SVL WILL BE WALKING THE STAGE IN ATLANTIC CITY!!!

And we can't be stopped!!

SVP ALLAN TAUNAN WILL BE IN SAN JOSE THIS THURSDAY 4/21!!!

Do You Want a McJob?

McDonald's (MCD) is the home of the original "McJob," though that's not a term the company particularly favors. The word even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary as "an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects."

Good luck hiring with that stereotype. But that's exactly what McDonald's is doing today in a push to hire 50,000 new workers. "We're proud of our food, and we're just as proud of the jobs we create," the company says about what it has called its National Hiring Day.
McDonald's says its jobs could be a way to buy a first car, put yourself through college or enter the corporate world. That last one is a bit of a stretch, but at least McDonald's has some imagination. The company says it trains people on leadership, team building and creative thinking. And most of the jobs should pay more than the $7.25-an-hour minimum wage.

Is that enough to change the "McJobs" image? 

The company hopes the big public-relations boost it's giving this hiring push will help. National Hiring Day is a bit of a stunt on McDonald's part. With 14,000 U.S. locations, hiring 50,000 workers means a little more than three workers per store, on average. McDonald's hired the same number of employees last April, The Associated Press reports. 

In this battered economy, Starbucks (SBUX) has become the go-to alternative for people struggling to find employment, the Chicago Tribune reports. That's because Starbucks has successfully portrayed its jobs as full of long-term potential and good benefits.

Even Chick-fil-A and Panda Express have built up a good hiring story with young people, one restaurant consultant tells the Tribune. "McDonald's is considered to be a fast-food restaurant," the consultant said. "It's going to be tough for them to differentiate themselves from the other fast-food restaurants."

McDonald's has gained recognition as a top place for hourly workers. Working Mother magazine recently named the fast-food chain to its list, citing the company's tuition reimbursement, mentoring, career counseling and flexible child care spending account among the factors.

Words From the Wisest

When patience is combined with the ability to discriminate between the action and the one who does it, forgiveness arises naturally.


As human beings, we are all the same, there is no need to build some kind of artificial barrier between us.


It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible.


Even without a religious perspective, love and compassion are clearly of fundamental importance to us all.


The enhancement of fundamental values is indispensable to our basic quest for happiness.


Overcoming negative tendencies and enhancing positive potential are the very essence of the spiritual path.


All ethical teachings, whether religious or nonreligious, aim to nurture compassion, to develop it and to perfect it.


Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others is the ultimate source of success in life.


Altruism means that we should not be exclusively preoccupied with our own welfare. This does not imply that one should become a martyr!

Warren Buffet- Man of No Mystery

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We'll break out of it. It takes time.

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.

am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of - of American capitalism.

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.

Who Is Going to Be Our MVP of April???

Truth

"The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefor be treated with caution."--- J.K. Rowling

How much $$$ do you want to make???

What the movie Office Space can teach us about Personal Development

I loved this movie the very first time I saw it especially since I was living in Northern California during the dot com boom. It was the kind of movie that made us laugh, but we all felt we could relate to on some level. The cubicle farms, long hours, and endless amount of traffic were a testament to the Silicon Valley culture of the late 1990′s. Although Office Space is hilarious, I think it is a social commentary on the state of our lives. I’m sure at this point you must be wondering what kind of personal development lessons I could draw from a movie like Office Space. So, let’s get right to it.

The most valuable lessons we can learn from the movie Office Space are the power of letting go and the power of indifference. Look at the behavior of the main character, Peter. When the movie starts, he’s a constant stress case about his job, he’s in a relationship with a girl who’s making his life a living hell and cheating on him. What is interesting to note is the results that occur from his change in behavior. After he stops caring, all of these wonderful things start to happen in his life. When the girlfriend that he hates calls, rather than putting up with her, he just hangs up the phone, and goes on to meet somebody he likes much more. At the office, he has absolutely no concern for getting ahead or making more money, yet he gets promoted. I’m not advocating that you behave in this manner at work, but I think you can learn something from his overall attitude.

Leo Babuta wrote an interesting post on Zen Habits about embracing what emerges, and noted that fact we can’t always predict the future. Yet, with our careers and jobs we have so much attachment to the future. Peter’s attitude in Office Space is a true testament to the fact that with indifference to outcomes and detachment, comes great power. By contrast his friends who are stressed and worried end up getting fired. When you are attached to an outcome, you are actually fearing loss, and the law of attraction goes to work, and that loss is exactly what you experience, loss. When you die, it’s highly unlikely that you will think “I should have put in more hours at the office or gotten that promotion.” Chances are it won’t matter at all and you wont’ care one bit. So, why wait? Start living today!!!

Why the Middle-Aged Are Missing Out on New Jobs. WHAT IS YOUR PLAN B?

