The Project Product Reviews: Lunch Balancer

I get pimped weekly to review products/services/books/etc., and I actually do a bunch of reviews.  I have a couple of rules to do reviews:

1. Whatever it is you want me to review, I need full access.  You want me to review your recruiting tool, give me access to the system and let me play with it. You would be amazed at how many folks won’t allow this!  “Oh, you want to say great things about something I’ve never used?!”  Yeah, that doesn’t work.

2. Book reviews are tough, I just don’t have that much time to get through your boring book.  That being said, if you send me a copy I might try to get through the first chapter.  If you send me a link to an electronic version (i.e., pdf), I’ll never read one word of it.  I’ve bought one e-Book in my life, it was Laurie Ruettiman’s I Am HR, and she had to walk me through how to download it onto my iPhone.

3. If you want me to review a real product, like the one I’m doing below – Lunch Balancer, you have to actually send me the product!  Seems simple, you send me product, if I like it I’ll write about it.  I don’t like, I also might say something about it.  If you never send me the product, I’ll never say anything about it.

4. If a hundred dollar bill somehow slips into the product as you ship it too me, that never hurts your chances of getting reviewed.

On to the real Product Review –

Lunch Balancer 

Lunch Balancer contacted me about seeing if I would have interest in reviewing their product.  They offer “nutritionally-balanced portion-controlled meals”, high protein, low carb.  The design is that they’ll actually ship to your office a box that has five meals read to go for about $6-6.50 per meal, depending on which way you go.  They are targeting the health conscious desk jockey that is getting fat by sitting around all day, not moving enough and topping that off by having some sort of super-sized fast food meal at lunch. Basically, they were targeting me! 

The box they sent me looked almost identical to their picture on the website:

lunch balancer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first impression was they sent a box of samples.  The next impression was this was all Hippie/Tree Hugger food, I was not going to like this!  Gluten free, organic, vegan, etc. were just a few of the titles I quickly scanned.  The box looked like a bunch of samples you picked up at a how to survive by eating tree bark convention. But they actually plan out the menu each day, and color code each item so you know which items go for which day.   Here’s what that looks like:

Lunch balancer 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be completely honest, I did the first two meals on two different days, let my staff kill the rest of the food after that.  Here’s my take.

Meal #1 – Turkey sticks, veggie chips, natural almonds and organic mango fruit snacks

Turkey sticks were like Slim Jims, but healthy, but tasted like Slim Jims.  I like Slim Jims, so the experiment to healthy eating was going great!  The 100% veggie chips, made mostly of peas, actually tasted like regular salted chips!  Heck, this was going to be easy!  I’m a little sketchy on almonds that are in a cookie, candy bar or have wasabi spices baked into them, but I have to say these were actually crunchy and tasted good.  The mango fruit snacks were also good.

When I first saw the amount I was going to eat, I thought no way is this going to fill me up, but it did!  Meal #1 done, and I was impressed.

Meal #2 – Protein Pretzels, natural almond butter, multi-grain crackers, roasted chickpeas and Chocolate Macaroons

The protein pretzels had a cinnamon sugar spice on them, and they were really good. The biggest hit was the natural almond butter and crackers. Since I never ate almond butter before I had no idea it was just peanut butter, but made with almonds!  I’m becoming a healthy eater!  The roasted chickpeas were crunchy and salty, and reminded me of the corn nuts you get at gas stations.  The chocolate macaroons, which I left until the end, because I knew those would be good, were absolutely awful! Yep, one miss, they tasted like little mud balls in my mouth.  Again, I was full after eating Meal #2.

I would definitely recommend Lunch Balancer to companies looking to give their employees a healthier option.  It’s fairly inexpensive, and better for you.  When you think about your time, gas and normal lunch expense. $6 per meal is pretty cheap.  Make it healthy on top of that, and it’s a win-win!

Check them out at www.lunchbalancer.com 

Lunch Balancer did not pay me for this review, but they did send me a free sample box to test their product.

