Why Health and Fitness Plus Network Marketing Make a Great Home Business

When you decide to choose a network marketing company, there are so many things to consider. You have to think about the company's compensation plan, learn about their terms of service, etc. However, the most important choice comes down to the product. If you don't choose the right product or service, you may never get your business off of the ground.

There are some network marketing companies out there with products or services that are simply too difficult to sell. Those who do have success with them probably have tremendous sales skills, signed up their family and friends to join them, or spent years building themselves up to a high level. It is critical to choose a product that you resonate with. If you can't believe in it or let alone use it on a regular basis, what makes you think you can convince others to do so?

This is why the health and fitness niche is a winner. I call it an evergreen niche because almost everyone will at some point in their lives want to improve their health. Improving one's health could be losing weight, getting into shape, or maintaining their current health. It is a niche that will never run dry!

The problem is that many of the products that are in the network marketing industry are not ones that promote the proper way to get healthy. They may sell at first because of the "magic bullet" effect of society seeking an easy fix in a pill or shake. Yet, when there are little results to show for it, the sales may run dry. You have to find products that you feel comfortable using, are legitimate, and truly bring results.

The great thing about the health and fitness niche is that you don't have to be a fitness professional to get started. You just need the desire to utilize the products and become a living testimonial to how they help you stay in the best shape of your life. Doing so makes selling as well as recruiting so much easier.

With that being said, choose your company wisely! Consider the health and fitness niche as there are some really excellent products that would make for a great homebased business.

By the way...would you like to learn more about the company I chose that is in the health and fitness industry?

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Heartburn and Acid Reflux - Health and Fitness Discussion

It seems there sure is a lot on television about acid reflux and heartburn these days, and you can barely watch an hour or two of TV without seeing at least one commercial from a pharmaceutical company recommending some great new drug, offered by prescription only, with some fancy name with lots of Z'z, Y's, or X's in it. They promise to help against chest pains, burping, bloating, gas, ulcers, and fix any of the symptoms, nausea, causes, and restore you back to a happy you.

Well, there is an obvious reason why these Big Pharma companies advertise on TV, they know these drugs are amongst their biggest sellers out there, providing 100s of millions of dollars each year to their profit. And they know they need you to go into your doctor and ask for them by name, if they are to get you hooked on buying them. Many doctors realize that when a customer comes in and requests a drug, they better prescribe it or their client is likely to find another doctor. So they do, because it's a catch-22.

"God Bless Advertising" you say, indeed, I agree, and it is rather unfortunate, as one could easily modify their diets, for instance the GERD Diet to stop the causes, rather than seek medicine or treatment to alleviate them from such symptoms. In fact, if you were to do just a little bit of personal research online, you'd find there are all sorts of articles concerning heartburn and acid reflux, and simple things you can do to make things easier on yourself if you suffer from such things.

Of course, if you are like most people, you assume that these TV advertisements and drugs are the answer, and that's fine, but I'd just hope you'd consider alternatives first. Please consider all this, and think about it.

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Building Unity Farm - Automation Arrives

Over the past few months, I've asked a dozen farmers what automation is best for Unity Farm's 15 acres of woodland management, manure movement, trail maintenance, food storage, and orchard harvesting.    I received thirteen different answers ranging from:

Buy John Deere, Kubota is underpowered

Buy Kubota, John Deere is mostly outsourced

Buy from your closest dealer, service really matters

Don't worry about the dealer, do the service yourself

Buy Agricultural tires, they're absolutely necessary

Buy Industrial tires, since Agricultural tires will wreck your property

Buy a skidsteer/compact track loader for work in mud/snow and on hills.   A tractor is for pulling not pushing

Never buy a skidsteer/compact track loader, they lack flexibility.

What did we buy and why?

I know that at least 11 farmers will disagree with me, but we bought a Terex PT30 Compact Track Loader, pictured above in our orchard.    It weighs 3000 pounds, lifts 950 pounds, yet only has 3 PSI pressure on the ground, leaving the trails and turf untouched.   The machine is the evolution of the ASV RC30 and has an advanced track system that does not slip in mud or snow.  

To make the decision, I test drove several devices.   With the PT30, I was able to move 12 cubic feet of mulch, haul 400 pounds of logs up a 15 degree slope, clear the orchard road of snow, move 500 pounds of rocks, and execute numerous zero turning radius redirections on snow in less than 45 minutes.

