The Downside of Entrepreneurial Success; They hit the jackpot once, and then think they have the magic

June 7, 2013, 1:57 p.m. ET

The Downside of Entrepreneurial Success

They hit the jackpot once, and then think they have the magic. It’s up to financial advisers to burst their bubble.

By DAISY MAXEY

Sometimes, the worst thing that can happen to an entrepreneur is being successful.

So say many financial advisers who tell tales of entrepreneurs who hit it big—only to let success go their heads. It’s then up to the advisers to somehow keep their clients from taking subsequent risks that threaten their financial future. Financial adviser Tony DaRoza, for instance, remembers all too well the client who did so well he ended up losing $100 million. After selling his first technology company and taking his second public, the client took only enough money off the table to ensure that his family would be fine and that his children could go to college, recalls Mr. DaRoza, a managing director at the Merrill Lynch Wealth Management unit of Bank of America Corp. BAC +1.36% in San Francisco. Most of the rest disappeared when the tech bubble burst, he says. The problem, Mr. DaRoza says, rests with the “gambling mentality” of some entrepreneurs. A bit of a risk-taking bent is a good thing; it’s how entrepreneurs make their fortune. But after one or several successful business ventures, entrepreneurs may begin to believe they’re infallible. And for some it isn’t just their own endeavors they’re certain of; their confidence in taking risks may kick in when they are approached by a persuasive colleague, acquaintance or family member seeking money for a new venture. Read more of this post

How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives: Annie Dillard on Presence Over Productivity

How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives: Annie Dillard on Presence Over Productivity

“The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less.”

The meaning of life has been pondered by such literary icons as Leo Tolstoy (1904), Henry Miller (1918), Anaïs Nin (1946), Viktor Frankl (1946), Italo Calvino (1975), and David Foster Wallace (2005). And though some have argued that today’s age is one where “the great dream is to trade up from money to meaning,” there’s an unshakable and discomfiting sense that, in our obsession with optimizing our creative routines and maximizing our productivity, we’ve forgotten how to be truly present in the gladdening mystery of life. From The Writing Life (public library) by Annie Dillard – a wonderful addition to the collected wisdom of beloved writers – comes this beautiful and poignant meditation on the life well lived, reminding us of the tradeoffs between presence and productivity that we’re constantly choosing to make, or not:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.

She goes on to illustrate this existential tension between presence and productivity with a fine addition to history’s great daily routines and daily rituals:

The most appealing daily schedule I know is that of a turn-of-the-century Danish aristocrat. He got up at four and set out on foot to hunt black grouse, wood grouse, woodcock, and snipe. At eleven he met his friends, who had also been out hunting alone all morning. They converged “at one of these babbling brooks,” he wrote. He outlined the rest of his schedule. “Take a quick dip, relax with a schnapps and a sandwich, stretch out, have a smoke, take a nap or just rest, and then sit around and chat until three. Then I hunt some more until sundown, bathe again, put on white tie and tails to keep up appearances, eat a huge dinner, smoke a cigar and sleep like a log until the sun comes up again to redden the eastern sky. This is living…. Could it be more perfect?”

Dillard juxtaposes the Danish aristocrat’s revelry in everyday life with the grueling routine of a couple of literary history’s most notorious self-disciplinarians:

Wallace Stevens in his forties, living in Hartford, Connecticut, hewed to a productive routine. He rose at six, read for two hours, and walked another hour—three miles—to work. He dictated poems to his secretary. He ate no lunch; at noon he walked for another hour, often to an art gallery. He walked home from work—another hour. After dinner he retired to his study; he went to bed at nine. On Sundays, he walked in the park. I don’t know what he did on Saturdays. Perhaps he exchanged a few words with his wife, who posed for the Liberty dime. (One would rather read these people, or lead their lives, than be their wives. When the Danish aristocrat Wilhelm Dinesen shot birds all day, drank schnapps, napped, and dressed for dinner, he and his wife had three children under three. The middle one was Karen.)

[…]

Jack London claimed to write twenty hours a day. Before he undertook to write, he obtained the University of California course list and all the syllabi; he spent a year reading the textbooks in philosophy and literature. In subsequent years, once he had a book of his own under way, he set his alarm to wake him after four hours’ sleep. Often he slept through the alarm, so, by his own account, he rigged it to drop a weight on his head. I cannot say I believe this, though a novel like The Sea-Wolf is strong evidence that some sort of weight fell on his head with some sort of frequency – but you wouldn’t think a man would claim credit for it. London maintained that every writer needed a technique, experience, and a philosophical position.

