The latest line from proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) implies that President Obama threatened long-standing national security relationships in his negotiating of the TPP. These proponents are not pushing the economic merits of the TPP, but rather arguing that its rejection by Congress would jeopardize longstanding ties between the United States and Asia. The claim is that if Congress is not prepared to approve the TPP then countries like Japan and South Korea will no longer be able to rely on defense commitments that have been in place for more than half a century.
As Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, commented on a trip to Washington:
It [rejecting the TPP] hurts your relationship with Japan, your security agreements with Japan, ... And the Japanese, living in an uncertain world, depending on an American nuclear umbrella, will have to say: On trade, the Americans could not follow through; if it's life and death, whom do I have to depend upon?
Other proponents of the TPP have made similar comments. The idea is that if the U.S. won't follow through on a trade pact that is has spent almost eight years negotiating, then how can it be counted on to honor its defense commitments to the countries of the region.
If this claim is taken at face value, it implies that President Obama was unbelievably irresponsible in negotiating the TPP. He knew that many aspects of the deal would be highly controversial. For example, the deal includes no enforceable provisions to prevent the sort of currency management by China and other countries that have been the major cause of the country's $500 billion (2.8 percent of GDP) annual trade deficit.
The deal also includes provisions that make patent and copyright protection longer and stronger. These provisions will lead to higher prices for prescription drugs and other protected items in other countries, and possibly the United States as well. In addition, more money for the drug companies and entertainment industry in royalties means that our trading partners will have less money to spend on U.S. manufactured goods.
In addition, the TPP provides for the creation of investor-state dispute settlement tribunals - extra-judicial bodies that give special privileges to foreign investors - including foreign subsidies of U.S. corporations. These tribunals will be able to over-ride U.S. laws at all levels of government.
For these and other reasons, President Obama surely knew that the TPP would be highly controversial when it was debated before Congress. Is it really plausible that he did not make it clear to our negotiating partners that he couldn't guarantee approval of the final agreement?
The proponents of the TPP would have us believe that President Obama told our trading partners that approval of the TPP was a slam dunk. That they could count on Congressional approval in the same way that they could count on Congress to honor its military commitments in the region. That one doesn't sound very likely.
In the lack of plausibility department we are also asked to believe that the governments in the region are incredibly ignorant about the state of U.S. politics. The TPP has been a hot item for debate long before Congress voted to grant fast-track authority in the summer of 2015. It has continued to be a major issue in the presidential primaries of both parties. Is it plausible that the staffs of the Japanese, Vietnamese and other embassies of the TPP countries somehow missed these debates or failed to report back to their governments on how contentious the pact is?
That one hardly passes the laugh test. Surely these embassies are staffed by competent and intelligent people. It is precisely their job to follow debates like the one on the TPP and to report back to their governments. While the governments of the other countries in the TPP may be disappointed by the decision of Congress not to approve the pact, it is inconceivable that they would be surprised by it.
There is an alternative hypothesis that makes far more sense. The Obama administration, along with other supporters of the TPP, doesn't feel it can sell the deal based on its merits as an economic pact. Therefore they are inventing a national security rationale for the TPP that does not exist. It's not a pretty story, but as they say in Washington: you throw it against the wall and see what sticks.
Ride-hailing services want to make sure Grandma Betty can get to bridge club just as easily as her 22-year-old grandson travels to and from ... whatever it is young folks are doing these days.
Once the domain of 20-somethings who might have a drink or two and need a safe ride home, companies like Lyft and Uber have set their sights on a different age range entirely: senior citizens.
Lyft announced Tuesday it has partnered with GreatCall, a mobile phone company that specializes in providing cell phones to seniors, to extend its ride-hailing services to those who ― like the elderly ― may not have a smartphone, much less want to learn how to use an app on one to hail a ride.
Instead of an app, GreatCall customers dial “0” to talk to an operator, who can provide a cost estimate and book a ride. The fare is tacked onto the customer’s monthly cell phone bill.
The L.A. Times notes Uber struck up a similar arrangement with a company called 24Hr HomeCare last week.
Several third-party ride-hailing services also specialize in giving lifts to older adults who don’t have smartphones, including GoGoGrandparent, a newer entrant that adds additional features like meal and grocery delivery options.
As people age, one thing to go is the ability to drive. That means losing your freedom to get to doctor’s appointments and to stay social with friends.
This is far from either company’s first foray into the senior market, which, judging by recent moves from both Uber and Lyft, seems ripe for disruption.
And it couldn’t come at a better time. The first wave of the so-called “baby boomer” generation turned 65 in 2011, with the number of Americans aged 65 and older projected to keep growing until 2030, when it’s expected to peak at around 71 million people.
Earlier this year, both Uber and Lyft began offering non-emergency medical transport services, specifically targeting customers whose rides would be reimbursed by Medicaid.
And in the Denver suburb of Centennial, where 15 years from now at least 30 percent of the population is projected to be over the age of 65, city officials are exploring replacing current dial-a-ride services with less expensive, more efficient rides via Lyft.
Starting Aug. 17, the city has embarked on a first-of-its-kind, six-month long pilot project, paying for Lyft rides to and from the area’s major light-rail station in a bid to increase mobility.
“We call Centennial the Silver Tsunami,” Centennial Mayor Cathy Noon told The Atlantic blog CityLab. “As people age, one thing to go is the ability to drive. That means losing your freedom to get to doctor’s appointments and to stay social with friends. We really want to help keep the people who started Centennial engaged in it.”
Note: The Huffington Post’s editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington is a member of Uber’s board of directors and has recused herself from any involvement in the site’s coverage of the company.
Three years ago, Fishkill Farms owner and operator Joshua Morgenthau found himself facing a situation that is every farmer’s nightmare.
It was time to prepare his 100-acre fruit and vegetable farm’s cherries and strawberries for harvest, but the workers he’d hired for the job weren’t there to help. His employees were many miles away in Jamaica, waiting for the green light to enter the U.S. and get to work.
Without enough hands to weed and prune the delicate crop, Morgenthau’s berries were at risk of rotting on the vine. Worse, he knew there was little he could do but wait and hope he didn’t lose his whole crop in the meantime.
Each year, Morgenthau employs eight seasonal migrant workers who travel to his farm in New York’s Hudson Valley through the labor department’s H-2A temporary agricultural worker program. The process of obtaining their H-2A visas had been relatively painless for the previous five years. But this time, he says the department changed the file number of his application without any warning.
That meant he had to refile all the applications, creating “hours and hours and hours of more paperwork and hassle for us” and delaying the workers’ arrival by more than a month.
As a result, the farm’s cherry and strawberry production took a hit that season. His team of migrant and domestic workers were unable to make up for the decreased harvest preparation time.
“We managed to get it picked, but it was still kind of a mess,” he told The Huffington Post.
Despite setbacks like this one, the visa program is essential to Morgenthau’s farm. He works with the same employees each year and described them as “part of the farm family.” He credits them with being experts at operating the machinery specific to the crops he grows.
The H-2A program was created in the 1990s to help agricultural employers bring temporary foreign workers into the U.S. to do seasonal work that domestic workers cannot or are not willing to do. As part of the program, employers are required to offer certain wages, plus transportation and housing when necessary. The H-2A visa holders live and work in the U.S. for several months at a time but are not considered immigrants, and the program is not seen as a pathway to citizenship.
This so-called guest farm worker program is far from perfect. It has been criticized for being easy to abuse, with some employers neglecting worker safety and stealing wages while facing little recourse. However, those familiar with the visa program describe it as the industry’s sole legal option for getting temporary farm work done.
The farming industry still relies heavily on undocumented workers, who are estimated to make up about half of the country’s 2.5 million hired farm hands, according to the Labor Department. The temporary visa program is responsible for just a fraction of the overall agricultural workforce.
