You Can’t Go it Alone: the three S’s for small business.

Boyd & Nicholas, Inc. started on 9/17/93. Since then B&N has made most every mistake known to running and starting a small business. The unforeseen effects of ORT and IPS on the industry also caused us in 98-01 to lose over half our clients and our staff just as the industry lost almost half the providers and suffered a 60% decrease of the Medicare spending for home health. Many of the consulting firms also disappeared.

I speak from bruises not perfection.

A. SELF EDUCATION
1. Join your national, state and regional association. Be aware of and part of the “global” community. No man is an island and don’t operate your business as if it were.
2. Practice CEUs. Most of your caregivers have continuing education requirements. You should manage as if you require them of your CEO, CFO and the rest of your management team including yourself. Education should not stop once you or they have obtained a degree. Attend the programs provided at the conferences and available via webinars and audio conferences.

B. SCORE www.score.org A non-profit organization that provides free and low cost education (webinars, classes, online, workshops) to small business in many areas including HR, budgeting, business planning, accounting, and more. They also will provide for free a mentor, F2F or e-mail, to give you advice.

C. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION www.sba.gov & http://www.sba.gov/about-offices-content/1/2895 The SBA in times past was known for being too much of a bureaucracy. They have added programs and streamlined the loan process. Specific education and funding programs are now available for veterans, women and minorities.

Short Sighted Pilots

Southwest tried to acquire Frontier Airlines in 2009. The deal failed largely because the
Frontier pilots failed to agree to the requirement of the Southwest pilots that the Frontier
pilots be on the bottom of the combined pilots seniority list. Southwest offers the highest pilot
wages among U.S. passenger airlines.

Recently Republic Airlines Holdings, who acquired Frontier Airlines in 2009, has suggested that
Frontier may be sold or close and certainly will suffer cost cutting measures including layoffs.
So sorry to the Frontier pilots who did not want to be at the bottom of the pilots seniority list
for the highest pilot compensation of the fastest growing airline.

Cheers to Southwest who did not proceed with the acquisition of Frontier due to the
requirement of their pilots. They kept to their corporate culture to be employee friendly and
loyal. (They were also the only airline who did not terminate any employees after 9/11).

Yes I love the LUV airline.

Boyd got religious

I have never been one to push religion and in fact have resented people that are overly
enthused in pushing theirs. One of the things I have liked about my business associate is
that despite his firm and strong beliefs he rarely brings up religion unless appropriate to
our discussion or if I bring it up. My wife is catholic, my brother is Mormon (as is the
next president) and friends are Jewish, Church of Christ, Lutheran, atheist and more‐‐‐and more power to them and all of us in our beliefs.

I have become a listener of Joel Osteen and greatly like and appreciate his positive
outlook on life thru Jesus Christ and God.

His themes include;

1. Don’t speak ill of others
2. Don’t speak ill of yourself
3. Tell yourself how good you are and believe it
4. Appreciate others
5. Be kind to all
6. Do the best you can
7. Be open to change
8. Run your own race, compete with yourself not others
9. Have the right perspective
10.Stay passionate about life
11.God does not make mistakes, you are not a mistake
12.Be positive, think positive, speak positive

In my life I have often been depressed and melancholy. It has been a struggle, not
always successful, to avoid the escapes of drugs, alcohol, migraines, and suicide.

Give a listen to Joel, it should not cause conflict with your beliefs and it could improve
your attitude on life and your feelings about yourself and the world. Listening to a cheer
leader does bring cheer.

http://www.joelosteen.com

Hard head is a blessing

We all wish Heather Rooney a full recovery. Her traumatic brain injury (TBI) of March 2011 continues to give her health problems and it may be a little longer before she is able to work again as a marketing consultant. I count my blessings and treasure my hard head.

http://rainbowcourage.com/ is her personal journey of the road to recovery. You may want to sign up to receive it. My hope is that people signing up for her blog will speed her recovery. Positive thoughts and positive energy. (She already has more blog followers than I do

CHICKEN SOUP

http://www.chickensoup.com/
Chicken Soup for the Soul is a series of books, usually featuring a collection of short and dense inspirational stories and motivational essays.

There have been over 200 titles. Many of the books are directed at specific groups of people, such as Chicken Soup for the Mother’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul, Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tough Times, Tough People, Chicken Soup for the Grandparent’s Soul, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teens Talk Relationships, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Dad.

I love the Chicken Soup stories. We have used some quotes or short items from their books in our “Point of Light Odd Friday” newsletter and would use their stories except for them being copyright protected. If you don’t think you have time to read any of the books then take time to read their daily free newsletter which gives you one story from one of their books.

Many of the Chicken Soup stories circulate on the internet in generic form. While it is good that the stories are being read and passed on it is also sad that acknowledgement or credit is not being given to the real people of the stories.

But then perhaps that is the least important aspect of the story.

I want to be a CRO

The concept that to excel in corporate responsibility, organizations need to embrace all CR disciplines: Sustainability, governance, social responsibility, and philanthropy.

