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Category: Content Marketing

The True Value of an 80-Hour Work Week

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I recently shared with you the concept of the “time and effort chains,” which are the factors that trap us within a business and force us to work longer and harder, with little to no additional value or payoff.

Today I wanted to share with you the final chains that hold us back and keep us from reaching our goals. These, coupled with an understanding of the time-value matrix and a new way to look at control within your business, will play a huge part in your success or failure as a business leader.

A lack of clear priorities and objectives.

If every member on your staff doesn’t understand your priorities and objectives, efforts get scattered and poor decisions get made. This leads to underperformance, which pushes you to chase after more control to set things back on the right path. This further robs the business of depth because you’re not prioritizing time to develop your team so that they can take on more responsibilities. It’s a negative reinforcement loop.

This also impacts your team as a whole. The lack of strategic structure for how priorities get established, goals set, and plans made causes your team to flounder and struggle. Of course, you’re always there to pick up the pieces and take back more control, but by this point you understand where that leads.

A lack of strategic depth.

When you have a team that lacks the experience or talent to accomplish the goals you’ve set, you often find yourself pulled back into more closely managing the functions of your department, division, or business.

It becomes a chicken and egg scenario: if you had the right people on the team, you could let go of more.

But because you have to handle so much of the work, you don’t have time to hire or develop the people who could take on much of the load currently on your shoulders.

Round and round you go.

Outdated time habits.

The world today is fundamentally different than the world we evolved in. Our time sense was developed in a business world where time and effort were what we were paid for.

But that has shifted. In fact, with the transformation of modern communication and technology, work no longer has to take place in an office or factory; you literally can work from anywhere.

Yet the geographical freedom we now experience, which our ancestors couldn’t have imagined, has a dark side.

More and more of us feel compelled to always be on, checking our devices, responding to messages. The changing, 24/7, interconnected world has completely altered the way we live and work, and many of us simply haven’t updated our time habits to design the structures and systems we need to effectively and sustainably produce.

If you see yourself in any of what I’ve shared, it’s time to take action and start moving toward a reality in which your time and value chains no longer hold you back from moving yourself forward as a leader.

By: David Finkel

Source: https://www.inc.com/

Dr. Kelso discusses what many people feel is the most frightening part about pursuing a career in the medical field…the crazy work hours. He dispels the myth that it is impossible to enjoy yourself and work the hours of a physician!

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This Tech Founder Buys His Employees Tickets to Burning Man. Here’s Why

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Burning Man might seem like the last place a company would want to send its employees. The two-decade-old art, music, and communal happening, which begins August 25th in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, has long been known for its very casual attitudes toward (if not outright celebration of) sex, drugs, nudity, and physical danger.

At the same time, Burning Man is a sort of summer camp for denizens of Silicon Valley.
Each year it attracts founders and CEOs like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, former Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt, and others who sequester themselves inside walled luxury camps while many of their employees can be found scattered throughout the playa.

But could the festival actually be a key to unlocking your employees’ creativity and productivity? Shane Metcalf, co-founder and chief culture officer of 15Five, a San Francisco-based employee feedback and management system whose clients include MailChimp, Credit Karma, and the American Red Cross, thinks so.

“We think that going to Burning Man is one the most incredible, profound experiences in your life, that it opens your world to higher levels of creativity than you ever knew were possible,” says Metcalf, 35, who has attended Burning Man 10 times. While he’s taking this year off, Metcalf’s company has offered to pay for its employees’ tickets to the event. Inc. called him to ask about this unusual perk and what exactly a long weekend of art, fire, EDM, and many other things best not discussed in an office setting does for his team.

There’s a bit of an escalating perk war among companies. You have an unusual perk.

We aren’t thinking about this as part of the perk war. I’m doing this because going to Burning Man, I guess 12 years ago for my first time–I’ve been 10 times–continues to be one of the most transformative and beneficial experiences of my life. I would not be the person that I am had I not gone to Burning Man. And for our whole company history we’ve been offering to pay for people to go to different workshops for personal and professional development.

So you see Burning Man in line with going to a class or a workshop?

There are so many misconceptions about Burning Man, but one of the things that’s often overlooked is the enormous educational experiences on offer there. There are literally hundreds of workshops offered every day at Burning Man, on every topic you can imagine. Sure, you can go and dance all night, ride art cars, but it’s pretty hard to go and not participate in some kind of educational experience.