Yet the program is growing increasingly popular ― due to the domestic labor shortages ― forcing more farmers to contend with a chaotic and heavily bureaucratic system that puts their crops in jeopardy. At the same time, calls to improve the program are being sounded by farmers and immigration reform advocates alike.
Credit: Gosia Wozniacka/APIn this Oct. 12, 2011, file photo, a crew of farmworkers harvest and package cantaloupes near Firebaugh, California.
The U.S. has cracked down on the use of undocumented laborers coming into the country, resulting in a widespread labor shortage in agriculture and ballooning demand for H-2A visas. This has also meant more administrative delays in processing visa applications.
Delays of even a week can result in major crop losses for farmers. Delays of a month or more can be devastating.
Morgenthau was able to save his harvest in 2013, the year his workers were delayed, but he knows just how easily things can fall apart. “We’re lucky to have never lost an entire crop,” he said.
Others aren’t so fortunate.
A number of farmers in Georgia reported six-digit losses this year due to delays in visa processing. Another farmer, in California, watched as one-third of his Napa cabbage rotted in the field while he waited for the H-2A workers to arrive.
Last year, a State Department computer glitch delayed workers on the West Coast, causing millions of dollars of lost revenue. Elise Bauman, executive director at Salem Harvest, a food recovery group that partners with dozens of farms in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, saw the fallout of this glitch firsthand. She and her team worked with just three strawberry farms in 2015, but she estimated seeing some 100 acres of the wasted berries with her own eyes.
“They have to be handled and harvested at exactly the right time, otherwise you get a pile of mush,” Bauman said. “Very delicious-tasting mush, but it’s not attractive.”
These issues will only compound as the visa program continues to grow. Visa applications increased by 40 percent over the past five years, according to NPR. Last year, 140,000 H-2A visas were granted. In the first half of this year, visa issuance is up another 17 percent over 2015.
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The H-2A program’s issues have sent the farming industry into crisis mode, vocally criticizing the program’s backlog of visa applications and emerging as a somewhat surprising proponent of immigration reform.
In an April news release, the American Farm Bureau Federation warned of rotting fields of crops resulting from H-2A delays. Those delays, the organization says, could be avoided if the program were revamped.
So far, there hasn’t been much action on that advice.
In June, a bipartisan group of Congress members calling for H-2A reform sent a letter to the Labor Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services leaders, asking them to streamline the guest worker visa process. Their effort has yet to gain traction.
In a media call organized by the pro-immigration reform Partnership for a New American Economy earlier this month, AFB president Zippy Duvall called for a more flexible and efficient visa program for migrant farmworkers. One solution Duvall has offered would be filing paperwork for the program electronically. Currently, paperwork must be processed through standard mail.
Failure to act, Duvall warned, would threaten the nation’s food supply.
“We’re coming to a point where the American people need to make up their mind if they want to import their food or import their labor,” Duvall said.
Other voices are calling for bigger changes.
Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, which represents farmers in California, Arizona and Colorado, took his call for reform a step further. Beyond streamlining the H-2A program, he would like to find a way to keep some of these temporary farm workers in the U.S., instead of sending them back to their home countries when their visas expire.
“We want to take care of the workers who are with us,” Nassif said. “They have experience, families and roots here. We want to keep those people [here] and protect them. We want some sort of legal status for them.”
In 2013, Nassif backed legislation sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that proposed a new “blue card” program that would make temporary workers in good legal standing eligible for a legal status, allowing them to stay in the country and granting them a path to citizenship. The bill passed in the Senate but did not come up for a vote in the House after being blocked by Speaker John Boehner.
In the absence of action in Washington, some believe employers in the industry should be doing more to offer better wages and conditions to their farmworkers, Bruce Goldstein, president of the Farmworker Justice advocacy group, argues.
“If employers want to retain their workforce and attract workers to their jobs, they collectively need to improve their reputation,” Goldstein told HuffPost.
Due to many farmworkers’ undocumented status, Goldstein argues, they silently endure subpar working conditions and pay, fearing that they’ll be reported or fired if they complain.
The average seasonal migrant farmworker is paid between $12,500 and $14,999 a year. Most lack health insurance and many work far more than 40 hours a week. (By contrast, someone working full time for the federal minimum wage earns $15,080 a year.)
Guest farm workers are supposed to earn more under the temporary work program. H-2A wages are set by the Labor Department and vary from state to state ― between $10.59 and $13.80 an hour ― based on state minimums and typical wages for domestic farm workers in the region. In Washington state, for example, the minimum wage for H-2A workers is $12.69 an hour. That’s significantly more than the state’s minimum wage of $9.47.
Some research has raised questions about whether visa-holding guest workers fare much better than unauthorized workers, however. An Economic Policy Institute study released last year found no significant difference in pay or conditions between the two groups.
As of now, farmers are able to get away with this. While advocates like Goldstein believe some employers are treating their workers fairly, the ones who aren’t continue to hinder their progress. And they need to be held accountable.
“There are many employers that comply with the law, but they are being undermined by the companies that want to reduce their cost and increase their profitability by cheating workers,” Goldstein said. “We need to create a law-abiding agricultural sector to benefit both the farmworkers and the employers that comply with the law.”
BuzzFeed has reported that the H-2A visa program and its sister program for short-term non-farm workers (H-2B) suffer from a host of other abuse problems. The Labor Department found that between 2010 and 2014 almost 1,000 companies had violated H-2 laws; however, fewer than 150 employers were banned from hiring guest workers through the program.
Still, some farmers believe the H-2A program is overburdened with regulations and expenses.
Dan Fazio, president of the Washington Farm Labor Association, connects farmers with migrant workers. He, too, described the H-2A program as flawed, but said he’s seen its popularity with participating farmworkers firsthand.
“Is it ideal to take a person from one country and bring them to another country to work? I don’t know,” Fazio said. “But I do know that the people coming to Washington state love the program and when their six months here are done and they go back, they make sure they’re on the list to come back next year.”
A lack of alternatives might have something to do with this popularity — and there’s no sign of that changing anytime soon.
But the lack of progress doesn’t mean the industry has to start from scratch to arrive at a solution, said Luawanna Halstrom, an agriculture consultant who previously served as president of the National Council of Agricultural Employers and has worked with a number of national and state organizations.
She’s hopeful that a fix is on the horizon — and it may not be as complex as it might initially seem.
“People are working with this old horse because it’s all they’ve got,” Halstrom said. “It can be a good program if we could reformulate it and figure out how to make it work.”
A revamped program would be welcomed by Morgenthau, too. Another delay like 2013’s might not turn out as well next time.
“The system should be streamlined,” he said. “When you have the whims of a bureaucracy and a heated political debate that could determine pretty quickly a positive or negative outcome in terms of being able to work with the qualified employees you have been working with, it’s just one too many variables to stomach.”
―-
Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food and water. In addition, Erbentraut explores the evolving ways Americans are identifying and defining themselves. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.
More stories like this:
Restaurants Officially Have No Excuse Not To Donate Leftover Food
A Whole New Kind Of Grocery Store Is Coming To The U.S.
This Guy Spends $2.75 A Year On Food And Eats Like A King
Genius Solid Shampoos Use No Plastic Packaging By Leaving Out Water
Meat Eaters Should Have Been Listening To Vegetarians All Along
Farmer Forced To Dump Insane Amount Of Gorgeous Cherries
Al Capone’s Brother May Have Invented Date Labels For Milk
CLARIFICATION: The headline on this story has been amended to better reflect the systemic problems with the H-2A program.
Social media has been the game changer in almost everything that surrounds us. With the birth of social platforms, custom targeting of prospective customers is easier than ever. One of the greatest innovations of technology is social media, not just in our ability to communicate but in our ability to market directly to those we want to reach.
