New Challenges- Strong People- Abundance of Ideas: Change Is In The Air

"It's no secret that people are excited and motivated to join a company with passion and excitement." (Photo via Zack Kanter)

Good Morning Folks, 

I read this weekend in Zack Kanter's blog that like Google, Uber, one of the world's biggest job creators who no one saw coming, is working towards a 2025 goal of all autonomous cars which would slash the entire workforce they JUST created. 

Autonomous cars will be commonplace by 2025 and have a near monopoly by 2030, and the sweeping change they bring will eclipse every other innovation our society has experienced. They will cause unprecedented job loss and a fundamental restructuring of our economy, solve large portions of our environmental problems, prevent tens of thousands of deaths per year, save millions of hours with increased productivity, and create entire new industries that we cannot even imagine from our current vantage point.

I think the huge disruptions of the last couple of decades will start looking pretty trivial pretty soon. And "gradual" is a relative term -- the pace of change is accelerating exponentially too. No doubt the economic impacts will be as great or greater than Zack describes in his article about Uber, whether precisely on this schedule or not.

Bottom line: The face of business is changing all around us and and the pressure is on to innovate or perish. Employment in America is increasingly operating in a new reality. The constancy of change requires today's career employee to think and act differently, because the path to the American Dream is no longer a guaranteed right of passage. 

Young Americans are being crushed by college debt. And even with college degrees, many of them can't find jobs. Older candidates faced an even harder time regaining employment during and after the Great Recession. 

Most of the gen x and younger Americans no longer have long work histories at any one particular company. It's a nomadic life of constantly on the look out for greener pastures.

The career escalator is jammed at every level. Unemployment rates are sky-high. Creative disruption is shaking every industry. Global competition for jobs is fierce. The employer-employee pact is over and traditional job security is a thing of the past.

That's why managers MUST navigate a brave new world in which companies must manage four different generations from millennials to boomers — each with different needs and motivations. 

That's why all business, law firms too, must run as better businesses.

In order to run better as businesses, law firms need true "Strategic Partners" (not just "vendors") to help them (re)IMAGINE....possibilities. To provide the ability to do what they would want to do if only they knew it was possible.                                  

It's no secret that people are excited and motivated to join a company with passion and excitement. In order to represent FSO with the “confidence, knowledge, professionalism, smiles and spark!” that we’ve pledged to in our 2015 Corporate Goals, we continue to make strategic adjustments and investments to support our foundation.

Steven Di Venuta joins us in New York City as our newest Director of Business Development. First and foremost, Steven’s power of focus will be dedicated to hunting new business and getting FSO new and amazing logos from around the country. In particular, Steven will be focusing on hunting and closing national legal accounts, particularly AmLaw 100 – 200 accounts to help expand our legal footprint. Steven will also own the growth of over 20 current FSO clients and help to further drive our national presence and revenue growth. Steven has built a reputation for sales and operational excellence, innovative strategic thinking and a deep and passionate commitment to his clients- each of which will help him drive FSO’s success around the country.

As FSO continues to sell across the United States, spotting and hiring great talent is and will continue to be our priority. That being said, I am pleased to announce the hiring of Ron Kelly, Senior Account Executive for Chicago. Ron is a very passionate individual who hates to lose! Ron is a “sales guru” (so he says, but the proof will be in the sound of ringing bells!), with 20 years of experience under his belt and still salivates over the art of the deal.

Amelia Ramos will be joining the Office of the Chief of Staff. Reporting into Denise Ngeow (SVP Corporate Strategy and Chief of Staff) and with a dotted line to Aida Hibbert (Experience Director for Field/Operations), Amelia will be focusing on strategy, learning the business end-to-end, including marketing, research and process planning.

Amelia’s responsibilities will include working with the front of house at headquarters to understand and evaluate our approach to the business and clients’ needs and to simultaneously develop a strong understanding of our hospitality model. She will help manage and deliver a solid people management program at the sites and will provide administrative support, as needed, for onsite processes and best practices at HQ. Finally, Amelia will be working with the People Solutions Team to support and deliver the FSO initiative “the happiest place to work”.

