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shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

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How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs

This is the third of a three-part series, where we’ll explore how Ring transformed from start-up pitch to the technology powering Amazon's privatized surveillance network throughout the United States.

On Halloween 2017, Ring’s servers crashed en masse. The Ring app was nonfunctional. Why? Millions of trick-or-treaters overwhelmed Ring’s servers. Children dressed as ghouls and superheros executed an accidental denial-of-service attack.

Kids are central in Ring’s marketing strategy, and the company even bragged about how many children they surveilled on Halloween this year.

When the company once known as DoorBot relaunched as Ring in 2014, its marketing strategy promptly changed. The convenient “smart home” doorbell butler was gone, reborn as Ring, a home-security product that doesn’t simply sell fear, but sells the idea that the nuclear, suburban family is a delicate, precious thing which needs protection from a hostile world.

In Ring’s advertisements and commercials—which are spread across HGTV, Fox News, podcasts, and social media alike—the company tells the public that it isn’t watching their families, but watching over them. Ring wants customers to think it's the protective father, but not Big Brother.

Although Ring is telling families that they need protection from unsafe neighborhoods, the company is also radically changing what a typical neighborhood is like. Ring has quietly partnered with over 600 police departments around the country and promotes Neighbors, its own neighborhood watch app, where users are supposed to report “suspicious” people.

Ring has also heavily pursued city discount programs and private alliances with neighborhood watch groups. When cities provide free or discounted Ring cameras, they sometimes create camera registries, and police sometimes order people to aim Ring cameras at their neighbors, or only give cameras to people surveilled by neighborhood watches.

We don’t have any substantial proof that towns become safer when Ring enters the picture. But when Ring cameras enter a town, it’s easy for cities to equate surveillance with being a good neighbor.

Inside Ring’s Marketing World

Ring’s marketing materials on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are a strange mix of installation instruction videos, testaments to how Ring supposedly reduces crime, and family moments as captured through surveillance cameras. It’s like a combination of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Ellen, and Cops.

In these videos, high schoolers leave for school and say goodbye to their parents. Small children in costumes talk to their parents through the camera intercom. A family plays in the front yard, unknowingly activating the motion-detection feature on the doorbell camera.

Image: Obtained via public record request from Commerce, CA

Ring dedicated a blog post to a video showing a 19-year-old woman leaving for a date. Her dad demanded to interview her date before allowing her to leave the house. The dad made the man repeat, several times, that he would return his adult daughter before her 10:30 p.m. curfew.

These videos sell old-fashioned notions, depicting the typical customer as a nuclear American family with a patriarchal father figure supervising women and children who are unable to protect themselves.

This ethos extends to the influencers that Ring has chosen to sponsor its cameras:. At least a dozen popular Instagram accounts , almost exclusively run by white women, have promoted Ring products, according to Ring’s tagged posts on the platform. They all appear to be mom lifestyle bloggers who favor a Charleston aesthetic of white houses, linen clothes, and Etsy signs that say things like “Hello” or “No Soliciting.”

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When you’re paranoid like I am & think every time the doorbell rings it’s a crazy person on the other side (who else pretends like they’re not home & hides when the doorbell rings 😂) you invest in security for peace of mind. Y’all know I love my security cameras so we recently got the @ring so now I know who is coming & going and that makes this Mom feel so much safer! Check out my IG stories for details ❤️ • I just wish I had it a few months ago when my door was shot with silly string 🤷🏼‍♀️ 📷: @chelsearoc

A post shared by Ashley McClellan Houston (@nashvillewifestyles) on Jun 7, 2018 at 7:25am PDT

Ring also has a section of its website called RingTV dedicated to sharing videos hand-picked by the company. RingTV’s Fun & Convenience tab is dedicated to videos like "Goldendoodle Puppy Uses Ring Doorbell."

But aside from all the wholesome family videos and cute puppies, the company also uses the RingTV website to try and prove that its cameras prevent crime.

The Crime Prevention tab shows videos depicting people who "stop crime in its tracks" or catch "strangers in the act." Some of the videos appear to show people apparently considering stealing a package, but not doing so after seeing a Ring camera.

