Personal Accounts

Pamz Guilt Free Pumpkin Bran Muffins

 I am always shopping around for good deals, maximizing value for my money.  I take that approach with cooking as well, looking for bargains in the calorie department and health.  I fondly remember my university days (college if you are American) and time away from home learning to cook for myself and friends.  For some reason we got stuck on bran muffins..."nature's internal scrub brushes"  my friend would say.  I came upon a recipe which used coffee as a liquid and being students, I always had a pot of coffee on to help us stay awake.  So this was a great way to use up left over coffee...another bargain.  So for months on end we would live on bran muffins and coffee, a cheap diet.

I think I may have had my fill since I went for a good 10 years before I could look at a bran muffin again.  When I started to be more concerned about the effect of processed ingredients, even in baking, I looked for and started adapting recipes which give me good fibre, low calories, and great taste.  A winner in the bran category which disguises the bran somewhat and makes for a moist product are these muffins with pumpkin in them.  I started to make them for holiday brunches and often fulfill my need for the taste of pumpkin pie.  Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 3 cups bran
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 1 1/3 cup sucralose (white or you can mix brown/white)
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 tsp. nutmeg
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 cups canned pumpkin
• 1 cup skim milk
• 4 tbsp. apple sauce
•  4 egg whites, beaten
• 1 cup raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

Method

1. Combine bran, sugar, flour, baking powder, spices and salt in large bowl.
2. Mix pumpkin, milk, beaten egg whites and apple sauce together.
3. Add wet ingredients into dry, stirring only until blended.
4. Using an 1/3 cup icecream scoop, scoop into muffin tins sprayed with cooking spray (using Pam, what else?).

Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. Remove from pans and cool on racks.

Makes 1 dozen

Consider Green Marketing: How and Why

Earth Day is upon us. For the most part we direct our thoughts towards becoming more considerate consumers of the environment, and consumer goods companies are jumping all over how to develop green products to fulfill that desire.
If you are a services business, it would appear to be more difficult to wave a green banner, attracting the environmentally concerned as new clients.

You can however consider the practices you follow in your marketing efforts and how you can make them more environmentally friendly. Likely you are already using email; social media is most certainly a paperless tactic.  Have a home office? Consider how much you are decreasing your carbon emissions by commuting to work in your house slippers.

Taking a green approach overall would give you the ability to proclaim you are part of the green solution, which could translate into new business and help the environment.

Marketing Sherpa is a great source for marketers. This blog has some good ideas on approaching the questions of how and why green marketing works in business . Green Marketing 101

 

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum...a social media success story

 As a business development guru, I am constantly challenged with questions about whether the investment in social media is worth the effort, yielding ROI.    I help clients create their own successes, and sometimes when you least expect it, you experience you own.

Yesterday started out as a tradional exercise in knowledge and networking.  PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), of which I am alum, held an special event for alumni, sharing insight on the evolution of Mobile Technology.   If you tweet, you likely find yourself playing "reporter", sharing insights to your followers.   It was a Check out #PwCAlumniTO.

 In the words of my fellow PricewaterhouseCoopers alum in an email to the event organizers., the traditional networking took a different turn.

Want to share with you a social media success story from yesterday.
 
While I was tweeting on #PwCAlumniTO during the event, I got to virtually meet a fellow alumnus on Twitter named @PamelaPowered.  We bantered back and forth on Twitter during the event while on the  hashtag.  Before this event we have never met nor did we recognize each other from our past PwC days.  We followed each other on Twitter and became Twit-friends.  
 
Knowing that we were both in the PwC Alumni vicinity, we were looking for each other to have a proper and face-to-face introduction.  Myself, not knowing anything about @PamelaPowered, I reviewed her Twitter profile, connected to the URL that she had displayed, and went to LinkedIn to get a better understanding of who she is and what her business was about.  

When we finally met at the reception, I was able to share my findings about Pamela Foster, which was her full name and not 'Powered', and felt like I knew her before we even met!  Not only that, Rob Narejko, my Base22 Canada business partner, found out that he and Pamela were practically neighbors in Burlington!  
 
Now that we are Twit-friends, met Pamela in person at the reception, and connected on LinkedIn, we will be exploring joint business opportunities between our organizations!! 
 

