California orchardist discusses his gold strategies

Posted by Elena del Valle on May 29, 2015

Going for the Gold

Photos: News & Experts

The more debt our country accumulates the more money it needs to pay the bills. The economy has been poor and the government’s solution increasingly has been to print new money with no collateral to back it up, leading many to believe the situation will worsen in the coming years. The deterioration will force our government to offer less to its citizens and charge them more in the form of taxes to pay the accumulated and growing debt, says William A. Storum, J.D., author, Going for the Gold Preserving Wealth, Lowering Taxes (Book Publishers Network, $21.95).

As that happens our currency will loose its worth to inflation; so will other so called hard currencies that have traditionally been considered safe havens, the author says in the book. He believes one way to protect our assets from the devastating losses such shifts would bring is to invest in gold. Given the limited supply of the precious metal many rely on it for the possible proverbial rainy day when the economy collapses and paper money becomes worthless.

William Storum, author, Going for the Gold

Storum points to many examples of economies falling on difficult times and countries with worthless currencies. He illustrates a period in our history in the last century when our government made owning gold by private citizens illegal, forcing people to sell their gold to the government and earning a profit on the difference a year later. He suggests strategies to accumulate gold bullion and invest in gold stocks and instruments in tax smart ways in order to safeguard our savings in case financial disaster strikes.

The 307-page softcover book was published in 2014. The author is an orchardist in California. He has inactive California Bar Association and California Board of Accountancy inactive licenses. There was no contact information on his book website.

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The China Study Quick and Easy Cookbook released

Posted by Elena del Valle on May 1, 2015

Photo: BenBella Books, Inc.

Do you prefer to eat vegetarian foods? Did you read The China Study (see Health, nutrition experts examine comprehensive China nutrition study) and Whole (Nutrition expert, educator discuss whole food plant based diet advantages) which outline the healthful advantages of plant based and whole diets? Do you have limited time to cook? If so, The China Study Quick & Easy Cookbook: Cook Once, Eat All Week with Whole Food, Plant-Based Recipes (BenBella Books, $19.95) by Del Sroufe may appeal to you.

The 253-page trade paperback book, edited by Leanne Campbell, PhD and published this year, is chock full of color photos by Robert Metzger in varied sizes. It is divided into sections by type of dish: Breakfast Dishes; Sauces, Salad Dressings & Seasonings; Snacks & Spreads; Salads; Sandwiches; Pasta & Baked Dishes; Soups; Entrees; and Desserts.

A short Appendix has Measurement Guide, Dietary Symbols and Nutritional Value information. At the end of the book there is an offer to sign up for a free digital copy (in Kindle, PDF or ePub) of BenBella’s Best of Plant Based Eating. All that was necessary to receive a copy was to provide a name and email address and verify the email address after receiving a confirmation email from the publisher.

Sroufe is also author of New York Times bestselling Forks Over Knives: The Cookbook, and Better Than Vegan. Campbell is author of The China Study Cookbook.

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Chicago sales executive draws on TV characters for leadership insights

Posted by Elena del Valle on April 17, 2015

Tune in to Wow Leadership

Photos: Smith Publicity

Depending on their program preferences would be leaders and existing leaders who watch certain entertaining programs on television can accomplish two tasks at once, according to Sheri Staak. The sales executive, teacher and author of Tune In to Wow Leadership: 10 Lessons Learned From America’s Favorite Shows (Greenleaf Book Group Press, $24.95) believes larger than life fictional TV characters from well known programs such as House, The Office, The Simpsons and Dallas offer leadership lessons.

In her 225-page softcover book published January 2015 she highlights examples of fictional leaders from current and past shows to illustrate leadership concepts. She believes some “…TV characters can serve as role models…” She strives to help readers define their own leadership experiences through real world insights and fictional TV show character examples and comparisons.

Staak defines Wow leaders (in contrast to Dud leaders) as those who are confident, fearlessness, have positive energy, are bold decision makers and motivate others. She also says they are honest, trustworthy, humble, respectful, authentic, visionaries, goal oriented, seeking self improvement, good communicators, care about others, and are agents of change.

