Official Richart Ruddie Blog - Internet Entrepreneur

How Manufacturing is Described by the top Countries

While in Japan you can't help but think everything seems to be so efficient. You think Germany as high level engineering. So here are some of the top countries and what their engineering and designs adjectives are:

Japan: Japan's manufacturing industry is renowned for its precision and efficiency. With a strong emphasis on innovation and technological advancements, Japanese manufacturers excel in producing high-quality goods. Whether it's electronics, automobiles, or machinery, Japanese manufacturing is known for its attention to detail and reliability. The country's commitment to continuous improvement and lean production practices has enabled it to stay at the forefront of global manufacturing, consistently delivering cutting-edge products.

China: China's manufacturing sector has gained global recognition for its large-scale production capabilities. With a vast population and a diverse range of industries, Chinese manufacturers are able to produce goods at competitive prices and in large quantities. China's manufacturing prowess lies in its ability to adapt quickly, leveraging its manufacturing infrastructure and skilled workforce to meet the demands of various sectors. The country's fast-paced and dynamic manufacturing landscape allows for versatility, making it a key player in the global supply chain.

Germany: Germany's manufacturing industry is synonymous with precision, quality, and engineering excellence. German manufacturers are renowned for their attention to detail and adherence to rigorous standards. The country's emphasis on advanced technologies and automation has led to highly efficient production processes, ensuring consistent and reliable output. Germany's engineering-driven approach, coupled with a strong focus on research and development, positions it as a global leader in manufacturing, particularly in sectors such as automotive, machinery, and engineering.

Italy: Italy is known for its artisanal manufacturing traditions and impeccable craftsmanship. From luxury goods to fashion, Italian manufacturing places great importance on design, aesthetics, and attention to detail. Italian manufacturers have mastered the art of combining traditional techniques with modern innovation, resulting in exquisite products that are highly sought after worldwide. The country's manufacturing prowess lies in its ability to create timeless and stylish goods, showcasing the perfect blend of tradition and contemporary elegance.

France: French manufacturing is characterized by its sophistication and refinement. Known for its expertise in luxury goods, France excels in producing high-end products that exude elegance and quality. French manufacturers combine creativity with technical precision, resulting in exceptional craftsmanship and attention to detail. Whether it's haute couture, perfumes, or fine wines, French manufacturing stands out for its commitment to excellence and the pursuit of luxury.

USA: The United States boasts an advanced and diverse manufacturing industry. With a focus on innovation and cutting-edge technologies, American manufacturers are at the forefront of various sectors, including aerospace, electronics, and biotechnology. The country's manufacturing landscape is characterized by its high level of automation, driving productivity and efficiency. American manufacturers are known for their ability to adapt and introduce groundbreaking solutions, allowing them to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving global market.

Switzerland: Switzerland is renowned for its precision and quality-focused manufacturing industry. Swiss manufacturers are synonymous with high-precision engineering and impeccable craftsmanship. Whether it's watches, medical devices, or precision instruments, Swiss manufacturing excels in producing top-notch products that are known for their accuracy and reliability. Swiss manufacturers leverage their highly skilled workforce and innovative technologies to maintain their reputation as leaders in precision manufacturing. The country's commitment to innovation and continuous improvement ensures that Swiss-made products remain synonymous with excellence.

Entrepreneur Lessons Learned from Recent Malibu Conference

Live the values that you create and codify your company's purpose and values.

Some other great values, ideals, and lessons I picked up from the human gathering conference are:

Do things with your hands and engage in things that are rewarding to solve while also rewarding to create in your life or workplace.

Have candor

Complain about all the problems in the world or commit to being part of the solutions.

Create and move on.

Blackjack Method for Meetings

My friend is coming out with a book covering this topic but for my own note taking purposes I wanted to be able to save it here to come back and review the concept when needed. If you play blackjack the goal is to get to as close to 21 without going over and ending with a higher score than the dealer. So the way to organize meetings daily with your team is to spend 21 minutes in three 7 minute segments.

That's 7 minutes of What are you busy with?

7 minutes of what are your challenges?

7 minutes of what do you need from me?

Blackjack method 7 minutes each with your team each morning and then you get back to work.