At the heart of these anecdotes of living is a dynamic contemplation of life itself:

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading – that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur’s life a good one, or Thomas Mann’s?

The Writing Life is sublime in its entirety, the kind of book that stays with you for lifetimes.

How to Make Mistakes; “Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are.”

How to Make Mistakes

by SHANE PARRISH on JUNE 6, 2013

In Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, Daniel Dennett, one of the world’s leading philosophers offers a trove of mind-stretching thought experiments, which he calls “imagination-extenders and focus-holders” (intuition pumps). They allow us to “think reliably and even gracefully about really hard questions.”

The first intuition pump is on mistakes.

History Rhymes

The history of philosophy is in large measure the history of very smart people making very tempting mistakes, and if you don’t know the history, you are doomed to making the same darn mistakes all over again.

Learning

Mistakes are not just opportunities for learning; they are, in an important sense, the only opportunity for learning or making something truly new. Before there can be learning, there must be learners. There are only two non-miraculous ways for learners to come into existence: they must either evolve or be designed and built by learners that evolved. Biological evolution proceeds by a grand, inexorable process of trial and error — and without the errors the trials wouldn’t accomplish anything.

Evolution is the Enabling Process of Knowledge

Evolution is one of the central themes of this book, as all my books, for the simple reason that it is the central, enabling process not only of life but also of knowledge and learning and understanding. If you attempt to make sense of the world of ideas and meanings, free will and morality, art and science and even philosophy itself without a sound and quite detailed knowledge of evolution, you have one hand tied behind your back. … For evolution, which knows nothing, the steps into novelty are blindly taken by mutations, which are random copying “errors” in DNA.

The Key to Good Mistakes

The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them — especially not from yourself. Instead of turning away in denial when you make a mistake, you should become a connoisseur of your own mistakes, turning them over in your mind as if they were works of art, which in a way they are. The fundamental reaction to any mistake ought to be this: “Well, I won’t do that again!” Natural selection doesn’t actually think the thought; it just wipes out the goofers before they can reproduce; natural selection won’t do that again, at least not as often. Animals that can learn—learn not to make that noise, touch that wire, eat that food—have something with a similar selective force in their brains. (B. F. Skinner and the behaviorists understood the need for this and called it “reinforcement” learning; that response is not reinforced and suffers “extinction.”) We human beings carry matters to a much more swift and efficient level. We can actually think the thought, reflecting on what we have just done: “Well, I won’t do that again!” And when we reflect, we confront directly the problem that much be solved by any mistake-maker: what, exactly, is that? What was it about what I just did that got me into all this trouble? The trick is to take advantage of the particular details of the mess you’ve made, so that your next attempt will be informed by it and not just another blind stab in the dark. Read more of this post

Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being; Feeling sad, mad, critical or otherwise awful? Surprise: negative emotions are essential for mental health

Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being

Feeling sad, mad, critical or otherwise awful? Surprise: negative emotions are essential for mental health

By Tori Rodriguez  | Wednesday, June 5, 2013 | 40

A client sits before me, seeking help untangling his relationship problems. As a psychotherapist, I strive to be warm, nonjudgmental and encouraging. I am a bit unsettled, then, when in the midst of describing his painful experiences, he says, “I’m sorry for being so negative.”

A crucial goal of therapy is to learn to acknowledge and express a full range of emotions, and here was a client apologizing for doing just that. In my psychotherapy practice, many of my clients struggle with highly distressing emotions, such as extreme anger, or with suicidal thoughts. In recent years I have noticed an increase in the number of people who also feel guilty or ashamed about what they perceive to be negativity. Such reactions undoubtedly stem from our culture’s overriding bias toward positive thinking. Although positive emotions are worth cultivating, problems arise when people start believing they must be upbeat all the time. Read more of this post

Can Positive Thinking Be Negative? Research suggests limits to looking on the sunny side of life

Can Positive Thinking Be Negative?

Research suggests limits to looking on the sunny side of life

By Scott O. Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz  | Tuesday, June 7, 2011 | 9

“Accentuate the positive,” the 1944 song by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen cheerfully implored us. From Benjamin Franklin’s 1750 Poor Richard’s Almanack(which advised readers that “sorrow is good for nothing but sin”) to today’s parade of motivational speakers, Americans have long embraced an optimistic, “can-do” attitude toward life. Plug “positive thinking” into Amazon.com, and you will find a never-ending supply of products designed to help us see life through rose-colored lenses, including a “Power of Positive Thinking” wall calendar and an “Overcoming Adversity with Encouragement and Affirmation” poster series.

