The End Game and How To Get Exactly What You Want

The End Game and How To Get Exactly What You Want

Life can be full of disappointments.  Maybe your career wasn't exactly what you hoped it would be.  Maybe a marriage or two didn't work out the way you had hoped.  You get the idea, life doesn't always live up to your expectations.  The life of possible problems is almost endless.  It doesn't mean you had a horrible life, but it just wasn't what you had hoped for or wanted it to be.  

I'm not trying to be funny as I write this, but I am being sincere.  If you find some humor in this, that's okay, but please think about what you are reading.  

Back to where I started, so life let you down.  You're not alone.  Everybody, EVERYBODY has had their share of 'not so great' moments.  Shouldn't you deserve....No, don't you deserve.....No, YOU DESERVE to get at least one shot of perfection.  By that I mean perfection on your terms.  Perfection, not the way everybody else thinks it should be, but exactly the way you want it to be.  I'm about to let you in on how to make that happen.  Follow what I'm about to write here and in the end, the very end, you will get something exactly the way you want it.  Not only will you get what you want but it will last and last and last. 

The end game I'm talking about it death.  If you are breathing today you will eventually face the end game.  I'm constantly amazed at how many people plan everything in their lives but ignore what will eventually be a very permanent arrangement.  After all, the final plans of your funeral and interment are just that - FINAL.  Not only are they final, they are forever.  

Not only are they final and forever, but you, yes you, can have total control of this event.  Yep, total control.  You can have it your way - TOTALLY.  You can pick what you wear, where you will be planted, and even some of the smallest details.  What I am talking about here is a prearranged funeral and I'm going to give you the basics to get you started on your final journey. 

Oh, there are two more even better reasons to prearrange your funeral.  The most vulnerable time to be screwed out of money on needless expenses is at the time of a loved ones death.  An unscrupulous funeral director knows how to play on emotions and run up a bill in the process.  Here's another great reason to think ahead and out of the box.  Let's say you prearrange your funeral today and live another 20 years before you kick, the price for your final bash is locked in the day you set it up (provided no major changes are made to the arrangements).  If the cost of that funeral goes up 3000% in 20 years it won't cost you a dime more.  Hey, just because your dead doesn't mean you have to be dumb.  PRE-PLAN!

I'm sure I'll get some funeral directors that will disagree with what I'm about to tell you, however, I would not prearrange my funeral before at least the age of 30.  During your 20's most people haven't settled to the point of mostly knowing where and how you are going to spend the rest of your life.  Even in your 30's you run the risk of moving to a different area and having to rearrange what you've prearranged.  Which brings me to my next point.  Be sure any prearranged funeral plans are transferable to another funeral home in another location.  The funeral home where you make the arrangements can help you with that.  At its very basic element, a prearranged funeral is an insurance policy that pays the funeral home a preset amount in the event of your demise.  The funeral home determines the amount the policy needs to be based on what you decide for your funeral.  These arrangements include the cost of cremation or embalming, urn or casket, services, death certificate(s), plot, memorial cards, etc.  Finally, and I do mean finally, at least one thing in your life will go the way you want it.  Of course, it will be the very last thing. 

Earlier I mentioned making sure the plan you buy is transferable.  Here's why.  Let's say you live in Blue Ball, Pennsylvania and you prearrange your final arrangements at Frans Funeral Farm at the age of 35.  Thirty years later you retire and move to Freedom, Florida and being shipped back to Blue Ball for burial is something that no longer appeals to you.  With a transferable prearranged policy it's not much of a big deal, however, please note you will have to pay additional expenses for the transfer of the policy and associated costs.  Let's say that you still want to be planted in Blue Ball.  Your estate will incur the additional costs of prepping the body in Florida and shipping it to Blue Ball.  The rest of your expenses at Frans Funeral Farm are still prepaid and complete.  Even with the add-on costs it will still save you money over not having any prepaid arrangements. 

If you prearrange your funeral properly when you check out all your loved one has to do is call the funeral home where the arrangements were made and let them know where to pick up the body.  Done properly, the rest is all taken care of.

Summing this up with a prearranged funeral - Your loved ones have less stress because all of the arrangements are made - You saved money - At the final curtain call, You get exactly what you want.

One final thought, pick a nice casket or urn.  You'll be there for a very long long long time.

The End. 

© Krystalco LLC 2012  Any publication or reuse of the information on this blog, in part or whole, without express written consent is prohibited.

Do you have what it takes to be successful?

Do you have what it takes to be successful?

This time around I’m going to applaud some successful business models and business people.  I’ll also share with you some of the reasons for their respective successes.

