Chad Blodgett

Put yourself in the shoes of a CEO or CFO of a business (regardless of the size). What would you pay for programs that prevent injury or disease?

To give you some more info - lets say the average monthly premium that you are paying per employee per month (PEPM) for health insurance is $600. So, every month, as part of your benefits package, you pay $600 per employee toward their health insurance.

If you are on a self funded, or partially self funded plan, you still pay this in order to plan for catastrophic events, and you stand to win more if your prevention efforts work!

Of that $600 would you be willing to pay

• $500 PEPM toward disease and $100 PEPM toward prevention?
• $550 PEPM toward disease and $50 PEPM toward prevention?
• $590 PEPM toward disease and $10 PEPM toward prevention?

What if I told you that the dollars put toward prevention would be returned to the business $3 to $1? Would you do business with me if I said “you give me $1 and I’ll give you $3?”

In essence a well designed prevention program will cost between $4-$9 PEPM – which is .6 – 1.5% of what you are paying to treat disease.

This is a “no-brainer.” I still believe that CEO’s or CFO’s who do not implement a Health Promotion and Prevention program within their company should be held accountable for the profits that are lost to their investors due to unhealthy employees.

Either implement a strategy or don’t complain each year as rises in your health care premiums eat away at your company profits.

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60% of those polled said that they thought smokers should have to pay higher premiums while 30% were in favor for the obese to pay as well.

I totally agree – and this quote sums it up. “When it comes to personal responsibility, consumers increasingly support making people pay more for unhealthy behavior”

If you choose to live unhealthily, why should your group pay for your treatments? You should be the one to pay for those additional expenses needed to treat your illnesses.

At eHealthCompete we are working with groups where monthly premiums are increased for all employees, unless employees participate in our wellness campaigns AND take actionable steps toward lowering their risk factor(s) (i.e. smoking, high BMI, high cholesterol, etc).

If you don’t want to participate or take those steps, that is fine, but you will pay a higher premium. However, if you participate and work on your risk factors, your monthly rates don’t increase.

This is a real answer for businesses. In the end, their lower premiums and healthier lives will not only improve the company and its profits, but will improve the quality of life for participating employees.

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Dentist’s main mantra is: Prevention. They are always teaching us to brush, floss, and eat healthy foods. If we do that we can, for the most part, prevent oral disease.

Doctors main mantra is: Treatment. They know how, and are very good at, treating disease, prescribing medications, and performing procedures on those who are sick.

I go to my dentist when I am feeling well, in order to continue feeling well.

I ONLY go to my doctor when I am sick or hurt. Never when I am feeling well.

Why? Because doctors don’t advise, or teach about prevention. They also don’t get paid as much for teaching prevention.

So, have dentists, who teach prevention, made a difference with the American Public?

• 50 years ago tooth decay left 3 in 10 Americans - over the age of 45 - with none of their natural teeth!
• Brushing ones teeth on a daily basis was a new hygienic step forward in the last 50 years, reportedly made popular by the returning WWII soldiers.
• Floride has become a mainstay for water, toothpaste and other products
• It is estimated that in a ten year period (1979-1989) the American public saved more than $39 billion in dental expenditures.

If doctors and businesses would focus more on prevention, even to the point where the American Public went to their doctor when they were feeling well, the Health Care crisis that we are experiencing would be reduced to nothing – just like the oral epidemic 50 years ago.

Do you think we will ever reach that point? Or will we continue to treat the disease instead of the problem?

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We recently began playing flag football every Saturday morning. The first time we did this, by the end of the three hours, no one could walk.

The next day everyone was limping around like they just got out of the hospital and they looked like they got kicked where the sun don’t shine.

Backs were aching, hammy’s were sore, knee were tender, quads were weak.

And this is from a group of 23-27 year old men.

I was among the aching group and realized that the workouts that I have been doing were for different muscles then the ones I used for flag football.

So, I started doing strength training of the “Flag Football” muscles without weights. That’s right, just my own body weight. I use to think ONLY using your body weight was a workout for women or small boys. Not anymore.

My favorite has been squats. I just stand, free of weights, and do a ton of squats. My legs start burning – but the sheer number of squats helps my leg muscles build endurance for those long Saturday games.

There are other exercises I have been doing that I’ll post at a different time. But the question is: would a three hour flag football game kill you off?

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Most of the social sites out there have a business model that is all about advertising. “If we get enough eyeballs coming to our site, we can make enough money to keep us a float.”

Wasn’t that the Pre-bubble mentality?

It appears, however that this business model could actually work, post-bubble. With the popularity of social-networks and the fact that online advertising continues to grow, business that offer their services for free, could begin to make some money.

Ad spending on social-networks is expected to reach 2 billion in 2010. Advertisers spent 350 million this year on social sites, and are expected to spend 865 million in 2007.

Did you notice the billion in the above paragraph? That is a lot of money.

Currently Google has signed a $900 million dollar deal with MySpace

MSN and Facebook have signed a similar deal

Dogster reports 290,000 users, 17 million monthly page views, and $1.2 million + in ad revenue for 2006.

TechCruch makes around $60,000 each month on ad

And the story goes on an on.

I bet Pets.com and other Pre-bubble companies wish they were around now.

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I remember a year and a half ago playing a game at my in-laws in California. In the game we had to list interests of ours anonymously and then the group would guess which interests went with which person.

