Andraya Carson: Think Super Bowl is just about Football? Think Again.

Help end human trafficking. Arizona is hosting the 2015 Super Bowl. Andraya Carson has started a project called Bag of Change. You can find Dray Carson's project at www.bagofchange.com. Contribute towards this project and your proceeds will go to help Phoenix Dream Center. We appreciate your support!

Andraya Carson :: Exploring Sex Trafficking and Prostitution Demand During the Super Bowl

Much has been said about the impact of the Super Bowl on sex trafficking, most of which indicates it is a key variable leading to a dramatic increase in commercial sexual exploitation and victimization. Recent reports and dozens of news articles strongly point to the Super Bowl as the most prominent national event where sex trafficking flourishes, with estimates of as many as 10,000 victims flooding host cities to be offered to willing purchasers intent on buying sex. While this has attracted a great deal of attention in the media and has served as a key point in the national dialogue on sex trafficking, support for such assertions has been sparse. While some such inquiries have been conducted capably, evidence supported research on the influence of the Super Bowl on sex trafficking has been limited.

With the support of the McCain Institute, researchers from Arizona State University sought to investigate and understand the true impact of the Super Bowl on sex trafficking, to further the national discussion on sex trafficking and its local and national impact as well as to develop a baseline understanding of regional sex trafficking trends for the 2015 Super Bowl which is to be held in Phoenix. What follows is what we believe to be the first comprehensive and systematic review of the quagmire that is the Super Bowl and sex trafficking and the first attempt to add clarity to a complex, national epidemic.

Please click here to read the full report

Dray Carson: Workplace Wellness Programs Can Save Us???

There is always so much discourse about the condition of our country’s healthcare system. Wouldn’t it be refreshing, and perhaps more rewarding, if as Americans, we were to focus as much energy on the state of our wellness?

Some could argue that we are a rather sickly nation. According to a recent report issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services, among Americans there is an especially high prevalence of risk factors such as tobacco use, high cholesterol, obesity, and insufficient exercise, which are associated with chronic diseases and conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and hypertension. In fact, 45 percent of Americans, almost half the entire adult population, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes. Even more frightening, 13 percent of Americans have two of these conditions and three percent are struggling with all three. It’s no wonder our healthcare system is so taxed.On a brighter note, however, these conditions can improve with lifestyle changes. To that end, more and more progressive employers are creating workplace wellness programs that promote, and sometimes even reward, healthier lifestyles.

Corporate wellness programs are nothing new. Traditional programs help employees maintain their health and prevent illness by providing education, fitness regimes and regular health screenings to ensure early detection of problems. Many corporate wellness initiatives even include an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) to help employees cope with personal or emotional issues that may be affecting their work and family lives.

In addition to delivering positive health benefits to employees, wellness programs yield employers significant benefits as well. Successful programs have been proven to reduce absenteeism, increase productivity and decrease healthcare costs.

Of course, to be effective wellness programs have to be utilized. Poorly-designed programs can miss their mark if they don’t take into consideration the health needs and interests of the employee population. One Midwestern company, for instance, launched its wellness program by opening a fitness center and implementing a campaign to combat prostate cancer. The gym was a big hit among employees, many of whom already participated in regular exercise, but the prostate screenings were largely ignored. When the company did some after-the-fact analysis, they learned that some 70 percent of their employees were women of childbearing age. They also found that many of their employees were smokers. Obviously, prostate cancer was not a concern for this workforce, but women’s health issues and smoking cessation were.

Conversely, Volkswagen is breaking the mold with a highly-customized wellness initiative designed to take their employees’ performance to the next level. At the company’s new $1 billion assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, newly-hired Volkswagen employees are undergoing on-the-job training in advance of the facility’s production start early next year. As part of their training, assembly line workers are being required to participate in two hours of fitness training each day. The fitness program, which is specifically-designed to help individual workers develop the strength and endurance necessary to meet the physical demands of their particular job, is intended to create “industrial athletes” who are able to grip, lift, bend and push without tiring. (Volkswagen has no intention of instituting a weight threshold for assembly line jobs, but some workers who initially resented Volkswagen’s required fitness training have lost as much as 30 pounds in a matter of weeks.)