Can you give me an example?

Sure: Authentic relating, workshops on how do you actually be present with other humans and connect on non-superficial levels. There are classes on movement and contact improv and partner yoga. There are classes on singing and death meditation. Classes on emotional healing and overcoming trauma. Lectures on the cutting edge of psychedelic therapy, and the neuroscience of passion. There are workshops on how to create a vision of the future that inspires us to enact global change. If you can imagine it, it’s going on there.

I imagine you can understand, from an outsider’s point of view, Burning Man seems like a strange place to have a company hanging out together. 

Sure. We’re not saying, “You’re going as a member of 15Five.” We’re not building a 15Five camp. We’re saying, “this is an invitation to go have an experience that’s famous for creating profound transformations for people.” So much of my own experience has been translated into how we built our culture around granting trust to people, creating freedom and responsibility, vulnerability, authentic connections, being your whole self, not having to lie about what you do on the weekends. Being who you are.

I think a lot of companies might be nervous about that, especially the granting trust part. There’s a lot of drugs, and freedom, and sex at Burning Man, and I bet a lot of CEOs would not want to suggest their team be near it.  

Breaking news: Your employees are already having sex and are already doing drugs. If you’re in denial that people have sex or that sexuality exists, you have your head far up your ass.

It’s not like you go to Burning Man and you have to do drugs. That’s the biggest lie! Burning Man has a massive family camp where hundreds of families are camping together and are not doing any drugs at all. Part of what I like about doing this, knowing that people have these misconceptions, is that it’s saying, “Look, you’re just wrong about that.” If you’re saying that by going to Burning Man you have to do drugs or you have to go to the Orgy Dome, then you just don’t understand Burning Man. And the only people taking us up on this offer are the ones that are naturally curious about Burning Man and this kind of alternative culture. We’re not forcing people to go.

So it’s not an enforced company offsite.

Not at all! It’s really saying, for the people who are interested in this, we’re giving them one little nudge of encouragement.

I know people who lie to their company when they go to Burning Man. They say, “I’m going to visit my aunt in Kentucky.”

Right. “And by the way, I won’t be reachable for five days.”

Exactly. Part of my strategy on scaling our culture is hiring more people who are Burners, too. Because there tends to be a higher level of authenticity, self-expression, and of creativity.

As someone who’s gone to Burning Man so many times, do you think it was developed as a way for people to come back to work and be more creative and productive? Was it designed for that? 

You can’t really say what Burning Man was designed for. That’s a can of worms. What I will say is that part of what Burning Man was designed to do is awaken people’s creative fire. I think it’s the highest concentration of creativity on the planet. There are so many amazing lessons around leadership and teamwork and collaboration. Somebody goes, and they participate, they join a camp, they help build it. There’re so many leadership lessons to be gained from that.

What do you actually provide your employees?

We pay for their ticket. We don’t buy their ticket for them. Paying for the ticket is the easy part; finding the ticket is the hard part. We leave that up to them.

Do you help them in any way set up their camp, or give them a checklist for what to bring?

There’s a kind of organic peer mentoring that happens from the people who have been to Burning Man before to the people going for the first time. Or they’ll invite them to existing camps, if people don’t have camps. That’s not company policy. That’s just the natural ethos of people who are supporting somebody because they’re excited for them, and know the impact that Burning Man has had on their life–this is an opportunity to share the love.

Is there any kind of company agreement they sign to respect certain boundaries?

What they do is their business. All we’re doing, we’re giving the little nudge of encouragement and permission to go. We’re not trying to over complicate this.

How many employees have taken you up on it?

It’s not like the majority of people are going.I think we have four people going. A lot of people are like, “Oh my God, I wanna go next year.” People for the most part are happy living their own life. Maybe they’ll get curious hearing the stories of the people who went.

Would you want everybody to go?

No. By no means would I want everybody in the company to go. I’m over that phase of Burning Man evangelicalism. Maybe in my first couple of years, I was like “Everybody needs to go to Burning Man,” but that’s just not true.

(This interview has been lightly edited.)

