WOULD YOU REALLY BE MORE PRODUCTIVE WITH A PERSONAL ASSISTANT?

HAVING SOMEONE HELP MANAGE THE THINGS YOU ALWAYS FORGET COULD BE THE PUSH YOU NEED TO FINALLY BE MORE PRODUCTIVE.

BY LAURA VANDERKAM

At most companies, executive assistants are increasingly rare. And even if there are assistants at your company, someone charged with organizing travel for three executives just doesn’t have time to remind you of birthdays, let alone make your dental appointments.

Another option? Hiring your own personal assistant. People who’ve done it say that even if you’re footing the bill yourself, it can be money well spent.

A PA’s main responsibility is “giving people permission to let things go,” says Lisa Krohn, who has done personal assistant stints for Jimmy Wales (cofounder of Wikipedia), Martha Stewart, and others. She tells clients that “I will take away everything in your life and take care of it”--except whatever it is that you do best.

She has stood in line to buy “Cronuts” to ship on a plane to Europe, and helped a Russian client purchase a full $30,000 wardrobe in 90 minutes, as he was on the phone the whole time. Such variety comes with the territory; a recent job posting on Idealist.org for a personal/administrative assistant for philanthropist Swanee Hunt says that the person will be responsible for, among other things, “Preparation of Swanee’s backpack,” and “Handle all personal purchases for Swanee; including gifts and flowers,” and “Handle iTunes database.”

You may be perfectly fine with managing your own iTunes selections. But having someone take care of random tasks that might distract you can make success possible. One example: You don’t get pulled over on your way to meet a client because you were so busy you let your car registration expire.

WHO NEEDS AN PERSONAL ASSISTANT?

This is especially true for entrepreneurs, for whom work and life often blend. Even if you’re working for someone else, though, funding your own PA has its upsides. Lynne Murphy works in academia, “so I’m always expected to do a lot with too little,” she says. “When I got a management role that came with an extra bit in my paycheck each month, I started putting that amount into an account at work and paying for five hours of help per week.”

At her university, there are always students looking for part-time work, and though she funds the position personally, she uses her university’s system to make sure everything is withheld properly. “I have the student do all sorts of things for me--organizing my reading lists on the library website, doing starter research on new projects or focused research on things that’ll take a while,” and other tasks.

She’s found several benefits. “Having him doing the easier tasks leaves my time/mind free to do the challenging ones,” she says, and “because I’ve promised him five hours of work per week, I have to be organized enough to make sure that there’s work for him to do. It makes me get a move on projects that I’m procrastinating on and makes me think beyond ‘what needs to be done today’ to ‘what needs to be done.’”

HOW TO FIND AN ASSISTANT AND WHAT TO CONSIDER

If you decide to hire someone, keep a few things in mind. You can use a service, though agencies are most cost-effective for full-time positions. If you’re looking for a part-timer, you can try an ad on Craigslist, or perusing Care.com, or other sites where people look to hire nannies (PAs often fall in the category of “household employees”; hence the overlap).

If you have specialized needs, your own network might be most helpful, particularly if you’re okay with a virtual personal assistant. Sarah Mueller once ran a business importing German children’s books. Since she needed someone who spoke German, she posted the job description on her blog, and found a wonderful assistant who made most customer phone calls in addition to other tasks. “She handled all of that and it was amazing,” Mueller says. “I was just lifted of this burden.” Since she didn’t need someone to prepare her backpack, it worked fine that Mueller and her assistant lived in separate states.

You might also consider a short-term engagement, at least to start. One of the biggest barriers to hiring a personal assistant is that people don’t know what they need. A highly experienced personal assistant can figure this out, but then you’ll be competing with extremely rich people on price. Krohn says she often comes in for limited periods of time, which lets clients decide if they need help long term.

Either way, a personal assistant can help ease a time crunch. “There’s just so much that somebody who is a second brain for you can handle,” says Gwyn Waters, founder of the Personal Assistant Network in the Bay Area.

“The capacity that you gain isn’t necessarily productivity related or measurable, but I think it’s almost like an increased intellectual capacity,” she says. "You have time to think about the big stuff for once, and “that’s a very huge stress reliever."

WHY COMPANIES SHOULD CONSIDER REHIRING THEIR FORMER EMPLOYEES

OU MAY HAVE ATTENDED THEIR GOING-AWAY PARTIES, BUT SOME EMPLOYEES ARE RETURNING TO THEIR FORMER EMPLOYERS, AND THEY'RE BEING WELCOMED BACK.

BY LINDSAY LAVINE

You could’ve sworn Joe from accounting left a few years ago for another job. You inherited his stapler. But it’s not a ghost you saw in the break room--employers are welcoming back employees who’ve left their companies, says T. Brad Harris, Ph.D., assistant professor of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois, and co-author of two recent articles on the subject. Harris defines “boomerang” employees as “people who work for an organization, leave for whatever reason, and return at a later date.”

We spoke with Harris to find out why companies are hiring back these employees, and why they want to return. Here are three reasons Harris says companies should embrace boomerang employees:

1. THEY’RE ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH THE CULTURE.

There’s something to be said for knowing the company’s culture and understanding the work structure, which makes them less risky hires, Harris says. He notes that the military has long employed this strategy, offering bonuses to those who re-enlist.

In the traditional employment model, employees had a level of fear that if they left, they missed their one and only shot with that employer, Harris notes. But that’s changing. “Employers and employees have embraced career models where it’s okay to try different things,” he says.

