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olko71 · 3 years ago

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New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on http://yaroreviews.info/2021/06/ev-startups-are-in-trouble-investors-dont-care

EV Startups Are in Trouble. Investors Don't Care.

Lordstown Motors Corp. RIDE 3.30% , an electric-truck startup, is off to a bumpy start as a public company. In the past month, it said it missed its targets on costs and production, acknowledged it overstated preorders, told investors it didn’t have enough money to start full production and parted with its CEO and CFO.

Yet the company’s investors are rather unfazed: Lordstown’s share price is roughly the same as in mid-May.

The stocks of numerous recently listed electric-vehicle companies are showing remarkable resilience in the face of significant turmoil at their businesses. Lordstown, semi-truck maker Nikola Corp. NKLA -2.94% and electric-car maker Canoo Inc. GOEV 0.40% all have share prices that are in line with, or above, the prices from when they struck deals to go public by merging with special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, last year.

Nikola has a market capitalization of $6.5 billion, up more than 60% since it struck its deal to list last year. Months later, the company’s executive chairman resigned after a short seller accused the company of misrepresenting its technology. The company, which denied allegations of fraud, then scuttled multiple new types of vehicles it previously advertised as key to its business, and a partnership with General Motors Co. largely fell apart.

Canoo announced this spring it dropped numerous aspects of its business plan that it sold to investors months earlier, and its CEO, CFO and co-founder all left the company. It has a roughly $2.4 billion market capitalization, unchanged from when it struck the deal to list publicly. None of the three companies have begun commercial production of vehicles.

Helping explain the seemingly unshakable shares is the flood of amateur investors who bet on stocks of new car makers that went public through SPACs in the past year, analysts and observers of the sector say. Motivated by the promise of fast growth and optimism about an electric vehicle-filled future, these individual investors helped push the shares of numerous new companies in the sector to historically lofty valuations by traditional auto maker standards.

It is unclear exactly how much of the electric vehicle companies’ trading is affected by amateur investors versus hedge funds and Wall Street institutions, which also own some of the stocks. Some traders have placed bets that companies in this sector will drop in value.

The resilience of these stocks has befuddled many watching the industry.

“Normal fundamental and economic analysis would lead you to a pretty dire outcome” for some of the companies, said Jon Lopez, an analyst who covers the new-electric vehicle companies for Vertical Group. But the financial world is awash with money and starved for investments that grow quickly, he said, leading to strange outcomes like this year’s Reddit-fueled rise of so-called “meme stocks” that were boosted by investors who posted calls to send shares of certain companies “to the moon.”

The dynamics at play are similar to Telsa Inc., the electric-vehicle company run by Elon Musk that has more than quintupled in value since early last year to become the world’s most valuable auto maker, said Bradford Cornell, a professor emeritus at University of California Los Angeles’ business school. Tesla’s share price often goes up for little clear reason, while negative events often have little or no impact. Investors are more focused on a future narrative of extraordinary growth than the present day-to-day, he said.

“Is the narrative still believable? If it is, there’s no reason why it can’t go up,” he said of these companies’ stocks.

Lordstown, Nikola and Canoo each have expressed optimism about their businesses, saying they are pointed in the right direction after recent turbulence. Executives at all three have highlighted significant progress even amid their struggles—a development that seems to have tided over investors.

Steve Burns, shown at right with former President Donald Trump in 2020, resigned as Lordstown CEO this month.

Photo: Ken Cedeno/SIPA/Reuters

Lordstown executives said this week they are still on track to start producing some pickup trucks this fall, and demand appears to be strong. The company is in the process of seeking new funding. Nikola has said it is on track to deliver its first electric trucks later this year, and recently struck a deal to raise another $300 million.

Numerous companies in the electric-vehicle industry are “trying to get through SPAC puberty,” said Tony Aquila, Canoo’s chief executive and chairman. After joining the board last year, Mr. Aquila scrapped multiple aspects of Canoo’s business plan, including a plan to rent most customers cars month by month—changes he said he made to bring Canoo’s business in line with what’s achievable. He said he wants to Canoo “underpromise and overdeliver.”

The stocks of Lordstown, Nikola and Canoo are down significantly from their highs, although the same is true for the shares of other electric-vehicle makers, as the market for high-risk stocks has cooled since a burst of enthusiasm late last year. The stocks of the three electric-vehicle makers also haven’t been immune to bad news, but the dips on concerning revelations were less than many analysts expected, and the share prices often recovered many of their losses.

The buoyant environment helped allow a burst of electric-vehicle startups to collectively raise billions of dollars with ease in the past year through mergers with SPACs. They quickly became appealing for early stage startups in hot sectors like electric vehicles; SPACs allow startups to freely talk about their future projections and plans, unlike a more heavily regulated initial public offering.

Lordstown was a prime beneficiary. In its investor presentation from last summer, it highlighted how it would make an electric pickup that would be far less costly than a gas-powered Ford F-150. There was already strong demand from a long list of customers who preordered the truck, the company said, and production would take relatively little investment because the plant Lordstown got from General Motors wouldn’t need much renovation.

Those plans have unraveled.

Share Your Thoughts

What’s your outlook on electric vehicle companies like Lordstown Motors? Join the conversation below.

Costs of outfitting the plant—which was previously used to build a gas-powered sedan—proved far higher than expected. Ford announced an electric F-150 that was priced more than 20 percent lower than Lordstown’s truck. The company acknowledged some preorders were made by prospective buyers who didn’t appear to have the resources to buy the trucks, and said it received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on the issue. Plant costs soared while full-scale production was delayed.

Peter Di Pasquale, a 30-year-old engineer from Pasadena, Calif., first invested in Lordstown in April after reading about it online, believing it would be able to produce a solid truck. He said he’s aware the company has significant risks, and the management tumult in the past week was concerning. Still, the company is nearing production of its pickup, giving it a leg up on other manufacturers that are months or years behind.

“The factory is real,” he said. “The workers are real.”

“I’m cautiously optimistic.”

Write to Eliot Brown at [email protected]

#PAID

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fatherquesadilla · 4 years ago

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Orion D. Black -They/Them · @DungeonCommandr

4th Jul 2020 from TwitLonger

my statement

"It's July 3th and I no longer work for Wizards of the Coast. I no longer work on D&D, the little that I did. This is going to be a long thread and my last for quite a while, so bear with me.

I took the job for two reasons. The first was for the dream. To escape poverty doing what I love, writing and making games. The second was to make D&D welcoming to the millions who are scorned by it.

A lot of people had hope for D&D that they carried with me. While some people were upset to see me work for a corporation that overshadows indie, others hoped that I would be able to make real change. I tried. I failed. And I lost a lot.

Liking a tweet or post, RTing, or even following people who speak ill of WotC can lose you your job in an instant. That's why you never see it happen. @Zbeg is 100% correct. It's a silencing tool. I can say more now.

Kindness doesn't replace respect. Working within your comfort zone doesnt support change. Most people in that group were not ready for me to be there, a nonbinary Black person who would actually critique their problems. Idk what they expected.

I worked hard for a very long time. I got a lot of smiles and vocal support, but it was followed by inaction and being ignored. My coworkers were frustrated for me, and still are now. I confided in them often, cried on shoulders on a few occasions.

I realized at one point that leadership had given me 2 assignments over about 5 months. It was mostly me asking project leads for work, searching out opportunities. Leadership didnt really care about me or my growth. I had to.

I firmly believe that I was a diversity hire. There was no expectation for me to do much of anything. I probably disrupted them by being vocal and following up. It didnt matter if I was supported by seniors and positive.

I think genuine people proposed me as an option and it was accepted because it would look like a radical positive change. It would help quiet vocal outrage. And because I had to stay silent, it was a safe bet.

I started to lose all of my confidence. I started to lose trust in myself. After finding out that I wasnt getting an extension or FTE, I resolved to just finish things out and take care of myself. To stop fighting and to just survive, quietly. But it just kept getting worse.

They would talk about how they're going to start working on treating staff better, retaining contractors, actually answering questions. How much they were invested in diversity and change even though they hired two cis white dudes into two big leadership positions during this. One of whom claimed that he doesnt know what he's doing. No shit. I never want to hear "maybe they just hire the best person for the job" again.

I found out that some of my work was stolen, which destroyed me. It lined up with a project they were going to do and I had sent it in to someone in leadership months ago. The project was announced and this person who contributed "forgot" that we had a meeting where I gave them my ideas, and then a follow up document the day after. I knew nothing was going to be done about it. Someone else told me that the person said sorry that they forgot. That's it.

I was really losing my ability to do much of anything. I have depression and anxiety and ADHD, all of which I manage pretty well. But those parts of me were under the pressure of being ignored, disrespected, "forgotten", and not being able to say a word to the world.

Then, as social unrest continued global due to BLM, the D&D team comes out with their statement. It was like a slap in the face. How much they care about people of color, how much changing things (that I and others had been pushing for months, if not longer) was just going to happen now. It took weeks of protesting across the globe to get D&D to do what people they hired have been already telling them to fix. You cannot, CANNOT say Black lives matter when you cannot respect the Black people who you exploit at 1/3rd your pay, for progressive ideas you pick apart until it's comfortable, for your millions of profit year over year. People of color can make art and freelance, but are never hired. D&D takes what they want from marginalized people, give them scraps, and claim progress.

I spent my time in that building worrying about how much people hated me for working there. I spent a lot of time thinking about how much it hurt to work there. I had and still have supporters, and many. Thanks to you all for being my voice and speaking out when I could not. But I felt so isolated and alone. If not for some coworkers who checked in on me, who were going through the same things? I would've quit. Every angry statement about D&D felt personal because I couldn't fix it. Because I failed, whether it was my fault or not. I felt like I was being trashed by everyone because I could not disconnect what I set as a personal responsibility from the state of the game. That part IS my fault.

But I wound up as I am now because of all of this and much, much more. I am depressed. I am unable to write. I constantly question if anything I create is worth anything. I feel like I let everyone down, and no matter how much people tell me I didnt, that doesnt change. I feel guilty for not being what y'all needed me to be, what I wanted to be, and betrayed for how I was treated at that company. It's an exceptionally kind place on the D&D team. People are very nice to each other in a very genuine way that I truly enjoyed. However, that doesnt replace respect. That doesnt delete how I was treated. It doesnt change the fact that I honestly never want to play a trpg again and am definitely not working in that field anymore.

I know that I'm probably losing a ton of opportunities writing elsewhere because of what I've said here, as well as what I've sent in internally. It may mean that I will return to poverty, which makes me feel like a failure to my race, my family, and my partner who I want to provide the world. But under all these things, I have my integrity. I worked my ass off. I did my best for as long as I could. And I didnt let them treat me like that without telling the world what needs to be said.

Trust actions, not words. Not "look at how much we freelance so and so", because freelancing is exploitation of diversity with no support for the freelancer. Not "here we finally did what we KNOW we should've done a long time ago", because they only care about how optics turn to dollars. EVERYTHING involving D&D will continue to farm marginalized people for the looks and never put them in leadership. They wont be put on staff. They will be held at arms length. I hope they prove me wrong.

A lot of BIPOC and other marginalized people are trying to make their way by using D&D. Dont shame them for that. Think about how much, and when you wield your anger, that it is done righteously.

That said, I dont recommend to anyone, working for the D&D department of Wizards of the Coast."

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sra9pq

#I'm done with them #i've been playing since Volo's was new #and i've been frustrated with their financial screwing over of players #and their continued cultural appropriation and stereotyping #I'm never touching their products again #wizards of the coast #wotc #dungeons & dragons #d&d #time to find some new systems to play

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redspiderling · 5 years ago

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Ok so im a trans myself. I didn't think it was bad when scarjo wanted to play a trans. Dont get me wrong I had problems get jobs and had a lot of people talk bad to me. But like she said, she is a actor and its her job. Also with her in the main role it would gain way more attention and its a good way to get people to talk about this. Now when I talk about that with other people they just say that the lgbt-community should chill.

