Yesterday at dinner our discussion was about the lack of interest or dedication of certain school teachers…

A friend said “ let me tell you something, they don’t care and there is nothing that you can do about it!”

WRONG, there is always something that you can do!!!

Inaction, apathy, passivity means to refuse to fight, to give up on yourself…

I prefer to be wrong and to fail than accept the status quo!

What would I be teaching my kids if I don’t stand up for what I believe is right!

"There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction" John F. Kennedy

Last week in Washington DC, I had dinner with my dear friend Jeffrey Cherry at my favorite restaurant, Maté. Jeff is a successful entrepreneur and the founder of the Conscious Venture Lab and Conscious Capitalism. 
I was impressed by their mission, and therefore requested from Jeff to write a synopsis of his philosophy to share with my readers.

“The concept of the Conscious Venture Lab for me is about the foundation of culture and how relationships lead to greater success.

We believe the most successful companies of the future won’t be those that focus myopically on shareholder value. Rather they will be those that understand

• Employees are our lifeblood and our job is to engage them in a way that they can’t wait to come to work everyday and give us discretionary effort.
  

• Suppliers are our partners and if we treat them as partners and not as servants they will bring us their own innovations and always do their best to help us succeed.
  

• We must treat communities with care, respect and humanity such that they welcome us in and don’t erect barriers to entry and,
  

• We want to have deep emotional relationships, not transactional relationships, with customers so we transcend customer satisfaction and move through loyalty and into a real Love of our company.
  

In order to do these four things you must in fact be focused on making the world a better place. Not because of your product or service, but because of your culture. We believe if your company does these four things you will have many measures of success, not the least of which will be extraordinary financial success.”

Great mission and great job!
Striving for social responsibility helps individuals, organizations and governments to have a positive impact on development, business and society with a positive contribution to bottom-line results.
Social responsibility is a duty every individual has to perform to maintain a balance between the economy and the ecosystems. When the ecosystem is healthy, it is sustainable!

“The price of greatness is responsibility” - Winston Churchill

I am sharing this article about a project that I have been working on for the past 7 to 8 years. It is a project that I have tried several occasions to make work - but failed.

Why am I sharing this article?

Because I want you to understand a concept, the concept of persistence…

The dictionary defines persistence as the firm continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.

When you have a dream, or an idea, you must first believe in your dream; you must see yourself accomplishing the dream.

Then, you need to put a plan together, a plan of action and lastly you must act on your plan!

Almost 100% of the time the initial plan will not work and you will fail.

So you go back to the drawing board and work on a new plan…

While planning your new strategy, you never forget your dream; you never forget your goal.

Then, you take action one more time knowing that your plan might fail once again - and again, and again…

You need to have passion and believe in your dream.  You need to have the determination and the persistence to continue in spite of all the difficulties. Most importantly, you need to be resilient and have the ability to bounce back quickly, reinventing yourself.

This is an idea; a project that has taken me 7 years to realize and at one point, I lost my stamina, to keep going…

Yet, I have a business partner that is determined and persistent that was able to persuade me to come back to Pittsburgh…

A plan is worthless unless you have the determination and persistence to make it work!

Please read the article:http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/blog/the-next-move/2014/03/latin-concepts-owner-fraga-rosenfeld.html