Friday, March 23, 2007

Stone Hawk Drug Rehabilitation


image from www.narcononstonehawk.com

Stone Hawk reports an amazing 76% success rate for its patiens that use their drug treatment programs on an inpatient basis. These stats put them as the most successful inpatient drug rehabilitation facility in the entire country! Located in Battle Creek Michigan, which is very close to where I used to live in Kalamazoo.

Their treatment program is different. They don't impose a set of morals upon seekers of help for their drug and alcohol addictions. They take in those that want help and teach them how to live a life with out drugs and alcohol by allowing them to create their own set of morals to live by. Teching them the ways to change and how to be drug free with how their own lifestyle is. They help people change the way they think and in turn teach them how to live.

Stone Hawk uses the New Life Detoxification Program for drug detox (Saunas) to sweat the drugs (toxins) out of the body. Then they show the student what ethics are, the student makes the decision to change their life, and Stone Hawk just directs them by showing them the path to freedom.

March Madness is here, so go ahead and goof off?



The tourney has been going on for a week now and many seem to think that employees are screwing around more everyday during this time looking at their brackets every 15 minutes. Some studies claim that workers are going to cost employers billions during the tournament due to loss of productivity. Let me just say that this is nonsense. Workers that have computers waste time everyday looking at sports news and any other things they want to do on the web. Is March Madness really that much different and cause that much less productivity than any other time of the year? I would ahve to respectufully disagree. Take a look at the two sides of the argument in this article from USA Today about the situation.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Using Web Directories to Promote Your Site

MAny web directories make it so you just show up on page 75 when you submit a site. It would take a miracle to get any traffic from such a directory as the odds of someone actually seeing you there are slim to none. With the Big Web Links Directory you have many more options. Instead of sorting listings by popularity, Page Rank, or alphabetically, the listings with Big Web Links are sorted by the contribution amount. What this means is that you have control over where you show up in their listings. Contribution changes take place immediately and will show immediate benefits. Also, the top 10 listings are shown on the homepage, while the top 20 listings are shown on the top links page, which is a significant benefit for those listings. A listing details page dedicated for each listing is also provided, which makes a total of 4 links possible in the directory.

Those 4 links could give you some significant PR benefits in the coming months since they are doing a TON of marketing to promote their directory. Just look at my post here. They are marketing to bloggers all over the websphere and are going to have a very good PR at the next update which will in turn flow through to those in the directory.


Tax sheltered retirement plans

Working with clients I always tried to make sure that taxes were a big part of our plan for their retirement. Both now and when they retired. A nice balance between saving money on taxes now, and putting them into a posittion to save money down the line as well by having a source of tax-free income.

The first and foremost is to ustilize things that your employer already provides. At least to the point where they give you free money on top of what you invested. 401(k) plans typically have some sort of matching that all employees should take advantage of. Many times you can get a match up to 6% of your income where your employer will give you an additional 1% for every 2% you put in up to 6%. So basically you get a 50% bonus just for saving money. If $100 is 6% of your income your employer may be matching it with an additional $50. There isn't a better way to get a 50% return on your money with the free bonus. No matter what your situation you should be trying to make sure you take that free money. Plus you are going to get a tax deduction for your contribution on top of it for that year AND that money will grow tax free until you pull it out.

Check out this article on 401(k)s, IRAs, and more here for a breakdwon of what these plans can do for you.