1888: Playwright Eugene O'Neill was born in New York City. 1916: Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic, in New York City. 1978: Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected pope by the Roman Catholic Church's College of Cardinals; he took the name John Paul II. Source: New York Times

As I read details of the news on Yahoo tonight, considering the world events getting odder and unsettling, I noticed I was humming the Beach Boys song, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice!” “ And wouldn’t it be nice to live together, in the kind of world where we belong…” While in this ‘wish the world were nicer’ reverie, I discovered this lovely article by Rebecca Brown, editor of Divine Caroline. In the hectic motion of our days, we run around in our own little worlds, especially those of us connected to multitudes of electronic devices. Plugged in to ipods, Zunes, MP3’s, cell phones, Smart Phones, various Blackberries, (feel free to add to this list, especially if you are reading this while mobile) iphones, bluetooth/is the plural blueteeth?, heavens! I have an ipod in my purse and a T-Mobile cell phone and a Verizon Blackberry, and a Bluetooth wireless earpiece, for each cell phone. From my Blackberry I can check any and all of my 8 email addresses and although I am a social media maven and use twitter.com all day from my laptop, I do not, as of yet ‘tweat’ on my cell phone, because frankly, and I always think people who start a thought with ‘frankly’ have been lying to me previously, but I digress… Anyway, we rush around connected to things and may miss key messages from real, live people around us. Ms Brown reminds us to remember our manners. Remember them? Remember others can hear our phone conversations so we should have mercy on them. Spare them the details of this and that. Hold doors open for others, pause to let people get off elevators before running them over and have change ready for car lots, so others don’t wait too long behind us. Pay attention to those older and younger and all these pregnant women, to give them seats on the train and such. Take it easy on scents for those who are sensitive. In fact, real manners, my southern mother used to say, stretch one a bit. Real manners take an effort and show true class in said effort. With all the chaos in the news, what say we all make a classy effort to be considerate and gentle with those around us. Hum a Beach Boys tune like, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up, in the morning when the day is new…” and know we made a difference in the lives of those we touched today.

I believe every business has magic numbers. A restaurant owner I know can predict his evening's receipts by the length of time customers have to wait for a table at 8:30 p.m. My friend Jack Stack, the father of open-book management, told me about a guy with a gear-making company who can determine his sales from the weight of the gears that have been shipped. Not the dollars. Not the orders. Not the number or type of gears. The weight. Indeed, the best business people I know all have key numbers they track on a daily or weekly basis. It's an essential part of running a successful enterprise. Key numbers give you the financial information you need to take timely action. Business moves too fast to wait for the monthly, quarterly, or annual statements. By the time you get them -- weeks or months after the end of the period -- you're already dealing with the consequences of whatever problems may have arisen when you weren't looking. You've probably missed out on a number of opportunities as well. To operate successfully, you need real-time information -- and not only about sales. If you just track sales, you can get into serious trouble. Sales don't make a company successful. Profits and cash flow do. A lot of companies land in bankruptcy court because their owners focus so much on driving sales that profit and cash become an afterthought. I speak from experience here. I was one of those owners. I might have avoided that fate had I paid as much attention to my gross margins as I did to my sales. Why? Because gross margins determine how much money you have available to spend on things like rent, electricity, telephones, salaries of salespeople and administrators, health insurance, bank interest, and the like -- everything, in short, that isn't directly involved in producing whatever it is that you sell. If you're thinking only about increasing sales as fast as you can, you'll be tempted to make decisions that could imperil your gross margins. That's what I did. My sales went through the roof, but my gross margins shrank dramatically. In the end, my company couldn't generate enough cash to pay all the bills. It wasn't long before I had to file for Chapter 11. Source: Inc. Magazine

Wow! I guess being promised nearly unlimited amounts of money will do wonders for confidence on Wall Street. The Dow skyrocketed more than 900 points yesterday, which is the single biggest one-day gain in history. But it's not all butterflies and rainbows from here. Yesterday's jump came with the bond market closed, and many investors are still very skittish. We should get more details on the federal government's plan to end the financial crisis. The Treasury Department is expected to announce a plan to guarantee all new debt issued by banks over the next three years. The FDIC is also expected to unveil unlimited guarantees on bank deposits that do not bear interest, which will bring the U.S. in line with most of Europe. We all know the big firms that are struggling in the financial crisis, but there are some companies that are doing very well. Not surprisingly they include Family Dollar stores and Anheuser-Busch.