 

Don’t Give Up, Don’t Ever Give Up

Today is the 10th anniversary of ESPN’s Espy Awards and the 10th anniversary of, North Carolina State’s Head Basketball Coach, Jimmy Valvano’s incredible speech at the first ever Espy’s.  At the time of the speech Jimmy V was dying of cancer.  It’s one of the greatest speeches you’ll ever hear.  Well worth 11 minutes if you have it to spare today, very motivating!  After Coach Jimmy V passed away ESPN helped set up the Jimmy V Foundation to raise money to fight cancer and each year at the Espy’s athletes and celebrities come together to raise money.  Here’s a link to the annual auction, there is some really cool stuff to bid, with all the money going to the foundation.

Jimmy V said you need to have these three things each day in your life:

“If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”

The 1 Problem with Posting on LinkedIn

LinkedIn made me internet famous for a day with my 11 Rules for Hugging at Work.  That one post got me a gig on Huffington Post, has gotten me speaking gigs and has gotten me clients at HRU.  My immediate reaction on the back channel to my close friends was “Holy Sh*t! This LinkedIn publishing thing is a game changer!”

Of course, my friends are smarter than me, and they said, slow down.  It’s great if you an “LI Influencer”, because they promote your posts out to millions of potential readers.  But, as they open the publishing ability out to everyone, let’s see what will happen.

I was in the first roll-out of 20,000.  Now everyone and anyone can’t publish on LinkedIn.  You know what?  My friends are smart.

I don’t know if you noticed, but the content stream on LI has turned into Twitter.  There is so much content, you can’t even begin to start to digest it, let alone find really good stuff.  That was my initial hope.  Oh boy, this is going to be great!  I will find all kinds of new and interesting voices! In reality, what has happened is I can’t find anyone, because there is so much crap that people write, I find myself unwilling and unable to put in the time to get through it.  So, I’ve given up.

I even have given up writing on LI’s platform, because I figure the same thing is happening to everyone else, that is happening to me.

The 1 Problem with posting on LinkedIn is that they’ve allowed too many people to post, to often.  It’s become spam.  It’s become to much to digest.  While their original concept of “Influencers” was great, the new concept of open access, I believe has blown up on them. More content does equal more clicks, I’m sure.  But, too much content just equals more garbage for their members to sift through.

There’s a great lesson here for leaders.  If you have something that works great and is getting great results, sometimes more of that one thing doesn’t equal better.  It equals worse.  As with most things in life, less is more.

Content Isn’t King

Ideas are king.

A guy made $50K for his potato salad kickstarter campaign. Not because it was some great potato salad (content), because it was an awesome idea that was funny and people are willing to spend $10 to be a part of a funny, awesome idea that no one else thought of.  The next guy who decides to do this with coleslaw will get nothing.  The idea was already created and it was brilliant.  No one would ever start a campaign to raise money to make potato salad! Then they did.

Don’t discount great ideas.  They’re hard.  The market is fickle.  Great ideas are valuable because so few are actually created.

The 6 Best Holidays According to Sackett

Yo! I’m on vacation this week, don’t try and come rob my house, it’s a ‘staycation’!  I’m going to run some oldies but goodies so I can let my creative juices focus on Gin and Tonics. Here you go:

We’re right in the midst of this big holiday season and everyone seems to have a favorite.  I think most kids love Christmas and Halloween.  I mean my kids are Jewish and they still love Christmas – well, let’s face it, they love getting gifts and like any good Jewish Mom and Dad we make sure they get more gifts then their Christian friends!  Many adults love Thanksgiving – all the food, football, black Friday shopping, etc. But everyone has a favorite!

I’m going to give you my list of favorite holidays:

1. Tim Sackett Day – Yeah, how soon we all forget! January 23, 2013 will be the 2nd Annual Tim Sackett Day, and it is the one day of the year we can all come together as one, and just think about me for a while.  In lieu of gifts this year, I’ll be asking people to just make cash donations directly to my bank account, that way when I think about all the poor and needy children in the world and it makes me depressed, I can afford good mental healthcare for myself.