One thing for sure every success has at least, to some varying degree, one or both of these elements – Devine guidance and/or plain dumb luck.  But that is just part of the story.

Company #1 is the single most successful story of a business in my lifetime – Apple.

Let me first say, I am not an Apple fan.  Admittedly I own an IPod and have ITunes on my computers, but that’s where my love affair with Apple products ends.  Notice I said with Apple products and not the company.  

Apple as a company has my undying respect.  Any company that can run its stock up from $2 to nearly $675 per share in just around 30 years sincerely WOWs me.  For the companies first 18 years as a publicly traded stock it rarely got above $30 a share.  It seemed like nearly every year during the first 15 years the company existed someone was talking about its demise.  I’m not saying Apple has done everything right, but the very few wrongs and misses they have had were, like most companies, in their formative years and they managed to recover beyond what anyone could have imagined.  

What attributes to Apples success?  I would have to say first and foremost its illustrious and imaginative former leader Steve Jobs.  Jobs was shear genius.  He hired people that were his equal or smarter than him.  He listened.  He learned.  He observed trends and got in ahead of the curve.  He watched for and seized opportunities.  He developed solid, well designed, innovative, and useful products exclusive to his software, cornering both the hardware and software development of the Apple line.  Of course, what I mentioned in the last sentence also gave him total price control.

First Apple established a niche market with a computer and software that became a graphic artist’s best friend.  Then it established strong branding.  This was followed by new product development and the rest of the company’s success is now, as they say, history. 

KUDOs to Apple.

The next company I’m about to gush over has so many interests and sidebar operations I don’t know where they all exist.  Owner of television stations, a television network, films, television shows, themed amusement parks, and it all started with a dream and a mouse.  It’s the ‘House that Mouse Built’ – Disney.

Walt Disney had a cartoon/fairytale idea and turned it into a mega-reality.  The Disney business model may have led to the Steve Jobs business model because there are so many similarities.  Listening and learning, like Jobs, Disney hired the smartest “Imaginers” he could find.  In the early days of television he chose to market to the youngest generation, children.  He appealed to the families, and was one of the early pioneers in bringing color to, what was then, black and white television.  

The Disney brand and Disney collectables are worth billions and billions of bucks and to think this empire all started with a black and white cartoon mouse.  Thank God for the genius of Walt Disney.

This last business is a family owned and operated film franchise that has made billions of $$ due to near perfect branding, smart business decisions, taking on varying degrees of risks, but most of all knowing one very basic and cardinal rule – “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” 

 

Albert “Cubby” Broccoli also knew if it was broke to fix it fast and always protect the franchise which in his case was “Bond, James Bond.”

In the early days, and it took a while, for Broccoli and Harry Saltzman to get the rights for the Ian Fleming James Bond stories.  Together, and for around $1,000,000 Broccoli and Saltzman brought Flemings spy character to life on the big screen with Dr. No.  Who knew in 1962 that 50 years later the Bond formula films would still be alive and well, long after Saltzman sold his rights to Broccoli and long after Cubby Broccoli died?  

Broccoli taught his daughter and ex son-in-law well.  Don’t mess with the formula.  The formula is fairly simple.  Make a film that gets the audience to the edge of the seat before the opening titles, use exotic and great locations, have a bevy of beauties for both bad and good, sex sells, the title song should be sung by a strong and current recording artist, there must be obligatory car chases, Bond must always be in danger until the bad guy is dead, a big finish action scene is a pre-requisite, explosions must be big and frequent along with shoot ‘em up action, the James Bond theme and variances of the theme song must be used throughout in the background, sell product placement ads in the films, and even though bruised and injured in the end our hero must live to fight another day.  

Make no mistake about it, the Bond business is big business to the tune of billions for many others besides the Broccoli family.  There have been spin-off cottage industries and mostly because of strong and very intense “BRANDING.”  There have been toys, model cars, lunch buckets, after shave, clothing lines, trench coats, ties, watches, champagne, trading cards, books, magazines, BMW cars, 7-up, tickets to locations where Bond films where shot all have been sold because of the Bond brand.  

Every time a license is issued to a product in the name of Bond, the Broccoli family can afford to eat Beluga Caviar.  So now you know that champagne and caviar go with Broccoli. 

The stories of Jobs, Disney, and the Broccoli family all have very common threads.  They were willing to take a chance, were good listeners, were willing to learn from both success and failure, understood the value of a strong brand, understood what to fix and what not to fix, knew how to hire skilled and quality co-workers, and knew to think big and dream even bigger.  

You really have to respect that kind of drive and the success which results from it.

© Krystalco LLC 2012  Any publication or reuse of the information on this blog, in part or whole, without express written consent is prohibited.