Studies Show Working Overtime Is Basically Pointless
How many hours per week do you work?
Despite the recent popularity of passive income and business automation, most entrepreneurs still work irregular hours and put in at least 60 hours per week.
(Maybe you just call it the “rest of the day.”)
Well, as it turns out, opportunity does sleep.
It knows when it’s time to turn work off and it prefers that you do too.
Researchers have found that putting in all those extra hours of work, specifically more than 50 hours, can end up being a waste of time from a productivity standpoint.
So, if 60 hours is too much, how many hours per week should we strive for?
Well, a Stanford study found that when people worked more than 50 hours, output per hour started to fall.
Studies have found that working for one to two hours, then taking a 20- to 30-minute break, keeps your brain fresh and enables you to accomplish more in less time.
You do work too much.
How to Stay Motivated Working From Home
How to Stay Motivated Working From Home.
Work From Home.
Because I started with a home-based business, I’ve seen firsthand how important it is for an entrepreneur to stay focused when working from home.
You have the freedom to set your own hours, dress however you want and take care of personal tasks while you manage your business.
The same goes for when you complete tasks for your business.
You need a place in your home that will give you the maximum focus for managing your company.
But, with the power to set your hours, you’re also responsible for completing the tasks that keep you in business.
To prevent burnout, plan on taking breaks throughout the day.
There’s no one way to best complete business tasks.
Here are just a few tools you might need for your home-based business: Planner Computer Cell phone Equipment and supplies to make products or perform services Whether you use the tools to stay organized, communicate with customers or create a product, you need to find the right ones for your company.
How To Improve Your Odds Of Getting Your Startup Funded
We’ve talked extensively about the alarmingly low probability of getting a startup funded in this video: We’ve also said that you CAN dramatically increase your odds if you Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later.
Now, watch this 1 minute 41 sec video to learn more about how to improve the odds of getting your startup funded.
Each has bootstrapped first, raised money later.
Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later works.
You do not have to waste years fighting abysmally low odds of getting funding from VCs for an unvalidated business.
But if you are up for some serious, rigorous work, we are ready to support and guide you to fundability or profitability, whichever makes sense in your particular situation.
Nothing impresses VCs more than a solid idea that is bootstrapped by a scrappy entrepreneur to traction.
After my twenty years in the startup eco-system, I see very clearly that Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later is by far the healthiest and safest strategy for startups.
So much so, that I can now go so far as to say that if you do NOT believe in the Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later strategy, 1M/1M is NOT the right program for you.
If you DO believe in Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later, come on over, let’s get going.
3 Guidelines for Creating a Support Group That Will Push You to the Next Level
3 Guidelines for Creating a Support Group That Will Push You to the Next Level.
The article was originally published on July 21, 2015.
A mastermind group with the right people can do incredible things for your personal and professional lives.
That’s what masterminds are for — not only to talk about your goals and find ways to become more successful, but to reflect and be honest about what is going on in your life so the group can come together to create solutions.
Here are three guidelines to think about when you are in the process of creating your own mastermind group.
It’s one thing to create a mastermind, but it’s a whole other thing to actually meet on a regular basis.
It does you no good to meet every other year or hardly ever talk to one another.
Whether you meet quarterly, monthly or have weekly conference sessions, just make sure to meet regularly.
My mastermind consists of people who don’t live in the same city as me, but we don’t let that stop us from meeting regularly.
Creating a mastermind can do exceptional things for your life.
Five startups get Rs 10L each seed funding from IIIT-H
Five startups get Rs 10L each seed funding from IIIT-H. HYDERABAD: Five early stage startups were selected for Rs 10 lakh each of seed fund and a 6-month accelerator program (Avishkar) by the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad’s (IIIT-H) incubator, announced IIIT-H Foundation.
Apart from the grant and mentorship, the startups will also get access to the research labs and receive various customer development and mentoring support from IIITH Foundation’s partners and ecosystem associates.
The program has an investment partnership with 50K Ventures and business coaching from CoCreation Consulting.
Prof. Vasudeva Varma, dean, research and development (R&D), IIIT-Hyderabad and chief executive officer (CEO) of IIITH Foundation, said, “The startup ecosystem in India is currently very vibrant.
However, most of these ventures cannot survive and are successful unless they have huge differentiation in terms of technology.
With Avishkar, IIIT-Hyderabad will give these companies a massive edge by providing the required base technology, mentorship, and talent on a need basis in addition to initial funding.” The startups, selected for the third batch of IIIT Foundation’s Avishkar Deep Tech Accelerator Program, operate in virtual reality (VR), medical diagnosis, robotics and machine learning (ML) space.
