You could call it the ultimate romantic gesture.

Last February, Andrew Shaffer, a writer who had recently moved to Lexington, picked up Fifty Shades of Grey, writer E.L. James' global publishing phenom that has introduced 20 million readers to the world of bondage, dominance and sadomasochistic sex.

Shaffer was appalled, as many have been, by the puerile plot line, wooden dialogue and shallow characters in the story of stalker-billionaire Christian Grey, who sweeps dim young college student Anastasia Steele off her feet and into his sex dungeon, more or less.

Shaffer was offended not just as a writer himself but as the boyfriend of Tiffany Reisz, who was the reason he moved to Lexington and who happened to be a very good erotic BDSM author herself.

So Shaffer, the author of the non-fiction Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love (Harper Perennial, $12.99 in paperback), sat down and quickly wrote a parody, Fifty Shames of Earl Grey (Da Capo Press, $13.99 in paperback), in which Ana Steal and Earl Grey enter a world of half-wits and another kind of BDSM: "bards, dragons, sorcery and Magick."

"I was offended," Shaffer said of Fifty Shades, "because I thought the writing was pretty terrible and I've read other BDSM novels that were so much better, including Tiffany's. On the other hand, it's all turned out pretty well for us."

"Pretty well" is an ending that could show up in a romance novel: For Shaffer, it means a book deal with a sizeable advance, interviews with The New York Times and NPR, and another book, Literary Rogues, on the way from Harper Perennial.

"Pretty well" for Reisz means a huge bump of publicity for her recently released BDSM novel, The Siren (Harlequin Mira, $13.95 in paperback) with a first printing of 60,000 copies as millions of titillated Fifty Shades readers look for their next fix.

Shaffer and Reisz met cute on Twitter and then met in person at the Romance Writers of America conference in New York. (Their first date was when Shaffer escorted Reisz to a Manhattan dominatrix; for a full accounting, check out Reisz's column on The Huffington Post.) They now live a modern-day literary life, white Mac notebooks constantly humming in different rooms of their Harrodsburg Road condo, a running Twitter conversation open in one window, the next book chapter in another.

Reisz, an Owensboro native and Centre College graduate, has worked on her writing for a long time, and she seems bemused by success in both personal and professional fronts happening at the same time.

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Lexington couple benefit from runaway success of 'Fifty Shades'

Posted on August 26, 2012, Sunday

OLYMPIC success does not come easy.

The two medals one silver and one bronze Malaysia brought home from the London Games came at huge personal sacrifices to the athletes who won them and from government funding as well.

For those who stood on the rostrum, success was the culmination of years of sweat and toil. They deserve their prize and glory.

Malaysia spent RM20 million (around US$6.5 million) for the National Sports Councils four-year Road To London programme. Some argue the amount is too high for winning only two medals. But then, whoever says Olympic success comes cheap?

South Korea had their most successful Olympics to date in London with a total 28 medals, including 13 gold. But they also spent US$100 million (RM310 million) plus US$30 million from the private sector.

By comparison, our total bill was only five per cent of what South Korea spent to bring success from their athletes.

So what do we actually want? Real success or just wishing for success?

Talks of budget cuts and downsizing teams are common. But targetting cheap competitions to save money means we are moving in one direction DOWN. Mediocrity and third class performance will not bring Olympic success.

Of course, the money spent must be success-oriented. Our plans for sports success has to be bottom up grassroots to elite level. Unfortunately, even today, a comprehensive grassroots development programme for many of our sports is still lacking.

Read more:
Olympic success cometh not on silver platter

By Joyce E. A. Russell, Special to the Washington Post. Joyce E. A. RussellWashington Post In Print: Sunday, August 26, 2012

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently found that employment for career counselors is expected to grow 19 percent by the year 2020. Yet, despite the increased money being spent on coaching by employers today, not as much is published about the effectiveness of coaching. Does it work, and if so, how? What impact does it really have? What do executives really think about it?