Sheri Staak, author, Tune in to Wow Leadership

“If you’re trying to instill motivation, deliver a call to action, or drive home a point, you must keep your platform skills sharp by preparing in advance–it can make or break your message,” said Staak in promotional materials for her book. “To be a Wow leader, you must have an acceptable level of platform skills. Your job is to inspire, motivate, and communicate effectively in order to lead effectively. Those to whom you present your ideas, directives, and visions are the same people you depend on to step up and push through barriers and challenges.”

Staak, a Chicago resident, has worked with and managed 1,000 sales executives while in working in leadership positions at large privately held and publicly traded global companies. According to her biography she has led businesses with more than $1 billion in revenue, worked with successful start ups and managed business turnarounds.

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Social media fans share their techniques in book

Posted by Elena del Valle on April 10, 2015

The Art of Social Media digital book first page

Photo: HispanicMPR

Using four or five words that explain what you are about and posting a simple photo that can blow up to a large size is best; as is picking a name that makes it obvious who you are. Try to create a profile that makes you seem competent, likable and trustworthy, says Guy Kawasaki, a believer in the business value of social media, about how business people should build their social media bio and avatar.

In his latest book The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users (Penguin, $12.99), written with Peg Fitzpatrick, he also says that everyone has a Facebook account, and that people have no choice when it comes to their business but to have a Google+ and a Facebook page. While he discourages paying for followers or likes and asking for shares he says it is fine to pay for Facebook promotions of posts and pages.

In particular, he and his coauthor discuss the ideas and methods they have tried. He recommends a vanity URL, implying that not having one “impugns your intellectual prowess.” Planning in social media is about finding a way to make money, success is measured by reshares of a post, and everyone wants more followers whether they admit it or not, he says in the book. To illustrate tips and suggestions he uses examples from his own businesses like Alltop and Holy Kaw as well as client projects for Motorola, Canva, and Audi he and Fitzpatrick worked on. An example of a project they both were hired for was a Motorola product launch in Latin America. A disclosure accompanies the tips in those cases.

The book is peppered with hyperlinks. The final chapter was dedicated to List of Apps and Service. The book describes social media channels as follows: Twitter for perception, LinkedIn for self promotion, Google+ for passion, Facebook to connect with others, and Pineterest for photos. Kawasaki had 6.4 million followers on Google+ in the summer of 2014, he says in the book. As of this writing he has 1.45 million followers on Twitter and followed 105,000 thousand. Fitzpatrick had 40,300 followers and followed 24,200 people on the same platform.

Kawasaki does work for Canva, an online, graphics design service. He is trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and executive fellow at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley. According to Fitzpatrick’s website she is an author, speaker and social media marketing pro.

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Car sales specialist discusses his search engine ideas

Posted by Elena del Valle on March 13, 2015

Win the Game of Googleopoly

Photos: Wiley, Bryan Taylor Johnson

Sean V. Bradley, CSP has made a career in automotive sales. When it comes to online sales he believes Google is king, dominating 67.5 percent of the market. He also believes it is essential to appear among the top ten results or the first page of results on Google. Because, he says, only five percent of people look at results beyond the first page, not being on that page is like not appearing at all.

He is convinced he has discovered search engine optimization techniques that will lead readers of his book Win the Game of Googleopoly: Unlocking the Secret Strategy of Search Engines (Wiley, $25) to Google success. The 249-page hardcover book published this year has 11 chapters where he outlines his SEO theories. The book directs readers to a book related website (it was down at the time this writing).

Sean Bradley, author, Win the Game of Googleopoly

Bradley is founder and chief executive officer of Dealer Synergy Inc. According to his bio, he has personally trained 10,000 automotive sales professionals, and has been hired by 1,000 multi-million dollar automotive dealerships.