 

By: Matt Haber

Source: https://www.inc.com/

Published on Apr 29, 2019

Have a look at our yurt set up for Burning Man 2018. I walk you through how and why we set up our camp. Hope you enjoy!

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Film & Animation

We Can Stop Kids From Cheating in School By Eliminating the Need

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As a high school teacher, I’ve seen a lot of cheating. So much, that I’ve concluded most adults don’t realize how many kids, even otherwise good and honest kids, cheat in school.

If you think of cheating as simply acting unfairly or dishonestly to gain an academic advantage, many people reading this column might remember their own experiences cheating. Whether you actively sought to cheat, or the opportunity simply landed in front of you, many of us can recall at least one occurrence with vivid detail. Your heart raced, your palms sweated, and you felt that undeniable sinking in the pit of your stomach, all due to the fear of getting caught. Yet you still did it.

But why? Why continue the act even when the body sends all the signals identical to a near-death fight-or-flight response? For some, it may be for the sheer thrill. But I argue most people who are tempted to cheat choose the better of two evils, both connected to failure.

Today, more so than when you and I were teens, the pressure to excel is unbearable. From the parents who demand it and the peers competing for it, the colleges that require it and the “influencers” who embody it, the pressure to be perfect has become the driving force for many students. And when the need to maintain perfection trumps the actual learning that occurs, you’ll begin to override your body’s natural warnings.

Our kids cheat because they fear the consequences of failing. So many are raised in a bubble, completely protected from failure. Any time it may have approached, those around them, who love them very much, happily deflected that failure for them. So a disproportionate number of adolescents truly feel they are geniuses, that they can do no wrong.

Unfortunately, an educator’s job is to confront his or her students with challenging obstacles to overcome, and they won’t deflect that failure. This forces our inexperienced youth into a corner, and many react by ensuring their success by any means necessary.

I’m one of these educators, and I absolutely challenge my kids, but I made a decision a few years back that completely changed the culture of my classroom: I eliminated the need to cheat.

I made the decision that the goal of my science class was to learn and appreciate science. From that day, I recognized that to pull these anxious kids from the corner they’ve been trapped in, I had to entice them back to the center. I had to establish an environment that eliminated the fear of failing, and I did it with a few very basic but powerful methods.

First, I eliminated due dates within a unit and moved to a mastery grading model. There are many varieties of this, but in my model, the kids receive a list for the unit describing the tasks to be mastered by test day. For every activity, the kids were encouraged to copy from each other and work together, but their grades came from 30-second conversations I had with each student, when I’d ask a variety of questions to gauge their mastery on the topic. Completing an assignment meant nothing if it couldn’t be verbalized, so the kids quickly learned that copying without understanding was a waste of time in my class.

Then, I encouraged cheat sheets. I let students write or draw anything they’d like on the front and back of a 3-by-5 notecard. The card had to be hand-written and turned in with the test. Many teachers may argue that doing so would invalidate their tests, to which I say, if your kids can write the answers to your tests on a notecard, you write bad tests.

We’ve worked hard to build high-level questions that require students to expand beyond the basic content from a notecard, and the sheer process of internalizing and paraphrasing an entire unit into such a small space encourages that level of critical thinking for our kids; moving beyond comprehension and into application. Plus, I save their notecards and return them before semester and state exams, providing the most personalized, hand-written summative reviews they could ever create.

Finally, after taking the test once on their own, I let them take it again, this time in groups. After grading the exams, I assign them in homogeneous groups; As in one group, Bs in another, etc., but I don’t tell students their scores. Then, I hand them back their original exams to take again. They don’t know which questions are correct, so the intellectual debates that happen over each question are incredible. When they resubmit, the group score is averaged with a student’s individual score.

Of course, there are those who say we need to teach our kids responsibility, to prepare them for the real world by not allowing late work, cheat sheets or group corrections. But it’s these classrooms where cheating is rampant, and it’s specifically because no recovery is possible.

As for tests, consider what every major exam over the course of someone’s professional career has in common: SAT, ACT, CPA exams, MCAT, LSAT, teaching certifications. You can take all of these multiple times for full credit. So where did this fallacy begin that somehow my biology exam is more pertinent to their lives and future success?

In a world that’s constantly demanding risk-taking and creativity, we cannot continue to produce robots of compliance and task completion. As a young gymnast develops her technique, she rehearses in an environment developed to safely take risks, with balance beams low to the ground and foam pits into which she can fall.