2. THEY’VE LEARNED SOME THINGS.

A major benefit for employers is when a returning employee brings something new to the job, whether through new skills, different experiences, or connections they’ve made while outside the organization. Harris says employers should make sure the employee was gone long enough before returning.

With any new job, the first few months are filled with uncertainty and stress. You want to make sure they get through that period so they aren’t going to have lingering curiosity about whether the grass is greener somewhere else, he says.

3. THEY’RE MORE COMMITTED.

Harris and his co-authors interviewed hundreds of employees and found that boomerang employees were more likely to leave a job for personal reasons like pregnancy, spouse relocation, or an unexpected job offer, rather than simply being dissatisfied with the job. Even if the employee left to explore other options, an employee who wants to return is likely more committed the second time because they “tasted the forbidden fruit,” Harris says.

However, Harris cautions companies to be mindful of the reasons why the employee left the first time around. If they left for more money and are coming back for monetary reasons, they may leave again. Companies are better served if they’re inclined to welcome back employees who were good performers or even those who made an honest mistake in leaving, he notes.

Harris and his co-authors suggest companies cultivate a talent pool of potential boomerang employees by focusing on creating a positive, fair culture with strong communication. For example, an employee who was passed up for a promotion should receive a clear explanation of why he didn’t get it. He also recommends establishing formal and informal ways to maintain communication with former employees, such as creating a LinkedIn alumni group.

BRAINSTORMING DOESN'T WORK; TRY THIS TECHNIQUE INSTEAD

EVER BEEN IN A MEETING WHERE ONE LOUDMOUTH'S MEDIOCRE IDEA DOMINATES? THEN YOU KNOW BRAINSTORMING NEEDS AN OVERHAUL.

BY REBECCA GREENFIELD

Brainstorming, in its current form and by many metrics, doesn't work as well as the frequency of "team brainstorming meetings" would suggests it does.

Sharing ideas in groups isn't the problem, it's the "out-loud" part that, ironically, leads to groupthink, instead of unique ideas. "As sexy as brainstorming is, with people popping like champagne with ideas, what actually happens is when one person is talking you're not thinking of your own ideas," Leigh Thompson, a management professor at the Kellogg School, told Fast Company. "Sub-consciously you're already assimilating to my ideas."

That process is called "anchoring," and it crushes originality. "Early ideas tend to have disproportionate influence over the rest of the conversation," Loran Nordgren, also a professor at Kellogg, explained. "They establish the kinds of norms, or cement the idea of what are appropriate examples or potential solutions for the problem."

Because brainstorming favors the first ideas, it also breeds the least creative ideas, a phenomenon called conformity pressure. People hoping to look smart and productive will blurt out low-hanging fruit first. Everyone else then rallies around that idea both internally and externally. Unfortunately, that takes up time and energy, leaving a lot the best thinking undeveloped. We've all been in meetings like this: Some jerk says the obvious thing before anyone else, taking all of the glory; everyone else harrumphs. Brainstorm session over.

To avoid these problems, both Thompson and Nordgren suggest another, quieter process: brainwriting. (The phrase, now used by Thompson, was coined by UT Arlington professor Paul Paulus.) The general principle is that idea generation should exist separate from discussion. Although the two professors have slightly different systems, they both offer the same general solution: write first, talk second.

Brainstorming works best if before or at the beginning of the meeting, people write down their ideas. Then everyone comes together to share those ideas out loud in a systematic way. Thompson has her participants post all the ideas on a wall, without anyone's name attached and then everyone votes on the best ones. "It should be a meritocracy of ideas," she said. "It's not a popularity contest." Only after that do people talk.

Nordgren, via an app he developed called Candor, has people record their thoughts before the meeting. Then, everyone goes around in a circle saying each idea.

This write first, discuss later system eliminates the anchoring problem because people think in a vacuum, unbiased by anyone else. Of course, people still jot down the most obvious ideas, which aren't necessarily bad ideas. But in brainstorming the goal is quantity, not quality. To avoid spending too much time on repetitive suggestions, people using Candor only present ideas someone else hasn't already said.

In her studies, Thompson found that brainwriting groups generated 20% more ideas and 42% more original ideas as compared to traditional brainstorming groups, she writes in her book Creative Conspiracy. "I was shocked to find there's not a single published study in which a face-to-face brainstorming group outperforms a brainwriting group," she said. In Nordgren's research he has found that the process leads to more diverse and candid ideas.

Discussion still has its merits, but should only take place after the group has generated a variety of distinct ideas with which to work. Raw ideas rarely work. It's the permutation and combination of the outlandish and banal that lead to the best proposals. "Usually the best idea that is selected at the end isn't exactly what anyone came up with at the beginning; the idea has been edited," Nordgren added.

The best part of introverted thinking, however, is that it cuts down on what I'll call the "loudmouth meeting-hog phenomenon." You know the type: the person who, along with one or two other people, dominate the conversation. (Here Fast Company's Baratunde Thurston acts out this very scenario with Behance Co-Founder Scott Belsky.) Thompson's studies have found that in most meetings with traditional brainstorming, a few people do 60-75% of the talking. With brainwriting, everyone gets a chance.

CREATIVE WAYS TO TURN YOUR COMMUTE FROM HELL INTO PRODUCTIVE "ME TIME"

YES, IT IS POSSIBLE TO MAKE YOUR COMMUTE INTO SOMETHING YOU CHERISH INSTEAD OF DREAD.