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B2B executives discuss big data marketing issues

Posted by Elena del Valle on March 6, 2015

The Big Data-Driven Busines

Photos: Wiley

Marketers Russell Glass and Sean Callahan are big data fans. They believe big data “is changing and should change the way business functions.” They are convinced the benefits of data gathering and analysis are available to companies of all sizes and that every company is relying on them.

Sean Callahan, co-author, The Big Data Driven Business

In The Big Data-Driven Business: How to Use Big Data to Win Customers, Beat Competitors, and Boost Profits (Wiley, $30), a 214-page hardcover book published this year, they discuss the marketing advantages they believe it offers.
The book is divided into thirteen chapters in which the authors share the examples of Nate Silver, Copernicus, Apple and Blackberry to illustrate their point.

Russell Glass, co-author, The Big Data Driven Business

For the future they consider the following issues important: personalization, marketing measurement, mobile, Internet, privacy and security, product development, social media, content marketing and human intervention.

Callahan is a marketing journalist, and senior manager content marketing at LinkedIn. Glass is head of B2B Marketing Products at the same company.

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Executive discusses new ways to connect with customers

Posted by Elena del Valle on February 27, 2015

Igniting Customer Connections

Photos: Wiley

Andrew Frawley, president, Epsilon, has 30 years of marketing experience. He is convinced the old methods of marketing are behind us. He seeks to establish an emotional connection with customers and engage with them in “effective ways that achieve impressive repeatable results.”

Toward that goal he commissioned proprietary research.

The findings lead to what he calls Return on Experience x Engagement or ROE ², an approach to produce profitable customer connections and measure marketing results. In Igniting Customer Connections: Fire Up Your Company’s Growth By Multiplying Customer Experience & Engagement by Frawley (Wiley, $28), published October 2014, he describes his ideas about marketing to build connections to match today’s technology and consumers.

Andy Frawley, author, Igniting Customer Connections

The 240-page hardcover book is divided into 21 chapters and three main sections. Part one, Connect with Your Customers Now, explains the approach and how it differs from the traditional return on investment concept. In ROE ² Research and Insights he explains how it works, illustrating the research and interviews with executives. In An ROE ² Primer, the third section, he discusses content, channels, measurement and segmentation, and technology as well as consumer privacy issues.

He believes marketers will require new analytical skills to take advantage of Big Data as the depth and breath of information expands. When it comes to consumer privacy, he suggests intelligent anonymity where a marketer has extensive information about a consumer without knowing who he or she is. He indicates in the book that best in class marketers don’t associate consumers’ individual information with cookies, and ensure consumer data remains only within the client’s possession. He proposes in Chapter 20 that marketers address consumer privacy with “transparency, knowledge, respect and responsibility.”

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Maryland law professor discusses big data contrast to data gatherers secret behaviors

Posted by Elena del Valle on February 20, 2015

The Black Box Society

Photos: Harvard University Press

Every day, a corporate or government system gathers data, openly and in secret, about people across America. From purchasing habits to driving our lives and movements physical and virtual are increasingly subject to voyeurism, storage, sharing and analysis without our consent or knowledge. In The Black Box The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information (Harvard University Press, $31.50) Frank Pasquale, professor of law, University of Maryland, explores issues related to corporate data gathering, and asks who tracks the activities of the data gatherers, their own data; and what happens to the data they gather about us.

He points to the proprietary methods, gag rules and nondisclosure agreements government agents and corporations hide with, leaving everyone else exposed. Using anonymizing software, he says, may draw unwanted attention from authorities. The same laws that aggressively protect the data gatherers’ secrecy is “increasingly silent when it comes to the privacy of persons,” he says in the book.

“Many of the firms I write about in the book try very hard to keep their practices secret. I had to comb many reports in order to find another leaks, litigation documents, and other ‘peeks’ inside their black boxes,” said Pasquale when asked by email about the biggest challenge the book presented for him.

Frank Pasquale, author, The Black Box Society

“I have heard from so many people who’ve been victimized by black box processes,” he said, when asked what was the most unexpected result of writing and publishing the book. “There was a man who found his credit damaged for years, because he lost one small stage of a lawsuit against an obviously fraudulent actor. There are people who can’t find jobs because some mysterious algorithm or reporting system keeps blackballing them. But there are also many who fight back, and I really find inspiration from their stories.”

