My Brother on New TV pilot, “ENTERTAIN ME!”

Hawaii’s got an exciting new show in town and the same guys who brought you “The Andy Bumatai Show”,  is filming the TV pilot, “ENTERTAIN ME!”. Back in 2008, when my brother Lance sang on Bumatai’s show, he must have made a strong, positive impression!

Because now, Irwin Santos (aka “Superman”) along with producers, Lewis Communications & June Crabtree Productions is bringing, “ENTERTAIN ME!”, to Hawaii television and Lance will be singing some, “oldies but goodies”. Last night, they began filming the TV pilot at Hawaiian Brian’s. It will air on Channel 2 KHON Saturday at 9pm prime time starting January 23, 2010.

Check it out:
http://www.dosomethingtonight.com/specialevent/entertainmevarietyshow113009/
11-30-2009

Aloha,
Garrett

P.S. Also, as a proud older brother, I’d be remiss if I failed to make you aware of Lance’s children’s book, “Kula and the Old Ukelele”. Illustrated by island cartoonist, Jon Murakami and published by Mutual Publishing, it’s been a winner! Here’s a SPECIAL OFFER for you: If you order this wonderful book, Lance will sign it and include a FREE CD of the song, “Jumping Flea”, which features Lance on vocals and Ohta-San’s son, Herb, on the uke. You’ll see that it’s a catchy tune for sure…order at:

SuccessHawaii’s Online Store

Do You Have an iPhone? Here’s an App that Puts Your Business in Your Pocket…

If you have an iPhone, this post applies to you. As a Mac user since my family started The Human Connection in 1987 (precursor to Successories of Hawaii), I have migrated from productivity tool, to productivity tool starting with FileMaker, to Entourage and now, hopefully for the long-haul, Daylite®.  If you’ve been searching for the best productivity tools to help you keep track of your calendar, projects and daily to-do’s, I have a strong suggestion. While there’s a lot of app’s out there for the iPhone, I’ve found something that actually works well for me. As I have mentioned in a previous post on this blog, I am working on setting up the Getting Things Done®(GTD) system on my iPhone. To accomplish this, I am using the new Daylite® software. Daylite is a business productivity manager designed to help you manage your business and your team. With features such as project collaboration, shared calendars, task delegation, and sales tracking, Daylite helps you move your business forward.

Coupled with Daylite, Daylite Touch is a business productivity manager for the iPhone and iPod touch, designed as a companion to Daylite on the Mac. Winner of a 2009 Macworld Best of Show award, Daylite Touch helps you manage your business and your team, keeping everyone on the same page and helping you stay on track and deliver on time. I’ve been using it for a little while now and it has really helped me stay on top of things. Keeping track of all your tasks will help you avoid disorganization, stay motivated and be more productive.

BTW: I will not get any credit whatsoever for referring you; it’s simply to share it with you in the hope of helping. Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think. Here’s to your success!

Resiliency and Getting Things Done®

In a recent seminar based on her book, The Power of Resiliency®, Dr. Linda Andrade Wheeler shared with her audience that, “it seems to me that in this age of instability, people are searching for something that is unshakable.  They are drowning in information, but starving for knowledge and meaning.  People want some foundation on which they can build a brighter future–a more predictable and dependable existence. I believe that foundation is their personal power — their attitudes, knowledge, and skills in controlling their lives in positive ways.  When people feel in control of their lives they tend to feel better about themselves and others.”

RESILIENCY.BK

Hearing Dr. Wheeler’s statement made me recall back to when we first began Successories of Hawaii in 1994. At the time, there was an explosion of methods for “time management”, “task management”, or “personal productivity enhancement” that were designed to teach knowledge workers efficient routines for dealing with this overload of ever-changing demands (e.g. Covey, etc). Most of the recommendations concerned concrete tools and techniques, such as using personal organizers, sharing calendars, etc. But it seems that people were seeking more than just physical tools and priority setting. Continue reading →

212 Degrees

781026In this excerpt from his book, 212 Degrees, Mac Anderson, the founder of Successories, puts a new perspective on pushing yourself–and others–to success. I still remember fondly the first time I met Mac in 1994 . It was in his Chicago offices where he was able to make me feel welcomed, and truly inspired. While becoming a Successories franchisee was a definite challenge, we did it! Ultimately, what it did teach me was to believe in the pursuit of my dreams . The life lesson remains: As he points out in his book, that one extra degree of effort in business, can change your life.

“Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Thomas Edison, American Inventor, 1847-1931

At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water comes steam. And steam can power a locomotive.

Raising the temperature of water by one extra degree means the difference between something that is simply very hot and something that generates enough force to power a machine – a beautiful, uncomplicated metaphor that ideally should feed our every endeavor – consistently pushing us to make the extra effort in every task we undertake. 212 degrees serves as a forceful drill sergeant with its motivating and focused message while adhering to a scientific law – a natural law. It reminds us that seemingly small things can make tremendous differences. So simple is the analogy that you can stop reading right now, walk away with the opening thought firmly planted in your mind, and benefit from it for the rest of your life.

You now have a target for everything that you do…212 degrees. You may not always be able to turn up the heat and hit the boiling point, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make the attempt. It’s what you’d advise others to do and it’s what we should teach our children.

It’s your life. You are responsible for your results. It’s time to turn up the heat.