BY CATHERINE CRAWFORD

Returning to work after maternity leave was not easy. I still shudder at the memory of carting around a breast-pump briefcase and spending my lunch breaks using it in the tiny, basement bathroom at my job. But surprisingly, motherhood greatly improved another aspect of my workday that I once dreaded: the commute.

Before I had a baby, the 45 minutes I spent each day traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan felt like a flagrant waste of time--time that could be better used doing things like sleeping in (mornings) or staying out (evenings). But after the kid came, those wasted minutes suddenly transformed into "kid-free bonus time." Nowhere else in the world could I be totally free of parental concerns except on that often very crowded F train--and yes, I’m including our apartment’s bathroom.

At first, I would just luxuriate in the opportunity to sit, or even stand when I didn’t score a seat on the subway, without anyone asking a thing of me. Gradually, as my kids grew older (and I became less exhausted), I began to use this auxiliary commute time in other ways, all of it feeling like gravy on the rails.

There are nearly 130 million commuters in the United States today. Although the average commute time hovers around 28 minutes, for many of us it’s significantly longer. Along with about a quarter of the nation’s commuters, I use public transportation; the other 75% of American commuters drive alone in their cars.

I polled a broad range of commuters all over the country who spend 30 minutes or more traveling each way to work for tips on using the time advantageously. There were, of course, respondents who detested their commutes, like one mother of two from Chicago who wrote “I commute on the CTA for 1.5 hours twice a day and mostly spend the time dreaming of killing people.” I’m sending her the following list distilled from my most helpful responses ASAP:

GET YOUR NEWS ON

One of the first things to vanish from my life after becoming a mother was time to read the newspaper. Then one day I downloaded the New York Times app for my phone and everything changed. I was able, once again, to open my mouth at a dinner party and discuss something besides organic applesauce or how I’d lost feeling in my hands because of being so incredibly exhausted. Don’t despair if you have to both eyes on the road; in addition to the New York Times audio digest, Audible offers audio editions of a number of smarty-pants periodicals (including Fast Company!) to keep your brain safe from atrophy.

IF YOU WANT TO SING OUT, SING OUT

A young L.A. mom who spends, like all Angelenos, countless hours stuck in rush-hour traffic, relies on prepared activities to make her car time not just tolerable but enjoyable. One recent project: buffing up her karaoke repertoire. "Lately, I’ve been polishing my new karaoke song, ‘Smile’ by Lily Allen," she says. "I really hate not having a karaoke song, so it’s also a constructive use of my time.”

Makes me almost wish I commuted by car. Plus, a Harvard study indicates that singers live longer. That makes for one productive commute!

GET YOUR WORKOUT IN

I’ll be the first to admit that biking or jogging to work is not for everyone. I want to go all Amsterdam, but not only don’t I have the courage to face off with NYC drivers while on a bike, I also can’t imagine an entire day working amid the “glow” of a sweaty commute.

On the other hand, after a full day of work it’s nearly impossible for me to get to the gym. With two kids at home, there’s no room in my day for another activity that involves a change of venue and outfit. So I had to get creative, and these days I often get off the train about a mile or so before my stop and power walk the rest of the way to work. If you drive to work, try parking your car some distance away.

NOTE TO SELF

Put that voice recorder on your iPhone to work and get organized. One busy mom wrote, “I find myself constantly making plans on the fly. So, on my commute home I download my brain and dictate everything into my voice recorder. It’s like one more place to put things I’m likely to forget. Often, just talking it out will remind me of others things I’d wanted to keep track of. Then, when I have a chance at home I sit down with my calendar and organize everything for real.”

GO LONG ON PODCASTS

Oh mighty podcast, what did we commuters do before you? Ted Talks, Bret Easton Ellis interviews, "Stuff You Missed in History Class"--all of it can turn a dull commute into a fascinating half hour of discovery. Check out Stitcher's top 100 podcasts if you're looking for something new.

If you still prefer the printed to spoken word, apps like InstaFetch and Instapaper will save anything you want from the web and then read it back to you with text-to-speech technology.

JUST SPACE OUT

Who said that being productive always means being mentally active? Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself is just to space out and think about nothing. Hey, if it’s good enough for Buddha...

¿Por qué fracasamos en el amor? 2 razones según Walter Riso

Por Yanira Arana, Espacio360

Walter Riso, psicólogo clínico y autor de una serie de libros como "Los límites del amor", "Amores altamente peligrosos", "Enamórate de ti", entre otros, explica que, según su experiencia, las parejas fracasan principalmente por dos razones: Idealizan el amor y eligen mal.

1. Idealizamos el amor
Riso explica que cuando empezamos una relación lo idealizamos tanto que hasta pareciera que nos vamos directamente al cielo por lo perfecto que en ese momento nos parece todo, pero que cuando llegamos a ver la realidad, la pura y cruda realidad, sentimos una especie de choque contra la pared, lo cual nos genera "el desencuentro vital".

2. Elegimos mal
El experto dice que cuando 'decidimos' estar con alguien nos dejamos llevar por la taquicardia, por el sudor frío que corre por nuestra espalda, por la emoción básica, por la atracción, por el enamoramiento, pero, en ningún momento estamos PENSANDO.

