Coming Soon: Less Fluoride in Your Tap Water

The federal government said Friday it planned to lower the recommended levels for fluoride in water, the first such change since 1962.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a proposal to change the recommended fluoride level to 0.7 milligrams per liter of water. EPA will be initiating a review on the maximum amount of fluoride allowed in drinking water. If EPA moves to lower the MCL they would need to formally make a revision to the rule and the overall process could take several years. By initiating the current review, EPA is following up on a commitment made in the second Six Year Review (SY2), which was released in March 2010. In SY2, the Agency indicated that the Office of Water was in the process of updating its health and exposure assessments and that when the Agency finalized these assessments, it would review the existing drinking water regulation to determine whether revisions are appropriate.

Locate Local Speed Traps

Locate police speed traps in your area:

www.trapster.com

9 Lies That Are Holding Your Business Back: Book of the Month

A great book by Steve Chandler & Sam Beckford

Read this book and learn:
• why getting your name out there isn’t what you need to be doing
• 7 tips to help you focus on your IDEAL high-value customers – and how to feel good about ignoring the rest (p. 134)
• why lowering prices doesn’t boost business (p. 116)
• and 5 new business ideas you should NOT follow

This book is fantastic! You’ll discover not only what to do (and what not to do) but how to do it – and make your business more profitable. And the recommended reading list in back of this book will launch you on a forward-moving, profit-inducing path.

Invest in yourself – or in one of your colleagues you care about – by getting a copy of this book today.

Low-Cost Ways to Motivate Your Staff

Great article on Low-Cost Ways to Motivate Your Staff http://ping.fm/Sg4fF ntent_display/sales/e3ie2b23ab2b6e7cd3431ad0556cc65fcec?imw=Y

Leveraging Your Time

A great article on
Leveraging Your Time from my friend, David Finkel:

Right now I want to share some tangible ideas to help you leverage your personal use of time to get more of what you want in less time. Over the last 20 years I’ve had a passion for learning how to structure my time for maximum results. It started off back in the days I used to be training to play in the Olympics (for about 8 years I played on the United States National Field Hockey Team). I had to figure out how to balance a rigorous training schedule with being a self-supporting college student. But my biggest breakthroughs have come in the last five years as I’ve learned that hours worked have no bearing on results accomplished or dollars earned. Once upon a time I thought that the way to become wealthy and successful was to work hard. But that is a Level One or Level Two reaction, NOT a Level Three solution.In today’s letter I want to share with you several key insights to help you get double or triple your results in half the time. Ready? Let’s begin!

I Know You…I bet you’re overworked, stressed out, feeling at times like you’re having to run just to stay even, let alone get ahead. You’re drowning in information and struggling to find an effective way to structure and organize that information. Most of all you’re frustrated. Frustrated that you have too many “small” things that get in your way of focusing on the big stuff that really matters. You crave a sense of control and balance in your life, and you’ll do just about anything to enjoy them. You just don’t know how to get that control and balance back.In the past you’ve chased after results and balance by working harder. You’ve tried working longer hours. You’ve tried working harder for the hours you do work. You’ve brought work home with you, worked while on your “vacation”, multi-tasked while driving, eating, and probably even while sleeping and yet it hasn’t helped! The more you do the more you find that is left to be done. It’s a vicious cycle.I want to let you in on a little secret…Working harder is not the answer. It wasn’t yesterday nor will it be tomorrow. Working harder is a Level One or Level Two reaction to the fear you feel that you have so much to do. It will NOT get you the results you crave. In fact, the harder you work, chances are the less you’ll accomplish that really matters. I know this sounds easy for me to say, but hang in there with me as I walk through a key concept with you.

Many of you have heard of “Pareto’s Principle” which states that 80% of your efforts produce 20% of your results, and that 20% of your effort produces 80% of your results. Well if this is true (and my experience shows me that it is) then let’s apply this concept more rigorously. If you take that 20% of your actions that generate 80% of your results and apply the same distinction, then 20% of that 20% produces 80% of 80% of your results. That means that 4% of your effort (the 20% of 20%) generates 64% of your results. And if you can bear with me for another math moment, apply this distinction one more time…This means that 1% (20% of 20% of 20%) generates 50% of your results! Think about it-1% of your highest leverage work produces 50% of all your results! I used this idea to create something called the Time Mastery Pyramid™, which is an actual formula I developed about 12 months ago for you to quickly and accurately quantify the per hour value of four distinct types of time: A Time, B Time, C Time, and D Time. D time is the 80% of unleveraged, wasteful time that only produces 20% of your total return. I call this time the “80% Mass”. C time is the leveraged 20% that produces 80% of your results. I call this time “Leveraged Time”. For most people this is the only distinction they have ever made about time. And while it’s better than most people have, if this is your only distinction on time, you are never going to earn what you are capable of earning, both in terms of income or net worth. Next there is B time. This is the highly focused 4% that generates 64% of your results. I call this time the “4 % Sweet Spot” and then finally, there is the top of the pyramid-A time–the “Magic 1 Percent”. Fully 50% of your results comes from these activities.

Did you know that most people not only have no idea what activities of theirs fall into the above four categories, but they don’t even know they exist? How in the world can you create more A and B time if you don’t know what activities constitute A and B time for you? Here is the real question for you: What activities do you do that fit into each of the four time categories above? What are your D activities? What are your C activities? What are your B activities? What are you’re A activities? When you really get this distinction and shift your focus from “putting in hours” to upgrading the type of work you do (more A and B time, and less D time) in the hours you do work, the results are amazing. Let me share an example with you. Imagine you are an attorney who charges $300 an hour. What would your D time activities be? Things like fixing a computer glitch, or making copies, or sorting out mail, or any of the things you do that you cannot bill a client for! What should you do with these activities? Delay them, delegate them, or dump them. You simply cannot afford to do them yourself.