BVP $100 Million Dollar Startup Playbook

So you want to scale your company to $100 million dollars in annual recurring revenue? Well Bessemer Venture Partners lays out a great playbook although it's from 2021 and the 2023 metrics that the current capital markets are asking for are a small or giant leap depending on where you are in the growth stage of your cloud or saas company. Some of the great things the playbook describes is:

"Enterprise segments tend to have long lifetimes and therefore high CLTVs and SMB short lifetimes and therefore lower CLTVs, thereby supporting significantly different customer acquisition cost structures." 

The other great metric that is often overlooked and not talked about because a focus on growth at all costs and a ton of cash being thrown at getting there no matter the method as long as growth of ARR is achieved is Cash Conversion Score. If you can build a company with a great CCS then thats a company that I would want to invest in. Below is BVP breakdown of cash conversion score:

 

"The Cash Conversion Score (CCS) is another metric that we often use to evaluate whether or not the capital that cloud companies raise and consume is generating a meaningful return. As the ratio of the ARR to total capital invested into a company minus cash, the Cash Conversion Score is effectively the return-on-investment of each dollar ever invested into a company. For both founders and investors, the Cash Conversion Score is, therefore, a powerful proxy for returns. If a company has a CCS of 1.0x, one dollar of investment into the business yields one dollar of topline recurring revenue. If we assume that the average cloud company gets a 10x revenue multiple (more in-line with historical norms vs. the 23x revenue multiple of ^EMCLOUD today), the one dollar of revenue multiplied by the 10x multiple equals $10 of enterprise value. Every dollar put into the company is getting a 10x return. Similarly, a company with a 0.1x CCS would only return the capital invested. ROI is not driven by Cash Conversion Score directly, but CCS indicates multi-year trends in a couple of incredibly important things, including product-market fit and a scalable sales and marketing organization. It is therefore a core KPI we track in evaluating cloud businesses.

The average Cash Conversion Score for cloud companies tends to increase as it matures, from an average of almost 0.5x from $1-10MM of ARR to almost 1x at $100MM+. For cloud companies, revenue generation tends to lag spending and only the strongest companies will scale to the $100MM+ mark where they are seeing the most leverage from their operating model.

One of the strongest companies on this metric—from the start—has been our portfolio company Zapier, which has raised only $1.3MM in its lifetime and announced in March 2021 that it exceeded $140MM of ARR. While we don’t hold every company to this CCS efficiency, we look for companies with best-in-class CCS of 1x+.

For the full playbook and help scaling your startup to over 100 million in 2023 visit: https://www.bvp.com/atlas/scaling-to-100-million

How To Increase Productivity - Richart Ruddie

To increase productivity in an organization will allow you to go from 50 clients to 5,000. It will allow your teams to free up time and work on doing things that are well productive. Below are 4 ways to increase productivity:

1. Reduce duplication of effort
2. Increase our skill levels (More education, Implementing Software or Operating Systems)
3. Greater access to information. Get it faster
4. Implement a new methodology. If nothing changes then nothing changes.

How can you increase your companies productivity and get ahead of the competition not behind it?

Find your clients pain point

Go into a sales meeting and find that client's pain point as quickly as possible. Once you've found that prospect's deepest need it is important to show how you would be able to fulfill and fix those pain points. This is what top sales people and hustlers work towards.

The second part is ensuring that you are able to execute on the delivery part of the process and satisfy the clients needs. Merely convincing people you can help them isn't going to cut it long term. Of course you could one or two times or a bit more but its not a sustainable model. If it's a physical product you are selling you certainly do not want the headache of constant complaints, returns, canceled sales, and all of the other headaches that come with selling a sub-par or not as advertised product. Now with the increased chance of a recession those things will just grow. It's bad enough without financial meltdowns and it will only grow if you don't fix your product or service during a recession. Purchase and provide the best possible solutions. 

This Week in Tech Updates from Richart Ruddie

Google ads and Google as a company is finally getting serious about privacy. They've been tightening up and making changes to Analytics and working on a cookie free future and this past week they just released this announcement: "New data protection laws, which apply to the collection and processing of personal information, will be coming into effect in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, and Utah in 2023." While we're at it and dealing with privacy issues Google settled with 40 out of 50 states here over tracking issues and is paying a few hundred million in fines. Read about the not so not evil company practices here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/google-settles-location-history-lawsuit-with-40-states-will-pay-392-million/ 

CBS News got off of Twitter for what they said was security purposes and then got back on a day later. It's been purported that their followers are fake or that they have extremely low engagement on Twitter and that may be to fraudulent followers or bots.