In fact, however, positivity is not all it is cracked up to be. Although having an upbeat attitude undoubtedly has its benefits, gains such as better health and wealth from high spirits remain largely undemonstrated. What is more, research suggests that optimism can be detrimental under certain circumstances. Read more of this post

The business lessons behind Disney’s magical experiences

The business lessons behind Disney’s magical experiences

Caitlyn Coverly, Special to Financial Post | 13/06/07 | Last Updated:13/06/06 12:16 PM ET

Michael Colglazier, President of Disneyland Resort, speaks prior to the premiere of Disney’s new stage show “Mickey and the Magical Map” at Disneyland on May 23, 2013 in Anaheim, California.

Last week, 250 GTA business professionals participated in “Disney’s Approach to Business Excellence,” an all day workshop offered through the Disney Institute and organized by McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business in partnership with the Certified General Accountants of Ontario (CGA).

Workshop attendees watched case studies, answered questions, and participated in several group exercises led by Bryan Tabler and Amy Rossi, two facilitators from the Disney Institute and veteran employees of Disney.  The goal of the day was to learn the strategies Disney believes are key to the successful maintenance of The Walt Disney Company. These strategies are regarded as Disney’s five universal assets of a successful business — also known as the Disney Chain of Excellence — made up of leadership excellence, cast excellence, guest satisfaction and financial results/repeat business. Read more of this post

Too much of a good thing: Leaders need to learn to beware of their strengths

Too much of a good thing: Leaders need to learn to beware of their strengths

Jun 8th 2013 |From the print edition

IT IS only natural for leaders to try to make the most of their strengths. The theory of comparative advantage directs people, as well as countries and firms, to focus on what they are good at. Management experts have tended to concur: one of the bestselling business books of recent years is called “Now Discover Your Strengths”, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. When business schools (and indeed business columnists) profile bosses, they often assume that more is better. But is this right? Three more recent books express some doubts. In “Fear Your Strengths”, Robert Kaplan and Robert Kaiser argue that “what you are best at could be your biggest problem.” Forcefulness can become bullying; decisiveness can turn into pigheadedness; niceness can develop into indecision. Read more of this post

Deluded bosses: Who’s behind me? The powerful overestimate the support of underlings

Deluded bosses: Who’s behind me? The powerful overestimate the support of underlings

Jun 8th 2013 |From the print edition

HISTORY is littered with powerful people undone by hubris. Julius Caesar should have ignored the cheers of the Roman crowd and paid heed to the soothsayer. The late Steve Jobs overplayed his hand at Apple as a young man and was kicked out of the company he founded. And then there was Jimmy Cayne.

When Mr Cayne walked out of Bear Stearns for the last time, having been eased out as boss of the ailing bank, he claimed there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Through the tears, he wistfully recalls, heart-broken bankers sent him on his way with a standing ovation. This is not how his staff remember it. So disliked was he that according to “House of Cards”, a book by William Cohan, underlings would ask in meetings: “Is Jimmy staying on? [Because] we’re not coming back for another year of this shit.” Read more of this post

The Hot New M.B.A.: Supply-Chain Management; More Schools Are Ramping Up Their Programs, Adding Majors and Concentrations as Employer Demand Grows

Updated June 5, 2013, 7:46 p.m. ET

The Hot New M.B.A.: Supply-Chain Management

More Schools Are Ramping Up Their Programs, Adding Majors and Concentrations as Employer Demand Grows

By MELISSA KORN

Call it a problem of supply and demand.

With global operations becoming more complex, companies in manufacturing, retail and technology—and the consulting firms that service them—are scrambling to hire people with supply-chain expertise. But these experts are hard to come by.

Sensing growing demand, more than a half-dozen universities have recently introduced undergraduate majors, M.B.A. concentrations and even entire degree programs dedicated to procurement, inventory management and global supply-chain strategy. Read more of this post

Humanities Fall From Favor; Far Fewer Harvard Students Express Interest in Field With Weak Job Prospects

June 6, 2013, 12:15 a.m. ET

Humanities Fall From Favor

Far Fewer Harvard Students Express Interest in Field With Weak Job Prospects

By JENNIFER LEVITZ and DOUGLAS BELKIN

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—The humanities division at Harvard University, for centuries a standard-bearer of American letters, is attracting fewer undergraduates amid concerns about the degree’s value in a rapidly changing job market.

