Bohemian Grove is a 2,700-acre (1,100 ha) campground located at 20601 Bohemian Avenue, in Monte Rio, California, belonging to a private San Francisco-based men’s art club known as the Bohemian Club. In mid-July each year, Bohemian Grove hosts a three-week encampment of some of the most powerful men in the world.

Chase is the consumer and commercial banking division of JPMorgan Chase. The bank was known as Chase Manhattan Bank until it merged with JPMorgan in 2000. Chase Manhattan Bank was formed by the merger of the Chase National Bank and the Bank of the Manhattan Company in 1955. The bank is headquartered in Chicago.

The Committee for Economic Development (CED) is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan think tank based in Washington, DC. Its membership consists of some 200 senior corporate executives and university leaders. According to its mission statement, the organization is “dedicated to policy research on the major economic and social issues of our time and the implementation of its recommendations by the public and private sectors.”

CED’s goal is to advance sound public policies that promote long-term and broad-based economic growth and opportunity for all Americans. Major policy issues that CED deals with include education reform, campaign finance reform, international trade and development, Social Security, economic and fiscal policy, workforce development, health care, legal and regulatory reform.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American bipartisan foreign policy membership organization founded in 1921. Located at 58 East 68th Street (Park Avenue) in New York City, with an office in Washington, D.C. Some international journalists believe it to be ‘the most influential foreign-policy think tank.’ It publishes a bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs. It has an extensive website, featuring links to its think tank, The David Rockefeller Studies Program, a new geoeconomic center, Emmy award-winning multimedia Crisis Guides Foreign Affairs, and many other projects, publications, history, biographies of notable directors and other board members, corporate members, and press releases.

The Conference Board, Inc. is a non-profit global business organization supported by business executives that holds conferences, convenes executives and conducts business management research. It holds 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status in the United States. It connects more than 1600 corporations in nearly 60 nations, its worldwide conferences attracting more than 12,000 senior executives each year. These conferences bring together authorities on a wide variety of economic and management issues. More than 150 chief executive officers address Conference Board events each year. Conference Board meetings have been independently rated as one of Americas top speaking platforms. The Conference Board also sponsors and manages more than 100 worldwide management councils, attracting senior executives from virtually every business discipline.

The main offices of the Conference Board are on Third Avenue in New York City. The Conference Board also operates offices in Brussels and Hong Kong. A similar but separate organization exists in Canada, the Conference Board of Canada.

Jon Spector is the current Chief Executive Officer, and Gail Fosler is the current President of The Conference Board. On April 1, 2008, Bart van Ark was appointed as the first non-U.S. Chief Economist in the organization’s 92-year history.

The Conference Board’s Board of Trustees includes prominent chief executives who lead global corporations. About half of these business leaders are based outside the U.S.

Henry Alfred Kissinger (born May 27, 1923) is a German-born American political scientist, diplomat, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration.

A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente. He negotiated a settlement ending the Vietnam War, but the cease-fire proved unstable and no lasting peace resulted beyond the pullout of the US troops.

Kissinger is still praised by colleagues today. He was honored as the first recipient of the Ewald von Kleist Award of the Munich Conference on Security Policy and currently serves as the chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm. Kissinger was the “most frequent visitor” to the George W. Bush White House as an unofficial political adviser on Israel and the Middle East—including the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Kissinger is criticized and even accused of war crimes, most prominently by Christopher Hitchens, for the policies he promoted during the Vietnam war and for his role in the establishment of dictatorial regimes in Latin America.

Duration : 0:9:27

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Short piece on new emerging business paradigm. Interview with Jeff Dunn, Dawna Markova and Richard Barrett, in Costa Rica at the CEO Leadership Summit.

Duration : 0:7:55

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Video from our FREE Online Business Course
http://www.myownbusiness.org
Session 4 – Business Organization

Question:
“What are some of the most common mistakes you see with people going into small business?”

Stan Henslee
Certified Public Accountant (C.P.A.)

Topics covered in this video:
Business mistakes, capital, planning, separation, bank accounts, organization

Transcript:
Basically I think there are three. The first one is that they’re going into the business under-capitalized. They put everything they’ve got into the business at the very start and they don’t have anything to fall back on. If they just had some high limit credit cards that were fairly clean to have something to fall back on to pay the bills when the business takes off a little slower than expected.

The second problem I see is co-mingling funds: paying personal expenses out of the business bank account and paying the business bills out of the personal bank account. You have to keep them separate and you have to treat the business as a separate entity and let it stand on its own.

The third biggest mistake I see, and this cripples most young businesses, is that owners take too much money out of the business in the early stages; where they leave the business under capitalized and no longer have the money needed to replace the product on the shelf or to expand into new areas. That is the kiss of death to a young business.

Duration : 0:1:32

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Video from our FREE Online Business Course
http://www.myownbusiness.org
Session 4 – Business Organization

Question:
“What kind of company structure is right for a home based business?”

Robert O’Dell
E-Information Strategies

Topics covered in this video:
Starting a business, home based business, business organization, researching company structures, sole proprietorship, partnership, forming a corporation, LLC and S-Corporations, getting advice from business professionals such as accountants and business lawyers

Duration : 0:1:44

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Video from our FREE Online Business Course
http://www.myownbusiness.org
Session 4 – Business Organization

Question:
“What are the benefits to outsourcing payroll?

Ken Blake
Certified Public Accountant (C.P.A.)

Topics covered in this video:
Small business accounting, payroll, outsourcing

Transcript:
Well, there are a number of benefits for outsourcing. There are probably three of them that are the best to keep in mind. The first one is there is a privacy factor in the sense that the payroll isn’t available for the employees to see the various salary levels.

The other thing is that it helps on your cash flow because most payroll services will pay the payroll and the payroll taxes as part of the payroll, so you don’t have a bump in your payroll requirements when the payroll taxes are due. So it has a tendency to level out your cash flow.

The third element has to do with reduction in time. It’s a little easier to deal with an outsource company because all you have to do is call in the payroll vs. when you do it yourself. Someone has to sit down and calculate the payroll or at least feed the data into a program and thereby taking up the employee’s time which could be better spent doing other things.

Duration : 0:1:21

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Short piece on new emerging business paradigm. Interview with Jeff Dunn, Richard Hawkes, Dawna Markova and Richard Barrett, in Costa Rica at the CEO Leadership Summit. Looking at business as a platform for solving global issues. Produced by Growth River.

Duration : 0:9:28

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Video from our FREE Online Business Course
http://www.myownbusiness.org
Session 4 – Business Organization

Question:
“Do you have any recommendations on how one should go about evaluating the pros and cons of taking on a partner?”

John Powers
Attorney-at-Law

Topics covered in this video:
Business organization, partnership, finding a business partner, limited liability

Transcript:
Partnership is a very popular form of operating entity. And I think what is most important is to think in terms of a business marriage. You’re going to be living and working with this person on a daily basis, so you want to have somebody you’re compatible with and someone who compliments and perhaps strengthens any weaknesses you have in order to better fulfill the goals of the business. If you have certain strengths but know that you have certain other areas you’re not good at, and you have a proposed partner that maybe strong in those areas, that would be something to consider if you’re able to get along and work out the other issues. I also recommend that with regard to partnerships you investigate whether there are limited liability protections available in your state and also give some thought to what would happened if in fact the partnership fails. Keep in mind that it is just like a business divorce. And you want to have given some thought to that; perhaps have an agreement in writing as to what would happen in that circumstance before you get started.

Duration : 0:1:44

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