Jobs are back. Just not for everybody.
Like many other things in the stutter-step economic recovery, the job market is finally recovering, but progress is uneven and some people are being left out. The latest jobs report, for example, shows that the economy created 216,000 jobs in March, for a total of about 1.9 million new jobs since employment levels bottomed out at the end of 2009. That's a healthy pace of job growth that will help bring down the uncomfortably high unemployment rate, and, with luck, cement the recovery.


But digging into the numbers reveals some of the unusual ways that work and retirement may be permanently changing for millions of Americans. Most of the new jobs created since the end of 2009, for one thing, are going to workers under the age of 34, or over the age of 55. Employment levels for middle-aged workers, meanwhile, are stagnant or still falling. Here's a breakdown:

Age group	Job gains last 15 months	Unemployment rate
All adults 16 and over	1.9 million	8.8%
16 - 24	490,000	17.6%
25 - 34	709,000	9.1%
35 - 44	-143,000	7.2%
45 - 54	-454,000	7.1%
55 and over	1.3 million	3.1%

(Note: The broken-down job numbers don't completely add up to the total due to seasonal adjustments and other factors.)
Job gains for workers under 35--about 1.2 million in total--seem to be healthy and normal for this point in a recovery. That's obviously good news, since recent college grads will have an easier time finding jobs, adult kids will finally wave goodbye to their parents and move out on their own, and young Americans will form more new households, which will help boost spending and perhaps even revive the moribund housing market down the road. But other trends are surprising and even troublesome. Here are four important things that seem to be changing:
More working seniors. Workers over 55 are snagging the most new jobs, which says a lot about the state of retirement planning in America. Numerous surveys show that perhaps half of all Americans heading toward their retirement years lack enough savings to maintain their current standard of living as they age. The sharp drop in home values has hammered away at the household wealth of many retirement-age people. Many others lost a bundle when the stock market fell in 2008 and 2009--and bailed out just in time to miss the bull market that followed. Add to that fears of cutbacks in Social Security and Medicare, due to the skyrocketing national debt. The golden years, for many, aren't shimmery at all.


Many seniors say they plan to postpone retirement or work indefinitely, and the data shows they're doing just that. For the last decade, the overall labor-force participation rate--the percentage of the population that wants to work--has been gradually shrinking. But for workers 55 and over it's been going straight up. At the beginning of 2001, for instance, about 33 percent of seniors counted themselves as part of the labor force. Right before the recession started, in 2007, it was about 39 percent. The participation rate dropped sharply for all other age groups during the recession, as people gave up looking for work, went back to school, or decided to stay home for awhile to help with the kids. But for seniors it inched up, and is now at 40 percent--about 7 points higher than a decade ago. On one hand, it's good news that older workers are able to keep a paycheck coming, and build (or rebuild) their nest eggs--and that employers are willing to hire them. But they may also be taking jobs that would go to younger workers. And rising later-life employment is probably a sign of economic stress that could last awhile.


A major midlife job crisis. The overall job market is clearly healing, but middle-aged workers aren't part of the revival. Workers between the ages of 45 and 54 are still losing jobs on net, with a decline of about 364,00 jobs in this age group so far this year. That seems remarkable--and worrisome--given that these are people in their prime earning years, and they also ought to be at peak levels of expertise in their fields or careers. Yet they're not yet participating in the jobs recovery, perhaps because their pay requirements are too high in an economy where employers still aren't willing to bring back the most expensive workers. Many are most likely middle managers whose ranks were severely thinned during the recession, or construction and manufacturing workers who still can't find work, and may never be able to in their current fields.



For the next youngest age group, the news is slightly better. Workers between 35 and 44 have picked up 158,000 jobs so far this year, but that's still weak growth, and overall this group is still down 143,000 jobs since the end of 2009, when the overall job market started to turn up. The weak job prospects for workers between 35 and 54 has major implications for the whole nation, because in general these are the workers supporting middle-class families (or trying to). Their spending drives the economy, and growth will be weak if middle-aged workers continue to struggle, or worse, drop out of the labor force in bigger-than-usual numbers.
More female breadwinners. Women have played an increasingly important role in the economy over the last 50 years, and that trend accelerated during the recession. Men dropped out of the labor force at a faster rate than women during the recession, and women also seem to be regaining jobs at a faster pace than men. Women are slightly better educated than men on average, and they also tend to work in fields like healthcare and education, which are more stable than male-dominated fields like construction and manufacturing. One likely outcome of all the turbulence in the job market is that women will be the breadwinners in more middle-class families headed by middle-aged parents.

Strive For Perfection? Always!

Mondays are not that bad...

It's really just another day for you to focus on your business. If you stay steadfast and determined, everyday can be a Saturday. So instead of complaining, focus on what is coming in the future!!

Katherine's Grand Opening

Rafael's First Time Presenting....

Awesome event and he along with Vinh Le closed the house DOWN!!