En ese preciso instante vino a mi cabeza la siguiente interrogante ¿y el amor a primera vista? y la respuesta de Walter Riso me mató en una.
Dice que para él, luego de todo lo que ha leído, experimentado y después de todas las parejas que han pasado por su consultorio puede decir que el amor a primera vista NO EXISTE. Argumenta que lo que sentimos en un primer inicio no es amor sino una atracción, es decir, vemos a una persona y nos atrae.

¿Por qué nos atrae específicamente esa persona y no otra? esa respuesta , según Riso, la psicología evolutiva intenta aún descubrir.

Pero para él, cuando elegimos a esa persona 'especial', lo hacemos "con la cintura para abajo", porque si lo hiciéramos de la cintura para arriba, significaría que estamos pensando. Pensar que una nueva persona va a ingresar a nuestra vida, pensar para dónde queremos ir, pensar qué religión tiene, pensar si le gusta o no hacer el amor, pensar si le gusta o no cocinar, en fin, pensar en todo lo posible.

¿Cómo podemos racionalizar el amor? voy a compartir un ejemplo que él hizo intentando explicar de una manera simple algo tan complejo, aquí les va:

Dijo: Decides salir con un hombre que te gusta y te parece 'lindo'. En la primera cita, justo al momento de pagar la cuenta te dice "tú pagas las bebidas y yo todo lo demás". En ese momento, según Riso ya puedes ir sacando tu línea, podría tratarse de una persona 'tacaña' y justo coincide con que a ti no te gustan para nada las personas tacañas, pero aún así, como es 'lindo' decides salir nuevamente con él. En la segunda cita te das cuenta que, chica que pasa, chica a la que le mira el trasero, es decir, recontra coqueto y justo coincide con que a ti no te gustan los hombres coquetos, porque de hecho que hay mujeres a las que no les molesta la coquetería, pero a ti si. Aquí Walter Riso te pregunta ¿entonces por qué decides salir una tercera vez con él?

Cuenta que cuando le pregunta a sus pacientes porque salió por tercera vez, las respuestas se repiten en muchos casos:
- Le voy a dar otra oportunidad.
- Es muy lindo.
- Mi amor lo va a cambiar.

Todas las investigaciones, según Riso, indican que las personas que son opuestas terminan mal, que las personas que son semejantes, no iguales pero semejantes, son las relaciones que funcionan mejor. "Si eres del Opus Dei y él es ateo, te has puesto a pensar lo que sería cuando lleguen a tener hijos, no van a saber si ponerlo en un colegio laico o católico". Así van sumando las diferencias y estas van generando conflictos.

¿A qué le llama semejanza?
"La semejanza implica tener visiones del mundo similares, no opuestas en nuestra manera de pensar y sentir, en lo básico. Si no te gustan las mismas películas no es un problema, pero si te encanta cocinar y comer, no podrías estar con una persona que come apio y toma agua.

El tema en verdad es interminable, complejo y cada persona es un mundo cuando se trata del amor, así que, aunque Riso diga que el amor a primera vista no existe, lo más probable es que hayan muchas parejas en el mundo que puedan decir que esa afirmación es completamente falsa. Lo que yo más rescato de todo lo que él dice es lo siguiente: Cada persona tiene como un principio vital muchas cosas, es decir, sabe muy bien lo que le gusta o no le gusta. Entonces si voy a salir con alguien, necesito descubrir si esta persona tiene esas cosas que me gustan o no. Está más que comprobado que por más lindo que sea al principio, cuando pase la fiebre de los primeros meses llegarás a ver que esa persona tiene virtudes pero también DEFECTOS.  Lo ideal sería no idealizarlo desde el principio para que luego no nos invada la frustración y terminemos reaccionando de manera inadecuada. Desde el principio deberíamos saber que todas las personas NO SON PERFECTAS aunque lo parezcan. Aprendamos a conocer a las personas, a esperar un poco antes de decir que es el amor de tu vida. También deberíamos aprender siempre de cada relación y no cometer los mismos errores.

Aunque también me pregunté lo siguiente y con esto cierro ¿realmente sabemos qué nos gusta y que no nos gusta? ¿realmente sabemos qué queremos y que no queremos de esa persona?

HOW 4 SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS CAME BACK AFTER STARTUP FAILURE

DON'T STAY IN DENIAL, OR BLAME OTHERS--LEARN FROM THE TOUGH TIMES THESE ENTREPRENEURS EXPERIENCED WHEN THEIR STARTUPS FELL FLAT.

BY VIVIAN GIANG

Choosing to leave behind the regular paycheck and benefits to build a 

venture from the ground up is a huge risk.

It’s risky because it’s hard work, there are no guarantees, and 95% of startups fail, based on research by Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.

With the odds against you, entrepreneurs feel like they’re literally pushing against the tides every day so when companies fail, the price, which can include financial ruin, utter embarrassment, and even mental collapse, is a hefty one for the founders.

We spoke to four entrepreneurs to explore what they learned from this mourning and accepting period, how they picked themselves up and moved on to become the success stories they are today:

GIVE YOURSELF THE ADEQUATE TIME TO GRIEVE.

Steve Blank, serial entrepreneur, lecturer at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University, Columbia University, Caltech, and UCSF

During Blank’s 21-year career in Silicon Valley, the startup guru was involved in eight startups and responsible for starting three or four of them, depending on your definition of “cofounder,” he says. Along the way, none of the failures he encountered made the same impression as the ones he made with video game company Rocket Science Games where his title was CEO.

