Investing in a publicly-traded person carries certain risks that are not present in a more traditional investment. Specifically, the health of a person is key to their financial performance. K. Mike Merrill has worked to address health concerns by engaging in regular exercise and developing healthy eating habits (Juice & Salad™), but the fact of mortality can’t be ignored (see Kurzweil, Ray).

With that in mind we’ve developed a policy to ensure shareholder trust in a KmikeyM investment. With an existing $100,000 life insurance policy K. Mike Merrill has instructed the sole recipient of these funds to redistribute it shareholders at the time of his death.

A Yes vote will mean that in the case of K. Mike Merrill’s death the amount of money received will be distributed to the shareholders based on their percentage ownership of the outstanding shares. Curt Merrill, a shareholder and the single beneficiary of the existing life insurance policy, has agreed to work with shareholder and KmikeyM.com site architect Greg Borenstein to end trading and pay out the funds if this proposal is approved.

Cast your vote at KmikeyM.com.

Been working on a lot of video lately. We spent a weekend with YACHT making a music video directed by Mitchell Davis. We created a behind-the-scenes montage from the three day shoot that will be posted when the new music video is released.

We’ve also been working with the Hot Knives in Los Angeles to make short videos of their recipes and consulting with them for various social media strategies. We just created the Hot Knives Facebook page and have been testing a few Facebook ads.

Speaking of Facebook we created a page for 2020.tumblr.com. 2020 already has 58 “likes” on Facebook. We’re excited to promote this long-running project to a wider audience!

For the rest of the year we’ll be focused on three primary things.

1. New auction of shares
2. Launch of VTac
3. Proposal for new project (Provision)

In addition to these primary goals we’ll also be getting back into the saddle of the Bright Future of Tobacco podcast. For Thanksgiving we’re traveling to Los Angeles to do more video work with the Hot Knives. Then in December we’ll be taking a Caribbean cruise and catching up on a backlog of research and reading we’ve been putting off. (We have a bad habit of buying books faster than we can read them.)

We are excited to finish the year strong and be well positioned to start 2012 with a focus on large-scale projects. We also anticipate asking shareholders for more input on matters both personal and business related and expect the auction of new shares to bring some much needed fluidity to the market.

If you have any questions or ideas or concerns we would love to hear from you. We can meet up for breakfast, coffee, lunch, dinner, or a drink. We can be reached at kmikeym@kmikeym.com or a variety of social networks.

Speaking of social media, we’ve been tracking our followers/likes/friends/etc. since the beginning of the year and we have an 84% increase since January.