Fw: How You Can Build Retention in the Hiring Process

From: The Recruiting Division <info@recruitingdivision.com> Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2015 4:33 AM To: Steve Reply To: The Recruiting Division Subject: How You Can Build Retention in the Hiring Process

800-797-6160 Retention Recruiting Question: "We are suffering from high employee turnover. What can we do to build retention into the hiring process?"     The Recruiting Division's Answer: A shockingly low percentage of new hires go on to stay and succeed in their new positions according to Leadership IQ's Global Talent Management Survey. The study assessed 1463 American companies and 972 Chinese companies on a range of topics, including leadership, engagement, retention, recruiting, and culture. Respondents were human resources executives from companies of different sizes from industries including manufacturing, high-tech, hospital/healthcare/insurance, pharma/biotech/medical device, financial services/banking, and services. Leadership IQ's three year study involved more than 5,000 hiring managers during more than 20,000 hires and found that while hiring managers often focus interviews on skills, lack of technical skills accounts for only 11 percent of new hire failures. The study revealed that only 19 percent of new hires go on to achieve success. Why? Technical Competency is the Wrong Focus Busy hiring managers and recruiters working to fulfill job requisitions most often fixate on verifying technical skills, whether for lack of time or lack of interviewing ability. Leadership IQ's study found this to be the wrong focus as more than 80 percent of new hires have the technical skills but still fail. Technical skills are easy to evaluate. There are many skills tests hiring managers can use, including asking candidates to actually perform the work of the position to evaluate it on the spot. But technical skills are not the only or even the most important skills that employers need in their workforce. The most effective focus during interviews should be on accurately reading and assessing candidates, interviewing skills that most hiring managers don't have and don't understand. The interview is a key part of the recruiting and hiring process necessary to gain critical insight into candidates, but the majority of interviews are not focused on getting this insight. Top Reasons New Hires Fail Leadership IQ reviewed hiring tactics, new hires' performance, personality, and potential, and compiled the reasons new hires failed, defined as being terminated, leaving under pressure, receiving disciplinary action, or getting negative performance reviews. See if your new hires left for any of these reasons: Coachability – Coachability is the number one reason new hires fail, with 26 percent of new hire failures due to their inability to accept feedback from those they work with, including bosses, colleagues, and customers. Emotional Intelligence – A close second to lack of coachability is lack of emotional intelligence, with 23 percent of new hire failures due to their inability to understand emotions, their own and others. Motivation – 17 percent of new hires in Leadership IQ's study failed because of lack of motivation, insufficient drive to succeed and excel in the job. Temperament – 15 percent of new hires failed with attitudes and personalities unsuited to the functions and tasks of the job and conditions of the work environment. Don't Rely on Ineffective Interview Tactics Forget about interview clichés like "Tell me about yourself" and "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" If you are scripting your interview questions from books like "101Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions," stop it right now. Don't rely on gimmicky questions like "If you were a tree, what type of tree would you be?" or leading questions like "We have a team environment here. You've worked on teams before, right?" These are not going to reveal if the candidate is coachable, has emotional intelligence, and is motivated to succeed in the position with your company. To develop the interview questions that are going to be effective in getting the valuable insight into candidates you need, start by looking at your current employees. Define the high-performer attitudes you want Look at your best current employees, the ones with outstanding performance and great attitudes that everyone wants to work with and that your customers compliment. Make a list of up to 10 things that make them high-performers in your organization, such as being collaborative, meeting commitments, or any other traits that make them valuable in their jobs to the business. Define the low-performer attitudes you don't want Look at your current employees again, but this time look for the ones who are "difficult" or "troublemakers" or have some other negative association. List the top things that make them low-performers or less than desirable as employees and co-workers, such as being inflexible, always arguing, or never taking responsibility. Now you have a valuable framework for interviews from which to craft effective interview questions that will reveal the types of candidates you want to hire and the ones you want to avoid.   How to Spot Coachbility Do you know how to spot coachability in a candidate? You're looking for candidates who have been open to input and constructive criticism from bosses, peers, and workgroups, and can make appropriate adjustments in their attitudes and work habits for the good of the company as well as their own careers. Coachability is an important trait in candidates and employees, indicating ability to be flexible and adaptable to your business needs and the requirements of the job. It indicates a willingness to learn, take advice, and control emotions. Derek Lauber of Lightbox Leadership suggests asking candidates directly if they have been coached, what has their experience with coaching been like, and what they think about coaching. Leadership IQ suggests a good way to reveal candidate coachability or lack of it is to ask candidates to describe their former boss, as well as what their former boss would say are their strengths and weaknesses. Open answers from a candidate reveal an ability to accept and appreciate input, while negative or non-answers such as "I don't really know what my former boss would say are my weaknesses" indicate some inflexibility and warrant further questions.   