Hi anon!

It’s really lovely to see people respond on tumblr with messages and I honestly appreciate it, even if it means I end up writing essay long replies xD

It’s undeniable that there is bias in the film industry. And outside of it. And I believe this is a complicated issue. There are 2 things to consider. First, what is an actor’s job, and then, what is the process of casting actors for roles.

Actors can be anyone, it’s in their job description, and thanks to modern technology, now they can be anything as well. Whether they should be anyone is up for debate. But there’s no right or wrong here. Some people believe that specific roles are meant for specific people, and some don’t.

Those arguments are not between people who want equality and people who don’t, but between people who don’t share the same ideas as to how we will achieve equality as a society.

If you ask me, I think people should be allowed to be cast in any role. I don’t think casting trans people in trans roles would help the trans community any more than if you would cast trans people in any roles.

The assumption that “if they’re not cast as trans they won’t be cast as anything” shows a lack of understanding over the craft of performance arts and over the process of casting. Not to mention that, as far as I’m concerned, equality doesn’t come in steps, it’s not like you can “start them easy” through type casting people for their identity, and then easing in to their humanity beyond that. Either you accept someone the way they are as your equal, or you don’t. There’s no middle ground.

Another reason on why people should be cast in roles regardless of their race, gender identity, or sexuality, is the fact that stepping into another person’s shoes is the very core of what acting is about. Because through immersion and empathy, comes understanding. And by seeing someone as you would see yourself, as a performer and as a viewer, comes equality.

By the way, political correctness in arts is a double edge sword. Yes, it means you get a more proper portrayal of minorities, but it also means you restrict these minorities to “appropriate” roles once again. It’s just this time, instead of typecasting as the Evil Secondary Character, you typecast them as the Good Man Bystander. Gina Torres talked about this at an interview, from the perspective of someone who comes from a minority group, and she described it much more eloquently than I ever could.

Also, corporations seem to have taken this to heart and are abusing the cause to make money. For example, it has become popular to remake famous titles with female cast members. What that means for companies is that they can re-brand an existing product and make money. It also means they are making shitty movies because they don’t care about the content, since what they are selling is the female presence. Does that educate the masses on equality? No, what it does is getting them to “blame women for ruining our movies”. Completely stupid and ridiculous btw but it’s a negative byproduct of this latest fashion, a fashion that I don’t personally see as entirely right or wrong.

And since we reached corporations, lets talk money.

There are different types of film making. There’s corporate, and there’s indie. In indie productions, all bets are off. We’re doing this for the art, so we care about the message, the content, what we give out to the world. Corporate means money.

The Hollywood Star ticket is dying. What I mean is, at this day and age, the idea that an actor or an actress can carry a movie to the theatres with their name on the title alone is no longer an option for the most part.

Once upon a time people would flock to the movie theatres for Bogart, for Hepburn, etc. That’s not happening anymore. Having said that, there are still a few names that grab people’s attention. Scarlett’s is one of them.

It has been said many times before, that when a production company decides to produce something outside its safe zone, they need to know they’ll get their money back somehow. One surefire way to get an edgy (for corporate productions’ standards) script to production is by bringing in the big guns. People were saying “well, trans actors need to start from somewhere, if they want to be cast in this way themselves”. Yes, they do need to start from somewhere, but that somewhere is not, and never has been, risky productions. It’s indie films.

Also, I don’t see why a future trans actor superstar should be instantly assumed as the go-to for trans roles. I don’t think they would appreciate being called in whenever Hollywood needs a trans representative.

Anyway, to close this endless reply, at this time in the world, Rub and Tug would never be produced without ScarJo. And it didn’t. Is that fair? For me as a potential viewer, no, I’d like to see that film regardless of the actor as long as they were good for the job. For the people putting the money in? Perhaps. If I were investing millions of dollars I would want some assurance as to whether or not that investment will be proven fruitful.

And make no mistake, this has nothing to do with equality. It has to do with a studio taking a risk and producing a script that would have never seen the light of day if not for the cast that would carry it into the theatres.

#I am so sorry this end up being so long #whenever I'm trying to put thoughts in words I take ages making my case #ANONS #messages #Scarlett Johansson #she could be more cardboard cut and make my life easier #I would like her less but still #life would be easier #the same vent

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-lower-taxes/

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

While Republicans believe in balancing spending cuts with tax cuts across the board, Democrats believe in cutting taxes for the middle and lower class, while raising them for the upper class. They believe in a higher marginal rate, with income tax being higher for those who make more, as opposed to the Republican views that taxes should be equal percentages for all income levels. In the 2012 Party Platform, 56% of republicans opposed raising taxes on those who earned over $250,000. This isnt to say that Republicans do not believe in focusing relief on the middle and lower classes; they do, however, believe in relief for all Americans, and not in raising taxes on the upper classes.

What Do Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less . They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I’m answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

They want to take away your hamburgers, former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka in February. This is what Stalin dreamt about America will never be a socialist country! The Conservative Political Action Conference audience cheered. The video played on my phone as I waved at Danny, the homeless man who begs for food every morning at the Newark Penn Station, where scores of poor people sleep in wheelchairs or lean on crutches or stand by the delis to ask for change.

These folks need more than hamburgers. They need jobs and homes. Yet, as the 2020 election season starts, Trump has branded progressives as socialists who will steal property and bring tyranny. The presidents fearmongering contrasts with the actual Green New Deal that some Democrats support but failed to pass in the GOP-controlled Senate. Its a fear driven by ideology. Republicans paint the poor as undeserving, marked by cultural or personal character flaws. Whereas Democratic Socialists believe people have the ability to run the economy and society to meet their needs. Why this difference in perception? It is because Republicans arent afraid of socialism they are afraid of equality with people they see as inferior.

Read Also: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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The 10% cuts were “across the board,” as he liked to say, implying they were of equal value to all. The dollar value of the cuts was, of course, far larger for those with larger incomes. Moreover, the tax law changes that accompanied the rate cuts made it easier for individuals and corporations to “write off” various forms of income and spending to lower their tax bills further. The tax rate for capital gains, money made from successful investing, would come down from 28% to 20%.

Reagan did not get everything he sought in this initial foray against high taxes and progressivity. The Senate trimmed the third year of the tax cut from 10% to 5%, and it would take a second bill, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, to pull the marginal top rate all the way down to 28%.

But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

They were the culmination of rising anti-tax sentiment in the late 1970s, when some states adopted tax limitations by popular referendum. That spirit was kept alive in the decades to come by groups such as Americans for Tax Reform, led by activist Grover Norquist. Starting in 1986, Norquist has challenged candidates for office to sign his “taxpayer protection pledge” not to raise taxes. The great majority of Republicans have signed.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

Reagan was able to reverse what had been a decades-long commitment to at least the look of progressivity. He could do it in part because his 1980 election coattails enabled his party to capture control of the Senate for the first time in a quarter century. Moreover, while Democrats still had a House majority, their ranks included scores of members from Southern and Midwestern districts that had also voted for Reagan.

When the budget resolution passed in that summer of 1981, 63 House Democrats joined all 190 Republicans in backing it. And when the tax package came to its critical votes in July, dozens of Democrats sided with Reagan and the Republicans rather than their own leadership.

In 1982, Democrats added to their majority in the House and negotiated some revenue increases with the Senate and the White House. And in Reagan’s second term, momentum built quickly for a tax overhaul that would combine still lower marginal rates with new business taxes and a paring back of tax preferences and other “loopholes.” The new overhaul’s main appeal to Democrats was that it exempted far more middle- and lower-income earners from the income tax altogether.

Career anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, here in 2018, called the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cut “Reaganite” the ultimate compliment from the founder of Americans for Tax Reform.hide caption

toggle caption

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Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

Besides the laws benefits to real estate pass-throughs, real estate in general was hugely favored by the tax law, allowing property exchanges to avoid taxation, the deduction of new capital expenses in just one year versus longer depreciation schedules, and an exemption from limits on interest deductions.;

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Members of Congress own a lot of real estate. Public Integritys review of financial disclosures found that 29 of the 47 GOP members of the committees responsible for the tax bill hold interests in real estate, including small rental businesses, LLCs, and massive real estate investment trusts , which pay dividends to investors. The tax bill allows REIT investors to deduct 20 percent from their dividends for tax purposes.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Its Not Easy Being Green

Democratic socialism is not a Marxist fever dream; its a call for help. Its less socialism than humanitarian aid for a people in crisis. Millions of Americans are in dead-end jobs, slipping behind on bills, deep in debt and scared of climate change.

Something is wrong with capitalism, Martin Luther King Jr. told his staff in 1966. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Saying the economic system causes pain means moving beyond the conservative image of the poor as flawed, personally or culturally, or the liberal image of them as unlucky victims of a more or less functioning meritocracy. To honor our human potential, capitalism must be dismantled, its pieces taken apart and recombined into a new world.

Climate change is one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said at the rollout of the Green New Deal. To combat that threat, we need to be as ambitious and innovative as possible. In its 14 pages, the plan envisions a World War II-scale mobilization of millions of workers. They will repair roads and bridges, build smart grids, upgrade industry to be zero carbon, build green public transit, remove carbon from the air, clean up waste sites, and clean up the poisoned land and waterways. When they come home, those workers can rest in new, green housing, and if sick or injured, they can go see a doctor, using a Medicare for All card.

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal hardly enough to justify quitting a job.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Not true. Welfare officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.

Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenue

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

Read Also: When Did Democrats And Republicans Switch Platforms

Orrin Hatch Tom Coburn And Richard Burr On Health Care

More recently, senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Richard Burr of North Carolina have headed up the Republican fight on health care. Their proposal was named the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act, and is based upon the principle of providing more flexibility and purchasing power to the individual. It shares some important similarities with the Affordable Care Act, such as the requirement to allow dependent coverage through the age of 26, and the inability of insurance companies to provide lifetime limits. When the three senators released their proposal, Burr stated The American people have found out what is in ObamaCare broken promises in the form of increased health care costs, costly mandates and government bureaucracy. We can lower costs and expand access to quality coverage and care by empowering individuals and their families to make their own health care decisions, rather than empowering the government to make those decisions for them.;The group stated that their proposal is designed to be roughly budget neutral over the first 10 years, leaving the financial burden on the American people at nothing. Coburn commented that they created this proposal because Its critical we chart another path forward. Our health care system wasnt working well before ObamaCare and it is worse after ObamaCare.

What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile the poorest 20 percent will stay there. And the same stickiness exists in the top quintile.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

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An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Chip Harter was the Treasury official in charge of writing the rules for the BEAT and GILTI. He had spent decades at PwC and the law firm Baker McKenzie, counseling companies on the same sorts of tax-avoidance arrangements that the new law was supposed to discourage.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

The Organization for International Investment a powerful trade group for foreign multinationals like the Swiss food company Nestlé and the Dutch chemical maker LyondellBasell objected to a Treasury proposal that would have prevented companies from using a complex currency-accounting maneuver to avoid the BEAT.

The groups lobbyists were from PwC and Baker McKenzie, Mr. Harters former firms, according to public lobbying disclosures. One of them, Pam Olson, was the top Treasury tax official in the George W. Bush administration.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

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How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

If youre a rich Democrat, you wake up each day with self-loathing, wondering how you can make the world more egalitarian. Please tax me more, you say to your elected officials. Until then, the next thing you do is call your financial advisor to inquire about tax shelters.

