3/24/2013 5:16:14 PM

I realize this thread is about Twlight Sparkle.... which I do not dispute. Hear me out, maybe I can offer some insight.

I am in outside sales, which is currently salary+commission, but will move into straight commission starting at the beginning of July 2010. I have been in this position since July 2009. I have competition from several direct manufacturing sales reps, large distributors, and local distributors. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each:

Direct Advantages: Immediate knowledge of new technology, no middle man mark up, one shipping bill (paid by manufacturer or buyer of goods), access to larger range of non-commodity items, control inventory, have access to many distributors that can effectively sell their goods which increases market share, and set prices of commodity they manufacture.

Direct disadvantages: Typically have 1-3 sales reps per region (i.e. southeast, mid-atlantic, northeast, etc.) limiting the number of accounts they can successfully manage/cold-call, lack physical customer service or physical technical service available to or affordable for smaller users or altogether, are sometimes not trustworthy because they will go in behind their distributors that sell their commodity to one account in large quantities (i.e. they missed a big account, and have found out about it through a distributor selling their particular product) which leads to the distributor not selling their product anymore, have too many distributors selling the product ultimately driving the set price down through deviations, possibly rely on distributors to actually sell the product, and competition from other direct sources.

Large distributor advantages: have access to other commodities that go hand in hand with other manufacturers (poor example- grocery stores sell milk as well as cereal), get direct pricing, many locations regionally or nationally easing the shipping burden of buyers with multiple locations, personal service either customer or technical, many sales reps that are able to cover a broader territory, access to multiple manufacturers of the same commodity allowing to keep prices in check, service programs that smaller companies can't offer and direct providers can't match in price or value, and experts of many many commodities as opposed to one or a few.

Large distributor disadvantages: smaller local distributors creating price wars (think Michael Scott Paper Co vs Dunder-Mifflin), direct mfg's going in behind and stealing business, limited access to all of the mfg's (you won't find Harris Teeter name brands in Food Lion and visa versa), can't truly set prices because it's based on both supply and demand, territory management, and tough growth prospects in slower economies (this is true for direct as well really)

Local distributor advantages: Typically a good ol' boy setting where the seller and the buyer know each other for years (this does happen at all levels, but mostly at the local level), local folks are right down the street and can be used in emergencies, if the local guy buys at high enough volumes then there is no shipping charge to the end user, and access to both direct mfg's and large distributors.

Local distributor disadvantages: easily beaten in price, array of commodities, array of technology, lack of trained staff, low cash flow, etc etc etc.

This is what I have noticed in my six months, I am sure there are plenty more that need mentioning. The way I am setting myself apart as a sales person is this: I go after the big accounts right now while I am new. The big accounts, if I land them, will take care of me while I am new and building a customer base. The money made off of those allows me to focus free time on smaller accounts that get me higher margins. I build up big accounts, I would like to have 5-10 of these, then get 20-30 medium accounts. If I lose 1 or 2 big accounts, the 20-30 medium accounts keep me afloat while I go after new big accounts. I don't really waste time on small accounts simply because they basically pay for breakfast or something really small.

I will say this, if you can't get a big account in the first 6-8 months (assuming you have cash flow that you can ride this long) you could be in a world of trouble. If you can get one, it will really make going after the others a lot more enjoyable and less stressful. It's simply just very exhausting wasting any time on anything other than big accounts in the very beginning. You work just as hard on the medium sized accounts and see 1/3 to 1/36 of the money in my situation.

If you have any other questions, you can PM me. I hope this helps in the slightest!