In presentation after presentation we hear that the back office folks are being forgotten about. That they are unhappy with their the outsourcing vendor, who has failed its people by neglecting focus on motivation AND training.

Seriously, every account we've won and in growing the business so rapidly in just 48 months was a client of someone else who let them down. In this economy, bigger conglomerates look to cut costs, but make a big mistake when they skimp on training. By neglecting to properly and consistently train their folks, our competitors have opened the door for others to eat their lunch.

Training is OUR competitive difference, and folks from all walks of the company are taking advantage of it.

That's where Onsite Outsourcing with Future State Outsourcing (FSO) shines. We excel at attracting and retaining inspired and passionate people with performance-based rewards and opportunities for advancement.

By partnering with FSO, outsourcing can become a leverage that can help use new resources for new projects and help drive revenue growth. 

We are on fire and we are going to LIGHT UP the ON SITE OUTSOURCING BUSINESS. We are not playing in this space. We are here to own it, and will be adding resources proactively and strategically to support our budding infrastructure."

Why? Because we CARE, we laugh, we love and we have fun! And we keep commitments many companies have strayed away from. J

Have a great week and thanks for being a part of our amazing journey.

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

   

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POSSIBILITY:

"Give your customers the ability to do what they would want to do if only they knew it was possible.” 

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Introducing A New Title With The Same Laser Focus On Pleasing You: Business Operations Manager

"I recall the Experience Service Extraordinaire banner which states “You say jump, We say how high?” These are the words that need to go through everyone 'sbrain when dealing with our clients."

Good Morning Folks,

Welcome to 2015 where we at FSO are focused on a very clear business model of People + Solutions, + Technology with greater energy, investment, smarts and focus than ever before. 

We have had an outstanding start the year…. Recognition… Management Meetings.. goals and objectives for 2015, new focus on site staff, field ops focused like never before on owning the client, new messaging (including spelling out FSO= Future State Outsourcing), and loving the employees and much much more. 

Look out to 2015!!!  Where you can count on us to show you new possibilities, new revenue and all the happiness and peace of mind you’ve come to expect from FSO.

But today I wanted to focus on our decision to retitle our field management, those folks responsible for the ultimate success of your site to Business Operations Managers and their bosses to Business Operation s Directors.

Boston's Jonathan Ramos, a Business Operations Manager at IMG explains:  

My name is Jonathan Ramos and I manage one of our national client sites - IMG. With over 8 years of outsourcing operations experience, I was recently recognized in our annual awards as an Experience Manager of 2014  and I wanted to share with you all what I see the true new role of a Business Operations Manager is.

What is a Business Operations Manager?

A Business Operations Manager is an FSO employee whose responsibility is to manage an operation for a client as if it was their own. A BOM owns their operation and is always looking for ways to run their businesses the most cost effective and efficient way possible while offering value add services. AS BOMs we must increase recurring income and increase value of our services and staff onsite.

A situation at IMG showed the true need of a strong Business Operations manager. IMG recently went through management changes and needed to ensure their sites exemplified synergies amongst their service lines and wellness program. Within 1 week, we were able to establish a vendor relationship with one of the preferred FSO  vendors. I reached out to the ED’s and obtained information in regards to vendor relationships FSO currently has. Angel Negron sent the info with-in minutes. We were able to increase recurring income while providing savings to our client. These savings secured the income and value while ensuring the client that we have their best interest at heart. A strong BOM needs to take ownership and be able to go above and beyond but also use the resources available to them..

A BOM’s responsibility is take on as much as possible. This will assist in growing and transitioning into a future role. As an FSO BOM I began identifying talent on my time off and handing out my business cards. All employees at IMG are also trained to contact me with issues before escalating to corporate in regards to benefits and payroll in case I am able to assist immediately. I recall the Experience Service Extraordinaire banner which states “You say jump, We say how high?” These are the words that need to go through everyone brain when dealing with our clients. BOMs empower their teams while maintaining a positive mind set. We understand client satisfaction and use our resources to ensure it excels their expectations. We create a game plan and attack immediately before our competition can even process the ideas we are putting out. All BOMs lead by example and are always aware of their energy and enthusiasm. Our energy is what fuels our staff in order to impress our clients. And we do all this with a big smile.