If youre a poor Republican, however, you have more in common with the Democratic Party than the traditional Wall Street, big business base of the Republican Party, according to a survey by the Voter Study Group, a two-year-old consortium made up of academics and think tank scholars from across the political spectrum. That means the mostly conservative American Enterprise Institute and Cato were also on board with professors from Stanford and Georgetown universities when conducting this study, released this month.

The fact that lower-income Republicans, largely known as the basket of deplorables, support more social spending and taxing the rich was a key takeaway from this years report, says Lee Drutman, senior fellow on the political reform program at New America, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Across party lines, only 37% of respondents said they supported government getting active in reducing differences in income, close to the 39% who opposed it outright. Some 24% had no opinion on the subject.

Read Also: Senate Democrats Vs Republicans

Us House Democrats Seek To Roll Back Trump Tax Cuts For Wealthy Corporations

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 – Leading Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday proposed a substantial roll-back of former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, including raising the top tax rate on corporations to 26.5% from the current 21%.

Democrats on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee said they will debate legislation this week that would achieve the changes as part of their broader, $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan.

In an attempt to finance the new spending, the Democratic-led committee will debate a proposal to raise $2.9 trillion in revenue over 10 years, according to a document circulated among members of the panel.

Besides increasing corporate taxes, wealthy individuals would see a jump in their income taxes as well as higher capital gains and estate taxes.

Even if the legislation as proposed passes Congress and is signed by Democratic President Joe Biden, corporate taxes would still be lower than they were before the enactment of the tax cuts pushed through by Republicans in 2017. But the top individual income tax rate would revert to its pre-2017 level.

The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee has scheduled work sessions for Tuesday and Wednesday to debate tax policy and other matters under its jurisdiction to be included in the $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” bill, which would require a simple majority to be passed in the Senate.

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED

Republican Senators Push Social Security Medicare And Medicaid Cuts After Supporting Ineffective Tax Cuts

Republicans Target Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

getty

The economy is recovering from the depths of the pandemic in large part due to the massive relief packages that Congress passed in 2020 and 2021. Just in time for this recovery, Senate Republicans are pushing for cuts to vital programs. According to news reports, five GOP senators are proposing a commission that would come up with proposals to balance the federal budget within a decade. Given that four of the five sponsors of this idea have signed on to the tax pledge to never, ever under any circumstances raise taxes, they are looking for programs to cut. They consequently take aim mainly at cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

These targeted programs are already and will continue to prove crucial to the financial and physical health of millions of Americans that have suffered from the pandemic. Many workers, especially older ones, have lost their jobs permanently and will move into early retirement with permanently lower benefits and little or no savings outside of those benefits. Millions of Americans, again particularly among older ones, experience long-term consequences from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel virus. Those hardest hit by pandemic will need strong, expanded retirement and health benefits, not cuts to an already basic system.

Don’t Miss: Can Republicans Vote On Super Tuesday

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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

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Why you pay taxes, and rich Americans -- like Donald Trump -- don't always have to

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/why-you-pay-taxes-and-rich-americans-like-donald-trump-dont-always-have-to/

Why you pay taxes, and rich Americans -- like Donald Trump -- don't always have to

Trump has since denied the New York Times story and claimed that he pays “a lot” in federal income taxes, but he has not released his tax returns.

Meanwhile, in 2017, a typical nurse earning an average of $70,000, paid $5,400 in federal income taxes, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, a coalition of labor groups and organizations advocating for progressive tax reform.

Trump’s ability to pay far less than the average working American was largely made possible because of how he structured his businesses, a vast array of tax breaks that are available to real estate developers, and incredibly large business losses and charitable gifts that he took as deductions to offset his profits, according to the Times report.

Trump is not alone in taking advantage of these opportunities, but he is certainly the outlier, said Steven M. Rosenthal, a tax lawyer and senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.

“Trump is either the world’s worst businessman or a tax cheat or maybe something of both,” said Rosenthal.

While some wealthy tax filers may see permission — why can’t I do that, too? — in the way Trump apparently prepared his taxes, that is not the way the wealthiest Americans typically approach their taxes, according to tax experts.

How to get a multi-million dollar tax bill down to zero

Wealthy people have money to take big bets, either in their investments or their businesses. When they go big and lose, they can take a capital loss or a net operating loss. And if the loss is big enough, they can use it to greatly reduce or even wipe out their entire tax bill in a given year. Sometimes taxpayers can even carry unused amounts forward to future tax years.

As the Times reported, Trump was able to avoid paying taxes for years because of a massive net operating loss of $916 million in 1995 that was spread out until 2005, thereby wiping out any taxes he owed.

“Can the little guy do this? No,” Rosenthal said. “You need all sorts of partnerships and pass-throughs. Even if you had those, you’d need to be very aggressive about avoiding taxes and be willing to undertake incredible losses.”

Another thing that helped Trump slash his tax bill? Staying with real estate, even as other sources of income came and went.

“People who make their living from real estate have many more tax advantages than a normal taxpayer,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.

Real estate professionals are able to claim losses from depreciation of their properties. Even if the property value goes up, because the building located on the property depreciates, it reduces tax liability, he said.

Deductions on expenses to the business are another way for people with profits to reduce their tax burden. For Trump, such deductions included fuel and meals for his aircraft that took him to his various properties, more than $70,000 for styling his hair during “The Apprentice,” and a total of $95,464 for a hair and makeup artist favored by Ivanka Trump, according to the New York Times.

Most wealthy people do not make their money off earned income, say from filming “The Apprentice,” said Clemente. “They are making it off of the wealth they have, the growth of their businesses and stocks.”

When they pay taxes on capital gains it is at a 15% to 20% tax rate, depending on their income. That’s nearly half the top rate of 37% on earned income, said Clemente. “It is this huge tax preference that favors people that have assets.”

Some other ways the wealthy drive down their tax bill is by making direct investments abroad, Mike Savage, chief executive of 1800accountant, a virtual accounting firm for independent contractors and start ups. If they owe tax to a foreign government, they’re allowed to take a US tax credit. “Avoiding double taxation,” he said.

Making big donations to charity can be another lever used by wealthy taxpayers, like Trump reportedly did through conservation easements that allowed him to claim charitable tax deductions. After signing a deal with a land conservancy, the Times reported, he agreed not to develop most of the property around a mansion he owns, for which he was able to claim a $21.1 million charitable tax deduction.

Who pays no income tax?

There are about 75.5 million Americans, or 43% of tax-filing households, that don’t pay any income tax, according to the Tax Policy Center.

The majority of these are low-income filers, and that is a “feature, not a bug, of the revenue code,” according to the Tax Policy Center. By design, the system excludes many households through a combination of personal exemptions, the standard deduction, zero bracket amounts and tax credits. Generally, you need to file a federal income tax return if your earned income is more than $12,200.

But those on the other end of the income spectrum may also pay no income tax.

“People say that Washington has a rigged system that favors the rich and isn’t working in favor of average Americans,” said Clemente. “Then, Donald Trump plays that to the hilt. All the while he’s the poster child for what is wrong with tax system in Washington.”

Still, to say that the super wealthy are all pushing the tax code to its limits would be inaccurate, according to Savage.

“Generally, you want to make enough money to increase your wealth and pay your taxes,” he said. “That’s the goal.”

Todd Morgan, chairman of Bel Air Investment Advisors, has been in high-net-worth wealth management for 40 years and said he’s never encountered a client with a tax return like those the Times described Trump as filing.

“If I had losses like that I’d be out of business,” he said.

Morgan said his firm works to keep clients wealthy for generations, not just rich right now. “We try to minimize taxes for our clients. But we’re not this successful [as Trump]. And that’s for the best.”

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fwips · 7 years ago

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Hi fwips, i'm a little shy about coming off anon, but I want to let you know how much I admire your attitude towards haters in the voltrob fandom. I've been a follower for a while so I've seen how you respond to unnecessary commenters/haters whether it's on your art or about specific things in fandom. How do you not give a shit? Also, I love your cosplays - sometimes I have to squint to make sure you're the cosplayer and not the character themselves

thank you! im glad youre able to find enjoyment for so long!

i think a lot of my apathy on this site and in fandoms in general is because i was so involved in the drama from fandoms and previous friend groups in my past and it taught me that all this stuff is make believe, the real world is what you should invest your time and emotional energy in. people on the internet literally do not matter unless you let them. people who say mean shit are trying to get a rise and attention out of others, because their parents failed them and they want acknowledgement of any kind. When you just ignore someone trying to get a rise out of you, i promise you it will make every online experience easier for you. Block who and what content you dont want to see, dont kick up fusses over things that don’t effect your actual progress in life.

I used to surround myself in people i only wanted to please, i wanted them to like me so much i sacrificed who i was, and by doing that became someone really ugly. I let people who didn’t care about me at all effect how much i cared about myself. People who try to start a fight or act like theyre above others for whatever their reasons are literally cannot shake someone who is apathetic. If theres one piece of advice I have for anyone, its that continuing to live and be the best person you can be, have good things brought into your life through your own hard work and kindness, will always be the best revenge. Life isn’t short, it’s the longest thing you’ll ever do, but moments can pass by faster than you’ll be prepared for, so why waste them on dramatic fights over cartoons when you can go do something positive instead? For every negative interaction, do something positive, and i assure you, you’ll feel like a million dollars.

someone send you anon hate? draw the thing they don’t like that makes you happy so theres more of it in the world.donate blood or register to be a bone marrow donor! do something you know will matter in the real world where none of this internet pettiness will be able to touch you as a person. Actively trying your best to be a good person won’t make others stop having a problem with you, but it will make that THEIR problem, not yours.

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coin-river-blog · 6 years ago

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Cryptocurrency wallet service provider Bitgo has secured a $100 million policy through Lloyd’s insurance to cover crypto assets that are completely under the company’s control, such as those held in its business wallet and custody offerings. The policy covers issues like insider theft by employees, loss or damage of private keys and hacks.

Also read: Survey Ranks South Africa Top for Cryptocurrency Ownership

Insurance to Cover Hacks, Theft and Loss of Keys

According to a statement released on Feb. 19, Bitgo, which provides custodial services for more than $2 billion in digital assets, said its business wallet customers will now be able to buy theft insurance and a key recovery service called Lost Key Cover. This will be done through Digital Asset Services, an insurance provider overseen by the Financial Conduct Authority, the U.K. financial services regulator. The key recovery service will be available for purchase either as an annual subscription or when needed, the company said.

Custodial assets held completely by either Bitgo, Inc. or Bitgo Trust Company are insured for up to $100 million through insurance group Lloyd’s. The assets will be covered for third-party hacks, physical loss or damage of private keys, insider theft by employees and other hazards. At the end of 2017, Lloyd’s had about $44 billion in gross written premiums. The insurer has a presence in nearly 200 countries and is one of the world’s largest insurance and reinsurance marketplaces.

Mike Belshe, chief executive officer of Bitgo, claimed the cover to be the “most complete insurance offering in the industry,” adding:

It is not always easy for some clients to understand under what circumstances their investments are insured and to what extent their loss would be covered. We are changing that by being more transparent than any other company about the terms of our coverage. Transparency and accuracy is essential for building trust in the market.

Lessons for Quadrigacx

Whereas traditional bank deposits are insured up to a certain threshold, cryptocurrency deposits generally are not, or only to a limited extent, such as exchanges insuring funds kept on their hot wallets, but not in offline cold storage. The Quadrigacx saga, in which the crypto exchange’s founder died with keys to $145 million worth of cryptocurrency, underscores the need for insurance protection. When CEO Gerald Cotten suddenly died in India in December, he apparently took with him the passwords to a multi-million-dollar fortune belonging to investors, which neither his work colleagues, court nor his wife can locate.