Hire for Attitude to Avoid New Hire Failures If you don't want your new hire failure rate to be in that 81 percent, change your recruiting and hiring process and hire for attitude instead of technical skills. That doesn't mean you don't pay attention to technical skills. Just don't make technical skills the whole focus of your hiring process. How can you know if that candidate in the conference room has the "right attitude" for your company culture and open position? They do not come labeled or prepackage with disclaimers saying "right attitude" or "wrong attitude." In "Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your Employees to Give it Their All, and They'll Give You Even More," Mark Murphy says that unless you have a very well-defined corporate culture like Southwest Airlines (whose culture is "fun"), you'll have to do a little research to figure out what the "right attitude" is that you want to hire. While Southwest Airlines tests candidates for attitude and adaptability to their culture by asking them to change into brown shorts or clown suits when they come in for interviews, you might not have such a clear cut way to identify the attitudes you want to hire. Surveying your frontline employees about the high and low performer traits you identified earlier is what Murphy suggests. He says asking employees and management about the high-performer and low-performer issues, situations, and consequences from their on-the-job experiences with them gives valuable insight and a foundation for developing attitude-focused interview questions.   Interview Questions to Hire for Attitude If you want to get to the heart of candidates' attitudes and how they compare to the high-performer attitudes you want and need in your company, you need to be asking questions about what your high-performers are doing. For example, if your top-flight salespeople consistently keep in touch with your best customers by phone, email, and in person, ask sales candidates how they build relationships with customers. If they say they send an email when there hasn't been an order in a couple of months, they don't have the same attitude toward customers as your top performers. If your best engineers are collaborative idea generators, ask engineer candidates how they work on teams, share information, and get new ideas for projects. If they describe working collaboratively within a diverse team to exchange ideas and research what others are doing in similar areas, they would probably be a good fit for how your company's engineers work. Murphy advises interviewers not to ruin the effectiveness of interview questions by tacking on "…and how you handled it" or "…and what you did" when asking candidates to discuss specific situations. He advises leaving questions open to get better insight. Some examples of interview questions to hire for attitude that Murphy gives: Could you tell me about a time you worked on a team to achieve a goal? Could you tell me about a time – separate from performance appraisal – when you got feedback? Could you tell me about a time you faced competing priorities? Could you tell me about a time you lacked the skills or knowledge to complete a job? NOT "Tell me about a time you missed an important deadline and what you did about it." Or you could develop something like Southwest Airlines' "Coat of Arms" used during the selection process, which is a questionnaire with attitude questions they give candidates to complete so they can assess attitude. Peter Carbonara, writing for Fast Company, describes companies who hire for attitude and train for skills. Companies like Silicon Graphics Inc., with an autonomous and extremely informal culture, whose worldwide staffing director Eric Lane looks for people's passion and fun sides in the selection process. Or Doubletree Hotels Corporation, whose executive vice president of human resources Ann Rhoades asks candidates "Tell me about the last time you broke the rules" to reveal who will fit within their culture of freedom, informality, and flexibility. Some companies, like Nucor Steel, hire for attitude not with questions, but with observations from monitoring construction sites, hiring the plumbers and electricians with the best work habits and practices. However you do it, stop wasting time and start hiring for attitude. Your new hire fail rate will drop and your hiring success rate will increase, and most importantly, you'll build the passionate and engaged workforce your company needs to grow and compete.       What's New 25 June     How Targeted Advice For HR Generalists Human resources professionals today do so much more than filing forms and advertising job openings. From recruitment and staffing, to benefits and compensation, to training and employee development, to legal compliance, they need a wide range of skills and expertise to support business Read more     Accolades "Although we've never used an hourly fee-based contract recruitment team before, we appreciate that they provide quick and positive results and well-vetted candidates who are educated about our business. " Jim, Cloud Billing Solution   Featured Webinar: Talent Data & Sourcing with Swoop! Did you miss our latest webinar? Stacy Chapman, with Swoop Talent, shows us how to find the right talent, mine your ATS, and maximize the value of your recruiting data!   | |

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Fw: The day I realized I was an alpha male...

