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Vol. 26, No. 3 • March, 2008
You can find this newsletter and some past issues on the web @ www.Freeman-Spicer.com
In a book about Warren Buffett [Warren Buffett Speaks] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . there are some wonderful lines about business and life that I just have to share:
• Invest the same way an expert plays hockey, says Buffett: “Like Wayne Gretzky says, go where the puck is going, not where it is.”
• Buffett told his son Howard: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
• Cultivate Good Character: “Always hang around people better than you and you’ll float up a little bit. Hang around with the other kind and you start sliding down the pole.”
• Disregard Old Age: “Retirement plans? About 5 to 10 years after I die.” Or “We take as our hero Methuselah.”
• How does Buffett define Friendship? “I remember asking that question of a woman who had survived Auschwitz. She said her test was, ‘Would they hide me?’”
• Buffett has a few ideas on how to control inflation: “I could eliminate inflation or reduce it very easily if you had a constitutional amendment that said that no congressman or senator was eligible for reelection in a year in which the CPI [Consumer Price Index] increased more than over 3 percent.”
• At times, Buffett finds no attractive investments: “Currently liking neither stocks not bonds, I find myself the polar opposite of Mae West as she declared, ‘I only like two kinds of men: foreign and domestic.’”
• How much attention does Buffett pay to the recommendations of brokers? “Never ask the barber if you need a haircut.” (Warren Buffett Speaks by Janet Lowe)
And Finally:
• On Thinking Big - Buffett stepped to a microphone and tested it by saying: “Testing . . . One Million . . . Two Million . . . Three Million.”
Marketing . . . . . . . . . Back to basics - some common errors when creating leaflets / brochures:
□ Being concerned with the looks, but forgetting the sales objectives.
□ Giving the printer poor artwork and expecting excellent results.
□ Failing to emphasize the unique selling proposition of your business.
□ Omitting (or hiding) prices if they’re critical to the reader’s decision-making.
□ Printing too many leaflets with details that date too quickly.
□ Giving insufficient thought to how the leaflet should best be distributed.
□ Using text on the leaflet that is difficult or too small to read easily.
□ Including poor illustrations.
□ Allowing the design to distract from the key selling message. (Effective Marketing)
“Suicide is a permanent solutions to a temporary problem.” unknown
Tough Love . . . . . . . . . A dying man smells his favorite oatmeal raisin cookies cooking downstairs. It takes all the strength he has left but he gets up from the bed and crawls down the stairs. He sees the cookies cooling on the counter and staggers over to them. As he reaches for one, his wife’s wrinkled hand reaches out, smacks his hand and she yells: “No, you can’t have those! They’re for the funeral!” (O’Hara)
Employee’s and . . . . . . . . . . . . Think your hard-working colleagues are as happy as they seem?
• Only 47% of Americans are satisfied with their jobs, but 52% of those working 50 to 60 hours a week are satisfied.
• Firefighters and clergy are happiest in their jobs.
• In a survey, 95% of bosses thought their jokes were “really, really funny;” only 3% of employees agreed.
• 66% of bosses said morale was excellent or great; 51% of employees agreed.
• American workers get an average of 14 days paid vacation a year, but only take 11. Nearly a quarter check work e-mail or voice mail while on vacation. (Money)
KILROY WAS HERE! . . . . . . . . In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, 'Speak to America,' sponsored a nationwide contest to find the REAL Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts had evidence of his identity.
Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war. He worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet. Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark. Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters. One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then that he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them.
As a result, Kilroy's inspection 'trademark' was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced. His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific. Before the war's end, 'Kilroy' had been here, there, and everywhere on the long haul to Berlin and Tokyo.
To the unfortunate troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had 'been there first.' As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.
Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always 'already been' wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arch De Triumphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.)
And as the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for the coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo! In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. The first person inside was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), 'Who is Kilroy?' .
To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave it to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax, Massachusetts. So now you know! (LaFree)
Out of Sight, Yes. Out of Mind, No . . . . . . . . Well into the work-from-anywhere era, managers are beginning to ask: Are the underlings working remotely . . . or remotely working? Yes, chained-to-the-desk mandates seem quaint at a time when we collaborate across continents and carry the office around in our palms. But as more and more people decamp, companies are grappling with how to manage these invisible armies and what kinds of people are cut out to work offsite. Hewlett-Packard offers a personality test so workers can determine whether they are suited to solo toiling in pajamas. Among other things, the test assesses whether workers can handle limited supervision. But even those who can require some face time. Researchers at IBM learned that if teams went more than three days without gathering, their happiness and productivity suffered. Now managers are required to bring teams together at least once every three days - physically or virtually - for reasons that have nothing to do with completing an assignment. Managing remote workers is like enabling an ecosystem. Executives at IBM and HP are schooled in setting up ways to gauge the productivity of people they rarely see. The most important ingredient in making these arrangements work: trust. (BusinessWeek)
And . . . . . . . “23" - Working in your pajamas? If not, you probably wish you could. A national survey indicates that 23% of Americans are relying on Web technology to regularly work from home or some other remote location, while 62% would like to have the ability to work away from the office. (Citrix Online)
This Will Cost Many of You . . . . . . . . Old wood burning stoves and fireplaces are headed for oblivion. State officials, around the country, are under the gun to put them out of service to meet ever tightening EPA enforcement of emissions regulations. Some states offer grants to help pay for replacement units . . . new stoves that burn wood more efficiently, cutting heating bills, as well as fireplace inserts that turn hearths into heating units. Typically, such grants cover 25% to 30% of installation costs. Within two years, look for Uncle Sam to lend a hand with a $500 rebate for the replacement of wood burning heaters. (Kiplinger)
Robbery . . . . . . . A guy robs a bank and takes hostages. In the course fo the robbery his mask slips off. He asks on of the hostages: “Did you see my face?” The hostage answers yes, and the robber shoots him. Then the robber turns to the second hostage: “Did you see my face?” The hostage answers: “No, but my wife did . . . . . “ (LaFree)
Favors . . . . . . . . . . . Successful people ask for favors. Asking for favors helps top people bond with and show that they value the person asked. Their requests are rarely a “big deal” or for something people must go out of their way to accomplish. But in the asking, a compliment is paid and others are reassured of their worth. Asking favors is a sincere form of flattery.
• Asking for favors makes the person asked feel important and included.
• Asking a favor says, “I value your opinion,” and “our relationship matters to me. I want us to continue working together.”
• Asking favors not only makes the person asked feel valuable, but also can have a powerful impact on the people who see you ask.
(Lions Don’t Need to Roar) Sincerely,
“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought Edward C. Levy
not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe President
to be just.” Abraham Lincoln