However, it’s unclear how commonplace any of these success stories are. Millions of people own Ring cameras, and the Crime Prevention tab hosts nearly 50 videos.

Image: Screenshot from RingTV

The Neighbors App, and the Racial Politics of Suburbia

Suburban life is at the center of Ring’s marketing materials, and almost all footage that the company shares is captured at suburban homes. This focus says a lot about what Ring is selling, and to whom: Historically, American notions of the suburban, nuclear family have been built upon the exclusion of people of color.

After World War II, white families fled from urban centers and resettled in homogeneous suburban regions. Redlining practices excluded people of color from getting loans and mortgage payments that would allow them to move into the same areas.

Additionally, as Vanderbilt University historian Sarah Igo writes in her book The Known Citizen, Americans associated the sanctity of the suburban home with the right to privacy. Suburbia was meant to be not only a destination of white flight, but a refuge.

Neighbors, Ring’s neighborhood watch app, efficiently encapsulates the mixed politics of privacy within the home and racial exclusion.

The Neighbors app, in its most basic function, allows people to upload footage from Ring products or other security cameras for other users to see. A post can be sorted into one of five categories: crime, safety, suspicious, stranger, unknown visitor, or lost pet. The Neighbors feed consists of these user-submitted posts and bite-sized alerts posted by Ring about possible dangers around town.

The app was launched in May 2018, one month after Amazon finalized the acquisition of Ring. (It wasn’t the company’s first experiment with mobilizing the politics of neighborhood watches to sell their products. In 2017, Ring offered free swag and discounted Ring products to neighborhood watch groups that promoted Ring and agreed to testify against their neighbors in court, if necessary.)

The Neighbors app has since developed a culture that is completely obsessed with crime and the self-policing of neighborhoods, and users often resort to racial profiling. Similar problems exist on the crime-reporting app Citizen and the neighborhood hub app NextDoor. On Neighbors, all posts are dedicated to crime, and three out of the five possible post categories deal with suspicious, strange, or unknown people. These options implicitly encourage people to post about people they don’t trust. In practice, this lack of trust is often racist.

The Aesthetic of Fear on Neighbors

The Neighbors app empowers people to not just watch their neighborhood, but to organize as watchers. Ring markets Neighbors as a “digital neighborhood watch,” which is an accurate description. It encourages people to think about who belongs and who is an outsider. In this way, Neighbors is not just a digital neighborhood watch. It’s a digital gated community.

“So much of it is this shared sense of the people who happen to be on that [app], or who we assume are neighbors like yourself, and watching and policing the dangers in your neighborhood,” Igo told Motherboard. “[Neighbors] also will undoubtedly reinforce some sense of who belongs here and who doesn't.”

When people take pictures or videos, they determine who and what is worthy of attention. But when people use security cameras specifically, they also determine who is suspicious and who does not belong.

Security cameras carry an aesthetic of suspicion and fear. Footage is often grainy, black and white, or green-tinted due to night vision filtering—but these aren’t inherently “sketchy” traits. Since security footage is usually shared in the context of crime on local news, all security footage is marred with the appearance of suspicion. Local news tends to over-represent crimes committed by people of color, meaning people of color captured on security cameras are at an especially high risk of appearing to be suspicious.

As more people buy cheap home security systems, the amount of security footage is proliferating. This means that more people appear suspicious than ever before. Even if a person has done nothing wrong, even if they have the wrong address or if they’re dropping off a package, they will appear suspicious.

Neighbors, and apps like it, have empowered people to publicly share footage that they consider unsettling, and people who they consider to be out of place, at a scale that we’ve never seen before.

Individual Decision With Group Implications

There’s a crucial, unstated aspect of owning a Ring camera: You aren’t just making the decision to surveil your own property and visitors when you buy one. You make a decision on behalf of everyone around you. If someone walks by your house, lives next door, or delivers packages to your home, they will be recorded and surveilled. They don’t get a choice. Buying even one Ring camera is a fundamentally communal decision.

