The Winning Way

Good Morning!
I Have Been Thinking

When Bob Hagan was a boy in Youngstown, Ohio, people equated the coke dust they swept off their doorsteps each day with opportunity, for it came from the steel mills that built this city.

After graduating from high school more than 40 years ago, Hagan worked briefly at one of the local steel mills that dominated the local economy. In 1971, he became a locomotive engineer at railroad company CSX Corp, switching rail cars in every mill and yard in the area over the years.

The job afforded him a ground-level view of the slow-moving disaster that would tear out Youngstown’s heart over the next decade and a half — as it did many other towns in America’s Rust Belt.

“In my rides through this valley on the train, I used to watch the fires of prosperity burn,” said Hagan, 60, an Ohio state representative since 1986 who still works for the railroad when not in session. “And then, years later, I watched the lights go out.”

On September 19, 1977 — remembered locally as Black Monday — Sheet & Tube Company laid off more than 4,000 workers in a single day. In the following years, the steel industry all but died here.

In hindsight, the big mistake was trying to save it.

“We have spent the past 20 to 25 years looking in the rearview mirror,” said Jay Williams, the city’s 38-year-old, independent mayor. “Letting go of the past has been difficult for many people because the past was so good.”

Letting go of the past is difficult. Looking at all the bad things that are happening and believing that there will be no recovery can destroy us.

Youngstown is an extreme but by no means unique case in America. On a basic level, it represents some of the challenges facing the country today in the wake of the longest and deepest downturn since the 1930s.

“America’s greatest ability has always been its capacity to reinvent itself,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Chicago-based financial services firm Mesirow Financial. “We may be able to emerge stronger and better, to the possible anger and envy of some parts of the world.

But getting there will take a lot of time, effort and money in a nation not renowned for patience and long-term planning.

“Neither our political system nor our capital markets are used to anything but a short-term view, and fixing K through 12 is a long-term proposition,” Swonk said. “Not addressing the issue is an option we don’t have. There is a difficult decade ahead of us.”

The first step toward inventing the future, as Youngstown has found, is acknowledging that the past is gone.

“The thing we’re starting to understand is that the prosperity of the steel mills was the past,” Hagan said. “So let’s accept it and let’s move on into something that makes it even better.”

Opportunity is never lost
It goes To Those Ready to Accept It!

Carolyn

   Ice Breakers
 I Remember!

When three-year-old opened the birthday gift from his grandmother, he discovered a water pistol.

He squealed with delight and headed for the nearest sink.

The Mother was not so pleased. She turned to grandma and said, “I’m surprised at you. Don’t you remember how we used to drive you crazy with water guns?”

Grandma smiled and then replied knowingly…

“I remember.” 

Thought for Today:  

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.”
~ Benjamin Franklin
 

 Tips and Techniques

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Happy designing!

 P.S.  Goals of WinAssoc & The Winning Way for 2010

• To pay a million dollars in commissions to the affiliates of our various programs.

• To work with directly and help 100 families to improve their business and financial standings.

• To change the format and emphasis of the newsletter.  The purpose of WinAssoc & The Winning Way family of websites is to work with individuals and small business people to put their own business on the web and help them make it successful.  Creativity begets creativity. The more we surround ourselves with creative people, the more creative we become.

• Adopt the message from “Meet The Robinsons”  Walt Disney has always been one of my personal heros.“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

  –Walt Disney

• To further define the products and services of the organization.

• To create at least one new product and eCourse each month over the next 12 months.

• To open the door of opportunity to other entrepreneurs to teach their specialty through the Internet Niche Lab.  To do this we need to be very proactive in seeking Joint Venture Partners.

Personal goals for 2010

• To get better in my understanding of PHP & MySQL
• Take some art classes 
• Get back to scrapbooking.  I have a ton of articles to get posted to computerkrafts. I just need to do it.  I promised my girls a documentary showing  them with our family photos just where  they came from.
• To get  out more meet new people in the real world and not just in the virtual world. 
• Get effective enough to work on my computer no more  than an average of 4 hours a day on business things and spend more time on my hobbies.
• Take my grandchildren to Disney World