Last week, a wonderfully-skilled electrician installed a new light fixture for us. He was competent, courteous and efficient. He answered all our questions simply, with skill and eloquence. I was amazed, as you might imagine, when I asked him, “How much do we owe you?” and his embarrassed reply was, “Gee, is $50 okay?” With the quality of work he'd done and the amount of time he put into it, I would have expected to pay double that amount. His resistance to naming his price reminded me of my small business clients who have the same problem.

What do creativity managers do? Replace the word management with the word optimisation.

I did a quick, very unscientific survey of 25 of my friends. I asked them to put the mail that they do not open or read in a specific trash bag. At the end of one week they gave it to me to be weighed. Guess how much the bag weighed? Remember, most mail is a fraction of an ounce. 63.4.....not ounces....lbs! Something is wrong with this picture! That's like 2 1/2 pounds per person per week! Holy Cow! Also this was a March survey, what if it had been done in November? Let's get a grip on this absolute waste of paper, ink, money and time! There are some common sense points we need to look at here.

It doesn't take a Terrorist Act, Tsunami or Earthquake to put a business heavily dependent on the internet in the dark and effectively out of business……for hours or even days into weeks. Actually, a misguided backhoe, a lightning bolt, a car accident involving a phone pole or cable box, a flooding rain or an electrical “brown out” can do it in a flash. And what company in the 2000's isn't dependent on email, e-commerce, advertising and collaboration on the net? You say, “We have cable backup for our T1 or T3” (if you are big enough) in the event of a failure…….terrific, a terrestrial backup solution for a terrestrial problem – WAKE UP! The backhoe can cut cable as efficiently as it did the phone line!

The network marketing industry is undoubtedly one of the best business models offering a fair chance for an average person to make his millions. The industry continues to grow at a tremendous pace internationally. More than 60 million people earn their livelihood in Network Marketing generating in excess of $ 80 billion in revenues. Yet the MLM or Network marketing industry accounts for highest number of failures, lost opportunity, and wasted human potential. Due to its very nature of being an absolutely democratic system and one of the best free enterprise models of business offering easy entry for entrepreneurs and businesses, it is a highly misused form of business with negligible protection for the average person. Lack of knowledge and awareness about the pitfalls compounds the problem further leading to negativity about a wonderful system of marketing.