According to Forbes, The End is Near for Big Business, Make Way for the Entrepreneuer

  
 According to today's Forbes article by Nathan Furr, big business is losing ground as a result of failure to adopt an entreprenuerial approach to solving business problems.   Does this mean a massive change who we will revere as captains of industry  is immenient?   I see many hoodies in our future.

Big Business … The End is Near

Apr. 21 2011 - 12:01 pm  By NATHAN FURR

The end is near!  Companies on the Fortune and Forbes lists are the captains of industry today but if trends continue, the vast majority will fall within just a few years. A recent study found that the top businesses in the world are falling behind and at an increasing rate! This study found that between 1973 and 1983, 35 percent of the top companies in the Fortune 1000 companies were new. However, in the next decade (1983 to 1993), the rate of replacement increased to 45 percent, and then jumped again to a whopping 60 percent between 1993 and 2003. If the current trend continues, over 70 percent of Fortune 1000 companies will turnover from 2003 to 2013. In other words, over 3/4ths of the existing captains of industry will fall from their thrones (a trend corroborated in other academic research). Why? Because they failed to be entrepreneurial. But it doesn’t mean they didn’t try.

Entrepreneurial Management

The recent Blockbuster bankruptcy serves as an excellent example. Although once the King Kong of movie rentals, Blockbuster failed to respond to online movie rentals until it was too late and when they did respond, they applied their existing management tactics to try and solve the problem. They failed because they didn’t recognize and solve an entrepreneurial problem with the right tactics. You may ask, why couldn’t so many smart people simply figure this out? Namely because we are just now developing the management science of entrepreneurship and what it means for firms of all kinds, large or small. As I will discuss soon, this new paradigm represents a shift from a planning to an experimentation mindset with a very specific set of tactics to quickly test assumptions before going to market. While on the surface it may sound simple, in practice it represents a radical departure from the way most entrepreneurs and big businesses actually act. Shortly I’ll share a high-level overview of this new approach and then dig into 1) where we went wrong in the first place, 2) the nitty gritty of becoming the new entrepreneur.

Lessons Learned:

• Large firms today face a more urgent need than ever to understand entrepreneurship
• Large firms who fail to be entrepreneurial will … fail

Pamz Ultimate Guilt Free Fudge Brownies

A recipe adapted from The Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels who comes up with some great options for healthier eating to support sensible weight loss and management.  Her website:  Jillian Michaels

She had me at unsweetened applesauce as a key  ingredient... a pantry staple of mine which replaces oil in all baking and cutting fat significantly. This recipe also calls for whole wheat flour, which adds fibre.  I am fussy about sugar, but honey at least is healthy for you, and mixing the honey and cocoa does give you the look and feel of melted chocolate when you are preparing the recipe.

 I am always challenged with making indulgent desserts for family and company, ensuring I have a healthy backup for myself, which usually involves fruit.  But with this recipe you can have your "cake" and eat it, too!

 
Ingredients

• olive oil cooking spray
• 2/3 cup honey
• 1/3 cups natural, unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tblsp. unsweetened applesauce
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray an 8-inch square pan with olive oil. Set aside.

Place the honey in a large glass measuring cup. Microwave on high power until the honey is runny and just bubbling, 45 to 60 seconds. Add the cocoa and stir with a fork until well combined. Let cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, place the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk until well combined.

In a large bowl, combine the applesauce, egg, and vanilla. Whisk together until well blended. Add the honey-cocoa mixture and whisk until smooth. Add the flour mixture to the liquid mixture and stir until no traces of flour remain. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake until the surface looks dry around the edges of the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it, about 25 minutes. Do not overbake.

Place the pan on a cooling rack and let cool completely before slicing into 16 squares.

Store the brownies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Makes 16 (2-inch) brownies

Enjoy your iPhone 4 while we wait for the iPhone 5

It never fails, as soon as we embrace new technology we hunger for new possiblities, of new improvements.   Add to the fact in Canada, we tend to feel like the younger sibling who has to watch the shiny toys in other hands.  Well, we all have to wait for the iPhone 5 to be released as apparently it is not going into production until September according to this report from Jay Yarow, editor of the Business Insider.   Check out their site so you too can learn about business news before your colleagues.  Business Insider 

 

Apple's new iPhone 5 should go into production in September says Avian Securities in a note this morning.

