CAREER
Consider New Opportunities
By Dan Miller
48days.com
CBN.com
-- And the Slogan Winner Is...
Last week I asked you to share your ideas for slogans for 2007. Well, about 10 minutes after the newsletter went out – your ideas started pouring in – at the rate of about 100 an hour for the next several days. We received thousands of submissions with several hundred each using the rhyming words, “heaven,” “revving,’ and “leaven.” I was surprised how many of you used “leaven” and gave reasonable explanations for expecting that hidden ingredient to make 07 a great year ("an element that produces an altering or transforming influence"). We received every possible combination imaginable; from “Remaining unshaven in 2007,” to “I wanna work with your son Kevin in 2007” and “We are gellin’ in 2007.”
But after much deliberation and attempts to capture some commonalties, our intelligent but unbiased, worldly-wise but impartial panel of experts, after spending three days in solitary confinement with no food or water, has selected these as the top three:
1. 1st Place – Creating “work heaven” in 2007. Angela Fox from Franklin, TN receives:
$150 certificate for 48 Days store.
2. 2nd Place -- Lovin’ my livin’ in 2007. Dorrie Presson, Thompson Station, TN receives:
-- 5 Book Package, including 48 Days to the Work You Love hardback, 48 Days to the Work You Love workbook, The Rudder of the Day, Life’s Little Instruction Book, and The One Minute Millionaire.
3. 3rd Place – Roses are red, violets are blue, in 2007, work where you want to! Ginny Henson from Cookeville, TN receives: Free 2 CD pack – “Turning Passions Into Profits” and “Is Your Job Your Calling?”
I had no idea these three were all from TN. We had entries from around the world and did not identfy locations until after the selections had been made. Many, many of you had similar suggestions. We choose exact wording and in questions of duplication went with the earliest submissions. Thanks again for the participation of each one of you. We are blessed to review your great ideas. Many of you had already chosen your own personal slogan to help you accomplish what you want for 2007. Now join us in keeping these at the forefront in anticipation of a wonderful year.
Can I Sell Recipes?
Question: Dan, I have collected recipes from various sources over the past 25 - 30 years. Do you know if there would be any legal issues if I compiled these into cookbooks and sold them as e-books? Thanks.
Answer: This is a common question about an unusual situation. Recipes are considered more of an invention than a work of writing that would need a copyright. Listings of ingredients as in most recipes are not subject to copyright protection. However, here’s where it gets a little tricky. If there is “substantial literary expression” in the form of an explanation or directions, or with a combination or recipes, as in a cookbook, there is then a basis for copyright protection.
This is from the U. S. copyright law: “Protection under the copyright law (title 17 of the United States Code, section 102) extends only to "original works of authorship" that are fixed in a tangible form (a copy). "Original" means merely that the author produced the work by his own intellectual effort, as distinguished from copying an existing work. Copyright protection may extend to a description, explanation, or illustration, assuming that the requirements of the copyright law are met.”
Bottom line: Go ahead and compile recipes you have and make your own cookbook. Make your cookbook appealing and make it your own. Then have fun selling it and making lots of money.
Here are a couple of relevant articles:
Washington Post
Marginal Revolution
Keep On Truckin'?
Here’s an industry that is full of contradictions right now. I hear from a lot of truckers who listen to my radio show as they are driving on Sunday nights. With the dramatic increase in gas prices, many of these owner/operators have lost their profit margins and are parking their rigs to go look for other jobs.
At the same time, there is a severe shortage of company drivers, now estimated at 20,000, and expected to increase to 100,000 by 2014, according to the American Trucking Associations. Trucking companies increasingly are turning to the expanding pool of older workers to fill openings, industry experts say. These older workers may not have young children and are more open to time away from home.
This is an interesting contradiction. It appears to be a poor time to want to own your own big rig, but it is a great time to find an opportunity as a driver. Obviously the companies are also impacted by the rising gas prices; so do some research regarding the stability of a company offering a job.
'Discouraged Workers'
Every month I receive the employment statistics from the U. S. Department of Labor. One of the names of the categories reported always amazes me; that of “discouraged workers.” This is an actual group of people that the government identifies. For the month of December they identified 274,000 “discouraged workers.”
Here’s the official government definition: “Discouraged workers were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them.” How’s that for a technical definition. And how does that fit with the other facts? National unemployment remains unchanged at 4.5 percent. (Keep in mind we consider even 5% to be full employment. There will always be that many people in between positions or taking a self-imposed break.)
According to CareerBuilder.com 40 percent of all American companies say they need to increase staffing levels in this first quarter of 2007. Health care, food services, commercial banking, transportation, construction, and many other industries are begging for new candidates.
How does a person become a “discouraged worker” in the middle of these opportunities? I often hear from people who have followed up on 10-15 ads in the paper and never got an interview. Thus they conclude no one is hiring and retreat in misery. Or they want to change from being a taxi driver to being a brain surgeon and the first hospital they approach turns them down. Last night at a workshop a lady told me she was 52 and I ought to know that no one hires a 52-year-old woman. All of these are set-ups for creating “discouraged workers.” And yet there is no connection to reality here – they all just show horrible job search strategies.
Here are 44 free articles I’ve written on how to find jobs with “discouraged workers” all around you. Don’t be one of them: Read on.
Quotes – New Year
Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man. ~Benjamin Franklin
We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce
One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things. ~John Burroughs
We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential. ~Ellen Goodman
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. ~G.K. Chesterton
Dan Miller is the bestselling author of 48 Days To The Work You Love and a renowned Life Coach specializing in career fulfillment. His weekly newsletter reaches 70,000 subscribers. Dan’s articles are featured here at CBN every Tuesday, and you can find out more about Dan at www.48days.com.
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