At my company, we are so specific with whom we target that we even identify our prospect by the books they are reading, the movies they are watching, and the industry experts they are a fan of. We guide our clients on how to significantly expand their reach to those that best match their customer profile. One of the best features social media marketing has for businesses today is its low barrier to entry. Gone are the days where a business is required to spend thousands of dollars on advertising to reach its prospect. You can now reach your audience spending as little as five dollars per week!
But which platforms are the best for businesses to use? In order to create a successful social strategy, you have to be familiar with how they work. We've provided a list of our favorite platforms for marketing our business and acquiring new clients.
1. Facebook
With more than 1.59 billion users, Facebook comprises of the largest blend of demographics of any social platform. It provides an extraordinary medium for your business to connect with your prospective customers all around the world. And from an advertising perspective, it's the easiest to manage and allows for the best possible targeting. We use Facebook Ads to match our current buyers with over two million similar prospects who possess similar characteristics. We then push them to an opt-in page where we can capture their name and email.
2. Twitter
Twitter's value lies in its ability for your posts to go viral: the more people share your posts and "retweet" your content, the more followers you will attain. We post recent news, updates and articles we have in major media. Hashtags make a big difference in building momentum for your posts, so pay attention to what is trending today and include relevant hashtags. We also retweet people who have many followers to increase the likelihood of them following us back.
3. LinkedIn
If you are working in a B2B field, this is the social media network for you to focus on. Connecting with business professionals in any industry is easiest with LinkedIn as it allows you to target them by industry, job title, etc. As with all social media, LinkedIn prioritizes relationship building more than any other. Don't lead with a sales pitch; start by building a connection. One of the best features for businesses are LinkedIn Groups. Businesses should establish Groups in your target niche or industry and invite others in your target market to join.
At my company, we focus on building new relationships with key prospects whose professional titles we've identified. For example, we'll search "CEO Speaker" to find people who are the heads of their companies and who also are active speakers.
4. Instagram
We use this popular photo-sharing platform at events and tradeshows. Whenever we're hosting events, we always have an incentive for the attendees to post photos to Instagram using our event hashtag. We'll also offer a free giveaway or raffle for those who participate.
5. Pinterest
Only use this channel if you have great images to share. Quality images are likely to go viral on this site due to its visual nature. If your image is pinned by a highly-followed member, it has the potential to be viewed by millions. It's also great for promoting products. We post photos of book covers and images with quotes accredited to our authors to promote their books. Adding the Amazon link to their books also helps boost sales.
6. YouTube
Aside from being the second largest search engine, YouTube is owned by Google. So when it comes to search engine optimization, videos are more likely to appear in search results than other websites. With Google's acquisition of YouTube, we use Google Hangouts On Air to do interviews with our authors and industry leaders. Then our interview is automatically posted to YouTube under our account for added visibility.
7. Yelp
Yelp is critical for businesses today. If you don't have an active strategy to build reviews on Yelp, your customers may do it for you soon enough. All it takes is one poor review to harm your abilities to build your social platform. Asking your customers to review your business on Yelp prevents any negative review from standing out. We hold campaigns to get our authors to post reviews about us on Yelp in return for a reward. For example, if they post a review, we'll offer them 10 percent off their next order or give them an added service.
It's up to you which among these platforms will likely be a marketing paradise for your business. Just remember that it is not just the social media site that you have to check, but the compatibility it has for your business.
Justin Sachs is a highly-sought-after business and marketing expert and CEO of Motivational Press, an industry-leading book publishing company.
A meal at a Howard Johnson was once as much as part of a road trip as the car itself. Now, one of the last two remaining restaurants is closing.
The location in Bangor, Maine, is shutting down next month, leaving a single restaurant in Lake George, New York, to carry the once-iconic name.
While the restaurant once served meals late into the night, it had more recently started closing at 2 p.m. daily. As business dropped off, rumors of its closure began circulating, the Bangor Daily News reported.
Robert F. Bukaty/APCustomers dine at the Howard Johnson in Bangor.
“It’s bittersweet, but it’s nothing to be sad about,” waitress Kathe Jewett, who has worked at the restaurant since it opened in 1966, told The Associated Press. “I’ve been here for 50 years ― and it’s time.”
The restaurant’s last day will be Sept. 6.
Howard Johnson opened his first location, a “small, orange-roofed soda fountain” in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1925. According to HoJoLand, an unofficial website, Johnson opened a second location but couldn’t afford to expand further on his own so he entered into franchise agreements.
Portland Press Herald via Getty ImagesCars pass a Howard Johnson location in South Portland in the 1950s. This location, built in 1938, closed in 1985.
By the end of the 1930s, there were more than 100 locations along the East Coast. There were 400 HoJo by 1954, and that’s when the company started to open motels along with its restaurants.
Howard Johnson would become ubiquitous along highways, especially toll roads. The company was a pioneer in opening locations just off exit ramps, according to Roadside Fans, a website dedicated to diners and classic chains.
“When the motorist spotted a Howard Johnson’s, he knew exactly what to expect,” the website noted. “With standardized menus and building designs, a Howard Johnson’s miles away felt as familiar and comforting as the one back home.”
I C Rapoport via Getty ImagesThe HoJo in New York City's Times Square became one of the company's most famous locations. It closed in 2005.
Howard Johnson would have more than 1,000 locations at its peak in the 1970s, with regulars enjoying the company’s famous 28 flavors of ice cream and popular meals, such as fried clam strips and pancakes. The company’s empire even included a line of frozen meals sold in supermarkets.
However, in the 1980s and 1990s, the company went through a series of ownership changes and parts of it were split up. Today, there are hundreds of HoJo hotels operated by Wyndham, but just two restaurants bearing the name ― each independently owned ― and in a couple of weeks, there will be just one.
“I’m devastated,” Christopher Leek, who has been dining at the Bangor location since his childhood, told AP. “It’s my favorite breakfast place. It’s a homey place.”
The modern-day cover letter is your introduction—of any kind—to the employer.
A cover letter has three goals, which you can accomplish in four sentences. Check out the video along with the highlights.
Click here to download my free 4 Sentence Cover Letter with the exact format!
There are essentially three (non-verbal) means to introduce yourself to an employer:
Cover Letter
Email (with attached resume)
Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
Your “cover letter” has three goals:
Explain why you’ve contacted the employer.
Provide insight on who you are and what you offer.
Show enthusiasm and interest in hearing (back) from the employer.
You can accomplish these three goals in four sentences, which I discuss in the video. Grab this free 4 Sentence Cover Letter to see the exact format!
If you have haven’t seen How To Build the Ultimate Professional Resume, check it out because some of the cover letter content references your resume.
You can also get the Interview Intervention Book Experience FREE, which has much more and includes an eBook, audio, chapter note, guides, and many aids related to job interviewing!
About the Author
Andrew LaCivita is the Founder & Chief Executive of milewalk and the milewalk Academy. As an internationally recognized executive recruiter, award-winning author, speaker, and trainer, Andrew has dedicated his career to helping people and companies realize their potential. He frequently serves as a trusted media resource and is the author of Interview Intervention, Out of Reach but in Sight, and The Hiring Prophecies (the eLit Gold Award Winner for Best Business/Careers/Sales Book for 2016).
Andrew’s passion is serving as a coach and trainer via his top 100 HR and Careers Blog, Tips for Work and Life®, and his online training site, the milewalk Academy. On a daily basis, he circulates his Today’s Line to Live By™, which is a self-developed inspirational quote. You can find these daily dispatches of inspiration on his blog and social media platform.
To learn more about Andrew and get the many free resources, books, and other helpful aids he offers, see his full biography and resources page.