 This suggests the iPhone won't be on the market until the end of this year, or even early next year possibly, says Avian.

Apple could also be developing a lower price/lower spec iPhone model, says Avian.

The report is based on conversations with a "key component supplier" to Apple.

Here's the full note:

"Supporting out comments over the last month, conversations with yet another key component supplier indicates that production for iPhone-5 will begin in September. This is consistent with Avian findings in the supply chain in recent months and we believe the consensus view is moving towards this scenario. In addition, our conversations also indicate the existence of a lower-spec/lower-priced iPhone in Apple's roadmap. However, while our contacts have seen the placeholder in the Apple roadmap, they do not yet have insight into specs or production timing. This leads us to believe that any launch is likely a very late 2011 or more likely a 2012 event. As a reminder, Avian has uncovered several data-points in recent months pointing to the existence of a lower-spec/lower-price iPhone. A lower-spec/lower-price iPhone has also been speculated in the press and gadget blogs, though we do not believe consensus currently discounts the existence of such a model."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-5-in-september-2011-4?op=1#ixzz1JyeE1jiQ

Snacks with Crunch

I always found that snacking on foods with a crunch particularly satisfying, likely since I often was grabbing for a snack out of some frustration and not hunger. Nothing particularly wrong with that, especially when I don't have time for a run which is a much better stress buster.
Reaching for those crunchy snacks that are healthy and light in calories will keep you on track for weight loss or maintenance.
Here are some suggestions from the South Beach Diet. Keep the list handy in your wallet when you go shopping, and on your fridge when the snack attack occurs.

http://www.southbeachdiet.com/sbd/publicsite/crunchy-snack-ideas.aspx?xid=nl_EverydayHealthDietandNutrition_20110419

Sorry, there is no magical food to reduce belly fat!

I have to giggle each time I see one if those ads on Facebook or other sites with the lure of a promise of the one food which will reduce belly fat. Well, the simple reality is that overall diet is the key.
Even more disheartening to know that there is no exercise which will spot reduce the belly fat either. Fat goes where it wants do you have to watch your overall calorie intake.

Here is an article from Everyday Health which spells out the bitter truth.

Flat Belly Myth - Diet and Nutrition - EverydayHealth.com http://t.co/N7ILCJV via @everydayhealth

Marketing tactics help, but won't get clients

It bears repeating-- particularly in B2B professional services environments--marketing tactics are important in the sales process, but only in that it opens or supports the conversation, you still need to close.  This can be a scary prospect for professionals who have trained to be accountants, lawyers, consultants, not be to salesmen.

As I reported in a blog back in 2004, (The Marketing Life Cycle) another caution is that you need to match the tactic to where you are in the life cycle of your service:  are you just starting a new business or are you well known and want to ensure you retain your current clients?  Different tool for the job.

Rain Today is an organization dedicated to unravelling some of the mysteries of marketing in professional services.   Check them out at www.raintodayblog.com

Marketing Tactics Don't Get You Clients

Marketing tactics play an important role in the sales process for professional services, but they alone will not win you new clients.

It’s what you do after prospects become aware of you that will decide whether they sign on with you or walk away, says Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid, Second Edition, in a recent podcast interview, One Sure Way to Get New Clients.

Listen to the full interview here:

Successful firms “understand that the marketing tactic that they use is not what actually gets them the client. They realize that the marketing just creates awareness,” says Port. “Certainly there are some tactics that might be more effective than others depending on what kind of services you sell and what market you serve…, but ultimately I think it’s the process in between that is the most important.”

What does that process look like? It includes doing something consistently over time to build trust, explains Port, who is presenting a webinar April 12 on how to get new clients titled Book Yourself Solid: How to Get More Clients Than You Can Handle. It includes doing something that pulls people together to discuss issues and get advice—no sales pitches in disguise.

Consider, for example, a weekly get together—whether in person or on the phone—with your current clients and prospects where you discuss interesting topics and get their ideas. It isn’t a presentation from you, although, you can certainly offer advice and suggestions. And you don’t try to sell them something. You want to bring people together and give them something relevant, Port says.

