Surprise: With $110,000 You Can Afford Forbes' Top Ten Colleges But Not The Bottom Ten

Surprisingly, for middle income families with moderate savings, Forbes' 2014 Top Ten Colleges are more affordable than the Bottom Ten Colleges, based on estimated aid and $110,000 of savings.

What CMOs Are Saying About The Future Of Their Relationships With Agencies

With Advertising Week about to kick off in New York, today’s Mad Men should become concerned about the state of their industry: The majority of clients, 62%, polled by marketing consultancy Avidan Strategies admit that they now view agencies as suppliers, and that today’s relationships are no longer a partnership.

Women Entrepreneurs: Bridging the Gender Gap in Venture Capital

Want To Reduce Business Costs? Here Are 10 Areas To Start With

Through technology and outsourcing, companies can reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and increase profits to be in a better position to deal with the inevitable cyclical economic downturn.

U.S. Is Top Export Destination For Small British Firms

More than half of small and medium-sized companies in the UK sell their products to the U.S., making it the top export destination for British firms.

Why Google's Employee Diversity Programs Are Doomed To Fail

Google would like to hire more women. The company has been dominated by a majority white male demographic for its entire history, with women accounting for only 30% of its employees and blacks accounting for a minuscule 2%. But in the last year the company has begun taking steps toward ridding itself of what HR executive Laszlo Bock attributes to unconscious bias, a psychological theory that suggests people build up undetected prejudices based on social and political forces around them. The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo was given a guided look at how the company is trying to correct for this unfortunate imperfection of the human brain by offering diversity training workshops to encourage employees to be more self-aware about behaviors that may be unconsciously hostile toward those from different backgrounds.

The Top 10 Entrepreneurs Who've Inspired Marketing Star Joe Polish

Joe Polish is a marketing genius and bestselling author who’s consulted many of the industry’s best: Sir Richard Branson, Body for Life’s Bill Phillips, Tim Ferriss and many more. He was "thought leadership" before the concept of thought leadership was born.

3 Ways For CMOs To Integrate SEO With Other Digital Marketing Teams

In the past, things like content marketing, social marketing, PR, affiliate marketing, and advertising for a business have all operated independently of one another. As the world becomes more digital, though, one thing that’s become clear is that search engine optimization (SEO) cannot act as a stand-alone department. Integrating SEO with all different digital marketing teams across the board is increasingly important.

High Yield Bond Prices See Largest Trading Slide In 15 Months

The average bid of high-yield flow-name bonds dropped 68 bps in today’s reading, to 100.9% of par, yielding 6.94%, from 101.58, yielding 6.7%, on Sept. 25, according to LCD. It was a broad-based decline, with 13 of the constituents in the red, against two small gainers.

Annual Security Expo Shows An Industry Evolving

By Bill Daly

What The Core Values Of Alibaba Can Teach Us

In the US most brands miss the mark when connecting to New Heartland consumers. What can they learn from Alibaba's Jack Ma about Corporate Core Values and the role they play in consumer's trust?

New F1 Contract Boosts Prize Money To A Record $800 Million

Prize money paid to Formula One’s 11 teams accelerated 6.1% to a record $797.5 million last year driving a 32% fall in operating profit at the race series according to financial statements released today.

How A Texas Couple Started With $500 And Built A $1M Shark Tank Winner

Lessons from a fast-growth startup that figured out how to win on Shark Tank.

Is Your Posture A Dead Giveaway? Three Postures That Raise Red Flags

Sure, personal appearance matters. And beyond your looks, your resume and your pedigree, it’s also the 'package'  you broadcast when you walk in a room. But, despite all the hard work you’ve put in to get you this far, you could be undermining it all by carrying yourself in ways

The 6-Step Process to Building Better Relationships With a Data-Driven Approach to Outreach

Outreach is the art of connecting with bloggers or authors and building relationships through social media, email, or other online channels. It’s a subject near and dear to my heart. Earlier this year, I spoke about this topic at Authority Intensive, sharing the insights I learned while down in the trenches — building outreach teams

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America's 25 Highest Sales Tax Rates For 2012

The Essential Tech Tools For The Working Nomad

I have the luxury of being able to travel and work at the same time. My current office is a setup in a sunny backyard of Perth, Australia. Last week it was a beach off the coast of Bali. To set up my travelling office, I had to make sure I had all the right tech gear, while also being mindful of the weight I’d be carrying across different countries. I needed items that were lightweight, fit in a small backpack, and didn’t require a ton of maintenance. Here’s what I carry:

Half The World's Wildlife Has Vanished Since 1970 [Infographic]

Over the past 40 years, human activity has exacted a devastating toll on the planet's wildlife population. According to a shocking new report from the World Wildlife Fund, 52 percent of the world's mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have vanished between 1970 and 2010.

How To Sell Almost Anything

Whether you're seeking advice on raising capital, scaling your business or looking for general industry insight, these sites are worth reading.

If Apple's 2% Irish Tax Deal Is Illegal, Fines Could Be Billions

Apple Faces Billions in Fines if a Formal EU Investigation Concludes its Irish Tax Deal Was 'Special' Amounting to an Illegal Deal.

IRS Flubs 57% Of Tax Collections, Says Audit Of IRS

A New Government Report Says IRS Is Too Loose With Calling Tax Debts "Uncollectible," Missing Out on $1.9 Billion By Not Following Its Own Rules.

Aussie Start-up Tinybeans Raises AU$2 Million To Grow Its Social Network For Families and Baby Pictures

As a parent, publicly sharing your baby’s precious first moments on Facebook may irk you or your friends even more so. Instead, you prefer to keep the special moments and pictures more private amongst only close friends and family - but where can you do that? Tinybeans is one such private social network that allows parents to easily record and securely share pictures of their children with a relevant group of people who are genuinely interested in seeing them grow up.

Deals That Disappear: Could A Snapchat Model Be The Holy Grail for The Hotels Industry?

Ever since the dawn of the internet, airlines, hotels, rental cars and any other industries relying on the complex business of yield management have been struggling with an innate dilemma.

Catalogs: The Persistence of Print

Not long ago, Christmas catalogs didn’t appear in our mailboxes until around Thanksgiving, usually just after.

What A CMO Can Learn From A Comic Book

Just about a month ago I wrote a piece about a very well-known brand and its use of comic books as a means to promote a product that is not normally associated with comic books. All modesty aside and nothing to do with me, it's an interesting read about the use of  something normally not associated with marketing and/or advertising.

The Toxic Beliefs Successful People Quarantine

There is nothing wrong with making a mistake. It's what you say to yourself after you mess up that matters. Your self-talk (the thoughts you have about your feelings) can either magnify the negativity or help you turn that misstep into something productive.

Insights From Badgeville On How To Build A Customer Loyalty Programme That Works

A conversation with loyalty expert Steve Sims, Chief Design Officer & Founder of Behavior Lab at Badgeville offers some clues into how to build a loyalty programme that works.

Is Public Speaking The Secret To Becoming A Billionaire?

Read this post to learn the ten reasons you should get started with public speaking today, plus three rules to remember when you step up to the microphone.

The Mysterious Popularity Of The Meaningless Myers-Briggs (MBTI)

Myers-Briggs (MBTI) assessments are exceedingly popular. They are also pretty much meaningless. Solving the mystery of their popularity reveals essential features of how organizations work.

7 Obsolete SEO Tactics You’re Wasting Your Time On

SEO has changed over the years, and what worked once doesn’t necessarily work now. Some of the old tactics you are using not only will keep your traffic stagnant, but they may actually cause your traffic to drop. What should you do? You should stop using the tactics I discuss below and start using the  [click to continue...]

Hotwire (And Other Online) Customer Relations -- Where Art Thou?

In the Internet age, many companies have dramatically downsized their customer service operations. Sometimes, it requires an investigation even to locate a real human responsible for interacting with the public.

7 Reasons You’ll Want to Start Your Free Trial of the Rainmaker Platform Today

Last Monday, we publicly launched the Rainmaker Platform. It’s a complete website solution for content marketers and Internet entrepreneurs. With Rainmaker, you can: Create powerful content-driven websites on your own domains. Build membership sites and online training courses. Sell digital products like software, ebooks, and more. Perform sophisticated online lead generation. Optimize your content for

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How To Find And Use A Mentor

25 Ways To Get Balanced In A Digital World

Here are some tips for balance in a digital world, for those times when you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed. Often, we face so many demands on our time that we can end up feeling distinctly out of balance. Try these 25 tips to help you get balanced.

Take a Page from Airbnb and Pinterest To Transform Your Employees' Mindset

Stanford GSB professors offer lessons from two of Silicon Valley's hottest young companies.

Meet The Newest Members Of The 2014 Forbes 400

Better blood tests, stronger soybeans, zippier energy drinks. As the backgrounds and businesses of this year's newcomers to The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans once again show, there are many routes to minting a huge fortune. Altogether there are 27 newcomers to The Forbes 400 , compared to 20 last year. The richest newcomer is Jan Koum ($7.6 billion), the founder of mobile messaging service WhatsApp. Only three of the newcomers are women: Elizabeth Holmes, Karen Johnson Boyd and Josephine Louis. Elizabeth Holmes Net worth: $4.5 billion. Age: 30. Route to Riches: Chemical engineering sophomore drops out of Stanford to work on better, cheaper, faster blood tests. Labors in secrecy for a decade. Surfaces with big partnerships, including drugstore chain Walgreens. Her company, Theranos, was valued at $9 billion in latest venture capital fundraising round; she owns 50%. Needlephobe: Afraid of needles, Holmes’ technology can do many blood tests with one tiny finger prick. Rich List Records: Youngest woman on Forbes 400; Youngest woman self-made billionaire. Board Bigwigs: Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Bill Frist, George Schultz. “What we’re about is the belief that access to affordable and real-time health information is a basic human right, and it’s a civil right.” Harry Stine Net worth: $2.6 billion. Age: 72. Route to Riches: Dyslexic farm boy tinkers with soybeans. Big Break: Licenses genetics to Monsanto in 1997. Company name: Stine Seed. Sales: Est. $1 billion. Up next: Breeding super corn seeds. Hobby: Hunting wild morel mushrooms. Wheels: Ford F-150 Truck. “We can all claim ‘I would’ve done great if I didn’t have this problem or that problem.’ Well, baloney. We make excuses for what we haven’t done well.” David Walentas Net worth: $1.7 billion. Age: 75. Route to Riches: Grew up poor in upstate New York, father paralyzed, forced to milk cows on local farm. Wins scholarship to U. Va., earns M.B.A., then consulting gig. Starts investing in NYC real estate in late 1960s. Dirty Job: After college cleaned military septic tanks in Greenland. First Purchase: Rent-controlled Harlem building at corner of 104th and Manhattan Ave. Big Score: Paid $12 million for 2 million square feet of old industrial buildings in Brooklyn in late 1970s; Dumbo is now one of city’s hippest neighborhoods, and his outer borough holdings are worth over $1 billion. “Well, I got rich, and I was never called dumb, but I’m not a genius. The secret is picking the good spots and staying with it. I’m not a digital wonder like the guys that created Facebook, but we build real stuff where people can live.” Russell Weiner Net worth: $2.5 billion. Age: 44. Route to Riches: Son of lightening-rod conservative talk show host Michael Savage mounts unsuccessful campaign for California State Assembly 1998. Lands on feet working for Skyy Vodka founder Maurice Kanbar. Maurice’s Mistake: Kanbar refuses to fund his lieutenant's energy drink; Weiner quits, founds Rockstar, eventually gets distribution deal with Pepsi, makes billions. Partner-Parent: CFO mother owns 15% of business. Extreme blends: Exotic flavors include creamy horchata, supersours bubbleberry and mango orange passion fruit. “I thought of the name Rockstar because we’d go to Vegas on trips, and on all the trips we used to party like rock stars. Who has more energy than a rock star?”