2. The 4th of July – Yep, I like blowing crap up, drinking and the sun – it’s like the triple threat of holidays!  I won’t give $50 bucks for your lame charity walk, but I’ll drop $500 on fireworks and think I underspent.  I mean it’s America!  Red, white and blue. Hotdogs with mustard. 2nd degree burns on your feet from stepping on those metal sparkler wires (pro tip – put a pale of water out when the kids are running around with their sparklers then as they run at you with that red hot wire, they can just throw it in the pale and hear the cool hissing sound it makes!).

3. Labor Day – It’s the official end summer blowout.  The weather is great, you have your grilling skills at peak seasonal shape and you’re only a few days away from your kids returning to school! Let’s be honest, we love our kids, but we love our kids a little more when they are in school all day and we just have to deal with them for about 6 hours between end of school and bedtime.

4. Halloween – There is nothing better than watching your kids sprint for 2 hours straight lugging around 15-20 pounds of candy, and I don’t have to do any of the work!  It can be 13 degrees below zero out and my kids will be sweating on Halloween night.  I love the candy trading negotiations that go on later that night – it’s when you get to see which one of your kids will actually make it in the real world!

5. Hanukkah – 8 crazy nights and none of your Christian friends get it! “Isn’t that your ‘Jewish’ Christmas?” – no, idiot, not even close! “I wish we had Christmas for 8 days!” and I wish you’d burn down your house again deep frying a turkey! Hanukkah is cool for the simple fact its the one time a year, as a kid, your mom let’s you play with fire! Plus the gelt! Yep, it’s not a Jewish holiday until you involve some money!

6. New Years Day – No work, football games all day and starting anew!  For me New Years takes on a special time as well because my first son was born on New Years Day – so we throw a birthday party into the mix, just to ensure we have enough food and cake to make it through all those football games!

Receiving votes, but didn’t make the list: Cinco De Mayo – Tacos and Margaritas – you have to  love Mexican holidays!; St. Patrick’s Day – Green Beer and pinching butts – a HR nightmare!; Father’s Day – I get to do what I want, or what my wife tells me I want to do that day!; Black Friday – I mean who doesn’t want to see idiots get trampled to death at Walmart!

So, friends, what is your favorite holiday?

Dad Ball!

Yo! I’m on vacation this week, don’t try and come rob my house, it’s a ‘staycation’!  I’m going to run some oldies but goodies so I can let my creative juices focus on Gin and Tonics. Here you go:

This one goes out to a special friend who is going through this right now!

Let me do this with full disclosure – my name is Tim Sackett, and I’m a Parent Coach…I feel like I have to give the AA introduction, because I’m definitely going to need therapy once my kids are all through the parent-coaching stage!   Coaching your own kids is probably the closest thing to child-parent-abuse without physical contact that I can imagine.  Dads completely lose their freaking minds when coaching their own kids – but not all in the same way – so I’ll give you run down of types of Dad Ball Coaches:

Coach Moses: This is the Dad who thinks his kid walks on water!  You know the type, this is the Dad who has a kid who is probably a decent player, but there are other kids who are better, but he continues to put his kid in prime positions in the field and batting lineup – even when they don’t produce.  Coach Moses will tear apart a team faster than any other type of coach.  The only time a Coach Moses can be successful, is when their kid is truly the best kid on the team – and it’s very apparent.

Coach Dalai Lama: This is a Dad who tries to make it all about the “experience”.  This Dad is all about fairness, and equality – winning isn’t the goal, learning is the goal.  After all these are just children, and we’ve been given this gift and opportunity to mold them, and we need to protect this opportunity like the fragile butterfly out of the cocoon.  This is also the team that get’s beat by hundred runs every game!

