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EVEN THOUGH IT’S NOT PERFECT
I’m Glad to Live in the United States!
I love this country and everything it stands for. In fact, I thank God every day that I was lucky enough to be born here. I know we’re not perfect, but, by and large, I think we do things better here than anywhere else in the world. And when we get it wrong, I believe we do what we can to fix it. I’ve been fortunate to visit a lot of other countries over the course of my life, and if you don’t think you have it good here in the United States, then I have some experiences I would like to share with you! In the late ‘90s, I went on a mission trip to a medium-sized city in Romania. Just a relatively few years prior to us being there, the Berlin Wall had come down, symbolically ending the Cold War and dropping the Iron Curtain. Also, at around that time, the last communist dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu, had been executed by his own people who were fighting for freedom. I remember an episode of “60 Minutes” where they toured Ceausescu’s mansion after he died. It was full of gold fixtures and hundreds of pairs of his wife’s shoes. It dripped of luxury.
On the other hand, while we were in Prague, we stayed in the same hotel that had hosted the leaders of the communist party and other world leaders when they had come to town. It was a five-star hotel with all the luxurious accommodations you could think of. It just goes to show that even in countries where everything is supposedly publicly owned and everyone is supposedly equal, some people will still find a way to live in extravagance while the masses needlessly suffer. Another time, I went on a mission trip to Nicaragua in Central America. In short, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such utter and abject poverty anywhere else I’ve been before in my life. So many people lived in little shanties made out of cardboard and road signs, with no running water and dirt floors. I also saw so many malnourished children that it was mind- numbing. After my first day out in the barrio in Managua, I wasn’t sure I could go back and do it again. It was just so depressing and utterly hopeless. The craziest thing? You could drop a seed anywhere on the ground in that country and it would grow without any help. Oranges, Continued on page 3 ...
what I did for work. When I told them I was in the insurance business, they just couldn’t grasp the core concept of what I did. That was because, living under a communist government, they had never owned anything of their own and therefore, had never needed insurance! These were smart, mature guys who loved their families but knew nothing about the concept of private property rights because the government (under which they had lived their entire lives) owned everything. About a year later, I went on a business trip to the Czech Republic, another country in Eastern Europe that had been under communist control until the end of the Cold War. In Prague, I met with the local insurance broker for a client of mine in their office in a multi-story office building. Once inside, you could tell the building hadn’t been changed or renovated in decades. No one had done any real maintenance on it in years. There was no air conditioning, and I was told the plumbing worked “most of the time.” But that’s what happens when the government owns something — an individual’s incentive to take care of that property is gone because that’s “someone else’s job.”
When I spoke (through an interpreter) with some of the men in Romania, they asked me
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HOW DR. SQUATCH REVOLUTIONIZED SOAP MARKETING A SOAP BUILT FOR MEN
Many unfortunate conditions have descended upon the global shipping industry, causing shipping containers to topple overboard into the sea at increasing rates. In 2020, 3,000 shipping containers were lost overboard — the most in seven years. Every shipping container lost holds millions of dollars of cargo, so shipping and retail industry leaders are assessing the causes of these accidents while also searching for solutions to prevent them. Increasing Demand From the Market for More, More Quickly Consumer demand for any and all products under the sun has increased steadily in recent years, and the pandemic only served to exacerbate that trend. The more demand there is from consumers, the more products need to be shipped around the world — which results in a bigger strain on the shipping industry. More Pressure on Ships and Crew s More to ship means more cargo boxes on ships, making them increasingly top-heavy and at risk for toppling into the ocean when ships hit waves and strong winds. At the same time, the increased cargo inspection is leaving crews more burnt out. This leads to errors and inspection oversights which can also lead to cargo spilling overboard. At least three quarters of all shipping industry accidents and fatalities are due to human error. Increasingly Unpredictable Weathe r The Pacific Ocean is home to some of the busiest shipping routes and worst weather in the world. Winds over the Pacific Ocean are the strongest they’ve been on record since 1948. That, combined with ship captains deciding to sail through storms as opposed to around them, to save on time and fuel, means bad weather is a more common reason for cargo getting lost overboard. So far in 2021, 1,000 shipping containers have been lost overboard. Over 226 million containers are shipped every year, so it might seem like an insignificant problem. However, those incidents still represent 60% of the monetary value lost in the shipping process. To mitigate these losses, ships should sail around storms and find ways to prevent burnout among their crews. As for the rest of us, maybe we should take a good, long look at our Amazon shopping carts and ask: Do I really need someone to ship this thousands of miles for me? Chances are the answer is no.