Commenting on the Bitgo deal, Nicholas Edwards, an official with Lloyd’s said: “We have been working hard to tailor a bespoke insurance product for Bitgo in this new, rapidly developing and complex sector. Following a thorough review of Bitgo’s security and controls we are delighted to have delivered an innovative solution that enables our client to develop and grow its business with confidence and security.”

San Francisco-based Bitgo claims to process 15 percent of all onchain global bitcoin transactions and $15 billion per month across all cryptocurrencies. The company is backed by the likes of Craft Ventures, Galaxy Digital Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Redpoint Ventures, and Valor Equity Partners.

What do you think about insurance cover in cryptocurrency? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Express yourself freely at Bitcoin.com’s user forums. We don’t censor on political grounds. Check forum.Bitcoin.com

Tags in this story

Bitcoin, BitGo, Cold Storage, Cryptocurrency, Digital Asset Services, Financial Conduct Authority, Hacks, hot wallet, Insurance cover, lloyds, Lost keys, Mike Belshe, N-Featured, QuadrigaCX, Theft

Jeffrey Gogo

Jeffrey Gogo is an award winning financial journalist based in Harare, Zimbabwe. A former deputy business editor with the Zimbabwe Herald, the country's biggest daily, Gogo has more than 15 years of wide-ranging experience covering Zimbabwe's financial markets, economy and company news. He first encountered bitcoin in 2014, and began covering cryptocurrency markets in 2017

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latestforextips · 8 years ago

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asksansweredpdf · 6 years ago

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flower crown: when did you last sing to yourself? i feel like it was teenage rebel - chameleon circuit hahaha

fairy lights: if a crystal ball could tell you the truth about anything, what would you want to know? well, i often do tarot spreads for this. but i guess i would ask - you know. i’m not sure

daisies: what is the greatest accomplishment of your life? literally just surviving it all

1975: what is the first happy memory that comes to mind, recent or otherwise? maybe a few work ones, or the time not long ago i was put in a group assignment for uni. we all decided to meet up after our group presentation for drinks and hang out and i had a really fun time making new friends and hanging out with people

matte: if you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? oh man i would have WAY less anxiety about everything. knowing that nothing i do will matter in a year would be so freeing and liberating. i’d probably get a new job and actually get my motorbike license and go for rides

black nail polish: do you have a bucket list? if so, what are the top three things? i don’t have a bucket list but i’ll try to think of 3 things i’d like to do before i die -

this has been in my drafts for days and i honestly can’t think of a thing.

pantone: describe a person close to your life in detail.

moodboard: do you feel you had a happy childhood? nope

stars: when did you last cry in front of another person? honestly i can’t remember. oh! i think maybe 6 months ago i got high and started over thinking and got sad and started crying. my roommate walked past because i forgot i had the door open and hugged me and then left after a bit

plants: pick a person to stargaze with you and explain why you picked them. ideally, it’d be a close friend. but i dont have those. so maybe if i could go back in time and stargaze with an old friend. otherwise, my current friend hj is cool! actually, i’d love to get high and stargaze with him.

converse: would you ever have a deep conversation with a stranger and open up to them? i have before. but no, i wouldn’t now. i’m not like that anymore

lace: when was your last 3am conversation with someone, and who were they to you? it was 4 months ago, with my old best friend’s ex-boyfriend (i think they broke up? i dont talk to either of them anymore). i used to be close to him anyway, like we were also best friends. and we used to be roommates.

handwriting: if you were about to die, and you could only say one more sentence to one person, what would you say and to whom? i’d love to look my mother in the eyes and say “i’ll never forgive you” but. it doesn’t feel right as much as i mean it. i guess i’d like to say it to both my parents. but i have to pick one person. .... i guess i would get my old best friend who i havent spoken to in 6 years and say “i’m sorry. i missed you for years. i’ll always love you” or something equally dramatic

cactus: what is your opinion on brown eyes? i have them and i love them. they’re so beautiful

sunrise: pick a quote and describe what it means to you personally. i’m picking a few because fuck the police “being human is a condition that requires a little anaesthesia” was from the bohrap movie. relatable mood. reminds me of my mother which makes me uncomfortable “fall down 7 times, stand up 8. higher, further, faster” from captain marvel. i’ve been through soooo much fucking shit in my life. and i feel like it just keeps coming (well. the shit keeps coming and it don’t stop coming and it dont stop coming and it dont stop coming and it dont stop coming) and sometimes i wonder what the point of it all is. like what’s the point of trying to be happy when i’m just going to be let down again. and so it’s encouraging to change perspective from that to, we get up higher, further, faster

“my skin has gone from porcelain, to ivory, to steel” - sansa stark it ties in with the captain marvel one. in that shit just keeps happening. and i feel the same way. i used to be so free and naive and i’m not that person anymore. i guess it makes me feel less alone.

oil paints: what would you title the autobiography of your life so far? “

overalls: what would you do with one billion dollars? buy a house for myself, buy a few investment properties so that i know i’m always secure financially. put a couple million in the bank. buy houses for my friends and family, donate the rest

combat boots: are you a very forgiving person? do you like being this way? yes and yes. i feel like i’m really understanding, and so i forgive people when it’s understandable. but once it’s past a certain point, i’m not at all forgiving. i hold grudges too. i like being this way

winged eyeliner: write a hundred word letter to your twelve year old self. “hey kid. happy birthday! well, this is where things start to get really hard. you’re going to go through a lot even though you think you won’t. people are going to leave you and treat you despicably and betray you. almost everyone you love will completely screw you over. you will have no one to count on except yourself. i’m not saying this to scare you. but i want you to know that even when you feel like it’s too much to handle, you’re so much stronger than you’ll even realise. you have so much turmoil ahead of you, but i love you so much. you’ll come out the other end with anxiety and so scarred. but you’ll survive it. all of it. you’ll survive. there’s no lesson or greater purpose. i’m not going to tell you that it all happens for a reason, because it doesn’t. just trust that you have what’s in you to face anything. once day this will all feel like a bad dream and you’ll start to feel like yourself again. best of luck. ps there is no god”

pastel: would you describe yourself as more punk or pastel? punk

tattoos: how do you feel about tattoos and piercings? explain. love them both. they’re hot and cool

piercings: do you wear a lot of makeup? why/why not? nah, i only wear make up to work. and that’s because i work in sales. part of getting people to like you is being attractive. make up makes you more attractive. when people like you, you have more influence over them and you make more sales

bands: talk about a song/band/lyric that has affected your life in some way. runaway by pink. that song just. what a mood. and family portrait. i relate to both of those songs so much. even when i was going through shit, i had that song that i could sing and even though things were never okay, they made it bearable

messy bun: the world is listening. pick one sentence you would tell them. be kind to each other?

cry baby: list the concerts you have been to and talk about how they make you feel. 1st was a pink concert i went to when i was 15! we were super poor so this was a major deal. i waited in line for ages and my back started hurting real bad. but as soon as she got on stage everything went away. it was electrifying and she performed my favourite song. and i had eyeliner on which i cried off because she was my idol and it was amazing. her dancers were also super hot and i re-affirmed my bisexuality because i was like. wow. yes 2nd was lana & borns. my sister made me go with her to see lana del rey who i dont really give a shit about. she’s cool but im not like a major fan. borns however, i adore with every fibre of my being. borns was the opening act which was cute. i was one of the only ones in the crowd who knew him and everyone behind me was like gasping and talking about how cute he is. which also re-affirmed my sexuality. up until that point i thought that maybe i was a lesbian because i didn’t tend to find men too attractive. but borns? nope, i knew i was bi. then lana came on. it was okay. i knew a fair amount of the songs and apparently pissed everyone off by singing? i just thought that’s what you did at concerts dsjgdslkr but i had fun.

grunge: who in the world would you most like to receive a letter from and what would you want it to say? i would love to get a letter from an old best friend of mine saying sorry & that we should catch up. i feel like i havent had a friendship as full of connection as the one we’ve had. it’s been years and i still dont have anyone that could possibly replace her. but i worry that if we ever did try to re-kindle things it just wouldnt work out. which would lead me to ask myself if there was ever going to be anyone else who i’ll have that connection with. but it’d be nice at least

space: do you have a desk/workspace and how is it organised/not organised? i don’t have a desk! i had one for about 3 months and it was organised. i was always too poor to afford a desk and it just wasnt a priority when i used my bed

white bed sheets: what is your night time routine? go upstairs, lay in bed, read .... words, stay up until my eyes are closing for me. sleep

old books: what’s one thing you don’t want your parents to know? my parents opinion literally means nothing to me. i wouldn’t care what they do/don’t know. i guess id prefer if they didnt know about the drugs because my mum did them a lot and it led to her being abusive. so they’d be suuuper judgy and probably take them off me and shit. but once im moved out, i dont really care. they wont be able to do much about it

beaches: if you had to dye your hair how would you dye/style it and why? i’d love to have a shaved thing. my hair’s already short. but my dad’s homophobic and doesnt want me to get it short. i dont give enough of a shit about it to argue with him so i leave it. but if i could, having a cool shaved thing would be nice

eyes: pick five people to go on an excursion with you. who would you pick and where would you go/what would you do? i dont think i even have 5 friends, and if i do, we certainly don’t have fun together. i’d just go by myself. i’m lots of fun to be around when it’s just me

11:11: name three wishes and why you wish for them. i wish for a job that has stable income, consistent hours, a kind staff, and is something that i’m not constantly fucking up. - i wish for this because i feel like getting up every day to do something that doesn’t give me panic attacks (that i might even be able to enjoy) is such a dream. and if it gives a stable amount of money and hours, i’d be able to plan things and have a life instead of worrying about them calling me at literally any given moment and asking me to work. which means i’d either have to work or stammer out an excuse on the spot & have the managers be mad at me i wish for a living space that i can afford & is either by myself or with people who aren’t terrible. or with people who can’t fuck me over if they get mad at me. this would step 2 of being happy for me. having a job that doesn’t make me anxious = job that could make me happy. living space that is secure and mine and that no one can take away = reduction of anxiety and security = potentially being happy. i guess i’d use the 3rd wish on having a car or motorbike. being able to get around without relying on anyone or public transport would be nice. i can go to places whenever it suits me and i’d be independent. i can just decide to go to an art gallery without it having to be a major planning thing or something that would take 2 hours to get to and from. it’d be very liberating

painting: what is the best halloween costume you have ever put together? if none, make one up. omg! last halloween. i borrowed an old friend’s witch costume. it was this cute corseted dress with a mini skirt & suspenders that attach to stockings. i bought a matching wand and witches hat. i looked super cute

lightning: what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done while drunk or high? i havent done terrible things under the influence hey. i mostly just have fun and keep to myself.

thunder: what’s one thing you would never do for one million dollars? i dunno man. one million dollars is a lot of money. surely any of my usual morals would fly out the window. murder would become questionable. like it’s $1 million. i guess maybe not murder because if i went to jail then i wouldnt be able to spend the $1m. mass murder of like children and innocent people i probably wouldnt do. even if i got away with it

storms: you on only listen to one song for the rest of your life, or only see one person for the rest of your life. which and why? 1 song would be maybe americans - janelle monae. it’s a tune and you can listen to it for any mood really 1 person? i’ve purposefully gotten rid of any person i would want to only see for the rest of my life. not in a murder way, i just cut ties with them

love: have you ever fallen in love? describe what it feels like to realise you’re in love. many a time. it’s a really nice thing! not just romantically. but for me, i just suddenly can’t stop thinking about them. like every spare second i have i’m wondering what they’re doing, thinking about our inside jokes, planning what i’ll say next, wondering what to wear to impress them next, planning how i’m going to work this funny story i want to tell them, etc. and i won’t be able to stop smiling whenever they’re around. the worst giveaway for me is when i can feel myself excessively talking to other people about them. and i can’t stop. it gives me something to think about that makes me happy. something that makes me happy to distract from usually the shitter things.

clouds: if you’re a boy, would you ever rock black nail polish? if you’re a girl, would you ever rock really really short hair? i am a girl and i have really really short hair. i rock it. i also rock black nail polish

coffee: what’s your starbucks order, and who would you trust to order for you, if anyone? i hate coffee. so i usually order a white hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows. i’d trust anyone to order it for me. as long as they didn’t screw up and get me the white chocolate mocha, which has happened a few times

marble: what is the most important thing to you in your life right now? alcohol. music! probbaly music before alcohol. i love music. cigarettes. and my phone

#mine

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fmservers · 6 years ago

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Why longer term sheets are better

Recently in a conversation, the length of term sheets came as a topic (I assure you, it was a riveting conversation). The complaint was that a term sheet which had recently been received was too long, and therefore the VC who sent it wasn’t being founder friendly. The travails of successfully raising money!