These include Niche.ai, a visual informatics products supplier for computer vision ecosystem, Blue Semiconductors, a semiconductor startup, Authbase, a cybersecurity startup that utilizes machine learning, DreamVu, a VR camera technology startup and Docturnal, mobile apps developer leveraging AI/ML and spectral analysis.
The accelerator would take up 2% equity stake in the start-ups by converting the seed fund into convertible debenture subscription accelerator.
It was started in June 2016 to accelerate growth of startups in machine learning, computer vision, robotics, articificial intelligence (AI), VR space.
Private equities, venture capital funds get tax breather for startups
NEW DELHI: Private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) funds investing in startups have got a tax relief.
Income from transfer of unlisted shares by them would now be treated as capital gains and not as business income even if there is transfer of control or a management change.
A number of funds had received show cause notices from income-tax authorities on this issue, prompting a spate of representations from them as well as startups to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).
The board has now sent out a letter to the field saying this change in control or management should not be applied in case of such investments as AIFs typically invest in unlisted shares of ventures, many of which are startups, making some form of ‘control and management of underlying business’ necessary.
This issue had its origin in the long-standing debate on treatment of transfer of shares as business income or capital gains.
These included a situation when genuineness of transactions in unlisted shares itself was in question, transfer of unlisted shares was related to an issue pertaining to lifting of corporate veil or the transfer of unlisted shares is made along with the control and management of underlying business.
Tax experts say the CBDT clarification helps remove any uncertainty and risk that gains from sale of shares in such cases could be taxed as business income.
“Taxing them as business income would have been a big blow since they invest for a longer duration and would have lost out on indexation benefit or full capital gains exemption (in cases of favourable treaty countries like Mauritius, Singapore, the Netherlands, etc),” said Amit Maheswari, partner at Ashok Maheshwari & Associates LLP.
Investors in such AIFs can therefore get the benefit of lower tax rate on capital gains,” said Rajesh Gandhi, partner, Deloitte Haskins & Sells LLP.
“The Budget 2017 should in fact remove the differential tax treatment between capital gains and business income and simply give pass through status to all types of income of AIFs,” he said.
Female entrepreneurs launch XXcelerate Fund to help women-led startups access capital
Female entrepreneurs launch XXcelerate Fund to help women-led startups access capital.
This female founders’ story starts in a kitchen — but the women weren’t there to cook.
Portland business leaders Mara Zepeda, Paige Hendrix Buckner, and Genevieve LeMarchal were sitting around the kitchen table discussing a familiar topic.
They met regularly to talk about sales strategies for growing their companies.
Despite their success in business, women kept facing rejection from venture capital firms and lenders.
“The women decided that they could do something about it,” said Robin Klemm, a longtime angel investor and technology consultant.
“Women receive only 3 percent of venture capital and 5 percent of small business loans,” said Klemm.
“Yet, this gap in access to capital is happening at a time when we see continuing proof points of the effectiveness of women business leaders.
The fund has already secured capacity-building cash from the Portland Development Commission.
Once the fund reaches its initial goal of $500,000, XXcelerate will name its first recipient.
5 Daily Habits to Optimize Your 2017
If you are like most people, then your focus is on making this year the best year yet.
Here are five daily habits that you can start utilizing in order to make the most of your upcoming year.
Nothing is as important as your health.
Health is wealth and if you want to make sure that you are staying as healthy as possible, then start getting up 30-60 minutes earlier every morning to workout.
No matter what type of exercise you prefer getting up early to make this part of your routine is only going to benefit you in the end.
Give to charity It doesn’t matter how much or how little that you make, start giving some of your time or money to a charity.
List your goals and review them daily.
A great exercise that can help you make a better 2017 for yourself is to write down your 10-year goals and your 20-year goals.
However, by doing so, you will learn to work each day in a way that will help you get closer to these goals.
Set aside 15-30 minutes per day to start studying up on finance and the stock market.
Pinterest begins rolling out search ads for keywords and shopping campaigns
Pinterest is adding another piece to its arsenal of advertising services, opening up search advertising to its partners and with companies advertising through the Kenshoo marketing suite.
With Pinterest looking to continue to grow into a must-have tool for advertisers, it’s begun building more and more products to capture all parts of a person’s buying behavior.
Adding search gives Pinterest the ability to tap into another part of that buying behavior — searching with the intent of a purchase (whether the user realizes it or not).
So Pinterest will now give some advertisers the ability to show ads against keywords and for shopping campaigns through Pinterest’s search.