Quote from The 4 Sentence Cover Letter That Gets You the Job Interview. http://bit.ly/2bsiT9R
As reported by Reuters, "Swiss bank UBS is leading a team of four of the world's biggest banks developing a system to enable financial markets to make payments and settle transactions quickly using blockchain technology.
UBS has developed a "Utility Settlement Coin" (USC), which is a digital cash equivalent of each of the major currencies backed by central banks, such as the dollar or euro, rather than a decentralized new digital currency such as bitcoin.
The USC would be convertible at parity with a bank deposit in the corresponding currency, making it fully backed by cash assets at a central bank. Spending a USC would be the same as spending the real currency it is paired with, UBS said."
Other banks involved in the project are BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank, and Banco Santander, as well as a brokerage.
Watch our interview with Santander's blockchain chief John Whelan below. Mr. Whelan explained that even though the project uses Ethereum technology, it is not exposed to the public Ethereum blockchain. London-based blockchain lab Clearmatics, involved with the settlement coin concept, started with a flavor of Ethereum but this project is likely to end up being rather proprietary in nature.
Disclosure: Not financial advice. At time of publication, I hold some bitcoin, ether, gold, and U.S. dollars in my long term portfolio.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tesla Motors Inc <TSLA.O> Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Tuesday the company will offer a larger upgraded battery pack for performance versions of its Model S and X vehicles that will extend range and allow for super fast acceleration.
The new 100 kilowatt hour battery pack means high end versions of the Model S sedan, called the P 100D, will be the world’s fastest accelerating car in production, the Silicon Valley automaker said.
“These are very profound milestones and I think will help convince people around the world that electric is the future,” said Musk on a conference call with journalists.
The new battery extends the range of performance versions of the new Model S beyond 300 miles (482.8 km), Tesla said. Musk said that if the weather is not too hot, a driver could travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles without recharging. After rising 2.1 percent to $227.71 in afternoon trade, shares dipped from session highs to $224.87, up less than 1 percent.
News of the upgrade comes as the all-electric car maker lays the groundwork for a controversial buyout of SolarCity Corp <SCTY.O>, while it also prepares for next year’s launch of its high profile Model 3 mass-market vehicle.
SolarCity agreed to Tesla’s $2.6 billion offer to buy the solar panel installer earlier this month, clearing one obstacle in the way of Musk’s ambitious goal to create a carbon-free energy and transportation company.
Both companies are still trading below where they were when SolarCity’s approval for the deal was announced.
In May, Tesla said it was stepping up production plans for its upcoming Model 3 mass-market sedan and would build a total of 500,000 all-electric vehicles in 2018, two years ahead of schedule, but it warned that spending will ramp up as well.
Tesla earlier this month reported a steeper than expected quarterly loss on higher spending at its vehicle and battery factories.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Tom Brown)
I’ve always struggled with the ethics of my chosen profession. Even while poring over copies of Advertising Age in college, my attraction to brilliant campaigns was tempered by the nagging sense that marketers’ influence on our thoughts and values isn’t always good. After all, a marketer’s job is to creatively convince people to do or consume things that they sometimes don’t even want or need.
That nagging feeling led me to spend the first 15 years of my career in health behavior change and nonprofit marketing. Later, my business partner and I founded RoundPeg to create brands and campaigns for organizations committed to social good. But I always had a sense that marketing’s potential for good wasn’t fully realized.
Ultimately it was RoundPeg’s joining the B Corp community that revealed a new approach to marketing that realizes that potential – and solves my professional ethical dilemma – for good.
Our Chance to B Better It was a no-brainer for RoundPeg to become a certified B Corp in 2012 and incorporate as a Benefit Corporation in 2013. We already operated responsibly and helped clients promote social causes and sustainable behaviors. We figured certification would strengthen our commitment to people, planet and community and we could learn from other good businesses. It did all of those things. But we never anticipated how significantly being part of the B Corp community would influence and inspire us.
Conversations with colleagues at other B Corps told us that the number of companies pledging to use business as a force for good is growing more rapidly than consumer attitudes and knowledge are changing. For this movement to survive and thrive, we need to make buying responsibly the norm.
It became clear that marketing – the practice that has encouraged society’s excess – is the exact tool needed to make the good choice the easy choice for mainstream consumers.
Marketing’s Opportunity While marketing isn’t the only force to blame for wasteful consumption, its significant contribution can’t be ignored.
Most consumers don’t test the marketing claims of every company, so when a company says they’re doing good, we assume they’re telling the truth. While scandals of goodwashing and worse increase skepticism, consumers are often at the mercy of marketers and remain powerless to distinguish between genuinely good and apparently good companies and products.
As consumers, we’re so far removed from where and how our stuff is made that we're often blind to the effects of our choices. For decades marketers have exploited that. Tapping into our values, they’ve positioned superfluities as necessities, made the case for shoddy products and convinced consumers that obtaining the latest version of everything is essential to creating the best version of oneself.
But time is revealing the negative consequences of decades of conspicuous consumption and consumers are generally paying more attention to what they buy, who makes it, where it’s from and what’s it’s made of. Sometimes they even question whether it’s needed at all.
The rise of socially responsible business like B Corps and Benefit Corporations presents an opportunity for marketers to reverse the damage done by our predecessors by using marketing as a force for good.
Purposeful Marketing: A New Approach Through Purposeful marketing, we can show consumers that every purchasing decision they make is a chance to be the change the world needs. We can equip them with the information they need to make better choices and invite them to be our partners in change.
While B Corp and other certifications provide context and ensure accountability, mainstream consumers with busy lives aren’t likely to take the time to distinguish the good, the bad and the ugly. Many don’t know that what these certifications mean or even that they exist.
Purposeful marketing champions the companies that are truly doing good to help consumers cut through the fray of false claims. Inspired by our fellow B Corps, RoundPeg applies Purposeful marketing principles to help good brands:
· engage customers by connecting their company Purpose with customer values, · cultivate long-term, meaningful customer relationships that amplify social impact and profitability · create meaningful customer experiences · build loyal communities of influence · empower customers to be brand ambassadors for social impact
Time for Change Until the majority of the marketplace demands change, conscious consumerism is at risk of becoming a fad. As marketers and as B Corps, we must encourage consumers to demand that brands act as part of the solution to social problems and invite our customers to be part of the solution.
Our experience as a B Corp taught us that businesses with good built-in do everything else differently, so it’s natural that we should rethink marketing as well. We can’t expect consumers to change the way they think, act and purchase without making changes ourselves. That’s why RoundPeg’s sole focus now is using marketing to help Purposeful brands make buying responsibly the norm.
We urge the visionaries behind purposeful companies – and our marketing agency colleagues – to join us in seizing the opportunity to use marketing for good. When we lead with Purpose, we don’t have to manufacture justifications to win customer loyalty because the shared Purpose itself creates the bond. The more consumers insist on purchasing with Purpose, the closer we’ll get to a world where companies that don’t do good don’t stand a chance.
The B Corp Life is a new blog series geared towards exploring what it’s like to work at a benefit corporation. Why do b corps matter, and what does the future hold for them? Let us know at PurposePlusProfit@huffingtonpost.com or by tweeting with #TheBCorpLife.
Pam Walter took a job as a banquet server at the Hilton Garden Inn in Missoula, Montana, in 2006. At first, she was paid an hourly wage plus a share of customers’ tips. But Walter said those tips didn’t last long.
The gratuities earned by servers like herself at several Montana hotels were renamed “service” or “setup” fees, according to a class-action lawsuit Walter filed last year. The hotels continued to add these automatic charges to their customers’ bills, but instead of dispersing the cash among the servers, the house started pocketing it.
Now, that money is finally making its way back to Walter and her fellow servers. Earlier this month, they reached a $4 million settlement with the hotels’ owners and a common subcontractor, according to a settlement agreement approved by a Montana state judge. The lawsuit involves more than 500 workers.
