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#my goal then becomes 350 book sales
mcnuggyy · 3 months
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just a little behind the scenes but I ran the numbers and found I need to be making 420 book sales in order for my comic to be making a profit <3 hehehe funny weed number
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atariaction · 5 years
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Kevin’s 2018 Post-Mortem
Hello, it's 2019, which means it's time to look back on the computer history efforts that I made last year.
In 2018 I finished managing the Ted Nelson's Junk Mail scan project. Recap: from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, computing pioneer Ted Nelson collected catalogs, flyers, brochures, spec sheets, and sales slicks for products and services in a wide variety of industries. They ended up in the hands of the Internet Archive, and then (temporarily) in my hands, where every scrap was scanned and uploaded to the Internet Archive. In total, there were 17 bankers boxes stuffed with papers, totaling 70,266 sheets scanned. I bought scanners and hard drives, hired and managed the scanner-people (who were paid for their work with funds donated by many generous donors.) That project began in May 2017 and finished in October 2018.
Besides the Ted Nelson project, I scanned a metric ton of microcomputer history, including many dissertations and theses relevant to the Atari 8-bit, Apple II, CP/M, and the Votrax speech chip; user group newsletters; and rare historial documents about Atari computers and software. You can read it all at https://archive.org/details/@savetz
My goal for 2018 was to publish audio interviews with 50 people on the ANTIC podcast. I published exactly 50. This was down from 61 in 2017, but I met my goal and had conversations with wonderful people, many of whom had never been interviewed in the context of their computer history.
In the "big name" department I interviewed sci-fi author Orson Scott Card, who worked for Compute! Books back in the day. Also Bruce Artwick, creator of Flight Simulator II; and Dennis Koble, one of Imagic's co-founders. And Tom Snyder, the man behind Agent USA and Halley Project and Run For the Money and In Search of the Most Amazing Thing and Snooper Troops and and and...
But the most fun was chasing folks down crazy back alleys of computer history. I interviewed several of the kids from Atari's Youth Advisory Board, the group of children that Atari brought in for part market research/part marketing opportunity. I interviewed the creative team behind Bits & Bytes, a 1983 educational musical about computers. I talked with Brooke Alderson, who appeared in Atari TV commercials, and Rawson Stovall, who wrote a syndicated newspaper column about video games when we was just a kid.
(My side-quest to interview as many Atari Program Exchange programmers as possible continued. Of the 159 people who wrote APX software. 92 have been interviewed, 14 are known dead, 7 declined. That's 112 (70.4%) accounted for. The other 47 have proven reallyhard to find. I might squeak out a couple more eventually but I'm afraid we've reached the end of that road.)
Sometimes interviewees had importnat papers to be scanned and software to be digitized.
One of the folks who I interviewed was Hal Segal, who was founder of the Association of Time-Sharing Users, then the Association of Small Computer Users, which combined to become the Association of Computer Users. That's quite a mouthful, but Hal's organizations produced quite a lot of material: binders filled with newsletters, journals, benchmark reports, hardware directories, and literature from other computer companies. He lent it all to me: I scanned it all and uploaded it to Internet Archive — 2,625 pages total. There's information there about models of computers about which virtually nothing else is published online.
I interviewed Greg Gibbons, who was creator of Automated Library II, software for running a school library on an Apple II or Atari computer. He gave me the only remaining copy of the software and manuals, which I digitized and put online.
I interviewed Bob Ertl,who created REWRITE, an Atari word processor for math teachers, for his Master's thesis. The word processor was never published, but at my request, Bob digitized it and made several versions of the software, with source code, available to the world.  
Around the end of August, I was feeling done with interviews. Not exactly burned out, but I definitely needed a break, so I took one. After taking some time to reflect, here's what I'm feeling. I've interviewed more than 350 people since 2013, and have been able to talk with so many of the people that I personally wanted to talk with: the names I knew from being a kid nerd, and the people behind the companies that I admired. I've become friends with some of them. From a personal perspective, this has been incredibly satisfying, and from that perspective, I've talked to most of the people who were on my dream interview list. So while I know there are more stories, more people, more interviews that can be done (and that we're all getting older, so time is running out) my personal goals for interviews have largely been met. And this ismy hobby, after all.
Does this mean I'm done doing interviews? No! But I will continue to focus on talking with that people that interest me personally, and since most of those are done, the interviews will slow down. I'm not going to commit to a certain number of interviews in 2019.
My work will continue in other areas of computer history. There's a particular archiving project happening in 2019 that is really big and reallyimportant for microcomputer history. I'm not ready to talk about it, but hold your breath and cross your fingers.
Also in 2019 I plan to finish writing and publish a mini-book about the 20 Atari computer-related theses and dissertations that I've found. I’m continuing to play all of Infocom’s text adventures with @Carrington for the Eaten By A Grue podcast(14 games left to go.) The project with Rob McMullen to add new levels to my favorite computer game, Jumpman, is still on the back burner but not forgotten.
I’m proud of my computer history interviews and archiving work and am looking forward to another fun, productive year. There’s plenty more to do. Here we go!
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ryanstinson · 2 years
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Business Operations Plan
Executive Summary- Canadian Prime Football Camps is for young athletes to advance their skills. Athletes who are unhappy with the high prices of training can come here for an affordable rate. Our camps have highly qualified coaches that can bring the best qualities of each athlete. Compared to other top quality camps nationwide, our prices are much more consumer friendly.
Mission Statement- To help athletes everywhere reach their full potential.
History- Founded in 2022 by CPFC President Ryan Stinson, the camps set out to make sure every athlete gets a chance to learn the basics of football as well as develop to their full potential.
Objectives/Goals- 1) Become a sustaining non-profit within 5 years. 2) Make sure customers are satisfed with the product. 3) Expand across Canada in 5 years.
Target Market- Kids in the Niagara Region ages 8-19. Football or Flag Football interest. All income levels.
Competitive Analysis- NRMFA and Niagara Spears use most of their marketing in the newspapers and on social media marketing. Both avoid the radio as well for advertising. Estimated costs would be around $2000-$3000.
My Product- The nice thing is that I am selling knowledge opposed to a product, something I am very blessed to have. The price point is lower then all the competitors while making sure each athletes has an enjoyable and memorable experience.
Average cost per session: $350
Ongoing maintenance fee: None at the moment
Permits: Covid-19 Vaccine Waiver Forms
Primary marketing channels: Social Medias, Cold Calling, Pamphlets at Local Gyms, and arenas.
Finacials- I will be book keeping the finacials until the camps can pay for accountants.
Est. Sales: $5000
Est. Costs: $3500
Est. Net Profit: $1500 over 30 Hours = $50 an hour profit
Organization:
President/ Coach - Ryan Stinson
Volunteer Personal Trainer/ First Aid/ Coach - Ted Mansell
Funding: $50 as a down payment then use revenue from first camp to pay rest of costs then repeat process.
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cubelelo · 3 years
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He Invented the Rubik's Cube. He's Still Learning From It
Erno Rubik, who formulated one of the world's generally well known and suffering riddles, opens up about his creation in his new book, "Cubed."
Erno Rubik, who created the Rubik's Cube, composed his book "Cubed," he said, "to attempt to get what's occurred and why it has occurred. What is the genuine idea of the cube? Video by Akos Stiller For The New York Times
The primary individual to settle a Rubik's Cube went through a month attempting to unscramble it.
It was the riddle's designer, an unassuming Hungarian engineering educator named Erno Rubik. At the point when he created the 3D shape in 1974, he didn't know it might at any point be settled. Mathematicians later determined that there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 approaches to mastermind the squares, however only one of those blends is right.
At the point when Rubik at long last did it, following quite a while of dissatisfaction, he was overwhelmed by "an extraordinary feeling of achievement and utter alleviation." Looking back, he understands the new age of "speedcubers" — Yusheng Du of China set the worldwide best of 3.47 seconds in 2018 — probably won't be dazzled.
"Be that as it may, recollect," Rubik writes in his new book, "Cubed," "this had never been finished."
In the almost fifty years since, the Rubik's Cube has gotten perhaps the most suffering, flabbergasting, goading and engrossing riddles at any point made. In excess of 350 million solid shapes have sold internationally; in the event that you incorporate knockoffs, the number is far higher. They enrapture software engineers, rationalists and craftsmen. Many books, promising pace settling techniques, dissecting solid shape plan standards or investigating their philosophical importance, have been distributed. The 3D square came to epitomize "significantly more than simply a riddle," the intellectual researcher Douglas Hofstadter wrote in 1981. "It is a keen mechanical development, a side interest, a learning device, a wellspring of illustrations, a motivation."
ImageErno Rubik, right, at a Rubik Rsquo;s Cube big showdown in Budapest in 1982. The competitors included, from left, Zoltan Labas of Hungary, Guus Razoux Schultz of the Netherlands and Minh Thai of the United States.
Erno Rubik, right, at a Rubik's Cube big showdown in Budapest in 1982. The competitors included, from left, Zoltan Labas of Hungary, Guus Razoux Schultz of the Netherlands and Minh Thai of the United States.Credit...via Rubik's Brand
Be that as it may, even as the Rubik's Cube vanquished the world, the exposure disinclined man behind it has stayed a secret. "Cubed," which comes out this week, is halfway his diary, part of the way a scholarly composition and in enormous section a romantic tale about his developing relationship with the creation that bears his name and the worldwide local area of cubers focused on it.
"I would prefer not to compose a personal history, since I am not inspired by my life or sharing my life," Rubik said during a Skype meet from his home in Budapest. "The key explanation I did it is to attempt to get what's occurred and why it has occurred. What is the genuine idea of the shape?"
Rubik, 76, is exuberant and energized, motioning with his glasses and bobbing on the love seat, running his hands through his hair so it stands up in a dim tuft, giving him the vibe of a surprised bird. He talks officially and gives long, intricate, philosophical answers, much of the time following off with the expression "etc" while circumnavigating the finish of a point. He sat in his family room, in a home he planned himself, before a shelf brimming with sci-fi titles — his top choices incorporate works by Isaac Asimov and the Polish author Stanisław Lem.
He talks about the solid shape as though it's his kid. "I'm exceptionally near the 3D shape. The 3D shape was growing up close to me and the present moment, it's moderately aged, so I know a great deal about it," he said.
"Here's one," Rubik said, recovering it from the end table, then, at that point tinkering with it missing mindedly for the following hour or thereabouts as we talked.
Rubik Rsquo;s introductory plan was made of wood, then, at that point he added shading to the squares to make their development noticeable.
Rubik's underlying plan was made of wood, then, at that point he added shading to the squares to make their development visible.Credit...Rubik's Brand
"While heading to attempting to comprehend the idea of the 3D shape, I adjusted my perspective," Rubik said. "What truly intrigued me was not the idea of the solid shape, but rather the idea of individuals, the connection among individuals and the block."
Pursue The Great Read Every work day, we suggest one piece of outstanding composition from The Times — an account or exposition that takes you somewhere you probably won't anticipate going. Get it shipped off your inbox.
Perusing "Cubed" can be an unusual, bewildering experience, one that is similar to getting and winding one of his solid shapes. It does not have an unmistakable story construction or circular segment — an impact that is intentional, Rubik said. At first, he didn't need the book to have sections or even a title.
"I had a few thoughts, and I thought to share this combination of thoughts that I have to me and pass on it to the peruser to discover which ones are significant," he said. "I'm not taking your hands and strolling you on this course. You can begin toward the end or in the center."
Or then again you can begin toward the start.
Erno Rubik was brought into the world on July 13, 1944, about a month after D-Day, in the storm cellar of a Budapest clinic that had become an air-strike cover. His dad was a specialist who planned flying lightweight flyers.
As a kid, Rubik wanted to draw, paint and shape. He contemplated engineering at the Budapest University of Technology, then, at that point learned at the College of Applied Arts. He became fixated on mathematical examples. As a teacher, he showed a class called distinct math, which included helping understudies to utilize two-dimensional pictures to address three-dimensional shapes and issues. It was an odd and obscure field, yet it set him up to foster the solid shape.
In the spring of 1974, when he was 29, Rubik was in his room at his mom's loft, fiddling. He portrays his room as taking after within a kid's pocket, with pastels, string, sticks, springs and pieces of paper dispersed across each surface. It was likewise brimming with shapes he made, out of paper and wood.
Keep perusing the primary story
At some point — "I don't know precisely why," he composes — he attempted to assemble eight 3D squares with the goal that they could remain together yet in addition move around, trading places. He made the blocks out of wood, then, at that point penetrated an opening toward the sides of the shapes to connect them together. The article immediately self-destructed.
Erno Rubik, the creator of the Rubik’s Cube, at his home in Budapest. “I’m exceptionally near the cube,” he said. “The solid shape was growing up close to me and at the present time, it’s moderately aged, so I know a great deal about it.”
Erno Rubik, the creator of the Rubik's Cube, at his home in Budapest. "I'm exceptionally near the 3D shape," he said. "The 3D shape was growing up close to me and this moment, it's moderately aged, so I know a great deal about it."Credit. Akos Stiller for The New York Times
Numerous cycles later, Rubik sorted out the novel plan that permitted him to fabricate something incomprehensible: a strong, static item that is additionally liquid. After he gave his wooden solid shape an underlying turn, he chose to add tone to the squares to make their development apparent. He painted the essences of the squares yellow, blue, red, orange, green and white. He gave it a bend, then, at that point another turn, then, at that point another, and continued curving until he understood he probably won't have the option to reestablish it to its unique state.
He was lost in a bright labyrinth, and did not understand how to explore it. "There was no chance back," he composes.
After the 3D square turned into a worldwide wonder, there would be mistaken records of Rubik's innovative cycle. Reports portrayed how he isolated himself and chipped away at the 3D shape day and night for quite a long time. In actuality, he went to work, saw companions, and chipped away at tackling the 3D shape in his extra time, for no particular reason.
After he broke it, Rubik presented an application at the Hungarian Patent Office for a "three-dimensional coherent toy." A producer of chess sets and plastic toys made 5,000 duplicates. In 1977, Rubik's "Buvös Kocka," or "Sorcery Cube," appeared in Hungarian toy shops. After two years, 300,000 solid shapes had sold in Hungary.
Rubik got an agreement at an American organization, Ideal Toy, which needed 1,000,000 3D squares to sell abroad. In 1980, Ideal Toy carried Rubik to New York to a toy reasonable. He wasn't the most appealing sales rep — a bashful engineering educator with a then-restricted order of English — however the organization required somebody to show that the riddle was reasonable.
Deals detonated. In three years, Ideal sold 100 million Rubik's Cubes. Advisers for addressing the block shot up the success records. "There's a sense wherein the 3D shape is incredibly, basic — it's just got six sides, six tones," said Steve Patterson, a logician and writer of "The starting point: The Foundations of Knowledge," who has expounded on the 3D square as an epitome of mysteries. "In an extremely brief timeframe, it turns out to be fantastically unpredictable."
Right away, Rubik didn't have a compensation from the toy organization, and for some time, he saw little of the eminences. He lived on his educator's compensation of $200 every month.
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jimzub · 7 years
Note
Your platitudes about defying harassment are great and all but none of you comic pros are listening to the real complaint that kicked all this up in the first place. The work is BAD. Characters with long histories are being awkwardly changed to fit a political agenda instead of servicing a good story. Marvel doesn't feel like Marvel so fans are fleeing. Sales are down. What are you going to do about it?