One of my interests was Social-Networking. Nobody knew what that was or what that meant.

Now, most of my family is a part of some social network, they blog, or they use social bookmarks to some degree.

So why are social sites getting so many visits? Why is 1 out of every 20 web visits to a social site?

I believe that user-generated content, the ability to communicate with others who have similar interests as you, sharing your expertise, hearing the voice of the common man, meeting new people, making new friends and having the ability of self expression to a large audience is what fuels social site popularity.

Are you a member of a social site? Do you blog? Is one out of your 20 clicks on the web to a social site?

*Note: Some social sites provide tremendous value to the user and their passion, hobby or interest (dogster, pikapet, boompa, etc). Others try to add value in a business sense (linkedIn) and others are for expression and friends (friendster, MySpace, Xanga, Facebook etc) and there are many others that fall into different categories. There are, in my opinion, many social sites that are a total waste of time.

Some interesting social sites that begin with the letter “F” are Flixter, Famster and Flickr (whats up with all the “F’s”?)

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Wendy’s has come under some fire for their video commercials on YouTube. Apparently they have created videos that trick the viewer into thinking that a normal user created and posted the commercial, when, infact, it is a corporate controlled commercial.

That bugs some people.

Wendy’s, and other companies, are very smart to tap into the YouTube audience. This video has been viewed close to 600,000 times. Aside from production costs, this was very cheap for Wendy’s.

Coke, wary at first, has now signed a formal deal with Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, the creators of the first exploding Diet Coke-Mentos video These video’s have become so viral and popular (I’ve heard reference to these video’s on Letterman, etc) that Coke has decided to listen up and look at this new distribution medium.

Does your company have a YouTube plan?

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iVillage, a popular website for women, is launching iVillage TV

They will be simultaneously airing the show on TV and the Internet – and they wll be allowing for interactive participation via iVillage.com.

MarketingVOX reports…

The show will feature interactive elements including live-chat at iVillageLive.com, with selected portions of the chat scrolling across the screen during the show’s broadcast. Mobile phone users can also text questions and comments to the show as it is being aired.

Very interesting move. I love the fact that users can express themselves and the chats portions will be displayed on air. I’m anxious to see how it pans out.

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What would you do? I get approached by weight loss websites each week that would like to exchange links with me. From what I understand, link trading isn’t that helpful – or at least it is not as good as receiving an external link by itself.

This week I received a first – someone wanting me to pay for a text link. Their website is a similar theme and their PR is 4. There alexa traffic has been less than WeightLossWars, however they have a recent spike (Nov) which could indicate growth.

My decision process is: PR 4 is pretty good. Non-link trading is better then trading. Cost is cheap (at least in my mind). I doubt this will bring much traffic, but it could improve my PR. Hummmmm….

Now, this decision isn’t that critical, I am mostly curious about what you SEO experts think. Should I be of the mindset to Comments(2)

A good friend recommended David McCullough’s TRUMAN to me and I have really enjoyed it. Imagine living a life that started in the 1800’s, spanned the turn of the century, witnessed the invention of car and flight, the improvements in medicine, two World Wars, becoming president of the United States, the decision to drop the A-bombs, etc, etc. What a life!

McCullough talks about certain “precepts” and “principles” that were engrained in the people “in such times.”

Make yourself useful
Honesty is the Best Policy
Anything worthwhile required effort
If at first you don’t succeed, try try again
Children are a reflection of their parents
Right is Right and Wrong is Wrong
Say what you mean, mean what you say
Keep your word
Never get to big for your britches
Never forget a friend

McCullough points out that many of the most familiar guidelines came directly from the bible…

Honor thy father and mother
A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches
Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before Kings

McCullough adds…

“They were more than just words-to-the-wise, they were bedrock, as clearly established, as integral to the way of life…as were the very landmarks of the community.”

Watching some of the politicians, business leaders and celebrities now days begs the question: Are these principles “bedrock” today? Are they still integral to our way of life? Are they still taught and followed?

What are your thoughts? What principles would you add?

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When you are as prominent as Senator John Kerry you get much more attention for saying stupid things, making mistakes, and being an idiot. I’m a little jealous.

I make so many mistakes its not even funny. In fact, I was presenting this years Holiday Weight Loss Challenge in front of a bunch of companies today and I tried to make a joke that just came out terrible! Because I have about zero prominence, the mistake I made has been forgotten and didn’t do too much damage.

Back to the Senator: I don’t agree with him on 95% of what he says, and I found myself enjoying the exposure he has received for this mistake. I’m sure that’s a flaw in my character.

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I got home late a couple of nights ago and was eating my dinner in front of the TV. As I flipped through the channels, I stopped on the Glenn Beck show on CNN.

He was talking about the crazy Venezuela president and how our voting machines are owned by a Venezuelan company. There is some controversy around the machines and people are worried that the software my have hidden agenda’s and basically “rig” the outcome of the elections.

Anyway - the point is that he said this…

“…we had these voting machines used in Chicago, and they were all screwed up back in March. They sent software engineers — I mean, software Mecca is Salt Lake City. We`re going to Venezuela. They have these guys coming out to repair the software from Venezuela.”

Salt Lake City - the Software Mecca? Is Glenn right? What is he referencing? What do you think?

You can read the transcript of that show here

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