Actually though, a longer term sheet is much more founder friendly and good business practice, and founders should be leery of VCs bearing short contracts.

Historically (i.e. about 6 years ago), term sheets used to be staid affairs, printed on plain white paper in standard Times New Roman font right out of Word. It was a wretched and horrifying world until the cool VCs showed up, who added design accoutrements (Bolded section heads! Logos! Colors!) while claiming that they had a “single-page” term sheet for founders, implying that the term sheet’s simplicity and prettiness showed that they weren’t really investors, but more like a Brooklyn barista with an art side hustle (and a lot of cash).

Here’s the thing, term sheets have an incredibly important purpose, which is to set forth in clear language the terms of a deal. Unfortunately in modern venture capital, there are a lot of terms that have to be negotiated in any equity round, from financial terms to option pools, to board structure, to voting rights on major business decisions like selling the company, and much more. Simpler term sheets either relegate many of these items to “standard venture capital terms apply” or some other vague language, or just wholly don’t mention them at all.

The challenge is that once the term sheet is signed, it becomes the blueprint by which the legal counsels for the VC and founder begin to write up the legal contracts that allows the VC to buy equity in the startup. When term sheets are clear, precise, and comprehensive, the lawyers just go to work and turn those agreed-upon terms into legal language in relatively short order.

When there are key terms that are “standard” or absent from a term sheet though, lawyers do what lawyers have to do: they negotiate for their respective party. Suddenly a term that seems fairly standard is up for debate, and unless a founder (and their VC) is paying very close attention to the legal process (from experience, no one really is), then the legal bills for the round can spiral very, very rapidly. That can pose a double whammy for a startup, since many VCs continue to charge the legal fees of conducting a round to the startup they are investing in.

I’ve seen founders in absolute sticker shock after seeing the legal costs of their round total into the upper tens of thousands of dollars because their lawyers racked up time trying to plow through term after term that could have been made clearer by the parties up front.

So, what’s more founder friendly: a longer term sheet that sets the deal terms clearly up front and likely saves the founder legal costs, or a shorter (but color!) term sheet that can end up costing far more down the line?

This is mostly a problem for first-time founders raising their first round of capital. I have a sinking feeling that many VCs take advantage of this naiveté to get better terms than they might have gotten otherwise had they actually walked through all the language up front. In later rounds, founders either ask all the right questions about the next round of capital, or their other existing investors figure this out on their behalf.

It’s good legal practice to always get all material terms figured out before your lawyers start writing contracts, whether in fundraising, or customer contracts, or what have you. You can’t always predict if there is something else that will end up being a disagreement, but getting most of the terms squared away will save legal time, and that is money ultimately in your pocket.

Side note: Extra Crunch published part two of five of our comprehensive guide to legal issues facing startups, this time focused on intellectual property. Don’t miss out on part one which focused on corporate issues.

Extra Crunch’s first conference call is today

We are hosting the first conference call for Extra Crunch subscribers today at 2pm EST / 11am PST. Call-in details are being sent out to members by email roughly one hour in advance. Today, Eric Eldon and I will talk briefly about Extra Crunch, and then TechCrunch social and product maestro Josh Constine is going to talk about the strategic issues confronting the social giants. Join us!

More SoftBank Vision Fund sadness

Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Get out your popcorn because there’s more drama involving SoftBank’s giant Vision Fund and its LP base. Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund stated that it no longer planned to invest in the Vision Fund. Despite previous discussions with SoftBank, the fund plans to instead put its money into infrastructure across areas like energy, healthcare, and education.

With assets of roughly $15 billion under management, Bahrain’s fund is small potatoes when it comes to SoftBank, and its contribution likely would have been much smaller than those of its Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia counterparts. However, after recent reports that Persian Gulf LPs are growing frustrated with the Vision Fund and are putting more money to work in infrastructure, Bahrain’s decision could indicate a broader change in sentiment towards the Vision Fund. Just look at the comment the CEO of Bahrain’s Fund gave to Reuters:

“We talked with them and with many people, but it shows we’ve not seen something we think we can add value to or it could add value to us.”

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has wanted to scale up the size of Vision Fund II, but that dream may well be fading as more large wealth managers decline to engage.

Steam and video game streaming

Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Extra Crunch writer Chris Morris had a dive into the challenges facing Steam yesterday. Steam is facing two trends. First, publishers are increasingly getting smart about owning their customer relationship, which is hard to do with the design of Steam’s platform. The second is that video game streaming is getting closer to reality, and that doesn’t bode well for a game store. Plus, developers want to keep more of their revenue, and Steam takes a lot.

What’s interesting here is that publishers (and I mean big, AAA publishers) are increasingly comfortable with the notion that they can attract customers to their own independent store fronts and don’t have to pay the Steam tax in order to get in front of customers. What concerns me is that indie developers both don’t have the leverage to negotiate with Steam and don’t have the marketing budgets or fanbases to reach out to a wide audience. That’s not a great world, and an opportunity I think to figure out how to create a more even playing field for independent game creators.

The chip space keeps getting hotter as Korea’s SK leads round for Chinese chipmaker

IvancoVlad via Getty Images

Written by Arman Tabatabai

TechCrunch writer Rita Liao reported overnight that the A.I.-focused Chinese chipmaker Horizon Robotics raised a $600 million round led by subsidiaries of Korea’s SK Group, including its semiconductors segment.

We’ve previously discussed the intensifying global competition in the chip space, and SK’s investment shows that no one wants to miss out on the next innovative technology like previous incumbents who now find themselves playing catch up.

It’s worth noting that Intel’s venture arm, Intel Capital, is also an investor in Horizon and led their previous fundraise, as Horizon seems to offer up another opportunity for the US chip giant to make up lost ground in AI chip innovation and to gain share in the Chinese market now that they have canceled a partnership with China’s state-backed chipmaker Unisoc.

The data point is another positive for Chinese chipmakers, who seem to still have access to foreign capital on top of more than enough domestic — often state-backed — investments. The city of Beijing just raised its first venture fund with $1.5 billion focused on chips, A.I., and other areas, while China is reportedly nearing the closing of its second state-backed semis fund that some estimate might be nearly $50 billion in size.

More news

Written by Arman Tabatabai

California may have canceled HSR, but China is moving forward with an IPO

While US high-speed rail (HSR) projects continue to fall flat on their face, China Railway Corporation is now planning to IPO its Beijing to Shanghai HSR line within the next year. There’s always some financial risk with publicly-traded infrastructure, but the line’s securely profitable and the deal should help shore up the finances of its owner as it plans to make its largest rail investments ever this year.

Japan’s antitrust investigation is the latest in Asia’s new wave of regulatory scrutiny

Japan is reportedly initiating an antitrust investigation into the country’s biggest ecommerce platforms. Investigators will be looking to see whether Amazon Japan, Rakuten and SoftBank-subsidiary Yahoo! Japan launched benefit programs that ultimately are subsidized by and cut into the revenue of its small-to-midsize vendor suppliers.

The investigation is the latest in Japan’s broader effort to increase regulatory scrutiny on big tech, a global trend that seems to be permeating Asia as seen in our previous discussions on India. While it’s unclear how the heightened scrutiny will impact companies’ perception of these markets, it’s certainly clear that the “move fast and break things” playbook is getting tougher to run.

Obsessions

We have a bit of a theme around emerging markets, macroeconomics, and the next set of users to join the internet.

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to [email protected].

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

Via Danny Crichton https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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toomanysinks · 6 years ago

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Timing and why we’re all VCs

Timing is the single most valuable skill of the modern economy, but I would argue its’s the least understood and also the least practiced.

Capitalism is fundamentally about timing, since market competition is about finding opportunities before others. When should you start a company? What company should you start? When should a VC invest? When should you join a company? When should you switch industries? When should you back a candidate for public office?

Every single one of our professional decisions is about timing, and yet, we do so little to practice and perfect it. Most employees only make 3-4 major career decisions in their lifetimes — hardly enough feedback for this skill to mature. Anyone who has worked in a large company further knows that timing a product launch or a new marketing strategy has more to do with internal politics than reading market forces.

Most of us want to make more money and accelerate our careers, but the truth is that these opportunities are few and far between. Most jobs have limited growth potential. Most startups die. Most VCs don’t make money. Most political candidates fail to get elected. The difference between success and failure sometimes has to do with hard work and tenacity, but far more often with the strategy of timing.

It’s obvious that we can be too late to these decisions of course. We can miss the round of financing, we can start a company a year or two behind someone else and lose the first-mover advantage. But we can also be way too early, ahead of the market and losing out on alternative opportunities that might have been more valuable.

Now, some perceive that “timing” is synonymous with “luck.” There is some truth there, in the sense that life is random and sometimes — completely unintentionally — people stumble upon a treasure chest of gold.

Don’t be distracted by that, because there are also people who just seem to have timing nailed. There are engineers (I know because I have seen their recruiter profiles) who have joined three unicorns in a row in the first handful of employees. There are VCs who get a string of wins that is far from chance. There are CEOs that always seem to guide their companies to the right place at the right time and drive their stock valuations up.

We talked a lot about why we can’t build infrastructure in America yesterday. One of the challenges is simply timing: so many things have to happen at once for these projects to get off the ground, and most governors and mayors lack the timing skills required to get them over the finish line.

How can you practice timing? Start writing down predictions about people, companies, and markets. Check in with the companies you talked with a few years ago — how are they doing? Ditto people you met a while back. Start evaluating your predictions: were they correct? Were they too early or too late?

More importantly, start cultivating networks of friends who have a sense of pulse on the frontiers of the economy. That could mean someone at the edge of a new science (quantum computing or AI) or someone who gets marketing to new demographics, or someone who tracks new regulatory and legal changes. Find a peer group of people who get timing and practice it as a craft.

Between TechCrunch today and my former roles in venture capital, I’ve had the opportunity to practice timing a lot. I have a list of companies that I would have backed, and some have turned into unicorns while others have ended up on the ash heap of history. I’ve predicted some trends well, while flubbed others. I’ve been way too early (a huge bias for me), and sometimes stupidly late.

But all along, I am practicing that timing muscle. It’s the only way forward in capitalism, and it’s worth every investment you can make.

Mithril Capital, management fees, and VC strategic drift

Peter Kim via Getty Images

Theodore Schleifer at Recode reported a rare deep dive into the internal intrigue at a prominent VC firm, in this case Mithril Capital. From the article:

Mithril had its best moment yet last week when a portfolio company, Auris Health, sold to Johnson & Johnson for more than $3 billion — returning at least $500 million to the fund.