Think about our great company. It all starts with new logo activity. Our presentation team of the sales force and many others is simply unmatched. 

Our People Solutions team that supports our field organization is bigger and better than ever before and ready to get out there an help all the teams. 

And our ops team. Well they are on fire. Delivering service like never before. And THANK YOU HQ.  We appreciate the hard work. Long hours and the solidifying of our policies, process, technology and more at HQ to ensure we are the best machine possible for our clients.

As Business Operations Managers, please OWN your sites and own them for our clients and for FSO. We need to perform this daily and as we say in our daily huddles “It’s not only today, but every day.” 

Following the role of a BOM will ensure success and a clear vision to 2020. 

Lots of great things ahead. We are blessed with amazing people. We have work to do but what company does not especially since we are still in start up mode if you will. 

Love life. Love your staff. Love your clients and love the prospect. Have everyone feel it. 

Enjoy. Stay warm and stay in touch. 

Have a GREAT DAY as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

   

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POSSIBILITY:

"Give your customers the ability to do what they would want to do if only they knew it was possible.” 

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Shift Happens. Starting Now.

"We live and work in difficult times. Today, change is everywhere, competition is fierce, and windows of opportunity slam shut before they’re even fully open. You've got to lead or be trampled. And, after months of strategy sessions and careful planning, lead is exactly what FSO intends to."

Good Morning Folks,

I hope you are as rested and relaxed as I am after a long holiday break and ready to plunge head-first into 2015 with all the passion, enthusiasm and quest for success that we aspire to.

One of my favorite  bloggers, Seth Godin, served his short but pithy messages to over 3 million folks last year and got enough accolades to have his most popular messages reprinted by the New York Times. That alone shows you a shift in media, a shift in thinking and a trend which ushers in this New Year in general— Shift, change or get out of the way.

We live and work in difficult times. Today, change is everywhere, competition is fierce, and windows of opportunity slam shut before they’re even fully open. You've got to lead or be trampled. And, after months of strategy sessions and careful planning, lead is exactly what FSO intends to.

One of Seth's final posts of 2014 was titled "Used to be." He reasoned:

• This hotel used to be a bank. 
• That conference organizer used to be a travel agent. 
• This company used to make playing cards.

"Used to be," is not necessarily a mark of failure or even obsolescence. It's more often a sign of bravery and progress.

At FSO we are we are fired up and ready to step up our operations and deliver better services that have substance, an impact on the bottom line, operational and strategic smarts.  2015 at FSO are focused on a very clear business model of People + Solutions, + Technology with greater energy, investment, smarts and focus than ever before.

Technology and business are evolving faster than your ability to adapt. "Used to be," counts for less and less. Therefore, 2015 will be all about Possibility: The ability of Outsourcing to support any and every strategic business need.  Our caring and supportive employees are here to provide unlimited value add services to help you gain additional revenue.

We express this in three simple buckets People + Solutions + Technology. 

+ People

People have always been our strength and focus and remain the foundation upon which to build every service offering. Our strategy is straightforward - we team the latest technologies with a highly trained, motivated, team oriented, passionate people who care about delivering the FSO Experience and doing a great job for our clients. We will stand out from the crowd with the most comprehensive training, awards and recognition programs in the industry and will be the happiest place to work. FSO’s employees will always have that “twinkle in the eye, skip in the step, fire in the belly,” which ultimately results in exceptional service delivery. 

+ Solutions

Outsourcing is increasingly considered to be a strategic decision. By pairing People + Solutions + Technology, FSO is adding real innovation to outsourcing to deliver value added services and gain additional revenue. Outsourcing is no longer just about saving costs. FSO provides operational expertise, service lines, resources and capabilities many companies do not possess and we are committed to challenging our clients to open their minds to the world of possibilities in the strategic and tactical running of their business.

+Technology

New technologies can have revolutionary impacts with widespread and unexpected benefits. But how technology adds value to the people solutions and advice we provide is what sets FSO apart. With the introduction of BlueSky Solutions, powered by Salesforce.com, we have many unique offerings in the market and competitive advantages which delivers a unique level of strategic support and advice for our clients. While we are partners, we are always thinking about how technology can drive out costs and cycles, and make visibility, transparency and accountability a real time event.