So, too should be the goal of every classroom. When kids see that failure is recoverable, the demand to succeed the first time, by any means necessary, is eliminated, and they finally have the freedom to take a leap.

By: Ramy Mahmoud

Ramy Mahmoud is a lecturer at the University of Texas at Dallas Teacher Development Center, a high school science department head in Plano and a two-time TEDx speaker. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

Source: https://www.dallasnews.com/

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New Harvard Research Says It’s Time to Let Employees Work From Anywhere (the Productivity Gains Alone Are Impressive)

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The idea of working remotely has been more than bubbling on the back burner. It’s at boil status, and the ability to work from home well is one of the hottest job skills going. The pot may be about to overflow, and the out-of-office move is about to go mainstream. At least if Harvard researchers have their way.

Harvard Business Review recently wrote an article provocatively titled “Is It Time to Let Employees Work From Anywhere?”, and researchers from Harvard Business School and Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business made their case for working from anywhere (WFA) to become more the norm.

The team analyzed data on WFA case studies, especially an in-depth look at a WFA program started in 2012 among patent examiners at the U.S. Patent & Trade Office (USPTO). Their research, soon to be published in a working paper, found examiners working from anywhere saw their work output increase by 4.4 percent, while quality of work held up, representing up to $1.3 billion of annual added value to the U.S. economy (based on the average amount of economic value generated by each additional patent granted).

 

The research also showed that in the specific case of working from home (as the WFA location) versus the office, productivity gains were seen in line with other studies. One such study involved a Chinese travel agency that saw productivity increase a whopping 13 percent when call center employees were allowed to work from home.The Harvard and Northeastern research team also found that WFA examiners chose to work in locations with lower cost of living, effectively equating to a pay increase–one that didn’t cost the organization a dime.

 

Longer tenured employees tended to move to “retirement-friendly” locations like Florida, which, according to the researchers, could encourage these most-valued employees to stay in the workforce longer.

But what about losing out on that peer-to-peer magic? Enter the most interesting finding of all, the fact that WFA examiners productivity increased more if they were located within 25 miles of other WFA examiners. Why? Because, as the study says, “geographically clustered WFA workers whose job content is similar may learn from each other informally.” In other words, they have the chance to congregate and share knowledge, similar to the way that co-workers informally learn from each other through office interactions.

So, how to make working from anywhere work for everybody? Here are some recommendations:

Remote work must come with true autonomy.

I interviewed employees working from home for one company with a WFA program and found they loved it with one exception — their boss was “making up” for his discomfort with not having them in the office by micromanaging them from afar, often checking to see if they were indeed working.

That’s poisonous behavior. Trust must be at the core of any WFA initiative.

Use a common set of technology tools.

Of course, make sure any remote location has easy, reliable access to the internet. Then, insist on a common set of tech tools to help solve the greatest fear of WFA employees, feeling out of the loop or disconnected. In the USPTO study, examiners using common IT tools (VPN, instant messaging, etc.) saw an additional 3 percent increase in productivity.

Foster WFA outposts.

If you can identify clusters of where WFA employees are living/congregating, feed it. Make the small investment to pay for a lunch or a co-meeting space in that geographic cluster to encourage peer-to-peer connection (and all the good that comes with it).

Keep the newbies in the office, for now.

The Harvard research team’s study focused on WFA employees that were already experienced. You need time to mold newer employees before letting them detach (physically) from the mother ship.

Let the type of work inform the viability of WFA.

Not all work lends itself to having employees do that work remotely. It makes more sense for a more experienced workforce with a fairly independent job type. A good dose of judgment is your best guide.

I think it’s time for WFA to be much more common. If you’re a leader and/or an employee, be brave and experiment with it — or at least ask for the opportunity to try.