3/24/2013 5:19:05 PM

don't be such a jealous girlfriend jaZon

seriously, join the club. i'll even spot you $50 on http://www.sharebuilder.com
you get these $5 free trades over time and i have a shit load saved up. dude it's easy. i started with barely over $1k on my first acct. that account is sitting at just over 4k now. yeh that one took over 6 years of work... but you just keep investing in things you feel are important and can make a profit. i have investments in tech (apple among them), energy(even solar firms, i love solar and think its obviously going to kill oil someday and i'm banking a lot on it), and even tesla and their electric cars. we aren't all billionaires. but if you start taking the streets chanting and trying to raise taxes on capital gains and other profits and threaten our way of life it really really gets on our nerves

i'm sure you'd understand

but yeh i'm just a white, racist, fox news, religious, homo-phobe constantly paranoid about everything around me so make sure you don't pay attn to any of this.

you just don't like to admit that the $x i have on the market right now is actually translating into paychecks going to some other family making brilliant products that are shaping our society that we all have a hand in! the beauty of it is i can pull it out at a decent rate and take care of myself when i'm in a jam. kind of like the opposite of a credit card. instead of negative money in a bank it's positive liquid that you don't owe shit too.

but that goes against your way of thinking. b/c of our 'superior' plane you shove us into, we automagically owe you everything. thanks.


oh this isn't my day job. i work as hard as the rest of you assholes, and get 95% of all my cash from slaving away daily like the rest of you. but i dont randomly believe my tuition should be free and some schmucks should just have to front the bill for every lazy asshole in this world. it breeds laziness. and i hate lazy people more than about anything. so yeh. maybe that explains it.

you know how pryderi hates conservatives for some random reason? i'm the same way with lazy assholes who refuse to get shit done.




also i really fucking want this car:


OMG NO WAI. A CONSERVATARD WANTING THAT? NAW MANG

OH and the best part is i have a plan to get one. i put around 5k into tesla and figured 'what the fuck', and that i'd let it grow until i decide i have enough to finance one or buy it. yeh it hasn't grown too much, but it HAS grown. so basically i'm building my own tesla, and fuck you if you dont have the same drive to do the same and want to tear down or tax the system to hell that makes this shit possible.

3/24/2013 5:20:53 PM

Alright I'm going to drop some knowledge on you bros. If you've never listened to a thing I've said, hear me out on this one post.

I'm going to explain why 95% of dieters/body recompositioners fail at changing their body type.

The consensus opinion is that you should always begin by focusing on adding strength/muscle and then later shed the fat. Now for a 17 year old kid weighing 135 lbs at 8.5% body fat looking to not get pushed around on the basketball court that is true.

Let's talk about a standard 30 year old male at 5'10, 185 lbs and 23% bodyfat. In the first month he is going to start strength training and jogging and see RAPID strength increases assuming he's not a total retard. He's also going to see some drops in water weight, food in the gut, etc as he switches from Papa Johns, McDonalds, and Neo China every day to fruits/vegetables/chicken, etc. He will also burn a little bit of fat because he has so many fatty acids naturally circulating in his blood and stored visceral fat he just can't help but lose a few lbs of it easily.l

He's going to lose ~10 lbs in the first 2-3 weeks easily in most cases. At this point he will start thinking wow this is easy, I'm a bad ass, I'm going to look like a god in a month.

Then as his diet relaxes a little and his strength training routine starts to slip a little bit he will still be making strength gains but the scale won't be moving much. You hear people say all the time "well I didn't lose any weight the past three weeks but I've been lifting so I'm sure i've added a lot of muscle and dropped fat." The reality is his leptin levels have dropped so his metabolism has taken a hit, the water weight has found a balance based on his new routine, and the ADAPTIVE COMPONENT has set in which is basically your body's mechanism to keep your weight from dropping too much too fast.

Early on in strength training beginners gains will mostly be neural and very little actual size or LBM will be added. In the meantime because he is well over 15% body fat his fat cells are more than happy to absorb the fat in his diet. This is exactly what we mean by "spinning your wheels".

After a month of making essentially no progress he will cut the diet/strength training and within a mere 2-3 weeks the water weight will return, their will be little to no changes in muscle size/LBM, and the fat will return. Dieter ends up 3 lbs heavier than when they started the training program with no results to show for all his work.