From this day forward, commit to operating at 212 degrees in everything you do. Etch it into your thinking–into your being. Apply it to your actions. It guarantees to increase your results positively and, in so many cases, increase your results exponentially.

The USS New York: Made from Steel of the World Trade Center!

USS.NY5Here  SHE is, the USS New York, made from the World Trade Center!

The USS  New York was built with 24 tons of  scrap steel from the World Trade Center. It is the  fifth in a new class of warship–designed  for missions that include special operations  against terrorists. It will carry a crew of  360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to  be delivered ashore by helicopters and  assault craft. Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, LA to cast the ship’s bow section.

USS.NY2

When  it was poured into the molds on  Sept  9, 2003,  “those big rough steelworkers treated it  with total reverence,” recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there. “It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.”

Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the “hair on my neck stood up. It had a big meaning to it for all of us,” he said. “They knocked us  down. They can’t keep us down. We’re going  to be back.”

USS.NY3

The ship’s motto? “Never  Forget”

Not Suprisingly, Hard Times Are Tough On Relationships

Relationships really seem to suffer when the economy is in the tank. According to John Ingrisano, author of The Back to Basics Book of Money! A Couple´s Guide to Financial Peace,

“marriage is an economic partnership. Money may not be the sole factor in its success or failure, but it is one of the top three.”

So, when couples run into financial challenges, Ingrisano says that it can impact every other aspect of their relationship. “It can turn your life and your home into a domestic battleground.” What can you do?

Here are just some recommendations from Ingrisano, who is also director of the Family Finances Conference Center.

  1. Keep the channels of communication open. Talk about your fears and concerns. Exchange points of view.
  2. Share money decisions and responsibilities. Pay bills together. Discuss purchases. Most of all, discuss your options if finances become tight. Do you reduce spending (cancel a vacation, dine out less often, give up gym membership)? Take a second job? Sell assets? Map out a strategy for getting through this together … and do it together.
  3. Keep thinking long-term. Identify mutual goals … and put them in writing. Where would you both like to be one year, two years, and ten years from now? In a nicer home? With children who are debt–free college grads? Retired in comfort at age 60? If you have trouble reaching agreement, look for compromises.

At The Wheeler Group LLC, we believe that the best way for you to learn about life insurance and the other financial services products we offer is to consult one of our professionally trained, licensed agents. Simply call us at (808) 216-4147 or easily email: gage@successhawaii.com to request a no-obligation, no–cost consultation with us.

*Why I Purchased Life Insurance at 24

When I was a 24–years old, I became a life insurance policy owner. At the time, I was a single individual, with some disposable income and no dependents.

Why did I do this? Well, the process began at my workplace. After asking a friend and colleague, Steven, about his retirement future, he shared how he intended to plan for it. He rattled off the usual, in no certain order: a 401(k) plan, Roth IRA account, personally–held stocks and bonds, a money market account. And, guess what? Life insurance.

By all means, I was surprised by that last one. Why was life insurance a part of his financial portfolio? My understanding was that we received annually renewed, term life insurance through our employer; so, basically, we were covered I thought. And of course, like many others’, I did not view life insurance as a part of any financial strategy at all.

Continue reading →

The Wheeler Group Participates in First-ever Personal Finance Expo in Honolulu

n108515205658_2754

Over this past weekend, we at The Wheeler Group LLC participated in the first-ever Personal Finance Expo here in Honolulu. The nonprofit Hawaii Council on Economic Education and the Hawaii Event Group hosted this well-received event. The two-day expo took place on Aug. 15 and 16 at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center and featured more than 30 seminars and a variety of exhibitions from both private companies and the government. The goal of the expo was to educate people of all ages about topics such as debt management, investments, retirement plans, employment and entrepreneurship and even the basics of starting a new business.

titleIn my estimation, Kristine Castagnaro, and her team at The Hawai`i Council on Economic Education exceeded event expectations and did a wonderful job for bringing together participants and exhibitors as resource providers. We were fortunate to meet numerous people interested in learning more about our programs designed to help them with retirement accumulation–saving tax-deferred, as well as distribution planning through tax-advantaged programs. As we shared with visitors to our booth, we believe that annuities and insurance are the essential foundational elements of a diversified portfolio, and we believe in safety through guarantees and asset allocation.

What’s Worse? Paying Too Much or Too Little?

images As English author and art critic, John Ruskin, said so eloquently,

“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little…”

Ruskin went on to say, “When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that’s all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot—it can’t be done.” (Or as I recall my father stating, on more than one occasion, and as a matter of fact, “You get what you pay for in this world…” Simple, sage advice–the absolute very best kind!) Ruskin continued and summarized, “If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

And finally, along that same line of thought, Ruskin was quoted as saying, “It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.”

Before Retiring, Consider Ric Edelman’s Top 10 List

PBS_RYR_Ric_and_LynLast night on PBS Hawaii, I watched as Ric Edelman, a #1 New York Times best-selling author, shared key points on what we all need to know right now to, as he puts it, “RESCUE YOUR RETIREMENT”. Edelman points out that, “if you’re like millions of other Americans, you could be making costly mistakes with your investment and retirement accounts that interfere with your efforts to provide yourself and your family with financial security.” This television special, exclusive to PBS, highlighted some of the big mistakes investors make, and explores fascinating insight into the science of financial decision making.

Continue reading →