Make-A-Wish Founder Launching Ripple Effect

Frank Shankwitz, a former highway patrol officer, seems like an unlikely person to have launched one of the most culturally significant nonprofit organizations in the country. The Make-a-Wish Foundation grew out of Shankwitz's effort to grant the wish of seven-year-old boy with leukemia who wanted to be a Highway Patrol Motorcycle Officer.

What Difference Does A Bank Account Make? You'd Be Surprised

People who do not have access to the mainstream financial system are subject to a variety of fees for services that the rest of us either get for free or at negligible prices. According to Jonathan Mintz, founding President and CEO of Cities for Financial Empowerment (often called the CFE Fund) and the former Commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs for New York says, "Using a traditional low-cost bank account could potentially save a full-time worker $40,000 over the course of his or her career."

Invent A Church, Skip Taxes, Enrage IRS, Go To Jail

Religion is Personal and Fundamental to Americans. But the IRS Can and Does Get Involved, Ruling on What's a Church and What's Just a Tax Scam.

A Gentleman's Guide To Dress Shirts

Cary Grant knew a thing about presentation. Mr. Grant calculated his clothing choices to create an unbroken line, an arrow, which pointed straight to his face. Mr. Grant knew about the magic of proportion in dressing well. And nowhere is it more important to practice that magic than in your choice of collars and the width of the shoulders on your jacket.

The Other Cross-Cultural Leadership Is Creative Collaboration

By David Slocum

Rural Healthcare Is Failing -- A Modest Proposal To Fix It

Rural healthcare is struggling. Twenty-four rural hospitals have closed across the USA since 2013 -- more than the total that closed in the previous 15 years. With 46 million Americans in rural areas, this trend has the potential to affect the lives -- potentially effect the deaths -- of thousands each year. But hope isn't lost?

Pinterest Goes Commerce: Pin, Click, Buy

It is no secret that Pinterest and other social commerce sites have begun to dial in the commerce equation. These sites (so far) have managed to balance facilitating product discovery and purchase capabilities with users' desires to entertain and educate themselves without feeling like they are in a marketplace.

How Nike Wins

Disclosure: I own shares of NKE

Why Branson's Holiday Generosity Will Not Suit All Employers

Sir Richard Branson's decision to abolish holiday leave may look super generous but there are drawbacks to a holiday policy like this one.

Disrupting And Winning The White-Hot Delivery Market

Uber shows that there is a huge amount of money to be made from combining mobile apps with transportation. But why not apply the concept to the traditional delivery marekt?

A New Bond Aims To Save Women's Lives In Developing Nations

The Women's Impact Bond aims to help fund groups working to introduce clean cook stoves in developing nations.

Ten Ways To Become A Digital Master Without Ever Setting Foot In Silicon Valley

By now, you've probably read or heard all the same stories over and over and over again -- how the Googles, Facebooks, eBays and Amazons of the world, or funky startups with funky names working out of some funky converted loft, have taken the digital bull by the horns and are doing all these incredible feats with all their algorithms, big data, and huge teams of Stanford/MIT-educated programmers and data scientists.

Ten Ways To Become A Digital Master Without Ever Setting Foot In Silicon Valley

By now, you've probably read or heard all the same stories over and over and over again -- how the Googles, Facebooks, eBays and Amazons of the world, or funky startups with funky names working out of some funky converted loft, have taken the digital bull by the horns and are doing all these incredible feats with all their algorithms, big data, and huge teams of Stanford/MIT-educated programmers and data scientists.

A 3D Printed, Wifi Enabled Medical Marijuana Inhaler

The world of 3D printing shows no signs of stopping. From 3D printed guns and medical implants to food and shoes, it seems that just about anything can be 3D printed.

Can Technology Solve The Late Payment Problem?

If your business extends credit to customers, then the chances are that you’re to some degree affected by the problem of late payment.

Hiding Assets Under Pet Names Looks Willful, Even For Lionel Messi With 400 Goals

Transparency is Important to the IRS and other Tax Collectors. FATCA is Everwhere, and Nothing is Hidden.

Hiding Assets Under Pet Names Looks Willful, Even If You're Lionel Messi

Transparency is Important to the IRS and other Tax Collectors. FATCA is Everwhere, and Nothing is Hidden.

Tax On Strip Joints Stays In Vegas And The Rest Of Nevada

When there is a decision by the Supreme Court of Nevada that includes among its plaintiffs Deja Vu Showgirls of Las Vegas, Little Darlings of Las Vegas and Crazy Horse Too Gentlemen's Club what could it possible be about?  What else but freedom of speech and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States?  Well, also taxes of course, since I'm writing about it here rather than my alternative blog.  Among the defendants is the Nevada Department of Taxation.

A Leadership Checklist For Corporate Culture Change

Here's a cultural change checklist for leaders: a quick list of what we've found, as a culture change consultants, is required every time. If you want to guide your company culture to a high and sustainable level of customer-centricity and customer experience excellence, here's what it's going to take.

A Leadership Checklist For Culture Change

Here's a leadership checklist for cultural change: a quick list of what we've found, as a culture change consultants, is indisputably required. As a leader, if you want to guide your company culture to a high and sustainable level of customer-centricity and customer experience excellence, here's what it's going to take.

A Leadership Checklist For Culture Change And Customer Experience Excellence

Here's a leadership checklist for cultural change, a quick list of what I've found is indisputably required, as a consultant on these issues. If you're striving to use your leadership to bring your company culture to a new level  of customer-centricity and customer experience excellence, here's what you're going to need.

'Urban Beardsmen' Power Startup's Growth

What do Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankenfein, Salesforce.com founder and CEO Mark Benioff, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, LA Clippers interim CEO Dick Parsons and former Oracle CEO Larry Ellison have in common—beyond their success in business?

Edit Post ‹ The Examining Room -- WordPress

Edit Post ‹ The Examining Room — WordPress.

Plane Ticket Journals -- Capitalism Takes Flight: Scott Osheroff

Scott Osheroff, 25 this month, is someone emerging markets investors should keep their eyes on. When not traveling Asia to check in on markets for Asia Frontier Capital and his other ventures ranging from mining to agricultural commodities trading, he is primarily based in Cambodia. The California native has been interested in investing since elementary school when he had a ploy to buy Toys R’ Us before the Christmas holidays and sell it after the holidays. Actively investing since he was 17 in the penultimate year of high school, Mr. Osheroff today sees himself well positioned to invest successfully in emerging markets he expects to grow rapidly.

No Need For A Cash Pile If Startup Leaders Have A Strong Idea, Clear Vision

Thanks to the attention attracted by the likes of Facebook and Apple, it is easy to assume that success in technology is largely about winning over consumers to products and services they did not know they wanted. But there is another way.

Tesla Eyes China As Biggest Market, Not Just A Toy For Rich Kids

Tesla's goal to make China its largest market could become a reality if it's seen as more than a rich kid's toy. Electric vehicles could take off faster in China than in the U.S.

Confessions Of A Six-Figure Father: Why I'd Never Send My Kids To Private School

When picking a school for his children, this dad knew what he wanted?and a parking lot full of BMWs and pricey tuition wasn't it.

Going Short on Brent Futures Needs No Excuse

The global geopolitical landscape couldn’t be more complicated than it already is. There is a war in the Middle East engulfing Iraq. An international US-led coalition including Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia is hammering Islamic State, a terrorist outfit with wider ambitions of establishing a regional caliphate.

You should never have "a customer from hell"

“This is one of those customers from hell.”

The Blueprint of an Optimal Blog Design

The design of your blog isn’t just supposed to look “cool.” It should be optimized to help you gain more readers and engagement. Do you know what your blog should look like? From using snippets and placing images in the correct location to figuring out the optimal width of your design, there has to be  [click to continue...]

Sneakernomics: The NFL's Merchandise Problem

Watching the NFL PR machine stumble around these last few weeks, unable to find a solution for its domestic violence problems, has been painful for fans and pundits. Add on the issue with Washington’s racist nickname makes it even worse.

Internet Drone Privacy Peril [100 Words Into The Future]

It must have seemed so very simple back then. You could choose when to tune in and when to turn off. Once companies saw the opportunities to access people everywhere, the push to connect accelerated. But today, there's no Off switch...

Fixing Healthcare From the Inside -- By Running It Like a Business

A Series of Forbes Insights Profiles of Thought Leaders Changing the Business Landscape:  Susan DeVore, CEO, Premier...

Zimbabwe's Wealthiest Man, Strive Masiyiwa Leases USD $40,000-A-Month Luxury Apartment In New York City

Zimbabwe's wealthiest man and one of Forbes' Africa's richest, Strive Masiyiwa, has leased a USD $40,000-a-month luxury apartment in New York City.

Top Productivity Tips For Writers (Part Two)

Do you want to be more productive with your writing? These strategies will help, whether you use writing for business or work as a writer. This is part two of a series. Today we’ll look at the pressures around writing, creative fuel, and why more time is not what you need.

Getting Your Foot in the Door: 3 Ways to Break Into a New Career

The majority of working professionals have considered trying something different. However, many are unable to successfully switch into a new career because they lack key insight into the tactics that will get them noticed by hiring managers that can facilitate a significant career move.

Social Selling: 1 Big Idea To Be 38x More Effective

There’s been far too much focus of late on the ways employee use of social media creates a company risk. Yes, misuse of social media on the job is a problem. But embarrassing gaffes, risk of information leakage and wasted time are only one side of the social business/social media

How To Be A Social Media Missionary

Guy Kawasaki is regarded as the father of evangelism in business. Evangelism is a religious term. He drove loyalty to Macintosh computers by converting followers to the gospel of Apple. This loyalty is akin to a religious belief and carries on unabated today. In his books The Macintosh Way, The Art

A New Era For English Spurs But Is It Really Worth £1 Billion?