First off, they’re not “platitudes.” Either you believe other people should be treated with respect and be free to exist online without being stalked or fearful for their safety or you don’t. It’s cut and dry. Condoning that, whatever your end goals may be, camps you out with people who are disrespectful at the top end and downright criminal at the bottom. Decide if this is the hill you really want to die on with the “allies” you have on your side.
Okay, on to your other point-
The comic industry is going through upheaval, absolutely. If we have to be honest though, so is all of media. Piracy is slamming into instant access entertainment and that’s splintering our attention more than ever before. New comics (dozens every week) aren’t just competing with each other, they’re competing with streaming movies/TV, video games, craft beers, and newly accessible deep archives of the best (and worst) comics from the start of publishing through to now. That doesn’t even count foreign content like manga, also available for deep dives and also fighting for your dollar. I don’t think it’s fair to just say sales are low because the work is bad and not acknowledge that almost every media is going through similar rocky times. People are reassessing where their entertainment dollars go across the board and things are shaking up - period.
The single issue format does seem to be taking a beating as of late, it’s true. Corporate decisions made in the past in terms of format, distribution, sales outlets, and pricing seem to be coming to a head and I have no idea how that will shake out, especially in a world that’s understandably distracted with natural disasters and a political divide as bad as it’s ever been.
Marvel of the 70′s wasn’t Marvel of the 60′s.
Marvel of the 80′s wasn’t Marvel of the 70′s.
Marvel of the 90′s wasn’t Marvel of the 80′s.
You get the idea. We can’t trap this stuff in amber. The Marvel Universe is a dynamic creative sandbox that reflects the time we live in while also carrying decades of continuity on its back. It’s wonderful and ridiculous, and can’t be fully encompassed in one character, one series, or one time. The stories that inspired me color my work in the same way the stories that inspired you color your perception of what’s happening now. 
There are people reading Marvel Comics right now who are being inspired by these current stories. Whatever you may think of it, this is their Marvel. If that goes down a road where sales can’t sustain it and things need to change, then I expect that’s what you’ll see. It’s happened before. Implosions and new initiatives. Experiments. The best parts get carried forward, the bad bits become footnotes and the creative journey continues.
I don’t run Marvel. If I did it would reflect my creative ideas more intensely, but it would also need to incorporate other people, other ideas, and the twists and turns the world throws at it. Compromise and collaboration is how this stuff gets done. It’s how the world actually functions. Acknowledge that not every title needs to fit your personal sensibilities in order to be “worthy.” Variety is an important part of the search for quality. 
As one writer working with a team of skilled and passionate people, all I can promise is that I’ll write stories that I as a reader would enjoy. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Marvel fan who loves incorporating continuity while also moving stories forward with new ideas. That’s my jam.
I don’t know of a single creator who sets out to tell a bad story or wreck a character they’re tasked with working on. There are comics I read that I do not enjoy and would absolutely have done differently, but my first instinct isn’t to assume the people involved are on a mission to destroy it. I move on and look to other titles for my fix. I check back in every so often to see if things have improved.
Back in the day, I collected Amazing Spider-Man from issue #231 through to #363. I loved reading Spidey stories. He was (and generally is) my favorite Marvel character. I have so many memories of those stories and key moments are indelibly burned into my brain. Even still, by the time the book hit #350+, I wasn’t feeling it any more. The book had changed. I’d changed. I eked out collecting for another year and then realized I’d missed a couple months and wasn’t worried about it at all. It was time to walk away.
Many years later, I was reading about Dan Slott’s Big Time story arc starting with Amazing Spider-Man #648 and thought “What the heck. I’ll give it a try.” Just like that, I was back into reading Spidey. I’ve been enjoying it ever since. This stuff is cyclical. I could spin my life away obsessing over why the books weren’t “good” in that long gap, but I’d rather read comics I enjoy. I don’t want you to leave or stop collecting, but I do think it’s important to allow that to happen if necessary. Find other books that tick your tock.
I don’t know Marvel’s deepest/darkest future plans, but I do know that Marvel Legacy is an attempt to ratify the past and present. To keep what works from the past while moving things into the future. Will it work? I don’t know. Keep reading and we’ll find out together. 
I hope you stick around and boost up titles you feel hit the mark while letting other titles succeed or fail with the readerships they cultivate, even if they’re not the same as you.
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medicarevideos · 5 years
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Give us a brief introduction to your company?
After a modest beginning in the year 2011, Solution Analysts has become a leading enterprise software solutions provider today. Our company has served over 350 corporate clients globally during our exhilarating journey of over eight years.
We provide enterprise-grade solutions across various industry sectors in the domains of mobile app, web, and eCommerce. I feel pride in mentioning that our team of experienced developers has quickly adopted technological advancements while making robust and futuristic software solutions.
What are the services you offer to your clients?
At Solution Analysts, we believe in providing end-to-end solutions in thriving domains of mobile apps, web and eCommerce domains. Therefore, our services are not limited to developing feature-rich mobile apps.
Our array of top-notch services includes
E-Commerce website development
Enterprise website development
Enterprise app development
Cross-platform app development
App store optimization
IoT application development
Consulting and Implementation
Maintenance and Support
In this intensely competitive era, what technologies, services and project model can give you an edge over your competitors?
When it comes to the software development domain, we never believe in competing with any developer company. Our focus remains on delivering client-centric and result-oriented solutions in a cost-effective way. We have supported many startups and SMEs to take their business to the next level. We feel that success lies in the client’s happiness and satisfaction. But, as a leading IT solution provider, we like to stay updated with the latest technology trends. For example, we have recently forayed into Blockchain and IoT app development. We have also embraced emerging technologies like AR and AI in our high-end enterprise software solutions.
Again, I will mention that we are not integrating advancements to get an edge over our competitors, but we do so to give our clients a competitive edge over their peers!
After service is a necessary part of development. How do you provide customer support to your client?
We believe in long-term business relationships. And therefore, our after-sales services are simply the best as we take care of every important aspect after delivering the solution. This is one of the major reasons why we have got over 80% repeat business.
We offer maintenance and technical assistance to our global clients in both ways: online and on-site.
What latest technologies and tools you’re planning to implement for mobile app development?
As I mentioned, we have forayed into blockchain and IoT app development domains. In the coming years, we intend to use cutting-edge tools and advancements in futuristic technologies like AR, AI, VR, and ML. In line with our vision to bring automation to the client’s business processes, we are going to use the latest techniques in developing custom-oriented software solutions.
What’s your approach to creating interactive and addictive UX/UI of mobile apps and websites?
Well, we always keep the end users in mind while developing mobile apps and websites. Apart from adopting an agile approach, our experienced designers take care of every aspect of UI/UX and the usability of our solutions. We do usability testing and ensure that our app and web solutions provide an engaging experience with visually appealing design patterns.
What are various technologies you used to make this app a reality?
We develop Android, iOS, and cross-platform apps that can meet the client’s business requirements. We use cutting-edge tools and technologies to transform our client’s creative idea into reality.
Here are technology stacks we use so far
For Android app development
Kotlin
Java
Android SDK
Photoshop
Android Material App Design
 For iOS app development
Swift
Objective-C
iOS SDK
Cocoa Touch
AppCode
Cocoa Touch
Apple Xcode
ARKit
Test Flight Beta
For Cross-platform/Hybrid app development
HTML5
CSS
JavaScript
Grunt, Gulp, Bower
AngularJS
Ionic
React Native
PhoneGap
Xamarin
Native Script
How has being an entrepreneur affected your family and social life?
Luckily my social life was not much affected because of my wife’s proactive approach. Her cooperation has helped me to manage and improve the social relations in the initial years of establishment of Solution Analysts.
However, family life was somewhat affected as I could not spend much time at home at the beginning of Solution Analysts. Here also, I should mention that my wife has assisted me a lot. She handled all the administration-related activities so that I could focus on the project execution. After some years, everything has got settled and I could maintain the subtle balance between work and life.
Whom do you consider your idol or biggest motivator?
Well, to start with, my father has remained the biggest motivator throughout my life. His life lessons still guide and lead me toward achieving the goals. However, I do admire many people for various qualities like courage, innovative approach, and leadership.
 Share best 3 applications which your company created or used for business.
In our exciting journey of over eight years, we have developed over 350 apps for the global clientele. We have made many innovative and outstanding apps to date. I would like to mention WYA App and Threadshare App from the array of best apps.
‎Way - #1 Best Parking App (Free, App Store) →
What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
Playing Cricket and watching movies are my favorite pastimes. I am a family man and always prefer to keep the family members with me. For example, when I play cricket with my team, I like to keep my son with me as a player.
I spend the non-work time reading self-help books. I occasionally do meditation and other activities that keep me away from any sort of stress.
‎Thread: Share What You Wear (Free, App Store) →
Have you raised any funding? Or Have any plans for the funding?
No. We have not raised any funding yet. Also, there is no plan for the same in the near future.
Give your opinions on how far this app revolution can make a difference in the technology world?
One thing is certain, mobile apps are here to stay. The level of app complexity is going to increase amid growing competition and ever-changing business requirements. This app revolution is going to continue for a long time, and technological advancements will make an impact on the development process.
Thinking about the difference made by the app revolution in the technology world, I would mention that as we witness the paradigm shift from individual apps to an enterprise software solution, we will see the advent of more advanced and next-gen apps with futuristic features. Such apps will be capable of offering the benefits of IoT and AI to the users.
What are the challenges you see in the outsourcing industry?
The outsourcing industry is thriving, but unfortunately, many service providers still rely on traditional processes while working on the client’s projects. The suppliers are confused about selecting the right outsourcing partner amid the growing number of stereotype outsourcing companies.
In coming years, as the suppliers are getting more concerned about their projects, the outsourcing companies need to address the challenges related to timezone difference, integration of advanced technology, use of cutting-edge tools, and the like to survive and thrive.
What’s more, though the virtual world can make the life easy when it comes to finding an outsourcing service provider, the in-person meetings are still preferable to get a clear picture and build the long-term business relationships. Though online validation is good, the physical validation has an upper hand.
Mention the ways you use to introduce new updates to your team.
Well, I never enforce any new thing directly on my team. Whenever I come across any technology update, I get into it before introducing it among my team of directors. At SA, we have no constraints of predefined processes because technology keeps on changing.
Whenever there is a need to implement technological advancements, I facilitate a healthy discussion between our directors of different departments. I also define the accountability and responsibility of all the directors and project managers to keep their respective teams updated.
What’s your step to enter into wearable tech and IOT revolution?
We’ve already entered in these futuristic technologies. We are working on providing end-to-end IoT solutions to the clients. Right now, we are actively present in the prototyping of the IoT app and providing consultancy to our esteemed clients to get the most of this revolutionary technology. We aim at offering enterprise-grade solutions from devices to app development to implementing the IoT network in the business system.
Anything, you would like to say to our readers, upcoming entrepreneurs or Startup companies?
Well, I find the posts of App Story interesting. I am sure that readers can stay informed by reading the App Story blogs.
For entrepreneurs and startups, I wish them all success. They should always remember that there is no secret sauce for success. If you follow ethical ways and focus on your goals, you can achieve success for sure. Also, never expect to make money overnight. When you focus on raising funds without establishing your business, you may end up making a mess.
More details Visit :  Solution Analyst  www.solutionanalysts.com
The post Interview With Kalpesh Patel CEO and Founder Solution Analysts appeared first on AppStoryOrg.
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tak4hir0 · 5 years
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38 years ago, the start of Chris Harris’s development career began, as he dove into programming in BASIC on the Commodore VIC20 that his parents gave him for his 12th Christmas. Since then, Chris has built and implemented hundreds of applications, starting on  mainframe, then moving to midrange and finally personal computers. He also witnessed the birth of the World Wide Web, was involved in preparations for the year 2000, and since 2017, has been working with SaaS and cloud computing.  Over the last year Chris has implemented Sales and Service Cloud, and built a human resources app called Cloud HR which is now on AppExchange. However, his road to success has been as phenomenal as the Y2K phenomenon. With sudden health issues, Chris could easily have given up hope. Instead, he threw himself into learning Salesforce, which not only served as a form of healing, but it helped take his career to another level.  You can read all about Chris and his story here, and recently, we sat down with Chris to learn about his journey from idea to app, and the hurdles he overcame along the way. His story from hospital bed to Trailhead Ranger/certified admin/app builder is truly inspirational. Let’s go back to 2017. Can you share a bit about your experience?Chris Harris: I have had significant health issues since an adverse reaction to medication in 2015, which left me with widespread musculoskeletal issues, neuropathy, and an eventual diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. These conditions make life very restricting and difficult at times. In 2017, I suddenly developed episodes of chest pain whilst I exercised and when under stress. After worsening episodes and numerous hospital admissions, I was finally diagnosed with severe coronary artery disease. Three significant blockages were found and immediate surgery was required in order to save my life. For the next week I was in a coronary intensive care unit on medication that was stopping me from having a heart attack. I then had over five hours of open heart surgery and two bypasses, followed by 11 days of recovery in the hospital. How did you recover and find Salesforce in this process?CH: The surgery fixed the issues with the heart blockages, but unfortunately left me with ongoing issues including irregular heart rhythm and recurrent breathing problems. I found myself struggling to deal with this new reality, and the effects to my mental health left me with episodes of anxiety and depression. I realized that I needed to focus my mind on something. I chose to learn Salesforce, since I hoped to build a career in the ecosystem. I started to gather resources online including documents, blogs, webinars, and videos, but the amount of information was both overwhelming and confusing. Then I discovered Trailhead and quickly realised that this was the key to building my knowledge of administration and development. I would set aside a few hours a day to focus on learning, using trails to guide my learning and projects to test what I had learnt. So through all of this, you have earned more than 350 Trailhead badges and became certified. Tell us more about that.CH: I threw myself into learning. Trailhead is fun, clear, and rewarding. I set the goal of taking my admin certification by the end of the year, and becoming a Trailhead Ranger. Ranger took around six months and soon after I took and passed the administrator certification exam! Now, two years later, I have over 350 badges and as time and health allows, I continue to add more. How did you get the idea for an AppExchange app?CH: Along with Trailhead, I decided that the best way to learn the platform would be to design and build an application. Having designed and built human resources applications on other platforms, it made sense to do it on Salesforce. I wanted to build a simple yet comprehensive solution for smaller organizations, including crucial functionalities such as leave booking approvals, employee data management, and expenses tracking. I also hoped it would be useful to other companies, and be something to build an AppExchange partner business around. Version 1.0 of the application, Cloud HR, was finished in July 2019, and successfully passed the security review the first time. It was listed on AppExchange in August, and now we hope to help customers streamline their human resources data management with our app. How does it feel to have your first app on AppExchange? Did you think you’d get here?CH: The journey from conception to design and eventually build was challenging. I had to learn an entirely new platform, with no budget for training, or customer support, all while recovering from significant health issues. There were times it felt like an impossible task, but I utilized the Salesforce community as a sounding board, and it allowed me to make many friends who helped support me on my quest.  When the application successfully passed security review, it felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. I hope to build relationships with other partners and consultants who might have an interest in introducing human resources solutions to their customers. I already have many new features planned for the next version. What advice do you have for other Trailblazers looking to achieve greatness like you?CH: We all have mountains to climb. If you experience sudden change such as health or career challenges, don’t give up hope. Instead, dive into something new. It will not only help you heal, but it will also help you focus on the future.  Set goals that are achievable, but challenging. This will drive learning and enthusiasm. Get involved in the community, such as attending or running community groups and conferences. I am the Norwich Community Group Leader and also part of the team running the InspireEast community event.  Finally, what’s your favorite AppExchange app?CH: I don’t have a single favorite app, but I would recommend looking at the apps provided by Salesforce Labs which contain additional features and examples of things you can do yourself. Check out Chris’s app Cloud HR on AppExchange and connect with him on the Trailblazer Community. 