FSO has dedicated significant resources in order to further support the growth and expansion nationwide. But we could not make the shift without a strong leadership team who collectively has hundreds of years of onsite outsourcing experience, having created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and solid solutions that have provided decades of success to tens of thousands of organizations.

FSO is all about engagement with our clients and becoming part of your business family. Our leadership team’s experience and ideas have come from the streets and not from behind a desk or from sitting in board meetings with endless graphs full of “why nots.” Our leadership team is out in the field with you - our clients – listening, impacting and improving the services we deliver every day. In addition to our proven leaders, Our Future Leaders are truly one of our greatest assets. Our mission with Future Leaders is develop business leaders across the FSO enterprise.

My commitment is to be out in the field amongst our employees and clients every single day to ensure that his personal touch and commitment to them is being felt and experienced by all. 

Every account we've won and in growing the business so rapidly in just 60 months was a client of someone else who let them down. In this economy, bigger conglomerates look to cut costs, but make a big mistake when they skimp on training. By neglecting to properly and consistently train their folks, our competitors have opened the door for others to eat their lunch.

Training is OUR competitive difference, and folks from all walks of the company are taking advantage of it. We couldn’t be more excited with the well-deserved promotion of Missy Adriazola to lead the charge. 

As technology continues to move faster and faster, rapidly innovating companies will find that trustability and management accountability will become indispensable. Moreover, when it’s not your core competency  it’s vital to have someone else managing it who knows how to hire and train in that type of role.

FSO's surge in growth and expansion throughout the United States has been largely driven by market and client demands. Our clients are asking us to grow with them. As they expand, they want FSO by their side. Leading that charge is Jim Caton.

Hospitality is Jim’s DNA. He has perfected the art of working closely with our national clients and our onsite teams in the field and remains highly engaged with every aspect of our client’s operations. Jim is tasked with expansion, while overseeing and ensuring service extraordinaire for existing business.

Operational best practices continue to be our greatest asset. Accordingly, Bomsi Billimoria joined FSO as Chief Operations Officer (COO) and our Executive Leadership Team (ELT) to apply his first-hand client-side insights working among 160,000 employees and $2 trillion in total assets! Bomsi reports directly to Mitch and is responsible for all of the tri-state operations and staff. 

In a day and age when technology carries equal weight in relevance to people + solutions, Our Chief Information Officer, Thomas Pategas, provides a unique level of strategic support and advice for our clients.  Not only does our CIO provide unbiased hardware and software recommendations, but he also has the strategic experience to ensure our solutions are in line with our clients overall IT device management, strategic goals, and budget. HE is always thinking about how technology can drive out costs and cycles, while making possible for you what was not possible before. 

While we are partners, we are always thinking about how technology can drive out costs and cycles, and make visibility, transparency and accountability a real time event.

We appreciate and value your trust last year - we are blessed to have such loyal customers.

Look out to 2015!!!  Where you can count on us to show you new possibilities, new revenue and all the happiness and peace of mind you’ve come to expect from FSO.

Have a GREAT DAY as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

   

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POSSIBILITY:

"Give your customers the ability to do what they would want to do if only they knew it was possible.” 

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Only 51 More Days Till The Happiest Time of The Year... Unless...

Photo: BitterSweetColours

"There'll be parties for hosting

Marshmallows for toasting

And caroling out in the snow

There'll be scary ghost stories

And tales of the glories

Of Christmases long, long ago

It's the most wonderful time of the year"

Good Morning Folks,

It's love at first chill with Christmas already in the air. 

New York City is always great but I think it's magical on Christmas! It's bustling with so much energy and life. Everyone is walking briskly, smiling, saying hello, preparing to tip and thank the service people who support and make possible the great lives they enjoy in a very special place.

Such expressions of gratitude are an emotion so powerful it can transform ones mood from darkness to healing light and renew our zest for life.

Being grateful is an attitude of deep appreciation for the realities that surround us "moment to moment"...each day of our life.