Corporate wellness initiatives are usually voluntary, so mandating that employees participate in customized fitness programs so they can better perform their jobs is a provocative concept that could gain traction over time, especially if American’s persistent health issues, such as obesity or high blood pressure, make physical labor difficult or even dangerous. For the time being however, companies are doing well if they can build a wellnessprogram that permeates the corporate culture and genuinely advocates for and promotes employees’ health and wellbeing.

When creating or redesigning a program, employers should try to adopt several best practices: 1.) assess your workforce’s health needs and put them before any personal cause or passion; 2.) consider the whole employee to address all areas of wellness, including physical fitness, disease prevention and detection, and emotional wellbeing; 3.) create a work environment where wellness is pervasive, going beyond the fitness center or health fair to include snacks and drinks available in the vending machines; and 4.) consider incentivizing employees to take advantage of wellness initiatives by holding workout or weight loss contests or offering small give-a-ways for participating in health screenings.

Corporate wellness initiatives cannot fix our healthcare system, but cultivating a more health-conscious culture, not just within one company but throughout our country, could certainly lead Americans to be less reliant on our already over-taxed healthcare system.

Original Post: http://www.gnapartners.com/news/can-workplace-wellness-programs-fix-what-ails-us-11

John Allen, is President and COO of G&A Partners, a Texas-based HR and Administrative Services company that manages human resources, benefits, payroll, accounting and risk management for growing businesses. For more information about the company, visit www.gnapartners.com. Andraya Carson is a business advsisor for G&A Partners and can be reached at acarson@gnapartners.com for a consultation.

Dray Carson: 7 steps to successful cold calling

Hello all you sales people who hate cold calling!!! I read this article and it helped me, so I am passing it on to you!

(MoneyWatch) A reader writes:

Will you share strategies that work best when breaking the ice with new prospects over the phone? I have to make some 20-30 calls within a 2 hour period and most clients are rushed and hurried and I find myself racing to get to the point, leaving very little time to build rapport. How do I build rapport immediately in these circumstances? I am genuinely interested in building a relationship to learn as much as I can about their core issues so I can build proposals that directly address their objectives and needs. What’s the best way to engage them (in 30 seconds or less I imagine), which would cause them relax somewhat so they want to share information with you. If you would be willing to share this, I would appreciate it very much.

Absolutely.

Before we get started, though, you need to be aware that there’s a vast difference of opinion, among experts and sales pros alike, about the effectiveness of cold-calling.

Many sales experts think cold-calling is a waste of time and prefer other forms of generating leads. Others see cold-calling as a last resort, while still others see it as a mainspring of any effective sales process.

Later, I’ll discuss some of those other viewpoints. For now, let’s just get the basics down. Andrea Sittig-Rolf, author of “The Seven Keys to Effective Business-to-Business Appointment Setting” is an extremely well-known proponent of cold-calling as a lead-generation technique.

When I spoke with Andrea a couple of years ago, she observed that cold-calling is all about getting the appointment. She therefore gears the entire cold-calling process toward achieving that end. Here’s a summary of her approach:

Research a list of prospects. Before making your calls, research your prospects. Look for prospects who have a similar profile to those who have bought from the past. They’ll be easier to sell. Next to each prospect, note any of your current customers in the prospect’s industry, region, job classification, or anything else that might help you to position your offering. Don’t spend a lot of time on this, just find out enough so that you can pitch using terms that the prospect can understand.

Build your script. Once you know whom you’re going to call, focus on what you’re going to say. Write a brief script (no more than three or four sentences) that introduces who you are, what you do, and what you provide. An effective script asks for the appointment early. Please note that the purpose of the script is NOT to communicate substantive information about your offering. Instead, the purpose of the phone call is to win the right to actually sell to the prospect.

