Imagine if you owned, managed or worked for a debt-free business. How would it differ from your current situation? As an owner/manager, how different it would be? Could you imagine that a debt-free business could generate more profits at a smaller size? Could you conceptualize that growth and infrastructure could be self-funded and slower, yet more profitable?

There are two extremely important issues that government contractors and grant recipients may not be aware of that may significantly impact them when they are under audit in the coming months and years. First, the banking, real estate, and other economic crises have initiated a "going concern" basket of auditor interpretations, assessments, and recommendations that are being applied in audits that are of substantial impact to how contractors/recipients to do business. Second, the level of understanding of business practices, methods, and "reasonable" standards may be lacking when it comes to the application and interpretation of standards and requirements being applied to companies.

'Tis the season of politicians and pollsters.  It is somewhat akin to the Christmas season in longevity and the ability to inundate us with meaningless commercials, promotions, slogans, sound bytes, and plastic.  Calls for contributions, ads which disrupt, distract, and dismay.  Ads for our hard earned money.  Ads which squander [or eat away at] our hard earned moments of relaxation and family time.  Television and radio and internet and print all leave us with one sure outcome - death and taxes still await us in the future (and if government can find a way, they will steadily increase both and try to convince us it is for our own good).

Have you ever been a part of a family-owned business?  Not necessarily part of the family but working for, with, or involved on some level as an employee, vendor, customer, or yes, even a member of the family?  If you have, think about the dynamics of how the business and the family relationships and roles affected each other.  Parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, all having dual roles - the family role generally influence the success of the business role - manager, president, accountant, lawyer, and so on.

Sometimes when you look at all of the messages which bombard us on a daily basis, it is hard to separate the "gems" from the clutter.  The messages all begin to blend together like a higher form of white noise and nothing is distinguishable. Every now and then a "gem" of an item makes it through the filter of your firewall, spam blockers, and the mental screening mechanisms of your own interests and you say "Hey, what's this?.  Sometimes that "hey what's this" isn't about a diamond in the rough, it is an "I know what they are up to." Or "I figured out what they're selling."