From birth, the lives of the truly fortunate are enriched by mentors. Your parents mentor you by teaching you right and wrong, supplying you with the morals and character needed to successfully navigate life’s challenges.  Your teachers and professors mentor you by providing you with the accumulated knowledge of generations past, everything from Accounting to Zoology. Whatever their form, mentors lead by example and seek to inspire others to achieve. The wisdom they impart can be life-changing, even if you learn what not to do.

Mentors have a thirst for knowledge, and slowly acquire this priceless resource over a lifetime of positive and negative experiences. They also have a passion for passing that knowledge onto others, in the hope that it will benefit their personal development, and ultimately help them overcome obstacles and reach their goals. Essentially, what mentors provide is the luxury of time. The luxury of not having to spend twenty years mastering a subject can be granted to anyone who is willing to merely listen and learn. After all, every good mentor was once a receptive protégé. But for many people, they reach a certain point in their life where mentors are hard to come by.

“A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions. – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Years ago, middle class Americans enjoyed a fairly stable lifestyle. You were taught that if you worked hard you would advance, and ultimately be able to provide for your children a better life than your parents were able to provide you. So goes the American Dream. But somehow over the years, this dreamy notion of the American middle class has been eroded by a staggering unemployment rate, ever increasing prices for consumer goods, a mortgage crisis, and crippling debt. When you add in the fact that gas prices are up 33% over the past year, it’s safe to say that many Americans are living through a perfect storm of misfortune. The job market is such that many people are forced to commute long distances just to have a job, so the skyrocketing gas prices have been absolutely devastating to people in this position.

It is with a heavy heart that I write to you today, as the Market America family has lost one of our brightest young stars, Timothy White. Even though he was a relatively new distributor, he was a model UnFranchise Owner who had limitless potential. Potential that was taken by the senseless actions of a drunk driver. Tim’s enthusiasm and good nature inspired those around him, and left an indelible impact on anyone fortunate enough to know this fine young man. His eagerness to constantly learn and improve made him a dream to work with, and the ideal teammate. Tim’s spirit and determination to achieve his dreams never wavered, despite the fact that he battled a rare heart condition. I am left with a tremendous sense of loss, knowing that someone who had already overcome so much would ultimately lose his life because of the careless actions of another. Loss in knowing that the world would never be privy to all that Tim might have become in this life. In mourning this young man’s tragic passing, I am ultimately left with this thought: Live your life to the fullest, and fearlessly chase your dreams, because tomorrow is promised to no one. Cherish the time you have.

It’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch scenes of families fleeing the flooding caused by the rain-swollen Mississippi river. Thousands of families are scrambling to salvage their most cherished belongings and head to higher ground as the waters slowly rise and swallow their homes and towns. For some it will take years and possibly decades to fully recover from this tragedy. I urge everyone to donate to this cause to help those who’ve been affected by this historic flooding. Its times like these that make us appreciate and respect the unstoppable force of nature. But not all floods are unstoppable. Not all floods are forces of nature.

“If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG.” – Bill Gates

To say that technology is advancing at a rapid pace is an absolute understatement. Anyone familiar with Moore’s law knows that our computing power essentially doubles every two years, as engineers find ways to squeeze more and more transistors onto circuits. For over 50 years the concepts presented in this law have helped digital electronics to advance at an almost exponential rate. These advances in technology have been profound, but putting this advancement into perspective can be a challenge sometimes.

It’s amazing to think that the Apollo Guidance Computer, which was responsible for guiding our astronauts to the moon, had the computing power of a modern digital watch. The AGC had an utterly miniscule amount of memory (2k) and storage (32k), a sluggish clock speed (1.024MHz), and software capable of multi-tasking a mere 8 jobs at a time. In essence, computers made today are thousands of times more powerful, but processing speed hasn’t been the only advancement.

Like Gutenberg's printing press, the internet and social media are changing the way society exchanges information, and the way we interact with each other. Our ability to instantly communicate on a global scale is impacting the world in ways humanity has never seen before. In less than 20 years the internet and social media have evolved into a force capable of sparking revolutions, in politics and business.

Before the internet provided this amazing platform of engagement, the relationship between company and consumer was by and large a one way street. Companies relied on bombarding consumers with radio, TV, and printed media to get their point across, without any real mechanism of interaction. Unless you were fortunate enough to own a small TV studio or a radio station, you had no real opportunity to connect with a company on equal footing, in a massive social forum.

The best thing about athletic competition is that fact that it presents you with unique challenges which forge and reveal a person's true character. However, in the case of the Lakers - Mavericks playoff series, it reveals something else as well. It reveals that even world champions experience ruts, and are susceptible to the same pitfalls and shortcomings that everyone else experiences from time to time.

Many of my fellow entrepreneurs are quite familiar with Ayn Rand’s masterpiece Atlas Shrugged, and embrace the concepts she presents in this timeless story of industriousness and ingenuity. The notion that you can reach your dreams through hard work, determination, and resourcefulness is what drives Americans to achieve, isn't it? To me, Rand’s ideas resonate with everything our forefathers intended for this nation. The concept that success is reached in an environment of personal liberty and independent thought is as American as apple pie and baseball. So why did it take over 50 years for this story to hit the silver screen?

Could it be that the message presented in this work has been largely lost on modern America? What do you think?

As word of Osama Bin Laden’s death rippled across the globe, our nation’s citizens have felt a spectrum of raw emotions. Emotions ranging from jubilation to shock, relief to sorrow. Sorrow for our unforgettable memories of that fateful September morning. Sorrow for the scores of fearless firefighters racing up endless flights of stairs to save strangers they would never reach. Sorrow for the thousands of innocent lives lost in September 2001 and the decade of war that has followed.

Jr Ridinger is mentioned in today's Miami Herald entertainment section on the second annual Rally for Kids with Cancer scavenger hunt with Eva Longoria and wife Loren Ridinger. The article explains one of the highlights of the gala which occurred when Alan T. Brown, founder of the Alan T. Brown foundation called out those attending gala dinner at the Eden Roc Hotel Miami Beach to each donate $1,000. In two minutes $21,000 was raised.  To read more about this event click here