Andrew Hager, who was a delivery-person for a meal-prep company in the Portland suburbs, said that he noticed all the “fancy houses” had Ring cameras, especially around Beaverton, OR. (The Beaverton Police Department has partnered with Ring, per documents obtained by Motherboard.)

For a while, he didn’t realize that Ring doorbells were actually cameras.

“It might've changed how I acted if I knew that there were cameras,” Hager said. “I was always professional, but I would’ve made sure I was not picking my nose or something.”

Hager added, more seriously, that he would not have been “blatantly checking the house out” if he knew he was being recorded.

“I feel like if people were watching me, they would've thought, ‘Oh, is this guy casing the joint out or something?’” Hager said. “Because you could totally think I was like, ‘Oh how much square footage is in here. I wonder how much they pay for this place.’ Before the door opens, I’m always looking around.”

Hager’s fear is justified. On the Neighbors app, users frequently post videos of people looking at their homes, taking pictures of their homes, or lingering around their homes. The captains often speculate as to whether the person is planning a robbery, although they just as well could have been at the wrong address or admiring the house.

“Making sure that packages are okay seems like a pretty common sense goal,” Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the anti-surveillance advocacy group the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and member of the Immigrant Leaders Council of the New York Immigration Coalition, said. “But the problem is that it comes at the price of recording these workers who are delivering them. It's just part of this surveillance web on the job that's depriving workers of autonomy and privacy, and can really have an emotionally toxic effect over the long term.”

The New Neighborhood of Ring Cameras

Ring has two aims that work in tandem. On one hand, it wants to become embedded in the process of policing. But it also wants to build relationships with neighborhood watches, and to have its cameras to become a feature of neighborhoods.

Ring doesn’t only partner with police departments. The company also provides discounts to local neighborhood watches and homeowners associations. According to emails obtained from Olathe, KS using a freedom of information request, all community leaders need to do is reach out to Ring.

"We would ask that a community leader (for instance head of HOA or neighborhood watch president) go to [redacted] to begin the process,” a Ring representative told a police officer who asked about local subsidy programs. “The community programs teams at Ring will work with them to create a limited time, zip code specific discount zone."

Ring also provides city-level discounts, if the city agrees to pay up.

Dozens of cities have Ring discount programs, which involve cities and towns paying Ring up to $100,000 in taxpayer money in order to subsidize Ring camera purchases for their residents. Ring will match every dollar committed by a city per the terms of these discount programs. This means that for every $100 residents save when buying a Ring product, the city pays $50 and Ring pays $50.

These city-level discounts have been happening since 2016, according to documents obtained by Motherboard.

By funding these discount programs, cities conflate surveillance and citizenship. For instance, West Hollywood, CA distributed flyers advertising its Ring subsidy program at voter registration events, according to documents obtained by Motherboard. West Hollywood also sold subsidized Ring products “exclusively” to residents in areas moderated by neighborhood watches. Everyone who bought a discounted camera was added to a registry list with their name and address.

West Hollywood isn’t alone. Camera-purchase registries—which Motherboard obtained from Redondo Beach, CA, West Hollywood, CA, and Green Bay, WI—included the names of purchasers and the police patrol areas in which they live.

Image: “RE__Request_for_shapefile_assistance.pdf” from West Hollywood, CA.

Documents obtained by Motherboard also show that several cities will loan or sell discounted cameras Ring cameras to residents. In one camera “loan” program in Green Bay, WI, police technically owned all footage generated on all cameras given to residents, per contract documents residents had to sign.

Police from Redondo Beach, CA even used the pretense of camera registries to determine who should get a discount and who shouldn’t, according to a city council meeting memo obtained by Motherboard. Police said that they inspected the facades of homes of each applicant, and looked for who had the most “optimal viewpoints that could assist with criminal investigations.”

In a slide presentation obtained by Motherboard, Redondo Beach police said that applicants who offered to surveil their neighbors would get a heavier discount than those who only offered to surveil their own property.

Image: Screenshot from Secure Your Castle slide presentation from Redondo Beach, CA obtained by Motherboard.