This is exactly the opposite of how a beginner (and if you haven't been lifting consistently for 12 months let's go ahead and say you are a beginner) should get started.

When you are begining a body recomposition you should be focused on DIET and RESISTANCE TRAINING with MINIMAL LOW INTENSITY CARDIO. The first thing you should figure out is how am I going to get to 15% body fat?

That's easy. Don't eat so damn much. If you're over 15% body fat your diet should have realistically almost no fat in it (other than say 10g of fish oil because you need to give your body EFA's). Let's say you have 40 lbs of stored body fat. That's over fucking 140,000 calories worth of stored body fat. You can walk a mile on 100 calories, so if you walked to fucking Dallas, Texas as long as you took 10g fish oil and got 300g of protein everyday you'd never even feel hungry.

Carbs are a non-essential nutrient. Meaning you could go the rest of your life without eating a single carb. Now am I telling you not to eat a single carb? No. Eat like 10-20 a day that's fine. Your body would rather burn carbs than fat because it's a more efficient fuel source. So if you're flooding your body with 200g carb a day how the hell do you expect to burn 140,000 calories worth of stored body fat within the next couple months?

Eat fucking protein. If you really want to lose WEIGHT, easy cut out protein and start running a lot. You'll drop muscle fast as hell and within a few months you'll be dead from skeletal problems. Once you decompose you'll weigh almost nothing.

Look if you're eating protein and you're a beginner to weight training you will make significant neural strength gains in the first couple of months. There's no need to eat 3,000 calories a day or do 65 sets at the gym. Do a full body exercise twice a week with 10-15 sets and you'll be adding poundage and reps every workout even if all you're eating is 1,000 calories a day. That's just how this works.

Once you get under 15% bodyfat, then we can talk about adding muscle size and eating carbs and shit.



TL/DR.

1) Eat protein
2) Stop eating carbs
3) Stop eating fat (except EFA)
4) Lift weights 2-3x a week and go up in weight/reps every session
5) No more than 1,000 calories
6) Take vitamin supplements so you don't feel like shit


Take the easy strength gains and fat loss now while it's available to you. In a few months when you're not a fat ass anymore we can talk about how to gain muscle size.

3/24/2013 5:25:36 PM

To much reading in this thread

3/24/2013 5:48:50 PM

I just want to start off by saying if you want an answer at the end, prepare to be disappointed. There just isn't one.

I was an intern at Nickelodeon Studios for a year in 2005 for my degree in animation. It wasn't paid of course, most internships aren't, but it did have some perks beyond education. To adults it might not seem like a big one, but most kids at the time would go crazy over it.

Now, since I worked directly with the editors and animators, I got to view the new episodes days before they aired. I'll get right to it without giving too many unnecessary details. They had very recently made the SpongeBob movie and the entire staff was somewhat sapped of creativity so it took them longer to start up the season. But the delay lasted longer for more upsetting reasons. There was a problem with the series 4 premiere that set everyone and everything back for several months.

Me and two other interns were in the editing room along with the lead animators and sound editors for the final cut. We received the copy that was supposed to be "Fear of a Krabby Patty" and gathered around the screen to watch. Now, given that it isn't final yet animators often put up a mock title card, sort of an inside joke for us, with phony, often times lewd titles, such as "How sex doesn't work" instead of "Rock-a-bye-Bivalve" when SpongeBob and Patrick adopt a sea scallop. Nothing particularly funny but work related chuckles. So when we saw the title card "Squidward's Suicide" we didn't think it more than a morbid joke.

One of the interns did a small throat laugh at it. The happy-go-lucky music plays as is normal. The story began with Squidward practicing his clarinet, hitting a few sour notes like normal. We hear SpongeBob laughing outside and Squidward stops, yelling at him to keep it down as he has a concert that night and needs to practice. SpongeBob says okay and goes to see Sandy with Patrick. The bubbles splash screen comes up and we see the ending of Squidward's concert. This is when things began to seem off.

