13 Business Books That Will Blow Your Mind Having never taken a business class in college I find that I read and listen to a lot of business books to round out my education. The books usually aren't "How to Manage Your Cash Flow" but rather get me to rethink the way I run my business, which--despite no business classes or diploma--continues to be in business 13 plus years after I started it. In that time, here are 13 of the books that had the biggest impact on how I run my business (in no particular order): Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink: If you supervise anyone in your business, this book is a must read. It shows that what science knows about motivation, business isn't putting into practice. In fact, many of the incentives we create can actually de-motivate our employees. The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham: I wanted to have at least one book that was dedicated to small business and the entrepreneurial spirit.
How to negotiate better than 99% of people In college, I had the opportunity to teach a “Student-Initiated Course,” or basically a course on whatever I wanted. So I got together with two of my friends and we put together a course on religious studies. Now, Stanford gave us incredible flexibility to teach essentially whatever we wanted…but the student instructors never got letter grades — it was always Pass/No Pass (everybody always passed), issued by the sponsoring professor. Until we came along. You see, I was never the smartest person in any school I attended. We would basically write our own ticket! One of my co-instructors was amazed that I convinced the sponsoring professor to agree. But my other co-instructor hesitated. To give you some context, this guy was a PhD student in Computer Science at Stanford and had previously attended IIT, one of the most competitive technical universities in the world. “Dude,” I said, “what’s your problem? “No, Ramit,” he said, “I don’t know about this. “What the hell?” I just stared at him. 1. 2.
Top 10 Common Faults In Human Thought Humans The human mind is a wonderful thing. Cognition, the act or process of thinking, enables us to process vast amounts of information quickly. For example, every time your eyes are open, you brain is constantly being bombarded with stimuli. You may be consciously thinking about one specific thing, but you brain is processing thousands of subconscious ideas. The Gambler’s fallacy is the tendency to think that future probabilities are altered by past events, when in reality, they are not. Reactivity is the tendency of people to act or appear differently when they know that they are being observed. Pareidolia is when random images or sounds are perceived as significant. Interesting Fact: the Rorschach Inkblot test was developed to use pareidolia to tap into people’s mental states. Self-fulfilling Prophecy Self-fulfilling prophecy is engaging in behaviors that obtain results that confirm existing attitudes. Interesting Fact: Economic Recessions are self-fulfilling prophecies.
30 Greatest Hip Hop Drum Breaks & Samples of All Time! I absolutely love lists. I make lists for things that I need to do when at home, on my way to work, at work, and even while I’m at the movies. There’s one list that I’ve been thinking of for the past three weeks and has caused me agony beyond reasonable comprehension… The top 10 drum breaks of all time! This is madness, right? Related posts: Tagged as: Beats, Drums, Hip Hop Rap Breaks, Hip Hop Rap Samples
Rise To The Top With Facebook EdgeRank Facebook can be a great place to market your small business; many of you have set up fan pages and are actively building a Facebook audience. One thing you may not realize, though, is that not all of the messages you share on Facebook are being seen by your fans. In fact, many of the posts you share on your Facebook page will only be seen by a handful of people, regardless of how many fans you have. If you want to know why this is and what you can do to optimize your posts for maximum reach, you’ve come to the right place. For the personal profiles of your fans, the default setting on their newsfeed is set to display what Facebook considers “Top News.” Users have to manually select “Most Recent” to see all posts from their friends and pages that they are a fan of. Affinity: Affinity refers to the strength of the Facebook relationship between users. What You Can Do: Encourage conversations with fans on your page and start a dialogue. © 2011 – 2013, VR Marketing Blog.
Business Plan Archive How To Draw A Wave | Club Of The Waves This art tutorial, kindly donated by surfing comic strip illustrator and surf artist Bob Penuelas covers how to draw a wave the Wilbur Kookmeyer way! If you're like me, then you've probably spent a lot of time in high school class daydreaming and doodling a thousand perfect cartoon waves in your notebook. It's safe to say that ninety percent of us surfers have a habit of scribbling perfect waves whenever a pencil is in our hands. Remember, there are millions of ways to draw a wave and hopefully with these simple pointers you'll find a million more. Drawing a basic wave The following illustrations and captions by Bob Penuelas take you through the basic steps of drawing a wave… Step 1 Sketch in the basic shape of the curl, spray, foam and base of the wave. Step 2 Add an extra line running parallel and below the curl line to define the thickness of the lip. Step 3 Add a flow line starting at the lip and curve it around to suggest roundness of the liquid lip. Step 4 Add the rest of the flow lines.