Many of them will receive just a thousand bucks or so, but some will recoup as much as $80,000, depending on how long they worked for the hotels.
“We’re very happy,” said Jason Armstrong, one of the lawyers representing the servers. “The named plaintiffs were very brave in putting their names on the complaint. Any time you go up against your employer you’re putting yourself at risk. They held their [employers’] feet to the fire.”
The Huffington Post first reported on this dispute last year, when a hotel worker in Bozeman, Montana, filed an unrelated lawsuit against the Hilton Garden Inn there. Laurie Zabawa said the hotel switched to “service” fees in 2012, after it outsourced the banquet work to a subcontractor called Gateway Hospitality Group. The policy change meant the workers themselves no longer received the gratuities attached to banquet bills, she said. As banquet manager, Zabawa was tasked with enforcing the new policy.
“It was awful,” Zabawa told HuffPost at the time. “Just imagine working there with those people for years. They were my family. It was horrible to go through, and I had no options.”
What happened at Zabawa’s hotel is surprisingly common these days. Many businesses in the service industry have pocketed as “fees” the money that customers likely thought they paid as tips for frontline workers. In 2010, catering employees who worked the U.S. Open in New York accused the concessions company of swallowing a 21 percent fee that was tacked onto customers’ bills. The workers said the service fee looked to customers like a gratuity. They settled the lawsuit for $600,000.
As HuffPost reported in 2011, Yankee Stadium was accused of pulling a similar move. Beer and hot dog vendors said the stadium’s concessionaire, Legends Hospitality, was tacking a 20 percent service fee onto the drink and food orders in the stadium’s luxury boxes, while giving the vendors only 4 to 6 percent in commission. The difference, they said, went to Legends, which at the time was jointly owned by the New York Yankees, the Dallas Cowboys and Goldman Sachs.
Big pizza chains have gotten into the act, too. As HuffPost reported in 2014, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s and Domino’s now commonly add nominal “delivery fees” to the tabs for delivery orders. The fees, which range from $1.50 to $3 a pop, don’t go to the drivers ― even though many customers assume they do.
Adding such service fees allows companies to raise their real prices without raising their sticker prices. By implying the fees are tips for services rendered, they leave customers with the impression that the money goes to the workers. To critics like Armstrong, the practice cheats both workers and customers.
Montana is one of a handful of states that have tried to solve the problem by mandating that any such fees go to workers. The state law under which Walter sued her hotel defines a service fee as “an arbitrary fixed charge added to the customer’s bill by an employer in lieu of a tip.” Such a fee “must be distributed directly to the nonmanagement employee preparing or serving the food or beverage or to any other employee involved in related services.”
Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Washington state have their own laws addressing service fees. The Washington law allows businesses to charge a service fee but requires them to note on the receipt exactly how much the employee will receive.
In the Walter case, the hotels and the subcontractor agreed to cough up the employees’ shares of the original gratuities, plus a surcharge in penalties. Of the $4 million settlement, around $1 million goes toward the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.
Armstrong said it would have been hard to recoup the fees if state law hadn’t clearly established that they belonged to the workers.
“The laws in the state of Montana protect vulnerable people from this type of wage-and-hour violation,” he said. “These workers are relying on their tip income to pay their rent and buy their food.”
Iroquois Valley Farms Co-Founder and CEO, Dave Miller, makes it sound simple: “We built this company to support the businesses of our farmers.” Iroquois Valley Farms merges the worlds of socially responsible investing and organic farming to provide land access and financing to farmers interested in expanding their regenerative organic businesses. As a company dedicated to maximizing environmental and social returns in addition to economic returns, it made perfect sense to become a Certified B Corporation.
Organic farming operates differently from the conventional agriculture world. Therefore, a company built to support organic farmers must operate differently from conventional companies. As a Certified B Corp, Iroquois Valley Farms faces self-imposed standards of accountability and measures itself against a broader purpose. By implanting the Certified B Corp structure and pledging to be a business that benefits all while doing no harm, Iroquois Valley Farms embeds its mission to support organic farmers in its operating structure.
Organic farming involves long-term commitment to the land: it takes three years to transition soil from conventional to certified organic and our farmers say it takes over ten years to fully restore soil health to previously conventionally managed farms. The organic transition is rough – farmers must market their crops at conventional prices while putting in extra time and money on soil restoration, which often leads to operational losses. There is no immediate economic benefit to farmers doing the difficult work of transitioning the land to organic status. The reward comes over time, when farmers can finally sell into organic markets. Organic food is more popular and accessible than ever, yet farmers hoping to break into the market face minimal support. Iroquois Valley Farms not only aims to support transitioning farmers, but also indirectly increase the accessibility of organic foods to consumers. Simply, with more organic farmers there is more organic food.
It’s clear that consumers want more organic food – organic sales continue to grow and reached $43 billion in sales in 2015, according to the Organic Trade Association. In Iroquois Valley’s work and in the industry, millennials are driving change. 70% of Iroquois Valley’s tenants are millennial. Amazingly, less than 1% of total US cropland is organic, and organic food sales make up only about 5% of total food sales.
These limits also represent huge growth opportunities, but the transition period is a major barrier to change for farmers. Iroquois Valley Farms, as a Certified B Corporation is purposefully built to match the needs of organic farmers. In order to build a company to match the needs of a farmer, one must pass Farmer Psychology 101. The key principle is that farmers do not think in years, decades or lifetimes, but rather in generations. As such, Iroquois Valley Farms is structured as a leasing company that is able to hold the land for multiple generations if necessary. This leasing company approach differs from the traditional Wall Street trading model, in which assets are intentionally bought and sold regardless of their usage or their interaction with the asset holder. Conventional agriculture thrives in the Wall Street model that does not consider soil health or the vitality of the farming community. Iroquois Valley specifically contrasts this approach by offering indefinite land access that supports the farmer.
Second to generational access is the opportunity to take ownership. Our tenants become eligible to buy the land after seven years. While many farmers may never take ownership, providing that option is essential – it enables long-term decision-making and generational planning when combined with indefinite lease possibilities. As a Company we have only sold farmland to farmer tenants, never any third parties that would risk displacing the existing tenant. Again, this contrasts the Wall Street trading model that sells when it is optimal for the owner – not the tenant. We call this the “well, hopefully” approach—well, hopefully the farmer can buy when I want to sell the farm. The “well, hopefully” approach inherently supports conventional management by perpetuating uncertainty instead of supporting a generational perspective. By providing potential ownership options on the farmers’ terms, Iroquois Valley Farm directly supports organic regenerative agriculture and enables better farm management practices.
For Iroquois Valley Farms, becoming a Certified B Corp was a given. It was a clear and definitive way to demonstrate the Company’s commitment to the principles organic farming embodies. These principles of attentive care for the land and care for human health already operate on environmental and social bottom lines. Furthermore, organic agriculture generates more revenues for organic farmers, which enlivens rural economies. Essentially, organic farming as an industry exemplifies Certified B Corp values. It’s only fitting that a company dedicated to supporting organic farmers and helping them grow this movement aligns with the same ideals. Organic agriculture takes a clear stand on the issue of how to grow food and decides it can do it well; Iroquois Valley Farms goes a step further to ensure that an already mission-driven enterprise can and is doing better by and for the world.
Claire Mesesan can be reached via email at cmesesan@iroquoisvalleyfarms.com
The B Corp Life is a new blog series geared towards exploring what it’s like to work at a benefit corporation. Why do b corps matter, and what does the future hold for them? Let us know at PurposePlusProfit@huffingtonpost.com or by tweeting with #TheBCorpLife.