Ring doesn’t officially endorse cities requiring people to go on a camera registry in order to obtain free or discounted cameras.

“Ring won't subsidize devices to cities to be used for camera registration programs,” a Ring lawyer told city officials in Peoria, IL, who asked about creating a camera registry program. “If you cannot agree to that, then we cannot do the program.”

“This is getting ridiculous,” the Peoria lawyer said to a Peoria City Manager, after forwarding the email thread to him.

But cities can make camera registries without Ring’s permission. The Peoria Police Department unveiled a surveillance camera registry program two weeks before these emails were sent.

“As a policy, Ring does not support any subsidy match program that requires recipients to subscribe to a recording plan or share footage as a condition for receiving a subsidized device,” a Ring spokesperson said in an email. “We actively work with these groups to ensure this is reflected in their programs."

The Fanatic Culture of Ring Stans

People decide to buy Ring cameras for lots of different reasons. Ring customer Bryan Herbert told Motherboard that Ring makes his life easier.

“I’m disabled and tend to walk slow,” Herbert said via Twitter DM. “It’s nice being able to speak to people at the door and let them know it’s going to take me a minute to get there.”

But one thing connects all Ring camera owners: a sense of community.

Digital community is a crucial tenant of Ring ownership. There’s Neighbors, where geographic neighbors connect with one another through Ring’s platform. But there’s also Facebook and Reddit, where user-moderated, fanatic communities for Ring product owners have flourished.

In these groups, people are implicitly understood to have accepted the privacy tradeoffs that come with owning the cameras, and the proliferation of police partnerships. The resulting culture is a combination of a do-it-yourself machismo and intense product loyalty.

The most noteworthy examples are r/Ring, the Ring-focused subreddit, and Ring Doorbell Users Group, the Facebook group for Ring owners. These online communities aren’t primarily focused on sharing “success stories,” or sharing so-called sketchy footage on Ring cameras. Users mostly troubleshoot technical problems and answer one another’s questions. Often, people who speak too negatively about Ring products are disparaged, even when they face frustrating technical problems with no obvious solution.

The admins of the Facebook group often advocate on behalf of Ring. In one post, the Facebook group admin screenshotted and shared a post, which began by complaining about the quality of Ring cameras.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the group admin wrote, “I’m sorry that [name redacted] is having issues and feels he must so eloquently announce to everyone that he is GIVING UP.”

The admin suggested solutions to fixing Ring products that were often more labor-intensive or expensive than setting up the device itself.

The culture on r/Ring is pretty similarly to the culture in the Ring Doorbell Users Group on Facebook. Dan Sullivan, one of the moderators of r/Ring, said in a phone call that he’s been a subreddit moderator for about four years, around the time that DoorBot became Ring.

“I’ve been leading that disaster for a while,” Sullivan said. “It was really an echo chamber when I came across it… There were people who loved it, people who hated it, and there was no one to talk to about it. It’s still like that now.”

Sullivan said that he tried to engage with Ring’s social media team and get them to provide help. Ring tried, but it’s mostly stopped engaging.

“Ring used to participate, but then they stopped because people were attacking the employees,” Sullivan said.

How Does It Feel to Be Watched?

Among the many Ring users that Motherboard spoke with for this article, none expressed privacy concerns, or misgivings about having a camera in and around one’s home.

Sullivan, the r/Ring moderator, said that if people are worried about their privacy, they just shouldn’t get a camera. It’s like Facebook, he said. If you don't like Facebook, just get rid of Facebook.

“I don't have it inside of my house for a reason, but I don't really care who sees what goes on on the outside,” Sullivan said. “You could make a list on why you shouldn't have a camera. Obviously these [videos] are going somewhere, being sent to a server somewhere. But I don't have anything to hide. I’m not a criminal, there's no risky things going on at my house. So I’m not worried about it.”

Sullivan added that there are benefits and drawbacks to every product. For him, the benefit of catching a criminal on camera outweighs the risk of relying on a private company to catch them.

