How did I miss this

July 15 is National Ice Cream Day

Enjoy Ice Cream it's mandatory

persist in all things

 Tony Ferrietti's formula for resilience

Resilience, like a muscle, grows stronger the more you use it.  But first you have to start exercising.  I recommend the acronym “CONQUER!” as a guide to working the resilience muscle.

• C is for “Connections.”  Life is all about relationships.  Simply stated, “people need people.”  Social support and close interpersonal relationships are extremely helpful in coping.
• Optimism is all about having a positive attitude and outlook. Keeping problems in perspective and focusing on the big picture makes the pressure not seem so overwhelming.
• Nurture yourself.  Exercise, eat a healthy diet, get some sleep, try to relax and have fun even in the hardship.
• Accept the Quest that can be an opportunity for personal growth, self-discovery, and character building.  Reframe the experience to recognize the benefits it can bring.
• Choose to be Unflappable in the face of adversity.  Controlling your response is empowering and builds resilience.
• Expect that change and stress will come.  Life never stands still.
• Be Relentless.  Decide to persist despite the pressure.

Plant, water, weed and focus

Ivana Taylor reviews Mike Michalowicz' Pumpkin plan


STEP 1: Plant promising seeds
STEP 2: Water, Water, Water
STEP 3: As they grow, routinely remove all of the diseased or damaged pumpkins.
STEP 4: Weed like a mad dog.  Not a single green leaf or root permitted if it isn’t a pumpkin plant.
STEP 5: When they grow larger, identify the stronger, faster-growing pumpkins.  Repeat until you have one pumpkin on each vine.
STEP 6:  Focus all your attention on the big pumpkin.  Nurture it around the clock like a baby, and guard it like you would your first Mustang convertible.
STEP 7: Watch it grow.  In the last days of the season, this will happen so fast you can actually see it happen.

Round and round the wheel we go

Jessica  Hagy's interprets Pluchik's wheel 

Explore the limits

James Altucher's insight into how to push the limits.



How do you explore your limits? I don’t know. I tried to figure out an easy formula for that for this article. But I only know what it’s like for me to explore my limits. I do it by:

-          Questioning everything. Writing if the answers come up different than I thought. (college, home, voting, Europe, war, religion, etc)

-          Writing about everything that made me feel a certain way. Or things I was ashamed of but I learned from. (failure at business, relationships, etc).

-          Not being afraid to contact people “out of my league”.

-          Exploring. Whether its spiritual. Or through reading. Or visiting a new place. Or going further in exercise. Or even trying to do nothing when expectations are to do something.

-          Considering myself an expert in anything until proven otherwise. Often I’m proven not an expert – right where my limits are.

we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

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IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Square changes the geometry of payments

The cashless society requires an alternate payment system. Square may be that system.

Chris Skinner discusses the Jack Dorsey's strategy

But the most outrageous part was how easy it suddenly became for anyone to accept credit cards, using a device they already owned. The process through which businesses are authorized to accept credit card payments is notoriously arduous and slow, particularly for small merchants. The issuing banks demand multiple proofs of creditworthiness and pile on extra fees. Square itself had difficulty negotiating that red tape—it took longer to get approval from Visa and Mastercard to accept a swipe than it did to create a prototype for the entire payment system. “Our sign-up process takes literally two minutes,” Dorsey says. “You download an app, put in your name and address, answer three security questions, link your bank account, and you’re done.” Andersen saw the potential. Just as Twitter democratized broadcasting, Dorsey’s new company would democratize the credit card industry. 

Henderson, the engineering lead on Pay With Square, points out that the company collects all kinds of information about its users, data that might be invaluable to merchants and customers alike. “First of all, we know your location,” he says. “Second, we have a decent sense of your history. We know the kinds of places you’ve been and what you like. But we also know lots of other things—like if there’s a whole bunch of food trucks that pull up nearby, we’ll see the spike in activity and can point you to those trucks. I think you’ll see us get really good at this.”

Analytics and data-mining might provide Square’s real business model. So far, the company has charged a very small fee for each transaction, and merchants aren’t likely to pay much more. And while Square has been giving participating merchants access to analytics about their businesses for free, it is also aggregating that data, real-time information about what people are buying in every region of the country, complete with detailed demographics. It’s reasonable to think that might be very valuable in the near future.

Raise awareness among your customers

Danielle Schlanger and Kim Bhasin highlight the fast casual juggernaut that is Chipotle. Sometimes you need to raise awareness.

