December 15th, 2007
And you thought it was just enough to have a balanced portfolio! John is a friend of mine as well as a professional speaker on the subject of Identity theft. He had the misfortune of being an ID theft victim twice-he offers great tips to all of us on protecting our identity.
Read John’s post and then you might ask your financial advisor what procedures they have in place to ensure that your identity is not stolen.
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September 12th, 2007
Annita Roddick 1942-2007, founder of the Body Shop passed away yesterday. Thanks to
Michelle Miller for a great quote of Roddick’s:
“If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.”
Great attitude and very inspirational for anyone trying to find their way. I’ve been watching The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch lately. It’s incredible the perseverance and tenacity some of his guests bring to the program. A great watch for entrepreneurs trying to find their niche!
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August 30th, 2007
Life is good once again at my favorite Starbucks. We have new trees planted, very green, Starbucks-and we have new umbrellas!! Yeah.. Libby Havice was kind enough to explain that Starbucks only uses one supplier to make their umbrellas and they had been back ordered forever! Thanks for your time and efforts Libby.
Every successful business venture has great employees that really enjoy what they do and go that extra mile to make you fell like a guest. No one does that better than the Starbucks crew at the Greenwood Village Starbucks-Thanks for all that you do!
Steve Mertz
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July 25th, 2007
Starbucks (sbux) stock has been beaten up quite a bit in the past year. Back in happier times, say November 16,2006, Starbucks stock closed at $39.43 Let’s see…today Starbucks closed at $27.96 The company has been trying to expand too quickly without regards to the bottom line. But not to worry, here in Denver, Colorado they are rolling out the breakfast menu and other assorted revenue producers in the next several months. Libby Havice, is the District Manager for my Starbucks in Greenwood Village-located at Belleview and Ulster. Libby is doing everything to cut costs and shore up that bottom line….even though the Starbucks in Greenwood Village has the largest outdoor patio, we have no quaint Starbucks umbrellas. Libby, what are you thinking??? Is this good customer service-if you would leave your air conditioned office once in awhile and come visit me at my store you would notice that your cost cutting efforts have reached ridiculous measures. I know, you are just being a good employee and it’s just not in the budget-right?
I’ve met Libby before so I am going to offer some constructive criticism. What if you Libby, contracted with some entrepreneur here in Denver. They would be responsible for locating corporate sponsors for those umbrellas. They would get the sponsors, get the umbrellas made with the logo of the sponsors, collect the money-payable in advance on a 12 month contract and give you a cut. Starbucks has no cash outlay and your customers at belleview and Ulster would stop sending you the hate mail
don’t answer yet-I want you to sleep on it and then meet me at my store with your answer. Just think-if it’s successful here in Denver you could have Starbucks roll it out nationally and you could take all the credit.
PS The employees at the Greenwood Village, Colorado Starbucks are the best and most friendly-even though we customers bitch about Libby Havice and no umbrellas!
PSS Your stock chart is too ugly to put in this post…..
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July 4th, 2007
I’m headed to have a barbecue with my family and watch the firework displays. Hope you all have a great holiday and a special Thanks to all our troops around the world!
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July 3rd, 2007
If you are considering medical tourism-you want to fore go this hospital in India. The 15 year old son of two doctors successfully performed a filmed Caesarean section birth under his parent’s watch in southern India-in an apparent attempt to set a record as the youngest surgeon-Right about now, I’m really feeling comfortable with this medical tourism idea!
Dr. K. Murugesan showed a recording of his son performing the C-section to an Indian Medical Association in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Murugesan told the medical association that he wanted to see this son’s name in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Murugesan, who could be banned from practicing medicine expressed no regret and accused the Manaparai medical association of being “jealous” of his son’s achievements-medical tourism anyone?
Heads up to InsureBlog for this tantalizing information!
Steve Mertz
Hospital Medical Equipment
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July 3rd, 2007
If I had the 5 million dollars that seo.com repotedly sold for recently. I have domain names on my mind this morning because I know a lot of people like to buy and sell domain names-hoping they might be the next seo.com! Yesterday, at Starbucks, a friend of mine asked me what I thought about the domain name jets.biz He mentioned it to me because I’m playing in the field of private jet charters-maybe a little affiliate action! I liked the name but upon further research I’m concerned that the domain name may have been flamed out by the owner-leading to it getting banned from the search engines-we have talked about the research you need to do before buying any domain name!
Please do yourself a huge favor before you buy a domain name and search Google and Yahoo to see if the domain name was ever indexed by the search engines. It takes a little research but it could save you a lot of time and money. Good Luck!
PS I did not buy jets.biz-instead I picked up jetsforu.com
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July 3rd, 2007
In 2006 (make that 2005), time flies
I started doing research for a
stem cell transplant for myself. My research took me from Portugal to China-and many countries in between. I didn’t call it Medical tourism-because the thought wasn’t exactly a holiday for me! My biggest fear about going overseas for medical procedures were the credentials of the physicians, staff and facilities-aside from the obvious concern-will this work??
Never fear, Fortune small business tells us that
Employers make a push for “medical tourism”. The article points out a small business owner trying to cope with the rising costs of health care. His insurance premiums jumped 32% last year-adding 12% to his overhead. He is now encouraging employees to seek treatment overseas-medical tourism. Some of the options include Costa Rica, India and Singapore. He estimates that overseas treatment will cut his medical costs by more that 10% per year and help him avoid another 20 to 30% rise in premiums.
Unfortunately, I feel for both the employer and employees-the thought of having surgery overseas scared the bejesus out of me! but from the employers perspective surgery overseas can cost 30 to 80% less than in the U.S. The article points out that the average charge for a coronary artery bypass is about $75,500 in the U.S., vs. $11,400 (including round trip airfare) at the Fortis Mohali hospiital in India-the cost difference blows me away! Free Money has touched on the
Issue of Medical Tourism. I won’t go there today because it has been hashed over quite nicely.
But you know me, all you entrepreneurs out there who are looking for cash flow ideas-medical tourism is not a fad and some serious money will be made. Business 2.0 Magazine estimates that upwards of 500,000 Americans went overseas to receive medical procedures. Adult Americans who are either uninsured or considered “under-insured” number more than 61 million-and rising! In come the entrepreneurs who set up a
medical tourism agency. There are no licensing requirements all you need is Internet services and online advertising. It’s not that easy because anything worth while takes work and pride but this opportunity for small business owners will continue to grow.
Steve Mertz
The Medical Tourism Revolution is On!
Posted in Business Blogs, Medical Tourism | 6 Comments »
July 1st, 2007
Blogging away debt has some interesting insights on consumers who use debit cards. When she went to return an item at Walmart she asked for the credit back on her card. Much to her surprise she learned that her debit card information was stored within the bar code of the receipt-as it turns out the card information is not on the bar code but rather the transaction!
On another note concerning debit cards-banks are raking in tens of millions of dollars in fees from customers who don’t keep good track of their debit purchases. Most banks will gladly pay the merchants and charge you $35 a whack. If you don’t keep meticulous records-go back to the credit cards!
Posted in debit cards | 4 Comments »
July 1st, 2007
I just held the new Apple iPhone in my hands for about half an hour. My Starbucks buddy, purchased the iPhone Friday! We all know it’s expensive, around $640 with tax, here in Colorado.
He purchased about 1300 minutes for an additional $80 a month. It’s easy to see that in a twelve month period you will easily pony up $2,000! That’s a lot of money-and I’m too cheap for the iPhone.
Having said that, the phone is cool. Very good Internet access, good email access, great tunes and pretty handy. I would own the iPhone if I needed a new phone. Why? I would write about 98.8% of it off as a business expense. Truly, the email and Internet access are worth it as a business tool.
If I could not write it off as a business expense-I would not own it-price of poker is just too high. Would you spring for the expense of the iPhone just because?
Steve Mertz
iPhone or not!
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