Monthly Archives: March 2013

03.17.13
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Ongoing battle against mediocrity

Yes, it is on going and no I am not perfect.  The thing is I keep trying and will continue to keep trying to stay far above that line.  Once a week or so an experience or lack there of sets me off and just makes me wonder.  This is not to say I expect to change the world it is instead to say I will not sit idle while mediocrity tries to infiltrate my world.

So on to this week.  I chose to visit a local doctors office for a second opinion. **I am perfectly healthy** an event in my family had me see a cardiologist.  This was an excellent experience from top to bottom.  Then I was referred to another doctor, not as good an experience but still  satisfactory.  Doctor number 2’s office can certainly learn from Doctor 1’s office.  IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO JUST BE A GOOD DOCTOR  I want an overall good experience.  So Doctor 2 wants me to see a third doctor, ok I said and we agreed on one doctor in the practice.  Now this Doctor had previously helped my wife so I said fine, made the appointment.  Fast forward to Friday the 15th, yes needed two days to decompress, and the fun begins.

Both previous doctors called to confirm appointments this one did not.  Yes, I should have double checked but I still ended up at the wrong office.  While at the wrong office I stood at the window for 5 minutes before approached than 5 more minutes while waiting for an answer.  On to the right office.  Now this firm happens to serve many cancer patients, my thought is you should be catering to these people the best you can.  Instead they were waiting in a drab, boring, waiting room.  Bad paint, bad, uninspiring art work, no magazines, bad wi-fi.   Just terrible.  Than I come to realize, after talking with three older women, that waiting an hour or more is common.  Bull****!  You make an appointment you keep an appointment.  Life happens, I get it but you need to explain what happened.  YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO WASTE MY TIME.  See although I may have been the only healthy person in the waiting room I am exactly the same as the people there, we all do not know how much time we have left and nobody has a right to take any of this time from us.

This is PATHETIC, from a business standpoint and on a human level makes me want to vomit.  Instead of vomiting I went and stood up for myself and the others and tried to validate what was causing the wait.  The staff offered to change my appointment to another doctor.  Even changing to another doctor kept me waiting for over an hour.  As far as that doctor, just another example of an educated person with no education on how to treat people.  As he walked out on me in the middle of our conversation.  Apparently he was done.

Bottom line, I can get over running a bad business but you and I have no right to waste anybody’s time.  But, letting people treat you this way is also part of the problem.  PLEASE stop accepting mediocrity.

Just some thoughts.

03.13.13
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Opportunity offered; flexible full or part time hours, internship?

Hello,

Are you looking for a new opportunity or are you looking for a job?  If it is a job, no need to read further.  I am not looking for an employee I am looking for one or more people that want to work with me, create their own success and share in mine.

Are you looking for a salary and benefits or are you looking for an opportunity to dictate what you make and customize your own benefit plan?  If it is a salary and a benefit plan please stop reading.  If you are interested in dictating how much you make I have a base salary for you as well as plenty of money for you to earn.   Remember the mint makes money the rest of us earn it.  Need benefits?  We can put together a package that works for both of us.  Many companies advertise “unlimited earning potential” which is mostly a bulls*** line to hook you in.  Truth is this is a limited opportunity but the only limiting factor here is you.

Are you looking for a 9-5 40 hour week?  Stop reading now.  If you are looking for a schedule with a lot of flexibility that can potentially be crafted to better suit your life than continue to read.  9-5 and 40 hours are no longer and have not been the norm for a while.  You can work as much as you want or as little as you want.  You also have the right to earn as much or as little as you want. Time and money walk hand in hand down the path to your success.

Do you have a genuine interest in having conversations and meeting people that you enjoy talking to and working with?  If the answer is no please look elsewhere.  If the answer is yes, I think you are going to enjoy this opportunity.  All day, every day I meet and speak with people whom I enjoy working with and my work for them is appreciated.  How about you?

What Now?  Pretty simple, do some research on me and my company, type Billy Van Jura into Google.  If you like what you find send me a resume and please include a link to your LinkedIn profile. Email here; [email protected] I’m going to look for it anyhow so thanks for saving me the time.  Either way I’ll respond.