With news swirling around earlier this month that Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs), a prestigious English Premiership football club that won the League and FA Cup double in 1961, was apparently up for sale for a cool £1 billion (c.US$1.65bn) I had to sit up and especially so as a fan of Arsenal F.C., their fierce North London rivals. It also made me reflect on whether the figure was realistic.

What You Should Be Doing on LinkedIn Every Month, Week, and Day

This plan will make sure you use LinkedIn to its full advantage.

How Emotional Intelligence Landed Mr. Rogers $20 Million

If your project needed $20 million in funding and you had to send someone to appear before the US Senate to get it, would you choose former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer or the beloved children’s television show host Fred “Mr.” Rogers? I imagine most people would choose Ballmer for his energy, experience closing big deals, and, more importantly, his aggressive go-getter style. Mr. Rogers, on the other hand, was mild-mannered, talked slowly, and the epitome of the nice-guy approach. It’s easy to think his gift was communicating with children, not adults, and he had no place in the world of money, power, and influence.

You Just Came Up With A Great New Business Idea - So Now What?

Has a great idea for a business struck you out of the blue? Melanie Haselmayr outlines the first steps you must take to solidify your new business idea and turn inspiration into reality.

Rising Stars: Best Global Cities For Business 2025

Where will businesses most readily thrive in 2025? Here are the 16 fastest-rising cities for business competitiveness forecast for 12 years from now. In the States, Miami is the fastest grower, gaining 10 places in the study's standings, but it's outstripped by overseas contenders here.

UK's Oil Capital Keeps Calm And Carries On

The world’s media has long departed after the Scottish Referendum, dust has settled, tempers have calmed and humdrum of life has just about resumed in Aberdeen, the UK's oil and gas capital. Being the Scottish hub from where British North Sea exploration and production has been planned for decades, the city found itself deeply embroiled in a debate on how much hydrocarbon wealth remains untapped in the North Sea.

Fear as a Management Technique

Contemporary management and leadership theory focuses on consensus, collaboration - the democratic « flat » style - rather than the top-down , « do as I say » style. Be comfortable with, not afraid of the person in  charge. The problem is: fear as a tactic to get others to do your bidding… works.

Your Company Failed To Sell -- Here's Why

Small business owners have an opportunity to learn from their peers who have attempted and failed or, more importantly, have successfully sold their business during the second quarter of 2014. The summary offers a few great lessons for Main Street and Lower Middle Market business owners.

How To Explode Your Instagram Following While You Sleep

Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them on a variety of social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.
Keysha Bass has finally launched her Instagram Training. Want to learn how to grow your Instagram following?

This coveted Instagram training that will teach you literally how to grow a targeted following while you sleep. (Or workout or go to the movies)

This training  is designed to show you how to grow your Instagram following with the following things:

Without buying non effective Fiverr gigs that get your account shut down
Without hiring a expensive Socialmedia Manager who costs your company an arm and a leg
Without outsourcing to odesk which can be a fruitless mission

Grab it here before it's gone ---> http://bit.ly/theinstagramcoach2 

We are not planning to leave this up forever because we don't want to get this in the hands of the "gooroos". 

Case Study: How I Used a Case Study to Grow My Sales by 185%

Case studies…You see companies using them all the time, but do they really work? I wasn’t sure myself, which is why I decided to test them out on NeilPatel.com with these 3 case studies. The goal was simple: generate more leads. The results were a bit unexpected. I didn’t necessarily generate many more leads, but I was  [click to continue...]

How to Make Winning Infographics Without Risk

The infographic is the Salvador Dalí of content marketing. By far the most interesting person at the cocktail party. Who can compete with the thin, longhorn mustache decorated with forget-me-nots? The anteater curled at his feet? His closest peer, the video, dozes near the crackling fire … slippered feet propped up, face buried in a

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10 Entrepreneur Approaches That Turn Off Investors

Many new entrepreneurs are so excited by their latest idea that they can’t resist contacting every investor they know, assuming the investor will be equally excited and want to contribute immediately. Others will work hard on a business plan, and then mail it indiscriminately to every potential investor they can find on the Internet. Both of these approaches are a waste of your time and theirs.

5 Reasons Why CEOs Need to Promote Their Personal Brand

A personal brand is what comes to the mind of others whenever they think of you or search for you online.  People represent what they find online with you.  If there are negative things online, people might not get the correct impression of you. In my opinion, your personal brand should tell your audience four things:

Planning An Important Meeting? Don't. Curate a Level Three Meeting Instead.

The most valuable meetings co-create joint sensemaking. These need to be curated to produce level three meetings that disrupt the familiar to get to a new future.

Derek Jeter's Big Tax Bill On 'Gifts' That Really Aren't Gifts

Many Retirement 'Gifts' to Yankees Star Derek Jeter Are Taxable Income, Even Though 'Gifts' Normally Aren't Taxed. What Gives?

Bionym Inks $14 Million To Get Password-Replacing Wearable, Nymi Out The Door

What if you didn’t have to bother typing in your password, use keys or even pull out a credit card ever again?

Why Marketers Should Cut Ties With Incumbent Agencies Sooner

This article is by Lisa Colantuono, co-partner of AAR Partners, an agency search consultancy.

Work Life Balance?

I just finished watching a documentary on Paul Levesque, better known as Triple H, a professional wrestler, now helping shape the WWE and sports entertainment. In it, the recurring theme was that Paul had a very strong work ethic, that he pushed harder, worked harder, did more than those around him. His intense level of […]

What India Could Learn from Alibaba

I wrote this post with Shrey Verma, an M.A. candidate at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. You can follow him on Twitter at @shrey7. 

Rocket Internet Valued At More Than $8 Billion After Incubator Prices Shares

Rocket Internet could raise more than $2 billion in what would be the largest German tech IPO since 2000.

Mindfull Investors Seek Opportunities For Impact

More and more people are beginning to appreciate that investors can earn returns at the same time they drive social impact and solve social problems. Increasingly, people understand that solving a world problem like hunger not only presents a challenge, but also an opportunity.

How To Get Your App Noticed -- Wisdom From App Annie

Whether you’re a small to mid-size app developer, or among a team coding late into the night in your dorm, in the end of the day you want people to download your product. Aside from creating the darn thing, getting huge numbers of users to notice your app is paramount.

Five Percent Of CGI Commitments Have Failed: Here's Why That's A Good Thing

Some fascinating news from the Clinton Global Initiative, currently in lockdown mode on 52nd Street this afternoon (the President's visit is nigh). No, it's not a baby name for the impending Clinton grandchild. Nope, no tea leaves on Hillary Clinton's impending run for the White House. No non-denial denials, political tidbits, or surprise celebrity sightings.

For Joint Filing Status You Have To File

Something that many people do not understand is that filing a joint income tax return with your spouse is an election.  You don't have to do it.  Of course, probably more often than not, it will cost a couple to file separately, although if they could claim to be single they might come out ahead.   You're not supposed to do that if you are actually married though.  The main reason that you might choose to not file a joint return is to avoid joint and several liability.  I've written about that a lot.

The Crucial Fact Most Marketers Miss About Millennials: Big Changes for Gen Y Marketing

Millennials are changing course as they begin to have children and it's signaling sweeping changes for marketers, trend forecasters and politicians.

6 Ways To Improve Your Online Checkout Process

Bad news for you:  Most of your online customers will abandon their cart, and not complete the sale. They will navigate away from your site, away from the shopping cart, and never complete the process. The primary culprit for shopping cart abandonment is the checkout process. If you could improve your checkout process, you can improve your sales by a huge margin. How much money is lost due to shopping cart abandonment? The shopping cart abandonment rates are appalling. Some studies (I.e., Rejoiner)  report that shopping cart abandonment is as high as 80%. The average abandonment rate reported by Baymard Institute is 67.91%. This number the percentage of people who, instead of completing their purchase, will leave your site. Out of every one hundred users who puts something in their shopping cart, nearly 68 of them will leave without making a purchase. Shopping cart abandonment is one of the biggest curses in the ecommerce industry. How much money are you losing due to shopping cart abandonment? Let’s do the math.

Your Website is Failing: How User Testing Will Improve Everything

UserTesting.com can be used for anything online. It will improve your conversion rate and user experience, even if you think you're optimized.

The Lede: Are You Overlooking This Cornerstone of a Smart Content Strategy?

Yesterday, Brian Clark published a highly anticipated answer to a question that’s been on a lot of entrepreneurial and marketing minds. If you missed it, that question is: Isn’t it time for more power and less hassle from WordPress … without breaking the bank? The answer is yes, of course, and he provides the solution

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Giving Your Employees Skin In The Game

I was working with a business owner on ideas for retaining a key employee. The employee was threatening to leave for a higher paying job, declaring “I love working here, but if I’m going to stay, I want to have some skin in the game.” I started explaining to the owner why he should avoid offering the key employee stock as an incentive. He stopped me, and asked that I first give him an idea of some of his options. “I don’t even know where to start; what kinds of plans are there that can help an employee feel he or she has a financial stake in the company, and will be rewarded for contributing to our success?” Fair question. The challenge is too many options; not too few. 

A Management Parable: Why Are Football Coaches So Timid?

In football, and in industry after industry, there's a conspiracy to stick with a timid management philosophy. The sad result is that coaches and managers fail to trust or deploy their people's talents. They create cultures in which the joy of playing the game is eclipsed by the fear of losing.

Wiz Khalifa, Afrojack Will Headline Forbes' Under 30 Music Festival, Kickoff Under 30 Summit

It’s not often that you can say without hyperbole that an event will kick off with a literal roar. But when you combine Afrojack, one of the world’s most sought-after DJs, Wiz Khalifa, one the world’s preeminent hip-hop artists, and 5,000 or 6,000 revelers, the Under 30 Music Festival – the kickoff to the first-ever Under 30 Summit – should have Philadelphia rocking.

Wiz Khalifa, Afrojack Will Headline Forbes' Under 30 Music Festival, Kickoff Under 30 Summit

It’s not often that you can say without hyperbole that an event will kick off with a literal roar. But when you combine Afrojack, one of the world’s most sought-after DJs, Wiz Khalifa, one the world’s preeminent hip-hop artists, and 5,000 or 6,000 revelers, the Under 30 Music Festival – the kickoff to the first-ever Under 30 Summit – should have Philadelphia rocking.

IRS's Lois Lerner Breaks Silence, 'Did Nothing Wrong,' But Still Won't Testify

Lois Lerner Talks To Press, Proclaims Her Innocence, Plays the Victim Card.