“You’re creating a vehicle through which you can build more personal trust with the people you want to serve,” he says. “And if you’re doing it consistently and frequently, then you stay top of mind. That’s a big part of selling professional services because not everybody needs your services when you meet them. And if they don’t need your services when you meet them, what are you doing to stay in touch besides just sending them newsletters about how great you are and how you can sell something to them?”

Port advocates what many selling professionals say, and that’s to stop selling if you want to get new clients. Get known in the marketplace for standing for something important that resonates with your prospects, be friendly and likeable, empathize with your prospects, and have a no-barrier-for-entry offer (like the weekly get-together) that brings people together and get them talking.

“People are always surprised that you’re not supposed to sell at the end of this thing,” Port says. “So, how do you get them to become clients? Well, you get them because they’re there all the time, they’re of course going to move over to your newsletter through which you sell, they’re going to be connected to different offers that you make because they like that you’re doing this thing.”

 



In praise of napping

Years ago I lived a block away from work and enjoyed the pleasure of coming home during lunch for a nap. In time when I have been fortunate to work from home, I have to admit one of the best perks is the siesta time.  My husband, a fellow Type A, who never napped before in his life ,now also enjoys nap time with me. 

I am happy to see reports like this one, from  that there are proven performance enhancing benefits.  Brain Blogger has some great posts. Here is the link to the original article where you can subscribe to their field for future stories. Check out Brain Blogger

Daytime Napping Improves Memory

By Chalita Thanyakoop, PhD | Editor Shaheen E Lakhan | 

 
Napping sounds like just the thing for babies and elderly, but even healthy adults can rely on a daytime snooze to improve their mood, alertness, and memory. Napping has been shown to enhance memory performance and counteract the effects of fatigue. Firefighters, doctors, astronauts, pilots and other professions that handle complicated procedures for long hours are often advised to take a nap during rest time. While many studies support the notion that napping strengthens existing memory, a recent study suggests that napping also reorganizes memory and links information together to form memory networks for easy retrieval at a later time.

A recent research article published in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory examines the role of daytime napping in memory processing. Thirty-one healthy participants are given a task to memorize two sets of photographs called “face-object pairs,” in which the same objects appear in both sets. That is, each object is associated with two faces: one from each set. A group of the participants is allowed to nap for up to 90 minutes, whereas the other group must remain awake and watch a non-arousing video about topics unrelated to the memory task. After the nap group fully wakes up and joins the non-nap group, all participants are tested to see if they remember the face-object pairs. In addition, participants are asked to match the two faces that are associated with the same objects. For instance, if face A is paired with a teacup, and face B is paired with a teacup, participant has to match face A and face B in order to score.

The nap group performs better than the non-nap group at memorizing face-object pairs. More importantly, the nap group also performs better than the non-nap group at matching faces associated with the same object. The nap group even scores higher as the nap gets longer. Since the participants directly learned only the face-object pairs, they have to perform face-matching task using indirect, or relational memory. Therefore, daytime napping not only enhances memory, but also helps reorganize and combine memories with common features together for later recollection.

Short daytime napping is consisted solely of the dreamless non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM), which also represents up to 80% of nighttime sleep. Research studies suggest that interaction between the neocortex and the hippocampus in the brain is important for forming long-term memory peaks during NREM sleep. Therefore, daytime napping allows our brain to organize and consolidate memory for better performance while we are awake. Nighttime NREM sleep is likely to have a similar beneficial effect on memory. All in all, it appears that the best way to cram for exams is to include a full night’s sleep or, at the very least, a restful nap.

References

Ficca, G., Axelsson, J., Mollicone, D., Muto, V., & Vitiello, M. (2010). Naps, cognition and performance Sleep Medicine Reviews, 14 (4), 249-258 DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2009.09.005

Lau, H., Tucker, M., & Fishbein, W. (2010). Daytime napping: Effects on human direct associative and relational memory Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 93 (4), 554-560 DOI: 10.1016/j.nlm.2010.02.003

MOLLICONE, D., VANDONGEN, H., & DINGES, D. (2007). Optimizing sleep/wake schedules in space: Sleep during chronic nocturnal sleep restriction with and without diurnal naps Acta Astronautica, 60 (4-7), 354-361 DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2006.09.022