If you use Wix for SEO or have client sites that are created on Wix then this resource SEO guide released this week may also be helpful: https://www.wix.com/seo/learn/resource/manage-seo-edit-by-page

Sucuri is a popular wordpress plugin  and they have just uncovered a WIDESPREAD hack that appears to be designed to improve someone's SEO performance which is a tricky and clever hack to send malware using black hat hacking techniques. https://blog.sucuri.net/2022/11/massive-ois-is-black-hat-redirect-malware-campaign.html )

Artificial Intelligence news for the week courtesy of The University of Cambridge states that "claims AI can boost wordplace diversity are 'spurious and dangerous'"https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/claims-ai-can-boost-workplace-diversity-are-spurious-and-dangerous-researchers-argue  and here's some more cool AI News: https://www.engadget.com/mit-century-old-differential-equation-liquid-ai-computational-bottleneck-160035555.html 

QUANTA MAGAZINE PROFILES A NEW "energy-efficient [AI] chip" that promises to revolutionize chip design and artificial inteligence research https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-brain-inspired-chip-can-run-ai-with-far-less-energy-20221110/ ). The chips use (relatively newly developed) Resistive RAM memory and the chips are called NeuRRAM (neuromorphic resistive RAM). These memory chips operate in ANALOG rather than DIGITAL mode, which is revolutionary. Analog computers predate digital computers but they didn't have memory systems like RAM.

Now companies are laying off en masse and doing a RIF which means a Reduction in Force or workforce for those who keep on hearing about these RIF's and had wondered what the acronym meant.  These companies over-hired during the pandemic, expecting a much larger economic bounce back that was pent up with money flooded into the system and for the last year we've been bearing the outpouring of that money.

So what does the future hold? Whatever you make of it.

Best Data Rooms when Doing an M&A Transaction

Data rooms take all shapes and designs when trying to figure out the best way to share your data when undergoing an M&A transaction. Some of the mid-level brokers and investment bankers I've noticed just default to Google Drive and Dropbox to share files. Here are 3 other good ones that come highly recommended:

https://digify.com/ - Document security to easily control access and distribution of your files and virtual data rooms. 

https://www.idealsvdr.com/ - Has offices in London, Hong Kong, and New York so fits the biggest locations for M&A transactions and bankers. Doesnt tell you the price on the site

https://www.datasite.com/us/en.html - Has a whole suite of services outside of just data room uploading and downloading.

Basic Strategic Advice For Roll Ups

After talking with a private equity advisor the advice to follow when doing a roll up is be ready to commit at least 5 years to the venture, building high growth and high value business where you can increase margins & operating efficiencies. If you are working in or buying a software as a service business you can get multiples of revenues that are 10x or greater especially if you can show consistent 20% growth margins. Services or public relations businesses you are looking at more of an 6-12x especially if you are selling to a global agency. Good to showcase 15-25% operating margins in a standard business and 15-30% margins in a public relations agency model.

Notes for the future.

Can't Cancel Scams Stretch to Newspapers Online

Read this interesting article about how the Federal Trade Commission is going to crack down on violations and news organizations that they specify that do negative option billing, let you subscribe and sign up online but make it nearly impossible to cancel your subscription to an online newspaper. https://www.niemanlab.org/2021/11/the-end-of-click-to-subscribe-call-to-cancel-one-of-the-news-industrys-favorite-retention-tactics-is-illegal-ftc-says I would guess that this is not going to get a lot of coverage as newspapers need this subscription revenue and would not want to post an unbiased news piece about the shady business practices that are consistently implemented among most of the news sites.

I was a subscriber to the Miami-Herald for example and there was no option to cancel online via a subscription page. If you are going to have clients enrolled for online services why make it so hard and difficult for them to cancel? This reminds me of the America Online days or the Free Credit Report days.

Finding the Right Cadence in your Startup

David Sacks former CEO of Yammer lays it out perfectly in this piece. The advice is worth it's weight in gold in building an unstoppable SaaS army from a potential chaotic startup narrative. His advice is even similar to the two pizzas theory coined by Jeff Bezos & Amazon to keep things small and in line to ensure that you are not building products that will stay perpetually in development and drain resources.

