Henry Bateman
The Philippines is the third largest Roman Catholic country in the world with some 80% of the 85 million Filipinos following the faith. The major events in the Christian calendar, Christmas, Easter, All Saints Day, are all celebrated with gusto but it is Easter or Holy Week, as it is known in the Philippines, which ignites the Filipino passion. From the public self-flagellation and crucifixions of Pampanga Province to the street parades and the shrines of Makati City’s Poblacion suburb with their infusion of popular and indigenous cultural influences, Holy Week is the celebration of the calendar.
For over half a century, the 17000 residents of this suburb have held street parades, a Saturday night, Sunday morning vigil or salubong and constructed shrines in honour of Holy week. Each year up to 40 shrines are dotted about the one square kilometer that is the inner city suburb of Poblacion. Throughout the year, street groups known locally as Samahans have raised the 50,000 pesos required to employ an artist, feed and water the volunteer assistants and obtain the materials necessary to actualize the artist’s vision for their shrine.
These shrines are folk art of the first order, utilizing a range of materials from the time honoured papier-mâché to the 20th Century’s set builder’s material of choice, polystyrene. When they are combined with bamboo, plywood, timber, bricks and mortar that call on the trade skills of the residents and the artist’s skill with the brush they produce settings worthy of an off Broadway production.
In the weeks leading up to Holy Week, streets become impassable to vehicles as the construction takes place. Scaffolding is erected, frames are built and clad, sculptures several meters high are constructed, water features are incorporated, lights are installed with the chosen street corners becoming beehives of activity. As the start of Holy Week arrives the activity goes up a notch, the shrines must be completed by Wednesday evening.
Its arrival heralds a street parade which wends it way through the suburb incorporating every shrine in its route. The devout carry crucifixes for installation in the shrines accompanied by the Makati City Marching Band. It is now that Christ’s Pasyon, the marathon chanting or singing of the poem of Jesus life, passion, and death begins and continues day and night through to 3pm on Good Friday.
The Thursday before Good Friday sees thousands of people from all over Metro Manila descend upon the suburb. They wander the streets admiring the diversity of the art created by the Poblacion residents. Although sacred in inspiration, the designs of the shrines are often unconventional ranging from the American Wild West to the pharaohs of ancient Egypt for their chosen themes. There is carnival atmosphere in the air as excited children run and point, adults ooh and ah, street sellers hawk their wares and camera flashes bounce off the walls of the shrines.
Throughout Good Friday Christ’s Pasyon is recited by members of the street associations, usually working in pairs. Church goers wander home from their devotions stopping to listen and gossip at the shrines. At 3pm, the reputed time of Jesus’ death, black shrouds are draped over the crucifixes in the shrines. In the evening a parade of the shrine’s tableaux traverses the streets of the suburb.
After Saturday’s midnight mass, at the local parish church of Saint Peter and Paul, effigies of Jesus and Mary are carried along different streets to meet for the Salubong outside the suburb’s sports complex. There, a temporary stage has been erected upon which a choir of children dressed as angels await their arrival. The statue of Mary has her head shrouded with a black cloth and before a crowd of several thousand people packed into this town square, it is removed when she meets her son. Blue and white helium filled balloons bare her shroud into the dark heavens above.
Eight to ten hours after this two a.m. meeting, many of the shrines are builder’s rubble. They have had their 4 days in the sun and over the following few days any trace of their existence will have vanished except perhaps for a painted section of road way and the record captured by the photographers.

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Analyzing The Companies Opportunities In The Network Marketing Industry
I am assuming that you have reached the logical conclusion that the network marketing business model is indeed superior. The next step then is the ability to analyze the companies and opportunities within the industry and determine what factors make some better than others. The logical conclusion is that if some companies are better than others at any given moment there must be consistent factors that
one could recognize that determine which are the better companies and
opportunities. This articles purpose is to find those factors and without applying them to any specific company or opportunity.
If you truly understand the business model than you can agree with me that the number one factor that separates the true that exists in a company is its timing in the marketplace. It is the Golden Law of this industry and it lays the foundation for the rest of this chapter. People who get involved in the foundation of a company generate 70% of the fortunes created in this industry.
What is the foundation? All business go through three standard cycles of business: the foundation, hyper-growth, maturity. Big money can be made in the Hyper-Growth stage and even perhaps in the Maturity, but History and logic tell us that the big financial opportunities exist for people that get into the foundation of a company.