Coach Knight (as in Bob Knight):  This is the Dad who yells – yells – and yells.  He yells at the players, yells at the umpires, yells at the other parents, yells at his mother – you get the idea.  These are the guys that believe the only way you get the most out of your kids is by yelling at them to keep them motivated.  This is usually the most hated of all Dad Ball coaches – but from personal experience, I’ve had some Coach Knights that were actually the best coaches.

Coach Bobby Boucher (pronounced Boo shea):  From the Adam Sandler movie The Waterboy – This is a Dad Ball Coach who played the sport in high school, but wasn’t any good – thus the “waterboy” reference…  You can imagine, this coach is trying to re-live their failed youth, but driving their team to win the league championship.  This coach is usually the main figure on the team – out in front of the actual team – the winning is all about their job as a coach, the losing is all about those idiot kids failing.  Nothing like a grown man re-living this life’s failures through the blood, sweat and tears of adolescent boys!

The one cool thing about my kids getting older and into high school is Dad Ball is most likely over.

Come Have Breakfast with Me at SHRM!

Okay, it’s not really breakfast, but it sure is breakfast time!

I’m speaking at SHRM National at 7am on Monday June 23rd in Orlando.  The title of my session is “What Your CEO Wishes HR Would Do!“.  It’s a fun session, will kick off your day at SHRM with a lot of energy and some laughs.  Plus, I’ll also give you 6 things you can start doing the next day to increase your influence in your organization, and get your CEO to fall in love with you – not marriage love, work love!

I promised SHRM I wouldn’t swear, so I’m going to try and make this a PG 13 version of what I would normally do.  They gave me a Mega-Session, which means I’ll have a big giant room, and a 7am time slot, which means I’ll have 50 people show up.  It’s a nice way to keep my Ego in check.  “Hey, you’re really popular, we’re going to give you a big giant room, but just to screw with you, we put you on during a time when normal people will be sleeping!”

Please, please, if you come out at that way too early time to see someone give a business presentation, stop by afterwards and introduce yourself.  To me, that is the real reason I love speaking at events, I get to meet other great HR Pros from around the country!  I’ll even give out hugs, even if you don’t want one! Because I’ll be all hyped up on Mt. Dew!

I promise I’ll be on my 3rd Diet Dew by the time 7am rolls around on Monday, which means I’ll be talking fast, probably saying things I shouldn’t and having fun!

See you all in Orlando!  At 7 freaking AM!  Ugh, it hurts me to even think about it!

Sackett’s 2014 Guide To Whom To See At SHRM!

The big annual SHRM National Conference happens in a week or so in Orlando.  I’ll be there.  SHRM is letting me speak again this year, which is cool, I’m as subversive as SHRM gets which makes it fun for me.  I always get a lot of SHRM dignitaries that show up to make sure I don’t say anything inappropriate, which makes me get very creative with my words, and if you read my blog you know that list of words is roughly around 350.

To combat the possibility I might slip up they put me at times they hope no one will show up.  This year I’m on at 7am on Monday!  Yeah, 7 freaking am!   Good thing for me I’m a morning person and I drink giant amounts of Diet Mt. Dew – I will have one on stage with me! If you bring me one, I’ll line them up and try to knock them all down in my hour and fifteen minutes!

Bobbi Wilson from Huntsville, AL SHRM (she’s good people, connect with her!) asked me who I would like to see speak at SHRM, besides myself, and I thought it would make a good post, so here’s my Top 10 don’t miss presentations at SHRM!  First we have to lay down some rules of why and who I will choose:

A. I’ll always choose entertaining speakers over non-entertaining speakers.  It’s an HR conference, we’ll have our share of boring ones!

B. I like practitioners, but don’t get too caught up in that.  Most of the best speakers used to be practitioners who found out they’re pretty damn good speakers, so they went the consultant route and doing very well.  Many practitioners are knowledgeable but can’t speak a lick!

C. Titles mean a lot.  If you can’t come up with a creative title, my guess is you can’t come up with a creative presentation.

