Tag: Business

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rePost:: Thanks for leading

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.
The scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.
In other words, if everyone could do it, they would, and it wouldn’t be worth much.
It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.
When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.
If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.
via Seth’s Blog: Thanks for leading.

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rePost::Marginal Revolution: The charity tax

The charity tax
The estimated social pressure cost of saying no to a solicitor is $3.5 for an in-state charity and $1.4 for an out-of-state charity. Our welfare calculations suggest that our door-to-door fund-raising campaigns on average lower utility of the potential donors.
via Marginal Revolution: The charity tax.

We hate not doing/giving, but we don’t have enough resources to be very generous. This produces guilt. This guilt lowers our self-image. I think this is the mechanism.

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rePost::The $12 Startup That Was Sold On Twitter For About $100,000 – with Sean Percival | Mixergy – Online Business Tips from Successful Entrepreneurs

This is a story about how an entrepreneur can build an internet business on the side. The business Sean Percival launched wasn’t meant to be the next Google. He was just trying to make some money and improve his business skills.
Sean built a site that sold customize European license plates, the kind of plates you might see on cars speeding on the Autobahn or cruising down the Champs-Elysées. As you’ll hear in this interview, he spent $12 to buy the domain, customeuropeanplates.com. Then he built the site using a free ecommerce platform. To fill and ship his orders, he partnered up with a company that was already in the business of selling license plates online. And he got customers by teaching himself search engine optimization and developing link partnerships with related sites.
He ended up selling the business — which was profitable — after Tweeting that he was thinking of selling it.
We talked in this interviewed about how he built the business, and how he built up the kind of social capital online that helped him sell his business for about $100,000 via a Tweet.
via The $12 Startup That Was Sold On Twitter For About $100,000 – with Sean Percival | Mixergy – Online Business Tips from Successful Entrepreneurs.

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rePost::7 lies we tell ourselves about money | I Will Teach You To Be Rich

1. “I want to make passive income”
I love when people say this because you can tell they have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s kind of like trying to identify people with bad taste: Just go to the local Hometown Buffett. They’re all there.
I hate to say it but most of us don’t need to focus on passive income, we need to focus on improving our active income — our jobs. How? By becoming more skilled, solving more problems for our bosses, and basically out-hustling co-workers.
A lot of people don’t like to hear this because it means that instead of reaching for some dream of $500/day in passive income, they actually have to do some work right now at their jobs. But your job is the most likely place you can significantly increase your income.
via 7 lies we tell ourselves about money | I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

This is an excellent list and should be read !

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Petron and the Healthcare Debate::The public option as a signal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com

When petron was a government owned company, they were able to distort the supply curves because they were in essence the regulatory arm of the government. If the outcry was large enough shell and caltex may increase their prices but petron’s price does not move. What’s interesting in the case of the philippines is that petron was sold to foreign interests and afterwards the oil industry was deregulated. Double whammy to the Filipino people. Our government does not have the balls and probably the manpower to effectively police what is in effect price collusions of oil industry players. The solution is string institutions but I guess that is near impossible for us right now. Buy back petron would be second best with the least amount of complications, although where we are going to get the money, I don’t know. Maybe a few of Pres GMA’s entourage could chip in!

The public option as a signal
Look, it is possible to have universal care without a public option; Switzerland does. But there are some good reasons for the prominence of the public option in our debate.
One is substantive: to have a workable system without the public option, you need to have effective regulation of the insurers. Given the realities of our money-dominated politics, you really have to worry whether that can be done — which is a reason to have a more or less automatic mechanism for disciplining the industry.
via The public option as a signal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

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Thinking Of Oneself::Chasing after the Wind : Aardvarchaeology

I only ask the very hard question , or rather I only try to answer the HARD questions during my birthday, which as more than a week ago, I’d be lying if I thoughts like this didn’t enter my mind.

I was brought up to believe that I am special. I was told that I am unusually smart and gifted. Whether or not this is true, it has given me a deep-seated expectation of myself to do great(ish) things, to achieve a bit more than the average Joe, to stand out from the crowd, to gain recognition.
Most people of course achieve very little that is noteworthy beyond the solid humble everyday victories of a quiet life. I’m sure that most people do not have a sense that this is in any way insufficient. I’m also sure that many of these average achievers have talent and potential far beyond that needed to live a standard life. They just don’t expect of themselves to do any more than the average person. I believe they are by and large content.
The skills and training I have are not much sought after. There is very little professional demand for me. This clashes badly with my grandiose ideas about myself. I achieve things that I am proud of on a small one-man-project scale, but few care, and I gain little recognition. I am frustrated.
via Chasing after the Wind : Aardvarchaeology.

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Learned::“Blink” and the Art of Hiring the Best – Assembla Consulting: Accelerate Your Software Development

It turns out that personal interviews tended to result in the hiring affable, good looking men, and lock out some great players who didn’t fit a visual image of what an orchestra player should look like. Without the screen, the personal, visual impression of the candidate is so powerful that it actually affects the sound that the committee heard. They thought they were selecting the best audition player, but when they used the screen, and really were able to listen to the audition, they heard differently. The human mind, your mind and mine, is filled with powerful biases. Some of those biases are useful for making quick decisions, others are just misleading. Its important to manipulate your process to screen out the misleading stuff and get the good stuff.
via “Blink” and the Art of Hiring the Best – Assembla Consulting: Accelerate Your Software Development.

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rePost :: Why I am Not a Professor

I’ve been mulling taking up graduate studies for over a year now and the only reason I am vacillating a decision is I’m afraid of being underwhelmed.

Teaching was not the only criterion of assessment. Research was another and, from the point of view of getting promotion, more important. Teaching being increasingly dreadful, research was both an escape ladder away from the coal face and a means of securing a raise. The mandarins in charge of education decreed that research was to be assessed, and that meant counting things. Quite what things and how wasn’t too clear, but the general answer was that the more you wrote, the better you were. So lecturers began scribbling with the frenetic intensity of battery hens on overtime, producing paper after paper, challenging increasingly harassed librarians to find the space for them. New journals and conferences blossomed and conference hopping became a means to self-promotion. Little matter if your effort was read only by you and your mates. It was there and it counted.
via Why I am Not a Professor.

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