Several Ring camera owners told Motherboard that they, in part, chose Ring because they wanted cameras that weren’t made in China, citing security concerns. Neither of them were concerned about how camera footage and customer data is used.

Why We Watch Ourselves

There’s one unavoidable fact about Ring: people are choosing to use this product. They’re choosing to put a camera in their homes. They’re choosing not only to watch other people, but watch themselves.

Self-surveillance isn’t a Ring-specific phenomenon. The core of self-surveillance has to do with how we understand privacy.

Sarah Igo, the historian, says that “privacy” deals with the threshold between where the individual person ends, and a collective society begins. As a result, privacy concerns are often invoked in situations where people are scared, apprehensive, or uncomfortable about changes happening in their society—technological, social, or otherwise.

As explained by Igo, after World War II, when white people fled to the suburbs, a combination of academic scholarship and popular opinion strengthened the idea that freedom, especially freedom from authoritarianism and fascim, can be found in the right to private property, space, and land.

The American home, in the face of these fears, became a place of safety and tradition. It was a place for families where a patriarchal figure protected his wife and children.

Americans, as Igo describes it, often fear and mistrust objects that mediate between the private home and the outside world. Many people in the early twentieth century viewed the telephone as an unwelcome intruder in the home. Fear of wiretapping was widespread throughout the century. The doorbell, for many, was no exception. Igo writes that people viewed the doorbell as something that empowered the outside world to penetrate and intrude on “domestic tranquility.”

Interestingly, Ring customers believe that the doorbell camera protects the home. It doesn’t invade the home; rather, it guards the home. Igo said in a phone call that this isn’t necessarily surprising. Ring doorbells, like all doorbells, mediate the relationship between the home and the outside world.

“Video cameras, security cameras, and so forth is the turning of the home outward to watch, in the other direction,” Igo said. “So I think it's still connected to this longer history of worry about invasions of the home. To prevent those, you have to look outward and invade the privacy of those potentially right on the street outside.”

“[There’s] this sense that the barrier can also be a window on to who's on the other side,” Igo added. “And that, at the very least, suggests rising distrust of unplanned interactions.”

So What Now?

Ring has some experienced pushback in recent months. In August, Senator Markey demanded the company answer questions about its data retention and relationships with law enforcement. Then, in November, five senators demanded Jeff Bezos answer additional questions about its data security practices.

Despite this pushback, Ring is not faltering or losing momentum.

It doesn’t hurt that the company has crucial connections to power. Jacqui Irwin, a member of the California state assembly, is married to Jon Irwin, the chief operating officer for Ring. Kira Rudik, Ring Ukraine’s chief operating officer, was recently elected to Ukranian parliament. Ring has connections in precisely the places it needs them in order to continue operating as it always has.

However, it’s impossible to talk about Ring in a vacuum, as if Ring is the only home surveillance company selling fear and promising security in return. Ring is the symptom of a worldview in which crime is an existential threat, and data-capturing technology is the solution. For people who subscribe to this worldview, it doesn’t matter that crime rates are actually going down nationwide. The only thing that matters is that they believe crime is a threat.

According to Evan Greer, deputy director of digital activist group Fight for the Future, Ring is a product that’s “incompatible with a functioning community.” If you don’t trust your neighbors, Greer said, it becomes okay to surveil in perpetuity.

“That's a fundamental idea that ties community together: neighbors trust each other, and protect each other, and take care of each other,” Greer said. “It just feels like, for Amazon’s business model to succeed, they have to sow distrust and fear between neighbors.”

Cahn, the privacy advocate, said that Ring and security products like it capitalize on a widespread feeling that we are never safe.

“It goes to some almost society-wide anxiety, that if we can't prove everything's okay, at every moment,” Cahn said, “then somehow, something terrible is happening.”

There is no single reason that people choose to watch themselves and others. The people of Baltimore, MD believe that camera footage can be a tool that facilitates justice in a city where justice feels rare. For others, Ring cameras offer the convenience of seeing who is at the door. Some people buy Ring cameras to usher in peace of mind.