What would your “C time” activities be? Anything that is a billable time for you. This could include working on a legal brief, or reviewing a contract, or updating a client. Understand this: C time can provide you with a great income, but you will always have to work exceptionally hard to earn it. This is the trap that catches most high income professionals. They seek to increase their earnings by cranking out more hours. MISTAKE! More hours will only take you so far. Plus when you get there you’ll be exhausted from all that work, and you’ll be a stranger to your family!

The answer lies in A and B time. B time for this attorney might include building relationships with other professionals who refer over business. Or putting systems in place in their law firm so that their staff can get better results without needing so much of our fictional attorney’s time. It might also include creating an accounts receivable system that increases the collection on all the firms billings by 10 percent. You get the idea.

What would A time look like? This could be speaking at a large conference where this attorney is able to generate new client relationships for his or her firm that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars of billable services. Or it could be writing a book that can be used to generate new business for the firm. See the difference yet? D time is by definition something that you should get off your plate. C time is time that you do your work more effectively. A and B time, however, are when you step out of the “doingness” of the work and do something that improves your capacity to create results, or significantly pushes back your limiting factor (e.g. generating new clients, improving a critical system, etc.). In fact, by focusing on upgrading your USE of time instead of focusing on increasing your hours worked, you can often double or triple your income, while at the same time lowering your working hours. It’s worked for me. Ten years ago I was working 70-80 hours a week. I now earn more than double what I earned back then and work less than half the hours. Trading time for dollars is a Level One or Two reaction. Upgrading your use of time to create more with less is the Level Three solution!

So now here comes the big question: How can you have more A and B time? You won’t get it by “trying harder”. And you won’t get it by sitting down and saying, “Okay, let’s have A time right now.”Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way. That would be like a parent saying to their three year old, “Right, let’s have an hour of quality time right now Junior.” How well do you think that would work? What I’ve discovered is that to get more A and B time you have to fundamentally alter the way you structure your day and your week. In fact, when you learn and master the ways to structure your time you will automatically enjoy more A and B time.”Focus Days” and “Push Days”

Let me share with you a powerful concept to help you get more A and B time, and to minimize the D time that gets in the way. I call this technique “Focus Days” and “Push Days.”. Let me share with you the way I use it in my own life:

Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays are my Push Days. . These are the days that I “push” key projects and the “work” I do forward-step-by-step. These are the days I am accessible by phone and email. These are the days I hold many of my phone meetings. On these days I “get stuff done”. I have set aside my Tuesdays and Thursdays as my Focus Days. These days I turn off the phones and email for the majority of the day, and focus on doing the highest value activities I can for my businesses. For me that usually means I am writing on these days. I’m writing new books; I’m writing sales copy; I’m writing business plans for my teams to implement. In fact, I often leave the office and work remotely these days. I go to a library and write there. Or I go to a café and work there. (I find that removes the temptation to do C and D work that seems to live in every corner of my office.)

Here’s the most amazing part-I can accomplish HUGE results in 3 to 4 hours on my Focus Days that I never would have accomplished if I stayed in the office “doing” the work all day long. (In case you’re wondering, I often will check in at the end of the day for 30-45 minutes to answer the most important phone messages or email.)

Now maybe you can’t set aside two full days a week as Focus Days, but you can find one day a week, or at the very least HALF a day a week as your Focus Day.

How to Prevent Snow, Rain, Heat and Gloom of Night from Keeping Your Appointed Rounds

My friend, Ardie Baxter, sent me this inspiration:

I woke up a few days ago and had this thought. You know the motto ‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.’” What a great motto not only for the mail carrier, but for all of us.

If you have read the book “The Secret” you know it talks about keeping positive thoughts in our minds and how powerful our mind really is. This came to me as being that “saying ” or “phrase” that we all could use.
This would not be the actual snow, rain, heat or gloom of night but all the “STUFF” that gets in our way.

We need to say to ourselves and do it that NOTHING or NO ONE will get in our way of reaching our goals.

What is it that is holding you back?
Fear of the unkown?
Fear of what others might think?
Fear of failure?
Believe me it won’t kill you.

Don’t worry about what others might think. I had my on family members calling me crazy, out of my mind and saying I was going to go broke. Those people that say you can’t or that you are crazy are just envious. Deep down they really want to try new things, but are afraid of the “snow, rain, heat and gloom of night”.

I have a friend who is 69 years old and has done very well for himself over the years. He told me that if someone told him he could not do something that made him even more determined. That is the kind of life we ALL need to live. I will succeed, I will have all the things that I want. That must be our credo our “Motto”.

Make a list of your goals read them everyday, put up a vision board with all your wants, push yourself, ignore all the naysayers. Do not let “Snow, Rain, Heat nor Gloom of Night” keep YOU from your appointed rounds.

Recommended Reading: StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath

“Hide not your talents. They for use were made.
What’s a sundial in the shade?” – Benjamin Franklin

Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best EVERY day? Chances are you don’t. All too often our natural talents go untapped – we devote more time to fixing our shortcomings that to developing our strengths.

This book – along with its online assessment – helps you discover what you’ve been missing about yourself. And you’ll get not six or ten but 50 Ideas for Action you can use this week, this month, and this year.

Though you can read this book in one sitting, you’ll keep this book as a reference for decades.

Invest in yourself – or in one of your colleagues you care about – by getting a copy of this book today. You’re certainly worth it.