From: Michael Ellsberg <info@ellsberg.com> Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2015 8:18 AM To: stevescott@techacq.com Reply To: info@ellsberg.com Subject: The day I realized I was an alpha male...

Recently, I was at lunch with an author I idolize--a multiple NYT-bestelling author you've definitely heard of.

 

Though he is kind of geeky looking, and talks with a very nasal tone, and thus doesn't look classically powereful at first glance, this guy is a pure alpha male. He is at the top of his game in a very competitive and hard-hitting career as a writer and journalist, has fans all over the world, earns millions of dollars through work he loves, lives in a mansion on the beach, cavorts with celebrities in every industry, and is happily married, with kids, to an amazing woman who would make any (straight) man salivate.

 

Somehow, the topic of alpha versus beta males came up (BTW, ladies, I'm going to be talking about alpha versus beta females coming up, so this is for you too…). 

 

I told him that I don't identify as alpha, I identify as a confident, successful beta male. (I won't try to explain my reasoning here, but I wrote a Facebook post at the end of last year explaining this. BTW, if you don't follow my FB, you're missing out on like 90% of my best content. I share way more of my personal stuff there--though that's about to change, as this current email suggests!)

 

This man, who I'm probably going to be doing some public collaborations with soon, but whom I'll just call AlphaWriterGuy for now, looked at me, and said, "You're not a beta male. You're definitely alpha."

 

"Really?" I asked. I went on (in seeming beta, self-apologizing style) to list a bunch of reasons why I thought I was beta, as expressed in last-years FB post. "What makes you think I'm alpha?"

 

"Look at the way you talk. You talk about this project you're doing, that project you're doing, all of them are gaining traction, you're networking with really high-level people and bringing them into your projects. And you're spending all your nights with all kinds of different women as lovers, all of whom know about each other and are happy to be with you (and each other.) Beta's don't talk that way. Or live the lifestyle you now live. You're alpha, dude. Accept it." 

 

(BTW, multiple lovers is NOT necessary to alpha maleness or femaleness. BUT, if you're curious... about how that whole "multiple lovers" thing works, here's a post with the recording of that that Untangled Love audio I sent last summer, along with a newer post reflecting my newly-single status. And yes, I'm single. But that's a whole other story, which I've written about at length on Facebook. Man, I need to catch you all up soon! It's been a while!) 

 

Back to the story at hand: hearing this statement, from a mega-alpha guy in my own field (book writing) whose opinion on these matters I had to respect, was for me the culmination (for now) of a 29-year journey.

 

I'm 38, but I say 29 years because it probably wasn't till about age 9, in fourth grade, that I started to take on what I would now call the identity of a beta male. (Before that, I was just an innocent kid, obsessed with legos and Super Mario Brothers and the such.) But starting around 4th grade, once the social pecking order started developing in my school, I was not even a beta male on the playground now, but an omega male--the lowest on the totem pole on the playground. (Of course, I didn't use those terms then--I just used the words for myself "dork," and maybe even "dweeb...")

Picked last for sports. No social self-confidence. Social self-hatred.

 

And, in terms of relating with girls, and then women, throughout the rest of grade school, middle school, high school, and to a lesser extent most of my college years and my 20s (with a few brief exceptions), I was somewhere on the spectrum between innocent and immature cluelessness, to total (and sometimes creepy) awkwardness.

 

It's a long story how I got from being that man, whose confidence in his own manhood was so low that I was literally thinking about taking my own life right before I was 30--to a man sitting across the table from a famous writer whom I idolize, hearing him tell me, based on what he sees of me, that I'm an alpha. I'll tell that story another time.