But you don 't have to wait for Christmas to be happy. If you are stuck in a dead end job or responsible for back office support and get greeted in the morning by the Debbie Downer receptionist face, find deadlines unmet, critical support staff calling in sick, criticism rather than compliments from the boss, voice mail loops and layers of management bureaucracy instead of answers, FSO can change your destiny. Because happiness lives, breathes and starts everyday with you smiling right here. 

FSO is driven by passionate people and the value they create. They are passionate about their work. Their passion and enthusiasm are the fuel that ignites our success. If there's one thing that FSO lives and breathes everyday – it's the employee experience. We focus on motivating and driving the hourly employee to deliver great service with a skip to their step, twinkle in the eye and fire in the belly.

Growing our folks is my legacy. My care. And my passion. 

Such happiness is contagious –– when the boss has it, it trickles down throughout the entire organization and beyond to its clients. Happiness can spread to everyone who has a dream, a goal, and the will to change. Happiness can elevate and inspire people to make real and lasting changes in their own lives. Today, an enormous opportunity exists to (re) imagine and reinvigorate your workplace and workforce with FSO.

Clients like to think of FSO as the Ritz Carlton of the outsourcing business. Our team takes great pride in all that we do for you. We're all about making the Hospitality service, a pleasant and seamless experience, every single day. Whenever, wherever and however, our Team we'll always be there. 

We continually strive to go "above and beyond" with our clients to provide the most enjoyable experience with the finest personal service and facilities and fulfilling even the unexpressed wishes and needs.

And we always deliver the rare, exceptional level of service that is really worthy of your gratitude. Unlike those Christmas envelopes you'll soon be delivering then shaking your head pondering "for what"?

There is  a poem. by an unknown author I discovered on Kate's site...

Smiling is infectious
You can catch it like the flu.
When someone smiled at me today
I started smiling too.

I passed around the corner
And someone saw my grin.
When he smiled I realized
I’d passed it on to him.

I thought about that smile,
Then I realized it’s worth.
A single smile just like mine
Could travel round the world.

So, if you feel a smile begin,
Don’t leave it undetected,
Let’s start an epidemic quick
And get the world infected!

That in mind please enjoy with my compliments this amazing version of the #1 Christmas anthem of all-time, based on the movie of the same name, It's the Most Wonderful Time featuring Natalie Cole and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

If you'd like the words from the song, go here. If you'd really like to get into the spirit f the season by viewing photos of New York at it's finest from the source of the one featured above go here.

And if you'd like to turn those outsourcing frowns to smiles, talk to us, witness us. We'll   take you on a tour of client sites and and let you taste the FSO experience first-hand where you'll see how different life has become for some of the best known-brands in the world.

Call me personally at 212-204-1193.

Feel the FSO Experience - and ensure everyone around you does too. 

Here's to a wonderful week!

Love Life!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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"The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. 
It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us.” 
~~ Ashley Montagu

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When Times Grow Tough, A Leader's True Colors Are Revealed

"Regardless of where you work, always continue to learn what makes leaders successful and what makes them fail" 

Good Morning Folks,

As I have often reminded our teams, anything is possible. Regardless of where you work, or what you do, always continue to learn what makes people successful and what makes them fail.

Because.. The most important resource in the entire universe is YOU. Products, services, innovation, ideas, breakthroughs – they all exist in your head, your heart and your hands. The output of your thinking, the engaging of your heart and the enlistment of your hands create profound results.

“Successful people do what unsuccessful people can’t do”. Find me anyone with skip, fire and twinkle who wants to learn and grow, and I will promise you a career in my company, never just a job. No one ever sets out to be average at FSO, we need to be the best at everything we do.

I am forever grateful to you all for being such a loyal audience and for the great feedback you've been sending my way. I really appreciate it!

Great leadership seems easy when things are good and everybody's happy. When times grow tough, however, a leader's true colors are revealed.

Ten years ago, a group of U.S. soldiers tasted combat for the first time in Sadr City, Iraq. Bill Murphy Jr. got to know one of the junior U.S. leaders in that battle when he wrote a book about West Point and wartime.  

