By Carl Edwards, MBA, ChFC®
Wow, what an amazing market ride over the last few years!  Running on tracks laid by an unprecedented Federal Reserve monetary easing program, the market has once again run to new all-time highs and appears to still have some steam. Or does it?
While no one really knows the answer to this, it is important to remember history as a guide, and to think about the future — your future.  It wasn’t all that long ago that the world’s financial system was shaken to its core, leaving many retirees running for shelter from the Ebola-like symptoms displayed by world financial systems.  Fear over which institution or country would next display the almost certain deadly symptoms ran rampant.
I am certainly not echoing the calls of the past and screaming it’s time to get your guns and gold. I am, however, pointing out to consumers the recent and vivid reminders of the importance to get back to the basics with your financial planning this New Year.  If we fail to remember the past, we repeat it. You have worked too hard preparing for this time in your life.
Let’s review three vital elements you should implement in your retirement plan this New Year.
•  Get your annual financial check-up.  How can we possibly forget to do this? Annual check-ups are the number one preventative care tool at our disposal. While many individuals should be meeting more regularly with their financial advisor, everyone should have at least the minimum of an annual visit.  Problems creep up and this is often the best way to catch them before it is too late.
•  Don’t forget to diversify. Are you working with a broker who always wants to sell you mutual funds full of stocks and bonds?  Does your annuity guy think every dime you have should be stuffed into insurance products? The reality is they are probably both wrong. Find an advisor this year who knows the benefits of each of these products, but who also knows the value of how they work together. Diversification is important and it may include each of these products along with other assets such as individual stocks and bonds, Certificates of Deposit (structured and fixed), Business Development Companies, Real Estate Investment Trusts, precious metals, and numerous other investments.
•  Rebalance, Rebalance, Rebalance. With the great equity run up we have encountered since the lows of March 2009, it is vital to remember that we must continue to evaluate our investment portfolios. While equity portfolios have risen significantly since that time, other areas of our portfolio may not have fared so well, leaving our risk levels in need of adjustment. It is often a good idea to capture some of those hard-earned gains. You never know — the next major pullback could be just around the corner. Be prudent, not greedy!

Certified life coach explains how to circumnavigate your own worst enemy
Human beings are capable of a rich inner life that, sadly, seems to elude so many, says dating and life coach Deborah Downey.
“I doubt that most of us fully realize just how much worry, doubt and fear we experience on a daily basis; it seems to me that acknowledging this default setting and finding an alternative for well-being should be among our top priorities,” says Downey, author of “What Are You Worried About!” (http://www.coachdeborahdowney.com/).
“Too often, we are inclined toward trying to be something that, upon closer inspection, isn’t what we actually want. Much of this can be attributed to our egos, which persistently tug at our motivations.”
Women who think they have to be married and men who are afraid of revealing their true feelings are just two examples of ego-driven ideas that lead us away from personal fulfillment, she says.
Downey, who found romance and happiness later in life despite living with multiple sclerosis for 25 years, says we can have a more worry-free existence. She explains a few ideas for overriding your ego’s default settings.
•  “I strive for imperfection and I’m always a winner.” 
“Most people laugh when I say this,” she says, because society is forever challenging us to compete and compare ourselves with others to assess our own value. Striving for imperfection is a reminder that we don’t have to drive ourselves crazy with unattainable goals.
“I notice most of us have hidden rules that we carry from childhood that really don’t help us as adults,” she says. “There isn’t any way to be perfect for myself or for any other person who has ever lived. To strive for something unattainable is to strive for failure. Ultimately, allowing for you to be who you are is, I find, liberating and more conducive to overall success in life.”
•  A lesson from Spanx founder and self-made billionaire Sara Blakely … Once upon a time Blakely was just another struggling entrepreneur. In addition to her blockbuster underwear product and her drive, she was armed with a profound idea inherited from her father, an advocate of acclaimed life coach Wayne Dyer. The idea: Don’t be afraid to fail big, because it means you put the effort forth on something that you care about, even though the effort was outside of your comfort zone.
“Appreciating one’s daily and weekly failures is not a means of encouraging it; rather, it’s a way of learning from failure and developing thicker skin so that you aren’t paralyzed into future inactivity due to fear of failure or the unknown,” she says.
•  “We no longer pursue the tormentor.”
 “When my mentor coach first said this to me over the phone, I asked her to repeat it three times,” Downey says.
Tormentors are all-knowing, all-controlling, arrogant to the 10th degree, super-demanding and impossible to please. Because her parents always demanded the best and never praised Downey as a child, she sought love from sociopaths and narcissists as an adult.
“The clarity of how I brought so much pain into my life by pursuing tormentors was mind-blowing,” she says. “Of course, one’s own ego can play the very same role.”
About Deborah Downey
 Deborah Downey’s experience spans 25 years of recovery in various 12-step programs around the country. Holding certifications as a professional life coach and as a chemical dependency counselor, Downey has dealt with addiction in its various forms, both as the child of alcoholic parents and as a confidant for others. In her self-help book, “What Are You Worried About!” (http://www.coachdeborahdowney.com), Downey, who has multiple sclerosis, details a proactive approach to training one’s mind to think positive.

GARFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio/PRNewswire/ — After investing two years in product development, Wig Display Systems, LLC, plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign in early 2015 to fund its debut product line, Wig Chateau. The startup company aims to reach its funding goal within 45 days of embarking on the funding campaign.
The patented wig stand system organizes and displays hairpieces for easy selection, grooming and proper ventilation. Catering to high-end wig wearers, the stylish stands are configurable for 4, 8 or 12 arms and available in three contemporary color options, including Glamour Girl Gold, Charisma Chrome and Throwing Shade Pink. An attractive wall sconce that holds a single wig is also available. Wig Chateau’s clever slogan, “You gave them a name. Now give them a home!” plays upon the tradition of women giving wigs monikers that express their unique personalities.
“I searched the market and found nothing that met my wig storage needs and was also aesthetically pleasing and stylish,” Wig Chateau’s President and CEO Tanesha Daniels explains. “From the outset, I knew the product had to be functional and accentuate the decor of a room. We were not going to create a wig-on-a-stick product.”
Wig Chateau aims to solve a real problem on the market: a lack of storage products specifically designed for fashionably displaying beloved wigs. After women spend thousands of dollars, the wigs are typically tucked away in boxes, stuffed in bags or hung on the back of doorknobs.
“I want to encourage wearers to take greater interest and care in the storage and display of their wig investments,” Daniels says. “After evaluating many designs based on beauty, functionality, structural integrity and manufacturability, we have achieved the perfect balance of form and function.”
For more information about Wig Chateau, visit www.wigchateau.com or call (216) 635-9648. The pre-launch video and company story are available on Prefundia.

Doctor tells you how to beat the odds
If you’re one of the millions of Americans who will make a promise to improve yourself this New Year, there’s bad news: You’re 92 percent likely to fail in sticking to your resolutions, says a recent study from the University of Scranton’s Journal of Clinical Psychology.
About 45 percent of Americans make resolutions. Ranking at the top is losing weight, and staying fit and healthy ranks No. 5.
“Of course, those statistics represent the average – you don’t have to be average!” says Dr. Virender Sodhi, founder of the Ayurvedic and Naturopathic Medical Clinic, (ayurvedicscience.com), which provides complementary and alternative medicine.
“There are plenty of things individuals can do to improve their odds of success if they resolve to become healthier and fitter.”
Dr. Sodhi, author of the new guide, “Ayurvedic Herbs: The Comprehensive Resource for Ayurvedic Healing Solutions,” (www.ayush.com) believes we can move much closer to a world of disease-free societies by following the laws of Mother Nature. Individual commitment to health via New Year’s resolutions is one path to take us there. Dr. Sodhi offers five tips for staying true to your goals.
•  Get away from the instant-gratification mentality and avoid unrealistic goals. Don’t expect to go from zero to 60 – 60 being your ideal body image – in just a few months, especially if you have little background in training. Unfortunately, most who have resolutions like losing plenty of weight and quitting smoking are used to easy snack foods and quick rewards. Health is a long-term labor of love; commit to the love and wait for results.
•  Establish good habits! People make resolutions because they know they’re important, but they’re hard. With each passing week, more people drop their promises for self-improvement. You’ll want to set the right goals; if you want to lose 100 pounds, focus on the first 10, and then the next. Make sure to establish new and good habits – it takes about 28 days to stick. Once you train your mind with good habits, achieving your goals becomes much easier.
•  What you should expect from your “labor of love.” Frequency, intensity and time – these are the three investments you’ll need for losing weight or gaining muscle. As a general rule, exercise at least 30 minutes three to four times a week. Make sure to start with the appropriate intensity for your health; too little intensity and you’ll see little if any results, but too much and you’ll be prone to quit. Don’t think that it’s always better to exercise for a longer duration. What matters is quality. Increase time and intensity once you comfortably meet goals.
•  Solidify the gains with persistent positive reinforcement. Learn to reward yourself in a new way by paying attention to the gains in your body. Notice the improvement in stress levels, breathing, energy, sex life, mood and overall strength. While these improvements are wide-ranging and palpable, they increase over time and can be subtle. Don’t let these improvements occur without a personal recognition of your accomplishments.
•  Embrace supplemental support. Of course, all health efforts are connected to your overall well-being. When you make the investment to eat more vegetables, you’re reinforcing your commitment to exercise. Consider practices such as yoga and meditation, which will feed your health kick and provide unexpected benefits. Additionally, supplements such as kelp, green tea extract, Commiphora mukul (Guggul) and Bauhinia variegata (Kachnar) can yield even more health benefits. And, spices such as garlic, onion, black pepper, ginger, cinnamon, long pepper, and cayenne pepper all have important thermogenic properties, which stimulates metabolism.