 

It took me a few weeks to integrate AlphaWriterGuy's comment into my psychology, and take on the identity that yes, I have become an alpha.

 

And as soon as I did, I began to see the world in an entirely new way. 

I began to see the world populated by leaders--the alpha males and alpha females--and the followers, the betas. There is nothing inherently 'better" about leaders as opposed to followers. (Followers make up most of any large organization or movement, and implement most of the stuff that gets done. You can't have leaders if there aren't followers. Followers serve a crucial part of any team, and no amount of "we're all leaders" management-nonsense and Everybody-Gets-a-Gold-Star--"EGGS" philosophy--will ever change that.)

So, no, alphas are not better than betas… but they are different. And if you don't make the distinction, if you resist the distinction for politically-correct reasons, or if you are unclear on what the distinction is… the world of social interaction and connection will make much less sense to you and you'll be way less successful in it. Whereas if you grasp these differences, a world of power and opportunity opens up to you.

All of the sudden, after AlphaWriterGuy convinced me I had become alpha, a huge host of insights about being alpha, versus being beta, started popping into my head.

Stay tuned as I share with you exactly how the world looks different (and feels different, and my reality is totally different) now that I see life in this new way, through the eyes as a man who finally owns fully that he is an alpha.

AND, for the ladies.... We are thankfully in an age where you women are rising up as Alpha Females leaders in every field, so if you're reading and you want more power, and you want to make a bigger impact, all of these comments apply just as well towards owning your status and ambition as a powerful alpha female, who is revered and respected by men as well as women...)

Stay tuned as I share with you exactly how the world looks different (and feels different, and my reality is totally different) now that I see life in this new way, through the eyes as a man who finally owns fully his alpha-ness.

 

***

 

In the meantime, I want to fill you in on a lot of changes in my life. I've alluded to some of them via the links above, and I don't want to rehash a bunch of old stuff (Jena and I, by the way, are doing AWESOME, our friendship is better than ever, and we still live together--in fact, never stopped living together--now as friends and soul-brother, soul-sister, in NYC.) 
 

• My 3rd published book, co-authored with my friend and mentor Bryan Franklin, is completely finished, it is AWESOME (3 years of hard word went into this baby), and it is coming out early next year from the same published as The Education of Millionaires, Penguin/Portfolio. The Last Safe Investment: Spending Now to Increase Your True Wealth Forever - Expect to be hearing a LOT more about this in the coming months! 
• Since finishing writing that book, almost all of my writing, and my personal life, has been focused on exploring some very... um... kinky stuff. I won't go into too much detail here, but you can read some of my stuff about the dominance and submission I've been exploring in my personal life here, here, and here. 
  An aritcle I wrote, How to Be a Woman's Best Sexy Friend, became one of the pieces most discussed and shared by women I've ever done--women were writing me left and right, asking how they could find their own BSF. So I decided to create my first business around this, a company devoted to helping all single adults, of all ages, genders, orientations, and walks of life, find friends with whom they can explore their own sexuality. I started this with my new business partner (and former assistant) Kim Howerton. Check out our launch announcement for the company and community here. 
• I've become obsessed with the crowdfunding-platform of Patreon as a new model for funding cutting-edge work directly from readers/fans as patrons of the arts, without having to "sell" anything. I'm just getting started on that platform, but look out for projects on Patreon that I'm doing with people such as my friend Daniel Pinchbeck, my aunt Barbara Marx Hubbard, and a project I'm REALLY excited about with my friend, the legendary adult actress Nina Hartley (more details soon.) 
• Oh, and, uh, yeah... I started starring in and co-producing self-funded, DIY, conscious, real, feminist, indie adult entertainment (AKA the four-letter "p" word which trips up email filters!) with my co-producer and lover Muse. Check out some totally SFW behind-the-scenes pics and footage here. We're in the editing phase and this is going to be RADICAL.

As you can tell, a LOT is brewing! 

As I go forward, I promise

• To keep you more updated than I have in the last few years. It's been a wild ride, the last few years, and I'm ready to start coming out of my email-hibernation and send you all great content on a regular basis again!
• To stop hiding so much of my personal life from you on my email list---because that is where my best stuff is these days!
• To keep sending you cutting-edge, high signal-to-noise content with zero fluff. 

