An Open Letter to Joy Behar | According to Kateri; a Blog

September 16, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ 1 Comment

As many of you have seen, Miss Colorado delivered a beautifully spoken monologue about nursing during last week’s Miss America pageant. Recently, on The View as the pageant was discussed, Miss Colorado’s scrubs were referred to as a costume, and Joy posed the question of why she was wearing a “doctor’s stethoscope.” Below is my now calmed down reply to all of it. Additionally, I would like to personally and publicly congratulate Kelley Johnson RN on her chosen talent, it is one that will reward you forever.

Dear Joy Behar,

A beautiful woman in a beauty pageant put on baggy clothes and humbly walked across the stage to talk proudly about her career, and her passion for caring for other human beings, and the only thing you could muster in response was an insult grounded in ignorance. Rather than being offended or getting angry, I will instead, take a moment to teach.

What are Tax Extenders for Small Businesses | Morey & Associates

September 15, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Tax extenders are a group of fifty tax breaks that apply not only to small businesses but teachers and individuals as well. What you need to be concerned with are those that apply directly to small businesses. While these tax breaks are temporary in nature, they can have a serious impact on how you conduct your business for the next year.

In 2013, these tax breaks actually expired on December 31st, but the United States Congress retroactively extended the tax breaks into 2014. They typically do this at the last moment of the year, or right after the first of the new year, making it difficult for small businesses to plan ahead. These tax breaks are also only renewed for one year meaning they will have need to extend them again before the end of 2014, so they can carry over into 2015.

The Pickup Truck of Electric Bikes May Be Better Than a Car | WIRED

September 15, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

NEW TO SAN Francisco, I discovered quickly that having a car is terrible, but not as terrible as relying on the city’s horrific public transportation or spending the few dollars I have left after rent on surge-priced Ubers.

For me, and for an increasing number of people in cities all over the world, the answer is a bicycle. 60 percent more people commute to work on a bike now than a decade ago, and cycling infrastructure has grown as cities have become too congested to handle more cars. Bikes rule, cars drool.

For a couple of weeks this summer, I sat in the seat of a bike called the Xtracycle Edgerunner 10e. This is no ordinary bike. This $5,750 beast is a longtail, one in a burgeoning breed of giant, high-tech cargo bikes. The 10e is capable of carrying up to 400 pounds’ worth of people, groceries, and whatever else you can think to throw in its many compartments. It comes with an electric motor, too, which makes it far easier to carry that huge load. This is the Ford F150 of bicycles, sold on its towing capacity—or maybe the Subaru Outback, the family-friendly car you can count on.

3 Easy Strategies to Help You Achieve Your Vision | Getentrepreneurial.com

September 14, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes the simplest tools can lead us to our biggest breakthroughs. Here are three tips that can help you achieve the vision you have for yourself.

Visualize Your Way to Success

If you have a pair of scissors, some old magazines, glue or tape, and some sort of poster board or canvas, you can make your own vision board. You don’t need to be a talented artist – you really don’t even need to be particularly creative – the purpose is to make your vision come alive through meaningful images.

You can cut out pictures, single words, and entire quotes – anything that you can dream of! Choose images that really resonate with the goals you have. You can create multiple boards if you’re the type of person who loves organization – for instance, one board for your personal goals, another for business oriented ones.

To get the most out of this exercise, I recommend setting aside about an hour where you’ll be undisturbed. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to create your board – have fun with this!

5 Ways Any Business Can Survive (and Thrive) Against Amazon | All Business

September 14, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The last twenty years has seen a dramatic shift in the retail landscape ever since Amazon burst onto the scene. Offering a vast selection and ever-shorter shipping times, Amazon came to dominate retail sales, starting with books and quickly expanding to other categories.

Yet for all of Amazon’s disruption, the online giant is not invincible. Many retailers and etailers have built significant businesses by refusing to accept the status quo. Any business can learn to beat Amazon by incorporating these five easy tips:

1. Create a unique voice.

Many businesses believe they are unique when they really do not have anything that truly sets them apart. In order for a brand to stand out, it must have a story that aligns with both their business values and personal values.