What is the best advice your father ever gave you? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
Answer by David S. Rose, angel investor, father of three, on Quora:
It is safe to say that my father has been, by far, the most important influence on my life as an entrepreneur. Back in the days of the dotcom boom, when I was in my 30s, I was delighted to be named a finalist for the prestigious Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year" Award in New York. It was no surprise at all; however, when my father actually won the award just a few years ago, he was in his late 70s!
For as far back as I can remember, my father has served as my primary role model, showing by example the importance of impeccable integrity, hard work and dedication, creative business thinking, and the need for maintaining a long-term perspective. Today, in his mid-80s, he is as energetic and engaged in the entrepreneurial life as anyone I know, creating new business and social ventures and mentoring yet another generation of entrepreneurs.
You can get anything done if you're willing to give away the credit. This was driven home to me when I was a teenager. I watched from a ring-side seat as he single-handedly conceived, implemented, and succeeded at pulling off a brilliant, entrepreneurial, off-the-wall solution to a problem that saved an otherwise-doomed $100 million project. But at the ribbon cutting ceremony, a dozen other people, including the mayor, were showered with credit while my father's name was not even mentioned. I was absolutely devastated, but he was quietly and calmly proud, pointing out that...
Plato's definition of "beauty" is "fitness to the end in view." ...And his end game had been to save the project, not be honored by the mayor. The moral of this is to have a clear idea of what you are trying to do, and then focus on getting that done. In many ways this is a precursor of the Lean Methodology concept of the Minimum Viable Product: don't be distracted by surface appearances or unnecessary features; start by solving the immediate problem with a "beautiful" solution.
Your actions shout so loud I can't hear what you're saying. One of his many admonishments on the subject of integrity, the point is that one can talk a good game, but at the end of the day it is what you do, and only what you do, that actually counts. Integrity means practicing what you preach, saying what you mean, and living up to your promises and exhortations with your own actions.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. He first told me this in seventh grade when I moved to a new school, and I have come to realize how important (even though it seems ridiculously obvious) this is in virtually every business environment. When people meet you for the first time, whether investors, customers, or potential partners, you are in control of what they begin to think of you. Once that first impression has clicked, it is damnably difficult to get people to change their mind. This is now a standard part of my presentation training seminars for entrepreneurs, because in a venture pitch your target investor will likely start making up his or her mind about your opportunity before you are two or three minutes into the presentation.
Trust everyone, but cut the cards. The corollary, from Finley Peter Dunne, suggests going into every discussion and negotiation assuming good intentions on everyone's part, but not being naïve about it. In my own entrepreneurial career I've taken this even one step further. My corporate motto has always been "everyone gets one chance to screw us," because if I limit my exposure on the first interaction, it will be the cheapest money I ever spend to find out who plays fair and who doesn't.
It's one thing to piss on my back, but don't try to tell me I'm sweating. This one comes from an old-time construction superintendent with whom my father himself apprenticed, and it again boils down to honesty and integrity. Whatever you do (or whatever someone else does to you) should be done clearly and with no obfuscation. Own your actions, and don't try to fool yourself or anyone else with false rationalizations. (As in "it's perfectly ok to pirate music and movies against the express wishes of the copyright owner, because I'm actually helping them by giving them added exposure...").
Every tub should sit on its own bottom. That is, examine each action or relationship independently, and don't mix yourself up by conflating unrelated activities. For example, if you are considering taking in a strategic investment, analyze the equity investment independently as one piece, and the strategic contract as a separate one. Similarly, when considering a problem, break it down into the smallest possible components and figure out how to solve each one on its own. Quite often a seemingly intractable problem can be handled with two or three simple actions.
Nice guys don't always finish first, but you should act as if they do. History has shown that bad things happen to good people, and if one runs around maintaining "nice guys always finish first", you will (a) be disappointed, and (b) convince people that you're hopelessly naïve. But the fact is that if the "nice" is combined with other characteristics such as "effective", "smart", and "hardworking", nice guys often do finish first, and have an easier time and more support from those around them.
If three people tell you you're drunk, lie down anyway. Mark Twain's advice about having a decent respect for the opinions of others is something that I remind myself about nearly every day. Entrepreneurs are almost universally convinced that they are bearing the Word of God, and that anyone who disagrees with them must therefore be either an idiot or invincibly ignorant. I am certainly no exception to this belief, but after nearly four decades in business I have come to realize how true Twain's words ring. While it is critical for entrepreneurs to have faith in their own visions, it is equally critical to listen to what the market and other smart people are saying. Coachability, flexibility, and a willingness to listen to (if not heed) good advice are some of the key things that I look for an as an investor.
Happiness is the exercise of one's vital powers along lines of excellence. Last but not least, George Santayana's perceptive view of personal fulfillment (what Abraham Maslow discussed as "self actualization") pre-dated by decades the concept of "flow". Exercising my 'vital powers' as an entrepreneur, an investor and a mentor makes me one of the happiest people I know, just as it has for my life role model.
This question originally appeared on Quora. - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
More questions:
Fathers: How can I learn to be a great father for my future kids?
Children: Is sleepaway camp good for children's emotional development?
Parenting: What is something crazy that a child of yours has done?
How do you consistently get your company to invest its time, talent, attention, and money on the right things in the face of so many demands and urgencies crying out for its resources?
You lean heavily on the strategic structure you've built for your company.
At its most basic form, your strategic structure is how your business rationally and effectively plans its pathway forward as you scale.
It includes your annual planning to set goals and create your map for the coming year; quarterly planning to check in on progress and gain clarity for the coming quarter's action plan; and weekly execution and accountability to follow your quarterly action plan and get the results you want.
When you repeat and refine how you go through your strategic planning and execution, you define and reinforce your strategic structure.
Let's start with your annual planning...
Your annual planning includes you asking questions like:
1.What business you are trying to build? Over the next 3-5 years what is your number one business goal?
Too many business owners never stop and clarify in writing the business they are working so hard to create.
What does your ideal business look like in 3-5 years?
What does it look like quantitatively? (E.g. What are its sales figures... its market share... its margins... the size of the average client... etc.)
What does it look like qualitatively? (E.g. What is it known for... what niches does it focus on... who are its best customers... what does the team look like... etc.)
2.Where do you currently stand in relationship to your number one business goal?
In other words, you're looking to identify the "gap."
If you are working to build a $15 million per year sales volume in the next 5 years with an operating profit margin of 20 percent, where do you stand right now? What is the "gap" that you'll have to bridge between where you are today and where you want to get to in the future?
In your annual strategic planning you'll create your written map to bridge (or at least narrow) this gap.
3.What is your single biggest "limiting factor" inside your business?
In other words, what one limitation is currently doing the most to limit the growth and success of your business?
Getting clear on your limiting factor is one of your top leverage points inside of your business. It is a great clue to where you should invest some of your top resources of time, attention, money, and talent to create a big result for your business.
4.What are 10+ potential ways to push back or make your limiting factors less limiting for your business?
Again, this is the challenge worth solving. When you do solve it, you automatically grow your business in a leveraged way! So get your leadership team together and brainstorm as many ways as you can to push that limiting factor back, or make it irrelevant.
5.Go back through your list of 10 "solutions", which of your potential ideas are "low hanging fruit?"
Low Hanging Fruit means that the solution is easy to implement or straight forward to implement, and it has a high likelihood of working, of producing a result.
6.Go back through your list of 10 "solutions", which of your potential ideas are a "home run"?
A home run is a solution that if it works, the payoff is BIG!
7.Which ideas are your "sweet spots"?
Going back to your above list of 10 solutions to each of your limiting factors, circle the solutions that are both a low hanging fruit and a home run. These are your "sweet spots". By definition these are the critical areas you need to invest the best resources inside your business. They are easy to do/high likelihood of working and they have a BIG payoff.
Taking all of this into consideration, map out your year.
•What are you revenue goals?
•Your profit goals?