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ncmagroup · 5 years
Text
Ralph Barsi
Editors Note: These 30 Best Sales Books are not endorsed or sponsored in any way – this is an expert-curated list that will enable sales reps at any experience level to crush their revenue goals!
Before you barrel through the following list of books, take a deep breath.
Most of us will scroll right to the list, hastily scanning the titles with an
“Oh, I know that one…that one, too…hmm, never heard of it…that one’s good.”
Check it out though – before you get too skeptical, we’ve got it covered. Our list of best sales books doesn’t just target one niche, so be prepared for a diverse set of top picks on how to build a sales process, sales strategy, sales management, sales acceleration, leadership, inspiration and more!
Slow Your Roll
We’re all used to tweets and texts, and flying through content. Books, however, require focus and attention. So peruse this list and consider how each book might improve your approach to problems, or work, or people.
Become a Student of the Game
If you truly want to be a better leader, a better salesperson, better speaker, better writer, or just a better person, you need to study the craft. And if you look hard, you’ll find there’s already a book with the instructions.
Make the Best Use of Your Limited Time
It’s not like you need the home study, the leather chair, or the warm reading lamp over your shoulder for “reading time.”
Listen to audiobooks & sales podcasts on your commute
Subscribe to your favorite blogs and have articles emailed to you
Discover awesome subjects by joining Goodreads
Hear what others inquire about on Quora
Join the discussions on LinkedIn Groups
Read cool stories in minutes onMedium
Sales Books Turn Readers Into Leaders
Studies continue to find that most CEO’s read 4-5 books a month and earn 350% more income than the average American. So, don’t take this list with a grain of salt. Get under the hood and explore all these books have to offer.
Work on yourself harder than you work on your job: If you stay ready, you won’t need to get ready. You stay ready by reading.
This complete list of 30 best sales books are listed in no particular order, and I’m not encouraged or paid to recommend them. They also don’t represent ALL the ones I’d suggest. It’s all out there, though, part of a slew of great lists that will recommend excellent titles for you. Remember, what you seek is seeking you.
Our List of 30 Best Sales Books (2018 Update)
Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko
The 10X Ruleby Grant Cardone
Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden
How to Win Friends and Influence Peopleby Dale Carnegie
The Sales Acceleration Formulaby Mark Roberge
The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
Predictable Revenueby Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hookby Gary Vaynerchuk
Agile Sellingby Jill Konrath
The Ultimate Sales Machineby Chet Holmes
The New Solution Sellingby Keith M. Eades
The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton
Smart Callingby Art Sobczak
Money – Master the Gameby Tony Robbins
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleby Stephen Covey
Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch and John A. Byrne
The Psychology of Sellingby Brian Tracy
Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Teamby Patrick Lencioni
Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Saleby Zig Ziglar
21.5 Unbreakable Laws of Sellingby Jeffrey Gitomer
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy
SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham
The Joshua Principle by Tony J. Hughes
Hyper-Connected Selling by David J.P. Fisher
Bonus: Combo Prospecting by Tony J. Hughes
Bonus: Hacking Sales – The Playbook for Building a High-Velocity Sales Machineby Max Altschuler
Bonus: The Sales Enablement Playbook by Cory Bray and Hilmon Sorey
Bonus: The No 1. Best Sellerby Lee Bartlett
Bonus: Outbound Sales, No Fluffby Rex Biberston and Ryan Reisert
Steal Like an Artistby Austin Kleon
The Decision Bookby Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler
Innovating for Peopleby LUMA Institute
The Sketchnote Handbook by Mike Rohde
Illuminateby Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez
Exactly What to Sayby Phil M. Jones
Blueprintsby Fernando Pizarro and Jacco Van Der Kooij
How to Get a Meeting with Anyone by Stu Heinecke
#1 Thinkertoys
Michael Michalko
Find two solutions to every problem you encounter. It’ll get you thinking and acting like a leader. And you’ll be surprised how often you can resolve issues on your own.
This book is filled with creative thinking exercises, called thinkertoys, that help evoke answers already within you. Each chapter is prefaced with a deep quote from strategist and philosopher, Sun Tzu. Even if you choose not to read the exercises, you’ll have a book of killer Sun Tzu quotes.
Buy Thinkertoys here: bit.ly/thinkertoys
#2 The 10X Rule
Grant Cardone
How much money did you make in the last 24 hours? If you want a better-than-average anything in life, then you need to think and act better-than-average. Stop telling yourself why you can’t achieve greatness and limiting your beliefs.
Your thoughts and actions need to increase 10X to get to the next levels. Business leader, Grant Cardone, walks you through how to “10X your life,” and provides exercises for you at the end of each chapter.
Buy The 10X Rule here: bit.ly/10XRule-
#3 Wooden on Leadership
John Wooden
If every player on the team plays to the best of their ability, the team won’t need to look at the scoreboard or talk about winning.
The late UCLA Basketball Coach, John Wooden, inspired his team to win 10 NCAA national titles in a 12-year span. Coach Wooden’s legacy was built on his Pyramid of Success, which he explains in great detail. Speaking of detail, Coach Wooden once said, “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
Buy Wooden On Leadership here: bit.ly/Wooden-
Bonus: Combo Prospecting
Tony J. Hughes
Unleash an incredible combination of old and new sales strategies.
How do you break through to impossible-to-reach executive buyers who are intent on blocking out the noise that confronts them every day?
Old-school prospecting tactics or new-school techniques alone won’t provide the answers.
But Combo Prospecting will…by showing how to combine time-tested sales processes with cutting-edge social media strategies and clever technology hacks.
The book reveals today’s new breed of Chief Executive Buyers, the channels they use, the value narrative you need, and the mix of methods that works.
With actionable insights in every chapter, it explains how to:
Do deep-dive research into social.
Locate leverage points that matter
Secure decision-maker meetings
Earn executive engagement
Build a knockout, online brand
Nurture a network that helps you thrive
Profit from referrals –
Publish insights that set you apart and steer the agenda
Employ an efficient, lethal library of scripts and templates
Buy Combo Prospecting here: http://amzn.to/2B8ZKsZ
#4 How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie
If everyone practiced the lessons in this book, the world would be a better place. Dale Carnegie wrote it in 1936, and it remains applicable to today’s world.
“Become genuinely interested in other people,” “Begin in a friendly way,” and “Praise every improvement” are just a few of Carnegie’s teachings. If you change, everything will change for you. Reading this book is your first step.
Buy How to Win Friends and Influence People here: bit.ly/win_friends
#5 The Sales Acceleration Formula
Mark Roberge
Sales leader Mark Roberge reveals the framework and formula behind HubSpot’s incredible scaling efforts. These very practices propelled HubSpot into the public market’s open arms.
Like famous equations that changed the world, this formula teaches you how the power of inbound lead generation, marketing and sales data, pipeline and activity metrics, and sales technology can change your business for the better.
Buy The Sales Acceleration Formula here: bit.ly/roberge-sales
#6 The Little Red Book of Selling
Jeffrey Gitomer
It doesn’t matter what Gitomer book you read, you’ll learn better ways to sell. This one happens to be the one I’ve referred to the most. Jeffrey’s style of writing, his tone, and his tips can’t be ignored – value oozes from them.
Similar to Jill Konrath (see #10), I’ve subscribed to Jeffrey Gitomer’s free eNewsletter, Sales Caffeine, for YEARS (about ten now). It still shows up in my inbox every Tuesday morning. This particular book is the largest-selling sales book of all time, worldwide.
It’s a classic that remains relevant over time. This is an absolute must-read for all salespeople at any experience level.
Buy Little Red Book of Selling here: bit.ly/lil_red
#7 Predictable Revenue
Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler
Known by many as “the bible” of SaaS sales development, this book provides a bevy of proven ideas for managing the top of the funnel. Aaron unveils proven best practices created and used by Salesforce.
It’s a guide that remains relevant, by many standards, and is a must-read for anyone in demand generation and sales development.
Buy Predictable Revenue here: bit.ly/predict-rev
Bonus: Hacking Sales – The Playbook for Building a High-Velocity Sales Machine
Max Altschuler
Because it’s our blog, and Max wrote this in 6 days from Bali, you know we had to add this to the list! In Hacking Sales, you’ll learn how to build a fully streamlined sales process using new technology built for salespeople along with innovative new techniques. Max showcases over 150 sales tools throughout the book, enabling you to build the ultimate sales stack to support a fully efficient sales machine.
Buy The Playbook for Building a High Velocity Sales Machine here: http://amzn.to/2mQToVU
#8 Think and Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill
Wouldn’t you agree you will acquire knowledge by reading all the books on this list (or even half of them)? All that knowledge won’t be worth jack – nor will it attract the income you’re likely after – without practical PLANS OF ACTION.
This book was published in a year after Dale Carnegie’s (see #4) – like, um, EIGHTY years ago. Apply what you learn from it, right here and now, in our world of SaaS, social media, texts, tweets, and eMedia, and elevate yourself, your company, your product, your brand, and your customers to unthinkable heights.
Buy Think and Grow Rich here: bit.ly/thinkngrow-rich
#9 Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook
Gary Vaynerchuk
Though it might be the same story, you’ll need to tell it differently to a group of executives vs. a group of your friends. The term means to give, give, give, and then ask.
“Gary Vee” explains, in great detail, how to do this online, and includes methods for telling your story on every major social media platform. If you’re looking to build your brand, then you’ll want to know how to “speak the language” of each channel, and each audience.
Buy Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook here: bit.ly/gv-jjjrh
#10 Agile Selling
Jill Konrath
I have followed Jill Konrath since 2007 when I subscribed to her “Selling to Big Companies” blog. To this day, she sheds value on the sales industry like bright, warm sunshine.
Buyers and sellers are on their own journeys – each resembling their unique roller coaster ride. Jill shares techniques and tactics to help salespeople adapt to these changes and arrive at the desired outcome. Everything she writes here is reinforced in her blog, eBooks and kits, and videos.
Buy Agile Selling here: bit.ly/konrath-agile
Bonus: The Sales Enablement Playbook
Cory Bray & Hilmon Sorey
In The Sales Enablement Playbook, sales veterans Cory Bray and Hilmon Sorey provide insights into creating a culture of sales enablement throughout your organization. This book provides a series of stand-alone chapters with frameworks and tactics that you can immediately implement, regardless of company size or industry. Whether you are a sales executive, sales practitioner, or a non-sales executive looking for ways to impact growth, The Sales Enablement Playbook will help you identify your role in a thriving enablement ecosystem
Get The Sales Enablement Playbook here: http://bit.ly/2gv94L
#11 The Ultimate Sales Machine
Chet Holmes
I’ve read this book a good 20 times, and have referred to it throughout my sales leadership career. It offers a 12-part program only used by high-caliber sales organizations and requires “pig-headed discipline and determination” to work.
Chet Holmes left us with a recipe for success that is unparalleled. This book explicitly spells it out, and many of its lessons are reinforced today by Chet Holmes International.
Buy The Ultimate Sales Machine here: bit.ly/UltimateSales-
#12 The New Solution Selling
Keith M. Eades
To know where you’re going means you need to know where you came from. This is the update to Mike Bosworth’s early 90’s classic, Solution Selling.
Applying a sales methodology to your selling gives you a tried and true advantage, and enables you to plan your work and work your plan. Among the popular methodologies, this happens to be a favorite. It uses the formula PPVVC=S (Pain x Power x Vision x Value x Control = Sale) to help salespeople accurately gauge the probability of closing a deal.
Other legendary methodologies include:
SPIN Selling (Neil Rackham)
Strategic Selling (Robert Miller, Stephen Heiman….sound familiar?)
The Challenger Sale (Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson)
The Sandler Sales Institute’s 7-Step System (David Sandler, John Hayes)
Buy The New Solution Selling here: bit.ly/new-solution
#13 The First 90 Days
Michael Watkins
This book is a road-map for leaders starting in a new organization. Time is critical in the first 90 days, and the faster you can reach “the breakeven point,” where you become a contributor of value vs. a consumer of value, the better.
Watkins provides real-world scenarios, several potential approaches, and different types of dialogue, to help you anticipate and prepare for any situation in your new environment.
Buy The First 90 Days here: bit.ly/First90-
#14 Difficult Conversations
Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton
It’s inevitable. You’re going to have difficult conversations – with senior leaders, with sales reps, with prospects and customers. Of course, most of us want to prevent these talks or avoid them altogether.
When you’re focused, however, on productive problem solving instead of emotion or “winning” the argument, you’re able to calmly arrive with your “opponent” at a path forward. This book lays out the best, most professional, tactful, and respectful ways to handle difficult conversations.
Buy Difficult Conversations here: bit.ly/diff-convo
Bonus: The No 1. Best Seller
Lee Bartlett
What does it take to be a top salesperson?
Many books claim to have the answer, but few demonstrate, by example, exactly how it is achieved. The No.1 Best Seller is a masterclass in professional selling, as seen through the eyes of a top salesman. With a career spent selling financial technology to the C-Suite and Investment Banking community, Lee Bartlett shares the mindset and methodology that has allowed him to consistently outperform his competitors to win the largest mandates in his industry.
Buy: The No.1 Best Seller: http://bit.ly/2sYvRas
#15 Smart Calling
Art Sobczak
Many argue that “cold calling” is dead, and in many ways it is. “Calling,” however, is alive and well, and salespeople NEED to know how to conduct a great phone call.
Sales trainer and coach, Art Sobczak, shares “dumb mistakes,” most salespeople say in the first 10 seconds of their calls; and offers new, better approaches to ensure you engage people on the phone vs. spilling info about you, your company, and your product all over them.
Buy Smart Calling here: bit.ly/smart-calling
#16 Money – Master the Game
Tony Robbins
Assuming you’re going to crush it in your sales career, you’ll make a lot of money. You better learn how to manage it or it will disappear. It was once said, “If you took all the money in the world, divided it up equally among everybody, it would soon all be back in the same pockets.”
Tony Robbins spells out 7 simple steps to financial freedom and interviews the world’s money masters, so you can model their success for yourself.
Buy Money – Master the Game here: bit.ly/robbins-money
#17 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen Covey
I attended a leadership conference in the early 2000’s, and Dr. Covey was the keynote speaker. He had us stand up, cover eyes, and point to where we thought was north. He then asked everyone to keep pointing while they uncovered their eyes. Everyone was pointing in a different direction.
In order to influence an organization of any size to head in the same direction, everyone must develop fundamental habits – like seeking first to understand before you’re understood. This book is a masterpiece in how to become highly effective in everything you do.
Buy The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People here: bit.ly/7-habits-
#18 Jack: Straight from the Gut
Jack Welch, John A. Byrne
Jack Welch is a master at business leadership. By driving culture before anything else, he shaped GE to become the “most valuable company in the world.”