Unity Farm is a "compact farm" with one mile of trails that are 5 feet wide.   I really do not want to widen the trails, since their current width gives an intimate feeling of being deep in a forest.    The PT30 works on all our trails and turning around in 5 feet is no problem.  Try that with a tractor.

Unity Farm has many slopes, rocks, roots, gates, and narrow passages around outbuildings.   I was able to drive the Terex through all of the them.

This weekend, I'll move a few thousand pounds of wood and a few cubic yards of mulch around 15 acres.   When I told the salesman that I had already moved 10000 pounds of manure, 10000 pounds of logs, and 10000 pounds of mulch with a wheelbarrow and wagon, he asked "are you nuts?".    The answer to that question could be debated.

Unity Farm was built by hand labor, but now that I'm almost 52 years old, I look forward to the automation as I move thousands of pounds around the property every weekend.

Admittedly that Kubota tractor did look appealing, so I did buy one…for my desk.

Another Unity Farm update.   I lecture frequently at Harvard Business School and write for Harvard Business Review (HBR).    My Harvard students and colleagues often asked me, "why didn't you go to 'B' school"?

They're completely right and I'm going to correct this deficit by enrolling in a nighttime executive  'B' school this semester.

I'll learn about Bee biology, site selection, hive manipulation, four seasons management, honey extraction, and disease control.

In addition to my degrees from Stanford, UCSF, UCLA, Harvard, and MIT, I'll proudly add the 'B' school certificate to my CV this April.

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Management Lessons Learned from A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones is the first novel in A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of high fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin.

I rarely watch television, but for Christmas, my wife bought me Season 1 of  Game of Thrones, the HBO series inspired by the novels.  Don't worry, this blog post will not contain any spoilers.

Watching the characters jockey for power and influence reminded me of my experience navigating organizations over the course of my career.   Here are my top lessons learned from the series:

1.  Doing the right thing does not always work

I have strongly believed that the nice guy can finish first and that in the long term those with strength of moral character will triumph.    In Game of Thrones, some of the moral characters are outfoxed by manipulative, cruel, and deceptive characters.   One character notes "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die."     I have no plans to change my personal philosophy or approach to life, but it is interesting to reflect that some battles cannot be won with honor if your opponents are truly evil.

2.  There should be alignment of authority and responsibility.

One character notes "The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword."   It's easy for management to make decisions when someone else has to implement them.  Over the course of my career, I've been careful to "eat my own dog food" using the products I'm responsible for creating, making hard decisions then executing them, and taking responsibility for consequences that even indirectly result from my actions.   In organizations where there is a disconnect between authority and responsibility, chaos reigns if you lack authority to manage change in your areas of responsibility or if you have authority but are not responsible for your actions.

3.  You need to choose your goals and stick to them.

One of the characters is torn between honor and family.   He does not know whether to stay with his new colleagues (as he as sworn to do) or travel to aid his family in a time of war.   He struggles with the decision and for a time pursues neither goal.   Eventually he chooses honor and is "all in" with that goal, knowing that many others will assist his family and all will be well.

4.  Strategy matters.

In the series, an extremely wealthy family attempts to win a war by being better resourced.   Another family with fewer resources strategically outmaneuvers the wealthy family by building alliances and separating their forces into two contingents, using the element of surprise to achieve victory.     Good planning is just as important as good execution.

5.  You can't predict the future, but you can react to events around you to make the future.

One of the characters is a young and untested leader, willing to grow and make thoughtful decisions as she gains experience.   Events occur around her beyond her control.   She reacts to them calmly and in the best interests of others.  Eventually circumstances change and she seizes the opportunity to move beyond her formal authority, creating loyalty with the informal authority derived from her unique abilities.


We all grow over time and engage in own Game of Thrones at a micro level as we journey through our careers.   Many of the characters in Game of Thrones and in our workplaces are morally ambiguous.   I live each day knowing that I cannot control the behavior of others, only my reaction to it.  Guided by my values, I've been able to achieve little victories in the game of life.

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Building Unity Farm - Winter Fermentations

It's the dead of winter in New England, with new snow on the ground and temperatures near zero.    The animals are clustered together in their barn spaces and heated buckets are keeping their water liquid.