In the book, he asks: Should our own citizens be on secret watchlists without their knowledge or any opportunity to defend themselves? Should a credit card company be entitled to raise the interest rate of a couple seeking marriage counseling? Should they be told? Should powerful search engines and social media sites be entitled to take down legal websites and books without informing the public? Should the Federal Reserve print money to save banks after their executives behave irresponsibly, and hide the printing from the public?

The 304-page hardcover book, published this year, is divided into six chapters: Introduction—The Need to Know, Digital Reputation in an Era of Runaway Data, The Hidden Logics of Search, Finance’s Algorithms: The Emperor’s New Codes, Watching (and Improving) the Watcher, and Toward an Intelligible Society. It features 83 pages of end notes.

To the question of what the average person can do to protect her or himself until, and if, the situation is remedied, and the transparency you call for becomes a reality? he replied, “I’d say: support smaller, more local economic actors. At least there are people at them who can respond to complaints and try to fix things. I’ve found that, at many large firms, algorithmic processes truly become faceless…there’s no one to appeal to.”

In closing he says, the data gathering situation and society with a black box approach “has become dangerously unstable, unfair and unproductive;” and that it is up to society to establish the rules that lead us to a safe environment and a stable economy.  Pasquale is an affiliate fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, and a member of the Council for Big Data, Ethics, and Society.

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Dallas consultant addresses role of accountability in business

Posted by Elena del Valle on January 23, 2015

Accountability

Photos: Bustin & Co

If accountability is “Doing what you said you would do within the time frame you agreed to do it*” and only a tiny fraction of management executives surveyed believed their companies did a good job executing their strategic plan, what does that say about the accountability at their companies? Greg Bustin, author, Accountability: The Key to Driving a High-Performance Culture (McGraw-Hill, $28) believes accountability is the greatest challenge businesses face.

In his 293-page hardcover book, published in 2014, he discusses the role of accountability in the business environment. The book is divided into ten chapters and an appendix.
Establishing clear expectations, dealing with problems immediately and leaving emotions behind are important steps when a leader holds others accountable, he says.

Greg Bustin, author, Accountability

He goes on to recommend that the way to accountability begins with a purpose. Once executives identify what they want to do, what they can do and what they’re willing to do, they can hold themselves accountable. Only then can they create a culture where accountability drives performance and hold others accountable. He defines seven characteristics he believes are necessary for efficient accountability: character, unity, learning, tracking, urgency, reputation and evolving.

Bustin, chief executive officer, Bustin & Co., is a Dallas based business and leadership consultant. Prior to this book, he wrote Take Charge!, Lead the Way, and That’s a Great Question.

_{*From Accountability.}

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Journalist shares insights learned from her life as a single woman

Posted by Elena del Valle on January 9, 2015

The Art of Not Having It All

Photos: St. Martin’s Press Publicity

Can a career woman find fulfillment alone? Is it possible to be single and happy? Melissa Kite thinks it is. She is single and dedicated to her work. She is convinced she is unusual for not seeking to have everything in her life. She is content with dedicating most of her energy to her career even if if it means there is no time left for the pursuit of a family. In The Art of not Having It All: True Stories of Men, Sex and Other Disasters (Thomas Dunne Books, $24.99), published this month, she discusses her life experiences and views.

In the Preface, she says she felt like “a total freak” and “…like the only woman in the world who was struggling to keep one ball in the air, and dropping that most of the time.” She prefers, she explains, focusing on doing one thing at a time rather than juggling a career and a family; and concludes that being single and lonely while not having the stereotypical everything at once such as kids, the perfect husband and a suburban home is not so bad after all.

Melissa Kite, author, The Art of Not Having It All

The 278-page hardcover book is divided into ten chapters. Kite is a freelance journalist and a columnist for The Spectator in the United Kingdom.

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