So, here’s who I will see if I have time in between networking with all the great HR Pros who come to SHRM (I usually get more out of the networking than the presentations!):

1. Tim Sackett, SPHR – Monday 7am – What Your CEO Wishes HR Would Do!”  – I hear he gives out hugs after his presentation! Plus, he’ll be all jacked up on Mt. Dew!

2. Jonah Berger – Tuesday 2:15pm – “Crafting Contagious Ideas – this might be the only session I will actually attend. This dude is brilliant and a great speaker. He’s my #2 behind Malcolm Gladwell.  You should not miss this.  #Fanboy

3. Jennifer McClure – Wednesday 10am – (friend alert! At some point Jen and I will share a Sprinkles Cupcake during SHRM – you’re not invited!) – “The Business Case for Building Effective Business Leaders This is actually the worst title in the history of SHRM that doesn’t include “FMLA” or “EEOC”, but Jen is a pro’s, pro who understands how to get a session accepted at SHRM.  The title has to be vanilla!  Don’t hold that against her.  She’s really good and has a cult following of HR ladies who love her!

4. Gregg Tate, GPHR – Tuesday 10:45am – “Adidas: How They Created Their nWow (New Way of Working) Company Culture” – I’ve seen the Adidas guys speak before and they’re usually good with a good story.  Insider tip – see how they pronounce “Adidas” – many insiders from Germany do it differently than we say in the states – you can’t get it out of your head!

5.  Mike Reardon – Monday 10:45am – “Sustaining the Disney Culture Through Selection, Training, and Engagement

6. Brad Karsh – Monday 2:00pm – “Once Upon a Time…Four steps to Using Storytelling to Deliver Unforgettable Presentations” – This is the most underutilized skill in HR, period. You’ll be a better HR Pro if you have this skill. Not just for presentations but increasing your influence throughout your organization.

7. Chester Elton – Monday 4:00pm – “All In: How Great Leaders Develop a Culture of Belief and Deliver Big Results” – Chester is a good speaker. Doesn’t matter what he’s presenting, he’s probably better than most at that time slot. He’s polished and will deliver a good show.

8.  Cy Wakeman – Tuesday 7am – (Cy has the session of death – no one wants to get up after partying Monday night for a 7am session!) “Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace: New HR Foundation to Boost Employee Value and Drive Results” – Cy knows her stuff!  I like going to presentations where I’m going to hear from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about, and she does!

9.  Michelle Smith – Tuesday 4pm – “Next Practices Leadership: Driving Growth & Innovation in a People-Led Economy” Michelle is from O.C. Tanner and they’ve got some great research on engagement, what works, what doesn’t – well worth the time to see her speak to get that data!

10. Vendor Show – Every day, all day – Pick out three kinds of technology you might bring into your HR shop in the next 3 years (digital interviewing, automated reference checking, assessments, recruiting tools, metrics, etc.) and good spend some real time demoing those products.  It will be some of the most valuable time you spend at SHRM!  Part of our job in HR is to know what we’ll be using in the future, this is where you’ll find that stuff!  Scout out the small booths in the back aisles.  There will be companies there that you haven’t heard about, that in three years everyone will be using – that’s really, really cool!

Connect with me.  One of my favorite things to do at SHRM National is to meet HR pros around the world who read my blog.  I get in Sunday, leave Wednesday.  Tweet me, email me, call my cell, stalk my session – but let’s connect in a real way (okay I mean hugging!).

6480 Lunches

Each day I get up.  Take a shower.  Go downstairs and say ‘good morning’ to my youngest son (he’s up first in the house – he’s like his Dad). Let the dog out.  Then I make lunches for 3 boys.   180 days per year.  My wife would make the lunches if I really wanted her to, but like most couples we have our ‘jobs’.  I make lunches, she puts together water bottles, snacks, makes sure they actually have what they need for everything else.  I run the lunch assembly line.