“A startup goes from failure to failure. All it does from day one is run a series of experiments and just like in a lab, most of them will fail,” says Blank. “But when it’s complete failure … when you’re shutting the company down, that never feels okay. It feels shitty. If you’re the CEO, you failed your employees. You failed your investors. And after, you either grow or you don’t.”

During this time, Blank tells Fast Company, he went through six stages of grief, but when he came out on the other end, he was “playing the game at a much different level.”

Phase 1: shock and surprise. Rocket Science raised $35 million and was on Wired magazine’s cover as one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley. It was on its way to greatness when 90 days later, Blank realized no one was buying the games and money was running out quickly.

Phase 2: Denial. For a time, Blank says that, in his mind, he really believed he had done everything he was supposed to do. During this phase, founders will often start playing the blame game to protect themselves from the failure itself.

“Allow yourself to feel it, but being stuck in denial and blaming others are the most destructive things you can do.”

Phase 3: Anger. During this phase, Blank blamed his cofounder, the engineers, the sales people, the VCs, and everyone else who had a connection to the company except for himself.

Phase 4: Depression. When the inevitable arrived, Blank writes that he slept a lot: “There were days I’d get up late and go to bed again at 5 p.m. I lost interest in anything associated with my past industry.” In fact, to this day, Blank still can’t play a video game.

Phase 5: Accept your role in the failure. This is the phase where you start redeeming yourself. After a few weeks, Blank started to talk about what happened to those around him, mostly to his wife. “At first you don’t want to talk about it,” he says. “You don’t want to admit it because it’s embarrassing.” But then you accept it, you talk about it, and you realize that failure in Silicon Valley isn’t an uncommon occurrence.

Phase 6: Changing your behavior. Once you’ve gained insight, it’s time to change your behavior. He writes about the last and hardest phase of his grief: “While I stopped blaming others, understanding what I could change in my behavior took long months. It would have been much easier to just move on, but I was looking for the lessons that would make my next startup successful. I looked at the patterns of behavior, not just at my last company but also across my entire career. I learned how to dial back the hubris, get other smart people to work with me--rather than just for me, listen better, and act and do what was right--regardless of what others thought I should do.”

BE OPEN ABOUT YOUR FAILURE

Christine Wallace, vice president of branding and marketing at the Startup Institute

When Wallace’s startup Quincy Apparel with former Harvard Business School classmate Alex Nelson shut down, Wallace slept, cried, and stayed in bed for three weeks, she tells Fast Company.

At the end of her grief, Wallace rejoined the world and decided to be as open about her failure as she had been about her successes. “The real story is much more volatile and human, and we do our community a disservice pretending otherwise,” she says. “I don't celebrate failure for failure's sake, but I think there is something amazing about trying to do something at the edge of possibility and potentially failing at it.”

KNOW WHAT WENT WRONG.

Gary Swart, venture partner at Polaris Partners

It’s been more than a decade since Swart decided to leave his “cushy” job at IBM as a business unit executive to start Intellibank, which he describes as “sort of like Dropbox done wrong.”

“All of a sudden, I’m at a startup eating peanut butter and jelly and working non-stop so when it didn’t work out, it was really brutal towards the end,” he tells Fast Company.

After the dust settled, Swart realized he needed to know exactly why the company failed before moving on. Was it not a good idea? Did he miss the market? Did he not execute it well enough?

“You can’t fail and make the same mistake again at the next company,” he says. “At Intellibank, we weren’t focused enough. We failed because we tried to go too broad. We were trying to be all things to all people.” At one point, the company was going through such an identity crisis that in the middle of a meeting, a potential investor interrupted Swart and asked him, “Can you tell me what your product actually does.” He writes about this in a post on LinkedIn: “We were pivoting so often for different types of customers that we completely lost the big picture.”

As a VC advising entrepreneurs today, Swart says that a successful company needs three things:

A need for their product or service.A big enough market because “even the best team with the best product will fail if its market does not exist.” A way to get into that market in a cost-effective way. In other words, “make sure you have enough money to execute in that market.”

Once Intellibank became a thing of the past, Swart was surprised to receive opportunities from people who knew how and why the company went under.

“What I realized was that I would have never had those opportunities if I hadn’t had that failure,” he says. “A good friend of mine says, ‘experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.’ “

KNOW YOUR WEAKNESS AND WHEN IT’S TIME TO SAY GOODBYE.

Matt Cooper, serial entrepreneur and vice president of Enterprise Services, Elance-oDesk

The hardest part about the end of of Matt Cooper’s first startup Soggy Bottom Canoe and Kayak Rental was that it died a very slow death.

“It wasn’t a spectacular finish where we ran out of the money and died. It was this long, drawn-out saga because it was a family affair.”

Shortly after quitting his investment banking job at JP Morgan in New York City to move to the backwoods of Mississippi to launch his first startup, Cooper had a gut feeling that he was moving too fast, but he didn’t listen to his gut. He hadn’t asked adequate advice the way he would today.

Cooper remembers cranking out a spreadsheet of what he thought the business would look like and thought that if he built it, they would come. Unfortunately, they never came.

At the end of his tenure as first-time entrepreneur, Cooper was aware that he had a tendency to move too quickly when it comes to business. Over time, he learned to create deadlines he would have to meet before moving on to the next big decision.

While it’s necessary for entrepreneurs to have faith in their company, it’s also critical to know when it’s time to cut the chord. According to Cooper, this happens when you can’t generate revenue, can’t cut back on expenses, and no longer have access to capital.

“That’s when you know you’re in big trouble,” he says.