There are many indoor tasks to do on the farm during winter - sharpening chain saw chains and other tools, reorganizing the workbench, ordering seeds, planning for Spring planting (we've been tractor shopping), and nurturing all the fermentations begun in the Fall.

Our fermentations include 3 kinds of cider, mead, cyser (a mixture of cider and honey), vinegar, sourdough,sauerkraut, and fermented pickles.   Here's an overview

1.   Cider, Mead and Cyser

Although we bottled 4 cases of sparking cider in the Fall, we still have 12 cases in the fermenters.    Fermenter #1 is a Champagne Yeast fermentation of 11 different kinds of apples kept at 52F in our mudroom to prevent Malolactic fermentation.  The malic acid in apples is a dicarboxylic acid with a sharpness/crispness that I like in a sparkling cider.  Think of it as the flavor of a green apple.    When I make sparkling cider, I add 6 grams/liter of dextrose at bottling to prime the cider for carbonation.  The malic acid and dextrose create a harmonious flavor that's very refreshing.   I typically have a 16 ounce bottle of sparkling cider with lunch on weekends.   After 2 months of aging, the ph of this cider is 3.75 and the malic acid taste is very notable.

Fermenter #2 is a Champagne Yeast fermentation of 11 different kinds of apples with added Malolactic bacteria culture.   After two months, the ph of this cider is 4.15, much softer and smoother given that most of the malic acid has been converted to lactic acid, which has only a single carboxyl group.  I'll bottle this cider uncarbonated - as still cider.   Malolactic fermentation changes the flavor a bit, adding the kind of butteriness you taste in most Chardonnays.

Fermenter #3 is a Champagne Yeast fermentation  of 11 different kinds of apples with added Malolactic bacteria culture.   The yeast has exhausted many of the nutrients in the cider due to a Keeving process  I used during the initial fermentation.  It's fermenting very slowly and I believe I will end up with a smooth cider with a small amount of residual sweetness.  I'll bottle this cider uncarbonated as well.   The ph of this Cider is 4.07.

The taste among the three is remarkably different and we'll see which one is best once I bottle them in the Spring.

The mead and cyser fermentations continue.   At the first racking, the specific gravity of the mead decreased from 1.090 to 1.030, yielding 8% alcohol.    The specific gravity of the cyser decreased from 1.085 to 1.010, yielding 10% alcohol.   We'll continue fermentation until the Spring and bottle them uncarbonated in 375ml clear wine bottles once fully fermented to a specific gravity of 1.000.

2.  Apple Cider vinegar

I separated 20 liters of hard cider from the other fermenting batches, added mother of vinegar  and stored it in the basement, open to the air.   When it is finished, the titratable acidity will be 5%.  It's currently at 2% and has a remarkable flavor without being overpowering.


3. Sourdough
We use the King Arthur Starter and keep buckets of active sourdough growing in our mudroom.

4.  Sauerkraut
We use a 5 liter Harsch crock and weights with the following recipe

3kg of cabbage
15 grams of salt

Remove wilted outer leaves of cabbage head, and the stalk. Shred cabbage.

Layer the cabbage, sprinkle some salt then press down with a fist until juice appears. Repeat until pot is full.

Lay on the weights and if there is not enough juice, add cooled boiled salt water (15gm salt per liter ratio)

Close lid, then add plain water to the rim (water trap)

Leave pot at room temperature for 3 days until you hear some bubbling.

Move to a cooler room for 4-6 weeks

Move into large Ball jars in the refrigerator.   Eat within a month.


5. Fermented Pickles

We use a food grade 2 gallon bucket and a plate on top as a weight
2 pounds freshly picked firm, unwaxed, bumpy pickling cucumbers, often called Kirby
2 cloves spring garlic, sliced thin
1 dill flower, or 5 sprigs fresh dill or 1 teaspoon dill seed
1/2 teaspoon coriander seed
1/2 jalapeño, seeded and slivered
2 tablespoons salt

Soak cucumbers for 30 minutes in a bowl filled with ice water to loosen any dirt. Slice the blossom end off each cucumber, which is opposite the stem end. If you aren’t sure which end is which, slice a little off each. Cut cucumbers into spears or chunks, if desired.

Pack cucumbers into one or two clean quart jars. Tuck in garlic, dill, coriander and jalapeño, if using.