While playing, a few frames repeat themselves, but the sound doesn't (at this point sound is synced up with animation, so, yes, that's not common) but when he stops playing, the sound finishes as if the skip never happened. There is slight murmuring in the crowd before they begin to boo him. Not normal cartoon booing that is common in the show, but you could very clearly hear malice in it. Squidward's in full frame and looks visibly afraid. The shot goes to the crowd, with SpongeBob in center frame, and he too is booing, very much unlike him. That isn't the oddest thing, though. What is odd is everyone had hyper realistic eyes. Very detailed. Clearly not shots of real people's eyes, but something a bit more real than CGI. The pupils were red. Some of us looked at each other, obviously confused, but since we weren't the writers, we didn't question its appeal to children yet.

The shot goes to Squidward sitting on the edge of his bed, looking very forlorn. The view out of his porthole window is of a night sky so it isn't very long after the concert. The unsettling part is at this point there is no sound. Literally no sound. Not even the feedback from the speakers in the room. It's as if the speakers were turned off, though their status showed them working perfectly. He just sat there, blinking, in this silence for about 30 seconds, then he started to sob softly. He put his hands (tentacles) over his eyes and cried quietly for a full minute more, all the while a sound in the background very slowly growing from nothing to barely audible. It sounded like a slight breeze through a forest.

The screen slowly begins to zoom in on his face. By slow I mean it's only noticeable if you look at shots 10 seconds apart side by side. His sobbing gets louder, more full of hurt and anger. The screen then twitches a bit, as if it twists in on itself, for a split second then back to normal. The wind-through-the-trees sound gets slowly louder and more severe, as if a storm is brewing somewhere. The eerie part is this sound, and Squidward's sobbing, sounded real, as if the sound wasn't coming from the speakers but as if the speakers were holes the sound was coming through from the other side. As good as sound as the studio likes to have, they don't purchase the equipment to be that good to produce sound of that quality.

Below the sound of the wind and sobbing, very faint, something sounded like laughing. It came at odd intervals and never lasted more than a second so you had a hard time pinning it (we watched this show twice, so pardon me if things sound too specific but I've had time to think about them). After 30 seconds of this, the screen blurred and twitched violently and something flashed over the screen, as if a single frame was replaced.

The lead animation editor paused and rewound frame by frame. What we saw was horrible. It was a still photo of a dead child. He couldn't have been more than 6. The face was mangled and bloodied, one eye dangling over his upturned face, popped. He was naked down to his underwear, his stomach crudely cut open and his entrails laying beside him. He was laying on some pavement that was probably a road.

The most upsetting part was that there was a shadow of the photographer. There was no crime tape, no evidence tags or markers, and the angle was completely off for a shot designed to be evidence. It would seem the photographer was the person responsible for the child's death. We were of course mortified, but pressed on, hoping that it was just a sick joke.

The screen flipped back to Squidward, still sobbing, louder than before, and half body in frame. There was now what appeard to be blood running down his face from his eyes. The blood was also done in a hyper realistic style, looking as if you touched it you'd get blood on your fingers. The wind sounded now as if it were that of a gale blowing through the forest; there were even snapping sounds of branches. The laughing, a deep baritone, lasting at longer intervals and coming more frequently. After about 20 seconds, the screen again twisted and showed a single frame photo.

The editor was reluctant to go back, we all were, but he knew he had to. This time the photo was that of what appeared to be a little girl, no older than the first child. She was laying on her stomach, her barrettes in a pool of blood next to her. Her left eye was too popped out and popped, naked except for underpants. Her entrails were piled on top of her above another crude cut along her back. Again the body was on the street and the photographer's shadow was visible, very similar in size and shape to the first. I had to choke back vomit and one intern, the only female in the room, ran out. The show resumed.