Over the years, I've asked executives who have gone through coaching what they think its value might be. Haywood Barney, a technology strategy consultant with IBM, said coaching "provided a structure and plan to accomplish what I saw as my future . . . sort of a road map." Bart Ludlow, project manager at Avian Engineering, noted, "Coaching accurately identifies a leader's strengths and areas for improvement which are critical for all of us to know in order to be more effective."

One goal of coaches is to push leaders to think through issues for themselves. Often, executives experience the positive spillover of coaching. As Doug Riley, vice president of sales at Thomas Somerville Co., said, "Coaching helped me fine-tune attributes that improved both my personal and professional life."

In their roles as leaders, executives often provide coaching to proteges and employees. Yet, as they move up in organizations, they are often not given mentoring themselves, despite the fact that they have increasingly more challenging jobs. Over the years, many executives have told me that they are especially appreciative to receive coaching at this latter part of their professional lives.

But not everyone goes into coaching convinced it will have any impact on them. If those individuals can be turned around to find value in coaching, then we have better evidence that coaching is making a difference.

"As someone who was initially skeptical on the value of executive coaching I have made a 180-degree turnaround," said Elie Ashery, president and chief executive of Gold Lasso. "Coaching helped me gain greater insight into how my peers not only viewed me personally, but my abilities to lead and provide value. With this new insight, I was able to better connect with my management team, board of directors and investors. As a result of these improved connections we performed better as a team and just had our best quarter ever since being in business."

Determining the value of executive coaching is tricky and is often estimated similar to how firms measure the impact of training programs. Metrics can involve any of the following:

Financial results examining outcomes such as cost savings, increased sales or profits, or reduced voluntary turnover or absenteeism.

Business results increased market share, organizational growth, or profitability.

Read more from the original source:
Executive coaching can provide big benefits, many say

Beating Michael Jordan on the golf course was enjoyable, but Terrell Buckley found it wasnt fulfilling.

They played every day, or at least every one the former NBA great spent in South Florida in 2006. They were joined by the likes of Lawrence Taylor, Cris Carter or Nat Moore, friends Buckley, a former Florida State All-America, made during his 14 years in the NFL before he retired after the 2005 season.

Im pretty good; I was close to being a scratch, Buckley said of his prowess on the links. Jordan had his days, though.

Inevitably, their conversations turned to the latest professional player to run afoul of the law. Buckley had the same talks with another friend, Troy Vincent, a former NFL Players Association president who now serves as the leagues vice president of player engagement.

It hit me that Im doing what probably 95 percent of the people do, you see stuff on ESPN and in the paper and you say, Man, what are they doing? All this money they make and all this and we didnt Buckley said earlier this month after a University of Akron football practice at InfoCision Stadium. I had to sit back and think when I was 17, 18 and 19, I was probably doing the same thing.

Buckley realized he had longed for a mentor while growing up in Pascagoula, Miss. In his mid-30s, he figured out what drove him, and it wasnt just testing his game on the championship course at Fort Lauderdales Grande Oaks Golf Club, where the movie Caddyshack was filmed.

The main thing Ive found out is that the Lord blessed me, I like to help. Im kind of a giver, Buckley said. My momma, my dad, everybody was giving and I want to be a part of that.

So in 2007 he went back to Florida State and finished his degree. He started working in football coach Bobby Bowdens weight room. He served as a graduate assistant, became coordinator of the life skills program for the Seminoles, then went back to the weight room. He stayed on after Bowden retired after the 2009 season. But coach Jimbo Fisher wasnt ready to fire a coach to hire Buckley.

On Dec. 29, Buckleys 17-year-old daughter Sherrell was driving the family home from the Florida Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla., after a victory over Notre Dame. Buckley was napping until his cell phone rang at about 1 in the morning. It was Terry Bowden, Bobbys son, offering him a job coaching cornerbacks at the University of Akron.

Bowden wanted an answer quickly, so Buckley discussed the opportunity with his three daughters. Sherrell, Brianna (14) and Britney (11) convinced him of the communicative powers of Skype, Google Plus and instant messaging.