Add salt to two cups boiling water. Stir until dissolved. Add two cups of ice (made with filtered water if yours is chlorinated). Stir well until the ice has melted and the brine is cool. Pour brine into jars, covering cucumbers.

Loosely cap jars and place in a bowl or pan because the jars may leak during fermentation.

Leave pickles on the counter to ferment. The brine will bubble lazily and become cloudy. Taste after 3 days, leaving on the counter another day or two if you want your pickles more sour, or refrigerating if they’re ready. They keep a month in the refrigerator.


It's time to put another log on the fire and listen to the subtle bubbling of our winter fermentations.

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Advice to the New National Coordinator

Karen DeSalvo started as the new National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology on January 13, 2014.   After my brief discussion with her last week, I can already tell she's a good listener, aware of the issues, and is passionate about using healthcare IT as a tool to improve population health.   She is a cheerleader for IT, not an informatics expert.  She'll rely on others to help with the IT details, and that's appropriate.

What advice would I give her, given the current state of healthcare IT stakeholders?

1.  Rethink the Certification Program -  With a new National Coordinator, we have an opportunity to redesign certification. As I've written about previously some of the 2014 Certification test procedures have negatively impacted the healthcare IT industry by being overly prescriptive and by requiring functionality/workflows that are unlikely to be used in the real world.   One of the most negative aspects of 2014 certification is the concept of "certification only".   No actual clinical use or attestation is required but software must be engineered to incorporate standards/processes which are not yet mature.   An example is the "transmit" portion of the view/download/transmit patient/family engagement requirements.   There is not yet an ecosystem for patients to "transmit" using CCDA and Direct, yet vendors are required to implement complex functionality that few can use.   I completely support the idea of "transmit", but it should have waited until the ecosystem was mature enough to make it an attestation requirement.  Another example is the use of QRDA I and QRDA III for quality reporting.   CMS cannot yet receive such files but EHRs must send them in order to be certified.   The result of this certification burden is a delay in 2014 certified product availability.   Certification should focus on rigorous interoperability testing, using mature standards, in practical use cases, supported by the evidence and experience.

2.  Evaluate the collective timelines of Meaningful Use, ICD10-CM, ACA and the HIPAA Omnibus Rule - Thousands of pages of regulations are hitting the industry at the same time and it's clear that like healthcare.gov, haste will make waste.   My suggestion - extend Meaningful Use Stage 2 Year One attestation by 6-12 months (not just delay Stage 3 a year as has already been done) to enable clinicians to install certified software, redesign workflows, be properly trained, and educate their patients about the new functionality available.   I realize this may be a regulatory leap, but I've seen new rule making done as corrective action in the past.  Although I believe ICD10-CM requires more testing (the CMS planned March testing is not enough) and most applications will not contain the clinical documentation improvement features needed for clinicians to adequately justify the new codes, most hospitals have put so much time and resources into ICD-10-CM projects that they cannot afford to extend the project beyond October 1.  For ACA, re-evaluate quality measure submission requirements per point #4 below.   For the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, rethink the accounting of disclosures scope and timing.

3.  Declare victory for Meaningful Use -  Stage 1 of Meaningful Use was a phenomenal success.   Adoption rates of good EHRs by hospitals and eligible professionals has tripled.   Public health reporting and interoperability are accelerating.   Awareness of security issues has markedly improved.   Stage 1 was seen as a tide floating all boats.   Stage 2 was greeted with less excitement.   It exceeded the capacity of many organizations from a technology, policy, and workflow perspective.  It has been described as a burden that has slowed innovation, consumed industry resources, and co-opted local agendas for quality improvement projects.   However, it has many benefits and those gains can be captured with enough time.   By the end of Meaningful Use Stage 2, hospitals and eligible professionals will have reached a breaking point in their capacity to absorb regulatory burdens, so we have to progress beyond 2017 very thoughtfully.   If our policy goals are outcomes based, then we should offer a Stage 3 regulation which enables organizations to qualify for incentives if outcomes are achieved using IT as an enabler.   We should not prescribe specific functionality for the EHR other than interoperability and security.  As noted in point #1, focusing on certification and attestation for interoperability is reasonable as long as there are no "certification only" functions mandated.     We should eliminate penalties for non-compliance with Stage 3 and return EHR innovation to customers and vendors.   Meaningful Use will have succeeded if we capture the gains of Stage 1 and 2, then focus on Stage 3 incentives that drive us to better outcomes, rather than penalizing providers for not checking more attestation boxes.