7 Tips For Being A Successful Social Entrepreneur

More than ever, people are looking to pursue meaningful career paths. At times our vision of how the world should be is so vivid, we can’t resist the urge to try and build it ourselves. Starting a business has never been easier, but executing on our ideas can make for seriously hard work. Here are some lessons on starting your own business and seeing it through:

Tax Court: Anxiety, Depression Are Not Physical Injuries

If you've ever experienced an anxiety attack, you know that it sure feels like your body is experiencing a physical trauma. The night my first kid was born, there was a lull in the labor when, shortly after my wife got her epidural, she fell asleep for a few hours. I fell asleep as well, and when we both woke up, it was go time. There was something about going from zero to sixty that was too much for my delicate nervous system to handle, and I had a full-blown anxiety attack. I started to sweat, my chest seized up, and I lost all semblance of balance. When the nurse came back in the room, despite the fact that my wife was trying to push out a seven pound tax exemption,  the nurse's immediate concern was whether I was okay.

Is Strategy Dead? 7 Reasons The Answer May Be Yes

I am an ex-strategy consultant. I have an MBA. And I am increasingly convinced the relevancy of both has been permanently diminished.  Is strategy dead?

Stephanie Palmer: How to Build Relationships in Hollywood

Stephanie Palmer is a former Hollywood studio executive who now teaches others how to promote themselves and sell their ideas.

IRS Issues 401(k) After-Tax Rollover Rules

The IRS finally clarifies 401(k) after-tax rollover rules, opening the door to tax-free growth of after-tax dollars rolled into a Roth IRA.

Lawyer In 'Smelly Washer' Suit Aims At Big Targets, Spends Real Money

The lawyer who's spent years pursuing the Whirlpool `smelly washer' case hires real experts and spends real money before filing suit.

Three Guys, A Poker Game And A Plan To Take Down Teleflora

Ever wonder why the bouquets you send through Teleflora or 1-800 Flowers sometimes end up looking a little…different to how they did online?

Should We Tax Away Huge Fortunes?

Sen. Bernard Sanders wants to rein in the runaway billionaires. In a recent piece for The Huffington Post, the Vermont independent (and apparent presidential candidate) made the case for a progressive estate tax.

4 Ways Leaders Can Avoid Crisis Of NFL Proportions

The ongoing National Football League (NFL) scandals surrounding the allegations of players involved in domestic violence and child abuse incidences have escalated conversations around ethics, the power of money, celebrity and entitlement. Discussions around effective leadership and what it means to “do the right thing” have also resurfaced amidst the self-serving decision-making and poorly executed crisis management from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, team owners and general managers. Everyone involved in the mismanagement of this scandal – one that technically never should have happened to begin with – has been exposed.

Get Your MBA in Internet Marketing with These 12 Guides and 2 Courses

MBAs aren’t cheap. If you wanted to get one from a school like Harvard, you’ll need $95,100 per year. If you wanted to get an equivalent degree in Internet marketing, do you know how much it would cost? If you guessed free, you’re right. All you have to do is read the 12 guides below and follow  [click to continue...]

Why Local Currencies Could Be On The Rise In The U.S. -- And Why It Matters

California recently passed an amendment to make the use of alternative currencies easier, and New York may soon make a similar move. Don’t make the mistake of assuming this matters only to hippies.

4 Reasons Social Capital Trumps All

They say every entrepreneur needs three kinds of capital: financial, human, and social.

Introducing Rainmaker: The Complete Solution for Content Marketers and Online Entrepreneurs

Four years ago this month, Copyblogger Media was born. Up until that point, I had launched several businesses off of Copyblogger, with several smart partners. Each of those individual businesses were killing it and had me involved, but those smart individuals weren’t collaborating with each other … because why would they? The five of us

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Meet Dadaviz: A Curated, YouTube-Style Distribution Platform For Data Visualizations

There's a lot of visual content populating the Web, but there's no one-stop shop for interactive data visualization. Dadaviz aims to solve this.

Virtual Lawyer: Running A Law Firm On The Cloud From Home

By Natalie Burg

Five Questions that Smart Conversion Optimization Consultants Should Ask

Conversion optimization consultants need to be two things:  1) smart and 2) curious. In order to optimize website for more conversions, a consultant doesn’t just make changes. Instead, the consultant asks questions. If you are a conversion optimization consultant or want to do some CRO work on your own website, ask these questions. 1.  Who’s the audience? CRO is a small part of the huge industry of marketing. There is a lot of overlap in field of digital marketing. If there’s one thing that holds this unwieldy field of marketing together it’s this:  audience understanding. In order to be successful at marketing, the marketer must know their audience. Marketers accomplish nothing meaningful without first identifying their audience. The conversion optimization expert can “fix” a website’s conversion problems only if he or she understands the audience. The illustration from Moz below shows how the field of digital marketing understands itself in all its overlapping glory: 2.  What’s the value of the product or service? According to CRO big dog Oli Gardner, a “winning landing page” has five elements:

Follow This Superstar’s 7-Step Example to Dominate Your Industry

I woke up like this. I woke up like this. Flawless. After listening to “Flawless” five times, Evette went to the mirror, and told herself the lyrics in the Beyoncé song were true. She believed it. She internalized it. She embodied it. Ready to dominate, Evette strutted over to her computer to fire off a

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If Jesus Were Alive Today He'd Engineer Wearable Technology

In a paper on wearable technology the other day from www.IDTechEx.com, a list caught my eye.

Who Do You Need On Your Startup Team?

How do you figure out what’s the right founder skill set for your startup?

Starbucks Personalization - Evil, Funny, Or Brilliant?

A video, Why Starbucks Spells Your Name Wrong, has gone viral in the last few days, garnering more than six million views to date. It's a hilarious take by Paul Gale on the practice of Starbucks writing your name on your special order coffee cup. In the video, Gale stars as a barista who, with an evil glint in his eye, gleefully spells everyone's name wrong. On purpose.

How Not To Handle The Option To Queue Jump In Customer Service

The introduction of EE's Priority Answer service for some of it's customers in the UK provides a lesson in how not to handle the option of queue jumping in customer service.

Digital Supply Chain Security: Outsourced Code Development

Last month I took some time to write about digital supply chain security in general as well from the perspective of partner networks. I had a chance to speak about this at the RSA Security Conference in Singapore and one piece that resonated with some of the attendees was around outsourced code development.

Emotional Well-Being Is The New Frontier

If you’re not supporting the emotional well-being of your employees, handing out pedometers or apples isn’t going to amount to much. Early in July, Arianna Huffington in a post entitled, “Big Business Finally Learns that Wellness is Good Business” offered an impressive roundup of wellness initiatives that big businesses have taken on. What’s most significant is that big business is turning its sights to the impact that emotional well-being--stress management, resilience and mindfulness--can have on the productivity, capacity and motivation of people. And they are seeing it as a must have for every employee, right up there in importance with fitness, weight management, and healthy lifestyle programming. “Making sure employees have the inner resources,” as she describes it, is key, not only to their productivity but also, it turns out, to their physical well-being. This approach flies in the face of accepted thinking about work, stress, and wellness and it’s about time. Emotional well-being has conventionally been seen as the domain of crisis based solutions: employee assistance programs, counseling, hotlines. But today’s workforce is anything but conventional: The modern workforce has dizzying demands on their time, and they don’t all work one way, nor do they have the freedom to “only” work on one thing or another: about 75 percent of employees are parents; more than a third of employees are non-professional caregivers; and 47 percent of employees are part of dual-income households. Along with this shifting demographic, the new reality is that there are no hard lines between work and home, personal and professional. People now tend to bring their whole selves to work, including their stressors and emotions every day. In our work with employers who use meQuilibrium, our cloud-based solution for building the resilience of their employees, we see some very interesting correlations which support this. It’s not the job that stresses people It’s common assumption that work alone causes stress, but in our experience, work itself is not the primary source of stress for most people. People regularly cite family, success and money as their key sources of stress.  In other words, people consistently rank family and success as higher than ‘their job’ when queried about what are their main sources of stress. Three powerful correlations between inner and outer well-being:

What's The Worst Customer Service Mistake You've Made?

What's the worst customer service mistake your company has made so far in 2014, the worst self-inflicted sabotage of your efforts to provide a great customer experience? I don't ask this to be a buzzkill, but because this is a great time of the year to get things on track for a better 2015.

Launch Of Apple's iPhone Payments Fails To Dazzle China's More Advanced Mobile Market

Chinese companies competing with Apple don't be afraid of Apple's newest launches. They're not breakthroughs compared to what's happening in China's mobile market, Silicon Dragon VCs agree.

Bid On Michael Jackson Treasures, Help Estate Fight IRS Too

As Michael Jackson Belongings Go on Sale, What's at Stake for his Estate and Millions Allegedly Owed to the IRS?

Familes Must Grow Their Wealth Faster Than It's Consumed

Harvard Business School  Professor John Davis, an expert on family wealth, warned last night that many family wealth creators hang on to the family business long after their fortune continues to grow by 6% a year and lose the opportunity to sell at the peak point of the success curve.

Who Kills Talent?

The answer to that question, at least according to Carlo M. Cipolla is simple -- a bunch of stupid individuals scattered throughout all strands of society, including corporate organizations.

20 Entrepreneurs Shaking Up New York's Tech Scene

Developers and founders no longer have to go west to find a vibrant tech scene. New York’s Silicon Alley has emerged as a heavy-hitting startup ecosystem, with a strong foundation of entrepreneurial and tech talent, venture capital, accelerator and incubation programs, marketing/PR and ad agencies, NGOs and government programs. New York is now a serious alternative to the Bay Area for founders hoping to make it big. But it has taken an army to get to this point, replete with all kinds of companies and supporting services that make a tech ecosystem possible. Here are 20 entrepreneurs shaking up the New York tech scene with their tech, service and non-profit businesses:

Why Location is Still so Important in a Digitally Connected Age

At a recent conference hosted by Techstars called FounderCon, 400+ entrepreneurs came together to discuss the theme, "Connect". For me that meant office location, durability and expansion because picking an office location is one of the first big, critical investments for an entrepreneur and the decision should be made with well-analyzed thought.

Is Your Business Bankable? Here's Why It Matters

Is your business powerful and stable enough to qualify for bank financing? If not, you may be forced to pay higher interest rates from alternate funding sources, or you might have to give up equity to bring in venture partners.

The Evolution Of Facebook

How has Facebook changed since 2004? Here's a look at some of the site's most notable redesigns and features.

Advanced Google+ Tips For Your Business

As Google+ has matured, what businesses can (and should) do on this social media platform has changed. I spoke with Marc Nashaat, a social media and inbound marketing expert from Powered by Search in Toronto, Canada, to get advice for taking Google+ activity to the next level. Here is what I learned:  

Lonely Planet's Tony Wheeler on Travel With A Purpose

onWhen Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler crossed over into Malaysia in the early 1970s, his passport was stamped with a unique tag: SHIT.   It stood for “Suspected Hippie in Transit.”

