buying process and therefore ready to make a sale.

Branding

If you are trying to raise the awareness and visibility of your product, service, or cause, you want to place your ads in front of as many people as possible within your target audience. This is called branding. Using cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) means you set a designated amount (what is it worth to you) on how much you are willing to pay per thousand impressions and then are charged only for every thousand impressions, not the clicks. Utilizing Google’s Display Network allows you to show ads on other relevant websites using contextual keywords from your keywords list.  The Display Network uses various ad formats to achieve this: text ads, banner/image ads, mobile ads, and video ads.

And of course, don’t forget to sign up to advertise on GoHuman…for free! You can’t beat free!

So next time you’re fishing for customers, use the online advertising option above that is right for YOUR unique business. Happy fishing!