Continue reading here:
UA’s Terrell Buckley drawn to coaching to mold men, not just cornerbacks

There was a time when folks in the food industry didnt want nutritional information published. They said people would be so bombarded with facts, they wouldnt know what to do or wouldnt bother to find out.

They were right in some respects: People see helpful nutritional facts on packaging, and they buy the bad stuff anyway.

And the same may be true when retirement plan participants get clearer details on how much they pay in fees to invest their retirement money.

New disclosure rules by the Labor Department are intended to help workers and the companies that provide retirement plans understand the fees charged to, or deducted from, individual accounts.

Those with 401(k)s or similar plans should begin receiving the information by Aug. 30. And more detailed information tied directly to the fees you pay will be sent with your quarterly statement by Nov. 14.

So what are you going to do with this enhanced fee information? Will you ignore it? Or will you take it seriously?

Its not reasonable to expect service providers to do this for free, but people are going to be shocked and outraged when they see how much they pay in fees, said Peter Kirtland, president and chief executive of ASPire Financial Services, which provides low-cost retirement plan solutions that can be customized.

The government says the new rules will reduce the time investors spend collecting fee information.

It would be great if most plan participants devoted time to analyzing fee information. They do not, according to AARP.

The advocacy group for seniors polled 800 workers with money in 401(k)s and asked them if they paid fees: Seventy-one percent said no. Yet all fund owners are compensated through fees for the costs of running the fund, says Don Blandin, president of Investor Protection Trust.

Read more from the original source:
Retirement fund fees, if ignored, will eat into your nest egg

By KASIE HUNT and THOMAS BEAUMONT Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - Mitt Romney is about to get personal.

The GOP's presidential nominee-to-be wants to use his four-day party next week in Florida to play up his life story following a summer filled with a barrage of TV ads - courtesy of President Barack Obama and his allies - that cast him as a ruthless and out-of-touch businessman.

He'll surround himself with his five sons, five daughters-in-law and 15 of his 18 grandchildren. Romney's wife, Ann, will play her biggest role yet. A parade of athletes Romney met as an Olympic organizer, such as hockey legend Mike Eruzione, will be on hand. So will doting parishioners he helped as a lay pastor in the Mormon Church in Boston.

From the stagecraft to the speakers' roster, the agenda for the convention that starts Monday is carefully crafted toward one goal: introducing Romney to the country on his own terms while projecting him as the leader the country needs in tough economic times - and Obama as a failure on that front.

"We go to a convention and for the first time define Mitt a little bit better," said Ron Kaufman, a top Romney adviser.

Aides dismiss the notion that the former Massachusetts governor needs to repair a damaged image after a summer of negative ads and a recent string of missteps, including Friday when he waded into a debunked conspiracy theory by raising the issue of Obama's citizenship.

"No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate," Romney joked at a rally in the suburbs of Detroit while visiting his native state. "They know that this is the place that we were born and raised."

Romney later Friday in a CBS News interview said he had not intended the comment as a swipe at Obama.

Just a day earlier, Romney caused himself another potential headache when he said big business was "doing fine" due to off-shore tax havens. It was a comment that echoed a claim similar to one he had criticized Obama for making, and it also reminded voters of Romney's own overseas accounts.

Continued here:
Romney to feature personal side at convention

"People say it isn't good quality but you have to remember Fifty Shades started as fan fiction and as fan fiction you have to have action" ... publisher Amanda Hayward. Photo: Ben Rushton

There was a time, not so long ago, that Amanda Hayward was close to quitting publishing. Selling the e-book and print rights of Fifty Shades of Grey to Random House for more than $1 million had made the founder of The Writer's Coffee Shop and the book's author wealthy women, and here the big publishing houses were waving dollars at Hayward again, offering to buy her out.

Caught in the blinding arc lights of a publishing phenomenon, Hayward was spent. The publicity was intrusive and bruising, the fun of the original enterprise curdled by lawyers and confidentiality agreements.