Looking back at the early days of Chipotle, CMO Mark Crumpacker admitted that they overestimated how much people actually cared about animals and the environment. He had to shift its marketing.

"It turned out to essentially not be true," Crumpacker said at a conference earlier this year. "Only 20 to 30 percent of those people actually care about that stuff."

So, Chipotle had to revamp its marketing focus. Instead of only touting all the great stuff it's doing, it had to raise awareness for environmental issues and get people to care about making a difference.

Training, training and more training

Celeste Edman highlights the continual need for training

Recently, I ate at a casual Italian restaurant. I was looking forward to the experience as the owners excelled at their fine-dining Italian establishment so I was interested in their take on casual. When I arrived, I was greeted by a welcoming host. We were seated, given menus, and told our server would be right with us. So far, so good. We waited. And we waited. And, we waited. Finally, the server arrived and asked us if we were ready to order. We asked about specials. There were none. Any recommendations on a starter, we asked? "There's some bread on there that's supposed to be good", he said to us.

It was in fact, very good. All the food was outstanding, but the service got progressively worse. When asked what his favorite pizza was, he informed us that he tried not to eat it because it made him fat! 

The owners had obviously taken great care to ensure quality products were used in their food, the décor was deliberate and specific to their brand, and the overall ambiance was good, however the server was so untrained and so incompetent that we won't be back.

Every person in your restaurant plays a role in your customer's experience. With thoughtful attention to your process and in turn your customer, you'll ensure consistency over all.

Summer's day

 Bill said it best a long time ago

 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

William Shakespeare 

Summer joy is upon us

The shortest night of the year has just ended. The Earth has reached the farthest point of its orbit around the Sun which does not know it is a star.  The northern tilt of the Earth is now at it's maximum. The conquest of light begun at the Winter Solstice is now complete. Enjoy!

A nice chart explaining the sunlight differences around the northern hemisphere At 6:09 p.m. (CDT) today, the sun will shine directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer while the North Pole reaches its maximum tilt towards the sun. For the Northern Hemisphere, this marks the official start of summer and the longest day of the year.

automated production

What is the number one issue every restaurateur deals with, labor. What is the number one complaint of customers, rude or inconsiderate staff. Well look here, John Biggs introduces us to the BurritoBot

The system will let you use your iPhone to order different condiments and toppings. Sliders control the amount of salsa, guac, and crema. It uses a Thing-o-matic and is currently in beta form, so don’t expect it to make you a burrito anytime soon.
Its creator, Marko Manriquez, is a student at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and this is part of his Master’s Thesis. Remember back when you wrote your thesis? About politics or some junk? Yeah, you should have picked the “build a freaking burrito robot” major. You wouldn’t be an accountant right now.

 

No one needs us anymore

All business is predicated on relevancy, once that fails you have got nothing. Any business needs to add value to the life of the customer. If that is taken away either by technology or a competitor that does things differently, your business model will not survive. 3D printers are on the way, business services can be outsourced, we are not that far away from a holographic doctor. How will your business remain relevant and add value?

Scott Ginsberg makes an incredible point for any business model.

 

Proof once again, there’s nothing more frightening than the prospect of irrelevancy.

The only problem is, no one needs us. We’re a dying breed. Everything people used to need from us – information, answers, ideas and advice – is available to them right now, for free, in perfect form, forever.

It didn’t used to be that way. There was a time when we were vessels of knowledge. Pillars of wisdom. Narrators of the story of life. And paragons of experience that those who were hungry could climb mountains to pursue, even if only to touch the hem of our garment.

But now people just google stuff. Nobody needs to wonder, think, reflect, ask, create, mediate, listen or read.  Just download, verify and repeat. Download, verify and repeat. And if we don’t do something to reverse this trend, our species is not going to make it. If the pendulum doesn’t start to swing the other way, we are not going to last.

Human beings are social creatures. We need to need each other. Our craving for belonging, connectedness and togetherness is no less essential that food, water or shelter.

But if we insist on ignoring, avoiding and circumventing each other – if we continue to solely depend on the pixels of digital surrogates instead of the perspective of actual people – we will continue to become less human by the hour.

Eventually, we’ll serve no purpose other than fleshy holsters for electronic devices.

We don’t need more access to information.

We need more access to each other.

Transit of Venus

A gentile reminder that we are not alone in the universe. The planet Venus will come between us and the Sun today at 5pm CST. The planet will be visible as a black dot moving across the surface of the Sun.

Consumers create jobs

Nick Hanauer's Ted presentation that explains it all.