This book illustrates Jack’s career path, his candid view on what matters most to businesses, his succession plan for up-and-coming executives (including personal, handwritten letters to his leaders), and the deep dives he encourages us to take when working on our business.
Buy Jack: Straight from the Gut here: bit.ly/jack-ceo
#19 The Psychology of Selling
Brian Tracy
“Get serious about your career; decide today to be a big success in everything you do.” This quote from Brian Tracy is the first of my five philosophies and a staple of my daily work.
Here, Brian walks through strategies and methods for moving deals through the pipeline and adding more “Closed Won” deals to the board. It is a classic book you’ll reference throughout your career.
Buy The Psychology of Selling here: bit.ly/psych-selling
#20 Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Patrick Lencioni
If you’re part of a struggling company or team, it’s likely because one or more of these dysfunctions are at play: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, or inattention to results.
This is one of TEN powerhouse business and sales books from Pat Lencioni. He continues to share his gift with the world, working with his team at The Table Group, to lift businesses to the highest levels.
Buy Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team here: bit.ly/5-dysfunctions
#21 Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale
Zig Ziglar
The man. Zig Ziglar is a sales legend, and his lessons continue to resonate today. I never took the opportunity to see him live, but still, listen to and watch his teachings.
In this book, Zig underscores the fact that “we’re all in sales.” He breaks down the very questions, attitude, and steps required to influence a “Yes!” from people.
Buy Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale here: bit.ly/zigsecrets
#22 21.5 Unbreakable Laws of Selling
Jeffrey Gitomer
It doesn’t matter what Gitomer book you read, you’ll learn better ways to sell. This one happens to be the one I’ve referred to the most. Jeffrey’s style of writing, his tone, and his tips can’t be ignored – value oozes from them.
Similar to Jill Konrath (see #10), I’ve subscribed to Jeffrey Gitomer’s free eNewsletter, Sales Caffeine, for YEARS (about ten now). It still shows up in my inbox every Tuesday morning.
There are laws for every discipline (physics, civil, criminal, mathematical, economic). If particular conditions are present, the laws will always occur, plain and simple. This book deeply explains the essential laws of our craft – selling.
Buy 21.5 Unbreakable Laws of Selling here: bit.ly/git21-5
#23 Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Ram Charan, Larry Bossidy
The title mentions “the discipline of getting things done.” That alone should inspire you to read this book. Ram Charan is a business legend and has advised the greatest CEO’s of all time, while Larry Bossidy has led an incredibly successful company like Honeywell and GE.
Execution is a discipline that must be a core component of organizations, but should also be at your core. What people say they’ll do and what they actually do are often two different things. Just get ‘er done!
Buy Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done here: bit.ly/Execution-
#24 SPIN Selling
Neil Rackham
SPIN Selling is essential reading for anyone involved in selling or managing a sales team. This book outlines the revolutionary SPIN technique (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-Payoff).
By following the simple, practical, and easy-to-apply techniques of SPIN, readers will be able to dramatically increase their sales volume.
Rackham answers key questions such as “What makes success in major sales” and “Why do techniques like closing work in small sales but fail in larger ones?”
You will learn why traditional sales methods which were developed for small consumer sales, just won’t work for large sales and why conventional selling methods are doomed to fail in major sales.
Buy SPIN Selling here: http://amzn.to/2hXlY4e
#25 The Joshua Principle
Tony J. Hughes
Joshua Peters is a salesman in crisis – after losing a key deal his boss threatens him with the sack and he has doubts concerning his choice of career.
His father is a sales veteran who progressed all the way to CEO but with their relationship is at an all-time low and he struggles to help. Then a mentor’s invitation from the other side of the world powerfully transforms everything as Joshua embarks on the journey of discovering leadership secrets of strategic selling.
He applies the principles to the biggest and most complex deal of his life and his mentorship culminates with a powerful meeting that finally reveals The Joshua Principle.
Learn about the Value Quadrant for Professional Sales Agents©, The New ROI©, the seven sins of selling, the ten laws of relationship and strategic selling, how to develop and execute effective strategy, the history and evolution of professional selling, how to gain insight to challenge thinking and create business value, how to successfully sell at the top, and much more.
Buy The Joshua Principle here: http://amzn.to/2tJIuqP
#26 Hyper-Connected Selling: Win More Business by Building Personal Influence & Creating Human Connection
David J.P. Fisher
Technology has fundamentally shifted how prospects buy…which means that salespeople have to catch up and change how they sell.  With the right approach, integrating technology into your daily sales activity multiplies your ability to engage and provide value.
But no matter how much technology we put in place, at its core selling is a human-to-human activity.  Old-school communication tools haven’t gone out of style, in fact, they’re you’re most powerful resource. Discover how to become a trusted Sales Sherpa™ for your prospects and integrate yourself into your prospects buying journey.
Buy Hyper Connected Selling here: http://amzn.to/2AtBQJu
Bonus: Outbound Sales, No Fluff
Rex Biberston and Ryan Reisert
  This book is a step-by-step guide for the modern sales professional. We want to give you the framework, knowledge, and skills to fill a sales pipeline with highly qualified opportunities. It’s all practical advice – no cutesy stories, no rants, and no product pitches.
There are really only two ways to fill a funnel: inbound leads or outbound prospecting. We focus this book exclusively on outbound prospecting because it’s the half of the formula that an individual sales rep can control (that’s why so many sales job descriptions include the phrase “we’re looking for a hunter”).
Buy Outbound Sales, No Fluff here. 
#27 Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
Austin Kleon
You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side.
Buy Steal Like an Artisthere: http://bit.ly/stealikeanartist
#28 The Decision Book – Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking
Mikael Krogerus, Roman Tschäppeler
The Decision Book distills into a single volume the fifty best decision-making models used on MBA courses and elsewhere that will help you tackle these important questions—from the well known (the Eisenhower matrix for time management) to the less familiar but equally useful (the Swiss Cheese model).
It will even show you how to remember everything you will have learned by the end of it. Stylish and compact, this little black book is a powerful asset. Whether you need to plot a presentation, assess someone’s business idea or get to know yourself better, this unique guide will help you simplify any problem and take steps towards the right decision.
Buy The Decision Bookhere: http://bit.ly/decisionbook50
#29 Innovating for People – Handbook for Human Centered Design Methods
LUMA Institute
Innovation is an economic imperative that calls for more people to be innovating, more often. This handbook equips people in various lines of work to become more innovative. It provides specific guidance for bringing new and lasting value into the world.
The key ingredient to successful innovation is the everyday practice of Human-Centered Design: the discipline of developing solutions in the service of people. Every story of a good innovation—whether it’s a new product, a new service, a new business model or a new form of governance—begins and ends with people. It starts with careful discernment of human needs and concludes with solutions that meet or exceed personal expectations.
This handbook is your essential resource for innovation. It’s a compact reference book describing thirty-six methods of Human-Centered Design.
Buy Innovating for People here: http://bit.ly/innovatingfor
#30 The Sketchnote Handbook – Illustrated Guide to Visual Note Taking
Mike Rohde
This gorgeous fully illustrated handbook tells the story of sketchnotes–why and how you can use them to capture your thinking visually, remember key information more clearly, and share what you’ve captured with others.
Author Mike Rohde shows you how to incorporate sketchnoting techniques into your note-taking process—regardless of your artistic abilities—to help you better process the information that you are hearing and seeing through drawing and to actually have fun taking notes.
Buy The Sketchnote Handbook here: http://bit.ly/rohdesign
#31 Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and Symbols
Nancy Duarte and Patti Sanchez
As a leader, you have the same potential to not only anticipate the future and invent creative initiatives, but to also inspire those around you to support and execute your vision.
In Illuminate, acclaimed author Nancy Duarte and communications expert Patti Sanchez equip you with the same communication tools that great leaders like Jobs, Howard Schultz, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used to move people. Duarte and Sanchez lay out a plan to help you lead people through the five stages of transformation using speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols
Buy Illuminate here: http://bit.ly/illuminateignite
#32 Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact
Phil M. Jones
Often the decision between a customer choosing you over someone like you is your ability to know exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to make it count. Phil M. Jones has trained more than two million people across five continents and over fifty countries in the lost art of spoken communication. In Exactly What to Say, he delivers the tactics you need to get more of what you want.
Buy Exactly What to Say here: http://bit.ly/exactlywhat
#33 Blueprints for a SaaS Sales Organization
Fernando Pizarro,‎ Jacco Van Der Kooij
Because of their very nature, SaaS companies live and die on revenue growth. And once the service is ready there is a very small window in which to scale. Missing that window is the difference between massive success and mediocrity.
With such high stakes, it is crucial to get a sales team and process in place that will scale. Yet most early-stage companies build their sales teams by the seat of their pants. This book distills the authors’ years of building high-performance SaaS teams into a set of highly detailed instructions that will allow sales leaders to design, implement and execute all around sales plans.
Buy Blueprints here: http://bit.ly/saasblueprints
#34 How to Get a Meeting with Anyone: The Untapped Selling Power of Contact Marketing
Stu Heinecke
The hard part just got easy!
You know how to sell—that’s your job, after all—but getting CEOs and other VIPs to call you back is the tricky part. So what if that impossible-to-reach person weren’t so impossible to reach after all?
Hall-of-fame-nominated marketer and Wall Street Journal cartoonist Stu Heinecke discovered that he could get past traditional gatekeepers and reach those elusive executives by thinking outside the box and using personalized approaches that he calls “contact campaigns.”
Buy How to Get a Meeting with Anyone here: http://bit.ly/meetwithanyone
The End Of The Bookshelf
They’re not all here. WAY more books are out there, containing ALL the answers you need to succeed. Schedule time to crack them open, and become the awesome salesperson you are.
These books, without question, will bolster your self-improvement, develop your leadership presence, guide you towards building effective teams, offer you different ways of solving problems, and show you how to do your job better. If you think a great one is missing from this list, please leave a comment with the title and author. Otherwise, prepare to rise up.
  Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com
Best Sales Books: 30 Elite Picks to Step Up Your Sales Game {2018 Update} Ralph Barsi Editors Note: These 30 Best Sales Books are not endorsed or sponsored in any way – this is an expert-curated list that will enable sales reps at any experience level to crush their revenue goals!
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729renegades · 5 years
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HEADING UP THE BUDGETING PROCESS AS THE BUSINESS SCALES
Scaling companies is a constant process of innovation. The following phrase describes these rapid periods of growth: what worked 12 months ago, doesn’t work anymore.
Once your product lands squarely in its market, revenues and customers can begin to grow exponentially. In response, the organisation must scale in size and ability to execute. Otherwise, the company’s infrastructure begins to age, processes break, and disharmony sets in among staff.
In 2017, a customer of mine saw their annual revenues increase 350%. Furthermore, the company is planning for revenues to double in 2018. With only 4 project managers implementing its enterprise software 12 months ago, it was easy to monitor tasks and efficiency. However, with 10 full time project managers on staff, they now need a more sophisticated system to track the numbers.
In addition, they’re trying to forecast how many staff still need to be hired for the remainder of 2018, taking into account the number of expected project wins, the yield of each project manager, and the estimated monthly cash flow available to use for hiring. Their model must change to adjust for scale. This challenge will be the topic of my next article and will be important whether you’re hiring your 1st staff member or 100th.
Scaling
We will now examine how the budgeting process changes as the organisation scales to 100 staff and beyond.  At Barclays or Apple, the finance and accounting team will consist of many book keepers, accountants, controllers, (S)VPs of Finance, and CFOs, with ultimately one group CFO heading up the entire function. But Barclays has 130,000 employees and Apple has 115,000.
What does the finance team look like when there are only 1, 10, 50, or 100 employees?  In addition, I’ll examine how the finance team adjusts and grows at each level of scale. The titles we’ll discuss include the book keeper, the accountant, the controller or VP finance, and the CFO. A well-functioning finance team allows the business owner to stay on top of her numbers and therefore her business.
The 1+ person company
Hire a book keeper as early as possible. Get her in, get the books correct, and pay her a consistent monthly fee. When you find the right one, do everything you can to keep her. It’s very hard to find a good book keeper.
Frequently, I see the business owner doing his own books to cut costs, only to end up with spreadsheets in various states of disarray. Avoid this mistake. Fixing the problem will require a higher monetary investment than hiring a professional in the first place.
To become successful entrepreneurs, one must learn to delegate. And book keeping should be one of the first tasks to be outsourced.
What does a book keeper do?
A book keeper is responsible for processing all the company’s business transactions. These will be recorded in a general ledger using small business accounting software such as QuickBooks, Xero, or Sage.  Book keepers are expected to be detail oriented and fully understand debits and credits, accounts payable and receivable procedures, issuing invoices, and processing payroll, among other things.
She can perform correct adjusting journal entries to complete the monthly reconciliation of the accounts and produce the income statement and balance sheet.  The business owner must work with the book keeper to set up the chart of accounts. The initial set up will be aligned with the different operating lines of the business. This will allow data to be extracted to calculate KPIs, an important task.
Ideally, you want your books and taxes done by the same person. Once the books are correct and understood, it’s relatively easy and quick to complete the tax filings. If any of the terms above are foreign to you, you must ask your bookkeeper to explain them. Being freely conversant in this area will give you confidence and authority and will attract staff, board members, and investors. Remember that you, the business owner, are always the final financial decision maker.
The 10+ person company
Dashboards, key performance indicators and analytics must change as the company has grown beyond the ability of the business owner to do it all in his head. You now have a decision to make. Will you continue to work with your bookkeeper and hire a part-time accountant to check the books and do your taxes, or do you outsource the bundle to an accounting firm for a flat monthly fee? Depending on the character of the company, you might even consider hiring a part-time VP Finance/Controller to help set a financial foundation upon which to further scale.
It’s imperative you know your numbers at this nascent stage. The more cash you can generate and conserve, the longer you’ll have to establish product/market fit and get to profitability.
The 50+ person company
Things don’t work in a straight line. It’s doubtful dramatic changes will occur at a specific headcount or that all functions will change at the same time by the right amount. At this level of scale, it’s certainly time to hire a full-time accountant. In addition, depending on the level of revenue, the number of staff, and the owner’s desire for rapid growth, he may want to hire a more senior finance person to provide strategic advice. Enter the VP Finance and the CFO.
Difference between a VP Finance and CFO
A VP Finance or Controller will most likely have a CPA degree and frequently has an audit background. He will make sure the books are 100% correct, the financial controls are in place to prevent fraud, and the monthly and quarterly reports are finished in a timely manner and well presented. In short, he makes sure the historical numbers are correct and has created a strong financial foundation upon which to grow. A good controller will let you sleep at night.
The CFO steps in when the business owner is looking to use his financial foundation or platform to scale and replicate. He needs a strong right hand, a financial partner and deep strategic thinker to help free up his time to focus on running the business. The CFO will be able to extract the correct information from the business to make cutting edge decisions. The CFO will also manage the investor relationships alongside the owner and will be in charge of any large financial transactions such as capital raising and M&A. He is the person who understands how the business will reach its goals.
The sweet spot of hiring a CFO is when your company reaches the US$2 million revenue mark. In my experience, this is when the owner has lost the ability to understand the numbers on his own as he starts to scale, replicate, and take on the world. Under $10 million in revenues, it may be possible, and in some cases wise, to hire a part-time CFO.
In summary, a book keeper, accountant, and controller/VP Finance will look at the past and present of a business’s finance. The CFO plans for the future.