Sampler (musical instrument) An AKAI MPC2000 sampling sequencer (1997) Mellotron EMS Synthi-100 as a part of EMS Musys Fairlight CMI E-mu SP-12 Prior to computer memory-based samplers, musicians used tape replay keyboards, which store recordings on analog tape. The first digital sampler was built by Bruce Haack, which he demonstrated on Mister Rogers Neighborhood in 1967. EMS Musys system, developed by Peter Grogono (software), David Cockerell (hardware and interfacing) and Peter Zinovieff (system design and operation) at their London (Putney) Studio c. 1969. During the 1980s hybrid synthesizers began to utilize short samples (such as the attack phase of an instrument) along with digital synthesis to create more realistic imitations of instruments than had previously been possible. The modern-day music workstation usually uses sampling, whether simple playback or complex editing that matches all but the most advanced dedicated samplers, and also includes features such as a sequencer. Synclavier PSMT rack (1984)
29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses for Your Business Looking for ways to grow your list of newsletter subscribers? There are a ton of ways to get people to sign up for your weekly or monthly email marketing campaigns. I’ve put together a list for you to read, so you have heaps of options for growing your list. Include a link to your newsletter sign up form in the main navigation bar of your website and/or blog. Bonus: Optimize your site for appropriate SEO keywords, and ensure your business is on appropriate online listings. Have any additional ideas? Need more ideas for your next email? Send your next email for free using VerticalResponse. Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally published in September 2009 and has been revamped and updated for accuracy and relevance. © 2016, Janine Popick. About the Author Janine Popick is a contributing author for VerticalResponse.
5 Unconventional Sales Ideas to Help You Land (Many) More Customers. We all want more customers. It doesn’t matter who you are — baker, butcher, or anonymous computer hacker. Getting more consumers is an all-consuming part of everything that you do. And that’s pretty logical. Without customers you find yourself out of work gasping for air. So it’s only natural that you perk up when the topic of winning friends comes around. Heck, you can always learn something from the experts, right? Which is even more troubling because most of what is currently being shelled out as advice is really a pitch to buy a “7 step” CD series on social media advertising. Too late you wake up way too busy, a smidge poorer, and wondering how all the tweeting and Facebook posting is getting you anything more than arthritis in your fingers. So let’s be frank. You can have more customers than you ever imagined. You can be madly successful without selling your soul. And here are a few ways to do that: 1. That’s right. That stuff just doesn’t work any more. Be busy helping people for free. 2.
Photoshop CS4: A Picture Worth a Thousand Words - Layers Magazine | Layers... I love Photoshop techniques that offer all kinds of possibilities for experimentation—and the following tutorial is a perfect example of one of those techniques. In this issue, we’re going to take a portrait and replace the person’s image with text (think 2009 Grammy posters). Pick a portrait that offers good contrast—a photo that’s very dramatic and dark probably won’t work as well. Create a new document (File>New) in a size that’s smaller than your photo: the specifics don’t really matter. Switch back to the photograph. Then, press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to copy the selected pixels onto a new layer. Go back to the Select menu and choose Color Range again. Click the Eye icon next to the Background layer in the Layers panel to hide that layer from view. Click the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. 8 COPY THE PORTRAIT Create a new layer and drag it above the black-and-gray portrait layer.
How to Get a Job Without Experience - Larry Stybel - HBR Now by Larry Stybel | 2:15 PM August 12, 2009 You know the Catch-22: “You can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without a job.” Young job seekers have always faced this dilemma. In today’s shrinking job market, people with years of experience also struggle with it. Whether they face the reality of a layoff, or merely the threat of one, many older workers are trying to reinvent themselves in order to become marketable in a changed economy. Whether you’re launching your career or trying to change its direction, you can get around this Catch-22 with some creativity and humility. Here’s how I did it: I was a clinical psychologist in a community mental health center. Imagine my surprise to learn that I could not find a single company eager to hire me. I couldn’t get business experience without getting hired. At a party, I met Dr. I said to Dr. For the next two months, two days a week, I did my best to help Dr. Neither of those led to new business. What?