In return, I ask

• If you want to see the real me, unleashed, and read the best and most edgy content I've ever read, please stay here, and open and read my emails!
• If you're offended by the topics I'm exploring or writing about lately, I kindly ask that you unsubscribe below.

Things are about to get STEAMY in here!

Thank you so much for surfing the waves with me. I can't wait to keep surfing and exploring with you. 

Love,

Michael 

This message was sent to stevescott@techacq.com from: Michael Ellsberg | info@ellsberg.com | Michael Ellsberg | 9005 Norwood Ave. | Kensington, CA 94707

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Fwd: future of transportation

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	future of transportation
Date:	Sun, 28 Jun 2015 10:35:14 -0700
From:	Peter Diamandis <peter@diamandis.com>
Reply-To:	peter@diamandis.com
To:	STeve <stevescott@techacq.com>

Four revolutions in transportation are taking place this decade.

This blog is a look at how they will shape your life, your business and our world.

In 2011, Peter Thiel famously said, "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters…"

Guess what? The flying car is coming, and so is a heck of a lot more.

In this blog, I want to explore the latest developments in:

1. Autonomous Vehicles
2. Telepresence Robots & Virtual Worlds
3. Hyperloop
4. Point-to-Point Aerial Transport

Each of these will change where we live, work and interact.

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Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous cars are coming and coming fast. Every major car company has autonomous cars under development. By 2035 it's expected there will be more than 54 million autonomous cars on the road, and this will change everything.

Saved Lives: There are 1.2 million people killed every year in car accidents. Autonomous cars don't drive drunk, don't text, don't have Alzheimer's and don't fall asleep at the wheel.

Reclaiming Land: You can fit eight times more autonomous cars on our roads, making their land use more efficient. In Los Angeles it's estimated that more than half of the land in the city belongs to the cars in the form of garages, driveways, roads, and parking lots.

Saved Energy: Today we give close to 25 percent of all of our energy to personal transportation, and 25 percent of our greenhouse gases are going to the car.

Saved Money: Get rid of needing to own a car, paying for insurance and parking, trade out 4,000-lb. cars for lighter electric cars that don't crash, and you can expect to save 90% on your local automotive transportation bill.

Best of all, you can call any kind of car you need, when you need it. Need a nap? Order a car with a bed. Want to party? Order one with a fully-stocked bar. Need a business meeting? Up drives a conference room on wheels.

Telepresence Robotics & Virtual Worlds

In the U.S. alone, business travel spending will top $310 billion in 2015 (Global Business Travel Association), or about 490.4 million business trips.

The idea of having to schlep your "meat body" from one location to another for a meeting will soon be old-school.

Instead you'll plug into a virtual world, or use a Beam robot to connect virtually. Already billions of dollars are being spent by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Sony, HTC and Suitable Technologies are already spending billions of dollars to develop the hardware and perfect the experience.

Beyond the advantage of saving serious cash and time flying from LA to NY, meeting someone "in person" will ultimately be a disadvantage. When I'm speaking to you over a virtual link or telepresence robot, I can watch your pupillary dilation, have my system pull up and recall facts about our last conversation and enrich my interaction with you in countless ways.

In the next decade, you will attend conferences, meetings, interviews, keynotes and maybe even dates by telepresence and virtual worlds. Just the advantage of avoiding a full cavity search courtesy of airport TSA makes it worth it.

For me, I have 15 Beam robots between my offices at XPRIZE (Los Angeles), Singularity University (Mountain View), Human Longevity Inc. (San Diego), and Planetary Resources (Seattle). In a single day, I'll routinely hop between four cities with a click of a button.

Hyperloop

A few years ago, California proposed (and passed) a $69 billion high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

In response, Elon Musk (founder of Tesla, SpaceX) published a paper on a conceptual transportation system called the Hyperloop that was, "a cross between a Concorde, a railgun, and an air hockey table," and that could be built at 10% of the cost of the high-speed rail.