Does a pre-revenue start-up looking to scale using other people’s money need a CFO?
A great start-up CFO is more than just a numbers guy. Successful start-ups need the forward-looking and transaction savvy individual early on. As the company starts working with angel investors and venture capitalists, they will expect the business to have a level of professionalism, governance, and communication. For this reason, the CFO will also play the role of controller and create a strong financial foundation upon which the business can then scale and replicate.
Budgeting – Growing/scaling business with staff from 10-100
Your VP Finance or part-time CFO will run the budgeting process with you as your partner, along with the head of revenues (sales/marketing) and the head of capital expenditure/engineering/product design.
The following 3 parts to your budget need to be well described:
Detailed revenue plan model
Set of KPIs
Comprehensive cost model with headcount
Begin with your revenue plan and work your way from the bottom up. This means you’ll go contract by contract, sale by sale, for the next 12 months. Ask your head of sales to estimate sales and scale it back as he is always overoptimistic. Push him for clarity and details especially around estimated contract wins in the 4th quarter of next year. These must be put into the budget as accurately as possible, even if they only currently exist in the imagination of the salesperson. A budget should always be conservative.
Knowing all your revenue numbers, now think through your KPIs for each region, division, and team. KPIs are the glue between the revenue lines and the expenses.
As you grow, your capital expenditures (whether ‘capitalised’ over a certain number of years, such as large fixed assets, laptops, and vans, or expensed immediately, such as monthly software costs and hosting fees) will increase. Separate the fixed costs from the variable costs. The fixed costs will remain roughly the same all year, whereas the variable costs will fluctuate directly with the revenues. Ensure that your profit margin (=revenues – variable costs) will be large enough to cover your fixed costs.
Budgeting starts in September, with the board taking its first look in November and providing a final approval in December. The budget is first and foremost for the team, not the board, so ensure sure the whole team buys into it first before presenting to the board. Ultimately each team is accountable to its own budget.
The 100+ person company
At 100+ staff you will need a full-time CFO. Keep these 2 items in mind when hiring one:
Firstly, hire for scale at the right time. The early stage CFO who is perfect for a company with revenues between US$2-15million, might not be the right fit for when the company becomes a public company. For that matter, the early stage CFO may not want to work for the same company post-IPO
Secondly, look for a CFO with a synergistic mindset for your company. The CFO position you’d love to fill is not the same position at Accenture or Google.. Look for an individual who shares your vision and has the skills to drive the company there.
Budgeting – Growing/scaling business with staff over 100
The larger and more complicated the company, the earlier the budgeting process starts. Aim to begin September 1, with a board review mid-November. The CFO must negotiate several times with each senior manager around revenues, KPIs, and cost numbers and will need adequate time. Each manager puts together his or her revenue forecast, drives the unique choice of KPIs, and determines the appropriate cost structure. Then the CFO brings it all together into one global budget.
In one memorable experience as a part-time CFO, I was shocked to learn how much each manager had low-balled their revenues and padded their expenses. When I incorporated each division’s budget into the global model, it showed total revenue growth increasing at half the rate of the monthly expenses and a year-end loss of US$447,000. In fact, it would have run out of cash by May. This tactic, known as sandbagging, is used to limit expectations and produce greater than anticipated results. After I discussed this discrepancy with the relevant parties, we were able to adjust the budget. Afterwards, I initiated an annual 2-day global budgeting strategy offsite at the start of October.
Conclusion
The budget forces the senior team to think strategically about investments, resource allocation, priorities, and partnerships. It focuses on the team and the company and creates company-wide discipline around hitting goals.
            from Blog | 729renegades http://bit.ly/2vlRzFq
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businessliveme · 5 years
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A New Vacation Planning Tool Wants to Predict Your Next Holiday
What if choosing your next vacation were as simple deciding what to watch on Netflix?
That’s the intention behind Wanderlist, a new tool from Virtuoso, a network of 20,000 travel agents that move more than $26 billion in annual transactions. It lets travelers create a virtual bucket list through a highly visual, lightly game-like survey. Then it syncs each user’s answers with those of their most frequent travel companions—family, friends, or a partner—in order to suggest trips that’ll make everyone happy.
“Think of it as a little portal for your dreams,” says Virtuoso Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Matthew Upchurch, who sees Wanderlist as a way for busy people to identify their travel priorities and for travel specialists to strategically execute them. “It’s like the leisure equivalent of a financial adviser. If you have a framework to help optimize your money, why not have one for your leisure time and spending?”
It also costs as much as hiring an expert—in part, because you are doing just that. In most cases, a travel adviser will suggest Wanderlist to clients; for a starting cost of $500, they’ll create a “portfolio” that strategically plots your group’s results on a calendar  according to seasonality and savings opportunities. (Retaining the specialist for travel planning support and ongoing advisory consultations, plus any other services, would then come at an additional cost.) Don’t have a travel agent? Wanderlist’s website will pair you with one to get the process started.
How It Works
So far, Wanderlist has been deployed to 15 travel specialists and 350 of their travelers. Within that small sample group, the technology has shown promise in streamlining a group’s many opinions and helping agents think about a family’s long-term goals.
One party, for instance, discovered that all four family members wanted to visit Hawaii—though it had never come up as a vacation idea—while in another case, the tool helped spur a grandmother and granddaughter to travel to Russia to see the Bolshoi Ballet, an interest they hadn’t known they shared. Another family thought it should go to Greece this year, but instead followed the agent’s recommendation and prioritized crowd-pleasing New Zealand on account of the currency’s better exchange rate.
The survey itself is simple but thorough and takes about 30 minutes to complete. First, it asks about your “life stages”—children under 12? A family with teenagers?—in order to determine whom you travel with most frequently. Then it prompts you to rate countries and experiences with a quick thumbs up, thumbs down, “already been there,” or “want to go back.” (There’s a fifth option if you’re not sure about the place at all.) Click the thumbs up icon twice and the destination will get slotted into your top picks—sort of like adding a TV show to your “list” on Netflix. By the time you’re done, Virtuoso will have collected a couple of hundred data points as to what type of traveler you are and what motivates your getaways.
Wanderlist is most robust when multiple family members participate. In my own trial, I was surprised to see that Indonesia was my husband’s second-highest-ranked destination—particularly considering that he’s always been apathetic about beach-focused vacations. Since we both want to go there, our preliminary analysis suggested we pair the destination with either Cambodia (one of my top picks) or Australia (one of his). It also shares information on the best times to go. (In my case, it was October through December for shoulder-season deals).
The service stops short of becoming a DIY travel-planning tool; the intention, unsurprisingly, is to pair travelers with advisers who can consult on the finer details and handle the logistics of booking. The company will also create a hardcover coffee table book featuring all the places your family wants to visit, just to keep you inspired.
What It’s Up Against
Gillian Morris, whose app Hitlist helps travelers find airfare deals that align with their bucket lists, says that other companies have tried (and failed) to build “vacation finders” in the past. As the creator of the Travel Founders Breakfast Club—an informal think tank for travel-tech startups—she’s had a front row seat to many of their stories. Among them: Triptuner, which abandoned its direct-to-consumer strategy in favor of a B2B approach; TouristEye, which was devalued and shut down after an acquisition by Lonely Planet; and most recently, Vivere, which is basic in its functionality. “I honestly see something like this almost every month, and it never tends to go anywhere,” Morris says.
One reason for this is that our dreams aren’t always aligned with our practicalities. “People say they’re interested in a certain type of vacation, but the things they book are often quite different: They say they want to go to Zanzibar but end up going to Miami,” Morris laughs.
But Wanderlist could, in theory, be an efficiency tool that shortcuts the “getting to know you” process between client and agent.
“Virtuoso is automating a back-end system that all travel agents already use,” says family vacation specialist Kathy Sudeikis of Acendas Travel, referring to ubiquitous industry software called Client Base that helps agents create client profiles the old-fashioned way, through conversations.
A further benefit, says Sudeikis, is earning the loyalty of Wanderlist’s youngest (and most digitally inclined) users: “The same kids who were exposed to the benefits of working with a specialist will stay clients when it’s time to plan their graduation trips and their honeymoons.” Upchurch says that, so far, Wanderlist has thus far been adopted by travelers aged 6 to 86.
Looking Ahead
If Virtuoso agents could integrate Wanderlist’s data with their sales platforms—which they currently can’t—they might be able to unlock further competitive advantages. For instance, Sudeikis thinks using the data for targeted marketing could prove useful: passing on special discounts for a Paul Gauguin cruise to Tahiti to a family that had already expressed interest in going there, for instance. “The opportunity to expose clients to exactly the types of trips that they are thinking about, and to drill down to such a personal level, stands to be very powerful.”
Morris, too, sees potential for the tool to develop machine-learning capabilities, a Pandora for vacations. “It would be pretty cool if Virtuoso was building a deeper preference map that could surface unique insights and eventually as its own artificially intelligent agent,” she says.
For now, Virtuoso is less focused on those aspects and more on bringing Wanderlist to family offices and corporations, which can use it as an employee-retention benefit.
One chief executive officer, Jeff Prouty of Prouty Project, a Minnesota-based consulting firm , has already signed up and called the tool one of the greatest motivators for his business. Then again, he didn’t just offer his entire team access to the Wanderlist survey; he also provided individual consultations with a local Virtuoso agent and a stipend for each employee’s first trip.
The post A New Vacation Planning Tool Wants to Predict Your Next Holiday appeared first on Businessliveme.com.
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antionetterparker · 5 years
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Norwex: Can you clean up with this eco-friendly MLM? [Review]
Clean up the world is a priority for more and more people…
Which puts Norwex in the right place at the right time.
Norwex is a Norwegian eco-friendly MLM founded in 1994 that specializes in green and organic products.
The timing was impeccable for this company — they entered the market for chemical-free cleaning products in the mid-90s, during the revival of bohemian, bell-bottom-wearing hippies and the birth of the movement for all-natural, organic products.
Competing against industry giants like Nuriche, Essante, and ID Life, they’re in a tough market of organic MLMs, but they’ve only grown in popularity.
Should you get involved? Keep reading to find out.
FAQ
1. What does Norwex sell? Organic, environmentally-friendly cleaning and personal care.
2. What are Norwex’s most popular products? Norwex’s laundry detergent is a highly concentrated powder that contains biodegradable surfactants and no phosphates or fillers.  Their EnviroCloth removes 99% of bacteria from a surface with no need for harmful chemicals. For dry dusting, it creates static electricity that lifts even the smallest particles of dust and dirt; for heavily soiled areas, it can pick up everything with just water. Their cleaning paste removes rust stains, hard water stains, scuff marks, permanent marker, dirt, grime, and more. They call it “elbow grease in a jar” because you can use it indoors and out to get everything clean with just a few dabs on an EnviroCloth. Many of Norwex Microfiber products contain an antibacterial agent for self-cleaning purposes. Micro silver in the wet cloth goes to work using its self-purification properties against mold, fungi, and bacterial odor.
3. How much does it cost to join Norwex? The website says you can join for free. Here’s what they mean by that: You’ll pay $9.99 for your Starter Kit’s shipping and handling fee. If you generate $2,000 retail or more in sales during your first 90 days, it’s yours free. If not, you’ll be charged $200 plus tax for the kit. To remain active, you have to place at least $250 in sales within a three-month calendar cycle. You’ll also pay $9.99 per month for your Consultant Office Plus. Be aware, that 90-day window for selling $2,000 of products starts when you sign up, not when you get the products. It can take 5 to 10 days to get your starter kit.
4. Is Norwex a scam? No, Norwex is a real business with real products that perform as promised. The products are popular and well-received, and with a few exceptions, distributors seem to enjoy their experience. That said, it’s unlikely you’ll make a great living off Norwex alone.
5. What is Norwex’s BBB rating? A+
6. How long has Norwex been in business? Since 1994
7. What is Norwex’s revenue? $50 to $100 million
8. How many Norwex distributors are there? 90,000
9. What lawsuits have been filed? In 2011, Norwex USA and Norwex Enviro Products were sent a cease and desist letter by Sweports, owner of the ‘455 Patent for an antimicrobial ultra-microfiber cloth. They claimed Norwex’s microfiber products infringe on that patent. Norwex demanded a trial by jury of all triable issues, including their assertion that they don’t infringe any claim of the ‘455 Patent, and that the patent is invalid and unenforceable. [1] In 2012, three creditors filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against Sweports. Since the patent infringement case couldn’t move forward, Norwex submitted a motion to dismiss the case. After reviewing the details of Sweports claims, it was found that they didn’t have all substantial rights to the product; therefore, their claim wasn’t valid. In 2013, the case was dismissed without prejudice, and Sweports may re-file its complaint after the bankruptcy proceedings are concluded. [2]
10. Comparable companies: Nefful, Amway
So should you promote them?
Product-wise, these guys are solid. If you’re all about the products, not a bad company to side with.
But business opportunity-wise, there’s better ways to make side income.
Click here for my #1 recommendation
Either way, here’s the full review on Norwex.
Overview
Norwex was founded in 1994 with the goal of providing homes with chemical-free cleaning products. Their mission is “Improving quality of life by radically reducing chemicals in our homes.”
Bjorn Nicolaisen founded the company after discovering a special microfiber cloth that was extremely effective at cleaning his windshield using nothing but water. He developed an entire list of household products that could effectively clean without using any chemicals, and Norwex was born.
Nicolaisen is a former attorney who has worked with the Norwegian Ministry of Environment and the General of Norway, so he knows his stuff. He’s currently still the Chairman of Norwex.
Norwex now has over 90,000 distributors, operates in Norway, Canada, the U.S., Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Australia.
How much does Norwex cost? It costs $200 to join Norwex, and that includes a starter kit with product. The kit can be initially purchased for just shipping and handling. Then, if you can sell $2,000 of product in your first 90 days, you won’t owe any more on it. Of course, if you don’t this the $2k mark, you’ll fork over $200 for it.
Registering for a consultant website, which is pretty much a requirement nowadays, is another $9.99/month.
In order to stay active, you need to sell $250 in product every 3 months. If you become inactive, you’ll be charged a fee to reactivate your account. After 12 months without sales, you’re no longer considered a consultant.
Products
Norwex is known as the chemical-free cleaning product company, although they’ve since expanded to offer personal care products as well.
Their flagship product is the microsilver cloth (also known as EnviroCloth), the special microfiber cleaning cloth that inspired Nicolaisen to start Norwex in the first place. These cloths are made of anti-bacterial fibers that attract dirt, grease, and dust, breaking down grime that would usually require chemicals to break down. The cloth also self-cleanses after 24 hours.
Cleaning and personal care products contain natural, botanical ingredients, replacing harmful chemicals with enzymes.
Production is mostly done at a production facility in China that the company opened in 2009.
For Your Home
These products include kitchen cleaning products, floor cleaning products, “home essentials,” and microfiber cloths.
To give you an idea of pricing, here are some home products:
EnviroCloth – $17.99 (best seller)
Ultra Power Plus Laundry Detergent – $24.99 (1kg)
Cleaning Paste – $29.99
Dishwashing Liquid – $9.99
Kitchen Towel & Cloth Set – $27.99
Produce Wash – $24.99
For Yourself
These products include bath and body care, personal care, and kids products.
