Corey Smith's Random Thoughts

Hold your horses. I am going to talk about health insurance.

However, I am going to avoid waxing too political... primarily because I am tired of the politics surrounding a financial decision. I am tired of the Democrats accusing the Republicans of being partisan and vice versa.

I think that if people understood that health insurance is a financial decision and not a decision based on "caring" or "compassion" then we would probably come to a solution to our problem. In fact, if people really thought about it, they would never want insurance but simply pay their own bills as they come up.

You may have heard the terms SEO and SEM bandied about over the last few years. I am reasonably confident that at least half of the so-called professionals that are in the search industry don't really know what they are talking about. They tend to use these two terms interchangeably.

In fact, you can especially identify someone that doesn't understand the distinction of these two terms when they say things like:

As the owner of a business you can imagine that sales people call on me all the time. I get emails, letters in snail-mail and phone calls on a daily basis. I even get the occasional pop in to the office in the hopes that I'll be available to be sold to.

Most of these sales people have one key thing in common. Most of the time the attitude is that of, "I have something to sell and I want to see if you want to buy."

I hate that. I hate being looked at as a wallet. I'm fortunate my children aren't old enough yet to ask me for more money and I'm sure I'll hate it when they are.

I mentioned in my last post that I was in Sun Valley last weekend. We stayed at the very nice Sun Valley Inn. It was a great location and a great place to spend a weekend away.

I was getting my bike out of the bell closet one of the days and I noticed a sign. The sign told the bellmen and the valet that they are not allowed to play games on duty.

Normally, customers wouldn't see that sign because it was an employee only area but I had just followed the valet in. At first I thought it was a little funny that they had to have that sign. It didn't really occur to me why they had to have that sign.

When you first get your new website, it's a momentous occasion. You'll usually expect bells and whistles mixed with a few fireworks by way of celebration. In fact, as you might expect, the entire world joins in one common thought of how wonderful you are and how fortunate you are to have accomplished a feat such as telling your server guys to flip the switch.

But, after the honeymoon of a new website launch wears thin... and even before you launch the website, there are a few things you need to be sure to take care of. One of the most important is checking for broken links.

My father-in-law is a retired farmer. He has worked years in various types of ranching and farming.

Before he retired, I remember him working long, long days at the beginning and the end of the season. When it was time to plant or when it was time to harvest, he would have a very small window in which to do his work.

Now, if you aren't familiar with farming, you may wonder why the window was so small. You might think, "Well, doesn't he have all year to do his job?"

In order to build and maintain a fire, you need three components: fuel, heat and oxygen. When it comes to heat and oxygen, the more you have of one, the less you need of the other. When your fuel is more dry or combustible then you need less heat or oxygen to spark a flame.

As I was camping with my son, we decided to try a little experiment with our campfire. We had a fire that had been burned out for a few hours and had no smoke at all. I decided to stack my firewood in preparation for the cooking fire even though I knew I wouldn't need it for a few hours.

When my wife and I were ready to sell our first house after living there a few years, we were able to sell it pretty quickly. A very nice young couple made us an offer that we accepted.

The last name of this couple was Smith. In case you haven't realized it by now, since my name is Corey Smith, our last name is Smith as well.

We laughed at the idea that we were able to sell our first home to another couple buying their first home with the same last name. But, that ended up not being the funny part.

We found that the couple, at the time of the purchase, was still engaged. Her maiden name was Smith. So, a Smith marrying a Smith bought a home from the Smiths.

In 2007, I built my own house. I decided that I wanted to be the general contractor and do a lot of the work myself. I had never built a house so it was quite an experience. In fact, if you've read my first book, you'll know there are many applications of building this house to many other areas of business and marketing.

I hired a framing crew and timed them to start as soon as the foundation was ready to go. They drove in on a Tuesday night at about 5pm and started working by about 5:20pm.