Everyone who buys a Ring camera shares one core belief: that Ring cameras are neutral, objective, or even benevolent. However, in a world so overcome by fear that the people believe they must not only watch others, and watch themselves, there’s no such thing as a truly benevolent tool.

How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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fullspectrum-cbd-oil · 5 years ago

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Bloomberg’s Big Bet: Can Money Beat Biden’s Momentum?

In his brief three-month campaign for president, Michael Bloomberg poured nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars into building an advertising and data-mining juggernaut unlike anything the political world had ever seen.

But a big part of the strategy hinged on a wildcard named Joe Biden.

Bidens’s resurgence after a dominant victory on Saturday in South Carolina has upset that calculation in the critical do-or-die sprint before “Super Tuesday,” when Democrats in 14 states vote for the candidate to challenge Republican Donald Trump in November’s election.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The billionaire former New York City mayor’s strategy was partly based on expectations that Biden would falter in the first four states. Bloomberg, who skipped the early contests, would then become the moderate alternative to frontrunner Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist.

Although Biden underperformed in Iowa and New Hampshire, he did better in Nevada and bounced back in South Carolina on a wave of African-American support to end Sanders’ winning streak and establish himself as the race’s top-tier moderate Democrat.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s once-ascendant campaign has struggled after he came under fire in debates over past comments criticized as sexist and a policing policy he employed as New York’s mayor seen as racially discriminatory. He has apologized for the policing policy and for telling “bawdy” jokes.

Advisors and people close to the Bloomberg campaign say they are still in the race and rebuff criticism that he’s splitting the moderate vote and making it easier for Sanders to win.

The campaign’s internal polling showed that Bloomberg’s supporters have both Biden and Sanders as their second choices, contrary to the perception that he was mostly peeling off Biden’s support, one campaign official said.

If Bloomberg dropped out, Sanders would be on a stronger path to victory, the official said.

Bloomberg has hovered around 15% in national polls, suggesting he will earn some delegates on Tuesday. If those polls are correct, he will likely earn fewer delegates than Sanders and Biden.

Another moderate, Pete Buttigieg, dropped out on Sunday, driven in part by a desire not to hand the nomination to Sanders, a top adviser said. “Pete was not going to play the role of spoiler.”

Bloomberg, however, has vowed to stay in the race until a candidate wins a majority of delegates needed to clinch the nomination. His campaign has spent heavily on advertising in states that vote on Tuesday, when a third of the available delegates that help select a Democratic nominee are awarded in a single day.

And it’s pinning some of its hopes on Virginia, the fourth-biggest state at stake on Tuesday and a key testing ground for Bloomberg. He made his first campaign visit here last November, and has visited another six times since. Last week, his campaign had hopes he could win or come close.

But even that plan is facing new headwinds.

After Biden’s win in South Carolina, the former vice president picked up endorsements from former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential candidate — underlining how Biden’s comeback is drawing establishment Democrats who might have otherwise backed Bloomberg.

Dan Blue, a prominent Democrat in the North Carolina State Senate who endorsed Bloomberg last week, said Biden’s strong showing in South Carolina reset the race. But he said he still believes that Bloomberg can win by playing the long game and gradually accumulating delegates.

“There’s no question in my mind that this thing is very fluid and not absolute,” he said.

‘HUGE NATURAL EXPERIMENT’

Bloomberg’s heavy advertising spending, however, makes him a uniquely powerful candidate even if he lags in opinion polls.

He has spent more than half a billion dollars on ads ahead of Tuesday, more than four times the combined ad spending of his four remaining main rivals – Sanders, Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Amy Klobuchar, according to data from ad tracker Advertising Analytics.

The biggest chunk was spent in Super Tuesday states, $214 million through Feb. 25, including more than $63 million in California and $50 million in Texas, where one analysis said 80 percent of the ads were Bloomberg’s.

Already, Bloomberg has spent more on television ads than Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did in their entire 2016 campaigns.

“It’s truly astonishing,” said Michael Franz at Bowdoin College in Maine, a leading researcher on political advertising. “He is giving us a huge natural experiment.”