To give you an idea of pricing, here are some examples of personal care products:
Cooling Mint Toothpaste – $15.99
Natural Deodorant Stick – $15.99
Organic Olive Oil Salt Scrub – $39.99
Hand Cream – $14.99
Bath Mat – $39.99
4-in-1 Kids Wash – $19.99
Compensation Plan
This company still relies heavily on the home party model, which is ineffective at best, and a gag-worthy money pit that will cause you to lose all your friends at worst.
You MIGHT be able to recruit a few friends and family members to come to your home party in exchange for food (a la Tastefully Simple) or a free makeover (a la a million and one cosmetics MLMs), but even those are questionable. Reps eventually dry up their “warm market” of friends and family members who are tired of desperate sales pitches.
But getting your friends and family to come to a sales pitch/home party where they get to…watch you clean? Yeah, right. Dream on.
It’s just not a sustainable way to make money.
Even if you do manage to get some decent sales at your home parties, it won’t amount to a lot in profit. But you do get some free/discounted product.
Sell up to $249.99 in product and you get 8% of your sales in free product.
Sell $250-$749.99 in product and you get 10% of your sales in free product.
Sell $750 or more and you get 12% of your sales in free product.
You also get a free window cloth for each party you book.
Consultants earn 35% commission on their personal sales.
Let’s look at an example. Say you manage to get a huge group of people together, and they’re all super stoked about cleaning products and ready to open up those checkbooks. Your pitch is on point, and you make a whopping $1,000 in sales.
Keep in mind how difficult this is to do. Their products range from around $10-$40, so you’d have to sell a LOT of microfiber cloths and dishwashing liquid to hit those numbers. Like 50 products. Even with 10 people, that’s 5 products per person… and it’s not easy to get people to give up their Saturday afternoon to come over and listen to you give a sales pitch, so 10 people is being generous. Not to mention, selling 5 products per person is an unrealistic goal, considering you’re lucky if everyone in attendance buys one product.
But let’s just say you really hit it big this time. $1,000 in sales would net you $350 in commission, $120 in free product, and a free window cloth.
This isn’t bad, but it’s nothing outstanding. If you can replicate this once a week, you’d be earning just above minimum wage. But replicating those kinds of numbers at your home parties on a regular basis isn’t sustainable — ultimately, you run out of friends and family to invite, and people don’t need to buy new dish rags every week.
Like all MLMs, the real money is in your referral commissions. With Norwex, you earn commission on the sales of everyone you recruit, and the people they recruit, and the people they recruit, and so on. The higher you move up in rank, the more levels you unlock in your downline, the more you earn in referral commissions. But recruiting a massive downline and moving up in rank is not easy.
Recap
Their products are generally well-reviewed, and their mission is great. The company has been around for a while and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
However, you’re not going to be making much money (if any) from selling them.
You need to be very skilled in marketing and sales and especially in networking to make real money, as you’re going to need to have a huge group of friends and acquaintances who trust you and would be interested in joining.
Networks dry up fast in this industry. Real fast.
I’ve been involved with network marketing for almost ten years so I know what to look for when you consider a new opportunity.
Norwex is a good company, but I wouldn’t recommend them as a sustainable income opportunity.
After reviewing 200+ business opportunities and systems out there, here is the one I would recommend:
Click here for my #1 recommendation
via https://mlmcompanies.org/norwex/
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mlmcompanies · 5 years
Link
Clean up the world is a priority for more and more people…
Which puts Norwex in the right place at the right time.
Norwex is a Norwegian eco-friendly MLM founded in 1994 that specializes in green and organic products.
The timing was impeccable for this company — they entered the market for chemical-free cleaning products in the mid-90s, during the revival of bohemian, bell-bottom-wearing hippies and the birth of the movement for all-natural, organic products.
Competing against industry giants like Nuriche, Essante, and ID Life, they’re in a tough market of organic MLMs, but they’ve only grown in popularity.
Should you get involved? Keep reading to find out.
FAQ
1. What does Norwex sell? Organic, environmentally-friendly cleaning and personal care.
2. What are Norwex’s most popular products? Norwex’s laundry detergent is a highly concentrated powder that contains biodegradable surfactants and no phosphates or fillers.  Their EnviroCloth removes 99% of bacteria from a surface with no need for harmful chemicals. For dry dusting, it creates static electricity that lifts even the smallest particles of dust and dirt; for heavily soiled areas, it can pick up everything with just water. Their cleaning paste removes rust stains, hard water stains, scuff marks, permanent marker, dirt, grime, and more. They call it “elbow grease in a jar” because you can use it indoors and out to get everything clean with just a few dabs on an EnviroCloth. Many of Norwex Microfiber products contain an antibacterial agent for self-cleaning purposes. Micro silver in the wet cloth goes to work using its self-purification properties against mold, fungi, and bacterial odor.
3. How much does it cost to join Norwex? The website says you can join for free. Here’s what they mean by that: You’ll pay $9.99 for your Starter Kit’s shipping and handling fee. If you generate $2,000 retail or more in sales during your first 90 days, it’s yours free. If not, you’ll be charged $200 plus tax for the kit. To remain active, you have to place at least $250 in sales within a three-month calendar cycle. You’ll also pay $9.99 per month for your Consultant Office Plus. Be aware, that 90-day window for selling $2,000 of products starts when you sign up, not when you get the products. It can take 5 to 10 days to get your starter kit.
4. Is Norwex a scam? No, Norwex is a real business with real products that perform as promised. The products are popular and well-received, and with a few exceptions, distributors seem to enjoy their experience. That said, it’s unlikely you’ll make a great living off Norwex alone.
5. What is Norwex’s BBB rating? A+
6. How long has Norwex been in business? Since 1994
7. What is Norwex’s revenue? $50 to $100 million
8. How many Norwex distributors are there? 90,000
9. What lawsuits have been filed? In 2011, Norwex USA and Norwex Enviro Products were sent a cease and desist letter by Sweports, owner of the ‘455 Patent for an antimicrobial ultra-microfiber cloth. They claimed Norwex’s microfiber products infringe on that patent. Norwex demanded a trial by jury of all triable issues, including their assertion that they don’t infringe any claim of the ‘455 Patent, and that the patent is invalid and unenforceable. [1] In 2012, three creditors filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against Sweports. Since the patent infringement case couldn’t move forward, Norwex submitted a motion to dismiss the case. After reviewing the details of Sweports claims, it was found that they didn’t have all substantial rights to the product; therefore, their claim wasn’t valid. In 2013, the case was dismissed without prejudice, and Sweports may re-file its complaint after the bankruptcy proceedings are concluded. [2]
10. Comparable companies: Nefful, Amway
So should you promote them?
Product-wise, these guys are solid. If you’re all about the products, not a bad company to side with.
But business opportunity-wise, there’s better ways to make side income.
Click here for my #1 recommendation
Either way, here’s the full review on Norwex.
Overview
Norwex was founded in 1994 with the goal of providing homes with chemical-free cleaning products. Their mission is “Improving quality of life by radically reducing chemicals in our homes.”
Bjorn Nicolaisen founded the company after discovering a special microfiber cloth that was extremely effective at cleaning his windshield using nothing but water. He developed an entire list of household products that could effectively clean without using any chemicals, and Norwex was born.
Nicolaisen is a former attorney who has worked with the Norwegian Ministry of Environment and the General of Norway, so he knows his stuff. He’s currently still the Chairman of Norwex.
Norwex now has over 90,000 distributors, operates in Norway, Canada, the U.S., Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Australia.
How much does Norwex cost? It costs $200 to join Norwex, and that includes a starter kit with product. The kit can be initially purchased for just shipping and handling. Then, if you can sell $2,000 of product in your first 90 days, you won’t owe any more on it. Of course, if you don’t this the $2k mark, you’ll fork over $200 for it.
Registering for a consultant website, which is pretty much a requirement nowadays, is another $9.99/month.
In order to stay active, you need to sell $250 in product every 3 months. If you become inactive, you’ll be charged a fee to reactivate your account. After 12 months without sales, you’re no longer considered a consultant.
Products
Norwex is known as the chemical-free cleaning product company, although they’ve since expanded to offer personal care products as well.
Their flagship product is the microsilver cloth (also known as EnviroCloth), the special microfiber cleaning cloth that inspired Nicolaisen to start Norwex in the first place. These cloths are made of anti-bacterial fibers that attract dirt, grease, and dust, breaking down grime that would usually require chemicals to break down. The cloth also self-cleanses after 24 hours.
Cleaning and personal care products contain natural, botanical ingredients, replacing harmful chemicals with enzymes.
Production is mostly done at a production facility in China that the company opened in 2009.
For Your Home
These products include kitchen cleaning products, floor cleaning products, “home essentials,” and microfiber cloths.
To give you an idea of pricing, here are some home products:
EnviroCloth – $17.99 (best seller)
Ultra Power Plus Laundry Detergent – $24.99 (1kg)
Cleaning Paste – $29.99
Dishwashing Liquid – $9.99
Kitchen Towel & Cloth Set – $27.99
Produce Wash – $24.99
For Yourself
These products include bath and body care, personal care, and kids products.
To give you an idea of pricing, here are some examples of personal care products:
Cooling Mint Toothpaste – $15.99
Natural Deodorant Stick – $15.99
Organic Olive Oil Salt Scrub – $39.99
Hand Cream – $14.99
Bath Mat – $39.99
4-in-1 Kids Wash – $19.99
Compensation Plan
This company still relies heavily on the home party model, which is ineffective at best, and a gag-worthy money pit that will cause you to lose all your friends at worst.
You MIGHT be able to recruit a few friends and family members to come to your home party in exchange for food (a la Tastefully Simple) or a free makeover (a la a million and one cosmetics MLMs), but even those are questionable. Reps eventually dry up their “warm market” of friends and family members who are tired of desperate sales pitches.
But getting your friends and family to come to a sales pitch/home party where they get to…watch you clean? Yeah, right. Dream on.
It’s just not a sustainable way to make money.
Even if you do manage to get some decent sales at your home parties, it won’t amount to a lot in profit. But you do get some free/discounted product.
Sell up to $249.99 in product and you get 8% of your sales in free product.
Sell $250-$749.99 in product and you get 10% of your sales in free product.
Sell $750 or more and you get 12% of your sales in free product.
You also get a free window cloth for each party you book.
Consultants earn 35% commission on their personal sales.
Let’s look at an example. Say you manage to get a huge group of people together, and they’re all super stoked about cleaning products and ready to open up those checkbooks. Your pitch is on point, and you make a whopping $1,000 in sales.
Keep in mind how difficult this is to do. Their products range from around $10-$40, so you’d have to sell a LOT of microfiber cloths and dishwashing liquid to hit those numbers. Like 50 products. Even with 10 people, that’s 5 products per person… and it’s not easy to get people to give up their Saturday afternoon to come over and listen to you give a sales pitch, so 10 people is being generous. Not to mention, selling 5 products per person is an unrealistic goal, considering you’re lucky if everyone in attendance buys one product.
But let’s just say you really hit it big this time. $1,000 in sales would net you $350 in commission, $120 in free product, and a free window cloth.
This isn’t bad, but it’s nothing outstanding. If you can replicate this once a week, you’d be earning just above minimum wage. But replicating those kinds of numbers at your home parties on a regular basis isn’t sustainable — ultimately, you run out of friends and family to invite, and people don’t need to buy new dish rags every week.
Like all MLMs, the real money is in your referral commissions. With Norwex, you earn commission on the sales of everyone you recruit, and the people they recruit, and the people they recruit, and so on. The higher you move up in rank, the more levels you unlock in your downline, the more you earn in referral commissions. But recruiting a massive downline and moving up in rank is not easy.
Recap
Their products are generally well-reviewed, and their mission is great. The company has been around for a while and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
However, you’re not going to be making much money (if any) from selling them.
You need to be very skilled in marketing and sales and especially in networking to make real money, as you’re going to need to have a huge group of friends and acquaintances who trust you and would be interested in joining.
Networks dry up fast in this industry. Real fast.
I’ve been involved with network marketing for almost ten years so I know what to look for when you consider a new opportunity.
Norwex is a good company, but I wouldn’t recommend them as a sustainable income opportunity.
After reviewing 200+ business opportunities and systems out there, here is the one I would recommend:
Click here for my #1 recommendation
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Link
Give us a brief introduction to your company?
After a modest beginning in the year 2011, Solution Analysts has become a leading enterprise software solutions provider today. Our company has served over 350 corporate clients globally during our exhilarating journey of over eight years.
We provide enterprise-grade solutions across various industry sectors in the domains of mobile app, web, and eCommerce. I feel pride in mentioning that our team of experienced developers has quickly adopted technological advancements while making robust and futuristic software solutions.
What are the services you offer to your clients?
At Solution Analysts, we believe in providing end-to-end solutions in thriving domains of mobile apps, web and eCommerce domains. Therefore, our services are not limited to developing feature-rich mobile apps.
Our array of top-notch services includes
E-Commerce website development
Enterprise website development
Enterprise app development
Cross-platform app development
App store optimization
IoT application development
Consulting and Implementation
Maintenance and Support
In this intensely competitive era, what technologies, services and project model can give you an edge over your competitors?
When it comes to the software development domain, we never believe in competing with any developer company. Our focus remains on delivering client-centric and result-oriented solutions in a cost-effective way. We have supported many startups and SMEs to take their business to the next level. We feel that success lies in the client’s happiness and satisfaction. But, as a leading IT solution provider, we like to stay updated with the latest technology trends. For example, we have recently forayed into Blockchain and IoT app development. We have also embraced emerging technologies like AR and AI in our high-end enterprise software solutions.
Again, I will mention that we are not integrating advancements to get an edge over our competitors, but we do so to give our clients a competitive edge over their peers!
After service is a necessary part of development. How do you provide customer support to your client?
We believe in long-term business relationships. And therefore, our after-sales services are simply the best as we take care of every important aspect after delivering the solution. This is one of the major reasons why we have got over 80% repeat business.
We offer maintenance and technical assistance to our global clients in both ways: online and on-site.
What latest technologies and tools you’re planning to implement for mobile app development?
As I mentioned, we have forayed into blockchain and IoT app development domains. In the coming years, we intend to use cutting-edge tools and advancements in futuristic technologies like AR, AI, VR, and ML. In line with our vision to bring automation to the client’s business processes, we are going to use the latest techniques in developing custom-oriented software solutions.
What’s your approach to creating interactive and addictive UX/UI of mobile apps and websites?
Well, we always keep the end users in mind while developing mobile apps and websites. Apart from adopting an agile approach, our experienced designers take care of every aspect of UI/UX and the usability of our solutions. We do usability testing and ensure that our app and web solutions provide an engaging experience with visually appealing design patterns.
What are various technologies you used to make this app a reality?
We develop Android, iOS, and cross-platform apps that can meet the client’s business requirements. We use cutting-edge tools and technologies to transform our client’s creative idea into reality.
Here are technology stacks we use so far
For Android app development
Kotlin
Java
Android SDK
Photoshop
Android Material App Design
 For iOS app development
Swift
Objective-C
iOS SDK
Cocoa Touch
AppCode
Cocoa Touch
Apple Xcode
ARKit
Test Flight Beta
For Cross-platform/Hybrid app development
HTML5
CSS
JavaScript
Grunt, Gulp, Bower
AngularJS
Ionic
React Native
PhoneGap
Xamarin
Native Script
How has being an entrepreneur affected your family and social life?
Luckily my social life was not much affected because of my wife’s proactive approach. Her cooperation has helped me to manage and improve the social relations in the initial years of establishment of Solution Analysts.