Guess what -- Hyperloop is now in design and under construction. When it works, it will be able to transport people and cargo between cities at speeds faster than a commercial airliner (over 700 mph) with record energy efficiencies.

Hyperloop, which Musk dubs "the fifth mode," would be as fast as a plane, cheaper than a train and continuously available in any weather while emitting no carbon from the tailpipe.

If people could get from LA to San Francisco in less than 30 minutes, L.A. to Las Vegas in 20 minutes, or New York to Philly in 10, cities become metro stops and borders evaporate, along with housing price imbalances and overcrowding.

A brilliant team of engineers is hard at work at Hyperloop Technologies, a company founded by investor Shervin Pishevar and former SpaceX Engineer Brogan Bambrogan.

I'm proud to be a founding board member along with Shervin, Brogan, Joe Lonsdale (Founder, Palantir & Formation 8), Jim Messina (Pres. Obama's Reelection Campaign Manager), and David Sacks (PayPal, Yammer).

Point-to-Point Aerial Transport

As alluded to above, some version of the flying car is coming. This is being enabled by the intersection of three converging technologies: high energy density batteries, autonomous navigation powered by differential GPS and lightweight, high strength lightweight materials.

The XPRIZE Foundation is working on a multimillion dollar Transporter XPRIZE to inspire progress in this arena.

Various designs are under development by a number of companies focused on the creation of personal transportation machines with vertical takeoff, vertical landing capability – think of human-carrying electric quadcopters. Something you can step into and tell it, "Please take me to downtown L.A." that then lifts you up, and flies you at 500 feet to your destination.

One company, Zee Aero, is rumored to be funded by Google. This flying car can take off and land vertically using a plethora of small electric motors turning four-bladed propellers and is narrow enough to fit into a standard shopping center parking space.

Another design, E-Volo's Volocopter, is an electric two-passenger, 18-rotor vehicle.

I call these "flying cars" or "human carrying multi-copters" point-to-point transport. They are a mix between a personal jet pack and your own autonomous, electric helicopter-on-demand. For crowded cities, they are a godsend. But for places like Africa which has no passable roads (especially during rainy season), these future Transporters are equivalent of Africa skipping the copper-line phone system and going straight to wireless.

Join Me

The future of transportation is an exciting one – and a faster, cheaper, safer, cleaner, and more fun one.

This is the sort of conversation we discuss at my 250-person executive mastermind group called Abundance 360. The program is highly selective and we're almost full, looking for a few last CEOs and entrepreneurs who want to change the world. You can apply here.

Share this email with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.

Best,
Peter

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P.S. Every weekend I send out a "Tech Blog" like this one. If you want to sign up, go to PeterDiamandis.com and sign up for this and my Abundance blogs.

P.P.S. Please forward this to your best clients, colleagues and friends — especially those who could use some encouragement as they pursue big, bold dreams.

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PHD Ventures , 800 Corporate Pointe, Culver City CA 90230

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Fwd: are people in silicon valley just smarter?

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	are people in silicon valley just smarter?
Date:	Sun, 14 Jun 2015 10:27:19 -0700
From:	Peter Diamandis <peter@diamandis.com>
Reply-To:	peter@diamandis.com
To:	STeve <stevescott@techacq.com>

Why is Silicon Valley better at innovating than most of the world?

Why are the number of successful startups so high there?

Where is the next Mecca of tech-startup success going to emerge?

This blog is about where and why innovation happens, and where it's going next.

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It Started in a Coffee Shop

In the 18th century, coffeehouses had an enormous impact on Enlightenment culture.

As Steven Johnson says in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, "It's no accident that the Age of Reason accompanies the rise of caffeinated beverages."

The coffeehouse became the hub for information sharing.

Suddenly commoners could interact with the royals, meet, mingle and share ideas.

In his book London Coffee Houses, Bryant Lillywhite explains it this way:

"The London coffee-houses provided a gathering place where, for a penny admission charge, any man who was reasonably dressed could smoke his long, clay pipe, sip a dish of coffee, read the newsletters of the day, or enter into conversation with other patrons.

"At the period when journalism was in its infancy and the postal system was unorganized and irregular, the coffeehouse provided a centre of communication for news and information . . . Naturally, this dissemination of news led to the dissemination of ideas, and the coffee-house served as a forum for their discussion."