We’re Not Nearly as Busy as We Pretend to Be, According to a New Study | Adweek

September 11, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Hey are you busy?” We all know that when someone asks this question at work, there’s only one possible answer.

But maybe, just maybe, we’re not actually that busy.

A new study from Havas Worldwide surveyed 10,000 adults worldwide and found that 42 percent admitted to overstating their obligations, while around 60 percent believe that other people are pretending to be busier than they really are.

Millennials were most likely to exaggerate their workload (51 percent) and to accuse their peers of doing the same (65 percent), while only 26 percent of Boomers said they pretend to be busier than they are.

What You Need to Know about Body Language at Work | Page 19

September 10, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

We’ve heard it a million times before: “90% of communication is nonverbal.” But what does that really mean? And how can you use that information? We asked the experts.

When we talk about language, we almost always are referring to words and sentences, nouns, verbs, dependent clauses, and all the various things that we can write down.

However, human communication is much broader than that—it includes variations in tone, emphasis, and entirely nonverbal signals like facial expressions, eye contact (or lack thereof), and hand gestures. Even the direction you’re facing communicates something to your conversation partner, regardless of whether or not they’re totally aware of it.

Clearly, there is a benefit to being able to reliably read (and project) nonverbal signals. So what’s a person to do? We consulted industry experts on nonverbal communication for their best tips. Read on.

Improve decision-making through the relieving mindset of self-responsibility | The Startup Magazine

September 10, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

For all of us life starts in a similar way, however through our decisions we change it with lasting effect. Decisions can bring you closer to your goals or lead you much further away. Think about this: Everything exists in your life, because at first you have made a decision on something. Decisions are the roots of all your results. You make your decisions and your decisions make you!

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

The tricky thing

Primarily it is not about whether your decisions are wrong or right. In the first place, it is rather about discovering when you really make a decision. They are usually intertwined with behaviour and habits so it often seems a decision would be out of your control. [In at least half of the decisions you make,] you are not even aware of making them in that moment.

Hampton Creek Throws Eggs at the FDA | Bloomberg Business

September 9, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Ask U.S. food regulators, and they’ll tell you that mayonnaise has to contain eggs, as it has for the past two centuries. But Josh Tetrick, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur hellbent on disrupting a host of food staples with his plant-based substitutes, gives a far different response: Who cares? “I think it is stupid we can’t call our product mayonnaise,” Tetrick says of his two-year-old Just Mayo eggless spread. “I think it’s ridiculous. We’re definitely not changing the name.”

That defiant stance seems to put Tetrick’s company, Hampton Creek, on a collision course with the Food and Drug Administration. The agency on Aug. 12 issued a warning letter listing a litany of rules broken by its Just Mayo and Just Mayo Sriracha products, including the use of “Mayo” in the name and the image of an egg on the label that may imply it meets the agency’s standard definition for mayonnaise—eggs and all. “This is one of the most blatant violations of the standard-of-identity rules that I’ve seen in a long time,” says Elizabeth Campbell, a former acting head of the FDA’s office of food labeling, who now works at EAS Consulting Group.

5 Scenarios Where Panic Can Destroy Your Startup | Entrepreneur

September 9, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Want your business to appear in Entrepreneur magazine? Tell us how you’re empowering employees, and you could be selected for a full-page promotion provided by Colonial Life.

Staying calm in a crisis is often easier said than done. When an emergency or unexpected and disruptive situation hits, your adrenaline rises, your thoughts start to race and your body and mind both go into reaction mode. Those fast, impulsive reactions are beneficial in some types of emergencies, like that of an older world where a predator was chasing you. But in the modern business world, such reactions usually create more problems than they solve.

The following five scenarios are especially sensitive to anxious reactions. So, instead of resorting to panic and instinct, take your time to approach these dilemmas carefully and methodically: