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So lately I haven’t been talking about the twerps as much. And it’s not because I’ve finally become COMPLETELY self-absorbed.

Maybe.

You see, The Monkey is 12 (going on 29) now. So she’s evil and no longer even a little cute. Kidding. I just don’t think it’s right to tell all kinds of stories that might embarrass her. I’ll save that for when she starts dating. Of course, all bets are off if she is being a pain in my ass.

And The ACN is just tired of the spotlight that comes with being so adorably cute. Blog celebrity was making her all Joaquin Phoenix-y. We have exchanges like this.

Uncle Pete: SO cute! Can I make a video?

ACN shakes her head no.

Uncle Pete: Can I take a picture?

ACN shakes her head no.

Uncle Pete: But… but…

ACN shakes her head no.

Uncle Pete: You want Uncle Pete to put the camera away and stop being a pain in the ass?

ACN: Yeeeaaaaaaah.

But I will tell you a couple little stories.

**********

I call The ACN every night at 6 pm. I will pretty much drop whatever I am doing at that moment. I will hang up with you to call her. (Conversely, she might straight up refuse to talk to me if there is anything even remotely interesting going on with her.) Because of our routine, she has come to expect my calls to be on time.

The other day I plopped down on my bed around 5:40 pm. I was watching some Seinfeld. I was very comfy. VERY comfy. Seemingly seconds later, I opened one eye and Jennifer Aniston was on my TV. “She was never on Seinfeld…” I looked at the clock…

6:11!!!!!!

Uh oh.

I grabbed my phone and called the ACN.

My sister answered with “You are in trouble!”

I am always on speaker phone, so I ignored my sister and tried to apologize to the ACN.

Silence.

“She’s mad at you, Uncle Fred,” my sister said. (The ACN has decided my name is Uncle Fred now… No idea why.)

“It’s only 11 minutes!” I pleaded.

“Do you want to talk to Uncle Fred?” she asked ACN. “She’s saying no, Uncle Fred.”

I did my fake crying sniffles. I heard little giggles.

“Are you laughing at me? GRRRRRRRRRR.”

I heard howls of laughter.

I figured she had forgiven me and that we’d talk.

Yeah, nope.

I apologized.

She ignored.

I GRRRR’d.

She laughed.

Finally I said, “Do you want to kick Uncle Pete off of the phone?”

“YEAH!!!!!”

Owie.

And when I called last night, the babysitter answered with, “Do you want to talk to Uncle Fred?”

Squeals of delight.

“She said no,” the babysitter told me.

More squeals of delight.

Everything I said got squeals of delight.

I did get a “love” and a “you” and a “bye.”

But they were outnumbered by squeals of delight.

And then she kicked me off the phone.

While squealing with delight.

**********

I got this Facebook message this morning from The Monkey:

“Heey Pete!!! I was just wondering if you could download Jump on it,
Swing, Meet me halfway, watcha say, 1980, and i think that’s it for
now! Please! Love you! <3"

Some things to note:

1) "Love you" is her new closer for any time she asks for a favour. Though it is an improvement over the "Oh you'll do it because you love me" that I had been getting lately.

2) All I get are song titles. Sometimes it isn't even the correct title. She never tells me who sings the songs.

3) "Jump On It" is from 1996.

4) I messaged her back to tell her I had the songs downloaded for her, and she replied with a bored "Oh, I'll get them from you at some point."

The other night The Monkey and her Dad were here. A hockey game I wanted to watch (and that I won a bet on!) was just starting. I said, "Ottawa has to win." The Monkey said, "Nope. Pittsburgh is going to win." I ignored her, even though CANADIANS SHOULD NEVER CHEER FOR AN AMERICAN TEAM AGAINST A CANADIAN TEAM.

A minute or so into the game, Pittsburgh scored.

I swore.

And The Monkey started trash talking me.

In French.

Which really is more annoying than English trash talk.

They eventually went home — after The Monkey paced back and forth in the living room reading out loud from a book for twenty minutes. I went to watch my game. And, of course, Ottawa won. Big.

The next morning I texted The Monkey's phone with "Ottawa 6 – Pittsburgh 2."

She must not have taken her phone to school, because after her volleyball practice, I heard my phone beep. I saw it was from her and started smiling. I opened it and found:

"Shit on you! Old man!"

I saw the movie “Amelia” recently. It’s the story of Amelia Earhart, who was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean (a feat that had only been accomplished by Charles Lindberg at the time).

In the movie there is a scene where she has been flying all night over the Atlantic, and is growing weary. She begins to nod off and then gets a second wind and tells herself, “Come on Amelia, if Lindbergh can do it? YOU can do it!”

As I watched that scene, I couldn’t help but think to myself that this is exactly how it is in ACN.

• If Jeff Weber can do it? You can do it!
• If Mike Bisutti can do it? You can do it!
• If Jennifer Dowd can do it? You can do it!
• If Spencer Hunn can do it? You can do it!
• If Craig Kotter can do it? You can do it!

The fact of the matter is that no one in ACN is trail blazing their way to Senior Vice President. It’s been done before. These are NOT unchartered waters. Follow the proverbial “yellow brick road!”

There is no need to reinvent the wheel here in ACN. Just do what those who have gone before you have done. If you have an original idea? Take a cold shower…it’ll go away!

14 days left until Anaheim.

It’s been four weeks since I have added anything here online. I have had so many thoughts and ideas run through my mind in that time. But as I mentioned in that last post, I have also had life get in the way. My Grandmother is still holding on (for those who are interested).

One of the absolutely great things about ACN is that you have the opportunity to “start over” at any time. Ten days ago, I decided to do just that. I have recommitted to my goal of Four Star RVP by November 7, 2010.

The image that you see to the left is what I look at on my cell phone screen every day. It’s easy for me to look at it and disregard it. So that’s why I decided to share this here in this public forum.

This is scary. I am risking humiliation. But I am steadfast in my commitment.

This post isn’t a long one, but I felt the need to put it out there. See you in Anaheim.

Christ demands a faith that will move mountains.  And since he never demands the impossible, we can, in the strength of our faith, move aside mountains of misery and ignorance, of misunderstanding, hatred and selfishness.  Usually this implies a task of reconciliation, which can be achieved only through prayer, humility and selfless love.

- Father Werenfried van Straaten, (1913-2003), Founder of ACN

The Lord is always within hearing.  We can inwardly draw away from him.  We can live turning our backs on him.  But He always waits for us and is always close to us.

Pope Benedict XVI

O Lord, I pray for the grace and the strength
to remain faithful to your teachings
and to the sacramental life of the Church.
Help me to persevere in the commitments
and promises I have made to you.
Give me the fortitude to live up to the vocation
I received in my baptism,
to the duties derived from my confirmation in the Spirit,
and to the graces received in the other sacraments.

Help me to place love of God and service to Him
before all else
and help me to bring selfless love
to my brothers and sisters in Christ. 

Amen

“Neither war nor peace can ever cause the truth of Our Lord’s words to waver.  He is and remains the same for all eternity and his words will never pass away.  And so our eternal happiness is inseparably bound up with Christ.”

- Father Werenfried van Straaten, (1913-2003), Founder of ACN

The most amazing stupid tricks network marketing companies do is letting some legal department enforce their policies and procedures.

Give this some thought. If a network marketing company has a legal team that writes the policies and procedures and oversees the legalities of the company, the network marketing company has generally spent about a quarter of a million dollars retaining this legal department.

So now the legal department has to justify their existence, since they just added a quarter of a million dollars overhead to the company. So the legal department writes Policies and Procedures so convoluted, so confusing – it’s just legalese.

And you have to read chapter 7, and remember 7.C. Then down in 19.D, they talked about it again, and you have to pull those 2 together. They talked a little bit about it up here. Now they add the rest of it down here.

But if you don’t connect the two, you don’t know what they’re talking about.
Lawyers LOVE writing All This BS!

Example: in some companies, the P & Ps say you are responsible to monitor your downline organization’s activities. If THEY do something illegal, then YOU are responsible for that.

A friend of mine got terminated because one of his downline members recruited somebody who was in another deal sideline, which was cross recruiting. But they held the sponsor responsible, and they terminated him, so they could steal his check. Real simple.

And your person signing the bonus checks needs to have built a downline themselves. MLM CEOs who have never built a downline do not have a clue about MLM distributors.

Network Marketing Companies Would Be NOTHING Without Distributors!
CEOs who have built a downline know that. They know that companies are nothing without the distributors.

Sure, they need a product. Yeah they have to ship a product. Yes, they have to send a bonus check. But who built the company? Who built the volume?
Answer: The distributor. And if the CEO realizes that, then they treat the distributors like gold. They don’t have some legal department trying to terminate their distributors.

Stupid Trick #2
And the other stupid thing that network marketing companies do is, they don’t listen to the field. The reps are in the trenches everyday. Companies need to know what their reps see, what they do, what they hear, what they say.

We tell people all the time, “Read your Policies & Procedures.” I got a call the other day from the COO of a company. Actually, his secretary called me to ask some questions about why I am telling people to read their Policies & Procedures. because they have a bunch of people doing it and it ticks them off!

This company, based out of Texas, has the most ruthless Policies & Procedures you’ve ever seen. They are unbelievable.

Want To Sell the Business that YOU built? Fuhgeddaboudit!

For example – if you wanted to sell your downline, sell your business, you have a 10-page document that you have to fill out. And before you offer the business to anybody, you have to offer to the company first.

And when you mail your request for them to buy it, you have to include a $100 nonrefundable fee. And then they can say yes or no!

Next step is, when the company says “No”, they will then send you 3 upline people that you can sell your business to. You have to offer it to each of them one at a time. And the P & Ps stipulate that to buy YOUR business, they must resign their own business.

So usually, they say “No”.  And after all 3 have turned you down, one at a time, then you have to offer your business to somebody in your downline.
And they make it so clear – they say “if you circumvent any part of this procedure, you are terminated.” So I told the secretary to have the COO call me and we could visit about the situation.  And the secretary said that he does not talk to people directly!

And I said well, “Well, he talked to YOU!” So she told me he doesn’t return phone calls, doesn’t talk to any reps directly.

I was stunned. I sat in my chair thinking, “Wow! This is unbelievable!” Now this guy wants to talk to me to find out why I am telling people to read their policies and procedures. That is amazing. what a trip!

P.S. – Have you read YOUR P & Ps lately? You should!

Wishing you much success,

Kevin & Linda Schrader

I will be completely honest with you. For someone who has never researched the home based business industry in the past, then understanding ACN’s compensation pay structure will be difficult. Even someone with vast experience may have a few issues comprehending the different elements of the pay plan. Founded in 1993 in Concord, North Carolina, ACN is a telecommunication company and operates in 20 countries. ACN is one of the largest telecommunication companies that sells its services via the direct selling industry. Their products include wireless, local and long distance, home security, internet, digital phone service and satellite TV.

The compensation plan entails a multi-level marketing approach which is the old way of compensating reps. In other words, it allows you to earn commissions off of your group’s sales volume. The amount of commission you earn is limited to the level you are at with ANC and your qualifications. As stated earlier, the compensation pay structure can be difficult to understand because it contains so many variables with each level of pay. This article will briefly give you an overview so as to help you better understand the income potential with ACN.

Commissions between 1% to 10% can be earned from your customer’s telecommunications monthly bill. You are incentivized to build your customer base because your commission levels are determined by it. The customer volume requirements range from $0 to $10,000 plus. The % of commission you earn is determined by this range.

You can also earn bonus commission from the volume sales of your downline’s representative’s customers. You will earn 1/4% of the volume of all your first generations customers. Once your first level has a customer base generating over $3,000, the ¼% commission is cut by 50%. Additionally, override commissions are earned all the way down to your seventh level depending on your qualification with the compensation pay structure. To qualify for this level of pay you must personally have 40 customers or 20 personal customers and 5 personally sponsored Team Trainers.

If you personally help a representative reach the level of Team Trainer within 30 days, ACN will pay you a customer acquisition bonus.

It is my conclusion that the ACN Compensation Structure is flawed because it limits you on the levels of pay you can reach. You are limited on the levels of pay you can achieve. More importantly, the way the pay structure is set up, it creates unwanted competition rather than a harmonious team effort. It is recommended that although CAN is a viable company with a good product line, the compensation structure is recommendation is that while this is a viable product and a real business, the compensation plan is substandard to others companies’ compensation plan within the industry.