“When people come to Pinterest, they’re starting earlier in their decision-making process,” Kaplan said.
So having something that’s visual in nature for a lot of different queries is actually the most powerful way of demonstration or displaying.” Pinterest hopes to end up opening up the tool to more partners as time goes on, but for now it’s going to be limited to its direct partners who can run campaigns and marketing campaigns run through Kenshoo.
Pinterest has typically been known to be stronger for marketers closer to building awareness for brands, rather than necessarily capturing the intent that users have when searching for products.
Some of its partners have seen the search ads drive in-store sales, signaling that Pinterest’s search ads may be capturing a wider spectrum of a user’s buying behavior during search, Kaplan said.
“We think search ads in a search environment is the right experience that’s gonna lead to a really big business for us and the right results for advertisers.
We’re seeing search is gonna be a bigger part of their buying process, and we want to make sure we’re thinking ahead.”
28 Best Habits to Have in Business
28 Best Habits to Have in Business.
Some habits that are the best to have in life, others are the best to have in business.
What are the best habits to have in business?
Start with just 10 minutes per day with this habit and allow it to grow and morph into your hour of power over time.
Anyone who’s serious about achieving monumental success in business needs to set business goals.
But not just long-term business goals.
Stay focused so that you can achieve your goals.
Both in life and in business.
Everyone who’s serious about success in business needs to be mindful of their actions.
Focus on doing one thing that you truly love to do, or even find a way to incorporate it into your work.
3 Reasons Email Campaigns Remain the Best Marketing Tool
But, as a recent study from marketing technology pioneer Zeta Global and market research firm The Relevancy Group found, there’s even more value for email marketing today than in years past.
With more and more consumers going mobile, they’re now staying connected to their personal inboxes 24/7, wherever they go.
Executed properly around relevant seasonal opportunities, online retailers can leverage timely, urgent demand in the market with offers for attractive deals to drive conversions.
Additionally, though everyone loves a deal, women (50 percent) respond more to discounts than men do (40 percent).
Last year, I did all of my Christmas shopping in one day.
Online shopping is more convenient than ever before.
Ultimately, online shopping has become a significant method for consumers to conveniently make purchases, particularly among people between 27 and 45 years old, whom Zeta found are most likely to do the majority of their shopping online.
I look at email on my phone no less than 50 times per day.
When looking at last year’s holiday research, Zeta found that 34 percent of conversions came from mobile devices.
With more people opening marketing emails via mobile and retailers seeing strong conversion rates tied to this trend, there is no doubt that the combination of mobile and email is delivering promotional messaging more effectively and providing retailers an additional edge in the maturing e-commerce space.
The 10 Largest NYC Startup Funding Rounds of January 2017
The 10 Largest NYC Startup Funding Rounds of January 2017.
Armed with some data from our friends at CrunchBase, I broke down the 10 largest rounds in New York during the month of January.
Early indications are that it was a stellar month for startup funding in the city as just the aggregate value of these rounds alone surpasses $500M .
I have included some additional information such as industry, round type, investors in the round, and total funding raised to further the analysis.
The analysis in this report is presented by Bond Collective.
As traditional ways of working shift, demand for shared and coworking space is growing.
BOND Collective delivers a hospitality-centric approach, with curated spaces and premium services that deliver brand equity for members that allow them to focus on their core business.
BOND members gain more than a workspace; they gain a turnkey solution and the benefits of a location with equity baked into the overall design aesthetic and work experience.
Entrepreneurs, professionals and global businesses use flexible work spaces from BOND to scale their operations.
To learn more, visit Bond Collective.
How Airbnb Changed the Traditional Lodging Industry
How Airbnb Changed the Traditional Lodging Industry.
In many cities, hotels in central locations were (and still are) overpriced and lacked the “atmospheric” character of the place itself.
Airbnb enables homeowners to offer their couches, spare rooms or entire homes for rent for short stays, and the company has become a network of over 25,000 active hosts in 190 countries.
For the host, it’s now easy to operate a “hotel,” however modest, with global reach of potential guests.
Then you’re able to specify a particular neighborhood, host language or amenities.
Many guests make their bookings entirely on the basis of the reviews.
After your stay, you are encouraged to review the host and the property, and your payment is transferred.
And, like Uber, its advantages over its traditional rivals are obvious: For both guests and hosts, it’s easy to find and list properties.
It’s universal — you can book in 190 countries.
Hosts can get insurance easily.
Women Empowering Women: Preterm Babies and the Story of Medolac
Women Empowering Women: Preterm Babies and the Story of Medolac.