A university report being released Thursday suggests the division aggressively market itself to freshmen and sophomores, create a broader interdisciplinary framework to retain students and build an internship network to establish the value of the degree in the workforce. Read more of this post

Former England cricketer Paul Collingwood lost more than £300,000 of life savings in risky unregulated investments; Many unregulated schemes promise generous upfront tax breaks and the promise of double-digit returns

Former cricketer Paul Collingwood’s investment dreams end in ashes

The former England cricketer Paul Collingwood and his wife are suing their financial adviser, claiming that he lost more than £300,000 of their life savings in risky unregulated investments.

The victims of advisers who sell risky financial schemes include top sports stars Photo: REUTERS

By Emma Simon

7:00AM BST 08 Jun 2013

They have issued a High Court writ against their adviser, Roderick Langham, who worked for Cheshire-based Sigma Wealth Management, which advised a number of other sports stars and has since gone into liquidation.

Mr Collingwood said he had instructed the firm to invest his money for retirement, not gamble it on racy unregulated ventures. Read more of this post

Fiduciary Duty to Cheat? Stock Market Super-Star Jim Chanos Reveals the Perverse New Mindset of Financial Fraudsters

Fiduciary Duty to Cheat? Stock Market Super-Star Jim Chanos Reveals the Perverse New Mindset of Financial Fraudsters

April 1, 2013  |

Editor’s note: This article is the first in a new AlterNet series, “The Age of Fraud.”

Hustlers. Cheaters. Crooks. American business has always had them, and sometimes they’ve been punished. But today, those who cheat and put the rest of us at risk are often getting off scot-free. The recent admission of Attorney General Eric Holder [3] that systemically dangerous megabanks may escape prosecution because of their size has opened a new chapter in fraud history. If you know your company won’t be prosecuted, a perverse logic says that you shouldcheat and make as much money for shareholders as you can.

Jim Chanos is one of America’s best-known short-sellers, famed for his early detection [4] of Enron’s fraudulent practices. In deciding which companies to short (short-sellers make their money when the price of a stock or security goes down), Chanos acts as a kind of financial detective, scrutinizing companies for signs of overvaluation and shady practices that fool outsiders into tlhinking that they are prospering when they may be on shaky financial footing. Chanos teaches a class at Yale on the history of financial fraud, instructing students in how to look for signs of cheating and criminal activity. I caught up with Chanos in his New York office to ask what’s driving the current era of rampant fraud, who is to blame, what can be done, and the ways in which fraud costs us financially and socially. Read more of this post

Indian promoters can learn a lot from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger — and finance has very little to do with it

Business Lessons From Buffett

Indian promoters can learn a lot from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger — and finance has very little to do with it

N MAHALAKSHMI

Barnett Helzberg was at New York’s Plaza Hotel, when he heard a woman holler, “Warren Buffett!” He spun around and yes, it really was. Helzberg did not waste the opportunity — he introduced himself and told Buffett he owned a company that satisfied the “acquisition criteria” laid out by him in the Berkshire Hathaway annual report (Buffett has been listing his acquisition criteria in the annual report for over three decades now). The billionaire investor told him to send across the information. Having sent the details of his company Helzberg Diamonds, he soon found himself in Buffett’s office at Omaha. Buffett looked at him and said, “Well, this will be the fastest deal in history.” When a perplexed Helzberg asked about due diligence, Buffett replied, “I can smell these things Read more of this post

Akio Yamada, who is the CEO of MIRAI Industry, makes the company ‘Paradise of employees’; Yamada’s main philosophy, “Employees are not machines.”

Case study: Akio Yamada, who is the CEO of MIRAI Industry, makes the company ‘Paradise of employees’

June, 2011

< Akio Yamada, who is the CEO of MIRAI Industry, makes the company ‘Paradise of employees’ >

Eng. Jinhyung Park

What do you consider when you choose a company for getting a job? The company which gives you no overworks? The company which guarantees retirement age? The company which gives much of money? It is so hard to choose one. But, there’s a company which is fulfilling everything for employees. It is Mirai Industry Corporation. It has been chosen the greatest work place in the survey in Japan. Now, I will introduce this company for the reader who wants to manage a small company or studies business administration. Read more of this post

How Warren Buffett, Frank Ocean Deal With Soul-Sucking Haters: “Read more than you drink”; “Don’t ever forget the reason you started doing what you do”

HOW FRANK OCEAN, WARREN BUFFETT, AND OTHER BADASSES DEAL WITH SOUL-SUCKING HATERS

IF JERKS ARE BEING JERKY TO YOU, JUST “DON’T EVER FORGET THE REASON YOU STARTED DOING WHAT YOU DO.” THAT AND 5 OTHER SMART TIPS ON NOT LETTING THE STEEZ-CHALLENGED MESS WITH YOUR STEEZ.