Sitting on a panel at the Southern Highlands Writers' Festival in July, Hayward was representative of the new force of social media and niche publishing. The passion of that audience of book lovers reminded her that the real purpose of publishing was to tell stories, a dawning that rekindled her flagging enthusiasm.

Hayward's eyes flash steel and mischief when she tells me rival publishers have since been trying to poach her authors. ''You have to laugh,'' she scoffs, ''because it's not going to work. It's not the way to do it, it's not the way it works, but they will learn. It's now, 'what's the next thing?', it doesn't have to be some book, it's what else captures people's imagination.''

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Three different authors in her stable are tracking the same early popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey in the fan fiction and original fiction community of her online forums. ''Same volumes,'' nods Hayward. ''It will take another four or five months from here to know.'' If, that is, she can boast a second bestseller.

With no experience to her name, the one-time quantity surveyor outwitted New York's publishing houses to bring the fan fiction story in from the sidelines to mainstream publishing. With global English-language sales approaching 40 million, the erotic trilogy has outsold Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and the seven Harry Potter books across several continents including Australia. Hayward wants to prove lightning can strike twice. And, next time, there's no way she's going to sell to any of the big publishing houses. She wants to do it all herself. ''Just once more would be lovely,'' she says, ''not to be known as a one-hit wonder.''

Our lunch venue, Crinitis at Castle Hill, is all masculine leather and polished wood, a restaurant in which Christian Grey, Fifty Shades of Grey's tycoon dominator, might have felt comfortable. ''But it doesn't have a red playroom,'' Hayward smirks, referring to the Red Room of Pain in Grey's penthouse suite where he beds his willing sexual slaves.

Hayward discovered the restaurant three months ago and has wined and dined some of ''the girls'' responsible for moderating the publishing house's 100,000-member fan fiction community, from which the publishing arm nurtures emerging authors. Until Fifty Shades came along, they were middle-aged housewives, with kids and husbands and tedious jobs they hated who led online lives as writers or reviewers of risque stories set in their favourite fictional universes.

See the original post:
Fifty shades of success

By Matt Fish as told to Plain Dealer Reporter Marcia Pledger

The Company: Melt Bar & Grilled, a restaurant that features grilled cheese sandwiches, fresh soups, salads and a beer list, offers an eclectic atmosphere filled with nostalgic Cleveland-related mementos. Founded in 2006 by owner Matt Fish, the company has about 200 employees who work in three Northeast Ohio locations. A fourth location is scheduled to open in Mentor in October.

The Mistake: When I opened my first restaurant in a small storefront in Lakewood, expansion was the furthest thing from my mind, considering my first idea was to open a bar that served really good food. I was just trying to get through each day. But the concept of serving comfort foods like grilled cheese took off like gangbusters.

We're open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. and I didn't take one day off for the first 21/2 years. My biggest mistake was being so focused on growing my business that I allowed business success to come at a cost of personal relationships.

At first I was afraid to hire many people because I didn't want to have to lay anybody off if the restaurant didn't work out. I would open the restaurant around 8 a.m., receive orders, set up the kitchen and then work on the line in the kitchen for hours. Later, after I started hiring more cooks and other people, I was always either thinking about management, or working alongside employees or making plans to expand. In the meantime, I was doing everything from writing schedules and cleaning up to handling financial issues. I'd be getting out by 2 a.m. Then I'd eat and sleep and do it all again.

As fast as we were growing, I thought it was important that employees saw me in stores. I didn't ever want them to feel like I had abandoned them. The business kept growing, but it came at a price. I lost track of myself because I put everything else on the back burner -- including personal relationships, friends and family. I've been divorced since I started the business, and later I lost my girlfriend. The business isn't the only reason, but building a business is a huge part of your life. I made it every part of my life, so it was the majority of the reason for the break-ups. My attitude with people in my life not involved with the business was, "Give me some time. It's all going to work out."

All I did was focus on my business. That was good for the business but unhealthy for me -- and the people around me. I had to make some changes.

The Fix: I finally realized that when you run a business, not working is just as important as working. You need to find some downtime to balance other elements of your life, including your own personal self, your family and relationships.

