A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.
Richard Branson
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From the category archives:
Food For Thought
Eric and Donald Trump Jr. reveal some early lessons on finance and trust. Check out the advise their father gave them at a very young age and leave your thoughts… agree or disagree?
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Once the laughing stock of Hollywood reality show stars are now becoming bigger brands than many real actors and actress in Hollywood. Former “Hills” star Lauren Conrad has released her second book “Sweet Little Lies” and she did an autograph signing for it in Los Angeles, CA on February 18, 2010 at the Grove.
She earns an estimated $1.5 million annually for her television appearances, fashion line, and product endorsements. In fall 2009, Conrad launched LC by Lauren Conrad in Kohl’s stores nationwide, she is the spokes person for “mark” a line created by Avon, and her first book LA Candy was a New York Times Best Seller. The game has officially been changed people, make way for the reality star to be the sought after brand of choice by companies; watch what I tell you!
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Now I am a self proclaimed Air Head, Nike is definitely my primary sneak of choice but I do have to say their stance on outsourcing production jobs to Indonesia is cold blooded, watch this video to check it out (this is an old clip of Michael Moore exposing the business operations on Nike).
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One of basketball’s most profound coaches John Wooden takes out some of his time to inspire others. With profound simplicity, Coach John Wooden redefines success and urges us all to pursue the best in ourselves. In this inspiring talk he shares the advice he gave his players at UCLA, quotes poetry and remembers his father’s wisdom.
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Each year, Warren Buffett writes a letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, a letter that is now as famous for his down-home wit and wisdom about investment and the foibles of Wall Street as it is for his report on Berkshire’s year. Here follows selected excerpts from his latest letter of his thoughts about bail-outs, bank bosses, risk management, real estate markets, M&A advisors, tap-dancing to work and more.
On Wall Street Bail-Outs
It has not been shareholders who have botched the operations of some of our country’s largest financial institutions. Yet they have borne the burden, with 90% or more of the value of their holdings wiped out in most cases of failure. Collectively, they have lost more than $500 billion in just the four largest financial fiascos of the last two years. To say these owners have been “bailed-out” is to make a mockery of the term.
On Wall Street Pay
The CEOs and directors of the failed companies..have largely gone unscathed…It is the behavior of these CEOs and directors that needs to be changed: If their institutions and the country are harmed by their recklessness, they should pay a heavy price – one not reimbursable by the companies they’ve damaged nor by insurance. CEOs and, in many cases, directors have long benefitted from oversized financial carrots; some meaningful sticks now need to be part of their employment picture as well.
On Risk Management
A CEO must not delegate risk control. It’s simply too important. At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books, with the exception of operations-related contracts at a few of our subsidiaries… If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of misjudgments made by a Risk Committee or Chief Risk Officer.
On Bank Governance
A board of directors of a huge financial institution is derelict if it does not insist that its CEO bear full responsibility for risk control. If he’s incapable of handling that job, he should look for other employment. And if he fails at it – with the government thereupon required to step in with funds or guarantees – the financial consequences for him and his board should be severe. For More Click Here
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Guns and Butter Baby! Plies shows off his new chain and real talk the design of this piece is crazy (in a good way) but wisdom man… is this wise. I know to each its own but come people we got to figure out a better way to invest our bread!
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Young people getting their entrepreneurship on in the college in a real cool way; here are a few of there profiles. Like most college students, Dickerson, a junior at Syracuse University, found himself wedged into a small dorm room that fit little more than a bed and a desk. The son of an interior designer, he set out to optimize that space. The idea? Turn the bed into a couch during nonsleeping hours. And, in 2009, the Rylaxer was born. The ergonomic, “bed transforming pillow” is made of foam, with lumbar support, and it comes in two sizes and a variety of colors, plus a cheetah print. Rylaxing has an online store, but for now the company is Syracuse-centric: The pillows are made in town and sold primarily on campus. A year from now, though, Dickerson hopes to be selling them at colleges nationwide, through an army of brand ambassadors. Click Here For More
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Here is a bit of food for thought from Forbes for the entrepreneur in you; Check it Out!
From the day we start kindergarten we fear the teacher’s call to our parents saying, “Hello Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I’m sorry to tell you that Mary has been disruptive in class.” We are taught, trained and indoctrinated to go along and get along, to not disrupt. In fact we’re constantly told to seek harmony. But in business that can destroy your entire value.
Sun Microsystems was a very successful company that sold computer workstations and servers. It had many people developing software, but less than 5% of that software was sold in any way other than installed in a Sun hardware box. In the mid-1990s Sun’s engineers developed Java, a powerful new language that was destined to rapidly increase use of the Internet. The problem for Sun was how to sell Java. Sun was a hardware company.
As the executives at Sun considered the problem, they pointed out that Sun had a great hardware business. Selling software would disrupt their product line development, their distribution channels and possibly their pricing schemes. The marketers, hearing the direction the execs were taking, quickly and quietly fell in line. Although the revenue potential was great and the product was far superior to a comparable one being released by Microsoft, nobody spoke up to say that Sun should disrupt its business model and get into software sales.
Within weeks the decision was made to simply give Java away. Rather than change what Sun did and how the company did it, the rationalization was that Java would make more people use the Internet, and that would lead to more box sales. Sun’s business would remain unaltered, and the new product would simply be free.
Sun’s value fell from a peak of more than $200 billion a decade ago to about $5 billion in 2009, as the company became largely irrelevant. In early 2010 Sun disappeared, acquired by the software giant Oracle, which is spinning off its hardware business and only keeping its operating system and other software products. In the end, Sun was worth only what software it had left–which didn’t include Java. It’s too bad for investors that nobody was able to disrupt Sun, perhaps pushing the company into the software business 10 or 15 years earlier and before 95% of its value disappeared.
More recently, look at Toyota. Toyota demonstrated great skill in rising to the top in the automobile industry. But along the way it lost its willingness to disrupt. Employees and managers, once famous for their ability to stop entire plants at the slightest sign of quality problems, became tentative and unwilling to do anything to disrupt the flow of product and sales. We now know, from recent congressional testimony, that the company’s managers were aware of problems that needed attention but kept acting as if nothing was wrong. Everyone worked to get along. Because nobody inside Toyota disrupted the status quo, its reputation and value have taken a severe blow. Click Here To Read More
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Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
Richard Branson
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