Square To Raise $100 Million At A $6 Billion Valuation

By Ryan Mac and Alex Konrad

Inside The Billionaire Family Feud That Nearly Killed Market Basket

In the battle royal over the Market Basket grocery chain, the roles of two cousins with the same name seemed clear: the victimized egalitarian versus the avaricious heel. Turns out it wasn't that simple.

What Marketers Can Do Today To Improve Their Relationship With IT

Understanding how to leverage IT to drive business results is a top priority for many marketers. Just 10 years ago, the primary internal relationships were sales or finance. Today, the CMO-CIO relationship has become more critical as the marketer’s ability to understand and communicate with consumers is largely driven by technology. To identify what marketers can do – and should do – to better leverage technology, and better leverage their relationship with internal technology partners, I spoke with Andrew Barr Brunger, Head of Global Consumer Strategy, User Experience and Design for Citibank.

London Tech Scene Boosted By Amazon.com's Latest Announcement

Retail giant Amazon.com has boosted London's reputation as the go-to place for tech companies, announcing that it will open a new corporate headquarters in the city. Amazon.com's new offices, which will open in east London's Shoreditch area in 2017, will have room for 5,000 staff – a major increase on Amazon.com's current UK presence of 1,700 employees. The move illustrates how the online retailer is taking London as an international tech hub seriously. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, welcomed the news: "Our city is the perfect home for top tech talent and I am very pleased that Amazon have confirmed their intention to create thousands of new jobs at a major base in east London. "We are proving time and again that we have the right places and people to support this vibrant sector." London – and particular the city's tech scene – has performed better than other cities over the past few years, attracting companies and entrepreneurs from around the world and becoming Europe's digital capital.

Children's Defense Fund Joins Forces with JJ Abrams to Celebrate Founder Marian Wright Edelman's Vision

Those familiar with the Children's Defense Fund know it to be a national, non-profit child advocacy organization. Yet not as many realize it was founded over 40 years ago by Civil Rights activist Marian Wright Edelman, in her efforts to champion policies and programs that lift children out of poverty by way of education. The organization's motto "Leave No Child Behind" reflects Edelman's mission to advocate on behalf of children -- to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life.

Enough With the Free Food, Already. Millennials Want Opportunity and Fair Pay

With the impending exodus of Baby Boomers from the workplace over the next decade and the insurgence of Millennials into it, Millennials are expected to make up roughly 75% of the workforce by 2025. That’s why it’s essential that winning organizations figure out what makes Millennials tick. So here’s one secret: it’s about providing opportunities for professional growth, not providing free food.

Trust In The Workplace: What Happened To It, And How Do We Get It Back?

Trust is important not just in our personal lives but also in the workplace. If employees don't trust each other or their managers then all sorts of problems start to arise: collaboration and communication stagnates, innovation ceases, employee engagement declines, productivity falls, and in general the workplace becomes unsuitable to be around. However, today it seems as though everywhere we look there is a lack of trust. Governments are spying on us, organizations are sharing data with third party sites, we are weary of banks, and contracts are becoming longer and filled with more legalese. According to ToleroSolutions 45% of employees say lack of trust in leadership is is the biggest issue impacting work performance. Maritz found that only 11% of employees strongly agree that managers that managers show consistency between their words and actions. The Edelman Trust Barometer also found similarly poor levels of trust among government officials and CEOs of organizations.

Paying Tax With Art Is Legal In UK & Mexico, Why Not In US?

The Tax Man in UK and Mexico Accepts Art, So Why Not in America?

Why You Must Not Ignore The Call to Adventure

The following is an excerpt from Chris Guillebeau’s new book, The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life. In ancient myths, most quests were ones of discovery or confrontation. A kingdom was under siege, so it required defending. A minotaur in a faraway land guarded a magic chalice, and

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If I Were Your Customer Service Consultant: Free Advice I'd Usually Charge You For (Part 1)

Since you didn't open Forbes.com this morning hoping to spend some money, I figured I'd give you for free some of what I usually charge good money for. (I'm a customer service consultant, helping companies improve--something that 100% of companies could benefit from. However: there are 95% of companies that could especially benefit from what I offer. That's what this post is about: Figuring out if you're what I call a "masterful company.")

Aussie Personal Finance Startup Pocketbook Hits 100,000 Users

Most people usually neglect keeping track of their personal finances. With multiple bank and credit card accounts, bank fees get all too much for us to handle. To put us back in control of our money, Aussie FinTech startup, Pocketbook has come to the rescue with an intuitive mobile app.

Four Valuable Business Lessons To Learn From Football

You probably were content just watching your favorite team play football. But, don?t overlook the valuable business lessons buried in the sport.

Can High Tech Money Management Create Happiness?

Betterment Founder and CEO Jon Stein will join FORBES at our Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia next month in a discussion with other entrepreneurs about why financial services are ripe for some youthful disruption.

Wine + Business: Emerging Markets, Less Romance, And A Healthier Bottom Line

Recently there has been an uptick, at different hotspots in Europe, in favor of fresh approaches toward wine, hospitality, and entrepreneurialism.

Ukrainian Troublemaker Receives $10,000 Award For 'Redecorating' Moscow

Techstars Boston managing director Semyon Dukach is in the habit of rewarding those who cause problems—for the right people, that is. This year, as part of his annual “Troublemaker Award,” the startup mentor and entrepreneur decided to spotlight a Ukrainian stunt-climber -- or, "roofer" -- who struck a blow for his home nation by sticking it to neighboring Russia.

Past, Present And Future: Why SEO Might Transform, But Will Never Die

Search engine optimization (SEO) has been around for as long as search engines have been popular, but the constantly evolving complexity of search algorithms have digital marketers wondering what’s next for their ranking strategies and if they’ll even be relevant in the next decade. Certainly, search marketing has come a long way from the link spamming and keyword-hiding practices of the past, but is it true that SEO may one day become completely obsolete?

What's The Future Of The Food Industry?

Millennials are driving the food industry online, with access, convenience and taste

Newtek Embraces Apple Pay

So What is Apple Pay?

Did Florida County Tax Man For Being Happily Married?

Having the state involved in deciding what is or is not a family seems to be unavoidable, but it often tends to not end well, when you think through the implications.  The decision by the Fourth Circuit of the Florida District Court of Appeal in the case of Robert Brklacic seems to have Mr. Brklacic being taxed on being happily married.  Here is the story.

What's A Software Company Doing Buying An Architecture Firm?

Software companies don’t usually go around buying architecture and design firms, but The Living isn’t your typical beards-and-Blue-Bottle band of architects. The 7-person shop in the Brooklyn Navy Yard was acquired earlier this year for a small, undisclosed price by design and engineering software maker Autodesk. The reason: The Living’s expertise in blending all that’s new in materials, 3-D printing and more arcane new fields such as biological manufacturing and algorithmic design.

Big Presentation? Don't Do It. Have A Conversation Instead.

Use your time with other human beings to engage in two-way relationship-building conversations.

German Startup Incubator Rocket Internet Launches IPO

Rocket Internet, the Berlin-based e-commerce startup incubator founded by Germany's Samwer brothers, announced plans for an initial public offering on Wednesday.

Miseducation of Apollo: Part 2

Today is the day that Apollo Nida reports to federal prison. Seriously, can you honestly believe that we are witnessing this Real Housewives of Atlanta star return back to prison for another stint? But should we really be surprised? According to an April 2014 study released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated two-thirds (68 percent) of 405,000 prisoners released in 30 states in 2005 were arrested for a new crime within three years of release from prison, and three-quarters (77 percent) were arrested within five years. Additionally, recidivism was highest among males, blacks and young adults. Five years after release from prison, black offenders had the highest recidivism rate (81 percent), compared to Hispanic (75 percent) and white (73 percent) offenders. These statistics make you wonder if Apollo ever stood a chance.

Size Up Your Investors Before Accepting Their Money

Even though the color of their money is always green, all startup investors are not the same. Struggling entrepreneurs are often so happy to get a funding offer that they neglect the recommended reverse due diligence on the investors. Taking on equity investors to fund your company is much like getting married – it is a long-term relationship that has to work at all levels.

6 Ways To Live Free

Got a great idea? Then quit trolling the bikini shots on theCHIVE—and turn your concept into a corp.

Startups That Seek Legal Advice Early Can Avoid 'Soul-Crushing' Mistakes

Entrepreneurs are known for thriving in uncertainty and proceeding despite risks, but with legal matters, proceeding with caution is the best idea.

Nestlé Wins At Social Storytelling By Combining Purpose And Product

Nestlé India recently released a rap video featuring none other than animated super babies extolling the virtues of breastfeeding. This charming video has already captured almost 2 million views on YouTube and each of the individual characters takes on a personality and life of their own. For example “Lil Wiz” talks about brain and vision development, “Germ Stoppa” talks about his immunity gain from his mother’s milk, and “Baby Luv” talks about the strong bonding between a mother and her child developed through breastfeeding. At the same time, the animated videos are a powerful lesson in effective social branding.

[VIDEO] Forbes CMO Interview: D&B CMO Rishi Dave On Transforming A 174-Year-Old Brand

Dun & Bradstreet, a business data and analytics company, has existed for 174 years. Its business had transformed in those many years, and it became time for its brand to do the same.

Why You Should Over-Tip In Business And In Life

In the movie My Blue Heaven, Steve Martin plays a former mob informant who knows the power of going big: “It’s not tipping I believe in,” he says in one brilliant line. “It’s over-tipping.” He’s right: Normal tips don’t make news. Exorbitant tips do.

Meet The Small Business Hoping To Shake Up America's Insurance Industry

PolicyGenius is a US start-up hoping to shake up the US insurance sector with a new price comparison service

Most Influential Social Media Personalities Of 2012

A look at the biggest names in American society as ranked by their influence and topicality in social media. Data from a survey conducted by social marketing firm Social Toaster.

Google's 'Material Design' And What Card-Based Content Means For Marketers

This article is by Linda Holliday, CEO of Citia, a card-based content platform company.

What Marketing Experts Can Learn From Project Management Pros

Marketing types tend to think of project management as a science best suited to software development or to product assembly, or at most as a tool to meet web development needs. They are wrong.

What Do Warriors, Monks, And Entrepreneurs Have In Common?

The warrior comes easy to an entrepreneur. We instinctively know how to fight, conquer, and win. The monk, the gentler side, takes time to hone and polish. It represents wisdom.

So You Lost The Sale -- Here's How To Rethink Churn Analysis

Many companies have a “Churn Reason” field in their CRM system and attempt to “code” each churn so they can report internally on why customers left. Here's how you should be thinking about the analysis.

5 Reasons Why More Data Doesn't Guarantee Better Decisions

Data alone may not be enough to guarantee better decisions, but better decisions almost always start with data.  