About 5 seconds after this second photo played, Squidward went silent, as did all sound, like it was when this scene started. He put his tentacles down and his eyes were now done in hyper realism like the others were in the beginning of this episode. They were bleeding, bloodshot, and pulsating. He just stared at the screen, as if watching the viewer. After about 10 seconds, he started sobbing, this time not covering his eyes. The sound was piercing and loud, and most fear inducing of all is his sobbing was mixed with screams.

Tears and blood were dripping down his face at a heavy rate. The wind sound came back, and so did the deep voiced laughing, and this time the still photo lasted for a good 5 frames.

The animator was able to stop it on the 4th and backed up. This time the photo was of a boy, about the same age, but this time the scene was different. The entrails were just being pulled out from a stomach wound by a large hand, the right eye popped and dangling, blood trickling down it. The animator proceeded. It was hard to believe, but the next one was different but we couldn't tell what. He went on to the next, same thing. He want back to the first and played them quicker and I lost it. I vomited on the floor, the animating and sound editors gasping at the screen. The 5 frames were not as if they were 5 different photos, they were played out as if they were frames from a video. We saw the hand slowly lift out the guts, we saw the kid's eyes focus on it, we even saw two frames of the kid beginning to blink.

The lead sound editor told us to stop, he had to call in the creator to see this. Mr. Hillenburg arrived within about 15 minutes. He was confused as to why he was called down there, so the editor just continued the episode. Once the few frames were shown, all screaming, all sound again stopped. Squidward was just staring at the viewer, full frame of the face, for about 3 seconds. The shot quickly panned out and that deep voice said "DO IT" and we see in Squidward's hands a shotgun. He immediately puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Realistic blood and brain matter splatters the wall behind him, and his bed, and he flies back with the force. The last 5 seconds of this episode show his body on the bed, on his side, one eye dangling on what's left of his head above the floor, staring blankly at it. Then the episode ends.

Mr. Hillenburg is obviously angry at this. He demanded to know what the heck was going on. Most people left the room at this point, so it was just a handful of us to watch it again. Viewing the episode twice only served to imprint the entirety of it in my mind and cause me horrible nightmares. I'm sorry I stayed.

3/24/2013 5:49:24 PM

^W....tf

3/24/2013 5:56:40 PM

hahahaha, god damn

3/24/2013 5:59:40 PM

I'm glad you posted this. Before you sell any trees you need to know what you've got.
$3000 for 200 trees is $15 a tree. A small stack of firewood at Harris Teeter is $5.
Does this sound like it might be a good deal?
Prices fluctuate a lot, but looking at just stumpage prices a single pine that size should be worth $40-60. Before the economy went down a tree that size would have brought at least $100.

There are factors that affect stumpage value (what you get paid) such as:

The economy. Current prices are about 25-60% of what they were before the economy started to suck. Prices fluctuate all the time within the larger general price trends. You can hit a high point and actually sell timber for more than what it was worth in a good economy. Consulting foresters are always on the watch for these spikes and can help you sell your timber at the best times.

Short term demand. If a processing facility runs low or if we've run into a period of wet weather (they can't log some tracts when the weather is wet) they'll offer more money. This is basically what creates those short term fluctuations.

Size of your tract. Once the tract gets less than 20 acres the value can decrease. High quality stands (sounds like yours is high quality) are more resistant to decreases. If you're dealing with a logging operation or one that is already logging nearby then size of the tract doesn't matter. It costs a logger time (money) to move from one site to another. If they barely have to move then you shouldn't see hardly any decrease.

Distance to a mill. The farther they have to haul the wood the more it costs them in time and fuel. Most of the time this isn't a big factor when you're talking about pine sawtimber.
Where is this tract anyway?

What the fuck you know. If you don't know wtf you have then he's not going to give you much money. Pretty obvious, but people often don't realize how little they know. You're smarter than that because you started this thread.
Generally speaking, if a buyer knows that you've dealt with timber sales in the past you'll get offered more. If a consulting forester is involved then the price you're offered is going to jump up 25-50% right off the bat. Often times we see the prices jump up many times over.