Murphy chronicles the lives of representative 2002 graduates of the United States Military Academy. A former trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and an army veteran, Murphy was protégé of celebrity journalist Bob Woodward and has military experience that may have helped him connect to his subjects and perhaps encouraged them to be open with him. He also reported from Iraq for the Post. Here's an excerpt from In Time of War that first appeared in INC:

Dave Swanson was a 26-year-old lieutenant then. He's out of the military now, and we talked recently about what he learned by leading 40 soldiers in 82 straight days of combat. Most of us probably won't be taking a platoon into a hail of gunfire anytime soon, but applying these principles can greatly improve your effectiveness as a leader, no matter what challenges you face. 

1. Control your fear.
As bullets whizzed by him for the first time, Swanson says he was very much afraid. However, he realized he had to subdue his fear because his soldiers were looking to him for clues as to how they should react. 

Courage doesn't mean the absence of fear, and of course being a leader certainly doesn't mean charging ahead blindly in the face of adversity. It does mean you can't allow your fear to become contagious. Your team needs to believe you're in control of yourself, if they're to have confidence that you can make smart decisions in tough times. 

2. Remember that the mission comes first.
You owe a lot to your team for giving you the privilege of placing their trust in you. First on the list, you owe them a goal worth dedicating their efforts to, and you need to demonstrate that you're willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it. 

"I say complete the mission at minimal expense to the people," Swanson says. "Every military leader will publicly say that the mission comes first, but we always accomplished the mission with the soldiers in mind."

3. Remember that the mission comes before you, too.
The only way that "mission-first" mantra can work is if your people truly believe that you will put the mission before yourself, too. In a life-imitates-art moment, Swanson says that in the heat of combat, he thought of a line from the 2001 HBO miniseries, Band of Brothers: "The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier." 

In combat, this means being willing to risk your own safety for others in the unit and the mission. In other contexts, it means demonstrating that you'll sacrifice your personal short-term interests for the team's goal. Otherwise, how can you ask them to do so? 

4. Rely on your preparation.
Swanson spent years preparing for battle. He had been an enlisted solider, he spent four years at West Point, and he trained for nearly two years after graduation. While training alone will never quite prepare you to lead in real life, he says, it's as close as you can get to the real thing. 

The same principle applies in any leadership context. Think ahead of time about how you'll react to tough situations, so you can free your mind in crucial moments to react and adapt quickly. 

5. Be tough, but human.
"To those who have been in combat," Swanson explains, "you live by hardness, intuition, and compassion." 

As an example, he stayed awake and on duty for 60 straight hours at the start of the battle, pushing himself until he physically collapsed, but he also found moments of humanity and even humor in the heat of combat. Your team needs to know that you're tough, but also that you're reacting to the world around you like an engaged leader, not a machine. 

6. Encourage your people.
Business is rarely a matter of life and death, but war certainly is. One of Swanson's soldiers, Specialist Jacob Martir, was killed in action during the months of fighting, and several others were wounded and sent home to hospitals in the U.S. 

"It absolutely ate me alive to lose anyone in the platoon," Swanson says. However, he realized that it fell to him to encourage his soldiers and inspire them to keep going. "They were all special. The next day after any [casualty], I would remind them that each of them had already sacrificed themselves for each other on a daily basis--and how, if required, I would sacrifice myself for any of them." 

7. Communicate effectively.
In the heat of battle, it's easy--almost natural--to shut down everything else and focus exclusively on the job at hand. That's a dangerous inclination, however. It's important to make communicating what's going on a priority as well. Your team and all of your stakeholders need to know what's going on, or they can't contribute. 

"Early on in combat, radio communications weren't always the greatest, but that was no excuse," Swanson says. "When technology fails--and it always does at the worst possible moment--you need to have backup ways of getting and giving information." 

8. Use your resources wisely. But use them.
Especially in the first days of combat, Swanson's unit dealt with destroyed and unarmored vehicles, and insufficient supplies of almost every sort. More important, confusion, combat, and casualties left them critically short of soldiers. 