•Your other "KPI" (Key Performance Indicator) goals?
•What is your strategy to reach these goals?
•What is your rough plan - quarter by quarter - to execute on your strategy and reach your goals?
Now, armed with your annual map, next you'll need to create your quarterly plan of action. Why quarterly? Because the quarter is the perfect unit of time to bridge your big-picture goals, which likely have a two- to five-year timeline or longer, and your weekly planning and daily action. The quarter is the key to executing on your strategy to accomplish your business goals.
It's long enough that you can get meaningful units of work done that collectively bring you closer to your long-term goals, but short enough so that you can frequently course correct and hold your focus.
For over a decade now I've pushed our business coaching clients to follow our one-page plan of action. You likely are asking why this strong bias for a one-page plan of action, why not 2 pages, or 5, or 25 pages? Why one page?
Because I've learned from our work coaching hundreds of companies that in the rush of the day to day, if your plan is 2 pages, or 3 pages you just won't use it weekly to guide your execution of that plan. With a one-page plan you'll review it every week, and pull the needed action steps for you to add into your weekly execution system. Plus you'll be able to review your key leadership team's quarterly one-page action plan each week and quickly check in and hold them accountable for their behaviors too. In essence your one-page plan of action becomes your quarterly and weekly GPS to make sure that your team is focusing on the right things, and hitting the key milestones on time.
Here's a link to an earlier article I wrote on exactly how to create your one-page plan of action.
The final element of your Strategic Structure is your weekly accountability and execution. I've developed a concrete tool to help you execute weekly called, The Big Rock Report. Essentially the way this tool works is that each week, at the start of the week, you and your key staff each pick 2-3 "Big Rocks". Big Rocks are specific action steps, tasks, or chunks of a key project that if you did them in the coming week would do the most to progress your business towards its most important goals. Why do I call them Big Rocks? Because these are the big things from which you build your success, week-by-week, quarter-by-quarter, year-by-year.
Each Big Rock should be something that takes no more than two hours. If it likely will take longer, then break it down into a smaller bite sized chunk. Why two hours or less? Because it's unlikely you'll be consistently be able to block off a bigger chunk of time. By keeping your Big Rocks to steps you can take and complete in a 1-2 hour "chunk" or less, you'll increase your odds of getting them done.
So the first part of your weekly "Big Rock Report" is to review how you did on your prior week's Big Rocks. Did you get them all done? What were the outcomes? What did you learn? Any next steps still needed?
Then you list out your Big Rocks for the coming week. Review your one-page action plan, what steps do you need to take this coming week to keep yourself on target to meet or exceed your quarterly plan of action?
For more ideas on growing your business, including a free tool kit with 21 in-depth video trainings to help you scale your business and get your life back, click here.
In the nearly 100 degree heat this weekend, I joined thousands of fast-food and other underpaid workers in Richmond, VA—the capital of the former Confederacy— to lead the first-ever Fight for $15 National Convention.
It wasn’t a typical convention like you see on TV: We didn’t endorse any candidates, and there weren’t speeches from politicians.
Instead, we came together in Richmond to highlight the racist policies that are holding back workers of color nationwide, and to mobilize the 64 million Americans paid less than $15/hour ahead of the 2016 election.
Together, we’re going to make sure that this is an election where candidates at all levels hear the demands of working people loud and clear.
For the past three years I’ve worked as a cook at KFC in Birmingham, Alabama. After more than three years in the fast-food industry, I’m still paid the minimum wage of $7.25/hour, which comes out to about $10,000 every year.
I started working full time at the age of 20 to help support my mother and two siblings. Even though I work hard and have gained skills in the kitchen, my wages have not budged. If it weren’t for public assistance to help cover the cost of housing, I would end up homeless.
When I heard about fast-food workers across the country going on strike to demand $15/hour and union rights, I realized I wasn’t alone, and that other people struggling like me were speaking out for change. I went on strike for the first time last year, and since then I’ve brought coworkers and neighbors to countless protests in my community to demand higher pay and the right to a union.
Earlier this year, we finally started to make progress in our fight when the Birmingham City Council approved a measure in February to raise our city’s minimum wage to $10.10/hour. It wasn’t the $15/hour we needed, but it was a start, and I began to dream of a life where the thought of buying dinner or paying the electricity bill didn’t cause panic. I even imagined finally being able to go to college to become a computer technician.
But the feeling of hope didn’t last long. Just two days after our city passed the wage increase, state lawmakers in Montgomery voted to take it away. In many ways it felt like the latest chapter in the racist history of states like Alabama: A predominantly white legislature used its power to override the decision of an overwhelmingly black city council, representing a city that is 74 percent African American. The raises won by 40,000 hard-working Birmingham cooks, cashiers, home care workers and janitors evaporated with the stroke of a pen.
Workers in Birmingham are not alone. In the last year, predominantly black workforces in Kansas City and St. Louis also had raises stolen from them by Missouri’s majority white state legislature. And while America’s racist past continues to hold back workers of color, today low-wage jobs are forcing workers all across the economy to scrape by: nearly half of America’s workers are now paid less than $15/hour.
Underpaid workers across the country traveled to Richmond for the Fight for $15 Convention this weekend because now is our time to chart a new course ahead of the 2016 election. People who work at McDonald’s were there. Home care workers were there. So were airport baggage handlers, wheelchair attendants, truck drivers, retail workers, farmers, adjunct college professors, early childhood teachers, and people who work in factories and retail stores.
We won’t stop until everyone has the right to earn at least $15 and the freedom to form unions. That’s the only way we’ll get an economy that works for everyone.
Success is not something you protect. It's something you risk.
A lot of cheerleaders in the business world preach that success involves throwing an intention out into the universe, with the physics of optimism as your sole force of forward motion, to achieve a specific goal or objective. While oftentimes effective, this school of motivational philosophy often overlooks other critical areas of business that many people avoid or disregard altogether, including a thorough analysis of risk within their organization.
Successful people enamor me. I spend a lot of time watching and observing countless entrepreneurs I know personally, as well as those I admire from afar. I love to study their behavior to better understand what they do differently, why they do what they do, and what makes them tick. In this process I've identified a pattern in many of them, which is their ability to constantly look into the future, contemplating what-if scenarios in their business, and always looking for what lies ahead, especially when it comes to the risk they face in their business. Assessing risk is sort of like budgeting for the downside. The key is to not only use optimism for reasons to take action, but to also utilize risk factors you uncover to guide your decisions. Yes, you must have courage to bet on your ideas, but you must also have the ability to take a thoughtful, calculated approach. It's nearly impossible to remove all risk in any scenario, but what's important is to make sure these troublesome areas are always considered and understood. This ensures that no opportunity you embark upon is executed naively and without thoughtful consideration. Understanding this concept is absolutely critical if you aim to build something great that will sustain for many years to come. Entrepreneurs are known for their ability to take on large amounts of risk that would make most people sick to their stomach, but successful ones don't do it blindly.
Try taking a stoic approach in your business by being honest, realistic, and open about the kind of risk you face in your business. This enables you to look ahead of you, behind you, and in all other directions, no matter how uncomfortable it may be to do this. Your biggest vantage point will always be the one on which you can envision the full panorama of potential successes - coupled with their corresponding potential failures.
A pivotal piece of building a solid foundation is built for your business is to conduct a risk analysis on a regular basis. I like to do this at least once a year for each business I run; for startups (or established businesses in rapidly changing industries such as tech) I recommend doing this at least twice a year or more because the environment around you will be shifting rapidly. To protect and empower your company to grow successfully, it is extremely important to stay on top of new risk factors as they emerge.