Ok, thats the first law of the industry. Get into the beginning of a company. How do you know if its the beginning? Generally if a company hasnt hit hyper-growth by its 8th or 9th year it isnt going to happen. When the business has a stronger focus on finding new team members you might be in the foundation. Generally as a company begins to hit hyper-growth the products become popularized and a larger portion of the volume of sales come from customers and return customers instead of new team members.
If we accept that the best thing you can do is get into the beginning than we also have to understand the number one risk involved is that your company being so young could tank, fail, and crash. Most businesses do in our industry just like every other industry. How do you manage that risk and at the same time find a company that has the potential to become a huge giant.
Lets start by talking about the history of the industry and what we can learn from companies that have already come along and become substantial players. To the best of my knowledge there have only ever been 7 companies in the history of this industry to achieve what we call Billion Dollar status at the time of writing this chapter. Billion dollar status means they have reached a point in which they are doing over one billion dollars or more in sales within one year
and have sustained it. Seven isnt many for a 60-year-old industry. In fact history has shown that a new Billion Dollar company only comes around every 6 to 10 years or so.
So, lets dive into the meat. What are those factors that minimize the risk of failure and maximize the potential of hitting Billion Dollar status? These are the factors that create the perfect storm in this industry once the timing requirement of being in the foundation is met.
1.Experienced Management
2.Financial Backing
3.Global Vision
4.Product Line
5.Compensation Plan
6.Training/Coaching - Duplication
1.Experienced Management. It takes more than a couple of rookies to really have huge success in this industry. You have to have a team of executives that have massive experience and success in the industry. They have to know how to ship product on time, pay on time, open international markets, and create a profitable pay-plan.
2.Financial Backing. Companies fail most of the time because they are under managed and under capitalized. In our industry the under capitalized is the bigger killer. It takes big money to create a product line, open markets, and attract the big leaders that we talked about in number one. Some companies may have enough money to survive those first few years until they are profitable but you are looking for a company that has the big money necessary to go global,
attract leadership, and launch products.
3.Global Vision. If you really want to have massive financial success logic dictates that you need to go international. More market share means more money and the earlier in the company that international markets open the better. This can create an international frenzy when other markets also have a ground floor international opportunity. This is so super rare that I have only seen it happen once or twice.
4.Product Line. For most people they think this is the only factor. While it is super important it isnt alone. There are many sub-factors to the product line that determine its long term success.
a.First to Market. Copycat products will never make Billion Status. Pepsi will never be bigger than Coke, Wendys will never surpass McDonalds and the Microsoft Zune will never beat out the IPod. First to Market worldwide products are a must.
b.Universal Appeal. This is about Target Market. Can children seniors use the product? Is it limited to one per household? Will it sell in every international market?
c.Consumable. Repeat Business is important so the product has to be
consumable.
d.Marketability. Can you give out samples, show results? Is the product tangible to the person looking at the business? Can they understand it inside of a 5 minute presentation?
5.Comp. Plan. Can you be profitable quickly? Do you have strong incentive to help others be successful? Is there such a thing as a bad position?
6.Training/Coaching Duplication. You can have all the perfect factors in place but if you dont have training and support than what difference does it make? It is necessary for a company to attract BIG Field Leadership from other companies. These big leaders who have a track record of success not only have to be a part of the organization but they need to create simple systems of duplication. The success in this industry is in duplication. How easy is it for
anyone to do it? Big leaders create training and action programs that are duplicable and follow-able for anyone.
I hope that this has been helpful. These are the factors that you can use to look at the companies that exist in this industry. Choosing the best company for you is the number one decision you can make if you want to have huge financial success. By taking the Outside In look at the industry you are doing what most dont. Most people learn about the industry via a company that gets them involved. They then have the unfortunate Inside Out look at the industry and dont understand why they arent having the success they want and why one company might be better than others.

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In Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggers first four years, the total bill for state workers salaries jumped by 37 percent, compared with a 5 percent increase in the preceding four years under then-Gov. Gray Davis, a Chronicle analysis of state payroll records shows.
One month before Schwarzenegger took office in November 2003, just eight state employees earned more than $200,000 a year working in the core state government, which excludes universities and the Legislature. In April of this year, there were nearly a thousand, according to records.
And the number of state employees making six-figure salaries has more than doubled since 2003, to nearly 15,000. Meanwhile, the number of state workers has grown by 26,000 under Schwarzenegger after being cut by Davis, who was recalled from office in the midst of a severe budget crisis.
Some of the pay increases in recent years have been out of Schwarzenegger’s control, including previously negotiated pay raises for some employee unions and court-ordered pay hikes for medical workers in the state prison system that are estimated to have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.
