Developing Marketing

Companies and businesses need marketing. This is a known fact in order to be successful as a business. The issue is, many business owners think they have a great marketing plan, and expect it to flourish overnight. As Dr. J.T. Dock Houk explains, a great marketing strategy does not happen overnight, and is more of a snowball effect.

 Too many times business owners see another business become successful after using a marketing campaign, and they think they need to follow the exact campaign to be successful. When in reality, every business is different and needs to use their own approach. Trying to implement another businesses strategy as your own could work in some aspects, but to be truly effective it would need to be tweaked to fit your business needs. This will not happen overnight, and trial and error is a large portion of marketing.

 

How to Help Employees Work Harder

Eliciting the best possible work from employees is a goal that many bosses wish to achieve. Increasing productivity and cutting down on mistakes is something everyone can strive for. Being able to do this makes the mark for a great leader. Dr. J.T. Dock Houk of the NHF knows how to motivate employees and can share ways to keep everyone on the right path for your business.

Reinforcing you expectations with employees with set forth a guideline that you expect them to follow. Once a clear path is defined, distractions become less opportunistic. Explain to employees who you are as a business, what you are trying to achieve, and how you expect to get there. This will relay the message of what is expected. Take a personal interest in your employees. Showing them that you care in their work, and personal lives will help them be able to relate to you, and to also see you as more of a human that has the same frustrations and struggles in life. They will be more comfortable and this may help with future ideas, and opinions.

Rafael Nadal Wins Yet Again

This past weekend, tennis great Rafael Nadal won his record 8^th French Open tennis title. He has been dominant throughout his career, and this weekend was no different. He defeated David Ferrer 6-2, 6-3, 6-2. 

He cemented himself as the sport’s greatest ever on clay, and being only twenty seven years old, has many future victories ahead of him. A proponent of the lesser-known double racket tennis, Dr. J.T. Dock Houk recognizes this outstanding achievement of single racket tennis.

Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are two of the tennis’ most polarizing athletes and the debate on who is better is never ending. Roger Federer is more accomplished overall with 14 major titles, but he is also older. Nadal is not far behind with 12 major title wins. It will be interesting to see how the future of these two rivals pans out.

The Events with NHF

While there is a series of unfortunate events that occurred to NHF several years ago, the “news” stories and blogs found on the web are blatantly misleading to completely false. Dr. J.T. Dock Houk

would like to set forth some of the history of this charity.

In 2006, NHF was sued by a family in Texas over an insurance policy the family donated to NHF. The Mancillas family lived in Texas and retained a lawyer known for attacking companies with “deep pockets”, meaning companies with large asset base and insurance. NHF had to appear in the Brownsville Texas courts to fight this case. NHF tried to get its insurance company, Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Company, to indemnify NHF in this case which was clearly a covered claim. The insurance company declined. NHF made every effort to resolve the case amicably, including making efforts to settle with the Mancillas family, but they turned down all efforts. In the summer of 2008, the court in Texas, presided by Judge Abel Limas, tried our case. (Note that the Judge was voted into office, that the Mancillas family were personal friends with the judge, and that critical evidence in our case was suppressed.) NHF lost and a very heavy judgment was levied.

With the Mancillas case, NHF needed to post a bond to appeal the Texas judgment in the amount of the judgment which was $7 million dollars. Bond insurers would not allow NHF to secure a bond with stocks because of the volatility in the markets at that time – stocks were fluctuating by thousands of points daily. The insurers required cash. NHF had to liquidate millions of its stock accounts very quickly to post the bond. This resulted in having to file for bankruptcy.

NHF reorganized in the fall of 2009, paid off the annuitants and other creditors, unfortunately with donated funds, because it was required to by the bankruptcy courts to do so. Since the fall of 2009, NHF has restored nearly $2M in lost funds to donor’s accounts from its own assets held in more illiquid form. There was no court mandate to do this, NHF has voluntarily done so.

In 2011, NHF sued its insurance company for failure to cover and for bad faith in denying coverage in the Mancillas case. NHF won a settlement from Philadelphia and has used those funds to restore even further its donor advised funds, to pay tremendous legal bills in the bankruptcy and ensuing insurance.