What else?  Please know or have the following;

  1. Your goals
  2. Your plan for the next 6 months, 2 years, beyond
  3. What you want from me
  4. What skills you can offer the company
  5. A property and casualty insurance license **will be required if hired**  Would be awesome if you have one now, not necessary for intern.
  6. A working car
  7. A full tank of desire
  8. One heck of a work ethic
  9. A really solid “Why”

Thanks for reading, hopefully we get to meet.

03.09.13
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What do I support?

Passion.  If it is passion with purpose even better.  See this gives me energy, the influence of these things and the subsequent ideas and inspiration that comes from them is a piece of my why.

When it finally came time to find something new and start my own firm the search for how I would do it began.  Somewhere along the line I caught this article in Mens Journal.  Shortly there after I did some more research and read this piece  and was even more hooked.  I now had some more ideas thanks to Yvon Chouinard.   Then I sat and watched 180 South , in my case this was one of those movies that was on in the background and quickly grabbed me.  These stories as well as some more positive influence from Clif and Gary Erickson helped me decide that one of the first steps of my company would be that a piece of the foundation would include 1% for the Planet .

Fast forward a bit and it is time to make a donation.  My household and subsequently my business will not donate to general funds.  We are not against them, I suppose they serve a purpose,  I just want to know that my money is specifically influencing a project.  Last year it was helping a school bus of kids have a field trip.  This year I focused my money to the Joppenbergh Mountain project.  Fortunately Friends of Shawangunks, a 1% not for profit partner, is a partner in this cause.

See I drive through this area frequently which helps but I also live in Poughkeepsie and have seen first hand the massive impact of  The Walkway .  Which is essentially a massive re-purposing project that has positively affected the environment as well as the economy.  If it works here it will work in Rosendale which is where Joppenbergh is located.  I also see the uphill battle that the passion filled supporters have ahead of them and gain a huge amount of energy from their determination, persistence and passion.  See charity is wonderful, supporting not-for-profits is nice and I do that as well but when I support a project that is essentially run on passion that is what works for me.  That is why I directed most of this years donations toward this cause and look  forward to my walk over the trestle as I look out at the creek below.

P.S. I also adopted some goats after reading about it on the 1% blog.  That is just another example of passion with purpose that I was thrilled to support.  Hopefully Fullmore and his kids did a great job 🙂

Thanks for reading, stay well.  Just some thoughts.

03.04.13
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I really need to lower my rate…

This is something I hear on a very regular basis.  Yes, I try to lower said rate whenever I am introduced and asked to help this situation.  But what can I do?  I can;

  • Get proposals from 12 different companies
  • review the coverage and make some suggestions
  • advise you to take a defensive driving coverage
  • give some ideas about how/when to pay to save money
  • review your discounts
  • help you make a plan

So that is five things I can do.  Now what can you do;

  • get proposals from the other twenty or so companies you can
  • Actually make some changes on your coverage
  • TAKE the defensive driving course http://www.newyorksafetycouncil.com/default.aspx?
  • Consider not getting a monthly bill, pay in full to save more
  • Actually go through everything
  • Be patient, your ticket or accident is with you for three years
  • Consider an older vehicle not a brand new one
  • Ask yourself if you are ok with a small dent in a safe car
  • Ask yourself how much work you can do around your home
  • start looking at this as a vital piece of your financial plan
  • review annually
  • Forget your loyalty to a company, loyalty needs to go both ways

Way more you can do than I can do.

Just some suggestions, thanks for reading

03.03.13
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Value vs Money vs Time who wins

I suppose it depends who you are, what the situation is and what is at stake.  Now maybe you will disagree with this;

There is no more valuable commodity than time .  We all have a finite supply and you never know when your supply will actually run out.  

So if we can take this as a fact that means it is Value vs Money for second place.  Money is wonderful, it lets you do a lot of things.  Feels good to have it, sometimes not so good when you don’t have enough but at the end of the day it is an inanimate object that if you do it right allows you to do  some wonderful things.  But when used to just buy inanimate things are you really getting the most value out of money?  I don’t think so, the most value comes when you use money to buy time that allows you to gain more value in your life.  Since value you get out of life tends to be more worthy than any dollar you may have than it looks like value is in second place.

But then again it depends on how you look at it.