However, family life was somewhat affected as I could not spend much time at home at the beginning of Solution Analysts. Here also, I should mention that my wife has assisted me a lot. She handled all the administration-related activities so that I could focus on the project execution. After some years, everything has got settled and I could maintain the subtle balance between work and life.
Whom do you consider your idol or biggest motivator?
Well, to start with, my father has remained the biggest motivator throughout my life. His life lessons still guide and lead me toward achieving the goals. However, I do admire many people for various qualities like courage, innovative approach, and leadership.
 Share best 3 applications which your company created or used for business.
In our exciting journey of over eight years, we have developed over 350 apps for the global clientele. We have made many innovative and outstanding apps to date. I would like to mention WYA App and Threadshare App from the array of best apps.
Way - Parking, Dining, Events (Free, App Store) →
What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
Playing Cricket and watching movies are my favorite pastimes. I am a family man and always prefer to keep the family members with me. For example, when I play cricket with my team, I like to keep my son with me as a player.
I spend the non-work time reading self-help books. I occasionally do meditation and other activities that keep me away from any sort of stress.
Thread: Share What You Wear (Free, App Store) →
Have you raised any funding? Or Have any plans for the funding?
No. We have not raised any funding yet. Also, there is no plan for the same in the near future.
Give your opinions on how far this app revolution can make a difference in the technology world?
One thing is certain, mobile apps are here to stay. The level of app complexity is going to increase amid growing competition and ever-changing business requirements. This app revolution is going to continue for a long time, and technological advancements will make an impact on the development process.
Thinking about the difference made by the app revolution in the technology world, I would mention that as we witness the paradigm shift from individual apps to an enterprise software solution, we will see the advent of more advanced and next-gen apps with futuristic features. Such apps will be capable of offering the benefits of IoT and AI to the users.
What are the challenges you see in the outsourcing industry?
The outsourcing industry is thriving, but unfortunately, many service providers still rely on traditional processes while working on the client’s projects. The suppliers are confused about selecting the right outsourcing partner amid the growing number of stereotype outsourcing companies.
In coming years, as the suppliers are getting more concerned about their projects, the outsourcing companies need to address the challenges related to timezone difference, integration of advanced technology, use of cutting-edge tools, and the like to survive and thrive.
What’s more, though the virtual world can make the life easy when it comes to finding an outsourcing service provider, the in-person meetings are still preferable to get a clear picture and build the long-term business relationships. Though online validation is good, the physical validation has an upper hand.
Mention the ways you use to introduce new updates to your team.
Well, I never enforce any new thing directly on my team. Whenever I come across any technology update, I get into it before introducing it among my team of directors. At SA, we have no constraints of predefined processes because technology keeps on changing.
Whenever there is a need to implement technological advancements, I facilitate a healthy discussion between our directors of different departments. I also define the accountability and responsibility of all the directors and project managers to keep their respective teams updated.
What’s your step to enter into wearable tech and IOT revolution?
We’ve already entered in these futuristic technologies. We are working on providing end-to-end IoT solutions to the clients. Right now, we are actively present in the prototyping of the IoT app and providing consultancy to our esteemed clients to get the most of this revolutionary technology. We aim at offering enterprise-grade solutions from devices to app development to implementing the IoT network in the business system.
Anything, you would like to say to our readers, upcoming entrepreneurs or Startup companies?
Well, I find the posts of App Story interesting. I am sure that readers can stay informed by reading the App Story blogs.
For entrepreneurs and startups, I wish them all success. They should always remember that there is no secret sauce for success. If you follow ethical ways and focus on your goals, you can achieve success for sure. Also, never expect to make money overnight. When you focus on raising funds without establishing your business, you may end up making a mess.
The post Interview With Kalpesh Patel CEO and Founder Solution Analysts appeared first on AppStory.
via AppStory
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Don&#039;t Let The General Electric Noise Distract You From The Bigger Picture
New Post has been published on http://indolargeprints.com/dont-let-the-general-electric-noise-distract-you-from-the-bigger-picture/
Don't Let The General Electric Noise Distract You From The Bigger Picture
Calling a spade a spade, all the suggestions that General Electric (GE), could, and probably should, cut its dividend aren’t off base. The company’s a train wreck right now. On a mathematical/GAAP basis, it can’t justifiably afford to maintain its current payout, which is only half of what it was a year ago.
Equally obvious is activist investor Nelson Peltz’s recent suggestion that GE is seriously considering a significant breakup. Nobody really doubted that’s at least one of the things new CEO John Flannery had in mind when in January he said all options were on the table. (Observers weren’t thrilled with the idea then, but have warmed to it now, but that’s a different story.)
And, if we’re being honest, nobody was truly shocked when Flannery said last month that the company’s energy division wasn’t on the road to recovery yet; most investors know there’s no quick fix to what really ails General Electric.
So why all the wild swings to news that really isn’t news? Because the market doesn’t “get” GE right here, and right now. It’s little more than an instrument of speculation, which is anything but normal for the iconic blue chip.
The good news is, the unusual situation the company – the stock – is in actually sets up an opportunity for long-term investors that can look past the headlines d’jour.
Perspective
It’s maddening how overused the Benjamin Graham axiom “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine” is used, so it’s with great trepidation I invoke it now.
On the other hand, if the shoe fits and the cliché applies… well, you get it. GE shares remain mired in hysteria, and that’s preventing long-term-minded investors from seeing what’s plausibly in store one year from now, let alone three years from now. In the end though, where GE is likely to be three years from now is in better shape than the market’s giving it current credit for.
Analysts think so anyway. Take a look.
Source: Thomson Reuters/image made by author
But cash flow? Yeah, that’s a hang-up, though not as much as one might fear. A closer look at General Electric’s books clarifies that on an operational basis, GE is cash flow positive. It’s just not cash flow positive enough right now to service its pension and debt obligations and also make meaningful, much-needed investments in growth that will supply more cash flow in the foreseeable future.
Maybe that’s in the cards sooner than we’re being led to believe though.
Yes, the power division is a liability. There’s at least a path to profitability in the arena though. Flannery explained during the first quarter call:
“First, we continue to have leading technology, deep domain, digital solutions and broad and deep customer relationships. We continue to be viewed as a go to provider in our industry and we are fighting for every opportunity in the market.
On the cost side, in an industry that clearly has excess capacity, we are aggressively moving to right size our footprint and base cost. We took out $800 million of structural cost in 2017 and an additional $350 million in the first quarter. We are on track to exceed our $1 billion target for 2018 and headcount and sites are coming down….
…We are driving out cost and addressing the quality issues we had last year. The team has introduced a new sales force compensation program specifically aimed at driving transactional services and margins. We have a new leadership team in our supply chain and they are reinvigorating the use of lean and Six Sigma to drive better execution. The H cycle time is down 20%. Ultimately our goal is to cut this another 50% or more…
… we are also exiting non-core assets as we simplify the business.”
OK, it’s not sexy, but it was never going to be. It’s a multi-year project, and a long-term project that becomes increasingly viable each day crude oil prices linger above $60 per barrel. Corporations aren’t fully opening their wallets until they know capital expenditures on GE’s power wares make sense.
In the meantime, aviation and healthcare are still performing well, and growing. The IATA forecasts that air traffic demand will double over the course of the coming 20 years, and the need for healthcare equipment is never going away even if that market is ever-changing. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reckoned that healthcare spending would grow 5.5% per year through 2026, largely driven by the 10,000 baby boomers that are retiring every day.
Meanwhile, the decision to shed its locomotive business is a big step towards the streamlining of the company that will ultimately unlock the value Flannery and Peltz (among others) have been talking about for a while.
Baby steps.
Green Shoots from GE Stock
To that end, some bulls are occasionally peeking their heads out in the meantime, planting seeds for a few green shots from the stock.
This is where things get interesting, and tricky. All of the technical recovery efforts made thus far have been up-ended. Even the best technical rebound we’ve seen in months – the one from last month – was largely wiped away. Take a closer, second look at the chart though. The tumbles are hurting less and less, and the rallies are making more and more progress.
Source: TradeStation
It’s still a fits-and-starts process, but the tide is turning.
It’s also turning more than you might guess with that second glance. The rising Chaikin line (bottom) says there’s a good amount of volume behind the recovery effort. Those bulls aren’t terribly vocal, but they’re putting their money where their mouth isn’t.
It’s largely a matter of greater confidence that will get – and keep – the stock back on track.
That confidence will be built on someone else being willing to stick their neck out, by the way. Moreover, that confidence will be built on the heels of certainty that the company is indeed going to unlock value by selling pieces of itself. Again though, that’s a multi-year process. The market is slowly starting to digest this reality, which old-school GE shareholders never had to chew on in the past.
Patience
It’s still more of a trade than an investment, to be clear. But, it’s one of those trades that could slowly morph into an investment… that rarest kind of stock picks.
Fanning those would-be-bullish flames even more than getting better income out of the company’s revenue-bearing assets will be, as was noted, more apparent progress on the breakup front. As Stifel analyst Robert McCarthy recently put it, GE is only rated a hold “absent a more material, dynamic breakup.”
That stance puts Peltz’s comments from late last week back in the spotlight, reminding investors that Flannery wasn’t just blowing smoke a few months ago when he alluded to the same. It’s coming, even if investors can’t fully see it yet, and even if they can’t fully appreciate the fullness of the prospect. Melius Research estimated late last month, when General Electric shares were priced at $13.28, that such a price “likely undervalues the assets by 25 percent or more” were the company broken into marketable pieces. With a current price of still less than $14, the bulk of Melius’ upside is in front of the stock.
It’s also possible that even Melius’ outlook underestimates how well GE’s aviation and healthcare arms could perform.
As for a target, Melius effectively says a post-breakup value would make GE stock worth around $16.60, at least. The chart wrestled with the $17.35, as support, and resistance, late last year and early this year. The figure is still within Melius’ “or more” range.
The toughest part of such a trade? Sticking with it even when the headlines are terrifying. They’re taking smaller and smaller bites out of the stock, as investors understand the situation better and better. It’s a process though, and GE shares aren’t fully out of perception-purgatory just yet. They’re getting closer though, and may be worth the risk of getting into before it fully happens.
The risk profile plunges dramatically if-and-when GE shares hurdle the converged 20-day and 50-day moving average lines at $14.39.
If you’re looking for stock picks that are less speculative and better-founded investments, take a test drive to The Well-Rounded Investor service. You’ll get top-down sector analysis and bottom-up market analysis that identifies the market’s best bets… names you may have never found on your own.
Want to know if we add General Electric to The Well-Rounded Investor portfolio? Better yet, want to know if we like a particular pick more than GE? Take a free two-week test drive to see what this new kind of newsletter is all about. There’s a new pick cued up for later this week.
Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, but may initiate a long position in GE over the next 72 hours.
I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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seanmeverett · 7 years
Text
Review of KPCB’s 2017 Internet & Tech Trends
Learnings from a product person’s perspective of a 350-page deck
I. Setting the Stage
At the pace the tech news goes these days, you’ve probably already forgotten all about Mary Meeker’s latest gem of a trends report. This year was a doozy. Over 350 pages. Analysts, get you some sleep.
The slides are embedded below to make this easier and so you can follow along with our comments of how to interpret these findings. Use this to build your own startup, innovate at the company you work at, or just to learn something new.
Knowledge is a tool that must continue to be sharpened.
http://ift.tt/2tQfhrR
II. Advertising & Retailing
p5: global internet users and smart phone growth has essentially stopped. We’ve reached the fat middle of the market in terms of spreading and have plugged in half the human species. The only thing that’s spread further is life support (oxygen, water, food) and electricity. New enablement technology diffused? Check.
p9: adults now spend nearly a full working day interacting with tech and digital media in the US. So, you’ve got your work job and now you’ve got your fun job. The convergence has already begun. Social media marketers isn’t just some joke job. It’s a skill of the new economy.
p13: this “time spent vs ad dollars spent” chart has been out of whack for years. It’s finally getting in sync. Which means its time for a new medium to get released. Only this time, it’s going to be so personalized, it’s basically a reflection of you.
p14: the internet is our new television, is our new radio, is our new book.
p15: if you’re buying ads, trying to target a certain demo to create a conversion into a sale, you basically only have one choice: Google or Facebook.
P16–25: ads is where almost all of the money is flowing in tech. You may find it boring, but don’t forget, boring = cash flow.
p27: I’ve never been a fan of interactive or dynamic ads. It makes the user do two things they hate: 1) sit through another damn ad, and 2) you’re not going to make me interact with it?! Oy, the best ad doesn’t look, feel, taste, or sound like an ad. It’s compelling content.
p32: Google is basically the digital world’s most pervasive and compelling product. Because it makes people pay to be next to the stuff you’re looking for. In the real world, that would be like some dude following you around a museum asking if you want to go buy this paint brush or eat at Denny’s next to a picture of food. Not knocking it, it’s an incredible business, but there’s a lesson here in that the digital world has different rules than the real one. Expect that lesson to keep playing itself out over the coming decades.
p35: future ads are going to be pics instead of text. Humans process pics way faster. Pinterest and Snap might have an opportunity against the Googs here, but the search habit is so embedded in the human populace that now it’s part of the web browser URL bar. Snap nor Pinterest has that level of OS access.
p39: retail and brands. It’s not about just showing your product in context anymore. We believe it’s about creating an experience around your product that customers want to come for. An example is throwing a music festival in the summer if you’re a bottled water company. You create the context and leave your product as the only option. That’s how you reach Millennials and Gen Z. And Amazon.com is how you reach adults with kids and no free time. It ain’t rocket science, it’s just execution.
p40: Will Smith saved us from aggressive aliens. We appreciate him. And he was a former math guy so, street credibility.
p44: AR is going to be interesting. Yet to be seen how pervasive it will become from a visual perspective until we have the glasses that don’t look like cell phones strapped to our heads. Or as I call them, “Noggin Boxes”.
p45: AI Assistants, to me, are the promise of truly invisible software. Many have talked about it, but you can’t just say what you want and have it work right all the time, as well people are very uncomfortable talking to a machine in public. It just feels weird. No amount of NLP or AI is going to change human behavior. It’s going to have to jump the shark in favor of neural laces where I think it and it happens.
p53: customer support survey where people tell you what they want. I’ve got a better solution. Make your product and service so great that it makes support obsolete. I know, easier said than done, but it’s a goal that means your business is around forever. Look at Vaynerchuck. He didn’t sell wine. He sold “I’ll drive to you in a blizzard with a power generator to keep your business open and house warm”. Then you never buy from another wine seller again. That’s extreme support.
P55: that little intercom chat window is freaking everywhere.
more retail stuff with a bunch of metrics and pipelines and yaddy yaddy
P66: apartment lobbies become storage facilities for packages. Boy can I attest to this in Cali as well as NYC. It’s a really smart notice by the folks who put this together. What it means is again: Amazon is your retail strategy. Forget store fronts, websites, apps, etc. Just drive traffic to Amazon pages. Get Affiliate commissions on top of it. Reduce friction, just get the damn sale. Your brand is in front of people when they get the product home. You don’t need to own the web experience.
p68: food delivery is a huge deal. We’re tired, we’re sick of cooking, and entire startup businesses have been created on the back of a grubhub page. It’s like amazon for real-time, hot food. It’s a big deal and will only get bigger. Cheap + Healthy + Filling. That’s your magic formula.
p71: AI for clothing design of the future. Don’t count it out.
p73: people don’t want to just try stuff on. They want to get it now to wear now. Real-time is the key to in-person experience. That’s the excitement, not to wait for it to be shipped. Not a fan of the “waiting” model.
p74: Wal-Mart’s in real trouble.
p75: meanwhile, Amazon Basics is a gold mine.