Jared Wiener is a top internet marketer and home business success coach who has worked with thousands of people around the world helping them create success in their lives leveraging the power of the internet. To learn more about Jared Wiener and what he does to create massive success online, go to #1 Home Business.

Well this is interesting. I was going to say a few words about ACN and how poorly their customer service is run…and guess what! I lost my whole blog. Now I have to start all over again, and I have lost my edge. Darn, darn and double darn!

Anyway I am still going to say my piece. I have a land line with a long distance package on it, as well as a video phone which uses the internet for long distance. To reduce the money spent on duplication I opted to cancel my long distance on my land line. This was October 14th.

The bill came in yesterday, and ACN managed to cancel my long distance all right….all the way back to September 18th. $55.00 worth was added to my bill. Oh, and there was another charge there for Totaled Bundled Service Charges of $30.73.

The call was made to customer service, and fortunately I got a very nice young lady on the line. Once I explained to her what happened, she credited the long distance charges that were in error, and apologized profusely on behalf of ACN.

Then I asked the loaded question….where is my charge for my internet? She then said I had cancelled it.

Dead silence on my end. Then a whispered four letter word to myself.

Man could it get any worse? Yes, it can!

ACN is the only company in the world that charges you for bundling your services under their plan. That is quite a touch at $30.73.

Anyway since there is no explanation about the bundling charge I am only going to pay for the regular charge and my internet, even though they cancelled it. Strange feat, considering I have been on the net everyday.

ACN has excellent products. Video phones, cell phones, iPhones, Home Security and so on. Their prices and products are fantastic and I recommend them highly. Unfortunately their customer service needs a new lookee see by the higher ups.

Well off to the races. We’ll talk soon.

O well-beloved of God,
hear the ardent cry
which rises up from every heart.
Bend tenderly over our aching wounds.
Convert the wicked,
dry the tears of the afflicted and oppressed,
comfort the poor and humble,
quench hatreds, sweeten hardness,
safeguard the flower of purity in youth,
protect the holy church,
make all men feel the attractions of Christian goodness.
In your name,
resounding harmoniously in heaven,
may they recognize that they are brothers,
and that the nations are members of one family,
upon which may there shine forth the sun
of a universal and sincere peace.

Jesus, loving companion of Your children, You have extended Your friendship to all. You opened Your arms without discrimination, Offering Your warmth to those seeking comfort. Endow me with the virtue of such a friendship, To know, love and trust all on an equal basis; To share my patronizing without favorism, And to be pleasant towards the destitute. Fashion my heart to reflect Your qualities, Those befitting of a cordial association. Jesus, You showed me the way to true friendship: Blessed is Your amazing and warm Person!

Persevere in prayer and in charity – fruits which you should attribute not to me but to God, who merely uses my words as a vehicle of his grace.  For the goodness which inspires your giving finds its origin in the heart of God.

- Father Werenfried van Straaten, (1913-2003), Founder of ACN

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Good morning my Lord,
I can't believe it's morning again!
It seems that I'm always busy and rushing around.
But no matter how rushed life may be,
help me to think of You always.
Thank you for another glorious day,
may Your word be always on my lips
in my heart and on my mind.
I love you my Lord, Saviour and friend. 

Amen

In the kingdom of the Father there are no things that “belong” to a person, no “shares” that one can demand as of right.  For the love of God is not divisible, but gives itself completely.  It is free, and sets us free.  Love can only be received by those who trust in it, never by those who demand it.

- Father Werenfried van Straaten, (1913-2003), Founder of ACN

As the conversations about talent management and acquisition metrics heat up again, and I can’t seem to have a conversation with a customer without Time to Fill, Employee Engagement, Employee Turnover, Average Length of Employment, Recruitment Cost Ratio, Cost per Hire, Quality of Hire, etc. coming up, I keep racking my brain for a way to answer the question, who really is winning the war for talent.  Well, I think I have an answer and I think we can use it to determine which firm, IBM, HP, or Accenture, is winning the war for talent.

To be fair there are a number of ways to answer the question who is winning the war for talent, but the more I think about it the more I believe the easiest way to do this without specific corporate intelligence is simply to measure how productive the average employee is at competing firms over time.

