Four Reasons You Hate Networking And What To Do Instead | Fast Company

December 14, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If you’re a normal professional, you may just feel at least a smidge of apprehension or resentment when it comes time to drag yourself to (or get dragged to) a professional networking event. Sure, sure, the crab puffs might be killer, but there are so many things to not love about these shindigs that I’d be here for hours if I tried to highlight each one.

Because that doesn’t sound fun for either of us, let’s start with four common reasons why you don’t enjoy them—even when you know (or suspect) they’re important to attend. And then let’s find a better option for every stinking one of them.

Retail sales show massive shift in restaurant industry | Business Insider

December 14, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Wednesday’s retail sales report was disappointing, missing economists’ expectations and raising concerns over the outlook for the holiday shopping season.

Within the retail sales report, however, was an interesting nugget that may be worrying for America’s major restaurant chains.

The percentage of retail sales devoted to bars and restaurants compared with food and beverage stores was nearly the smallest gap in decades, according to Bespoke Investment Group.

Disrupt or be Disrupted | Duct Tape Marketing

December 12, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In a few short years much of what you do, make, fix, sell, and ship, won’t mean much to anyone. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance that if you stay put doing whatever it is your business does right now – you’ll be out of business.

If you want to survive, let alone thrive, you must tap new trends and produce new ideas at an accelerating rate.

Robots, artificial intelligence, and technology built on top of the internet will continue to threaten the very fabric of what most business (and jobs) are set up to do today. If I’m to be totally honest, it will wipe most business and jobs as we know them today completely away.

No one was a social media manager, app developer, or drone operator (there are 70,000 of these now) ten years ago.

And in ten years there will be very few cashiers, travel agents, and social media managers (coming full circle on this one pretty quickly).

Nintendo Is Leaving Its Comfort Zone, and We’re All Better Off | Entrepreneur

December 12, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Super Mario will finally jump to iPhones on Thursday, and I will get to live out my boyhood dreams of exploring the game series’s Mushroom Kingdom in the real world sometime in the future. Today, Nintendo revealed initial plans for its first-ever theme park attractions, which will open in Osaka’s Universal Studios Japan in 2020, with other locations to follow.

There will also be Legend of Zelda-themed escape rooms. My inner child just can’t even.

You see, the Japanese company that’s also behind Pokémon and Donkey Kong has majorly shifted its strategy in the past few years, at a time when the smartphones in all of our pockets increasingly threaten its grip on the handheld games market and its Wii U console failed to live up to the success of its predecessor.

The ‘Uber for X’ Fad Will Pass Because Only Uber Is Uber | WIRED

December 12, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

“UBER FOR X” has been the headline of more than four hundred news articles. Thousands of would-be entrepreneurs used the phrase to describe their companies in their pitch decks. On one site alone—AngelList, where startups can court angel investors and employees—526 companies included “Uber for” in their listings. As a judge for various emerging technology startup competitions, I saw “Uber for” so many times that at some point, I developed perceptual blindness.

Nearly all the organizations I advised at that time wanted to know about the “Uber for” of their respective industries. A university wanted to develop an “Uber for tutoring”; a government agency was hoping to solve an impending transit issue with an “Uber for parking.” I knew that “Uber for” had reached critical mass when one large media organization, in need of a sustainable profit center, pitched me their “Uber for news strategy.”

3 Best Free Recovery Software to Get Your Data Back | Life Hack

December 8, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Data loss can happen on any device that is capable of storing data. Even a simple misplacement is a loss of data, and it is a loss technically. There are number of reason for this like human error, file corruption, hardware, site relates thefts, viruses and damaging malware, mechanical damages of hard drive, power failure, spilling coffee, and other water damages etc. Thus the permanent loss of data needs to be avoided as it hinders the ongoing success of business.

Though there are number of ways for recovering the data but it is expensive business so it’s better to take substitute which is backing up your data, photos and key documents on regular basis. Even there are number of backup regimens but it is of less comfort. As and when you are aware that data loss had happened, first thing which is critical is stop using drive immediately which is affected.

Marketing Feels Bad Because We’re Ashamed Not Because It’s Shameful | marketingforhippies.com

December 8, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The other day, I was wondering about why there was such an appeal to marketing courses that taught secrets of unconscious persuasion, stealth tactics, invisible influence, secret closes, ninja strategies etc.

The implication of all of these approaches was that no one would notice what you were doing. No one would notice that you were steering them towards buying from you. They would just, unexplainably, feel compelled to trust and buy from you. They’d just leave the conversation with your product proudly in their hand thinking that they had made the decision when, in fact, it was all you and the secret arsenal of tactics you’d deployed throughout the conversation.

Almost Half of Job Applicants Don’t Follow Basic Directions, Say HR Pros | The Simple Dollar

December 8, 2016December 8, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Were you one of those kids who always followed directions on classroom activities? If so, you probably had an advantage when you started your career, because standing out from the pack may be as simple as paying attention to the details as you submit your job application.

While there’s little hard data on the subject, it appears a startling number of job seekers don’t follow basic directions when applying for a job: The human resource professionals I spoke with estimated that about half of all candidates are guilty of leaving out critical information on their applications.

Whether it’s forgetting to include an attachment or requested references, or accidentally leaving a section blank, a haphazard application can have real consequences for your candidacy; depending on the circumstances and the strength of your resume, it could even get you knocked out of contention.

Background Checks May Lower School Shootings: Study | Live Science

December 7, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

States that require background checks before people buy guns or ammunition may have a lower chance of having a school shooting, a new study finds.

Researchers found that over a three-year period, states that didn’t require background checks before purchases of guns or ammunition were more likely to have a school shooting than those states that did require them, according to the study.

Why Your Company Should Blow Up the 9-5 Workweek | Inc.com

December 7, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Your mind could have drifted thousands of miles away, but as long as your body showed up to work at Dallas-based tax firm Ryan, that was all that mattered. “We literally ranked people by hours,” says Delta Emerson, president of Ryan’s global shared services. “Even if someone worked 24 hours the day before, they still had to book at least eight hours Monday through Friday.” The clock was seen as an easy proxy for work ethic, and employees who logged marathon sessions at their desks “wore their hours like a badge, practically tattooed on their foreheads,” Emerson says. “But it was at a cost.”

Emerson didn’t want to just tweak the workweek. She wanted to bust it open. But when she pitched the idea of flexible hours, she was almost thrown out of the CEO’s office. A resignation letter from a rising star finally got her the green light. Now the firm measures results–not time. Some staffers work as little as 20 hours a week; some start at 7 a.m., others at 10 a.m.; some commute to the office only twice a week. Since the 2008 shift, revenue has grown 15 percent year over year, customer satisfaction is higher than ever before, and turnover has plummeted.