All appears well. But behind the scenes, a far different story has been unfolding.

The late-stage investment firm has been a slow-burning mess for the past several months, angering current and former employees, limited partners, and, crucially, [Peter] Thiel himself, sources say.

Among the issues is the firm’s huge management fee … and I guess lack of expenses?

The firm is likely collecting as much as $20 million a year in management fees, sources familiar with the figures say.

We don’t know exactly how much the firm spends, but people close to Mithril say they can’t imagine that the firm, given its staff size, is spending more than half of that on operational expenses. [Mithril Capital founder Ajay] Royan’s salary, like that of other venture capitalists, is not publicly disclosed.

One limited partner called the fees, given the size of Mithril’s staff, “outrageous.”

What? I don’t understand this line of reasoning at all. The firm negotiates a fairly standard agreement with its limited partners, and then the LPs are pissed because the firm isn’t spending the money on massive staff and large, expensive offices? The whole point of delegating investment decisions to a GP is to empower them to organize their firm to win deals and get stuff done. If — and it’s a big if of course — they can do that on the cheap, then why should an LP care at all? Burn the management fee in a fireplace if it makes the deals happen.

Ajay Royan told Bloomberg in 2017 that Mithril does not “charge excessive fees.” But he was not exactly known for being thrifty with management money. Former employees describe Friday catered lunches where costs could run over $100 per person, and Royan was known internally for a “book ordering problem” — a former employee said that “unbelievable amounts of books” would be delivered each week to the office by Amazon to maintain the firm’s extensive library.

Pro tip: take on the mantle of book editor for a major tech publication, and the publishers will mail you books for free. We get at least a dozen at the TC offices every week, which is why we write about books so often around here these days. Alas, no $100 catered lunches.

The wider story here though appears to be one of a firm completely strategically adrift. Mithril is struggling to compete against ferocious competition in the growth-stage equity market. The best deals are obvious to dozens of firms, and the ones that are less obvious have huge risks attached to them that make it hard to write the big checks required.

“[Royan] literally did not want to compete. If there was a process or bidding war or something resembling a competition, he would just walk,” the employee said. “And he would just say, ‘I don’t want to outbid.’”

Mithril is hardly the only VC firm that is strategically adrift. Every time I go back to SF, this seems to be the norm these days among venture capitalists. There is a huge amount of money sloshing around, and very few deals that are in that sweet spot between obvious and highly risky. Startups either get three dozen term sheets or none at all, since every firm is walking around with the same frameworks and metrics in their head.

It’s so rare to actually hear a VC strategy that isn’t generic capital, that has some differentiation on sourcing, and picking, and growing businesses beyond the “we invest in great companies.” VCs don’t like strategy because it means making choices, and making choices means saying no to certain things, and those things might be the next Facebook. So they do everything, all the time, which really means they do nothing. And so we get book ordering problems and expensive lunches and weirdly angry LPs. What a boring mess.

Quality tech news from around the web

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Carl Larson Photography via Getty Images

South California is also seeing declining seed investment

Today, the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) published its updated economic forecast for LA and the Southern California region. One interesting note in the report is an observed slow down in early-stage venture investing. The report highlighted that while growth-stage investments in CA were hitting record highs, total deal count and seed investing — both in terms of total seed dollars and seed deal count — were at their lowest points since 2012.

The data points in LA, Southern CA, and the rest of the state seem to follow the trend of declining seed rounds seen in the rest of the country. While the topic is one we’ve previously discussed and one which has heated up in recent weeks with commentary from Marc Suster, Fred Wilson, and others, it’s interesting to see the trend occurring even in more nascent startup markets.

Will “Diet CA-HSR” even get done as feds look to pull back California funding

The federal government announced that it would be pulling back $1 billion in funding that was slated for the California high-speed rail project through 2022, while also pursuing legal action to help recoup the $2.5 billion it has already coughed up. The Federal Railroad Administration is arguing that the state’s updated plan — completing only a route from Bakersfield to Merced — is starkly different from the plan for which the funds were originally allocated. Ouch.

As stock exchanges compete to attract IPOs, unicorns and investors win?

It might be getting easier for companies to go public around the world. With ample late-stage capital keeping more companies staying private for longer, looser rules from the SEC and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange may be on the way to help entice more IPOs.

In the US, the SEC proposed allowing all companies to market themselves to investors before announcing IPOs versus just those that fall under the agency’s “emerging growth” definition. Across the Pacific, Bloomberg reported that Chinese tech companies have been lobbying the HK Exchange for a number of more favorable rules, including allowing companies to maintain extra voting rights and letting major shareholders buy extra stock in the process. With a serious number of Chinese companies opting to list on foreign exchanges last year, the HK Exchange might be feeling pressure to cough up concessions that could help them win local listings — especially if the US moves forward with friendlier rules.

How Japan lost half its citizens with poor data

The Japanese government failed to pay out billions of yen in government benefits for years due to faulty data. If that wasn’t bad enough, Nikkei Asian Review reported yesterday that the government is struggling to even locate roughly half of those who are owed since they don’t have their current addresses on file.

As simple as it may seem, tracking the indebted is actually a tall task since citizens have changed residences, changed names, and since the Japanese government has historically destroyed benefit applications (containing address info) after the period required to maintain them. At this point, it’s unclear whether everyone who is owed will even end up getting paid, with the Japanese government now offering a prime example of how poor data maintenance and not just poor data collection can make a situation go from bad to a whole lot worse.

Can the race to build roads in Southeast Asia avoid development gridlock?

As we harp on our “Why can’t we build anything?” obsession, infrastructure development in Southeast Asia is continuing to heat up and everyone seems to want a piece of the pie. Japan announced plans to further accelerate investment into infrastructure and urban development in the region — where China is also actively engaged — with initial expansion talks focused on Cambodia and the Philippines. At the same time, a newly unveiled government budget in Singapore and the ongoing election in Indonesia have brought infrastructure development strategies into the spotlight, with open debate on how these projects have been and should be funded.

Obsessions

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

We are going to be talking India here, focused around the book “Billonnaire Raj” by James Crabtree

We have a lot to catch up on in the China world when the EC launch craziness dies down. Plus, we are covering The Next Factory of the World by Irene Yuan Sun.

Societal resilience and geoengineering are still top-of-mind

Some more on metrics design and quantification

Thanks

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/20/timing-and-why-were-all-vcs/

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-lower-taxes/

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

What Do Republicans Believe In

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

Read Also: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

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You May Like: Leader Of The Radical Republicans

Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Its Not Easy Being Green

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenue

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

Read Also: When Did Democrats And Republicans Switch Platforms

Orrin Hatch Tom Coburn And Richard Burr On Health Care

What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

Don’t Miss: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

Recommended Reading: Snopes Trump Republican Dumb

How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

Read Also: Senate Democrats Vs Republicans

Us House Democrats Seek To Roll Back Trump Tax Cuts For Wealthy Corporations

Democrats on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee said they will debate legislation this week that would achieve the changes as part of their broader, $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan.

Besides increasing corporate taxes, wealthy individuals would see a jump in their income taxes as well as higher capital gains and estate taxes.

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED

Republican Senators Push Social Security Medicare And Medicaid Cuts After Supporting Ineffective Tax Cuts

Republicans Target Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

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Don’t Miss: Can Republicans Vote On Super Tuesday