Like this column? Sign up to subscribe to email alerts and you’ll never miss a post.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

By: Scott Mautz

Pants optional. Wouldn’t that be nice for your work day? Remote working can make that possible, and many companies are starting to change their culture to offer those options. Justin Jones is currently employed as a Consulting Architect at VMware. His previous work history includes positions at Accenture, Lockheed Martin, E­mu Systems, Creative Labs, and Keen Energy Services. Justin frequently presents at technical conferences, including VMworld, Puppet Labs conferences, RADIO, and TechSummit. He is an active member of the Fuse Coworking space in Richland, WA and winner of the 2016 Tri Cities Launch University for his team’s software idea, Compass DMS. His personal interests include board games, music, brewing, and tennis. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Apple Is Spending Billions on Its Upcoming TV Service. It Could Be a Costly Mistake

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We already knew Apple is joining the crowded TV streaming business, but thanks to a report from Bloomberg we now know the company is preparing to launch it’s Apple TV+ service in November. That coincides with Disney’s upcoming streaming service
launch announced to appear on November 12.

Certainly, Apple can afford to spend the money. With more than $100 billion in cash on hand, the company has plenty of resources to pour into building out a content library. The bigger question is, however, is it worth it?

The Financial Times reported on Monday that Apple is spending $6 billion on original content, including The Morning Show, a drama produced by Jennifer Aniston and Reese Whitherspoon, which reportedly costs more to produce per episode than Game of Thrones.

 

Apple is entering tricky waters. Netflix became the dominant leader in video streaming mostly because it had a robust library of familiar shows and films that viewers cared enough about to pay $10 a month for. That lead has eroded as content creators like HBO, Disney, and NBC Universal enter the game with their own services in order to monetize their content by cutting out the proverbial middle man.

 

For example, Netflix is losing its top two shows — The Office and Friends — in the next year, which has forced it to double-down on creating original content. Despite those efforts, and the fact that it still has a huge collection of popular shows and movies, the company saw it’s U.S. subscribers decrease for the first time last quarter.

Which brings us back to Apple. The company has remained tight-lipped about what specific content users can expect but has indicated that The Morning Show will be a launch feature.

Of course, if the primary library will be original content, that could be a hard sell for users, especially as they become tapped out by the number of subscriptions available to different video services.

Apple has bet big on its services division to drive a large part of its future growth. In addition to Apple TV+, the company is counting on its paid News+, App Store, Music, and Arcade game subscription services. Those drive recurring revenue each month, and it’s conceivable that it won’t be long before the company offers a subscription bundle that includes all of these services.

 

Still, in order for any of them to succeed, users have to care enough about the content to plunk down money every month. Apple Music benefits from the largest library of music, as well as many exclusive releases. iOS is one of the largest gaming platforms in the world, so it’s not hard to see why it will attract subscribers.

But, with the TV+ service, the bottom-line question is this: will customers pay $9.99 a month for largely unknown shows? If so, Apple could easily become a leader in both content creation and delivery. If not, the company could be looking at a very expensive lesson in the economics of media production.

 

I suspect that because it’s Apple, the content will be top-notch enough for people to sign up. I also suspect that because it’s Apple, people will sign up. But the challenge Apple faces isn’t that different from those you do — though it’s probably on a slightly larger scale.

 

That challenge is that every time you leverage your brand to launch something new, there’s not only a risk, but a cost. For Apple that cost is $6 billion. The company can’t afford to get this wrong at that — or any price.

Neither can you.

 

By : Jason Aten

 

Source: https://www.inc.com/

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Shopify Cracks The E-Commerce Code, And Its Billionaire CEO’s Fortune Doubles In Just Six Months

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Tobi Lutke, the Canadian CEO and founder of e-commerce platform Shopify, has a net worth that’s doubled to $3.2 billion in just six months, thanks to his company’s skyrocketing stock.

  • The e-commerce platform’s stock, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, has skyrocketed up 106% since mid February, when Forbes measured net worths for the 2019 list of billionaires. Shopify provides the online shopping engine for more than 800,000 customers, including Kylie Jenner’s beauty store Kylie Cosmetics.
  • Lutke, who was born in Germany, owns nearly 9% of the Ottawa-based company. He founded Shopify in 2004 after he and a friend had attempted to start an online snowboard shop out of Ontario and realized there were no efficient tools to help small business owners operate online. As winter ended and snowboard sales plummeted, Lutke told Forbes in a June 2018 interview that he decided to create Shopify.
  • Shoppers have spent over $100 billion on Shopify-powered sites since it began operating, according to the company.
  • Shopify had $1.1 billion in 2018 revenues, a 59% increase from the previous year.
  • Shopify’s $42.3 billion market capitalization is now larger than that of many big tech brands, including Twitter, Snap, Square and Lyft.
  • According to the Financial Times, Lutke prefers that his employees refrain from regularly checking Shopify’s stock price.