By John Pitts
One quote that will always be branded within my subconscious is that, “A true leader is not judged by how he leads while present, but in absence.” The civil rights era was a time compact of stentorian leaders with one of the most well-known Black leaders being Martin Luther King, Jr. His majestic style of leadership sparked effective nonviolent movements across the south, but sadly his time was ended prematurely.
I prelude with this to say lately around the United States, there have been many wrongful deaths of African American males from Trayvon Martin to Mike Brown. Social media has been enthralled in the current events with the trending topic #blacklivesmatter. In addition to the social media trending topic, the Black Lives Matter protest on Highway 280 and the River Chase Galleria was an emotionally appealing sight to see. Not only for the hope of a better future for the lives lost in the past, but because history repeats itself.
Flashback to more than 50 years ago students of schools around Birmingham had the same peaceful protest strategy, but were met with grown men wielding fire hoses and ferocious attack dogs. Why I said history will repeat itself is because it was a point in time where there was worse racism than my generation could envision. Seeing the success of a peaceful protest this past week not only gave me hope as a young Black male in a period of time where we are being targeted, but as a young leader seeing how the best leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., lead in absence.

By: Neal Thornberry, Ph.D.
Innovation is not for the faint of heart, as Galileo learned when he said that the Earth revolved around the sun. He was scorned, threatened with death and eventually put under lifetime house arrest.
Innovators are not always welcome guests even within their own organizations, and their challenges are heightened by a dangerous organizational intersection: where Complexity meets Wackiness. The more complex an organization, the more difficult it is for the innovator to figure out where to go with a good idea and how to weave it through the organization to implementation and eventually value creation.
Growing organizations cannot avoid complexity. They add processes and people, divisions and specialists. Since we can now measure almost everything, they often believe if one measurement captured in a report is good, then more are better.
One company, with whom I worked, learned that its sales people were losing a month of selling each year because of the time spent filling out reports required by the finance department. This example of complexity gone awry drove the organization into Wackiness – sacrificing revenues for reports.
There are many other examples of Wackiness getting in the way of innovation – and examples of stealth innovators circumnavigating them. One of my favorites is the tale of Jim Repp, head of Jeep design at the old Daimler Chrysler Corp.
Jim knew that many Jeep lovers spent thousands of dollars upgrading their Wranglers for serious off-roading. This gave him the great idea for a mass-produced Jeep with all the upgrades built in at half the cost. When he shared his idea with marketing, they said there was no market for that type of vehicle and besides, you’re an engineer, not a marketer.
Undeterred, Jim and a small band of innovators I call Innovation Judo masters built a secret prototype. They took it out on the Rubicon Trail in California for off-road trials and invited the senior executives to watch. Jim’s prototype outperformed the other Wranglers and, as crowds gathered around it, the executives saw their enthusiasm. They immediately authorized production of what is now a best-selling icon, the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon.
Fortunately for Chrysler and other companies, there are a few passionate innovators like Jim who won’t let go of their idea no matter what. They’ve developed a special set of skills (I call them Innovation Judo) that allow them to bypass those blocks.
They are:
•  Discipline
•  Leverage
•  Speed
•  Openings
•  Circling
•  Unbalancing
•  Redirection
The Jim Repp story illustrates the application of several of these principles. The discipline to plan for building a secret prototype; leverage in getting senior executives to support his idea; utilizing the opening at the Rubicon Trail; and then using the surprise (a tactic of unbalancing) of a Jeep that looked like all the other jeeps on the trail but outperformed them.
Since it takes so long to correct the dangers at the Complexity/Wackiness intersection, identifying and supporting a few Innovation Judo Masters can go a long way in overcoming some of the most difficult barriers to innovation.