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topicprinter · 6 years ago

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Hey guys, my name's Rob and I thought I'd share my experience as an entrepreneur starting an online coupon site DealsXtra and an email sourcing tool Contactout. Lately, I've been musing on trying to find a greater sense of purpose, so please take the time to read the article below and let me know what you thinkI went to one of those personal development cults seminars once, and I asked a barrage of questions:What is the purpose of life? What should I do with my life?“Shut the fuck up”, the seminar leader said“You already know all the answers inside. You’re just asking me for permission to do what you already know is right. You’re looking for validation. Stop. You don’t need anyone’s permission. When you get an internal sense of what’s right, just go do it. Act, and then see what happens. Adjust your actions depending on the results that you get.When you come across a problem, think for yourself how to solve it, trust in your own judgement. See the world with your own fresh pair of eyes and make your own conclusions from first hand experience. Don’t just listen to everything that other people tell you. Always question and think critically; other people are no smarter than you are. Listen to others, but think for yourself.”FOLLOW YOUR HEARTThe best advice I’ve ever gotten in my life is to follow my heart. I think of it like, there’s a guiding compass inside of me, that always knows which direction to go. An inner voice that knows what’s right. I just need to tune into it and trust it.For example, right after university, I worked in investment banking and hated my life. I hated the lack of freedom, the repetitive tasks, the ass kissing. I knew I wanted to work on my own business. An online business that would let me travel and explore the world. But I didn’t trust myself. I’ve studied so hard to land this job. All my friends where in corporate. How could it possibly be the right move to leave when everyone else was happily working? Wasn’t I living the corporate dream? I kept looking to other people for career advice, when I already knew. It took me 6 months to find the courage. I decided to start my own business – it was the best decision of my life.Elon Musk also follows his heart. He calls it: “thinking from first principles”. When asked how he came up with the ideas for Tesla, SpaceX and Paypal, Elon looked inside. He asked himself what are the biggest problems that humanity is currently facing? And thought about solutions to those problems. Meanwhile, most people are caught up with the crowd, trying to ride market trends. Let’s do cryptocurrency for dogs!SOCIAL CONDITIONINGThere are all these people telling us how we should live our lives. Social conditioning is fucking with us everywhere. Work is telling us that climbing the corporate ladder means success in life. Fashion trends are defining what beautiful is. Our social group is making us conform and act in a socially acceptable way.Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables – slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off. – Fight ClubHumans are tribal creatures; we’re wired to go with the crowd. But just because everyone else believes in something, it does not mean that it’s right. In the past, everyone believed that the earth was flat. We look back and think that’s ridiculous. Now imagine that you’re in the future looking back. Could it be that there are heaps of popular beliefs we hold today that our future selves would think are ridiculous?We forget to listen to ourselves. Our default state is to listen to others. We spend our lives trying to live up to other people’s expectations. But most people have never sat down and really thought about what they want to do with their lives. And it’s important that we think about it because we only have one life. We only have a limited time on this planet. One day we will be dead.You’re time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. – Steve JobsThe challenge for our generation is creating a world where everyone has a sense of purpose. Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness. – Mark ZuckerbergSOCIAL CONDITIONING VS FOLLOWING OUR HEARTSDo we listen to social conditioning? Or do we follow our hearts? The book “The Fountainhead” explores this question. The story goes like this:Once upon a time there were two architects who went to university together – Peter and Howard. Peter was super social; he became the head of the architecture society. He networked his way into a really prestigious firm after he graduated. Worked incredibly hard, sucked up to all the right people and eventually became a director of the firm. Made tonnes of money and retired a rich man. Towards the end of his days, though, he looked back on all the buildings that he designed and thought to himself: “All these buildings are ugly, I don’t like a single one of them. Every building I designed was driven by what the client wanted, or what my firm wanted.” He felt like his vision of the perfect building was still trapped inside him, and that nothing he achieved in life meant anything.Meanwhile the other architect, Howard, just didn’t give a fuck. He hated the Victorian design classes at university because it was unnecessarily ornate. Howard wanted to do minimalist post modern design. He ended up dropping out of university and going to intern with an architect who he had a lot of respect for. However, the architect wasn’t getting much business because his designs were so radical. Later on, Howard started his own firm. But he would only take on clients if the client gave him complete freedom to design the building however he wanted. His clients would have no say in the design at all. Howard didn’t have many clients and only built a few buildings in his career. However, he felt that every building that he built was a representation of his truest vision of art. The pylons of the building were like Howard’s bones, the windows and wooden finishings were his skin and flesh, each building was a temple to his soul.Would you rather be Howard? Or would you rather be Peter?How has social conditioning influenced how you live?Write down 10 of your core beliefs.Which of your beliefs did you consciously decide upon, and how many have been dictated by society?Which of your beliefs are helping you and which beliefs are holding you?Are you living the life you want to live, or the life society wants you to live?How do YOU want to live your life?LOVE WHAT YOU DOYour work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle. – Steve JobsWHY BIGGER GOALS ARE BETTERMost people set small goals in life. We don’t set ourselves big goals because we’ll fail. But big goals are actually easier to achieve than small goals. People are inspired by big goals and will go out of their way to help you. Investors will give you money. Big goals create movements and bring together teams. Small goals may be easier to accomplish, but not as many people will help you do it. Also there’s much less competition with big goals. How many of your friends are trying to cure cancer or solve cold fusion? How many friends work in accounting? Sure curing cancer is a million times harder than working in accounting, but there’s a million times more people that your competing against if you choose accounting.When I started my coupon site 7 years ago, I just wanted to earn enough money to support myself and travel. This wasn’t going to become a big business, so I had trouble attracting investors. When I pitched at startup conferences, investors would be like, “cool story bro, needs more dragons.” I had no money, and my goal wasn’t very inspiring, so I had trouble hiring great people. I ended up spending 4 years figuring out marketing by myself and building the business to a level where it supports my lifestyle – yay, go me.Meanwhile, Tim Kently-Klay managed to build Zoox into a 1.5 billion dollar business in the same time frame. Right… So wtf am I doing with my life? Here’s how Tim did it. One day Tim woke up and was like, “I want to build fully autonomous self driving cars”. No, not some half-arsed version like Tesla. Tim explains that by completely removing the steering wheel, driver’s seat and components needed for human driving, you can make a much more efficient self driving robot. A fully autonomous Uber – that was the dream. A slight problem was that Tim knew fuck all about self driving cars. But Tim was a hella smart guy who had started a successful graphics design company in the past, so he set about reading everything he could on self driving cars. After a year of intense study, he drew out some blueprints for his self driving car which he displayed at some conferences.His plans were given the honorable title of “Vaporware Horseshit” by critics. However, Tim hustled on and met Niki the venture capitalist who gave him a million dollars.Tim took that million dollars and went to the self driving car team at Apple. He said to them, “hey so you know… you guys are all screwed because Apple is shutting down their self driving car project. So come join me and we shall conquer the world.” And the self-driving car team is like, sure, seems legit, why not? Then Tim went to Lord Draper, the greatest venture capitalist of them all, and was like, “Hey I am building a self driving car and have the best team in the world to do it, you should give me 30 million dollars.” Draper thought for a while and then he’s like, sure why not? Tim took that money and convinced more people to join his jihad. Then he goes and raises 250m at a $1.5bn valuation. Tim does all this in 4 years.I set a small goal; build a coupon site. In 4 years I accomplished it. Tim set a big goal; make fully autonomous self driving cars. And in 4 years he has built a $1.5bn company.What would you rather be doing?If you could achieve anything, what would you be working on?WHAT ABOUT MONEY?When I was in college choosing my career, all I cared about was: how much money could I make? So I chose investment banking. And I quit after 6 months. But anyway. Most of my peer group chose their careers because of money. It wasn’t always like this. Back in the 60s, we had just landed on the moon. Einstein and Edison were the celebrities of the day. People wanted to be inventors, explorers and scientists – to work on things that would push forward the envelope of human progress. Nowadays people want money – financial security. What happened to changing the world? Most people are not working on meaningful problems. Millions are dying in Africa. Our best and brightest proceed to go work in finance or tech or whatever industry is the most cashed up.If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don’t like doing, which is stupid. – Alan WattsBeing the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to be at night saying we’ve done something wonderful that’s what matters to me. – Steve JobsHere’s the thing: solving the world’s biggest problems is the best way to make money. This makes sense from an economics perspective. If you create the most value then the market will reward you with the most money. But wait, how the hell would working to solve poverty in Africa make more money than being an investment banker? Banking appears to be a steadier path to making more money – if we view things from a short term perspective. But what about in 10 years, 20 years and more?Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years– Bill GatesLet’s say you start a social enterprise in Africa. In your first year you make nothing and your banker friend makes $150k. In 10 years, your social enterprise does well enough for you to live comfortably. Meanwhile your friend is making $2m as a director. You wonder if you made the wrong choice. But in 20 years, Africa grows rapidly, income levels rise 20x to western levels. Business is booming because your customers can afford to pay you western prices. Everyone now wants to invest in Africa. Multinationals are in a bidding war to buy your company. The land that you brought for ten thousand dollars per hectare is now worth a one million dollars per hectare. You are now worth over $100m. Meanwhile the world realizes investment bankers are basically glorified real estate agents – annoying and unnecessary. Bankers and real estate agents get replaced by a super efficient AI marketplace and your friend is made redundant.BUT IT’S RISKYSure, chasing big goals is risky. People say that 9 out of 10 new ventures fail. Well, what if you tried 30 times? It’ll take about 4 months to see if a venture will work out, so you can try 3 new ventures a year. If you work on it for 10 years, you’ve tried 30 different ventures and you’re basically guaranteed success.How I got over risk of starting my own business was, I said to myself: even if I tried for the rest of my life and I died trying, would I be happy? Yes, because I enjoy the process of trying to change the world, building a business, and working on something I find meaningful. I can’t control if I will succeed or not. What matters is that I tried.It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. – Franklin D RooseveltImagine at the end of your life, you realized that you never gave your dream a try. You just let it slip past. How would you feel?When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like, “If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me… and since then, for the past 33 years I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today.”And whenever the answer has been, “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.Because almost everything: all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure… these things just fall away in the face of death… leaving only what is truly important.Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. – Steve JobsLIMITING BELIEFSPeople have all these limiting beliefs about why they can’t achieve their dreams. Like, I am not smart enough, I have a family to support, I am too old, I have a very needy cat.All these bullshit excuses. How do you know you can’t do something until you’ve tried? You don’t know. It’s much more useful to believe you can do anything, because then you’ll try. If you don’t try you fail by default.Those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world usually do– Steve JobsPeople seriously underestimate how far willpower can take you. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what your circumstances are. Got a family to support? Keep your day job and work on your dreams at night. Not smart enough? Spend twice as long studying. Too old? KFC was built by a 70 year old. You are not a victim of your circumstances.What are some things you want to achieve but feel like you can’t?YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU SET YOUR MIND TO MANIf there’s one story that demonstrates how far willpower will take you despite the hand you’ve been dealt, it’s that of Barrack Obama. No not the president, but his father Barrack Obama Sr.Obama Sr grew up in one of the poorest families in the world in Sub-Saharan Africa, but his son went on to become the most powerful man in the world. How did this happen?Obama Sr grew up in a Kenyan village. School was a little shanty hut where all the village children were packed into one class. Education sucked, but Obama Sr showed some spark. He had one thing going for him: he was able to learn English since grandfather Obama was a cook in a white household. One day, some aid workers came to visit their village. Teenage Obama Sr was like, “damn those aid workers looking fine, I think I’ll go chat them up.” The aid workers were impressed by Obama Sr’s drive and encouraged him to apply to the University of Hawaii’s African scholarship program. Barrack Sr studied intensely and with the tutorship of the aid workers managed to get the scholarship. At the University of Hawaii Obama Sr met Ann Dunham who would become Obama Jr’s mother. When he wasn’t chasing skirts, he managed to top his class and get a full scholarship into Harvard Law School. Willpower can get you from growing up in sub-Saharan Africa to going to Harvard Law School, to your son becoming the president of the United States.Now you may be thinking Obama Sr is smarter and more driven than I’ll ever be. He has better genetics. Just because he has achieved greatness doesn’t mean that I can. But are successful people really smarter than us? So I was in Silicon Valley last year doing a program called 500startups where I got to meet tech billionaires and industry leaders. It was surprisingly underwhelming… The advice these billionaires gave was mostly self indulgent, generic and useless details. “so I cooked lunch for my team everyday, and everyone loved my cooking”. “Ohh marketing, we didn’t do any marketing, the product just grew by itself”. The best advice I got was actually from other startup founders who were still hustling to make it. Then it struck me. These billionaires are not better than the rest of us. They’ve just worked hard and on the right things. But they’re fallible humans. We are all cut from the same cloth. I can do whatever they can do.Malcolm Gladwell writes about the 10,000 hour rule: how a master in any field has practiced for at least 10,000 hours. If we put in that amount of hours, we can master anything. Take Laszlo Polgar, a Hungarian psychologist who, after studying hundreds of great intellectuals, identified a common theme – early and intensive practice. He hypothesized that with intense practice, he could turn his three daughters into prodigies. He chose chess as the perfect activity to train his children in, because it was creative and analytical and had objectively measurable results. Two of his daughters went on to become grand-masters. No women had ever achieved the title of grand-master before. All three daughters ranked in the top 6 in the world for chess.Sure, we’re born with certain physical characteristics or elements of our personality that are hard to change. But the moment that we accept ourselves, take the wheel and start steering, that’s when things start happening. Take Lebron James vs Steph Curry. Lebron has the perfect genetic build for a basketball player. Steph doesn’t. He doesn’t have the height, he doesn’t have the bulk. But he doesn’t give a shit. He proceeds to practice the hell out of his shot. And with that, he has achieved a level of success to rival Lebron. You may not be able to change some part of yourself, but you can develop other parts and be just as effective.Cool, so I believe I can do anything I set my mind to. But…HOW DO I FIGURE OUT WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE?To discover your “why”, ask yourself these questions. Find the common denominators in the answers and you’ll have your first lead to explore in finding your why. The commonalities in your answers may point you towards your purpose, and give you some directions to explore.What do you think is biggest problem in the world right now?If money and time weren’t limiting factors, what would you allow yourself to dream of doing?What makes you feel angry, or rise up at the injustice you see?What gets your emotions going? what brings tears to your eyes?What makes you happy?– Daniel Flynn, founder Thankyou WaterREADRead. Do a shit tonne of reading, and then read some more. There are world leaders and billionaires who have spent years distilling the best of their life’s wisdom and principles of success into books. Books that we can access instantly for $10 on Amazon. It’s the digital age. We are the first generation to have the entire trove of human knowledge available on demand in our pockets.Yet most of us don’t read. What the fuck? Instead we spend our time watching TV. What did Kim K name her kid? Did North Korea fire another rocket? What happens next on Game of Thrones? All this bullshit that we don’t need to know about. Our newest drug addiction is social media. It gives us a hit of validation, a new like, another viral video. But there’s no substance, no meaning. The short term hit leaves us shallow inside and longing for another, and another. Popular media is fucking up our brains. It’s the information age buffet. Because we’re fat fucks from the first world, we say, give me all the junk food, broccoli can fuck off. We need to treat the information we consume like food and watch we’re putting into our bodies.LISTEN TO AUDIO-BOOKSThe best life hack that anyone has ever told me is to listen to audio-books at 2x speed. You can listen to audio-books whilst you’re at the gym, or driving, or any other mindless task. This way, it’s easy to find 2-3 hours everyday, and if you do, you can finish 2 books every week, and 100 books a year. 100 books will put you miles ahead. Most people don’t even finish 100 books in their lifetime. I started audio-books 3 years ago, and I’ve learnt more in 3 years than I have in the rest of my life combined. School didn’t teach me useful skills, books did. Books written by people who have done it before. You can get most popular titles on Amazon’s Audible book store. Make sure you select the USA Audible store as this has the widest selection.WHAT SHOULD I READ?Check the New York Times best sellers list. Ask mentors what their favorite books are. Google for book recommendations by Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or other people you respect.Here’s a list of my favorite books:The Power of Now by Eckhart TolleThe Fountainhead by Ayn RandSelf Compassion by Kirstin NeffThe Four Agreements by Don Miguel RuizThe Singularity is Near by Ray KurtzweilCrucial Conversations by Kerry PattersonThe Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson100 book recommendations FIND MENTORSAfter reading and researching what I wanted to do. I got in touch with people who’ve done it before. No matter what you’re trying to achieve, there are 7 billion people in the world and there are people out there who have done similar things to what you’re attempting to do. Find these people on Linkedin and ask for their mentorship. Ask people who are not your direct competitors, people in a different geography or who have moved onto something else. You’d be surprised at how many people respond. I got around a 30% response rate. Here’s an email that I sent.Hi John,I am Rob, an Australian tech entrepreneur linkedin.com/in/robliu. We’re building contactout.com a recruitment tool similar to Connectifier but targeting the Australian and UK markets.I would greatly appreciate your mentorship and advice on growth and how to do sales for recruitment tools, and any insights you’ve gained from your experience at Connectifier.Would you be free for a brief chat on Skype? Happy to send you $500 for your time.Kind Regards, Rob LiuJohn was previously VP Marketing at Connectifier, a competitor whose business model I was trying to copy. John came on board as an adviser and helped me add over one million dollars in value to my business. It all started with an email.When emailing, bribe people. Offer them $500 to talk to you. This makes it look like you’re serious about your request and respectful of their time. Most mentors are rich already and won’t accept your money. For people who do accept your money, don’t bother talking with them. Because if they need $500, then they’re probably not very successful, and would make a shitty mentor.After reading, researching, finding mentors, you’ll still have to figure out a lot of the journey by yourself. You’re aiming to do something great and that involves blazing a path into the unknown. It’s like playing soccer. You can read all about soccer tactics, you can practice dribbling, practice kicking. But if you want to get good at soccer, you need to get out onto the field and play the game. Think for yourself, follow your heart, and take action.You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path; and that will make all the difference. – Steve JobsYOU ARE ON THIS EARTH FOR A REASON.We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?– Steve Jobs“Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.Do it or don’t do it.It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself,. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”– Steven Pressfield