A New Spin On Venture Capital With A Focus On The Solo-Founder

There was a time when being a “solo founder” in London’s Tech City was simply “not cool”. The equivalent of being the last guy on the dance-floor at 2am when the bar was closing.

Leading A Heritage, Artisanal Family Firm Into The 21st Century

Mark Ossowski, one of the UK’s most successful specialist antiques dealers, on steering a heritage, artisanal family firm into the 21st century

Can 1.3 Million Walmart Workers Deduct 'Uniforms' On Their Taxes?

Walmart's Dress Code Means Workers May Need To Go Out of Pocket, But Does That Mean Tax Deductions? Not Necessarily.

9 Secrets Of Patient Experience And Patient Satisfaction For Hospitals And Healthcare Professionals

The more that patient satisfaction and the patient experience come to the foreground in healthcare, the more often I see these concepts misunderstood, thought of as undue obligations, and/or gone about entirely the wrong way. Here is some straight talk about patient experience and patient satisfaction I find myself emphasizing often (as a consultant and speaker) in hospitals and other healthcare environments. Patient satisfaction isn't the enemy of medical outcomes.  Done right, the work you do on patient satisfaction, on improving the patient experience, improves medical outcomes as well.  In the hospital, and upon discharge. This should be obvious, but our ingrained conception of win/lose, zero-sum gets in the way of seeing this clearly.  A good night’s sleep - nurses coming when you need them without making you suffer in agony -scheduling that is prompt and makes sense - physicians involving the patient and family in treatment and follow-up: Of course these improve outcomes.  It’s (sorry, neurologists) a no-brainer. Improving the patient experience is about systems as much as it is about smiles.  It can mean hiring industrial engineers to time how long it realistically will take to wheel a patient from appointment to appointment, so that the idea of a schedule can be taken as a serious concept and you're not letting down patients and gumming up the system all day.  Inevitably, improving such systems will improve smiles in the end. Improving the patient experience and patient satisfaction is about smiles, not just systems.  The systems and processes you've put in place that work for most of your patients in most situations emphatically will not work for all of your patients in all situations.  And when a patient doesn’t fit into your system, or a patient’s circumstances don’t fit into your  list of expected scenarios, you need smiling, helpful, empathetic employees, administrators, managers, executives who will address what needs to be done (including simply delivering an apology) regardless of the fact that they had hoped their systems would suffice.  Part of this is that everyone in your organization needs to learn to handle customer complaints and concerns:  "I can't help you, I'm the wrong person" is unacceptable; "Absolutely: let me get you to the person who can take care of that" can work wonders. Cues to indifference are everywhere–and it's where much of patient dis-satisfaction lives. Healthcare professionals avoiding eye contact with "civilians." Med students hurrying self-importantly down the halls, nearly running down the slow-moving patients who won't get with the program.  Patients ignored by nurses who haven't yet clocked in and therefore don’t realize they are already (poorly) representing their institution. Doctors in the hallway loudly carrying on about the relative benefits of different Canyon Ranch vacations they’ve taken. Two radios playing at once from two administrative areas (with the patients waiting, inevitably, somewhere in between the two. Unless your musical tastes run to Charles Ives, the resulting dissonant acoustics are uniquely unpleasant.). Vending machines that are left long out of service.  Vending machines that require exact change, but your hospital doesn't have a change machine. It's important to offload the transactional: Humans are important in all service environments, including healthcare, but there are some things that automation does better, and that self-service may do the best.  Filling out patient-related forms is one of these. Your patients and their families have a lot of positive experience these days with efficient online and mobile-based models, and it makes them impatient with inefficiency and duplicate processes. You're not doing it right if you're not ruthlessly attacking systemic delays: I wrote an article recently about how Cleveland Clinic manages now to guarantee that any patient can have an appointment with the appropriate care provider the same day they call in. (after 4 PM this guarantee rolls to the next day). You can do this too: it’s not easy, it won’t be comfortable at first. But it makes a lot of sense. Smaller changes that help include: Stop batching/delaying the distribution of lab results – Consider if it's time to implement one of the newer technologies that allows patients to reach nurses directly (ex: Vocera communications' system) rather than waiting for someone to notice a call light and eventually respond. ... But realize that great customer service must be delivered on a customer’s schedule.  Your quest for speed cannot become a quest to hurry patients. Doing that it going to lead to frustration and, ultimately, noncompliance and other outcome problems. Your quest for efficiency can often be at odds with your quest to improve the customer experience, if you don't realize that there is value in being inefficient when it comes to that untidy link in the chain: the patient. You have to do everything you can experience your care as your patients do.  Park where the patients do.  See how easy it is/isn’t to get to the front door on crutches.   Take a tour of your hospital with someone who hasn’t been there before, and let them show you whether they can really find where they’re going.  You’ll be amazed how many mis-aligned, out of date, confusing signs you have. It all makes intuitive sense to you, of course, because you have been in your building enough times that you know your way around in your sleep (Probably, I suspect, literally.)  And, once a year, do a "full bladder exercise": Everyone who works with patients should drink two or three liters of water–it is incredible how your perception of a "reasonable delay" between call button and response changes when you have a full bladder. If you want to ace your HCAHPS and other measurements, don't think too specifically; think instead in terms of “halo effect”: The halo effect I'm referring to is the human tendency to cut you slack when they have a generally positive impression of you.  let a generally positive experience with you “infect” areas in which you may not have been entirely up to snuff.  Taking a sample HCAHPS question where your goal is to have an answer of "always" (for example: "During this hospital stay, how often were your room and bathroom kept clean?" ). "Always kept clean" is, strictly speaking, an impossibility.  Not even Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton can pull that off; they may tidy your room three times a day, but that's plenty of time to trash it in between. Yet it is possible to get an "always" response from a patient.  Because the way patients remember is more holistic (sorry, I know that word can lead us down an icky path; I promise I won't use it again)  than you think it is.  An overall extraordinary experience with your facility and organization. will convince a patient to cut you slack while a generally poorly treated patient is going to grade you literally on your HCAHPS. And a literal reading of/response to the HCAHPS questions isn't going to turn out all that well for anyone. Micah Solomon is a customer service, patient satisfaction and patient experience consultant,  speaker, and author.

Patient Experience And Patient Satisfaction: Nine Things Hospitals, Healthcare Get Wrong

The more that patient satisfaction and the patient experience come to the foreground in healthcare, the more often I see these concepts misunderstood, thought of as undue obligations, and/or gone about entirely the wrong way. Here is some straight talk about patient experience and patient satisfaction I find myself emphasizing often (as a consultant and speaker) in hospitals and other healthcare environments. Patient satisfaction isn't the enemy of medical outcomes.  Done right, the work you do on patient satisfaction, on improving the patient experience, improves medical outcomes as well.  In the hospital, and upon discharge. This should be obvious, but our ingrained conception of win/lose, zero-sum gets in the way of seeing this clearly.  A good night’s sleep - nurses coming when you need them without making you suffer in agony -scheduling that is prompt and makes sense - physicians involving the patient and family in treatment and follow-up: Of course these improve outcomes.  It’s (sorry, neurologists) a no-brainer. Improving the patient experience is about systems as much as it is about smiles.  It can mean hiring industrial engineers to time how long it realistically will take to wheel a patient from appointment to appointment, so that the idea of a schedule can be taken as a serious concept and you're not letting down patients and gumming up the system all day.  Inevitably, improving such systems will improve smiles in the end. Improving the patient experience and patient satisfaction is about smiles, not just systems.  The systems and processes you've put in place that work for most of your patients in most situations emphatically will not work for all of your patients in all situations.  And when a patient doesn’t fit into your system, or a patient’s circumstances don’t fit into your  list of expected scenarios, you need smiling, helpful, empathetic employees, administrators, managers, executives who will address what needs to be done (including simply delivering an apology) regardless of the fact that they had hoped their systems would suffice.  Part of this is that everyone in your organization needs to learn to handle customer complaints and concerns:  "I can't help you, I'm the wrong person" is unacceptable; "Absolutely: let me get you to the person who can take care of that" can work wonders. Cues to indifference are everywhere–and it's where much of patient dis-satisfaction lives. Healthcare professionals avoiding eye contact with "civilians." Med students hurrying self-importantly down the halls, nearly running down the slow-moving patients who won't get with the program.  Patients ignored by nurses who haven't yet clocked in and therefore don’t realize they are already (poorly) representing their institution. Doctors in the hallway loudly carrying on about the relative benefits of different Canyon Ranch vacations they’ve taken. Two radios playing at once from two administrative areas (with the patients waiting, inevitably, somewhere in between the two. Unless your musical tastes run to Charles Ives, the resulting dissonant acoustics are uniquely unpleasant.). Vending machines that are left long out of service.  Vending machines that require exact change, but your hospital doesn't have a change machine. It's important to offload the transactional: Humans are important in all service environments, including healthcare, but there are some things that automation does better, and that self-service may do the best.  Filling out patient-related forms is one of these. Your patients and their families have a lot of positive experience these days with efficient online and mobile-based models, and it makes them impatient with inefficiency and duplicate processes. You're not doing it right if you're not ruthlessly attacking delays: I wrote an article recently about how Cleveland Clinic manages now to guarantee that any patient can have an appointment with the appropriate care provider the same day they call in. (after 4 PM this guarantee rolls to the next day). You can do this too: it’s not easy, it won’t be comfortable at first. But it makes a lot of sense. Smaller changes that help include: Stop batching/delaying the distribution of lab results – Consider if it's time to implement one of the newer technologies that allows patients to reach nurses directly (ex: Vocera communications' system) rather than waiting for someone to notice a call light and eventually respond. ... But realize that great customer service must be delivered on a customer’s schedule.  Your quest for speed cannot become a quest to hurry patients. Doing that it going to lead to frustration and, ultimately, noncompliance and other outcome problems. Your quest for efficiency can often be at odds with your quest to improve the customer experience, if you don't realize that there is value in being inefficient when it comes to that untidy link in the chain: the patient. You have to do everything you can experience your care as your patients do.  Park where the patients do.  See how easy it is/isn’t to get to the front door on crutches.   Take a tour of your hospital with someone who hasn’t been there before, and let them show you whether they can really find where they’re going.  You’ll be amazed how many mis-aligned, out of date, confusing signs you have. It all makes intuitive sense to you, of course, because you have been in your building enough times that you know your way around in your sleep (Probably, I suspect, literally.)  And, once a year, do a "full bladder exercise": Everyone who works with patients should drink two or three liters of water–it is incredible how your perception of a "reasonable delay" between call button and response changes when you have a full bladder. If you want to ace your HCAHPS and other measurements, don't think too specifically; think instead in terms of “halo effect”: The halo effect I'm referring to is the human tendency to cut you slack when they have a generally positive impression of you.  let a generally positive experience with you “infect” areas in which you may not have been entirely up to snuff.  Taking a sample HCAHPS question where your goal is to have an answer of "always" (for example: "During this hospital stay, how often were your room and bathroom kept clean?" ). "Always kept clean" is, strictly speaking, an impossibility.  Not even Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton can pull that off; they may tidy your room three times a day, but that's plenty of time to trash it in between. Yet it is possible to get an "always" response from a patient.  Because the way patients remember is more holistic (sorry, I know that word can lead us down an icky path; I promise I won't use it again)  than you think it is.  An overall extraordinary experience with your facility and organization. will convince a patient to cut you slack while a generally poorly treated patient is going to grade you literally on your HCAHPS. And a literal reading of/response to the HCAHPS questions isn't going to turn out all that well for anyone. Micah Solomon is a customer service, patient satisfaction and patient experience consultant,  speaker, and author.

