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What if … You Upgraded to YOU 2.0? BY JULIAN REID
A new year brings a clean slate, new optimism, and resolutions. Hopefully, your resolutions are upgrades. Perhaps you’ve upgraded your life with a new fiancé! Maybe you’re committed to a healthier lifestyle. How about your vocational life? Have you considered upgrading to ... YOU 2.0? If not, the beginning of a new year is a GREAT time to do it! Consider this approach: Everything you’ve done in your Julian Reid has a chemical career to this point has brought engineering degree from you to your current version of Georgia Tech, a U.S. Chamber certification in You 1.0. Now, start from a broad Organization Management strategic view, and ask yourself this and several professional question: coaching and sales “If we looked at your life a year certifications. Contact him from today, what has to have at (770) 521-0698 or jreid@ esourcecoach.com. happened during that period, both personally and professionally, for you to be happy with your progress?” This question is not intended to be rhetorical, and the “we”
is not a typo. Take some time with your spouse, a friend, or a personal coach to answer this question at the big picture level. Challenge yourself to upgrade, and put a little pressure on yourself. Why? Remember how quickly VHS tape rental became obsolete? Blockbuster stores disappeared seemingly overnight. If YOU don’t want to risk similar obsolescence in your career, then perhaps an upgrade to YOU 2.0 is more of a necessity than you think. Next, look at your D.O.S.; your Dangers, Opportunities and Strengths, as they pertain to your upgrade. Itemizing Dangers should focus on the risks of doing nothing. Read the signs around you. Is your company ripe for a merger or downsizing? Are your expenses going up while your income is stagnant? Is your current job, boss, industry or employer causing you unhealthy stress? Your biggest discovery in considering these issues may be that the risk of standing pat is bigger than the risk of assertive change. Proactive goal-setting trumps reactive damage control. Next, do the same exercise by identifying your Opportunities. Start by NOT seeing the obstacles to your vision of what you want your lifestyle to be. Finally, list your Strengths, but let someone else, who knows your talent and skill set, edit and prioritize that list. The YOU 2.0 upgrade process concludes with writing D.O.S.driven goals. YOU take control, and discover that you like it. Happy New Year!
The Times They Are A-Changin’ BY PAUL MCLENDON
Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone If your time to you Is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin’ Or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’. —Bob Dylan, 1964 Paul McLendon is a licensed Health and Life Agent with Insphere Insurance. He is a Health Care Reform Specialist, providing assistance to small business and individuals, and a Federal Marketplace Broker Certification for SHOP program and individuals. (404) 422-0363 or pmclendon@insphereis.com. 18
Even Bob knew that the Affordable Care Act rollout would be a challenging time for the country. In this article, I’ll expand on the fact that most people are seeing a price increase on their individual plans and why group policies are affected as well. Individuals with pre-existing
AROUND WOODSTOCK | January 2014
conditions have always had the greatest challenge in finding health insurance unless they worked for a company that offered group insurance. Premiums would still be affected by the individual’s condition, but in a more limited way because the pool of their co-workers would absorb the extra cost, which is akin to how the government desires the current system to work. Starting In January, everyone can and is required to buy health insurance. The theory goes that if you make everyone—the young and the old, the healthy and the sick—jump into the pool, then the costs can be equalized by sharing those increases. SPLOST is a similarly packaged and sold concept; pennies from you and me supposedly mean very little, but add pennies from everyone, and we get millions. Then we have the money to paint crooked new lines on our newly paved streets, but I digress. In the case of health insurance, millions of new people nationwide will bring unknown conditions into the individual market so there is a need for far more than pennies from each person to pay those claims. Hence tax increases and the extravagant increases in premiums for everyone. Increasing taxes and borrowing from Medicaid are helping the government subsidize the middle and lower classes who are buying for the continued on page 60