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therealestatesparkblog · 6 years ago

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5 Tips for Tackling Your Life With a Warrior Spirit

This weekend a dear friend of mine warrior, UFC fighter James Krause will be throwing down in Lincoln, Nebraska. I have come to know James well, not only as a professional athlete, but through the MMA gym he owns and often coaches at. James is also a visionary when it comes to business and his budding real estate investing empire. For two years I have been training with my personal coach Trey, James, and the many other amateurs and professional fighters in the gym. Ive come to learn some real ground and striking skills. Ive met amazing, talented athletes to train with. And realized there is quite the different between watching it on TV and thinking you understand and being in the midst of a sparring session. Training is Not For the Light-Hearted, or Easily Deterred There are very real, immediate, and potentially severe consequences from training. Ive broken toes from kicking someones knee at full speed. There were times I had massive bruises and difficulty walking for multiple days from being repeatedly kicked in the thigh and the side hard. Idislocated my jaw when I was choked across my chin. After all, the point of training is to get good at kicking, punching, kneeing, and choking another human being. I believe the factors and effort it takes to become great at martial arts shares principals that directly relate to real estate. Lets explore connecting mixed martial arts, professional fighters, the mastery of something, and how it intersects with real estate. Principal 1. Understand the Game Ever been to a sporting event and you didnt know the rules of the game? For me, watching rugby is like watching a bunch of men in funny suits who dont know how to play football throwing a misshaped football. I DONT KNOW THE RULES! (Sorry, rugby fans!) In MMA, there are a specific set of basics on how to throw a punch, how to throw, how to defend yourself from kicks, or get out of a particular submission. Ways to put together combinations in striking, or setup take downs. There are also specific rules you must follow as a fighter both standing, in transition, and on the ground. These rules have to be followed or you can lose points or even be disqualified in a fight. Just like in real estate, when pressure is applied to a live situation, you will go to your default. To what you have trained or done the most of. The fighter must train in real time, with real pressure. Without repeated effort and focus, in a live situation, with adrenaline and a real opponent in front of you, your default will be panic instead of a sound defense or counter. In real estate, if you want to accomplish buying rentals or flipping a property, you have to understand the game. What are the legal rules of putting this contract together? How does it work buying from a wholesaler or an auction at the court house steps? There are real, serious, consequences to not understanding the game. Talking about a punch in the gut I can tell you, it hurts (both physically and mentally). Not knowing the game in real estate can cost you money, headaches, a lawsuit. It can financially ruin someone who hasnt understood the rules and hasnt done their home work. Related:Why the Small, Seemingly Insignificant Actions You Perform Daily Are VITAL to Your Success Principal 2. Show up and Put In the Work From what I understand the average black belt in jui-jitsu has been working steadily at the craft for 10, 12, 15+ years. Sure, there are people who have a high aptitude or have worked extraordinarily hard to accomplish this sooner. But it still take many years. If you have never trained, it may be hard to understand. But let me try to paint the picture for you: As a white belt (which I am), most of my time in class is spent learning skills and then defending myself, trying not to get arm locked or choked out. This takes patience. And a willingness to be uncomfortable. At first, with someone smothering you with their weight, or an elbow in your midsection, you FREAK. You cant breathe. Its hard to understand what is happening without understanding the basic concepts of offensive and defensive positions. Over time, you start to develop some skills. More defense. Higher stamina. You can control your breathing. You start to use techniques instead of trying to muscle out of a problem (which doesnt usually work). These skills are practiced, honed, worked, thousands and thousands of times until they can be executed without conscience effort. As you gain these skills, it becomes second nature to understand the situation and take action armed with the necessary tools, talents, and techniques. The professionals in our gym are there every day often multiple times a day. Their skills and abilities arent luck. They are the product of their time, effort and practice, of their craft. Sound familiar? Real estate is no different. You have to put the work in, learn how construction works and the details within it. You need to know how to put a rental deal together and understand a secondary note. Buying SFRs versus apartments. As you learn skills, moreskills and details appear that you didnt know existed. Not less. These skills become the backbone of your real estate game. Just like your martial arts game. Its the pieces that put together the whole. Principal 3. Know and Work on Your Strengths, and Understand and Defend Your Weaknesses As an MMA fan, I have seen incredible fights over the years in the UFC and beyond. To a new viewer, it may seem that there are two people trying to beat the crap out of each other. Although this does happen, there are SO many aspects to the game beyond just being in a boxing type brawl, two people just trying to hurt each other. One opponent might be a great wrestler even a college, world, or olympic champion. Some are incredible jiu-jitsu players with tricky submissions and ground game. Others are tactical strikers, kick boxers, Muay Thai champions, and some are just freak athletes, cardio and stamina with an engine to outlast a storm and keep fighting. There is also a real mental game both internally and outwardly toward your opponent. The more well rounded you are as an athlete in each of these areas, the better your overall MMA game will be and the more easily youll be able to transition between skills and observe and understand the opponent in front of you. You can more easily recognize both problems and opportunities within the fight.

When other fighters and coaches break down a future opponent, they look for patterns. For weakness, like emotional strain after getting hit or taken down. Where are the holes in their game? What is the best way to get after this opponent? For some, it may be a lack of skill in wrestling, so you would practice setting up take downs with striking. Or maybe someone always likes to counter with a certain punch, so you practice over and over feinting a certain strike to set the conditions you can get your opponent to react to, and you use that opportunity to your advantage. In a real estate negotiation, do you unknowingly show your cards? Or choke in a negotiation when you were about to get the numbers you wanted but you didnt read the other parties cues? Have you practiced over and over how to pitch a sale or a purchase? Reviewed your personality and worked on the areas of your business that arent strong? If you are great at building rapport in person, stop trying to close the sale on the phone. Get to the house or meet up with the other party. If you arent very familiar with a particular type of deal, dont try to negotiate it immediately without all the information. Call a friend or mentor who KNOWS and does those types of deals. Work through how to do it. Sometimes its better to pass on an opportunity if you cant understand it rather than say YES and then get into a deal or property you dont understand. Related:From Wholesaling to Hoarder House Flips: 17 MUST-Read Real Estate Investing Success Stories Principal 4. There is No Replacement For the Real Thing When I first started training, my coach Trey and I worked on throwing a few basic punches and kicks. He would call out the numbers, and then I would be expected to throw or kick that punch. At first, we would do single punches or small combinations of just one or two together. We worked constantly on refining the way I threw a punch. The way my body or head moved as I threw a right hand, or a left. I distinctly remember him saying, Soon Ill throw out five or 10 different things together and you will just do it. At the time, more than a few combinations would literally break me mentally, and Id have to slow down or have him repeat these many times over. It was exhausting. But over time, it became second nature to throw or punch. Trey could help me refine a punch while working on multiple other things at the same time. There is NO replacement for putting in the work, for doing the reps. At this point, I am reasonably effective sparring against some of the amateurs in our gym. Its a constant process of refinement, practice, and DOING the work. You cant replicate the speed and timing of sparring in a live situation. Thats why we practice reps, scenarios, and combinations, over and over. In my business, Ive completed hundreds of real estate transactions over more than a decade and negotiated tens of million of dollars of real estate deals. Im well compensated coaching other real estate investors who want to grow as leaders and operators in the single-family space. BUT, to this day I still study, grow, learn new tactics, timing, realizations, breakthroughs, and opportunities in every transaction. The learning is constant and comes with time and experience. AND, with continuous work on your craft. You have to operate at real speed. In real deals. With real money and opportunity at stake. Principal 5. Have a Killer Team in Your Corner This weekend, James will have an incredible group of people around him. They are there not only to get him safely through his weight cut, but to make sure he is hydrated and his nutrition is on point. Theyll help him keep his head in the game and not go stir crazy. They will train with him and keep him sharp without getting him injured prior to the fight. When it comes time for the fight, the corner will call out things they see in real time. Like what the opponent is doing, what combinations to throw, how to get out of a nasty spot against the cage, and opportunities he may not see in the moment. Youre corner literally has your back in the midst of a fist fight. Having this level of trust and confidence in your corner isnt just a given. Its learned and earned. It comes over time. And with experience and practice. Does what they tell you makes sense? Do you understand it? And can you can effectively do it in the moment? It has to work together seamlessly. This has so many direct similarities to real estate. Not sure on the value of that project? You call a realtor you trust. Or if the title is clean, you go to your title company to do the research. In my business, my partner is so much better at the tracking of money and figuring out follow up systems. If Im not sure what to do in a situation, or how to implement an idea, I go to him. My team in our construction, sales, and acquisitions. My business partner. Close mentors and friends in the real estate world Ive built relationships with over time. Our title companies, contractors, attorneys, inspectors, and appraisers, that weve worked with time after time. This is MY real estate CORNER. Final Thoughts First, Get some, James! Lets go! You inspire me on the level of training, dedication, mastery, skill, and success in your sport. Im in your corner, and Ill be screaming and yelling for your success this weekend. Second, if youve made it this far, dear readyWHO do you have in YOUR corner? Where are the gaps? What are you missing in your life, your business, your MMA game? Do y0u need more or different people in your corner? Are you cutting corners in your success? Or are you putting in the work? And do you have the team around you helping you get better, who has your back, but who also can call out what they see even if its about YOU? Its time to take action with the warrior spirit. Apply that level of effort, level of tactics, emotion, and repetitions, and get after it.

What tips do you have for getting after your goals? Share them in the comments below! https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/tackling-life-warrior-spirit

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