Should You Be Paid For Your Social Media Posts?

A new social media platform aims to subvert the traditional model by paying users for their updates. But what's the value of what people put on the Internet?

If people are unhappy with Facebook, the company's success at selling ads targeted to smartphone users tap-tapping through their News Feeds doesn't show it. Despite a wallop of bad PR over its News Feed manipulation study and some users fleeing the site, the company’s $2.9 billion second quarter earnings outstripped the previous year’s by 61%. Facebook's mobile ad revenue drove much of the growth.

That fact still leaves the social network in a tricky position. Does Facebook primarily function as an arm of the advertising industry, or as a platform that benefits its users? Can it be both? If so, at what point does laser-targeting ads to users become exploitative and creepy, rather than desirable? Plus, if Facebook’s revenue comes from ads piggybacking on user-created content, does that mean users deserve a cut of the profit, too?

THE WORLD’S LARGEST UNPAID WORKFORCES

Entrepreneurs Arvind Dixit and Jason Zuccari think that if social media platforms are raking in big advertising money, it’s only fair that users are able to monetize themselves. That's why the two old college friends founded a new social media platform that pays users for their posts. After initiating a testing phase in 2012 and a re-launch earlier this month, Dixit and Zuccari's Bubblews.com now retains a total of 300,000 users, each of whom are paid a penny per click, per comment, and per like on their posts.

It's notoriously difficult to start a new social network when success depends on a critical mass of users to get hooked. But given frustrations with Facebook, people are hungry for alternatives, and earning money for social media "work" makes an appealing pitch. Still, as Bubblews's early successes and obstacles show, it's harder than it looks to construct a model that does this well.

“We started the company because we were reading about how a lot of the social media networks out there were creating the world’s largest unpaid workforces,” Dixit says. “And we said we could make that different.”

On Bubblews, users--or workers, depending on how you see them--receive pay in $50 batches at a time. In order to obtain their first paychecks, Bubblers (as users are called) have to rack up 5,000 likes (or their equivalent) across their posts. Two more caveats: Bubblers can only post in English, and each post has to be a minimum of 400 characters--the length of the first two sentences of this piece.

It's unclear how much money Dixit and Zuccari have already doled out, and how much an average Bubbler makes. Dixit won't disclose the figure, and it also seems a little tricky to calculate, because Bubblers can cash in whenever they want. In theory, a Bubbler could hoard pennies and cash in on his or her deathbed.

A BAFFLING COMMUNITY

Compensating people for social posts gets even more complicated when you take into account rewards that can’t be monetized, says Ramesh Srinivasan, a scholar of digital labor and an associate professor at the University of California-Los Angeles. If Bubblews wants to last, it’ll have to make people feel like it’s a place where they can sincerely enjoy one another’s offerings. After all, Facebook users post to feel rewarded by a sense of community, not necessarily by paycheck.

“The key for [Bubblews] is whether they can balance the feeling of monetizable value, the compensation that they provide to these different users, with the experience of being part of a community that many of us go to Facebook and Twitter for,” Srinivasan says.

It’s clear that Bubblews has already managed to cultivate some kind of community, but it’s still a baffling one. Many of the posts I find while browsing the site read like a filibustering senator in his eighth hour at the podium. Some bubbles do contain recipes or personal stories, but somehow, even the barely readable posts yield comments full of praise: It's probably smart to pay it forward when more likes and comments on your posts will get you paid.

Zuccari sees the positive commenting as a sign that Bubblews really does attract a strong sense of community--or at least a strong sense of instant gratification. Both of these things benefit Bubblews, which sells advertising alongside user-generated content. And it's precisely because Bubblews pays users for posts that users don’t feel exploited while writing for the platform, Dixit says.

"WHY DON’T WE CREATE SOMETHING THAT’S BUSINESS UP FRONT?"

The pair's broader business strategy doesn't seem all that different from Facebook's desire to pepper its users with highly optimized ads, and their privacy policy reads like they're keeping their options open on how best to do it. But Bubblews sees its own ad strategy as distinct from Facebook's data collection practices--mostly, they say, because they're analyzing information that users choose to make public, like posts.

Arvind Dixit, left, and Jason Zuccari, right.

"We’re not taking any private data from people," Zuccari says. "We know age, as well as location, rather than these other social media sites that are taking private information and using it to target ads."

That ethical argument’s a little more difficult to parse than it first seems. When I ask Dixit and Zuccari why their privacy policy still guarantees that the company can “collect information from commercially available sources” about its users, they tell me that they still plan on targeting Bubblers with ads in unique ways. The Bubblews creators are currently working with a sentiment analysis company--a firm that would apply sophisticated prediction models to users' posts--to generate portraits of users' personalities. If those algorithms become reliable enough, Bubblews could one day cut out third parties collecting user data, and enable brands to target specific personality types with sales directly through the site.

Whether Bubblews does end up engaging in the data collection option preserved in its privacy policy is an open question, but for now, its creators say their methods are more transparent than other social media platforms. To elaborate on this point, Dixit compares social media networks to spaces that could have once been described as free public parks. “As time progressed, they were forced to figure out ways to monetize, which upset people because now there’s billboards in the parks,” Dixit says. “Why don’t we create something that’s business up front? We do have to advertise, we do have to monetize, and we want people to feel like they’re part of the ecosystem.”

That rationale doesn’t sit well with everyone, especially those who don’t see the exchange of data for basic online services as a foregone conclusion about the future of the Internet.

