We are V.A.'s (Virtual Assistants)

 A brief departure from my series on the topic of the church/state issue. 

We are Virtual Assistants. My wife and I are a team. When we retired from our full-time jobs, we decided to start our own business. We wanted to work together, and we wanted to work from our home office. She was an administrative assistant for her whole career. I was in small business and startups in my career. 

We combined our talents and interests into a business solution for a small business that needs a staff to handle the details of their business that is not the core or revenue-generating part. 

Our ideal client is someone who is spending more time working in their business and not on their business. 

Reach out to us and see where we can help you. Remember before you drown in a sea of stress, call Your Office SOS.

The Church and State and the state we are in ( Part 2)

The church in the middle of the twentieth century was an integral part of America. But after WWII, it took on a decidedly culture Christianity flavor. Everyone was Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. Look at the Arlington National Cemetery at the time. If there are Muslin or Athiest or any other religious symbol, they would have been minuscule and a very tiny minority. Today I am sure it would be much different. The public cemeteries would have reflected the same religious demographics.

The US experienced a kind of revival but not like earlier revivals that were moves of God by His Holy Spirit. There was a return to religion to form a context for a way to view the world as it took shape after the two World Wars and the current Cold war of the mid-century. But the mainline churches had been corrupted by the higher critics of neo-orthodoxy. They offered a context to the godless communism that emerged as a new threat after the Korean War. However, the new wave of religion was a form of godliness but denied God's power and personalness. 

God was getting lost in the suburbs. What connection to each other and God in the agricultural area was morphing into the industrial age, and a mechanized process god: religion emerged. The moral values of America were a Judeo-Christian sort of ethic. Check out Hay's Rule and Hollywood battles. 

School prayer was normative, and textbooks were sprinkled with spiritual values. But the tenuous values and superficial adherence to an abstract God began to crack. 

James Dean and the like began to portend and foretell what the '60s would bring. 

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The Church and State and the state we are in ( Part 1)

Oh, where to begin. I need to cover this ground because it's my opinion that the younger people ( I mean under 60) have not received proper education about civics and history in public school.

Let me digress and speak of my own "baby boomer" upbringing. Being raised in the USA in the '50s, we were being fed a lot of propaganda. Propaganda took place in our schools, both public and parochial. The media was only somewhat complicit then, but that is a subject for another blog. 

Post WW2 and Korean War; America in the '50s was fighting the Cold War. These were the IKE years. American nationalism was at an all-time high. Most of our parents believed in God and country. The foreign threat with its nuclear ramifications was uniting our country. But at the same time, simmering unresolved internal conflicts still were starting to appear. 

The racial issues and women's movements seemed to have been put on hold until we could gain some semblance of safety from our foreign enemies.

Many of our parents were 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants who fought to make America safe from the terrors of their "old country." Even so, the melting pot was beginning to boil over in the '50s.

I don't intend to address the broad scope of the tear in our nation's fabric in-depth here. I am content for the moment to single out the significant fraction and reason why our form of government is on the brink of collapse in 2020.

To set the stage for the boomer view of history lets briefly look at the 1st half of the century. "OK, Boomer" gets its context.

It seems like war and depression and then war again marked the 1st half of the twentieth century. But there were two other issues that I will interject that had a significant influence on the first half of the twentieth century that are critical to our story's development: Woman's Suffrage and the Temperance Movement. 

Those two issues brought together an alliance with unintended consequences. 

From a blog: https://amazingwomeninhistory.com/womens-suffrage-and-temperance-movemen

Women were thought to be morally superior to men by nature, and many advocates for women's suffrage argued that women should have the vote because of this. Advocates for temperance wanted women to have the vote because it was believed they would vote for prohibition due to their moral superiority.

So when I say radical Christian Fundamentalists and Feminists in 2020, no such coalition could be conceivable. But in the first quarter of the twentieth century, that's exactly what happened.  

During this period, the church, for the most part, was visible but beginning to fracture. Cities everywhere sprung up with the steeples of churches dominating the skyline. They were taller than the courthouses and commercial buildings; this is a fact that should not be dismissed lightly.

But as the organized churches grew in size structurally and physically in both size and number, their spiritual growth started to stagnate and decline. 

At this point, we will leave off for today and take up the topic again on subsequent posts. 

Don't get blindsided

When someone takes the initiative to start a small business, they usually possess some strong characteristic traits.

Not everyone who has an idea or product to sell has the stuff it takes to start a business venture. These folks are called wana-preneurs.  

But those bold folks who do dare to start out on their own can become victim to some of their strengths. They are usually rugged individualists, and sometimes that can insulate them from glaring mistakes because they can't see the forest for the trees. Some mistakes I have observed:

• They fall in love with there logo or brand because it's their baby. All well and good if it's effective and on point. But all too often, it's amateurish and misleading. 

• They don't know their costs and numbers is another blind spot. They price things because that's what the competition or market says that is what they should charge. If they can't figure out the cost of doing business and profit margins, they are at the mercy of the customer and consumer. They need to know their numbers and justify the price that is profitable and fair. 