when you’re competing against name-brand companies in the supermarket, you have to think, “What are these big corporations unable to provide?” Smart Marketing For Haldrup and his boutique brand, the answer was deeply personalizing their content and building a community through targeted marketing. Haldrup is far from your typical marketing guru — but even as a former IT security consultant, he was savvy enough to notice the different strengths in online marketing platforms. He’s also invested plenty of money into video ads that people want to watch. Haldrup took a risk and paid $20,000 to a professional marketing agency to create a humorous ad about soap. It immediately paid off, increasing the soap subscription base from 11,000 to 17,000 in three months. Today, as of this writing, the ad has over 114 million views. The contents of an average Dr. Squatch soap include lye, vegetable oil, and a variety of scented essential oils, which are not particularly groundbreaking ingredients. But while there’s nothing new about Dr. Squatch’s soap itself, the brand’s targeting and tactics are completely innovative for their industry. Men and women alike have come to adore Dr. Squatch for its attractive subscription
Jack Haldrup has a common autoimmune skin condition called psoriasis. Because regular supermarket soaps burn his skin — leaving it dry and irritated — he was forced to seek natural, gentler soaps. He told the San Diego Union-Tribune, “I ended up buying handmade soaps from farmers markets, and they made my skin feel great.” While Haldrup relied on natural soaps for his skin, he also realized how beneficial they are overall. But the average guy, he thought, wasn’t going to seek out soap at a farmers market or health food stores. That’s how Dr. Squatch, now a $100 million soap business with a massively successful 2020 Super Bowl ad, came to be. But marketers are all asking the same question: How’d he break into a corporation-dominated market like soap? Not Just for Hippies At 29 years old, he created Dr. Squatch, an all-natural soap brand for men. This is highly unusual — for many years, soap has been primarily marketed to women, perhaps since companies assume women make the household soap decisions. But Haldrup believed everyone deserves healthy soap. Although they expected their sales to be highest in coastal cities like New York or San Francisco, their biggest audience turns out to be middle America. “[Our soap] is for the guy who would never normally consider buying natural products because he thinks they’re for hippies,” Haldrup says.
system and humorous, personalized messaging.
They’ve become a great example of how powerful a strong message can be, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for the company! We’re rooting for you, Dr. Squatch!
It’s not easy to break into a highly saturated market like soap, but
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Heroic Pup Saves Owner From House Fire ALERTING HIM IN THE NICK OF TIME
When you get a dog, it becomes an indispensable part of your family. After spending so many days, months, and years feeding, walking, petting and caring for it, you can only hope that if you ever needed its help with anything, the dog would rise to the challenge. Well, back in April, one very lucky dog owner confirmed that his 3-year-old bull terrier, Rocky, would always have his back when it counts. Sulphur Springs, Texas, resident Fernando Montes de Oca received a “second chance at life” after he was alerted to a house fire that would have almost certainly consumed both of them had Rocky not begun to bark incessantly to awake his owner. Montes de Oca has had Rocky since he was a puppy. He had no reason to expect that one day his pup would save his life. When Montes de Oca fell asleep on a couch in his detached garage one evening, he awoke to the sound of Rocky barking — and to flames surrounding him. Firefighters guessed the fire started from an overloaded power strip. No one else was around Montes de Oca’s property that night. It was just him and Rocky — and luckily, that was just enough to save him. Because of Rocky’s barks, Montes de Oca escaped in time, only having burned his hand on a doorknob when he left the garage. He was later treated for his burns at Medical City Plano, a nearby burn center, and is expected to make a full recovery. Rocky did not sustain any injuries in the fire. Though Montes de Oca’s garage burned to the ground, he and his family are just thankful he’s alive — and thankful for Rocky, the dog responsible for alerting him to the fire. “Rocky did save my life, and he deserves a big ole T-bone steak,” said Montes de Oca to local news station WFAA. True to his word, Rocky did receive his steak — the least Montes de Oca could do to thank his pup for saving his life.
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because of where he was born, with his country’s government, he was unable to do that. I was heartbroken for him.
bananas, plantains, and mangoes grew wild everywhere. The ground was so fertile, yet people were going hungry. The wonders of socialism.
Our capitalist system may not be perfect, but it works a whole lot better than any of the socialist or communist alternatives. So, this Fourth of July, instead of focusing on those few things that are wrong with our country, I hope we can find reasons to be grateful for the freedoms we still have in these United States of America. Happy Fourth of July!
While we were there, I spoke with a man who had been a member of the Sandinistas, a socialist political party that had overthrown the previous Nicaraguan government and ruled through the 1980s. When I was in the military in the 1980s, we were trained to fight against two primary threats: the Soviets and the Sandinistas. So I conversed with a man who, less than a decade before, would have been my sworn enemy, someone I was trained to kill, and I found out he was just a normal guy like me who wanted to work, feed his family, and watch his children grow up. But
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INSIDE This Issue Stories From Visiting Other, Less Fortunate Countries page 1 How Dr. Squatch Revolutionized Soap Marketing Why Are More Shipping Containers Getting Lost at Sea? page 2
Heroic Pup Saves Owner From House Fire page 3
Make Your Work-Life Balance Easy page 4
3 Business Tricks That Will Improve Your Personal Life
1: Start your day with a plan. We know what you’re thinking: Writing out your plan is more work than just doing it. The key is to plan whenever you can. If you jot down things you want to accomplish the following day as they come up, all you’ll need to do is spend a few minutes organizing your list the next morning. Pro Tip: Remember to include time to unwind and relax! 2: Develop new and improved processes. While certain activities can’t be replaced with shortcuts (like spending time with family), consider ways to make your current processes more efficient and beneficial. For example, you can’t lose weight if you don’t change your diet and exercise. Adjusting your habits might seem difficult, but there’s actually a straightforward method. According to “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, every new habit has a simple formula behind it: motivation, ability, and prompt.
Whether your reminder is an alarm at the same time every day or even another habit (“I’ll exercise before I take my morning shower”), make sure it’s part of any new process you implement. 3: Remember, work is flexible — your personal life isn’t. Bryan G. Dyson, CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, once told his staff, “Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends, and spirit — and you are keeping all of these in the air.” In his metaphor, work is a rubber ball. “If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same.”
When you’re constantly in the “zone” at work, you’re not always thinking about what’s best for your personal life. While many business owners prioritize balance, what will truly benefit both your home and work life? Check out these three tricks.
We hope these tips help you protect the “glass balls” in your life!
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