“I find the very notion that our social life and the future of the Internet should be framed in terms of monetization both appalling and reductive,” says Adam Fish, a professor of sociology and media studies at Lancaster University, located in northern England. “The Internet can be used for more than selling of the self. The intimate details of our lives and the future of the Internet should not be up for sale to the highest bidder or those who have the computing power to crunch the data in such a way so as to be able to sell it to advertising companies.”

For better or for worse, social media companies are hunting and selling as much selfhood as possible, and Bubblews has chosen to follow that same basic business model. But if Dixit and Zuccari cast Facebook and Twitter as parks with billboards blocking out the sun, what does that make Bubblews?

“The best thing I would compare us to is a Starbucks,” Zuccari says. "It's a place of commerce."

THE TOWER OF LONDON POURS 888,246 POPPIES FROM A WINDOW TO HONOR WWI DEAD

BY JOE BERKOWITZ

A new installation by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper commemorates all British deaths from World War I with 888, 246 red ceramic poppies creatively arranged around the tower.

The human toll of war is hard to appreciate or understand in cold, hard statistics. Probably because nobody wants to think about what they truly mean. Sometimes, it actually takes seeing the number fleshed out in a meaningful way to realize each one of those digits is a person. Last fall, 9,000 soldiers were etched into the sand of the Arromanches beaches to commemorate all who perished on D-Day. Now, the first day of Britain's involvement in World War I is being marked with a similar display of casualty-visualization--this time with bright red poppies to remind us of the blood spilled.

August 5 will mark exactly 100 years since the first day of Britain's entry into the war. On that day, an installation will open at the Tower of London, in which 888,246 red ceramic poppies will be arranged around the tower, honoring the precise number of British and colonial soldiers that died between the outbreak of war in 1914, and 1921 (the war ended in 1918 but the artists are recognizing those who died of their wounds after returning home). As dreamed up by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper, “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” flows out of the window and into the Tower's moat, a seemingly endless stream of crimson. Cummins told the Guardian the installation's name was inspired by the words he found in the will of a fallen solider: "I don't know his name or where he was buried or anything about him. But this line he wrote, when everyone he knew was dead and everywhere around him was covered in blood, jumped out at me: 'The blood-swept lands and seas of red, where angels fear to tread.'"

Unlike a number in a news story, such a sight that so quickly and thoroughly conveys the human cost of war, should help Britons, and others, appreciate the sacrifice it represents.

What Kids Think The Car Of The Future Should Look Like Is Awesome

Adults are so boring. When Toyota asked kids all over the world to innovate, they brought their A-game.

What does the car of the future look like? If you ask someone in the industry, they might start talking about what's next for self-driving cars. Ask a 10-year-old, on the other hand, and they might suggest cars that harvest drinking water from fog as they drive, or modular cars that join together to form public transportation.

Those were a couple of the ideas from the Toyota Dream Car Art Contest, a global competition that asks kids to draw their vision of the "dream car of the future" each year. Over 600,000 kids entered this year, and Toyota is releasing one design from each of 90 finalists a day, complete with a short animation whipped up for each design.

Some of the ideas are not so serious, like this banana space car from 6-year-old Parker Su of Taiwan:

But others took creative approaches to solving actual problems. Several of the designs suggested cars that could scoop up and recycle trash off the street as they drove along; one version turned plastic scraps into low-cost bricks for housing, while another created new products in a section of the car.

An 11-year-old designer came up with a car that 3-D-prints houses:

Another reinvented the school bus, with individual cars that would be programmed to join together at a certain point to reduce traffic:

A few of the ideas seem at least partly feasible, like a suggestion from a 14-year-old designer from Qatar that cars could harvest moisture from the air, in certain climates, to help water plants and gather drinking water. If billboards can harvest fog, why not cars?

Some ideas hinted at interesting possibilities for the distant, sci-fi future, like a car that shrinks down to fit in your pocket at the push of a button--so you can forget about parking issues--or a car that shifts shapes based on mind control.

"We at Toyota believe that great ideas and great cars are born from the power to dream, and it is important to nurture this power of the next generation," says Masanao Tomozoe, president of Toyota Motor Sales and Marketing. "We wanted to provide the opportunity for kids to really explore their dreams of the future and share them through drawings. . . . They offer such innovative and out of the box solutions."

FORGET LOVE: EHARMONY WANTS TO HELP YOU FIND YOUR NEXT BOSS

"ELEVATED CAREERS BY EHARMONY" WANTS TO HELP YOU FIND A JOB SITUATION FOR THE LONG HAUL.

BY CHRIS GAYOMALI

As hundreds of thousands of people know, dating site eHarmony is very good at pairing two people looking for love. Since launching in 2000, eHarmony has matchedmore than 600,000 married couples. As of May, it touts about 762,000 paying members.

While casual dating site OkCupid landed in hot water for creepily misleading users it claims to have algorithmically matched (hey, happy people in relationships don't browse through OkCupid, yenno?), eHarmony's approach has been to pair people into serious, lasting relationships. Its mission is perfectly illustrated when you first sign up for it and are required to fill out a daunting 200-question survey. This give its algorithms plenty of data to crunch on. You have to commit.

Now, eHarmony is taking its algorithm-driven love-arrows and refashioning them for a different market: People searching for jobs. Eharmony says it plans on launching a new matchmaking subsidiary, "Elevated Careers by eHarmony" (try to say it in one breath), which will pair job hunters with prospective employers, again with the idea that they'll both be in it for the long haul, as MarketWatch reports.