• They can't manage their time is another trap that snags the solopreneur. They get bogged down in working in their business on not on their business. They end up getting behind, not following up with clients, not keeping their paperwork in order, and their schedule is dictated only by one urgent task and then another. 

• They don't have the skill sets to promote their business, product, or service. They never learned to sell, prospect, or market. They just run after the easiest path of least resistance to get to market.

• They often fly by the seat of their pants with no plan, no goals, and no structure. They are chasing one shiny object after another. 

So let me say if this is you, let us sit down and let us evaluate your business practices. We at Your Office SOS have decades of business experience and insight we can bring to help you navigate the choppy waters of the business world. See our website www.yourofficeoss.net for the details. 

Doctor Zhivago Now

I thought of what it must have been like in the time of the Russian Revolution while watching one of my favorite movies Doctor Zhivago. I think we are in the early stages of that movie here in America. 

I never thought things would get this bad here in the USA; they are. There is no getting around it. We are going to have a severe battle or revolution of some scope on our hands. I do not hear any voice on either side that is powerful or influential enough to appease the calmer voices in the middle. 

The divide is too strong, and social media reinforces that divide. We all get our confirmation bias feedback from our tribe. The media we watch panders to our given views and becomes a reality for the narrative they want to advocate. Advocacy has replaced journalism and has infected every media source we read, listen to, or follow. 

I read a blog recently when I searched for the lyrics to the song by Buffalo Springfield, "For What it's Worth" (There's battle lines being drawn And nobody's right if everybody's wrong ). The blog had a perspective on the middle that I found interesting. I hardly agree with her (when looking at her bio) in any area religiously, politically, and philosophically, but she has a point.

http://dlhalperblog.blogspot.com/2019/01/nobodys-right-if-everybodys-wrong.html

Opening a can of worms

Well, after taking last Monday off for the Labor Day Holiday, I am back doing my weekly Monday blog.

This week I am going to be addressing a topic that may trigger some folks. As they say, "fools rush in, where angels fear to tread," so here I go.

I want to address the topic of diversity and inclusion. 

First off, I am writing this as a straight, white male going on 70, which gives me a perspective on how we got here and why we got here on this topic.

One definition of diversity and inclusions parameters:

A person who identifies as a woman, a person of color, a Muslim, a member of the LGBTQ community, a foreign-born non-citizen, a disabled person, an older person, a young person, and any other underrepresented people group.

 

My question asked is why any of these qualities, traits, or ethnicities qualify anyone for anything. Nothing here addresses the fact that very short ( P.C. here: vertically challenged ) people do not make the NBA or blind (P.C. again: visually challenged) folk don't make it in NASCAR.

It seems D&I only apply when there is ambiguous subjectivity involved. 

The sports analogy shouldn't be dismissed so lightly. Why would any other endeavore so rigorously be required to slot a person in just to fill an identity role? 

Men have dominated just about every endeavor up until recently. Maybe technology levels a lot of things. Is it just because just brute strength is not as necessary as it once was? 

Why are there not more female jockey's in horse racing? I believe every major sport would love to have the first female on a men's team. I watched Anika Sorenstam play the Colonial; no one is stopping her. She just couldn't make the cut.

When we lower strength requirements for police. military and EMT personnel are we not violating 

the Hippocratic oath of, "first do no harm?"

I could go on about why. Why no Asian defensive backs in the NFL? Why so few blacks and Hispanics in hockey? These are all too rampant in sports analogies. I would get redundant.

Why do Asians dominate our schools as academic achievers? Why are there not more women plumbers? 

Every President was a male, and until just recently was there a black President. Only three females have ever run and are running for Vice-President. Was it because voters didn't vote for someone solely based on their identity. Women and minorities have had the vote all my life. 

I am not sure why certain groups and specific identifiers happen. I am sure that with today's victim mentality and identity politics so pushed by our politicians, media, and academia, there would be a better, more reasonable explanation come forth that just explicit discrimination. 

All this being said, I know that whatever opinion I have is quickly dismissed and discredited because I am an old straight white male. 

I only hope that in the future, we can ride on airplanes that are flown by and built by the most qualified folks and not the most diverse. Just an example for sure. But when identity triumphs over anything else, the results will not turn out well.

Work life balance

 Are you drowning in the details if your business? You got in business because you love "whatever." You want to work on your business, not in your business. 

You start finding your day is consumed by prospecting, answering emails, planning your schedule, preparing that PowerPoint presentation, etc. No time to post to social media. No time to follow up on those proposals. Phone calls are not being returned. 

 

Pretty soon, you no longer have a business because you drowned in the details. Your health is declining. The kids are feeling neglected. Now, the wife is ready to leave. All because you couldn't turn loose of the details you didn't need to be doing anyway. 

We can free you to do what you do best: we take care of the rest. SO before you drown in a sea of stress, call Your Office SOS.  We will turn your life from crappy to happy.