Follow me on Twitter. Send me a secure tip.

Angel Au-Yeung

Angel Au-Yeung has been a reporter on staff at Forbes Magazine since 2017. She covers the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs and tracks how they use their money and power.

 

Source: https://www.forbes.com

Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein breaks down how the Canadian e-commerce platform creates economies of scale to give small businesses benefits that help entrepreneurs compete with giant retailers. » Subscribe to CNBC: http://cnb.cx/SubscribeCNBC » Watch more Mad Money here: http://bit.ly/WatchMadMoney » Read more about Shopify: https://cnb.cx/2vxmuPg “Mad Money” takes viewers inside the mind of one of Wall Street’s most respected and successful money managers. Jim Cramer is your personal guide through the confusing jungle of Wall Street investing, navigating through both opportunities and pitfalls with one goal in mind — to try to help you make money. About CNBC: From ‘Wall Street’ to ‘Main Street’ to award winning original documentaries and Reality TV series, CNBC has you covered. Experience special sneak peeks of your favorite shows, exclusive video and more. Get More Mad Money! Read the latest news: http://madmoney.cnbc.com Watch full episodes: http://bit.ly/MadMoneyEpisodes Follow Mad Money on Twitter: http://bit.ly/MadMoneyTwitter Like Mad Money on Facebook: http://bit.ly/LikeMadMoney Follow Cramer on Twitter: http://bit.ly/FollowCramer Connect with CNBC News Online! Visit CNBC.com: http://www.cnbc.com/ Find CNBC News on Facebook: http://cnb.cx/LikeCNBC Follow CNBC News on Twitter: http://cnb.cx/FollowCNBC Follow CNBC News on Google+: http://cnb.cx/PlusCNBC Follow CNBC News on Instagram: http://cnb.cx/InstagramCNBC Shopify COO: Servicing 820,000 Merchants | Mad Money | CNBC

 

 

Microloan Startup Tala Raises $110 Million In New Funding

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Tala, a Los Angeles startup that makes microloans to consumers and small business owners in emerging markets, is announcing today that it has raised $110 million in funding. The new Silicon Valley venture capital firm RPS Ventures, cofounded by Kabir Misra, former managing partner at Softbank’s $100 billion Vision Fund, is leading the round. Tala’s backers include PayPal, billionaire Steve Case’s VC firm Revolution, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital and Data Collective, among others. The new funding values Tala at nearly $800 million, according to an investor. Tala has raised more than $200 million in equity investment to date.

Shivani Siroya, 37, founded Tala in 2011 after stints as an investment banking analyst and as an analyst at the U.N. Population Fund, where she did socioeconomic research. Tala’s mobile app lets people in Kenya, the Philippines, Tanzania, Mexico and India take out small loans ranging from $10 to $500. Most use the app to invest in their small businesses, like shops and food stands. To evaluate borrower risk, Tala uses cell phone data instead of credit scores, looking at loan applicants’ habits, like whether they pay their phone bills on time.

Siroya first launched Tala’s app in Kenya in 2014. Today it has more than four million customers who take out three to six loans a year at a 10% average monthly interest rate. Its 600 employees are spread across offices in Santa Monica, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and India. The company made Forbes’ Fintech 50 list earlier this year.

Tala’s closest competitor is Branch, a five-year-old San Francisco company led by Matt Flannery, who previously cofounded donation crowdfunding platform Kiva.org. Branch has four million customers and an average monthly interest rate of 15%. Earlier this year, it raised $70 million in equity financing from investors like Visa and Andreessen Horowitz, plus $100 million in debt. Tala also raised $100 million in debt over the past year to help fund its loans.

With its new capital, Tala plans to make a bigger push into India and expand to new countries, potentially in regions like West Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. It also plans to launch new products. In Kenya, Tala has already tested a micro health insurance offering that would cover customer visits to a hospital. It expects to launch its first microinsurance product in the next 12 months. It has also piloted a financial education and coaching program, and it plans to test additional products over the next year.