To Seth Godin, president of Yoyodyne, a $5-million on-line direct-marketing company based in Irvington, N.Y., happiness for a business owner boils down to one simple thing: positive cash flow. At his three-and-a-half-year-old company, he confides, "we think about this every day. But there are a lot of people who forget, when times are as good as they've been during the past few years, that the business world is cyclical and that you need money to make money." Sound cash-flow management is essential for any growing business. But here's the flip side of that reality: the stronger the economy is--and the faster a company is growing--the easier it can be to overlook cash-flow controls, sometimes without even suffering negative consequences...at least for a while. "The best thing about volatile economic conditions is that they remind managers to refocus their attention on the basics," notes Jeffrey Levine, a certified public accountant based in Newton, Mass., who warns his clients that it could take as long as 12 to 24 months for the full ramifications of today's economic problems to hit their businesses. Granted, some companies' cash flow will take it on the chin much sooner than others', especially if they sell directly to countries or industries that are already experiencing difficulties. But there's only one way to begin, and the time to do it is now: evaluate your cash-flow controls, and tighten them promptly wherever it seems necessary. If there is one single point of vulnerability in most companies, it's accounts receivable. That's because entrepreneurial companies almost invariably make the mistake--especially in their early or fast-growth stages--of paying much more attention to making sales than to collecting receivables. Source: Inc. Magazine

The meeting of G-7 nations over the weekend promised "no more Lehman's." The Western nations vowed that no more failures like Lehman Brothers' would be allowed as all bank deposits will be guaranteed and banks will be flooded with "almost unlimited liquidity." The plan to end the crisis was short on details, but the group did promise to take any action, no matter how unorthodox, will be used if needed. Those announcements could pay off this morning, as signs point to a rally on Wall Street today. Author and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was announced as this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for economics. Krugman is the author of a number of books, including The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century and The Conscience of a Liberal. GM and Chrysler are considering an historic merger to shore up both companies and find a way out of the economic mess. Experts are scratching their heads at the proposal, saying that there is little to be gained from the merger as GM lost $18 billion last year, and Chrysler's sales have fallen farther than any other car maker.

Cash crises happen. the way they're managed can have a tremendous effect on a company's all-important relationships with creditors. "Credibility and confidence are built slowly but destroyed rapidly," says David Preiser, head of restructuring and managing director at the New York City office of Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin, an investment-banking house based in Los Angeles. His recommendations for breaking bad news to loan officers, vendors, and other creditors: · Develop a credible plan. It may require getting advice from a lawyer or an accountant, but it should resemble an action-oriented business plan. "It won't convince creditors if it's just a short-term dance, but it also can't be too gloomy, or they'll panic." Aim for a realistic assessment, and then focus on how you'll fix problems. Above all: "Never promise anything you already know you can't achieve." · Telephone your creditors to suggest meeting with them and their lawyers. Schedule meetings before payments are due; mention but don't fully describe your difficulties; divide in order to conquer. (Don't bring creditors together so they can "gang up on you.") Another tip: "Don't schedule the meeting after you've run out of funds. Always leave yourself enough to make a tiny payment and demonstrate good faith." · Behave appropriately during that meeting. To Preiser, that means being respectful, confident, and strong. "If you seem prepared to tackle problems, you'll inspire creditors' respect. If you seem overwhelmed, they'll panic." · Beware of vendor panic. You don't want to scare vendors "into refusing to make shipments." Preiser's advice: "Don't treat vendors dishonestly," but don't bare your soul. "Achieve a balance between present problems and future hopes." Source: http://www.inc.com/magazine/19960201/1570.html

1935: George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway. 1964: The 18th Summer Olympic Games opened in Tokyo. 1985: Actor-director Orson Welles died at age 70. 2006: Google Inc. announced it was snapping up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in a stock deal. Source: New York Times

It looks like the government is ready and willing to take an ownership share in troubled banks. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says the $700 billion bailout would allow the government to give money directly to banks that request it. That would give the federal government an ownership stake in those institutions. Insurance giant AIG is asking the government for more money. Last month, the government loaned AIG $85 billion in an effort to keep the company from collapsing. AIG is asking for nearly $38 billion more from the government to help shore up their books. The company plans to sell off some of it's subsidiaries to pay back the original loan, but experts say the economy could prohibit the company from selling those assets at a reasonable price. The newest request comes after revelations that executives with the company spent more than $400,000 on a retreat at a California spa. Another large insurance company could give Wall Street heartburn. MetLife says their quarterly earnings will be down from projections due to turmoil in the global market. The company says the plan to raise capital and cut jobs in response to the lower than expected earnings.

You can market your Web site for little or no money. Your skills and time will determine which low-cost methods you can perform yourself and which might require professional services. The methods discussed here require little money but often a lot of time. Before you try them, determine their respective costs by adding up the prices of any tools you'll need, such as paper, printing, or purchased mailing lists. Estimate the hours required to act on each method; multiply that by your hourly work rate and add this to the total. Apply the Rule of Three Commit to trying any technique three times to determine its effectiveness. Measure the results by how many leads and customers each one generates -- for instance, conduct a survey on your site asking people how they found it. Focus your effort on the techniques that yield the greatest return on investment (ROI). Try search engine and keyword optimization. Without search engines and directories, locating information online would be nearly impossible. Getting your site indexed by search engines and directories makes it accessible to customers and drives traffic. Search engines use keywords to categorize your site and make it easier to find. Determine which keywords customers might use when seeking a product or service you offer and include 5 to 15 in the meta tags in the HTML code, the title tags, and the first few hundred characters of text in your Web pages. Source: Inc. Magazine