In a capitalist economy, the true job creators are consumers, the middle class.  And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the middle class, is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor and the rich.


hat tip Alltop


Jim Tankersley article

Power transference is illusory

Restaurant's use the visit of a famous or powerful individual to sell the idea that this place is a must visit. Everyone wants to associate with powerful beautiful people and wants to frequent locations where these individuals congregate. Everyone wants the feeling of the illusory power transference. The problem is of course that it not real. When a local sports team wins a championship there is little tangible improvement in the lives of the individuals in the locality however everyone feels a sense of belonging and a surge of power from the success of the surrogate team.

Robin Hansen explains:

“Illusory Power Transference” is the academic name for feeling powerful due to a superficial connection to a powerful person, such as having once been in the same room:

...

 

We propose that … associating with the powerful CEO suggests that he, too, must be powerful. Moreover, this minimal connection with the CEO would actually lead him to act as if he personally possessed more power when making important decisions on the job and interacting with others. ….

We use two experiments to … demonstrate that men who have a tenuous association with a powerful other (versus a powerless or equal-power other) felt more powerful and were more optimistic, confident, and risk seeking, even though they could not leverage the associate’s power. (more; HT Tyler Cowen)

Leadership sins

Mike Figliuolo reviews the seven deadly sins and how it impacts the people that make your life a heaven or a hell

Greed

If you’re in leadership role for the money, you’ve got it all wrong.  You’re responsible for the care and feeding of the people around you.  Doing it for cold, hard cash is the antithesis of being a servant leader.  Don’t get caught focusing on the raise, the bonus, or the corner office.  It will come back to haunt you when everyone on your team quits in search of a leader who cares more about them than they do about stock options.  Keep your priorities straight – if you lead well, the compensation will naturally follow.

first movers get steamrolled by execution

Paul Barron has a thoughtful perspective on the many variables necessary to make an enterprise work

So let’s look at what Chipotle has done right and how it’s changed the restaurant business.

Chipotle may not have fired the first shot in the fast casual revolution, but the fresh Mexican chain is certainly the most famous of the founding fathers. Launched by Steve Ells in a space near the University of Denver in 1993, the restaurant grew quickly, opening its second location in 1995 and continuing its expansion — first with a loan from Ells’s father and later with a $1.8 million Small Business Administration loan. Ells, who had no business background, had clearly tapped into an unmet need among diners for healthful, fresh Mexican cuisine, and the Chipotle brand began to take shape: sustainably sourced ingredients, a simple menu, and impeccable quality.

In 1999, Ells opened his first restaurants outside of Colorado, but it was interest from McDonald’s Corporation that was the magic bullet for the company’s growth. The fast-food titan first approached Ells in 1997 and became a minority investor a year later. Contrary to popular belief, McDonald’s did not buy Chipotle but did become its largest investor, sinking more than $360 million into the chain over seven years and helping Chipotle make use of its proven distribution system. By 2005 the chain had more than 500 company-owned restaurants, and in January of 2006 it made its initial public stock offering (IPO), the stock doubling in value on the first day of trading.

In 2006, McDonald’s divested itself of its Chipotle holdings, earning about $1.5 billion on its investment. Today, the company has restaurants in 38 states and Canada, was the third-fastest-growing restaurant chain in 2010 according to Nation’s Restaurant News, and was ranked as the best fast-food Mexican chain in 2011 by Consumer Reports. Most recently, the company hired award-winning chef Nate Appleman to create new menu items and spearhead the creation of a new fast casual Asian concept restaurant, ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen, which opened in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2011.

In my humble opinion, Chipotle was simply in the right place at the right time with the right product. But this does not mean that their success has been due to pure luck. You can have the right place, time, and product going for you, but you have to know how to leverage them. True, the company was not the first “Fresh Mex” concept, the first burrito player, or the first creative brand builder. But they knew how to grab the gold when the opportunity came. Having watched the mistakes of their predecessors, they were able to develop an in-store and external brand that tapped into what their customers cared about: freshness, quality, sustainability, a sense of humor, and above all, a sense that they were breaking out of the “slightly more upscale fast food” mold of chains like La Salsa and Baja Fresh.

Among other things, Chipotle’s success is another nail in the coffin of the “first mover advantage.” There have been many companies and people in history who have come late to the dance and yet prevailed as the leader in their industry. It’s not always the first mover who winds up “owning” the category; another player who enters the market later and takes advantage of the pioneer’s mistakes often rises to the top.