A must read for entrepreneurs building a SaaS platform: https://sacks.substack.com/p/the-cadence-how-to-operate-a-saas-startup-436aa8099e8

Will Smith's Advice on how to suceed in business

Time to get Jiggy With It. Mark Mason is releasing a ghost written book by The Fresh Prince himself. As I've blogged about my love for the hit 90's show and even adorned a Halloween costume that mimicked the costume on the opening scenes for The Fresh of Bel-Air I'll look forward to reading "Will" when it comes out later this year.

Will Smith says that he's "World-class at only a couple of things" Every hour that Will is not focusing on those things he is doing a disservice to himself and the world. If you are world-class at something you should be focusing on that and if you are building a business and can afford to hire the world-class employees then build a team off of that and you have a recipe for success.

CEPTIA is the Reason there are no more pay toilets in the USA

CEPTIA a small bootstrapped organization in the 1970's said enough was enough paying a dime every time you wanted to use the restroom. As you can imagine there was revolt against the free restroom movement but much like any change in the country there will always be revolt and disugst but decades later it will have seemed obvious. A perfect example is when the phone system changed and each individual home got it's own number there was protests in San Francisco.

For more information on this piece of American history read: https://psmag.com/economics/dont-pay-toilets-america-bathroom-restroom-free-market-90683

Richart Ruddie on Building a Billion Dollar Software Business During a Pandemic

Richart Ruddie on Building a Billion Dollar Software Business During a Pandemic

What role is technology playing in improving business scores when viewed from above? China has been developing and working on a social credit monitoring system that is something that could be seen in Western Culture as invasive but during a pandemic is seen as a safety measure akin to contact tracing software.

Modern Software is opening up so many doors and possibilities. The most exciting news recently has been the Neuralink from business Magnate (not magnet) Elon Musk which will help solve numerous mental and health issues through a chip installed in peoples brains. Musk said at the public’s unveiling that they expect to have hundreds of thousands installed eventually and for it to be scalable.

A modern technology not as lifesaving as Neuralink but one that entrepreneurs like Richart Ruddie predict that businesses and individuals will stake their future on is the Social Credit Scoring system. Ruddie foresees significant decisions being made over social credit scores one day similar to how you choose to eat at a restaurant if it has a high Yelp score or choose not to stay at a hotel because the reviews are bad. The same will be the case for doing business with somebody in China because their “credit rating” is great vs. passing on those who have bad credit scores.

This technology is becoming widely popular as people want to be able to know who it’s safe to do business with and who is not. In the modern world, creating a billion-dollar business is possible more so now than any other time in history thanks to the connected world that we live in. Staying vigilant and taking advantage of modern technology has helped companies sprout into unicorns at a faster pace than any other time in history.

Seeing a lot of opportunity pre-pandemic Ruddie went over to China and was working with a team over there to register as a Chinese company and to help develop software to track, monitor, and improve scores. This is something similar to his work as a leading public relations and reputation repair expert who has served over 10,000 clients. China is different though he said. The opportunity here is beyond anything in America simply due to the fact that the total addressable market size is greater than the entire USA population. 

As even Mark Cuban has said there is a little bit of luck in becoming a billionaire but If he had to start all over again he is positive that he would end up a multi-millionaire but not so sure he would join the 3 comma club once again.

Creating useful technology that is revolutionary has both pros and cons. All you have to do is ask Mark Zuckerberg’s critics about it.  There are more cybercrimes in the modern world and COVID-19 has exacerbated that trend with the work from home policies, but technology also provides an opportunity to solve these crimes and connect us at a time that we have all felt so disconnected from each other. Credit monitoring software allows people to identify fraud and solve it before it causes damage to businesses globally and Ruddie has developed another piece of software to help alert users when their information has been breached or stolen and is being sold on the dark net. He’s garnered interest from top telecom names on expanding and due to the inability to work in China directly at the time he’s finding other areas in the cyber world to focus on while he listens to his favorite DJ’s, is surrounded by his impressive art collection, and cranks away on refining the software.

For those unfamiliar with the credit monitoring software this is a further explanation:

What is the Chinese credit monitoring software?