She also told me about the motivation she’d received from the parents of these babies, who, she said, have had the courage to stay optimistic, visit the hospital daily or even several times a day and learn everything they can about the complex world of neonatal intensive care.
Infant formula was the standard nutrition source in hospital neonatal units for many years, Medo explained.
But, starting in 1990, research increasingly connected infant formula with the increased incidence of infection and death in preterm infants.
It’s a job we can’t quit.” Female entrepreneurship at work To address this problem, Medo started an earlier company, Prolacta Bioscience, in 1999 with the goal of developing the first protein fortifier to add to mother’s milk for preterm infants.
In some cases, this “solution” even led to their deaths.
This led to a program Medo established, called “Milk Money,” which compensates qualified donors for pumping milk several times a day.
Empowering women and advancing an industry With a safer product, a better supply chain that the milk donors own and control, and no shortage of qualified raw milk, Medolac was in business.
This new availability of commercially sterile human donor milk has made a big impact with hospitals.
Today, it’s become a global initiative, and one supported by data, for neonatal units to feed, or aspire to feed, only human milk.
Advice for Success from a Top Cornell University Coach
He advises those not achieving their goals to “be mad about it, then turn your attention to tomorrow.” Hahn channels that drive training a team that has been near dynasty in Ivy League wrestling for the last quarter-century.
The Cornell wrestling team got there by honing raw talent.
The best persist, the rest need to find their niche elsewhere.
Hahn has seen this success translate into the wrestlers’ everyday lives, and he shares the methods that have built such consistent winners.
Lessons: 1.
Enter each day with a purpose!
Be part of a community that motivates you to achieve.
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3 Ways to Have a Bigger Impact in Your Personal and Professional Life
In my travels all over the world, speaking to different organizations of all sizes, there are two common questions that I always seem to receive at some point before or after I deliver my keynote presentation: “How can I decrease the daily stress in my life, and, “How can I have a bigger impact this year?” Most people are stressed out at a very unhealthy level and truly believe that they must go through pain and all kinds of stress in order to take their lives and business to the next level.
Here are three things that have worked exceptionally well for me in the hopes of looking to minimize stress and increase impact.
Living in the moment doesn’t mean completely forgetting about the past and the future; it means not allowing the past or the future to control the present.
Working insanely hard doesn’t stress people out; weak preparation and working hard on insignificant tasks is what stresses people out.
Do the work others aren’t willing to do.
I immediately noticed the ridiculous amount of preparation and hard work that was required to be the best.
When you become a champion of preparation, you will notice your impact rise and your stress levels drastically decline.
Celebrate every day.
Make it a personal habit right now to start celebrating everything in your life.
I personally use a Moleskine notebook, and at the end of each day, I write down five wins for that specific day.
Laureate Education Prices IPO At $14.00/shr
Laureate Education Prices IPO At $14.00/shr.
(RTTNews.com) – Laureate Education, Inc. announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 35 million shares of Class A common stock at a price to the public of $14.00 per share.
Shares of Laureate’s Class A common stock are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on February 1, 2017 under the symbol “LAUR,” and the offering is expected to close on February 6, 2017, subject to customary closing conditions.
Laureate has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 5.25 million shares of Class A common stock at the initial public offering price less underwriting discounts and commissions.
For comments and feedback: contact editorial@rttnews.com http://www.rttnews.com
The Goal Standard Challenge: How to Set Yourself Up for a Win Today by Focusing on Your M.I.T.
The Goal Standard Challenge: How to Set Yourself Up for a Win Today by Focusing on Your M.I.T..
In our second week of The Goal Standard Challenge, known as the Honeymoon Stage, people are excited about achieving milestones, ready to check-off tasks and look forward to feeling a sense of accomplishment once they have met their goal.
To keep that momentum going, productivity expert Chris Winfield taught us how to set ourselves up for a win today and prepare our mind for success tomorrow in a Facebook Live.
Once we have that mindset, Winfield provides advice on how to master our mornings, making progress on our goals at the start of the day.
Related: The Goal Standard Challenge: The Productivity ‘Secret’ Needed to Make Progress on Your Goal Check out his Facebook Live video to get more advice.
Also, download his accompanying worksheets Mastering Your Mornings and Prioritizing Your Tasks.
If you haven’t signed up for The Goal Standard Challenge email, go to our content hub.
Also, if you are late to the challenge, no worries.
The hub has all the past weeks’ information, videos, content and resources.
Also join our Facebook Group to get updates, real-time support and be part of a community full of achievers, just like you.