Patient Experience And Patient Satisfaction: 9 Realities That Hospitals and Healthcare Professionals Often Get Wrong

The more that patient satisfaction and the patient experience come to the foreground in healthcare, the more often I see them misunderstood, begrudged as an undue obligation, even feared.  Here is some straight talk I find myself emphasizing often (as a consultant and speaker) in hospitals and other healthcare environments. Patient satisfaction isn't the enemy of medical outcomes.  Done right, the work you do on patient satisfaction, on improving the patient experience, improves medical outcomes as well.  In the hospital, and upon discharge. This should be obvious, but our ingrained conception of win/lose, zero-sum gets in the way of seeing this clearly.  A good night’s sleep - nurses coming when you need them without making you suffer in agony -scheduling that is prompt and makes sense - physicians involving the patient and family in treatment and follow-up: Of course these improve outcomes.  It’s (sorry, neurologists) a no-brainer. Improving the patient experience is about systems as much as it is about smiles.  It can mean hiring industrial engineers to time how long it realistically will take to wheel a patient from appointment to appointment, so that the idea of a schedule can be taken as a serious concept and you're not letting down patients and gumming up the system all day.  Inevitably, improving such systems will improve smiles in the end. Improving the patient experience and patient satisfaction is about smiles, not just systems.  The systems and processes you've put in place that work for most of your patients in most situations emphatically will not work for all of your patients in all situations.  And when a patient doesn’t fit into your system, or a patient’s circumstances don’t fit into your  list of expected scenarios, you need smiling, helpful, empathetic employees, administrators, managers, executives who will address what needs to be done (including simply delivering an apology) regardless of the fact that they had hoped their systems would suffice.  Part of this is that everyone in your organization needs to learn to handle customer complaints and concerns:  "I can't help you, I'm the wrong person" is unacceptable; "Absolutely: let me get you to the person who can take care of that" can work wonders. Cues to indifference are everywhere–and it's where much of patient dis-satisfaction lives. Healthcare professionals avoiding eye contact with "civilians." Med students hurrying self-importantly down the halls, nearly running down the slow-moving patients who won't get with the program.  Patients ignored by nurses who haven't yet clocked in and therefore don’t realize they are already (poorly) representing their institution. Doctors in the hallway loudly carrying on about the relative benefits of different Canyon Ranch vacations they’ve taken. Two radios playing at once from two administrative areas (with the patients waiting, inevitably, somewhere in between the two. Unless your musical tastes run to Charles Ives, the resulting dissonant acoustics are uniquely unpleasant.). Vending machines that are left long out of service.  Vending machines that require exact change, but your hospital doesn't have a change machine. It's important to offload the transactional: Humans are important in all service environments, including healthcare, but there are some things that automation does better, and that self-service may do the best.  Filling out patient-related forms is one of these. Your patients and their families have a lot of positive experience these days with efficient online and mobile-based models, and it makes them impatient with inefficiency and duplicate processes. You're not doing it right if you're not ruthlessly attacking delays: I wrote an article recently about how Cleveland Clinic manages now to guarantee that any patient can have an appointment with the appropriate care provider the same day they call in. (after 4 PM this guarantee rolls to the next day). You can do this too: it’s not easy, it won’t be comfortable at first. But it makes a lot of sense. Smaller changes that help include: Stop batching/delaying the distribution of lab results – Consider if it's time to implement one of the newer technologies that allows patients to reach nurses directly (ex: Vocera communications' system) rather than waiting for someone to notice a call light and eventually respond. ... But realize that great customer service must be delivered on a customer’s schedule.  Your quest for speed cannot become a quest to hurry patients. Doing that it going to lead to frustration and, ultimately, noncompliance and other outcome problems. Your quest for efficiency can often be at odds with your quest to improve the customer experience, if you don't realize that there is value in being inefficient when it comes to that untidy link in the chain: the patient. You have to do everything you can experience your care as your patients do.  Park where the patients do.  See how easy it is/isn’t to get to the front door on crutches.   Take a tour of your hospital with someone who hasn’t been there before, and let them show you whether they can really find where they’re going.  You’ll be amazed how many mis-aligned, out of date, confusing signs you have. It all makes intuitive sense to you, of course, because you have been in your building enough times that you know your way around in your sleep (Probably, I suspect, literally.)  And, once a year, do a "full bladder exercise": Everyone who works with patients should drink two or three liters of water–it is incredible how your perception of a "reasonable delay" between call button and response changes when you have a full bladder. If you want to ace your HCAHPS and other measurements, don't think too specifically; think instead in terms of “halo effect”: The halo effect I'm referring to is the human tendency to cut you slack when they have a generally positive impression of you.  let a generally positive experience with you “infect” areas in which you may not have been entirely up to snuff.  Taking a sample HCAHPS question where your goal is to have an answer of "always" (for example: "During this hospital stay, how often were your room and bathroom kept clean?" ). "Always kept clean" is, strictly speaking, an impossibility.  Not even Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton can pull that off; they may tidy your room three times a day, but that's plenty of time to trash it in between. Yet it is possible to get an "always" response from a patient.  Because the way patients remember is more holistic (sorry, I know that word can lead us down an icky path; I promise I won't use it again)  than you think it is.  An overall extraordinary experience with your facility and organization. will convince a patient to cut you slack while a generally poorly treated patient is going to grade you literally on your HCAHPS. And a literal reading of/response to the HCAHPS questions isn't going to turn out all that well for anyone. Micah Solomon is a customer service, patient satisfaction and patient experience consultant,  speaker, and author.

How Do You Handle Rejection?

Being in business means you’re going to face rejection. Not everyone is going to like your business or your product. As much as we don’t like it, rejection is a fact of business life.

Just A Year After Opening, New African School For Girls Copes With Ebola

This was supposed to be a special time for More Than Me Academy: the celebration of the school's one-year anniversary as a vital social venture taking girls from the streets of the West Point slum in Monrovia, Liberia and giving them a chance at education and a life beyond poverty.

When Ad Re-targeting Becomes Stalking

When I was running my first company in upstate New York,  we had a client that had hired us to create ads for him. His retail establishment was called The Old Brick Warehouse,  and he sold furniture. It was mostly low-priced pressboard furniture skinned with wood-grained laminate. Children's bedroom furniture, coffee tables, low-priced and packaged up with discounts, lay-away pricing, and deals to make the cheap prices and quick-and-dirty quality appealing.

Your Guide To Online Reputation Management

If you think online reputation management is only for big brands, think again. With the rise in use of social media, and the popularity of user-generated review sites like Yelp, SiteJabber, Amazon reviews and even employer review sites like Glassdoor, monitoring and managing your online reputation is more important than ever.

What Business Leaders Can Learn From Online Dating

“All he did was talk about his past girlfriends,” she said. “It was probably one of the worst dates I’ve ever been on.”

7 Tips For Startups To Attract And Retain Top Talent

Bringing the right people on board is important for any business, but startups in particular can’t afford to make hiring mistakes. Here are seven tips to help startups attract and retain top talent.

A Venture Capitalist Walks Into A Winery...

Venture capitalist Jay Levy and winemaker Greg Scheinfeld launched Uproot Wines as a hybrid company that blends wine and ecommerce. Here are reasons why it's succeeding.

M-Pesa To Monitise: How Necessity Is Pushing FinTech Innovation From Africa To The UK

Necessity is often said to be the driver of innovation. Nowhere is this clearer than with the mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinancing service, M-Pesa, in Kenya.

How Your Company Can Innovate The Disney Way

The Walt Disney Company doesn't invent much, but it's extraordinarily innovative. Make sure you don’t confuse the two...

Selling An Advisory Practice? Don't Shortchange Yourself

The financial advisory landscape is transforming and there are strong indications that the pace of change is only going to intensify. The competitive environment is becoming more extreme. The clientele – especially the wealthy – is increasingly circumspect, critical, and demanding. And various business margins are being squeezed from different angles, for different reasons.

Social Media: Corporate Attitudes and Aptitudes

The New York Police Department (NYPD) is training its officers in the use of social media as part of a program aimed at improving the force’s image and avoiding scandals like the one in April when #myNYPD hashtag was proposed for members of the public to upload photos of themselves engaging with policemen and women backfired after protestors filled it with examples of alleged police brutality instead.

Race Sales? LA Clippers, Now Atlanta Hawks, & IRS Wins Big

First Donald Sterling's Racial Insensitivity Lead to Banning and a $2 Billion Sale. Now, Atlanta Hawks Owner Bruce Levenson is Selling Out too. And the Biggest Winner Is the IRS.

Do This One Thing Before Doing Business In China

By Dan Harris

Keynote Speaker True Confessions: 7 Peculiar Observations From A Professional Speaker

What's life's really like for a professional keynote speaker?  People surprisingly often tell me they want to know. (Far more people, I'm sure, couldn't care less, but nobody except my family tells me this to my face.) So here are some confessions and observations about the more peculiar aspects of life as

Keynote Speaker True Confessions

From time to time people tell me they're interested in what life's like for a professional keynote speaker. I?m sure far more people couldn't care less, but outside my immediate family, nobody ever tells me so to my face. So in no particular order, here are confessions and observations about life

11 Biggest State Incentive Deals

Nevada is offering $1.25 billion for Tesla's gigafactory. Here are the 11 biggest state incentive deals, according to the advocacy group Good Jobs First.

You Are Not Doomed To Lead Alone

Many midsized company leaders feel doomed to leading and managing their business themselves.  They’ve been burned so many times by dysfunctional leaders that they think they must “do it all” themselves.  They hired executives who ran amok, or who made one bad decision after another.  They give up on having a team of leaders, and end up burning themselves out trying to do more than is humanely possible.  The growth of their company stagnates.  Growth killer #7, Tolerating Dysfunctional Leaders (from my book, Mighty Midsized Companies; How Leaders Overcome 7 Silent Growth Killers, Bibliomotion, September 2014) has hammered their business.  But they actually did it to themselves.

Hacked Is The New Black For Retailers. Here's What You Need To Know

Consumers aren’t waiting to see what Home Depot has to say. On late Thursday a class action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Georgia against the retailer over the potential data breach.