4.  Fund pilots and research -  We are on the cusp of a sea change in interoperability, population management, and clinical decision support.   CCD led to CCDA which leads to FHIR for content summary exchange.    The Direct protocol will evolve to a RESTful interface using OAuth/OpenID for trust fabric creation.   However, we're not going to make the move to FHIR and REST unless pilots (followed by agile development of implementation guides) are funded to enable incremental progress.   FHIR is too new and REST has too many industry skeptics.   The pilots will create a tipping point which mitigates risk and enables progress.   Also, two of the great challenges in informatics - automated quality measures (QueryHealth and HQMF) and nationally curated decision support (Health eDecisions) would benefit from pilots.   In point #1 I noted that we need mature standards but at present our quality measurement and decision support standards are immature.   If we pilot them and revise them, we'll mitigate risk and can consider the use of quality and decision support standards which are optimized for purpose in future interoperability certification.

5.  Continue the ONC convening function for standards, privacy/security, and hearings to capture lessons learned about adoption/implementation -  ONC provides a very important and unique convening function in which issues can be discussed by multiple stakeholders.   There will be an ongoing need for standards selection and revision, bridging the work of standards development organizations and clinical stakeholders.   Privacy and security policy is informed and improved through national debate of the issues.   Evaluating the successes and shortcomings of the EHR related regulations is important to future refinement.   I suggest that ONC/CMS limit their regulatory focus on Meaningful Use requirements related to mature interoperability standards and privacy/security (as noted above), and focus much more on bridging gaps in five key areas:  a)  ONC versus CMS (certification versus attestation); b)  HHS versus CMS (disparate quality measure and other reporting requirements within the HHS domain); c) the government versus market (vendors and providers); d) vendors versus providers; and e)  providers versus patients.  In practical terms, this would focus less on a core belief that 'all EHRs should do X, Y and Z' to a focus on 'given what we are learning about an ever-evolving market (e.g., new payment models, new delivery models such as Patient Centered Medical Home, new technologies, new patient engagement models, etc), what EHR interoperability needs, quality measures, and privacy/security safeguards are needed.'

It's a fragile time at ONC when the excitement of the ARRA/HITECH funded grant programs has passed, many people have departed, and Congress is wary of IT projects in general.

Karen is the right person for the job at this time in history, just as her predecessors were the right people for their eras.   She can regain the trust of Congress, make midcourse corrections to the Meaningful Use program, and balance the burden/benefit on stakeholders.   If she can rebuild a city's health system after Katrina, she can polish those elements of the ONC strategy that experience in the marketplace has deemed to be necessary.

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Building Unity Farm - The Sounds of Unity Farm

Since moving to the farm in April of 2012, I've posted many pictures of our efforts to create a working farm in Sherborn, Massachusetts.   Although it's winter, the farm still bustles with activity.   To give you a sense of what I experience every morning as I walk through the barnyard tending to the creatures, I carried an Olympus USB audio recorder with me on a recent morning.

On the front of the farmhouse we have a rain chain in lieu of gutters that drains into a cistern to capture water.    It was raining during my recording you'll hear my walk from farm house, past the rain chain, to feed the guinea hens and ducks.

After feeding the ducks and guineas I sat with the chickens for a few minutes and fed them scratch grains.   Our two roosters decided to compare their voices.

The duck pond was thawing as the temperatures warmed and I spent a moment clearing the ice so that the birds could enjoy open flowing water.

I brought fresh lettuce from the hoop house to the birds  and placed it in a large rubber bowl so all the animals could enjoy a taste of summer during the winter.   The guineas squawked with joy as they crunched the leaves.

The northern border of Unity Farm is mixed forest and wetlands.   The western border is the Dowse apple orchard.  The southern border is another farm.   The eastern border is the CSX rail line (map below) for slow moving freight trains that travel between Framingham and Foxboro.   At 7am, 12:30pm, and 2:30pm and 11:30pm, we hear the gentle rumble of a freight train in the distance, 10 acres away through our forest.   Here's what the morning train sounds like from the barn.

Every season brings new sights and sounds on the farm.  This spring many migratory birds will return and nest at Unity Farm.   This summer, we'll experience the birth of several baby alpaca.   The Fall brings the rustle of falling leaves.   More sound posts to come!

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