Credit monitoring is a comprehensive way for entrepreneurs to safeguard their businesses from fraud and identity theft. There are criminals devoted to taking advantage of business startups using client information for their gain, limiting the growth.

However, this software is designed to notify business owners of any transactions made through the credit reports and provide favorable action. In case there is someone taking advantage of personal information, then the investor will know.

Vulcanpost.com posts essential information that keeps a record of common cybercrimes in the entrepreneur's world and provides viable solutions. Business owners need such a website to be updated on what's going on in the entrepreneurial world and understand what customers expect.

 Role of credit monitoring software to business startups

China has created a new system that tracks people's and businesses' actions to reward them by punishing the wrongdoers and supporting business startups. Business owners now have an opportunity to improve their scoring, while those who score low will suffer such as one would in the Western World for having a bad credit score.

Any investor wants their business to be successful, and this is possible when the clients are confident and know the information is protected. A credit monitoring system in China guarantees transparency and notifications sent in case of any fraud.

Investors now have a peace of mind knowing they are involved in a legal investment. This system protects the business from trade conflicts between business owners, investors, and customers.

To improve your persona score you need to follow the golden rule and follow the law. The Chinese social credit monitoring software does the trick in providing customers with transparency. Loan providers can monitor their client transactions and credit score; therefore, making the right choice who do to do business with and who they shouldn’t be able to trust.

For instance, if someone hasn't been paying their debts, than loan providers can access the score and be warned about the un-credit worthy client. Richart Ruddie’s plan for those using the software will be to help users to improve their credit scores by doing good in society and promoting that good karma. The amount of data compiled is enthralling when you calculate that there are over 1.3 billion people in Mainland China.

Finding a Reliable decision making tool

Many people use credit monitoring software in Singapore to safeguard themselves from identity theft and fraud. This software also comes in handy when people want to increase the credit score. Whenever people borrow money, this software tracks the credit report as well as the scores.

Why Chinese Social Credit Monitoring software

Reliable software is needed and with a proper UX/UI design that has functionality to send notification messages to the account holder's phone if any transaction takes place or score changes. It becomes easy to see the potential here and it wasn’t cooked up in a Stanford incubator.

A successful business idea will end up attracting attention from all corners of the globe, and even if the owner is cautious, other sharp entrepreneurs are going to hack away at the idea. Also concerning is the data treasure chest that these startups will have and for nefarious hackers that may try take advantage of the client's personal information and all the data encased in the credit monitoring software.

Business owners who have adopted Chinese social credit monitoring software and have high scores for honesty are experiencing increased sales. People want to be associated with companies that guarantee protection and follow all legal standards. This software being developed by Ruddie will further help people keep a close guard through regular checks and balances.

Touch Points in Marketing - Richart Ruddie

Touch points in multi marketing programs are growing in importance as COVID-19 affects consumers typical behavior. Pre-Covid marketers had more options. The business traveler who sees the ad in the airport, then sees the ad in the magazine on the plane, and then Googles them and is tracked with a pixel and enters the funnel. Today that funnel is changing and touch points adjust just as marketing spend and direction does each year (or in this years case each quarter).

As marketers we have a number of ways to measure the impact of each touch point along the customer journey. Measuring in marketing is difficult as there are so many different ways a customer is touched and how do you attribute just one touch point as the entry way to the funnel? As marketers we need to continually optimize campaigns to get the most value for our investments and measure ROI over the short and long term.

Understanding the benefits and drawbacks of each allows you to have a plan that gets you the insights you need to grow your business in todays climate.

Happy Marketing,

Richart Ruddie

French Quote: Marcel Proust Real Act of Discovery on Richart Ruddie Blog

"The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands but in seeing with new eyes". Sometimes you hear a quote and it speaks to you and other times you hear a quote and you laugh or brush it off. After finishing the book Practically Radical by William C. Taylor the co-founder of Fast Company Magazine talks about what sets and transforms companies. He educated me about DaVita a Dialysis company that I've noticed all over the world but never understood what they did as well as Threadless a T-Shirt company we used to talk about all the time and the early days of Netflix.

The book ends with Proust's quote on seeing with new eyes and speaks volumes to being able to recognize in a time like this we need to all look at things with new eyes and find solutions that you traditionally wouldn't come up with.

