Here is a turkey recipe that also includes the use of popcorn as a stuffing ingredient — imagine that.                             

When I found this recipe, I thought it was perfect for people who just are not sure how to tell when turkey is thoroughly cooked, but not dried out. 8 – 15 lb. turkey 1 cup melted butter 1 cup stuffing (Pepperidge Farm is Good) 1 cup un-popped popcorn (ORVILLE REDENBACHER’S LOW FAT IS BEST) Salt/pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brush turkey well with melted butter, salt, and pepper.

Fill cavity with stuffing and popcorn.Place in baking pan making sure the neck end is toward the front of the oven, not the back. After about 4 hours listen for the popping sounds.

When the turkey’s ass blows the oven door open and the bird flies across the room, it’s done. And, you thought I didn’t cook…

Let this photo travel around the world 1,000,000 times

2. Feeling tired in the afternoon, put down the caffeinated soda and pick up a cucumber. Cucumbers are a good source of B Vitamins and Carbohydrates that can provide that quick pick-me-up that can last for hours.

3. Tired of your bathroom mirror fogging up after a shower? Try rubbing a cucumber slice along the mirror, it will eliminate the fog and provide a soothing, spa-like fragrance.

4. Are grubs and slugs ruining your planting beds? Place a few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long. The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminum to give off a scent undetectable to humans but drive garden pests crazy and make them flee the area.

5. Looking for a fast and easy way to remove cellulite before going out or to the pool? Try rubbing a slice or two of cucumbers along your problem area for a few minutes, the phytochemicals in the cucumber cause the collagen in your skin to tighten, firming up the outer layer and reducing the visibility of cellulite. Works great on wrinkles too!!!

6.. Want to avoid a hangover or terrible headache? Eat a few cucumber slices before going to bed and wake up refreshed and headache free. Cucumbers contain enough sugar, B vitamins and electrolytes to replenish essential nutrients the body lost, keeping everything in equilibrium, avoiding both a hangover and headache!!

7. Looking to fight off that afternoon or evening snacking binge? Cucumbers have been used for centuries and often used by European trappers, traders and explores for quick meals to thwart off starvation.

8. Have an important meeting or job interview and you realize that you don’t have enough time to polish your shoes? Rub a freshly cut cucumber over the shoe, its chemicals will provide a quick and durable shine that not only looks great but also repels water.

9. Out of WD 40 and need to fix a squeaky hinge? Take a cucumber slice and rub it along the problematic hinge, and voila, the squeak is gone!

10. Stressed out and don’t have time for massage, facial or visit to the spa? Cut up an entire cucumber and place it in a boiling pot of water, the chemicals and nutrients from the cucumber will react with the boiling water and be released in the steam, creating a soothing, relaxing aroma that has been shown to reduce stress in new mothers and college students during final exams.

11. Just finish a business lunch and realize you don’t have gum or mints? Take a slice of cucumber and press it to the roof of your mouth with your tongue for 30 seconds to eliminate bad breath, the phytochemcials will kill the bacteria in your mouth responsible for causing bad breath.

12. Looking for a ‘green’ way to clean your faucets, sinks or stainless steel? Take a slice of cucumber and rub it on the surface you want to clean, not only will it remove years of tarnish and bring back the shine, but is won’t leave streaks and won’t harm you fingers or fingernails while you clean.
bet you thought this would be rude

13. Using a pen and made a mistake? Take the outside of the cucumber and slowly use it to erase the pen writing, also works great on crayons and markers that the kids have used to decorate the walls!!

Pass this along to everybody you know who is looking for better and safer ways to solve life’s everyday problems..

To realize
The value of ten years:
Ask a newly
Divorced couple.

To realize
The value of four years:
Ask a graduate.

To realize
The value of one year:
Ask a student who
Has failed a final exam.

To realize
The value of nine months:
Ask a mother who gave birth to a stillborn.

To realize
The value of one month:
Ask a mother
Who has given birth to a premature  baby..

To realize
The value of one week:
Ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize
The value of one minute:
Ask a person
Who has missed  the train, bus or plane.

To realize
The value of one-second:
Ask a person
Who has survived an accident.

Time waits for no one.
Treasure every moment you have.

Well into the conversation we started talking about giving. If you’re one of the millions of people who have regularly donated to their favorite charity, you may be feeling the pinch right now and have taken charitable giving off your list. The charities, of course, are in a double bind because people like you and I have cut back and the number of people needing help has escalated. To make matters worse, many of us believe that giving always comes back to us, just in different amounts and in different forms.

No matter how badly off we are, it doesn’t take much effort to find people whose circumstances are much more difficult and challenging.

What to do?

Enter – no dollar giving. The idea popped into my head because Gary and I had just cleaned out our home and taken a huge load of clothing and household items over to the Vets. However, since this was a business conversation, our brainstorming centered on business giving.