Beyond the Coffee Shop

Today, researchers have recognized that the coffee-shop phenomenon is actually just a mirror of what occurs when people move from sparse rural areas to jam-packed cities.

As people begin living atop one another, so too do their ideas. And, as Matt Ridley aptly describes, innovation happens when these crowded ideas "have sex."

Geoffrey West, a physicist from Santa Fe Institute, found that when a city's population doubles, there is a 15 percent increase in income, wealth and innovation. (He measured innovation by counting the number of new patents.)

Why Silicon Valley is Getting it Right

My friend Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life and now CEO of High Fidelity, spent some time investigating why the Bay Area in particular has become such a hub for technology and innovation.

As Rosedale explains, "I think the magic of Silicon Valley is not in fostering risk-taking, but instead in making it safe to work on risky things. There are two things happening in Silicon Valley that are qualitatively different anywhere else."

Those things are:

1. The sheer density of tech "founders per capita" is 10 times greater than the norm for other cities (see figure below).
2. There is a far greater level of information sharing between entrepreneurs.

Image: San Francisco has about twice the density of the next-highest city (Boston), and about five times the density of New York.

Rosedale goes on, "You can't walk down the street without (almost literally) running into someone else who is starting a tech company. While tech ventures are individually risky, a sufficiently large number of them close to each other makes the experience of working in startups safe for any one individual."

"I like to visualize this as a series of lily pads in a pond, occasionally submerging as their funding runs out," he explains. "If you are a frog, and there are enough other lily pads nearby, you'll do just fine."

"Beyond simply having a lot of people near you to work with, I believe that the openness and willingness to share inherent to Silicon Valley is a big driver in this effect."

Beyond the Next Coffee House

For entrepreneurial technology innovation to occur, you need two things: a densely packed population of tech-savvy entrepreneurs and a culture of freely sharing and building on ideas.

Rosedale, who is working on the key technologies to intimately and powerfully connect people using virtual worlds, points out, "If we create a virtual world, we can expect a sudden disruption as the biggest 'city' of the tech future goes 100 percent online."

Just as the coffeehouse is a pale comparison to today's high-density city, so too will today's city be a pale comparison to the coming high fidelity, virtual online innovation communities.

Imagine a near-term future where any entrepreneur, anywhere on the planet, independent of the language they speak (think instant translation), can grab their VR headset (e.g. Oculus, Hololens, Magic Leap) and immerse themselves into an extremely high resolution and low latency VR world filled with like-minded creative, insightful and experienced entrepreneurs.

But this hyperconnected world is not happening in isolation to other changes.

As I've noted in previous blogs, the number of people connected to the Internet is exploding, going from 1.8 billion in 2010 to 2.8 billion today, and as many as 5 billion by 2020.

The opportunities for collaborative thinking are growing exponentially, and since progress is cumulative, the resulting innovations are going to grow exponentially as well.

Ultimately, these virtual worlds will create massive, global virtual coffeehouses for entrepreneurs to meet, to innovate, to create businesses and solve problems.

It's for this reason (among many others) that I believe we are living during the most exciting time ever.

The tools we are developing will bring about an age of abundance, and we will be able to meet the needs of every man, woman and child on Earth.

Join Me

This is the sort of conversation we have at my 250-person executive mastermind group, Abundance 360. The program is highly selective and has ~97% of the spots filled. You can apply here.

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Fwd: lazy slobs and OPPORTUNITY (it's not what you think.)

-------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject:	lazy slobs and OPPORTUNITY (it's not what you think.)
Date:	Fri, 12 Jun 2015 10:23:35 -0400 (EDT)
From:	Frank Kern <news@frankkernhelpdesk.com>
To:	im1@bydf.com