Anticipate objections. Each time one of them materializes, you’ll need to handle them appropriately… and then ask for the appointment. Most objections are common to all sales situations, so you should have little or no trouble listing them out. The trick here is to practice handling objections until the response is automatic. Note: the most important part of handling the objection is asking for the appointment.

Get positive and get calling. Attitude is everything. If your offering has value to the customer, you’re doing the prospect a favor by giving him or her the opportunity to meet with you. Therefore, have confidence in your ability to provide value. That confidence not only helps you communicate more effectively, it provides the motivation that will drive you to actually sit down and start making the cold calls.

Leave a message (if necessary). If you end up in the contact’s voice-mail system, don’t despair. Leave a very brief message based upon your calling script. However, rather than setting a time for an appointment, say that you’ll be calling back on a certain date and time, but would appreciate a callback. The next time you call, ask the admin if the contact is in. If not, tell the admin that you’ve been trying to connect with the contact and would like to know when would be a good time to call.

Handle the objections. Once you’ve got the contact on the line, execute the script. Don’t read it! Put it into your own words, with enthusiasm. In almost every case, you will get at least one, and probably more, objections. Since you’ve anticipated these objections, you should respond to them as necessary and then ask for the appointment again. If you receive more than 3 objections, it’s fair to assume that the prospect is not going to meet with you, so thank the prospect and politely end the call.

Repeat the process on a daily basis. if you’re determined to excel, commit to an hour a day attempting to achieve two appointments. If it takes fifteen minutes to get the two appointments, then you can quit early. Practice this regularly and, according to Andrea, you’ll very quickly have a calendar full of qualified prospects.

This post originally appeared on BNET.com

© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

ByGEOFFREY JAMESMONEYWATCH  Originally posted on: September 20, 2012, 1:49 PM

Andraya Carson and Panelist Group is a Success in Atlanta

Andraya Carson recently spoke at a Women's Conference in Atlanta, starting off the weekend of Oprah's The Life You Want to Live tour launch.  Because of Dray Carson's extensive business experience in the areas of Business Development, Sales, and Outsourcing, Andraya Carson's topic was how to do it all without having to do it all. The panelists interacted with the audience and viewers offered feedback that Andraya  Carson's input was valuable in their business and personal lives. Dray Carson shared the stage with Mary Lou Henner, Dr. Melinda Silva, and other thought leaders in their areas of expertise. There were 300 in person attendees and an additional 500 live stream attendees. There were over 13,000 attendees to Oprah's event, where she personal recognized the COO that invited Andraya Carson to be a part of the event.

Andraya Carson is also passionate about speaking up against Sex Salvery and Human Trafficking in the USA and globally.

Andraya Carson Has Helped Me A Lot

I met Andraya Carson about 8 years ago. She helped me close the financing on my first house. Andraya Carson worked her but of for me then and I can truly say she got me the best deal and made it so easy. Thanks Andraya!!

In the meantime, Andraya Carson has become my best friend. I have seen her go through the up’s and down’s of life and she has seen me do the same. In all of this I have seen Andaya Carson always rise to any occasion she was faced with. Be it business development, treating friends right, being inspiring and forward thinking, in every way Andraya Carson comes through with the highest quality and the highest ethics.

I am grateful to have Andraya Carson as a friend and am looking forward to many more adventures with her.

- Susana Lange

Andraya Carson Business Development

ANDRAYA CARSON IS WORKING WONDERS IN THE AREA OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT. Andraya has helped many companies expand their reach in various market places through developing their business. Andraya Carson has worked in the areas of wellness industries and other industries. Andraya Carson is an assett to any company.

Virtual house calls

Some doctors already use the Internet's ability to provide almost-instant communication to help treat patients.

But as technology improves, advances in  telemedicine are moving more and more doctor-patient consultations into the virtual world. "This is the future of medicine," said Dr. Toby Bond with TMB Medical in Athens. "This is going to be the standard of care." Bond already gives his patients secure access to view lab results and medications online, and soon will start using a program that will allow him to meet with patients through a teleconferencing program known as Smart House Calls. "We're just rolling this out right now," Bond said.