This is the first year I started making myself take off one day of the week, and I've been doing it 90 percent of the time. I also started running again, which helps me to clear my head.

Running three miles, three days a week, helped me to realize that having a significant personal relationship in my life is hugely important. Now that I don't have one, I realize how important relationships are and how important it is to work on them.

Read the original post:
Matt Fish, founder of Melt Bar & Grilled, allowed success to affect personal relationships: My Biggest Mistake (video)

At the helm of successful companies are the entrepreneurs who have achieved the American dream and built wealth from their leadership efforts. The Tri-Counties, being an idyllic place to live, are filled with many people in this esteemed position.

Does achievement in business translate to success in personal wealth management? Unfortunately, the answer is often no. The tragedy is that the apparent "wealth" that was generated over decades can be squandered in a matter of a few years because of poor personal planning decisions.

What are the two most common mistakes business owners make? First, they neglect their personal finances, with all the attention going toward the business. Second, they tend to be overly optimistic about the business prospects. They are "all in" with making the business grow and fail to create a backup plan should success not follow.

A helpful approach for business owners is to think about personal wealth as a separate business. Develop a clear vision of desires, or personal goals, as the starter. Then create an operating strategy, a financial plan, that outlines realistic paths to fund lifestyle goals. Implement a risk management plan that includes insurance and estate planning to protect against "what-ifs." And last but not least, have an effective team in place to implement the strategy efficiently. That team might include a financial adviser, accountant, attorney, banker, investment manager and insurance professional.

Paying down debts, investing in retirement plans, funding college accounts and creating liquid wealth outside of the business is paramount for future financial security. Ensuring a succession strategy is in place for the business to thrive once the owner is no longer at the helm is critical to ensure maximum value when the business is sold.

This is not always easy. Although converted wealth from a business sale can make personal financial dreams a reality, proposed buyers rarely value the business the same way as an owner/founder does. Having concentrated wealth in the business is not as simple and fast to unlock as one may believe. Careful planning must begin years in advance.

By creating a personal financial plan and treating it like a separate business, by involving professionals and family members in the process well in advance, and by setting realistic assumptions about the wealth to be generated from the disposition of the business, the business leader can enjoy an immensely satisfying lifestyle and create an impactful legacy for heirs and charity. It all stems from entrepreneurs giving their own wealth the same level of care and priority they dedicate to managing their business.

Brad Stark and Seth Streeter are co-founders of Mission Wealth Management in Westlake Village and Santa Barbara.

Read this article:
Separating business from personal finance decisions

[08/24/12 - 11:19 PM] Development Update: Friday, August 24 By The Futon Critic Staff (TFC)

LOS ANGELES (thefutoncritic.com) -- The latest development news, culled from recent wire reports:

Looking to keep track of all the various projects in development? Click here to visit our signature "Devwatch" section. There visitors can view our listings by network, genre, studio and even development stage (ordered to pilot, cast-contingent, script, etc.). It's updated every day!

Maz Jobrani will visit "Men at Work" as "the owner of a Lebanese chicken restaurant who befriends James Lesure's Gibbs" (TVLine.com); Brooklyn Silzer has been cast as Danny (Carmine Giovinazzo) and Lindsay's (Anna Belknap) daughter Emma on "CSI: NY," a role previously played by twins Nadia and Talia Hartounian (TVGuide.com); Clifford Joseph Harris, Jr. (a.k.a. T.I.) will guest on "Hawaii Five-0" as "a member of a crime syndicate investigated by a Jersey-based Danny (Scott Caan) and his partner back in 2001" (TVLine.com); Paloma Guzmn is bound for "Person of Interest" as "the beautiful, smart and spoiled party girl daughter of a Brazilian diplomat" (TVLine.com); Tom Waits will lend his voice to "The Simpsons" as "someone who helps introduce Homer to a community of survivalists" (TVLine.com); and Tania Raymonde will recur on "Switched at Birth" as a street artist who befriends Vanessa Marano's Bay (TVGuide.com).

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Development Update: Friday, August 24