Marketers who peddle "do nothing and get rich" are marketing to what's called "the lowest common denominator".   There's a "lowest common denominator" in every marketplace, even yours.   In weight loss, it's the guy who wants six pack abs by taking a pill while eating ice cream on the couch.   In dating, it's the guy who wants to date a model by reciting some canned pickup lines ...even though he's a poorly dressed slob who lives with his parents and compulsively picks his nose.   In business, it's the guy who wants a flood of customers but doesn't want to write an ad or talk to anyone (or provide actual value in exchange for the money.)   The list goes on ...   Isn't it safe to say most of your competition panders to this crowd?   Of course.    They'll buy just about anything.   Lucky for us, here's something everyone else is missing.   There's another, BETTER group out there.   It represents about 20% of your marketplace and makes up about 80% of the actual profits in most businesses.   I call this group the "EVOLVED CUSTOMER".   Now, here's the breakdown on them:   PROS: Repeat buyers. Ascend to higher purchases. Refer customers. Easy to sell once trust is established. Loyal.   CONS: Wary of marketing. Hard to earn trust.   These guys are obviously the BEST source of income and obviously, we want THEM as customers, right?   Well, here are four secrets about them:   Secret #1: These guys HATE "lowest common denominator" stuff. They find it REPULSIVE.   And one of the easiest things to do is to attract them by doing the OPPOSITE of what your competition does.   Secret #2: You can create and automate a series of marketing "machines" that attracts these customers exclusively, that creates trust by delivering value, and that creates sales.   Secret Part 3: This type of marketing is significantly less "salesy" than the "lowest common denominator" stuff your competitors are doing, and it's much easier to deploy.   Secret Part 4: By deliberately REPELLING the "lowest common denominator" customers, you accomplish two things:   A: You become magnetic to the EVOLVED CUSTOMER.   B: You achieve much more powerful BRAND POSITIONING in your marketplace.   If you'd like me to show you how to go about this, I'd be delighted. I'm holding an advanced training this week where I'll walk you through process maps, worksheets, and even NLP language patterns to help you magnetically attract your ideal customer.   No charge and you can register here :-)   Frank   P.S. If you skimmed to the bottom, here's the sort version:   1. There's a category of customer that can give yuor business a      MAJOR UPGRADE in sales and revenue.   2. Most of the people in your market (if not all) are REPELLING     these customers because of their marketing.   3. I'm holding a free training for you that shows you how to attract     these customers, how to earn their trust, and how to sell to them.       You can get all the details here :-)   I'm giving you worksheets, process maps, and even telling you EXACTLY WHAT TO SAY by showing you extremely powerful NLP language patterns.   The training is around an hour and a half and I'll be doing ON CAMERA Q&A at the end for another hour or so to answer questions :-)   More details and you can register here.   Frank P.S. The (not so fine) fine print:   It's pretty safe to say the average person who attends (or buys) ANY "sell more stuff" trainings rarely makes any money. Kind of like the way most people who buy home gyms don't get ripped. (Ahem) With that in mind, understand my results aren't even remotely typical, and that I am in NO WAY implying ANY type of result for ANYONE who attends.   I'm happy to show you what's working for me, and I certainly hope you use it and it works for you, but the only person who can get you any type of result is ...YOU.   P.P.S. Interesting thing about the (not so fine) print.   As you know, I think fine print is for sissies and you might as well get all that stuff out in the open.   Anyway, I actually tested this in a campaign recently and created two different sales pages:   PAGE A: Had "softly worded" disclaimer in the body copy as well as "normal" fine print at the bottom.   PAGE B: Had IN-YOUR-FACE and AGGRESSIVE "disclaimer" right there at the top of the sales page, in the copy, even before any benefits of the product were discussed.   Guess which one was the winner?   PAGE B. The one with the brutally open and blunt "disclaimer" lingo.   This kind of goes to prove (for the zillionth time) that you can often get great results by doing the OPPOSITE of what everyone else is doing.   So if you like that kind of stuff ...inside information on what's working ...completely devoid of hype and shenanigans ...come register for this training with me.   You'll get a lot out of it and you'll have a good time :-)   See you then.   P.P.P.S. Oh yeah, that spit test I just told you about? The traffic came from ADVERTISING.   Currently bringing in between $1.38 and $2.11 in sales for every dollar spent on traffic.   I'd love to show you how I'm doing this, so come on this training and let's get to work.   .                             Frank Kern Inc 7660-H Fay Ave PMB 307 La Jolla, California 92037 United States (858) 223-1914

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