Smart House Calls will allow doctors to meet patients for follow-up exams, give families access to their doctors back home as they travel and allow physicians to give quick advice on medical issues, said Troy Heidesch, the CEO and founder of the company based out of Oconee County. "This is not to replace the doctor-patient exam," Heidesch said.

Heidesch thinks that technology could help lower health care costs and provide more efficient communications between patients and doctors, he said. St. Mary's Hospital already uses technology to help some patients with chronic diseases such as heart failure, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Patients learn to self-manage through daily transmission of their weight, blood pressure and symptoms into a machine that relays that information to home care staff, said Shelley Nichols, St. Mary's stroke coordinator and a registered nurse.

"They're able to get help on a daily basis and many times their medicines or treatment plan can be updated with physician input over the phone to avoid re-hospitalization," she said. "It's like having a nurse in your home daily to keep you well, safe and able to manage your disease without going back into the hospital."  St. Mary's also uses telemedicine to help monitor stroke patients, through a partnership with the Medical College of Georgia's REACH program, said Dr. McCord Smith, a neuro-hospitalist and certified vascular neurologist.  "Our REACH program is without a doubt one of the top three systems in the world as far as how it works and the number of people treated through it," Smith said.  Patients who receive clot-busting drugs within three hours of a stroke can recover faster and have better outcomes than patients who don't receive the medication, he said.  Although the drug works, neurologists must watch the patient for any adverse effects, he said. "The first thing that people discovered was that there weren't enough neurologists around to look over these programs," he said.  REACH gives hospitals, like St. Mary's, the opportunity to augment on-site neuro-hospitalists with virtual neurologists and pool information, assisted by nurses and emergency room staff, Nichols said.  "We really have the best of both worlds," she said.  Neurologists have jumped on telemedicine and developed programs to suit their needs, but it's only a matter of time before other specialties find ways to use the technology for their fields, Smith said.  "I actually think it's sort of hard for us to imagine how much it will be used (in the future)," Smith said.

As more and more baby boomers age, there will be a greater need for doctors, Smith said.

"The baby boomers are about to put a big drain on medical resources," he said. "I think telemedicine is ... a creative way to address those problems of inadequate access."

Carson Connections welcomes HealthNation Connect to their team!

Carson Connections is dedicated to helping you create a healthy body and healthy business. Our firm was built on the belief that you deserve the best quality of service and care when it comes to your wellbeing, both physically and financially. Therefore, we have aligned ourselves with professionals in their area of service, in order to connect you to sources which will provide you with tools to achieve your health and wealth goals. The two go hand and hand. Having a successful business is worth very little if you are physically not healthy enough to enjoy it. Likewise, your having excellent health without a great bank account, is equally not enjoyable. Let Carson Connections connect you to a healthy body and healthy business!

Healthy Body: Carson Connections partnered with HealthNation, as a healthcare solution for Americans. Access to quality care at an affordable price, is a huge crisis in the U.S. Telemedicine is a solution to challenge. Very simply put, it connecting doctors with patients using everyday technology such as phone, email or webcam. You can consult with a US Based and Licensed M.D. or Naturopathic doctor, and even receive a diagnostic review and prescription, from the comfort and privacy of your own home. All of this is for only $30/ per entire household! It's health care on your terms, available 24/7/365...our doctors don't take holidays and there are no black out dates! Because of the preventative care opportunities coupled with the immediate access to care when you are sick, it is a no-brainer to add this priced right service now!

Healthy Business: Carson Consulting, LLC (dba Carson Connections), a private business development firm dedicated to helping small businesses create and implement customized strategies around marketing, business process flow, financial analysis and business planning, client management, duplication systems, and more. Your business is unique and cookie cutter solutions are outdated. Bottom line is that we believe Unique People deserve Unique Solutions. So call us to see how we can help you get to the next level.