 

-Richart Ruddie

How I used AI Tools & Google Trends to Determine that Amazon HQ2 Is Coming to Miami

Amazon has yet to announce where they are going to put their newest headquarters called HQ2 into Overtown, Miami. With some proprietary AI software I've been testing and using Google Trends I can say with a high degree of probability that Overtown Miami will be the announced city for the second headquarters. If you look at search volume and spikes you get these clues.

Here are a few examples that you can see:

 

Notice the huge jump in late January for the neighborhood of Overtown that is just west of Downtown Miami and only miles from Jeff Bezos high school.

If you look at some of the other competitors and candidates bidding for HQ2 and their such volume jumps and AI metrics I've been monitoring have not yielded the same results:

 

Montgomery County, Maryland was definitely in contention but most likely due to over regulation and Maryland being known as an anti-business friendly state has hurt it's chances of providing thousands of new jobs to Marylanders.

Theres more data and articles that I've read through trying to work against my logic and the data but I can't find data to support another city. There are reasons I can think of that would make the area not so desirable such as Hurricanes and rising sea levels but every location has it's positives and negatives and Miami definitely has a lot of positives. Time will tell as I write this late at night on the 13th of February.

2017 a Financial Overview from Bloomberg

Bloomberg just did a great interactive piece covering 2017. There are some key points that stuck out to me:

More money went into startups in 2017 than any other year in history. SoftBank certainly led the way with huge investments in already established startups and Theranos receiving a huge end of year investment. 2017's total was $141.3 Billion invested in startups. 2016 investments paired with 2015 investments. In January of 2016 when I sat in on meetings at Battery Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Greylock Partners they all said that they were getting back to basics on VC investments. Take it FWIW.

Hong Kong has the highest real estate prices in the world and they continued to climb while their unemplyment continued to dip to only 3.0% where Japan has 2.8% unemployment followed by the US and Isreal at 4.1%, United Kingdom at 4.3% and Germany at it's lowest level since reunification. Apollo Golbal raised 24.6 billion dollars for the largest fund ever.

Student Loans have now exceeded the total size of U.S. High yield corporate market. This is a catch 20/20. Education costs continue to rise so there should be a rise in student loans which has continiously risen since 2005. This also equates to more students in school which is a positive thing IMO. More education typically = better society right?

Art market continues to reach new highs. Salvator Mundi sells for a record $450.3 million dollars at auction. Price was actually 400 Million combined with a 50 million dollar auction house fee. Off the top of my head this was sold to the Louve in Abu Dhabi. The total cost to build this museum was less than the cost of the one painting. The naming rights however are even more than the cost to build the museum. So what is art? Is it a name and recognition? The most expensive piece of art in the world is the Mona Lisa. The auction house did a fantastic job marketing this as the second Mona Lisa and when you have a piece on display for the next 100 years and people flock at $60.000 a ticket to go and see the second Mona Lisa the return on investment and name that the 2nd Louve has made for itself tends to make sense.

Reference:

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-year-in-money/

Puma & Adidas Were Once One

Reading through this article on the downfall of Nike from Quartz:

and it has this graph below that showcased to me something that I never knew and assume most people don't know. That the Dassler brothers from Germany had a shoe company and it consisted of Puma and Adidas. This former oligopoly started to diminish when Nike came out decades later and within only 5 years Reebok had become the biggest shoe company in the world. As with all cycles things change and Nike came back and still leads today despite a recent announcement to cut 2% of their workforce and the failure to come out with a blockbuster product in the last couple of years. Puma at one point in time had 30% of the market and today is closer to 5% while no company has ever had more than 50% of the entire market which Adidas once owned in the early 1970's.

 

You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you

Jeff Bezos says it best with inspirational quotes and advice on failing and growing your failures. If you're not failing you're not trying hard enough. Come up with difficult tasks and make good and bad headlines to succeed and innovate in the world.

One reason why people don’t like failure is because it’s embarrassing, Bezos added. He described a toddler trying to put a square peg in a round hole for hours, without success. But it doesn’t keep them from trying and trying. That’s how they learn.

“We all have that when we are little, but as we get older, somehow it’s not as cool to fail,”

For the full Geekwire overview and article go here: http://www.geekwire.com/2016/amazon-founder-jeff-bezos-offers-6-leadership-principles-change-mind-lot-embrace-failure-ditch-powerpoints/

Bakerys Edible Cutlery

Please support if you like the product: https://www.producthunt.com/tech/bakey-s

Always glad to support sustainable and eco-friendly products that can make a meaningful impact on the world at scale.

