Category Archives: Business Reports

Budgets. Strategic Planning. Annual Planning. ‘Tis the season … but who has time? For many business owners it can be hard to work ON your business, rather than feeling the pull to solve IN the business issues. In this article we’ll share a simplified approach to strategic planning.

Can you gather your leadership team and answer these 8 Questions?

1. What are your Core Values?

I don’t mean your aspirations or the words on a plaque. Rather, what are the behaviors that define your best team members? Who do you LOVE working with – including vendors and clients? What do they have in common? Your core values define the right people for your company. They act as a magnet – both attracting and repelling!

2. What is your Core Focus?

This is your reason for being; it’s what you’re best at doing! Others call it a mission. It comes from your core and it should give you a filter to help you focus your energy. In Good to Great, Jim Collins says. “You are more likely to die of indigestion of too many opportunities than you are of starvation of not enough.”

3. What is your Core Target?

Pick a timeframe – 10 years? 15 years? Then identify what you REALLY want to accomplish. Be brave. You are inviting people to be part of……what?

4. What’s your Marketing Strategy?

Who is your ideal customer and what do they need to hear from you in order to part with their hard-earned money? You don’t need to become a household name. You do need to focus your Marketing and Sales efforts.

Michael Cruz

Your business plans are built on logical thought. We decide where we want to take our business. Goals, plans and strategy help you focus on the growth in your business. Inevitably, some of the plans will need adjusting because there will be obstacles along the way. Many of those obstacles will come from your own people NOT following through on achieving your plans. Sometimes it is because they did not believe in the goals. Perhaps your culture got in the way.

Wiki defines culture as “the values and beliefs; language and communication; and practices shared by a group of people.” You have a company culture whether (or not) you acknowledge it. Most often the culture in your company is a set of unwritten rules.

We live within many cultures in our world. Since culture is about behaviors that are acceptable, we try to adapt based on the group setting. There is a culture in your immediate family, at work, at church or in other social groups. Adaptation to the expected culture is what normal people do.

New employees spend their early time in your employ observing “acceptable” behaviors. They absorb how people interact and watch what values are held high. And which behaviors are frowned upon. They are helped along with comments from others such as, “We don’t do that here.” And they adjust their behavior to fit inn better.

It is therefore key to understanding the culture that has evolved inn your organization. There are many ways to determine company culture. The most focused one is to ask you employees. There is a local company that helps you measure your culture through a survey. It is called CultureTalk. It gets your team to think about what is important and what gets measured by the company. It is not very expensive but can be invaluable. (www.CultureTalk.com)  It will help you figure out what your culture is.  There are also individual culture profiles that can show us what our natural behaviors might be. That also helps us see potential stressors in our attempt to adapt to the company expectations. 

By Mary Beth McCue

Healthy life-style and trauma work are simply “life work.” Where have we been, where do we want to be, what are the options to getting there?  

Preferably all for the better of humanity, and the best path for ourselves. We all interconnected with these factors in the human quest for a peaceful purposeful and joyful existence. It can and should be achieved from within.

When we experience trauma, a series of neurological events occur in the body leading to negative mental and physical impact. Trauma is our unique response to experiencing a stressful event. Depending on how we process it, or not, will determine health, and everything in our lives. 

The amygdala area of the brain can (generationally) hold events, including the intensity and impulse of emotion that comes along with these memories. Many neurological series of reactions connect to the GI, but potentially all areas in the body. Discovering the areas of stress and trauma, and how they feel in the body are significant to lifestyle changes and healing. 

A colleague and teacher of mine psychiatrist James Gordon, MD, founder of The Center for Mind Body Medicine (cmbm.org), shares great points in his many teachings and trainings on the role of nutrition and healing trauma.  The mental and conventional health fields have generally been slow to recognize the role nutrition can play in every persons life. 

This all has been changing over the last couple of decades as more and more research and clinical practice’s like functional nutrition become widely accepted and demanded from the consumer.  The Smiles trial  and the Helfimed study are two of many examples of how diet plays a significant role in treating depression, which is based in unresolved trauma. 

by Renee Walrath

Open enrollment is around the corner and employers are scrambling to accommodate the rising cost of health insurance. 

The annual premium for individual coverage has risen more than $225 per year on average, and family coverage has risen more than $700 per year on average from 2010 to 2022. Statistically speaking, prices for healthcare grow much faster than inflation and that combined with increasing employee demands has companies, both small and large, forced to make difficult decisions.

The specific reason for increasing healthcare costs can be attributed to a variety of factors including the following:

• Continuing research and new, innovative technology leading to more expensive procedures and products.

• Labor shortages, physician consolidation, and contract renewals are amplifying the already aggravated industry.

• Chronic healthcare conditions, catastrophic health claims and rising prescription drug prices add to the sizeable hike for 2024.

This is the second year in a row that employers have projected a 7 percent-plus hike and confronting affordability and disrupting costs are among the top obstacles for employers in 2024. 

Organizations must reshape their strategies and business models to allay the drastically different costs. Nearly two-thirds of large employers (500-plus employees) are planning to make enhancements to their health offerings in 2024 to support employee needs. 

By John Gable

It’s probably not on your calendar, but September is Life Insurance Awareness Month. And that means it’s a good time to become more aware of the benefits of having life insurance—and the dangers of not having it.

Unfortunately, confusion about some of the basic elements of owning life insurance may be keeping people from getting the protection they need. More than half of uninsured Americans say they have put off purchasing coverage because they don’t know what to buy or how much they need, according to Life Happens and LIMRA, two nonprofit organizations that provide research and education about life insurance.

Yet, while this confusion may be understandable, a delay in acquiring appropriate insurance can be costly in more ways than one. From a strict dollars-and-cents perspective, it’s generally much more affordable to buy life insurance when you’re younger. But there are potentially much greater costs involved in not having insurance when it’s needed — and these costs are personal.

To be specific, what is it worth:

 • To know your family could stay in your home if something happened to you?

 • To know your children could continue their education plans?

 • To know your debts could be paid without burdening your family?

By Barbara King

For grandparents, the relationship with a grandchild can be one of the most important things in the world. But what happens when the child’s parents prevent you from seeing or having a relationship with them? 

Sometimes, the only recourse left to grandparents is to petition for grandparents’ visitation rights from Family Court. But do grandparents have visitation rights in New York? 

Visitation rights vary from state to state, but generally speaking, grandparents’ visitation rights are not as extensive as those granted to the child’s biological or adopted parents. But grandparents do have a statutory right to petition for visitation, even if the child’s parents are unmarried, have been legally divorced or one is deceased.

These limited rights to visitation are not extended to aunts and uncles, great-grandparents, or other family members, except in circumstances where the child’s natural parents and grandparents have both passed away, or are otherwise legally barred from access to the child. Adoption is not a barrier to a biological grandparent’s rights to request visitation, but the child’s best interest, including health, safety, and welfare are the primary considerations.

What if the custodial parent is opposed?

The state of New York recognizes that a child’s parents have the fundamental right to raise their children in the manner they feel is best for the child, including who is or is not allowed to visit with them. As such, a Family Court will grant visitation rights to grandparents who have an already established relationship and/or have been denied access to their grandchild if it is deemed by the court to be in the child’s best interests.