1. Improve the role of business in society, helping companies to be good corporate citizens.

2. Embed good corporate citizenship behavior in how companies achieve business goals and financial success.

3. Enable professionals and companies to be purposeful about their impact on environment and society.

4. Empower the CR practitioner in driving responsible corporate decision making.

5. Engage individuals throughout the organization to make a difference at work, changing the behavior of corporations.

The Corporate Responsibility Officer, (CRO, see www.thecro.com and www.croassocation.org) seems to be coming a growing profession.

It seems like a good idea to me. The political parties should adopt the concept for themselves.

I want a Ménage à trois

The phrase literally translates as “household of three.”

In the USA we only have two major parties; Democrat and Republican. Many other countries have three or more major parties. In England they are the Conservative and Unionist Party, Liberal Democrats and Labour Party. In Germany there are six major parties with the Christian Democratic Union and Social Democratic being the largest two. Italy has more political parties than pasta and France more than they have good wine. These countries often have to form a coalition government in order to make the governmental process work. Sometimes the coalition would be short lived due to disputes between the partners.

I use to think that the multi-party system was a terrible way to run a country and that our two party system was the best. NO LONGER. It seems that particularly in this century our two parties fight to the point where little gets done and much is disputed. The appointment and confirmation of judges and other officials is stalled or greatly delayed due to the bickering. Needed reforms of our health care programs, taxes, social security and more are not taking place due to the inability of the politicians to compromise.

We have “czars” in the White House and the Independent Payment Advisory Board to make decisions that legally, morally, and ethically belong to the congress elected by the people to make decisions.

I am now wishing we had more major political parties and a coalition government. The creation of new parties; the Blue Dog Democrats (The Bulldog Party), the Ripon Society Republicans (The Lincoln Party), Ron Paul (The Isolationist Party), tea party (The Whig Party) could form a coalition government among themselves or with the Democrats (The Federalists Party) or the Republicans (The Tories Party) to run the USA.

I would like to see three parties in the House and the Senate. Could be an improvement. Hard to imagine it being worse.

When No Notice is Good News

The Corporate Responsibility magazine (CR www.thecro.com) publishes two lists almost yearly.

1. CR’s 100 Corporate Citizens 2010
No home health care business organization is listed. HP is #1; McDonald’s is #49; Starbuck’s is #52; Walt Disney is #81; and the list does have a few drug companies.

2. CR’s Black List 2010
No home health care business organization is listed. Abercrombie & Fitch is listed along with Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc.

I guess not being on the best corporate citizens list is ok. It is certainly better than being on the black list. Just ask Allscripts.

Fate

Frank R. Howard Memorial Hospital – Willits, California
In 1926 15 year old Frank R. Howard was injured in a very serious automobile accident. The
doctor was unable to save him without a “real hospital” or emergency equipment. They were
bringing up a train from San Francisco, 150 miles from Willits, when the boy died. The tragedy
moved Charles Howard (played by Jeff Bridges in the movie Seabiscuit) to donate the
“tremendous sum” of $30,000 for the construction of Frank R. Howard Memorial Hospital.

Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital—Hollister, California
In 1902 nine year old Hazel (“little sunshine”) died from an appendicitis. They could not get
her to a San Jose hospital, some 30 miles away, in time. Mr. T.S. Hawkins, her grandfather,
gave the community a hospital in 1907.

Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford University) –Palo Alto , California
Leland Stanford, Jr. died in 1884 at the age of 15. He fell ill in Greece and died in Italy. His
parents devoted their fortune to the memorial university named for their only son which
opened in 1891. His father, Leland Stanford, was a powerful and wealthy Californian
businessman who also served as governor and U.S. Senator.

Comments

The above were created by grieving folks who could have had the hospitals built and the
university started before the death of the child.

I was the innocent BOYD

Two true tales of olden times.

1. In 1989 I left the Medicare intermediary, Blue Cross of California (BCC), to become a consultant for Brecker, Brewster, Grove & Associates, a home health care business consulting firm.

About then a hospital in Sacramento hired a former intermediary auditor (from Aetna not BCC) to advise them on how to handle a Medicare overpayment of approximately $200,000. He advised them to return the monies to the Medicare program (duh). They choose to keep the monies and await any specific later request from the government.

The consultant filed a Qui Tam or false claims action against the hospital. The hospital was fined $2.6 million of which he got $650,000. He retired from the consulting business.

I thought my new career and profession was over before it got started because of the press reports;

1. We were both former Medicare intermediary auditors.
2. We both lived in Petaluma, California.
3. Our last names were both BOYD.

What are the odds of these coincidences? Am I lucky my career was not ruined by any confusion?

2. The BCC provider audit department like “CMS” was on a fiscal year ending September 30th of every year. I was there from 1977 to 1989 and every September was the month of Hades as we rushed to finalize cost report audits and final settlements. Often we would complete the reports in early October but date them in September. I would get calls from providers saying their NPR was dated 9/28 but they got it on 10/15 or they got the proposed adjustments, dated 9/27, on 10/19 and had lost two weeks of their response time (I was usually kind enough to extend the deadline).

About 1993 a BCC senior auditor had a Qui Tam against BCC for cheating on the deadlines and BCC was fined $6 million of which the auditor got about $1 million.

Why didn’t I think of that?