See what you think of these …

• Give a referral without thought of benefiting.
• Help someone out with a name and phone number. If you can’t think of someone immediately, make a call or two on the person’s behalf.
• Give a testimonial. Many small business owners who do excellent work forget to ask for testimonials; however, well thought out kudos can go a long way on a website. The bonus – you’ll get a huge thank you. If you hate writing, just record it.
• Or offer to take phone calls from prospective clients to tell those people what a great job the small business owners did for you.
• Send a web link, article or book to someone who can use it. I don’t mean doing this as part of building relationships with your clients… I mean doing it because you remembered someone was interested in the topic or genuinely needed help with research.
• Offer to barter, but don’t stop at the exact dollar equivalent of the exchange. Give a little extra. Make sure the job is done well.
• Give your time and expertise to someone who is struggling and could really use a hand. A couple of hours of your time could mean the world to this person.

This is just a start.  What ideas do you have?  We’d love to hear them.

In Part 1 of this series, I talked about learning to Let Go. That was my first experience of learning from a game.  This lesson applies to all parts of my life, not just business.  Take my bedroom carpet, for example.  When we moved into our current home, this carpet was a beautiful shade of off-white.  Now, five years later, it is an intriguing shade of spotted banana.  You see, somewhere along the way I decided to pull up the carpet we had installed in the bedrooms and replace it with the same hardwood flooring we have in the rest of the house.  Having made that decision, it made no sense to me to have the carpet cleaned, because, after all, it was going to be replaced.  So I waited for the right time to pull the funds from other projects, staunchly refusing to give in as the months ticked on.  I knew that as soon as I had the carpet cleaned, the Universe would hand me the funds.   So what you may ask?  Well, it was the principle of the thing.  Waste not and all those other lessons learned from parents who had been through the Great Depression.  Now I am having my carpet cleaned; and I am diligently looking for other areas where my principles are getting in the way.

Last week, I told you I would talk about Farm Town, the second game I play.  Farm Town is a game accessed through Facebook.  You start with a small plot of land and a few coins, and you build your farm into a mega-combine employing others to harvest for you while you run along behind them plowing and reseeding.  It is an ingenious game that starts by taking a few minutes here and there and rapidly grows to an hour or so a day.  Oops, did I say that out loud? 

The first lesson I learned in Farm Town wasn’t so much a first time lesson as it was a confirmation of something I knew but needed to internalize everywhere, not just at my desk.  Cash flow is King.  You see, at the end of the day, if you don’t have enough coins to buy seed, you can’t plant.  And if you can’t plant, you will have nothing to harvest and therefore nothing to sell for more coins.  So my strategy was simple – plow and reseed before buying anything – even fences for the animals.  Yes, you guessed it; this game has a lot of moving parts.  Spare cash went into buying more land to expand the farm and make more coins from growing more crops.  This, of course, meant that every reseeding took more and more coins.  But I stuck to my strategy and today I have a 300,000 coin farm house and a fully planted mega-farm.  Loral Langemeier would be proud. 

So what does this have to do with real life?  Everything.  Money that could go into new flooring, for example, sits in a reserve set aside for our rental real estate.  Good thing because the air conditioning just went out in one of the units.  Impulse purchases are a thing of the past.  Excess funds have to be reinvested to earn more coins.  And one day the Universe will bring me the deal I envision, enabling me to replace the carpet in the bedroom; but only after the plowing and reseeding are done.

So how does cash flow work for you?  Next lesson, Farm Town and competition.

There are two games I play when I am not working, reading, or listening to the airline hostess tell me that I am sitting in the emergency row.  While they started as a way to entertain myself when I was too tired to work – late night flights from here to there come to mind – I grew to respect the lessons I learned from playing them. 

So how do I translate this lesson into everyday living?  After all, running a business or two is not a game.  Or is it?  What I learned is to do the best I can with each strategy, each project, and then let go to see what happens.  The results can be amazing.  When things appear not to go my way, I ask the best question I know – What’s the lesson here?  I always get an answer, and it is usually that a better configuration is right around the corner.  So get ready. 

Where do your lessons come from?  In Part 2 I’ll talk about Farm Town.

When you try to find out, the Project Manager mumbles something about rules. All they are allowed to hire are other companies. Frustrated and sad, you walk back to your car. How can they possibly have a rule like that? Not everyone is IBM.

You became a sole proprietor so you could work your own hours on the projects you like for a fair price and put the money into your pocket, not the corporation’s. Now you’re finding it hard getting the projects you really want. Do you need to work for a management agency to get the work you love? Absolutely not!

Several years ago a very large corporation ended up in trouble for hiring certain people as independent contractors when in almost every respect they were really employees. It cost the corporation a small fortune to fix. When something like this happens, word gets around fast; and even years later no other business wants to find itself in the same position.

The Internal Revenue Service has strict rules on who qualifies as an independent contractor; and if you, the business, get it wrong, you could be liable for paying that hire’s payroll taxes and benefits on top of the contract price.

Most corporations avoid this issue altogether by hiring only companies to supply independent contractors. Are all these companies the size of IBM? Of course not. Here’s the solution to your dilemma – you can be your own company. Yes, John Smith can be an employee of Advanced Project Management, Inc. or Smith Enterprises, LLC. Your client would contract with your corporation or limited liability company for your services. You would be unable to take them court, claiming you are really an employee of their corporation, because the corporation did not hire you – it hired your company. Problem solved. While you will still be working to put money in the company’s pocket rather than yours, you will at least own the company and can get the money out.

Want to find out more? Email us at info@yourentitysolution.com or call 702.506.0190. We specialize in helping new entrepreneurs get started.