2 lunch boxes with those blue ice things to keeps things cold, 1 brown paper lunch bag (Keat’s too cool to carry a lunch box)

3 Turkey Sandwiches with cheese, 2 kinds of bread, 2 kinds of cheese.  One on pita or ciabatta (Cameron prefers none normal bread), one on whole wheat, one half on whole wheat.

3 Granola and/or protein bars

3 bags of baked chips (this is as healthy as we get in the Sackett household!)

3 of something sweet (we don’t live in Russia!)

1 Fruit Roll-up (Coop loves these)

1 Large bag of fruit snacks (Keat loves these)

1 bag of Chex mix or other cracker (Keat again)

1 package of peanut butter crackers (Keat again)

2 waters, 1 V8 Fusion

I’ve attempted a few times to figure out our per lunch cost, because it seems like we probably pay more for our kids taking their lunches, then if they just bought school lunch.  My wife and kids tell me I’m crazy, but it seems like an insane amount of food each day for three lunches!

5 times per week, 180 days per year, 12 years, 3 kids.  6480 lunches.

I know my kids have no real conception of what this means.  I know so many families that have their own kids, make their own lunches.  I really don’t mind.  I know that one day, very soon, I won’t be making lunches.  I work a lot, my wife is home mostly, she gets the after school conversations, etc. Most things my sons go to my wife because she is the one that’s there and takes care of most things.

I take care of lunches.  I go to work.  By the time I get home usually one or two or three have already eaten dinner.  It’s not a huge contribution, and I’m sure I could force them to make their own lunch, but it’s one small way I get to show them I’m involved.

6480 lunches seems like a lot, until there all done, then it seems like not so much.

The Tim Sackett Commencement Speech

It’s that time of year when universities and high schools go through graduation ceremonies and we celebrate educational achievements.  It’s also that time of year when you get bombarded with every great commencement speech ever given.  There is clearly a recipe for giving a great commencement speech.  Here are the ingredients:

1. Make the graduates feel like they are about to accomplish something really great, and not just become part of the machine.

2. Make graduates believe like somehow they will be difference makers.

3. Make graduates think they have endless possibilities and opportunities.

4. Make graduates think the world really wants and needs them and can’t wait to work with them.

5. Wear sunscreen.

I think that about sums up every great commencement speech ever given.  Let’s face it, the key to any great speech is not telling people what they need to hear, but telling them what they want to hear!

I would like to give a commencement speech.  I think it would be fun.  I like to inspire people.  Here’s the main topics I would hit if I were to give a commencement speech:

1.  Work sucks, but being poor sucks more. Don’t ever think work should make you happy.  Find happiness in yourself, not what you do.

2.  You owe a lot of people, a lot of stuff.  Shut your mouth and give back to them. Stop looking for the world to keep giving you stuff.

3.  No one cares about you. Well, maybe your Mom, if you had a good Mom.  They care about what you can do for them.  Basically, you can’t do much, you’re a new grad.

4.  Don’t think you’re going to be special. 99.9% of people are just normal people, so will you.  The sooner you come to grips with this, the sooner you’ll be happy.

5.  Don’t listen to your bitter parents.  Almost always, the person who works the hardest has better outcomes in anything in life.  Once in a while, a person who doesn’t work hard, but has supremely better talent or connections than you, will kick your ass.  That’s life. Buy a helmet.

6.  Don’t listen to advice from famous people.  Their view of the world is warped through their grandiose belief some how they made it through hard work and effort. It’s usually just good timing.

7. Find out who you care about in life, and make them a priority.  In this world you have very few people you truly care about, and who care about you in return.  Don’t fuck that up.

8.  Make your mistakes when you’re young.  Failure is difficult, it’s profoundly more difficult when you have a mortgage and 2 kids to take care of.

9.  It’s alright that sometimes you have to kiss ass.  It doesn’t make you less of a person.

10.  Wear sunscreen.  Cancer sucks.

So, do you feel inspired now!?  Any high schools or colleges feel free to email me, I’m completely wide open on my commencement speech calendar and willing to give this speech on a moments notice!