A little known and rarely used financial metric, sales per employee (S/E Ratio), can actually help us do this.  Yes, there are things that distort this metric, not the least of which is that sales are generated throughout the year and employee numbers are reported at one moment in time.  For instance, any company could employ 1,000 people for the first 10-11 months of the year and then have a 20% RIF in Dec and file their annual report citing the number of employees at the end of the fiscal year rather than the average number of employees throughout the year (which many did in 2008!).  However, when S/E Ratio is taken into account over time, say five quarters or five years in a row, it should give us a general sense of just how productive the company’s workers are over time.  With this data in hand it then seems plausible to conclude that any firm who can consistently maintain a higher S/E Ratio than its competitors must be doing a better job at recruiting and retaining high performers.

What would be even more interesting would be a future S/E Ratio as it would inherently include information about how much more productive companies expect their workers to be in the next quarter or year, and it would be a clear sign of where companies see the economy going because they would not be forecasting employment growth unless they thought the sales were there to support it.

To illustrate my point I thought it would be interesting to use this measure to compare some of the best-known companies in the computer services industry, an industry that is highly people intensive and therefore should be very sensitive to this number.  In Table 1 you will see the latest fiscal year sales and employee numbers for IBM (IBM), HP (HPQ), and Accenture (ACN) and their S/E Ratios.

As you can see from the table, HP is generating $108,655 (42%) more in sales per employee than IBM and $237,825 (182%) more in sales per employee than Accenture.

Now I know some readers will say they are not all in the same business, and in some cases this is true.  However a substantial percent of each company’s revenues come from the same service lines, so I would argue this is at least directionally correct and if the order of magnitude is directionally correct as well I’d say investors should be asking some hard questions to IBM’s and Accenture’s management teams about how they plan to improve upon these numbers.

NOTE: I was unable to find the employee numbers for HP and Accenture for 2007 or earlier I was not able to do a time comparison, but I have requested them from investor relations and plan to update this post once I have them in hand so we can compare their performance over time.  To me the performance over time is really the best measure, and would be best done on a quarterly basis.  That said, I just read several quarterly statements from these companies and can’t find this information.  I’m guessing investors just don’t think this is all that important.  Surprised?  I am.

The question you should be asking yourself is, does this really matter?  Well, if we believe that people are a company’s most valuable asset as many executives have been quoted as saying, then it would stand to reason that people are the biggest contributor to sales and those who attract and retain the best produce more in profits (all other variables held equal).  As such, we should see a correlation between S/E Ratio and stock performance.  So, let us look at the stock performance of these three companies.

Above is a one-year chart (courteous of Google Finance) of IBM, HPQ, and ACN.  From this chart it would appear that investors don’t care that HPQ’s people are so much more productive.  However, when we look at the five-year comparison below (again, courteous of Google Finance) we see HPQ has outperformed IBM by approximately 100% and ACN by approximately 120%.  What would be really interesting to know is if HPQ has maintained a higher S/E Ratio during the same five-year period.  If (or when) I find the data I will be sure to update this post.

I’d love to hear what readers think of using the S/E Ratio over time to measure a company’s effectiveness at attracting and retaining great talent.  It may not be the best metric but I do think it provides some interesting insights.

For those who are interested in further understanding the S/E Ratio you can read about it at http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/04/110304.asp.

To learn more about CorDell & Company’s talent management and acquisition services visit http://www.cordellandcompany.com/services.html or send an email to cordell DOT larkin AT cordellandcompany DOT com.

The extraordinary fusion between love of God and love of neighbor makes life beautiful and cause the desert in which we often find ourselves living to blossom anew.

Help me, I pray
To get through this day.
I don’t even ask
To have things my way,
Your will is okay.

Things done in Your way
Are best suited to stay
In the Master Plan,
Help me to help
In any way that I can.

Don’t let me be
Part of the problems I see,
But let me rather be
A light unto Thee.

Amen

The love that comes from God, that he himself sets flowing from heart to heart as a manifestation of his goodness, shares in God’s immensity and never thinks it has done enough.

God, my Father,
may I love You in all things and above all things.
May I reach the joy which You have prepared for me in Heaven.
Nothing is good that is against Your Will,
and all that is good comes from Your Hand.
Place in my heart a desire to please You
and fill my mind with thoughts of Your Love,
so that I may grow in Your Wisdom and enjoy Your Peace. 

Amen