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Jeff Kauflin

I cover fintech, cryptocurrencies, blockchain and investing at Forbes. I’ve also written frequently about leadership, corporate diversity and entrepreneurs. Before Forbes, I worked for ten years in marketing consulting, in roles ranging from client consulting to talent management. I’m a graduate of Middlebury College and Columbia Journalism School. Have a tip, question or comment? Email me jkauflin@forbes.com or send tips here: https://www.forbes.com/tips/. Follow me on Twitter @jeffkauflin. Disclosure: I own some bitcoin and ether.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/

Trust: How do you earn it? Banks use credit scores to determine if you’re trustworthy, but there are about 2.5 billion people around the world who don’t have one to begin with — and who can’t get a loan to start a business, buy a home or otherwise improve their lives. Hear how TED Fellow Shivani Siroya is unlocking untapped purchasing power in the developing world with InVenture, a start-up that uses mobile data to create a financial identity. “With something as simple as a credit score,” says Siroya, “we’re giving people the power to build their own futures.” TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more. Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at http://www.ted.com/translate
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How Telegram Using Mining Autobot On Mobile Phones

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment on How Telegram Using Mining Autobot On Mobile Phones

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There is now a plethora of Telegram bots out there that label themselves as bitcoin miners, Ethereum miners or just generic ‘Crypto’ miners. Scratch the surface and you’ll soon discover that the vast majority are just scams.

You could pour hours into these little bots gradually building up Satoshi’s, gems etc but then comes the glorious day of withdrawing your “earnings” and you are told you don’t have enough points or keys to withdraw the minimum amount. Let me save you hours more time by saying its virtually impossible to acquire these keys/points and you may as well delete the channel.
Here is a list of a few of these scam bots:

Myself and a group of others are constantly testing these bots to the point of withdraw and they all end up the same! “You do not have enough points to withdraw minimum amount”.  The list I give is small but there are probably hundreds of others out there or in the pipelines to be released soon.

There are exceptions of course and if you’re willing to put in some hard work, mainly building your ‘team’/gathering referrals then you can make quite a lot. The best one I have found so far is Telegram Mining Autobot, this company has now three decent bots under its belt BTC, LTC and the new ETH bot. These do require a minimum investment! But by putting in the work and growing your team you will soon get your ROI (Return of Investment) and then some.

They are also quick to react to issues that may arise (Server upgrades etc) and very occasionally double the earnings. For those people that worry about Investment bots being a ‘flash in the pan’ and being shutdown/closing before you get your ROI, TMA boasts silent investors and claims “Our Revenue comes from investments made with our Unofficial Partners and is more than enough to pay Everyone for the course of their deposits!” So for the foreseeable future they are here to stay.

So to summarize, the old clichés ring true with bots if it seems too good to be true.. If they say you don’t need to invest, you probably won’t be able to withdraw and it’s not a bot it’s a game… simple. I’d love to be proved wrong but in the meantime, I will keep testing these and making people aware of the scammers.

I hope you find this useful, the world of Crypto currency can be a harsh place.

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crypto bots telegram bitcoin litecoin

Shelter Dogs Are Being Trained to Protect Wildlife by Sniffing Poop

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment on Shelter Dogs Are Being Trained to Protect Wildlife by Sniffing Poop

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Dogs can identify tainted wine just by sniffing it, and now shelter dogs’ incredible olfactory skills are being put to work for wildlife conservation.

Shelter dogs with endless energy might not make ideal pets, but Samuel Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington, gives them a new purpose in the center’s Conservation Canines program. Wasser and his colleagues train high-energy and obsessively focused dogs to seek out the scat—a.k.a. poop—of threatened and endangered wildlife.

Dogs are 153 percent more accurate than humans in detecting scat by smell, and through the program, the dogs have identified scat from tigers, orcas, spotted owls, bears, and Pacific pocket mice. The dogs hone their skills in Washington State’s 4300-acre Pack Forest.

Their work isn’t limited to land animals. Since 2006, Wasser and researcher Deborah Giles have studied the endangered southern resident orcas around the San Juan Islands in Washington with the help of the conservation canines. Giles’s rescue dog, Eba, goes out on the boat with researchers and locates orca scat in the water—a scent usually undetectable to humans, KCPQ.com reports.

