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Regulators adopt new attitudes toward financing
Excellent recap of what is happening to us! by Bernie

It's Tax Day -- Let's party like we work for GSA!
I consider myself a reasonably smart human being, but no matter how much I read about this government and how f'd up it is no one seams to have the answers. Can anyone tell me what else I can do, as a hard working American who is sick to his stomach, besides vote, because that isn't enough. I know the problem, tell me the answer. My thought is it will take someone with the biggest set of balls known to mankind to clean house. Looking for some answers, and I am all ears by Joseph Bullyan

It's Tax Day -- Let's party like we work for GSA!
And we wonder why our budget is out of control?!!? OMG!!!! We are to blame though - we keep electing the same members to the most exclusive country club in the world! They are exempt from most laws, get everything paid for by the taxpayer and are set for life - while we just keep struggling to pay them for that luxury!Worse, our two presidential candidates will raise over half a BILLION Dollars to convince us to vote for them! Actually worse - we'll contribute to them and elect them!Shame on us ... by Bernie

Australia, Europe, China . . . . pick two!
It would be interesting to know what the Board members that didn't vote yes on going into China thought and are they RV mfg. or suppliers? If any of them are suppliers they must have all their products made there already! by Tony

Australia, Europe, China . . . . pick two!
As a follow-up on this discussion, there was a very interesting article in the Washington Post last week and it was reprinted in the Boston Sunday Globe this past weekend. The article is titled: "China may buy only domestic cars for official use." You can read the article at: http://b.globe.com/GTIu6A Many of the comments at the Post and Globe indicate that there is nothing wrong with a country doing this - and I agree with them. We do the same thing here in America at the federal and state ... by Bob Zagami

Australia, Europe, China . . . . pick two!
As always, Bob has done his homework and presents a great editorial. I just can't see any benefit to having anything to do with The "China" Connection. I can't think of any Industry that has actually "benefited" it's American workers by joining with China.An American purchaser of an RV has multiple choices of types, options and price already! Why add an Asian Product to that mix - that will only hurt American made products - as it always has in the past. High tech products are mass produced and ... by Bernie

Australia, Europe, China . . . . pick two!
Bob, you’re right on!

The Chinese government cannot be trusted and they abuse their people terribly. If an RV manufacture decides to “dance” with a partner in China, it will be the fire dance, and it won’t be China that gets burned!
by Barry Hughes

The Chinese even knock off websites
I don't see a major problem with it.I just type the name then hit Ctrl & Enter and it goes to the dot com.Can not see why I would even type dot com then dot cn. by Wayne

The Chinese even knock off websites
This trick happens in all countries. Not limitied to China. It's cyber siting and tech it is illegal but that doesn't stop anyone from doing it.

If you are building a "brand" you often want to buy every version of your domain. Because even if you can get all of those domains back with the law from the people sitting on them it is just safer to own them all up front if you can.

by Aaron

Australia, Europe, China . . . . pick two!
Point of clarification from Jim this morning, the China Committee vote was unanimous but the Board of Directors vote was not.

Also, the sentence in the third pargraph from the bottom should have read, "We will continue to monitor China, not to prove somebody wrong, but to honestly report the information we get on the abuses we expect to see despite the best laid plans of RVIA." by Bob Zagami

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Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Feed Your Head
By Chuck Marzahn @ 6:28 PM :: :: 1 Comments ::

All this talk of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock must be giving me flashbacks. (You MUST know I’m kidding) Anyone remember Grace Slick belting out the words "feed your head” in White Rabbit? What are you feeding your head lately?

For my part, I’m touching some material I return to year after year. I consider some works to be timeless. Some are ingrained in me for the remainder of my days. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill will always be there. More recently, Good to Great had a deep impact. Another is Getting Things Done by David Allen. On rereading that book recently, my attention was arrested by the subhead saying, “Your Mind Doesn’t Have a Mind of Its Own.”

It’s really got me thinking about what goes on in our minds. More accurately, I’m concerned with what we choose to fill in the spaces of our minds. Most of us suffer from more than a mild case of distraction. Talk about the waves of information overload… My email inbox had grown to over 4000 messages which I had stored there. If you leave it to chance, someone else will make your decisions and take over your mind. That’s not paranoia striking deep (again with the songs from the sixties). It’s a simple fact, if you don’t choose what your mind focuses on, our culture today is more than willing to fill it with 24 hour news and blog articles.

Shad Helmstetter has a fine book on what to say when you talk to yourself. Most of us don’t get that we can direct the conversation between our ears.

I’m choosing to retake control of what I spend time considering. I’ve turned the email alarm off so I have fewer interruptions. If it’s something really urgent – call me. I’ll be checking email every few hours otherwise.

A good way to achieve that focus is with a dealer group. Knowing you have others looking over your shoulder, caring about your success and holding you accountable helps build that persistence and consistent effort over time. If you haven’t looked at the virtual dealer group program we’ve been running for the past 6, almost 7 years, call me.

It’s having a plan. It’s executing consistently over time. Doing the things your know you should at the times you know they should be done….

My business is growing. Is yours?

Due to unrelenting spam, RV Daily Report will only allow comments on stories from registered users. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Comments

# Art Bedard

Monday, November 16, 2009 6:34 PM

Re: Feed Your Head You're right, Chuck. Garbage in, garbage out. There are enourmous opportunities for distraction today that can cause me to focus attention on things that really don't matter. Another thing that always amazes me is that if left to wander, my mind will go all over the place. How to reign that bad oscar back into its corral is a daily challenge. Or better yet, to be focused on a task at hand only to be interrrupted by an urgent e-mail, followed by a phone call, a knock at the door, another phone call, six or seven other e-mail messages, a growling stomach and the ever-expanding to-do list staring you in the face. How to develop and maintain the self discipline necessary to move forward is a challenge. By Greg Gerber on 9/2/2009 9:55 PM Re: Feed Your Head One could argue that with all the technology in our lives today, espescially in the business world, that a large segment of our workforce is actually less effective and they need to retool their brains to get back in touch with customers and prospects and pay attention to the task at hand. Just look at how many people are trying to send text messages while driving down the highway at 60 MPH. Case closed. By Bob Zagami on 9/3/2009 5:52 AM Re: Feed Your Head Exactly, Bob. Sat beside a lady at a light. Car in front of her went on green. She sat there texting. At least she was stopped. I was almost to the next light before she moved. The car behind her could have been a poster child for road rage. I'm thinking the challenges aren't going away and the answer is to recognize those challenges of information overload and retool and rethink the way we interact with the information environment. For example, have you found Jott and VLingo yet? Those are apps that allow me to talk into my iPhone and send transcribed messages to myself or others. Pretty cool, huh?! I wonder what Drucker (fathered the concept of "knowledge workers") would think now... By Chuck Marzahn on 9/3/2009 7:03 AM Re: Feed Your Head You know Chuck, I've got most of the books you mentioned and several more you didin't collecting dust in a box either in my garage or attic. I think I'll knock the dust off a few and peruse through them one more time. Thanks for the reminder. By John Gagne on 9/3/2009 5:19 PM Re: Feed Your Head Great points Chuck. The internet has become a terrific tool and, unfortunately, a managers enemy. If used properly as a resource tool and marketing tool, one can expect positive results. When used as an employee distraction such as surfing the web, facebooking and checking sports scores, it's a managers opposition and ruins productivity. I, for one, am going to take your suggestion and close my laptop for a few hours each day and pay more attention to the people aspect of my business. Time is limited and we need to chose what we do with it responsibly. I need to do some dust cleaning as well. By Bob Cox on 9/3/2009 9:00 PM

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