It's an interesting proposition. The Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that the typical worker in the United States stays with his or her employer for 4.6 years, and eHarmony wonders why that couldn't be longer. "The goal will be to help people get a job where they really belong," eHarmony founder and CEO Neil Clark Warren tellsMarketWatch.

Mouthful of a name aside, employee retention continues to be a problem for many companies in industries across the board. One Gallup poll from 2013 found that just 19% of Americans are insufficiently challenged in their jobs, which is a problem, since happy companies are proven to make more money.

So if Elevated Careers by eHarmony manages to provide employees with a stable work environment they're satisfied with? And employers get someone they can trust to not jump ship when the first opportunity presents itself? It might not be true love, but it's not entirely off the mark, either.

[h/t: MarketWatch]

3 Business Lessons From The Sinaloa Drug Cartel

INNOVATE LIKE A SYNDICATE.

WRITTEN BY Devin Liddell

Blockbuster is gone. So are Lehman Brothers, Atari, Pan Am, Circuit City and countless others each year. Startups fail, too, with 80% going belly up within the first 18 months. But here’s something to consider in comparison: criminal syndicates don’t go out of business. The Chinese Triads have been around since the 17th century. For 25 years, Mexico’sSinaloa Cartel has outmaneuvered vicious competition at home as well as the United States' $51 billion--annually--“War on Drugs.”

Net margins for criminal organizations shame their legal counterparts; while airlines earn 1.8% and oil companies average 8%, cocaine cartels earn a 93% net margin--for just wholesale. Profit per full-time employee ratios are also off the charts. Google’s profit per FTE is $270,000 and Apple’s is $460,000, both of which are impressive. But the Sinaloa Cartel’s profit per FTE is estimated at $20 million. The global reach of these organizations is also expanding. Beyond North America, the Sinaloa Cartel is now active in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

All of this money and growth is happening despite the efforts of governments and law enforcement agencies to eradicate them. Imagine if there were federal agents whose sole mission was to put Sears or J.C. Penney out of business? I’m thinking they wouldn’t be around. Or, what if Amazon Prime had to operate in secret? Each year, lots of brands die without any help from the FBI or ATF. And yet criminal syndicates make immense profits mostly in competitive commodities businesses. So how do they do it?

In a word: culture. Criminal syndicates are far superior at creating successful cultures than the vast majority of the Fortune 500. All successful criminal syndicates, across cultures, geographies, and endeavors, are primarily culture-driven brands. Despite their significant differences, these culture-driven brands have three key attributes in common.

1.- Credo. The Japanese yakuza identify themselves as “chivalrous organizations” and operate within strict codes of conduct that express very specific organizational values. The Sinaloa Cartel, unlike its competitors, actively cultivates a populist image and claims to adamantly oppose kidnapping and the murder of innocent civilians. These beliefs govern organizational behavior--who they are, what they do, and what they won’t do. And theses credos are far more actionable and authentic than the “values” posters hung in corporate cafeterias. In place of employee handbooks and other corporate drivel, these organizations have distinctive rituals, symbols, and artifacts to express their credos.

2. Improvisation. Corporations can over-index on “innovation.” But improvisation is a form of innovation, and just as important. Asstreaming technologies emerged, did Blockbuster improvise and move quickly to shift the way it did business? Not quickly enough. And that’s reflective of mainstream corporate cultures that tend to think of innovation as a “process” rather than a behavior.

Criminal syndicates are different; they think of innovation as an organizational imperative. A drug smuggler who finds a new way across a border knows that customs agents will eventually discover the innovation, so he needs to always think of new ways. The Sinaloa Cartel was the first to design and construct a tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico border. The cartel also managed to have family members hired as border agents, and even used a catapult to counter a high-tech fencein Arizona. The yakuza benefit from highly diversified revenue streams, which they’ve systematically grown from traditional gambling and prostitution rackets to modern construction and transportation businesses. Where there is a threat or an opportunity, criminal syndicates improvise.

3. Small-but-big. While too many corporations bury employees within organizational charts that are so big there’s specialized software for creating them, criminal syndicates stick to small teams. With just an estimated 150 members, the Sinaloa Cartel produces revenue equivalent to the GDP of Belize (a country with more than 330,000 people). And while the Yamaguchi-gumi is the largest yakuza organization with more than 20,000 active members, those members are spread across 2,500 different businesses and 500 sub-groups. The teams are small, but they can pull significant resources from the whole.

Just as importantly, the small team structure nurtures an entrepreneurial zeal and an emphasis on doing. With so much at risk, with everyone empowered, and with everyone aligned through shared values and a unifying sense of purpose, criminal syndicates use small teams to accomplish really big things.

There it is, the underworld model for success: small-but-big teams inside belief-driven cultures improvising continuously. Doesn’t sound so criminal, does it? That’s because it’s a familiar formula for some of the best legal brands in the world, from Apple and Nike to Virgin and Zappos. One of the familiar refrains about criminal syndicates is that they are run “like a legitimate business.” Another is just a sorrowful question: What if these talented criminals had only used their talents for good? Both of these are missing the point. Legitimate businesses wish they had the cultural clarity and business results of these underworld organizations. I don't mean to downplay the harmful, reprehensible activities criminal syndicates deal in. But they could teach legitimate businesses an important organizational strategy: work toward small-but-big teams, create belief-driven cultures, and improvise continuously. Because it works.