What do Dying People Regret?

A great read: http://thedailypositive.com/top-10-regrets-dying/

Most valuable lesson is people not spending time on things that were later deemed more important in life, resolve your fights early and don't let them drag on, say I love you more, and know that happiness is always a choice. 

Great Interview Questions

Job interviews are no fun. People probably put job interviews on par with going on blind dates but ahead of public speaking. It's nerve racking, scary, and you really don't know exactly what to expect even though you have a general idea. Now that I think of it. It's kind of like a blind date just to get hired instead of to meet somebody new.

Any who. Here are two great job interview questions that I like to ask:

Tell me something that you have won at?

The reason for this question is that you want to hire winners at your office. Having people that are competitive and want to be the best for your company are great attributes to have. If they are winning for you then you should be achieving your company goals.

If you Could have any super power what would it be?

Most people have no idea how to answer this and it really causes you to think. Your head starts to spin thinking of super heroes and what powers they have. I have one answer that flys off my tongue as I explain in this blog post here. If it weren't time for me then I don't have a rapid fire second answer.

How to get a celebrity to feature your product

Received this inquiry on how to get featured for a product and company that I invested in. The details of Angela's inquiry are below. What are your thoughts on her pitch and the templated email that was sent with just one word inserted:

 

My name is Angela Owens, I am the Brand Manager at Celebrity
Connected. We specialize in connecting companies, like yours, to
celebrities at gifting suites to celebrate various award shows. I
wanted to reach out to you personally as I checked out your website
and absolutely LOVE your products!

I would like to feature "INSERT NAME OF COMPANY I AM SPAMMING HERE" at our next gifting
suite. You can expect to meet over 100 celebrities and chat, take
photo/video, and promote
your brand to each celebrity individually. Basic participation package
includes a 10 x 10 show space, 4 passes to the gift event, and rights
to media taken. The event information is as follows:

Honoring the MTV Movie Awards®  on April 9th 2016 in Los Angeles:
Participation fee: $5,000


The day of the event will begin around 7AM when sponsors will have a
chance to set up their space. The show starts around 10:30 when the
celebrities start checking in with our talent department and walk the
red carpet into the gift suite. You will be personally gifting each
celebrity and be able to gather media. You will own the rights to any
media captured, so it is important to keep the camera clicking! In
addition, you will also be able to ask the celebrities to endorse your
business on various social media outlets where you will reach
thousands of followers. If timing is an issue we do have a few more
events this year as well.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns or if you
would just like a more in depth explanation of how all of this works.
I can be reached at 657-900-2059. Thanks for your time…I look forward
to hearing back from you and hopefully working together very soon! A
response would very much be appreciated :)

Best Wishes,
Angela Owens.


Angela Owens
Brand Manager
Corporate Office:
701 S. Parker St STE 2400
Orange, CA 92868
Office: 657.900.2059
Fax: 888.958.0552
Email: [email protected]

The MTV Movie Awards® is a registered trademark of the MTV Network®.
Celebrity Connected is not authorized by and is not associated with the MTV
Network ®, The MTV Movie Awards ®, or any of its official partners or
vendors.

Barnes & Noble Going All Hardcover

Shopping at Barnes & Nobles for some new books this evening I noticed something peculiar.

There are little to no softcover books. The majority of the store is filled with hardcover books. When I travel my preference is to have a great softcover book to fit into my bag. Tonight I purchased two softcovers and one hardcover but it was not easy to find. Naseem Talib's Fooled By Randomness was a gigantic hardcover that looked nothing like my personal soft copy. It was so abnormal that I almost purchased it thinking it was a book I didn't own already but I doubt thats why there are so many hard copies in the store.

Where Have all the softcover books Gone?

All the softies are being forced out. Is this a non-capacity issue? Making the store look more crowded with books without actually having to fill it with as many books? I am not quite sure but the nice lady at the checkout pushing the BNC club on me said it was a corporate decision and she did not know why.

If you have thoughts or reasons on why you can almost only buy hardcover book at Barbes & Noble then please do let me know.