Also fueling the spurt in payroll growth: salary increases for employees in a few politically powerful labor unions, including the states prison guards, as well as pay hikes for workers in the upper echelons of state government. Elected members of the Legislature, who will decide in the coming weeks how to resolve the states $17.2 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, also received increases last year.
“Salaries have only gone one way - up,” said Charles Murray, chair of the California Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets pay for the state’s top elected officials. Murray, a Republican from San Marino (Los Angeles County), has called for a pay cut for legislators and other elected officers in light of the state’s huge deficit.
“If we had control over the janitors, I’d ask them to take a pay cut, too,” he said. “The reasoning is very simple: We’re in big trouble moneywise.”
Legislators, gubernatorial aides and top medical professionals have received pay hikes in the last 12 months. And as the state looks at drastic cuts in many programs, the governor is proposing about $260 million in salary increases for the state’s prison guards, whose pay jumped about 34 percent in five years under their previous contract.
At the same time, pay for many lower-ranking civil service workers has not kept up with the 15 percent increase in the state’s consumer price index in the past four years, according to an analysis by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. Most civil service workers saw their pay rise by only 12 percent over that time.
The winners of the payroll race seem to be the unions with the strongest political ties or those who spend big bucks on political contributions and lobbying, said Christina Lokke of California Common Cause, a good-government watchdog group.
“There’s lobbying going on among all these groups of state employees - and the outcomes are pretty imbalanced,” she said. Sometimes, politics and money beat good policy, thats when the public loses out.
Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said much of the blame rests with the Davis administration, which negotiated some contracts in which workers deferred initial pay raises for bigger gains in later years. Essentially, when the governor came into office, many of these promises had already been made, he said.
California Highway Patrol officers got a 32 percent pay increase over four years through a contract negotiated by the Davis administration that linked their pay to the five largest police departments in the state. The average officer now makes $73,000 a year. The states professional engineers received a 31 percent pay raise through a similar automatic-increase mechanism negotiated by Gov. Gray Davis’ administration.
Examples of the salary hikes revealed in the states payroll database and compensation documents include:
* More than 100 physicians and surgeons working in state prisons saw their pay increase from an average of $129,000 to $238,000 in four years, and salaries for supervising psychiatrists jumped to $236,000, after a federal court-appointed receiver, Robert Sillen, determined that pay had been so low that the system was having difficulty attracting competent medical workers.
* Legislators annual pay climbed from $99,000 in 2003 to $116,000 this year, while the state attorney generals increased from $148,000 to $184,000. The governors salary also rose, from $175,000 to $212,000, but Schwarzenegger declines to accept his salary. The state citizens compensation commission sets these pay rates, and some of its members are now looking at whether it can lower them.
* Eleven top advisers in the governors office got hefty pay increases in August, a week after the governor signed a budget that slashed programs for the homeless, mental health services and parks. Chief of staff Susan Kennedy received a $32,000 pay raise, boosting her government salary to $175,000. Four years ago, the top aide in the governors office earned a base pay of $138,000.
* At the top of the states salary list were chief officers for the California Public Employees Retirement System and the states stem cell research facility in San Francisco, known as the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, each of which is controlled by a separate board that is independent of state elected officials.
CalPERS Chief Investment Officer Russell Read made a base salary of $555,000 - plus incentive pay that pushed his total earnings to more than $900,000, according to a spokeswoman for the system. Alan Trounson, a renowned biologist appointed last year to head the stem cell agency, is paid $490,000. Four years ago, the top employee in the retirement system made a base salary of $360,000, and the stem cell agency didn’t exist.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman in the governors Department of Finance, said state pay rates often arent competitive with those in the private sector and in city and county governments throughout the state. This year, the three top investment officers at CalPERS, including Read, announced they will leave to pursue private-sector investment jobs, many of which pay millions of dollars a year.
While the public needs to be concerned with the salaries being paid out to state employees, it also needs to know the state is in a competitive market and we need to find ways to attract and keep the best people, said Jason Dickerson of the Legislative Analysts Office, which has recommended that the state keep a tight lid on any further pay increases.

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Some art is not made to last, and such is the case with playing card sculptures that seemingly defy the laws of physics. Carefully stacking playing cards to form a structure is difficult enough when you’ve got a modest goal, but some playing card art masters can build entire villages including buildings that reach an amazing 25 feet into the air. Playing cards also appear as a theme or a medium in works by a variety of artists, from painters to the architects of the always-creative structures at Burning Man.

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