III. Interactive Gaming
p81: if you’re on the internet, it’s highly likely that you game. Play is built into human nature because it’s escapism.
p82: I used to watch a room full of developers talk about and watch online gaming while they coded. This was back in 2013. Cooperative esports is not a fad, but something that’s going to be around for some time. The new sports agent will be after these huge sponsorship dollars.
p84: people in Asia like video games. No secret here.
p85: pretty even split amongst all age groups on who games.
p88–97: there’s a reason gamification works. The problem is always around defining and designing a concept called “fun”. Just because you slap points on something doesn’t automatically make taking out the trash fun.
p99: Twitch ain’t goin nowhere. Level that up with Minecraft and then add in some cryptocurrency where it becomes your job and watch a new economy blossom in a digital universe completely outside the confines of governmental taxation, which means you get to keep 33% more of that money you spent time making.
p101: I’ve never played fantasy sports but all my friends have been playing since we were kids. Weird that it took until only recently for the likes of Fan Duel to show up.
p103: more game machanics. Understanding that they exist is the first step, the next step is applying them correctly. Easier said than done. Trust me from experience running a gamification product for brands to increase engagement via social media.
p114: gaming beats social in engagement. The problem is that you eventually master the game but not your social network. So more value is continually added to Facebook, Insta and Snap while the creators of FarmVille, Clash of Clans, and Angry Birds have to keep creating hits. And content is hard.
p120: tech and sports has been talked about for decades but there hasn’t really been a breakthrough killer product that everyone swears by. Maybe the bracelet / watch that tracks steps but that’s pretty low-grade in terms of information density.
p123: state of the art for sports platforms is just analytics dashboards with some gamification added on top. But does that really increase your performance? Sure it helps to know you did a few more steps than yesterday and that you’re on a streak for working out 3 days in a row, but you kind of already knew that intuitively didn’t you? Where’s the leverage? Much like the iPhone made computing pervasive, did the Apple Watch really make sports pervasive and higher performance? It seems there’s a big hole that still exists in this area until we start tracking automatically what food goes into our body, the digestion that takes place, how exercise and sitting affects that, alcohol, work and environmental factors, and then gives you suggestions for improving your health.
p129: gamification in industrial settings is highly important. It gets talked about too much in consumer and not enough in aerospace, automotive, surgery, military, industrial manufacturing, robotics, etc.
p132: the volume of digital information created is on a power law curve, we’re still just at the very beginning.
p133: Moore’s Law still isn’t coming to a close, regardless of how many people talk about it. Because there is always room to pay more for faster compute.
p138–145: esports is a big deal. It’s growing 40% every year now reaching half the population of the United States.
p150: do trends in gaming predict future product around all of tech, much like porn used to in the video production space?
IV. Media
Editor’s note: after years of experience building online video/audio platforms, media businesses, and social apps, we are undoubtedly going to have a biased view about this section so you can either take it as we know some inside baseball or we’re bat shit crazy. So all I can promise is the unvarnished truth from my perspective.
p153: music streaming is pretty simple — make sure you have the song I want to listen to, give me some new songs I’d like but haven’t found on my own, and then charge me a flat monthly fee like $10 for it. Execute on those 3 things and you’ve got yourself some good bacon. Of course, Amazon is the real wild card here because as a Prime member, you get music plus a whole host of other things.
p154: online video vs cable tv is also very simple — give me the channels I want to watch, new movies the moment they hit the theaters, and charge me a low monthly fee. High quality is the name of the game here. Hollywood blockbusters and some personal favorites (HGTV, ESPN, HBO, Science Channel, etc). That’s it. Everything else is window dressing and noise. Apple Music is getting into Hollywood with original content. Netflix is killing the game but their library aside from originals is waning. Amazon Prime is coming in hot, and watch out for Facebook’s wildcard of a movie in a text message.
p158: streaming music subs are growing because nobody needs to buy albums anymore. Truthfully it’s Apple Music (install base of devices) vs Spotify (the O-G-riginal).
p161: Netflix subs are also growing rapidly as they expand their service globally. But the only thing that matters is getting the latest Hollywood blockbusters on their service. If they can’t continue to do that, it’s going to be a long painful death. I’m talking Avengers, Star Wars, etc. Basically, Disney. Which isn’t going to happen because they have their own streaming service.
p163: recommendation engines. Oy, have I heard the pitch for this a million and one times. Again, we’re back to “Ok this title I’ve never heard of is interesting, but what’s the new Hollywood flick I can watch?”. That has nothing to do with recommendation engines and everything to do with high quality content licensing deals with the studios.
p165: it’s YouTube vs Facebook. The former gets longer form, the latter shorter form. They’ll both battle for movie/TV-grade content but that’s Netflix, Amazon, iTunes. So there’s your split. Facebook is quick-hit social, YouTube is UGC around 15 mins, Netflix is originals and TV shows with some movies, iTunes is your Hollywood rentals and purchases, and Amazon is just the everything all the time so maybe one day.
p167: interesting that every one of the social networks is growing at the exact same MAU rate.
p171: the older you are, the more you watch. Less of a social / eventful life?
p173: pay TV will never go away because it’s more economical to pay the $100 to $200 per month for the cable, internet, TV bundle and get all the channels than trying to buy only internet service and then pay for one off channels and then movies on top of it. The reality is a mixed bag approach. Some internet, some cable, some OTT.
p176: the goal is a personalized linear channel. You tune into one TV station, let it play all day every day, and it’s filled with everything you want when you want it. Social videos, educational stuff, movies, TV, etc. Disclosure: I’ve got a patent for inventing this and for mobile live streaming.
V. The Cloud
p181: might surprise you to see the public cloud really hasn’t taken much of the spend away from a traditional data center / private data center.
p182: but AWS is kicking everyone else’s ass, which is no big surprise.
p182: security is a big deal, and as cyber becomes ever more important in the global economy (i.e., digital transformation), expect some big exits in this space due to the sheer need to protect not just information, but money.
p184: at this point, most people are familiar with APIs where as recently as 5 years ago I did some research and could find only about 10,000 public APIs in existence. Today, containerization is in a similar space. One way to think of it is like a computer dedicated to one API. Also, edge computing could be the biggest boon to digitizing our world, but the problem is fitting something powerful enough in a small space that doesn’t suck in a lot of electricity. You need efficient chips and efficient AI (i.e., connectomics).
p187: boy have I spent a lot of time on enterprise software. SAAS-based cloud products. It’s the playbook played out across Silicon Valley and internal digital transformation teams everywhere, now.
p188: at this point it seems laughable to say Design Is Important for digital products. Though the requirements for usability is much less, considering the Snapchat generation grew up with this stuff and can reverse engineer a UI just by tapping it.
p190: we don’t hear enough about cybersecurity, mostly because it’s a tight-knit group of folks who prefer to remain anonymous and protected. But it’s a big deal, especially in closed door conversations. Interpolate this to our infrastructure systems like power, water, etc and you start to realize how incredibly important this becomes.
p191: spam’s up? I would call many ecommerce shopping emails spam but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Where’s the startups that lets you unsubscribe from everything with a push of a single button?
VI. China
p195: China has nearly 4x the number of people of America with an economy and excess cash flow growing at staggering rates. Personally, I feel they’re iterating faster than the US and Rest of World in key innovation areas like AI, Space, Manufacturing and a single mobile app for the entire country. Watch out when they launch their own cryptocurrency that lets them optimize their monetary policy in real-time. I’ll invest in that ICO.
p196: service output is going up and to the right.
p197: it’s no secret that private enterprise fuels growth. China just proved it in a huge way over the last decade.
p198: focusing on health care (large population) and IT (the future). Smart.
p200–203: almost everyone in the country is connected to the internet via mobile and they spend almost all their time on it. Hello WeChat.
p204: No surprise on WeChat, but look at Tencent’s share of time. Crazy. More than half of China’s internet time is spent on a Tencent property, with a bit more on Alibaba to buy stuff. That’s like Facebook + Amazon in the US.
p209: live is a big deal over there, and has become an economy in and of itself. People are supplementing their work income with 24x7 livestreaming of their lives and getting paid by viewers with stickers and weird emojis. It’s also the place where many big companies are investing their R&D dollars because gaming and live are providing higher returns than investing in their own businesses. Isn’t that crazy? I take the money I make from my business and invest in this app over here because I’m going to get more money back. At what point does it suck up a lion’s share of the entire economy?
p210: Live is money.
p213: bikes are big in China because they’re cheap, don’t take up space, and they can fit in small spaces.
p216: bikes as the last mile of the commute. Interesting that people take a portfolio approach to traveling from A to B.
p219: expect this to explode when China releases their cryptocurrency.
p223: this is a great roundup chart to see which monetary services are getting the most users across China. Payments and Wealth Management, of course.
p229: China’s ad market doesn’t seem as fervorous as America’s. I have a feeling because the economy is more about direct payments.
VII. India
p233: it’s as big of a population as China, but a much smaller economy as their main export is software engineers instead of manufactured goods. Be careful though, it could be a sleeping giant as the GDP growth rate is the same as China. The US, while big, is only growing about 1/4th as quickly.
p234: far fewer of India’s population is connected to the internet. Only about 1/3rd compared to about 3/4th in China and almost everyone in the US. Internet penetration is highly correlated to the wealth of a nation.
p235: Android’s big there.
P236: smartphone shipments have basically flatlined.
p237: getting access to the internet is expensive for the majority of the population, hence the drag on the economy.
p242: China is selling India their phones.
p246: China is also India’s most-used web browser.
p247: US, China, India dominate the Android app store.
p251: expect internet usage to continue to increase based on bringing costs down which will have a positive impact on India’s future economic prospects. Internet > Education > Skills > Compensation > Productivity > GDP
p252: we’re all just humans regardless of the (country’s) name on the door. So yah, streaming music and video is big in India too.
p254: India’s leadership is focused on the right thing, see p251 above.
p260: a singular digital ID is smart. What is it in the US? Driver’s license and Facebook. In China? WeChat profile.
p262: payments and infrastructure are being built now. What happens when it’s fully built out?
p266–267: mobile is where all the time spent and no surprise that half is on entertainment with 1/3rd on social. Regardless of nationality, we’re all still humans.
p270: a massive portion of India’s compensation is spent on health care. Decreasing this cost + increasing access to the internet are the main two levers to increasing economic well being.
p274: VCs are investing in startups, helping to drive growth, though it has flatlined in recent quarters.
p278–279: I know that India’s young population presents a large opportunity and know some big transportation companies looking to capture that market.
p281: oh god, are you still with me? If you’ve happened across this chart, I think we’ve lost you. My fingers just got tired looking at this one.
p284: the US leads in number of years of schooling, and India trails far behind. Internet = education because it shows what’s possible and gives you the resources for free to get started.
p286: females in India aren’t working.
VIII. Healthcare
p289: have a digital helper analyze, diagnose, and prevent issues with your health is the holy grail. We’re close to that future, but knowing how lagging the healthcare industry is with tech overall, it’s going to be an uphill battle unless individuals take matters into their own hands. For examples, CIOs at hospital systems are focused on reducing sepsis which directly saves lives, but moving medical records and software to the cloud is a painful, decades-long process.
p292: health IoT including wearables are likely to expand in the coming years. Eventually the whole nanobots in your blood helping cells fix themselves in real-time is a nice thought but we’re a long, long way off from that.
p293: more blood and health tests are now available through labs, which means diagnosis is cheaper, faster, and more accurate.
p294: pay attention to sensors that are included in wearables. Without a sensor, there’s no data to analyze. So, the most pervasive (an accelerometer) will only give you number of steps. Not very helpful in helping you manage your health but I suppose it’s something. Once we get into heart rate, blood sugar, metabolism, etc we will start to unlock some pretty cool stuff. Then it requires a highly efficient, but low-powered AI like Biologic Intelligence to understand it all and detect anomalies in real-time.
p295: I’d say Google through Verily and Apple with their Watch wearable are best positioned from the big tech companies. Interesting that Amazon doesn’t really have a health-centric product yet. Now that they own Whole Foods and are pushing into groceries and food, expect that trend to continue into personalized health as part of a Prime subscription.
p299: patient data is necessary for understanding someone’s health but the flip side is pre-existing conditions and the impact it might have on you getting health insurance coverage, the price of your premium, and getting services paid for. Double-edged sword, this.
p302: look at this crazy exponential curve in medical knowledge. And there’s not much out there on the impact food we ingest has on our health. Expect this trend to continue into the future as our population gets bigger and older.
p304: personalization isn’t just for targeted advertising campaigns, biomarkers from DNA sequencing can be used to target clinical trials to get you the help you need from new procedures, drugs, etc.
p305: data, it works.
p306: the young are paying attention earlier in life. They’re listening to their parents and grandparents ailments and stories.
p309: a friend founded a telepharm startup called, well, Telepharm. He was early on the trend, but when you can’t get all the way to the doctor in person, live streaming is a great second best alternative.
p311: back to the tech adoption curve that I linked to at the very top of this analysis, of course we expect health to be adopted quickly. As we like to say in tech circles, find a problem and offer a solution. Health, when it’s a problem, is all you care about and are price inelastic.
p313: costs are decreasing.
p314–318: number of genomes sequenced are increasing. Just wait until we start capturing people’s connectomes.
IX. Innovation
p320: I take issue with this statement. It assumes that innovation is all it takes to raise capital, get big, and sell product. It doesn’t. Even scientific invention isn’t enough. You need to have relationships. Lots and lots of relationships to get capital from investors, corporate coffers, and customers. Then and only then does a product matter that someone can buy.
p322–325: US and China are dominating tech. The question is who’s iterating faster. Because that’s the slope of the line. And whichever line is steeper, predicts the winner. I have a gut feeling I know who it is.
p329–331: IPO & VC, a confusing chart with way too much going on but I think the story is it’s been more or less steady for about a decade. M&A is about the same, even though it cuts the timeline in the chart in half. Be careful, your graph axes.
X. Macro
p336: in the US we pay about 1/3rd of our income to the government. The question is what is it spent on. Unsurprisingly, health care for older people, defense so nobody hurts us, and interest on all that debt because taxes don’t cover the spending.
p337: the USA is not a healthy business if you look at it like a startup. Look at all that red.
p338: debt is highest during war. But that money gets spent somewhere.
p340: the US has the highest debt level in the world. China doesn’t even make the list because they’re printing money doing all the world’s manufacturing.
p341: giving people money and services for doing nothing is a great way to get an entitlement mentality. That’s why they’re called Entitlements and that’s where a lot of America’s income is going. It does help people who want to do something for that income, but are physically or mentally unable. That’s part of what a government is for. To help those citizens who can’t help themselves. But the fact that it’s increasing so rapidly is troubling.
p344: debt is debt. Most Americans have a bunch of debt in houses. Second is student loans. So living and educating. Not a great sign if you want to grow.
p347–348: immigrants account for a lot of value creation.
p350: as a world, we’re better off than we were. That’s progress as a species and something to be positive about.
— Sean Everett
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