At the same time, they made full use of everything they had. At the end of the first week of fighting, for example, Swanson reflected that he had personally gone through ten 30-round magazines, meaning he had fired 300 bullets at the enemy. Just about everyone else in his platoon had, as well. 

9. Imitate the leaders who inspire you.
When Swanson had to act in the heat of battle, especially when his soldiers' eyes were on him, he thought back to the lessons he had learned at West Point, and some of the other leaders he had known and respected. He also found himself asking a question that has circulated for years among military leaders as a sort of joke: "What would John Wayne do?"

"Regardless of where you work, always continue to learn what makes leaders successful and what makes them fail," he says.

We have amazing employees, customers and leaders at FSO. Thanks to our employees for all you do for us, and to our clients for awarding us with the privilege of serving you.

Have a GREAT day as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

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"Excellence is not an act, but a habit"

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Live Life. LOVE Life!

The Buddha said, “You have no cause for anything but gratitude and joy.”

Good Morning Folks,

Jonathan Swift wrote, “May you live every day of your life.”  While it is clearly obvious that we are alive—living and breathing human beings, how much of the time we are spending on Earth are we really living? How can we tell?

An entire lifetime can be spent on searching outward for the true purpose of life. There is no right or wrong scenario in the notion that we embark on this journey of self-realization. However, when we refuse to acknowledge our Being as the ultimate truth, we are indeed living, but solely for the betterment of others.

So… How can we live every day of our lives? 

After over a decade of study, best-selling co-author Michelle Rosado, ("Pursuing Your Destiny: How to Overcome Adversity and Achieve Your Dreams), offers a few ways she's learned to live a mindful and peace life:

1. Be Present. 
To live in the present means to BE present in all you do. Observe your thoughts as if your mind was a separate entity from self. Take a few moments throughout the day to be still and honor the time you spend with your higher self. Remember, this moment is the most important one of all.

2. Be Compassionate. 
Hardly any effort can be found in expressing compassion for anyone who is in need of guidance. It is our natural instinct as compassionate Beings to offer assistance in times of need. But when the hurtful words of another creates a lasting emotional scar on one’s heart, the ego can be diffused by showing love and compassion for the one inflicting the hurt.

3. Be Grateful. 
The Buddha said, “You have no cause for anything but gratitude and joy.” When you feel as if there is a lost sense of hope in humanity and receive a “reality slap” from your current circumstance, it is the perfect opportunity to look within. There is much to be grateful for when we are present and aware of our gifts.

4. Be Yourself. 
Many of us have experienced conditioning in our childhood that only accommodate others – in our thoughts, actions and speech. It is by fear that we continue living in this mindset throughout our adulthood, and by choosing to unravel the layers of the past can we truly be free. Make this a daily practice, for being yourself is one of the most precious gifts you can give to others, and to your soul.

What makes this advice so special is Michelle's rise from adversity: Her book, Pursuing Your Destiny: How to Overcome Adversity and Achieve Your Dreams" is the touching true story about how Michelle escaped from the World Trade Center on 911 into the life she never dreamed possible. Together, with her husband Randy, they share the experiences of their chance meeting which brought these two souls together to create one life they share.

Michelle's brush with death on 911 reminds us that time waits for no one. Treasure every moment you have. No one is ever guaranteed tomorrow. To realize the value of a friend or family member: LOSE ONE. 

As I have often reminded our teams, anything is possible. Regardless of where you work, or what you do, always continue to learn what makes people successful and what makes them fail.

Because.. The most important resource in the entire universe is YOU. Products, services, innovation, ideas, breakthroughs – they all exist in your head, your heart and your hands. The output of your thinking, the engaging of your heart and the enlistment of your hands create profound results.

“Successful people do what unsuccessful people can’t do”. Find me anyone with skip, fire and twinkle who wants to learn and grow, and I will promise you a career in my company, never just a job. No one ever sets out to be average at FSO, we need to be the best at everything we do.

We have amazing employees, customers and leaders. Thanks to our employees for all you do for us, and to our clients for all you award us the privilege of doing for you.

Have a GREAT day as I look forward to seeing all of you soon.

Mitchell D. Weiner
Chief Happiness Officer

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“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes” 
~~Zig Ziglar
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