If Investors Are Not Biting, Perhaps You Should Take It Personally

We have all heard people say, when they make a decision we don’t like, that “it’s not personal”. Generally they mean “it’s about the facts of the situation, it’s not about who you are as a person.” Usually this is a bit of a fib. In venture capital it’s often a big lie.

Squeeze First, Hire Later: What's Weighing On Jobs Growth

As the August jobs report on Friday indicated, U.S. employers still aren’t hiring tons of employees on a consistent basis. Recent data from Sageworks, a financial information company, also suggest companies may have less incentive to absorb some of the slack in the labor market that Federal Reserve officials have highlighted in recent weeks.

Monet Found In German Suitcase Part Of Nazi Loot

More Nazi Art Suggests More Claims By Victims of Nazi Germany, But Who Pays Taxes on Recovered Art?

Debunking Four HR Myths That Destroy Company Cultures

Four HR myths that destroy corporate cultures and company culture-building efforts and undermine leadership. Plus: consulting the work of Southwest Airlines, Mayo Clinic, and more to find solutions for every one of them.

How to Built An Amazing Team of Contributing Writers on a Budget of Zero

I have worked with Search Engine Journal for the past 3 year as a Writer, Editor and now Editor at Large.  I love sitting down with people that are in that same situation and doing well at it. A lot of publishers wish they had the high quality of contributed content that Technorati’s enjoyed the past few years. The company, once known as the go-to blog directory, has an editorial side that publishes thought leadership pieces on technology, product reviews, expert interviews, and tech industry event coverage. Tech Entrepreneurs and expert business thinkers from Amazon, About.com, Altimeter Group, CNBC, Copyblogger, Dell, Hootsuite, Hubspot, IBM, MarketingProfs, StumbleUpon, and others, have all been interviewed via this niche property. At the same time, a recent San Francisco growth hacking conference had an army of writers in attendance. Hardly newsworthy for a fully-staffed content and journalist team, however, extremely noteworthy for a publication consisting solely of dedicated contributing writers. And it’s the “dedicated” element that had me curious to learn more. How are these Technorati writers motivated? How is content kept at consistent quality levels, having been generated from a vast variety of disparate sources? I sat down with former Technorati managing editor (now editor emeritus), Andre Bourque (SocialMktgFella) to better understand his experience managing event coverage, op-eds, PR firms, and most importantly, contributing writers to generate over a million and a half monthly uniques.   John Rampton (Question): You once told me, “Care for your contributor.” What do you mean by that? Andre F. Bourque (Answer): I started as a contributing writer, so I knew the type of passion it takes to stay up late and write tirelessly about someone else’s product, event, or idea. When you’re doing that for free, there are certain things you need, to keep you motivated, satisfied, and able to continue to contribute. When you do that, you can begin to tailor the type of content you’re receiving from unpaid writers, not merely sift through submissions of list articles, and obscure opinion pieces. For example, creative tech writers find little value in a press release. When’s the last time you tweeted one to your followers, or posted on to your Facebook page? We don’t, because they’re boring. So I set up a Google Form survey we distribute to brands and PR agencies. It includes questions that guide the writer into more of a story, less of a product “update.”

McDonald's Should Either Raise Wages Or Have Robots Flip Burgers

For years, cheap teenage labor helped McDonalds become the world’s largest food franchise, enjoying hefty operating margins that caught the attention of Wall Street. McDonald’s stock has been a stellar performer, handsomely rewarding patient investors.

New Hampshire Supreme Court Declines More Power In Tuition Credit Case

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has upheld a tax credit for contributions to scholarship funds.  The credit to corporations against their business profits tax was 85% of the amount of contributions to organizations providing scholarships to families to pay tuition at private schools and out-of-district public school or to cover

The Companies Hiring The Most In Marketing Right Now

A Great Customer Experience Is Defective If It's Late: Consulting Marriott, Uber, USAA For Solutions

No matter how perfect your product, customer experience, or service is otherwise, in the eyes of the customer it?s broken if you deliver it late. Worse, the concept of what constitutes on-time delivery is the most movable of moving targets. So although there?s been an expectation of timeliness since the dawn of the industrial age, today, in our ultra-accelerated world of ??Why do I have to wait a full .8 seconds for a web page to load on my tablet?,?? customers are expecting speedier service than they ever have before. And there?s no turning back: What seemed speedy last year may seem snail-like today. Companies in today?s marketplace need to come up with solutions that stay in step with customers? ever more extreme perception of what ??in a timely fashion?? means. Because if they don?t, their competition will step in to fill the timeliness void.

Fire Your Boss: How Companies Without Hierarchy Are Getting Ahead

It used to be the man made the company. Great businesses were personified in the figures of their visionary bosses like Jack Welch, Michael Ovitz, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, around whom a carefully constructed hierarchy of managers assembled to ensure maximal success. There has always been something aspirational in this, a collective desire to invent a symbolic vessel for greatness none of us suspect we could have on our own. After decades of pursuing charismatic leaders to magically create growth in any industry—from app design to car manufacturing—a number of big corporations have turned toward non-hierarchical, leaderless structures and are actually outperforming many of their more structured competitors.

Appreciating The Introvert: Five Questions With TBWA Disruption Director Lorna Hawtin

As Disruption Director at TBWA based in Manchester, UK, Lorna Hawtin is responsible for asking questions, wreaking havoc, and building strategies and behaviors for challenger brands, which will give them an unfair advantage. As a Berlin School of Creative Leadership   EMBA participant, she put her skills to use and caused disruption in the best way possible, by asking the hard to answer questions, challenging herself to a new way of thinking, and inspiring her classmates to do the same. It is no wonder she not only received the honor of Valedictorian but took home the Michael Conrad Outstanding Thesis Award for her thought-provoking research on “Unpicking the Extravert Ideal in ‘Adland’ – Does a Cult of Charisma and Collaboration Impede the Value Creation Potential of Introverts in the UK’s Creative Industries?”

Will SIPC's Brokerage Insurance Scam Help Allen Stanford Walk?

If you experience an insured loss and the insurance company doesn't pay, you know you've been scammed. As I've discussed in a series of columns posted at www.kotlikoff.net, SIPC (the Securities Investor Protection Corporation) is running an enormous scam in claiming to insure our brokerage accounts against fraud. SIPC’s refusal to pay the legitimate claims of most Madoff victims and all Stanford victims makes this abundantly clear.

Innovation, Culture And Some Insights From Twitter

A bad culture prevents strategies from being implemented and strangles innovation. Nothing new and wonderful is going to happen in a company that treats its employees like the targets in a Whack-a-Mole game.

Nude Photos Of Jennifer Lawrence And Kate Upton Leak: Five Important Lessons For All of Us

Within hours of the breach today, Twitter announced that it is suspending accounts that share the celebrity nude photos; do you really think that you will get the same treatment?

Sam Zell's Predicted Correction Likely To Be A Pause That Refreshes

September and October are statisically weak, but the long-term outlook remains favorable.

How Angels Can Enjoy The Best Returns -- Financial And Otherwise

With angel investing being so risky, eventually most smart angels wonder – is there a way to increase my odds for good returns?  And how else do I make investing a good experience for me?

The Path To Software Success Starts With A Data Roadmap

Software businesses can be worth phenomenal amounts of money if the data transformations are managed to their full potential. Those that manage the transformation of their data explicitly through all five stages of the data roadmap will have a huge, unfair advantage over those who don’t.

Millennial Men's Fashion Retailer Frank And Oak Raises $15 Million

Goodwater Capital leads a substantial round of investment into Frank and Oak, which sells affordable fashion to men ranging from ages 20 to 35.

Take Responsibility For Your Brand!

The recent OSI food safety scandal in China provides an excellent case study on how NOT to do business. Firms need to rethink concepts they’ve held onto for years. Those that aren’t able to do this will find themselves reeling from one scandal to another.

Burger King's 'Not About The Taxes' Whopper? Playboy For The Articles

Burger King is Buying Tim Hortons and Moving to Canada, But Not for Lower Taxes, Says the CEO.

Cities Of The Future: What Do They Look Like, How Do We Build Them And What's Their Impact?

You may have heard of a "smart city" or "future city." Songdo, in South Korea is a good example of what this looks like. It was built from the ground up in 2005 with over $40 billion invested into its creation and opened in 2009. Censors are planted throughout the city to monitor to monitor everything from temperature to traffic patters to help alert residents of what their days might look like. Instead of having garbage trucks collect trash the waste is automatically "sucked" out of each house into a central system that then uses it to create compost. Telepresence is outfitted in schools and homes, the buildings themselves are designed to be sustainable and eco friendly, and the city itself is designed around open spaces. Songdo is just one example of what a "smart" or "future" city looks like and is perhaps on the very forefront of this evolution.

Why Uber Should Shift Up Its Personalization Engine

What Uber Does Uber is a mobile app that gets people from point A to point B, usually via sedan or SUV, occasionally via helicopter, water taxi, or other transport. Sometimes cats come along for the ride. Pilot programs also provide courier service, and delivery of fast foods and just about anything else to be found in your local brick and mortar stores.

Fueled Fix: Why Uber Should Shift Up Its Personalization Engine

Award-winning mobile app design and development agency Fueled has built apps for big brands like Barneys to startups like QuizUp that have generated more than one-quarter of a billion dollars since starting up in 2011. In this exclusive series for Forbes, Fueled’s founder Rameet Chawla offers advice to well-known companies operating in the digital domain. For this first installment, he takes a close look at the mobile app age’s answer to hailing a cab: Uber.

Checklist Of Traits Of A Successful Entrepreneur

By Jenny Q. Ta

The Small Business Credit Outlook? "An All-Time High"

Experian and Moody’s Analytics recently released their Small Business Credit Index, and “In line with expectations, small-business credit conditions improved in the second quarter,” cites the report’s authors. “The index measures credit quality for firms with fewer than 100 workers, and last quarter’s move puts it at an all-time high.”

Were The Ice Buckets Worth It? New And Deeper Analytics Say 'Yes'

For their analysis of the ice bucket campaign, RJMetrics downloaded and profiled 1,500 randomly-selected #icebucketchallenge videos using the YouTube API and uploaded the raw data to their site. Marketers should take take.

The Mentality of Effective Interviewing

With the economy significantly improving, launching a successful job search has become slightly less labor intensive. Regardless, job seekers who are looking to execute a fruitful employment search in today’s corporate environment ought to become familiar with advanced interviewing, persuasion and positivity strategies. If used properly, these tactics yield a higher salary, heightened confidence and more interest from a diverse group of employers.

European Online Fashion Retailer Zalando Announces IPO

European retailer Zalando's IPO, which was announced officially on Wednesday, could be the largest offering from Germany's tech sector in 14 years.