What you need to do
-Like others have said, contact the NCFS county office in whatever county the land is in:
http://ncforestservice.gov/contacts/contacts_main.htm

-Call the county office and tell them you were offered money for some timber. They'll want to know where it's at. Ask them to give you a management plan for all the timber on the property. You'll want that so you can plan ahead and know when you need to harvest your timber. They'll give you their recommendations, which will probably be to harvest at least those old trees. They'll also give you a list of consulting foresters, timber buyers, and info on selling timber.

-Read the management plan. Seriously, read it.

-Pick a consultant. Ask them which consultants work in that area and ask which ones they've had good experiences with. They can't tell you which one to pick because it's our policy, but they will hint to the ones that are good. It's generally better to pick a consultant that's local.

-Let the consultant handle the timber sale. They'll charge you 5-10% of the sales price, but that's ok because you're going to make a lot more money anyway and you'll have much less of a headache letting the consultant handle it.

-Once they start logging then contact the county office again and ask them to do a logging inspection. This is important if you have streams on your land. If they screw up a stream and leave the site you could be stuck with fixing the problems. A good consultant will handle the water quality issues for you. Also, a consultant will draw up a good sales contract that puts the water quality responsibilities back on the logger.

-After the logging is done have the consultant handle the reforestation or call the NCFS and let them know you want a reforestation plan for that area. If it needs to be replanted then the consultant or NCFS will get you an application for our Forest Development porgram that pays for part of the reforestation.


Some other info...
-In NC there are registered foresters that have passed the NC Board of Registration for Foresters test. A consulting forester or a service forester (me and others with the NCFS) works for you. There are registered foresters that work for timber buyers. You need to be aware that being a registered forester doesn't exactly tell you which side of the fence the forester is on. Some foresters on the timber buying side will try to convince you that they're on your side since they are a registered forester. Just keep that in mind.

-The money you make on a timber sale is taxed as long term capital gains. Don't report it as regular income unless you like paying more taxes for no reason. The money you pay the consultant can be taken out of the sales price so you don't get taxed on that part.

-It's easier to manage most land that is clearcut harvested. If the logger you were talking to only wanted the big trees and wanted to leave the small ones then it might not be a good thing. If he leaves crappy small trees then once those grow bigger you'll just have crappy big trees that aren't worth much. If they cut all all the trees down then you can reforest the area with good seedlings.

-You can pay less in property tax for forestland (NC Forestry Present Use Tax Valuation Program). To do this you need at least 20 acres of forestland and you need a management plan. If the land isn't already taxed at the forestry rate then once you get that plan, bring it to the tax office and apply for the forestry present use tax.

Edited to add some more stuff...
It sounds like you might not have a lot of land with trees that are ready to harvest. A management plan from the NCFS will help you figure out what can be sold.
If it ends up that you don't have much area to harvest then sometimes it can be hard to get a consulting forester to handle the sale. A consultant in this case might want a flat fee for handling the timber sale or may want you to enter into a contract for them to help you with future timber sales. At the very least you could also get a consulting forester to cruise your timber and give you an estimate on the value then handle the sale yourself.
Most likely you should be able to find a consultant because they're hungry for work in this economy, but if you can't get a consultant that's fine too. You can deal directly with loggers. In this case you should call a few timber buyers off the list the NCFS should send you. Get a couple of offers to see if you can get a price that's closer to what the consultant valued the timber at.

If you have more questions feel free to ask me or the NCFS (if you ask me you are technically asking the NCFS )

3/24/2013 6:00:27 PM

4^

3/24/2013 6:06:36 PM

something about threadchrist

3/24/2013 6:10:49 PM

Sparkles, Professional Male Model

3/24/2013 6:39:32 PM

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion

3/24/2013 6:42:03 PM

i don't care about your goddamn homoerotic vampire stories

3/24/2013 6:42:25 PM

3/24/2013 7:47:59 PM