From collected samples of whale poop, Wasser and Giles can tell if the donor animal is pregnant, if it’s getting enough food, and if it’s diseased. The sample’s chemical composition can paint an entire portrait of the animal’s health. “If you don’t collect data, you don’t know what’s going on,” Wasser told KCPQ.com.

The canines’ incredible sense of smell is one key to understanding orcas and other species. And when it comes to saving these threatened animals, humans need all the help they can get.

By: Garin Pirnia

Source: http://mentalfloss.com/

 

Animals dogs nature News science

 

 

I Lost 15 Pounds, and This Is the 450-Calorie Salad I Eat For Lunch Most Days

marketingscoopsLeave a Comment on I Lost 15 Pounds, and This Is the 450-Calorie Salad I Eat For Lunch Most Days

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I’m a creature of habit. I like to drink the same 400-calorie smoothie every morning after my morning workout, wear the same three black pairs of leggings, listen to the same pump-up jams that I’ve listened to since high school (what’s up, early-2000s pop/punk). And as a creature of habit, I tend to make the same handful of recipes over and over.

Sure, that’s mostly because I’m a terrible cook and not that adventurous in the kitchen, but eating the same things over and over again can help you achieve your weight-loss goals. I have lost about 15 pounds since January, and I find that eating the same lunches repeatedly has kept me on track and takes the guesswork out of tracking my meals.

Since I usually order a takeout salad for lunch anyway, I thought it would be easier if I just made my own salad and brought it in. My 450-calorie salad is actually delicious and provides all three macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fat) to keep me feeling full and satisfied all afternoon. To make things even easier, I just bring all my ingredients to work and chop the veggies when I get there. I don’t have time to slice up a bell pepper or a cucumber in the morning before work, but I do have time to throw all my ingredients in a plastic salad bowl with a lid and run out the door — I like the 2.5-quart bowl from this Sterilite 8 Piece Covered Bowl Set ($12). Check out my recipe below.

450-Calorie Weight-Loss Salad Recipe

  • Mixed greens (usually bagged Spring mix)
  • 3 ounces of rotisserie chicken (no skin)
  • 1/4 of a cucumber
  • 1/4 of a red bell pepper
  • 1/4 of an avocado
  • 2 tablespoons Greek dressing

In my opinion, the dressing makes all the difference. That’s why I love Primal Kitchen Greek Vinaigrette dressing ($21 for two bottles). It’s made with avocado oil, so it’s full of satiating, healthy fats. I also get more healthy fat from one-fourth of an avocado. For protein, I opt for a slice of rotisserie chicken; I buy a rotisserie chicken from the store on Sunday night and have it the whole week. I also love a variety of colorful veggies to add some healthy carbs.

If I have had a hard workout that morning and know I’ll be hungrier, or if I want some crunch, I’ll throw in a handful of crushed Parm Crisps ($37 for a 12-pack) or get in extra carbs by crumbling up some Simple Mills Almond Flour Fine Ground Sea Salt Crackers ($25 for six).

Although it’s probably easier to keep a bottle of salad dressing in the work fridge, I don’t trust my coworkers (kidding! sort of . . .) so I use the GladWare Mini Round containers ($7 for an eight-count). I can measure out two tablespoons and store it easily. I love these little reusable containers for not only salad dressings, but also stashing nuts, nut butters, and berries.

I’ve been tracking my calories using the Noom weight-loss app and love how the Noom food database is huge and includes all of my favorite foods, snacks, and salad dressings. It makes tracking so much easier. Using the Noom app, I calculated that my salad is 445 calories.

By: Christina Stiehl

Source: https://www.popsugar.com/

Sure, a salad isn’t the sexiest lunch you can have. But this simple combo is quick to throw together, delicious, and leaves me feeling satisfied. I can’t argue with 15 pounds down.

Image Source: Getty / jeffbergen
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Sterilite 8 Piece Covered Bowl Set
$12
from amazon.com

Buy Now

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Primal Kitchen Greek Vinaigrette dressing
$21
from amazon.com

Buy Now

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Parm Crisps
$37
from amazon.com

Buy Now

Image

Simple Mills Almond Flour Fine Ground Sea Salt Crackers
$25
from amazon.com

Buy Now

Image

GladWare Mini Round Containers
$7
from amazon.com

Buy Now

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