The easiest way to do this is to conduct a risk audit on your business by compiling everything into a spreadsheet. Once it is completed I like to print it out and place it somewhere in my office where I will see it often. I recommend setting up an Excel or Google spreadsheet with five columns, labeling each one with the steps below: Step 1: "KEY RISK": What is the risk factors facing your business? Risk factors should include your competition (rising costs, lower prices, surplus inventory), the economy, your industry (how susceptible is it to change?), technological changes, consumer preferences, rising costs, key personnel within your organization (what if you lost your top producing sales agent?), industry regulations, etc. Don't forget to also consider burnout as a risk factor if you're a founder. Trust me, it happens.
Step 2: "RISK SCORE": How do I weigh this risk on a scale of one to 10? After careful consideration, you should score each risk factor you identify so you can sort by rank once you are done. This does not mean a risk factor you rank as a two is to be neglected for the risk factor you assign a score of nine. This simply allows you to prioritize which risk factors you should be engineering a contingency plan for first (queue step 3 below).
Step 3: "CONTINGENCY PLAN": What is my contingency plan for this risk? Ask yourself, "What can be done if this does actually happens?" and then begin to compose the steps you think are necessary to alleviate or deal with the risk. Keep in mind some risk factors are out of your control and have terrible mitigation plans (e.g. if your company is AAA Taxi and your obvious risk is technological advances via Uber, you might be facing a bigger uphill battle).
Step 4: "PERSON ACCOUNTABLE": Which person in my organization is responsible for this risk? Some risk factors may not be something any one person can be accountable for, such as economic downturns, or a major change in technology, but regardless, try to identify a key person to assign to each risk factor you identify in your business. This will help you visualize how the risk management is spread throughout your organization. If you have too many risk factors falling on one person's plate (HINT: it's usually the founder), then that itself is also a risk factor. Can the founder delegate any of these areas of responsibility? What happens if the founder gets burnt out, or become sick? In that scenario, the company will have an even bigger problem on its hands.
Step 5: "DEADLINE": What is the deadline for executing a mitigation plan for this risk factor? Putting an "If then, then what" action plan into place will help serve as a guide if and when the risk factor surfaces. Some risk factors can be completely wiped out from your organization (such as safely removing toxic or litigious people from your organization), so if that is the case, your mitigation plan could include the steps to take to eradicate it completely.
I often tell my employees that asking for feedback is a valuable way to improve your skills in business, and it's one of the only ways we can see our blind spots. Asking for feedback is an uncomfortable thing to do, and conducting a risk analysis and assessment on your business can be just as tough. You will see things you might be aware of, but have been avoiding for quite some time. You'll also discover other areas you haven't noticed until now. Be prepared to touch the place that hurts, because that is where you will create the most growth.
Take some time to thoughtfully evaluate the risk you face, and understand, again, that risk is an inherent part of business. To me, risk is a necessary motivator that keeps me moving. It's part of what gets me out of bed every morning, ready to conquer any way I can. Well thought out and calculated risk is not foolish, it's strategic; it's a daily opportunity for improvement. Imagine what you will be able to learn in the process about your business, and maybe most importantly, about yourself, too.
Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies the dividing line between profit and loss. - Charles Duhigg
Remember, jumping out of an airplane and expecting to grow wings before you hit the ground is hopeful at best, but guaranteed fatal. Are you doing the same with your business?
Setting goals tends to be at least an annual event in our professional lives. Generally, this involves sitting down with our supervisors to identify the things we want to achieve in the coming year and make an action plan for success. An important question that is either implicitly or explicitly embedded in this exercise is the degree to which we should stretch ourselves.
An intriguing study conducted by Leadership IQ sheds some light on that question. They surveyed over 4000 employees about how their supervisor managed the goals they were assigned. Specifically, they were asked to respond to the following questions using a 7-point scale (from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree):
My boss pushes me harder than I would push myself
I will have to exert extra effort to achieve my assigned goals for this year
I will have to learn new skills to achieve my assigned goals for this year
Interestingly, people who scored higher on the above three questions were also significantly more likely to:
Consider themselves to be high performers
Feel that the work that they do makes a difference
Recommend the company to other people as a great place to work
Perhaps the most revealing and powerful result was that individuals who scored higher on the first three questions were also significantly more likely to recommend the person they work for as a great boss. Essentially, supervisors who expected more from their employees and pushed them were seen as more desirable.
Although this finding may be surprising to some, several reasons were postulated to explain this relationship. First and foremost, a powerful by-product of setting stretch goals is that it instills confidence in employees. Why would a supervisor agree to such a goal if he or she did not feel that the employee had the skill or aptitude to achieve it? This type of acknowledgement inspires a higher level of commitment and performance as a result.
Another benefit of stretch goals is that it can convey the importance of the work. Rather than being mundane or routine, it requires employees to be at their best and to explore new territories and opportunities. This can enhance the level of meaning and purpose employees extract from their work, reinforcing the message that their work matters.
Translating Research to Practice
The above research provides some intriguing lessons for both individuals and leaders alike.
For individuals This research clearly highlights the importance of setting stretch goals for ourselves. If and when you set personal goals, make sure you are appropriately stretching yourself. Committing to move beyond our comfort zone can be incredibly rewarding and maximize our personal and professional growth and development.
If you really want to stretch yourself, ask someone you know and trust to be your 'goal coach.' Just like a personal trainer, this person can push you to achieve your goals and make sure you stay on track. They can also challenge you to continue to strive for excellence.
For leaders Although some leaders may be concerned about overburdening their employees, the above research suggests this may limit them from reaching their potential. While it is not wise to continue adding responsibilities and pressure until the person cannot take it anymore, an effective strategy based on the above is to have an open conversation about how you, as their leader, can appropriately stretch them during the upcoming year or quarter.
Before the goal-setting meeting, ask your employees to think about how they can stretch themselves in these areas. What would be effective stretching areas for them to explore?
You can also ask your team how you can best support them in this process, both individually and collectively. Stimulate open group discussions around the importance of stretching ourselves. Challenge your team to think about how they can support each other moving forward.
Each of the above strategies can yield tremendous dividends by tapping into our desire to grow and develop.
Conclusion Setting goals is a universal activity, which continues to take prominence within organizations. It appears that "getting out of our comfort zone" is crucial to maximizing the benefits from this process. Taking the time to reflect, as individuals or as people leaders, on how we can incorporate this perspective into our professional lives can maximize our performance and allow us to fully explore and realize our potential.
**Image courtesy of www.freeimages.com (source: Aaron Neifer)**
A bumpy flight from Boston to Sacramento sent two dozen people to the hospital on Thursday evening.
According to the Boston Globe, JetBlue Flight 429 encountered some bad weather over the Plains and was forced to make an unexpected landing in Rapid City, South Dakota around 7:30 p.m. central time.
Jet blue scary ride... pic.twitter.com/q9iFTgmKeJ
— Rhonda Renee (@Bistrobaby) August 12, 2016
The turbulence injured 22 passengers and two crew members, who were taken to Rapid City Regional Hospital for evaluation. All were treated for minor injures and released, NBC News reported.
“It was almost like a bang, like we hit a wall and just dropped straight down,” Casey Corcoran, who was traveling with two young children, told Boston ABC affiliate WCVB. “There was stuff in the aisles, you had people crying.”
Flight attendant was in galley during incident. Hit her head on ceiling & completely dislodged the panel. Cuts, neck injury, and concussion
— Derek Lindahl (@oif_vet) August 12, 2016
@mgeheren this picture one of the injured flight attendant. 1 other just left! RCH Regional are the best pic.twitter.com/HFlfYw7H2E
— Rhonda Renee (@Bistrobaby) August 12, 2016
In a statement, JetBlue said the plane’s travelers would be boarded onto another aircraft.
“JetBlue care team members are being sent to assist injured customers, and a replacement aircraft is en route to Rapid City for customers continuing on to Sacramento.”
