The Living Heart

Michael Debakey’s The 21^st Century Living Heart will be the last book in the series by the late, famous innovator and surgeon and co-author Antonio Gotto, Jr., MD, DPhil.  The book will round off the series of texts on cardiovascular health, giving readers inside information about cardiovascular treatment collected by two experts over the course of their lives.  From diet, exercise, obesity, hypertension, smoking and stress, Debakey and Gotto will cover risk factors and their prescribed treatments extensively and with authority.

The 21^st Century Living Heart is the latest in a string of recently closed deals by successful client Frank Weimann of The Literary Group International.  Until its release, you can stay healthy by checking out other titles in Debakey and Gotto’s Living Heart series.

Luminarium

Luminarium, by Soho’s Alex Shakar, will be released this August.  Life has changed dramatically for George Brounian in a very short time.  Once, he was the co-CEO of a successful business in New York City, creating virtual paradises.  Now he lives with his mother, while his brother lies in a coma, and the company they built together is snatched away by military contractors.  When a beautiful woman promises him an answer in the form of a new neurological study which offers peak experiences and a spiritual rebirth, George struggles to define what is real.  Soon, he receives emails and texts, apparently from his unconscious brother.

Luminarium is a novel that entertains, while examining the role of the virtual in shaping the real and reaffirming the power of a brother’s love.  Look for it later this year.

Literary Group Scores Again

Publisher’s Lunch announced another deal today by Frank Weimann of The Literary Group International.  Who Needs Paint When You Have a Banana?  will be “an inspiring guide to creating art with everyday objects, from tattooing a banana and painting with your favorite beverage to using blades of grass, cocktail napkins, pieces of candy, and the written word to find your voice and make something cool” written by artist and YouTube sensation Phil Hansen.

Haven’t heard of Phil?  Well if a picture is worth a thousand words, this YouTube video should speak volumes.  Check out Phil painting Bruce Lee—with his fists!

Benay Enterprises, Inc – Your financial Dashboard

We have all been told, "Keep your eyes on the road."  Whether it came from our driver's education teacher or a nervous passenger, paying attention to where you are going has always been sound advice.  When it comes to your business’ finances, not keeping an eye on the financial road can be just as dangerous as not paying attention on an actual highway.  Benay helps clients understand and create the financial dashboard they need to keep their businesses safely on the road to growth and success.

Whether you are driving a Ferrari or a Camry, you are a single proprietor or a mid-sized company, you have to have a financial dashboard. All companies need the right controls to keep the corporate vehicle on the road and out of a financial ditch.

• The speedometer tells you how fast you're going. What’s your business speedometer? Your income and expense statement, also known as a profit & loss statement. The P&L tells you how much money you’re making (income), how much it costs you to make that money (cost of goods sold or cost of sales), and how much of it you are spending (expenses). If you’re making money it’s profit; if you’re losing money, it’s a loss – hence the term profit & loss!
• The car’s fuel gauge can make the difference between getting to where you want to go and running out of gas. What’s your business’s fuel gauge? Your balance sheet. It is a snapshot of your business’s financial condition at a specific time, and tells you the value of your business, how much it has (assets), and how much it owes (liabilities).  Assets always have to equal liabilities plus equity. A great example of this is if you own a building worth $200,000 (asset) and owe $150,000 (liability), then you have equity of $50,000. This gauge is a good way to see how far you’ve come and decide what routes to take ahead.  
• If you drive a stick, you're probably familiar with your car’s tachometer, which measures revolutions per minute (RPM) in the engine. Your business tachometer is your cash flow statement and shows exactly how much cash is flowing in and out of your business. This information can help you shift gears at a time when you'll get maximum economy by investing in new projects, personnel or equipment, or by slowing down spending until you have more in your figurative gas tank, cash in the bank.

There are many other business gauges, terms, and tips for safe driving on today’s financial terrain.  Benay’s expertise and experience can help you navigate your road ahead.  We’d like to be your driving partner, helping you foresee the dangers and possibilities that lie on the road to growth and success.

Classic Pulp-Fiction Revival

Do you remember those vintage comics that focused on the grotesque and the bizarre, with titles such as Thriller and Weird Tales of Terror? Often the artwork featured a vampiric attack or a horrified victim, and until the Comics Code relegated these to dustbins, they had a popular following.

Well, thanks to the latest offering by Feral House, you don’t have to remember – you can take a walk right down memory lane, and enjoy the same strange stories and terrifying tales that outraged parents and censors in the 1950s. The Weird World of Eerie Publications: Comic Gore that Warped Millions of Young Minds! is a compilation of many pieces once offered by Eerie, publisher of many post-pulp magazines (where the publications moved after leaving the comic medium).  The book is treated in the February 20^th New York Times Book Review, which describes how author Mike Howlett “resurrects both Eerie… and the grotesque stories and images that filled adolescent minds a decade after the crackdown in 1954, when the Comics Code placed strict puritanical limits on the amount of gore, crime, and sex in comic books… Even if you’re not a fan of the genre, it is a curiously wonderful, weird, and eerie tale of magazine history.” Who would want to miss that? Pick up a copy, on sale now.

Do You Need A CFO?

Entrepreneur has published an interesting article about the financial needs of growing businesses.  Titled “Is It Time for a CFO?” the article addresses the concern of entrepreneurs and business owners struggling with the decision of hiring an employee to handle their financial needs.  According to Gwen Moran, there are four key questions to ask yourself when deciding if your company has grown enough to need a CFO:

• You're regularly getting financial "surprises" in the form of bank notices, tax penalties, or unusual financial statements.
• You regularly feel overwhelmed by the financial demands of your business.
• You're not keeping good records and not tracking expenses because you don't have time to do so.
• You're not looking at planning, regulatory or tax changes.

If the answer to these questions is ‘Yes’, then it’s time to hire a CFO.  Right now, Benay is functioning as an external CFO for several companies, solving the need for an in-house employee, and taking care on all of the same essential functions.

It’s something to think about as the year progresses and your businesses grow.  You can find the rest of the article here.