BY: DRAKE BAER

As we in the career hustle know, the moment you start doing awesome work, you become become vulnerable to people stoked on shaming others. An example: look at the torrent of heinousness that surrounded Frank Ocean last year after he came out. So how to deal with haters? One option, as Neil Gaiman proclaimed and Ocean exhibited, is to make honeyed, soul-affecting music.

Frank Ocean, “Thinking About You”: A best practice for hate-resilience is to make strange, amazing things

But what about for the people who don’t sing soul? There is hope in the jealous working world, coming from Pioneers Press, the certifiably badass bookbinders from the prairies of Kansas. They recently blogged a few selections from their zine The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad, which is, according to author Adam Gnade, an antidepression handbook and a “guide to a freer, more lawless life.” As proponents of living well-lived lives, please allow us to curate a few of his more punching points below, cordoned off in helpful blockquotes.

1: “People will always shit on the things they’re scared of.”

So scare them. Innovation is heresy.

2: “Read more than you drink.”

Reading books is still one of the best ways to discover new things. Getting drunk probably isn’t–though a few beers may help you be more creative. Read more of this post

Rearden Commerce CEO Patrick Grady argues entrepreneurs see the world not as it is, but how it could be

Brainstorm Tech Spotlight: Patrick Grady, chairman & CEO of Rearden Commerce

June 6, 2013: 12:22 PM ET

Patrick Grady argues entrepreneurs see the world not as it is, but how it could be

FORTUNE — Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech Conference (July 22-24 in Aspen, Colo.) regularly brings together the best and brightest minds in tech innovation. Each week, Fortunewill turn the spotlight on a different conference attendee to offer his or her own personal insight into business, tech, and entrepreneurship. This week, we asked Rearden Commerce Chairman and CEO Patrick Grady to answer 10 questions about life outside of work, the company he admires most, and industry advice for young entrepreneurs. His responses follow. Read more of this post

Roger Bootle, the founder of Capital Economics and columnist for The Daily Telegraph, has appointed advisers to prepare a sale of the business in a deal that could land him a windfall of up to £50m

Roger Bootle looks to sell Capital Economics

Roger Bootle, the founder of Capital Economics and columnist for The Daily Telegraph, has appointed advisers to prepare a sale of the business in a deal that could land him a windfall of up to £50m. Roger Bootle is thought to have been looking at selling up since turning 60 in June last year Photo: Rex Features

By Philip Aldrick

6:00AM BST 07 Jun 2013

Mr Bootle, who owns 68pc of Capital Economics, has retained corporate finance firm Quayle Munro to work on a strategic review. The former HSBC chief economist, who started the independent consultancy in 1999, is thought to have been looking at selling up since turning 60 in June last year. Capital Economics has been growing rapidly, last year making a profit before tax of £4.9m. It had £3.6m of capital and £4.2m of net cash. Consultancies can attract multiples of more than 10 times earnings in a sale, which would value the business at around £70m. Mr Bootle has taken out £1.7m in pay and dividends in each of the past two years. A sale would also see big paydays for senior economists Jonathan Loynes, who holds 14pc of the stock, and Julian Jessop, who has a 7pc stake. Staff own the rest.

Experience has shown that as the BRIC companies expand internationally, many of the factors that contributed to early successes in the home markets are likely to prove irrelevant or even a hindrance

Proactive strategies for emerging market companies

By Professor Allen Morrison – May 2013

Emerging market economies, and especially the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China), continue to experience impressive growth.  Yet despite the progress they have made, the economic growth they have enjoyed risks grinding to a halt unless they can effectively deal with a gaping problem: a lack of effective global leaders. Experience has shown that as the BRIC companies expand internationally, many of the factors that contributed to early successes in the home markets are likely to prove irrelevant or even a hindrance when the company tries to go global.  Read more of this post