Many of his ads feature Trump, mocking the president as a “bully.” Others introduce his life story. When he drew criticism for sexist comments and past treatment of women on the job, one ad countered with endorsements from longtime women employees.

The campaign also has pushed beyond old frontiers with digital spending. More than $106 million have been poured into Google and Facebook ads, according to disclosures by the social media giants.

Without a young network of enthusiasts on social media like the one enjoyed by Sanders, Bloomberg has tried to boost his online presence by paying for one: he has hired influential meme accounts to post messages on Instagram, and paid others $2,500 a month to share pro-Bloomberg messages on texts and social media.

Inside his campaign headquarters in New York, the staff of Hawkfish, a start-up digital analytics company, sift through huge tranches of voter data to help chart his campaign strategy.

Bloomberg decided Hawkfish was necessary because Democrats haven’t kept up with Trump’s ability to target voters and bombard them with messages, said Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s states director. “It’s a very potent, very difficult-to-overcome weapon.”

‘HOW MUCH CAN IT BUY HIM?’

His unprecedented spending has likely fueled his rise in public opinion polls from just around 5% when he entered the race on Nov. 24 to about 16% in recent polls.

“The question is, how much can it buy him, and there’s definitely a ceiling,” said Amanda Wintersieck, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

In South Carolina, where he was not on the ballot but had still spent $2.3 million on advertising through Feb. 25, two thirds of the primary voters said they viewed Bloomberg unfavorably, according to Edison Research exit polls. About 77% and 51% of these voters had favorable views of Biden and Sanders, respectively.

The spending has also provided a target for opponents who say Bloomberg is stark proof that the wealthy wield too much influence over U.S. elections.

In conversations with dozens of mostly Democratic voters across seven states last week, Reuters found that Bloomberg’s spending blitz had won him a little enthusiasm, and some respect. “He might be the one,” said Garolyn Greene, 41, as she waited at a bus stop in Houston where Bloomberg held a rally on Thursday.

Others were less forgiving. Bloomberg has apologized for overseeing an increase in the use of a police practice called “stop and frisk” in New York City that disproportionately affected black and other racial minority residents.

On Sunday, as Bloomberg started to speak about racial inequality at a chapel in Selma, Alabama — one of the 14 Super Tuesday states — about 10 people, mostly black, stood up and turned their backs. Biden was seated in a place of honor with the pastor at the same church.

“I think it’s just an insult for him to come here,” said Lisa Brown, who is black and a consultant who traveled to Selma from Los Angeles, referring to Bloomberg.

The incident underlined Bloomberg’s continued struggles to win over black voters — a core constituency for the Democratic Party.

A VIRGINIA BATTLEGROUND

Bloomberg’s supporters say they hope his spending will deliver dividends in battleground states that favor moderates like Virginia, where some polls put him ahead of Biden but at a close second behind Sanders.

Bloomberg made friends in Virginia long before his campaign, spending millions to elect Democrats to state offices and congressional seats, culminating with Democrats taking control of the state legislature last November. Last week, those legislators gave final approval to a sweeping set of gun control laws – a signature cause for Bloomberg.

“I think people are appreciative,” said Lori Haas, Virginia director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and a Bloomberg supporter.

Bloomberg has opened seven field offices in the state, part of a national network of offices and paid staff that has far outpaced his rivals. The campaign had more than 2,000 paid workers and 214 offices in 43 states, not counting the several hundred in his New York headquarters, said Kanninen, the campaign’s states director.

Whatever happens on Tuesday, Bloomberg and his campaign staffers have been stressing that he will keep spending into the fall to defeat Trump, whether he’s the candidate or not.

“Someone said you shouldn’t be spending all that money,” Bloomberg said on Saturday at a get-out-the-vote rally aimed at women in McLean, Virginia. “I said, ‘Yes, well I’m spending it to remove Donald Trump,’ and he said, ‘Well, spend more.’”

(Additional reporting by Joseph Ax, Elizabeth Culliford, Tim Reid and Trevor Hunnicutt Editing by Soyoung Kim and Jason Szep)

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peppurthehotone · 5 years ago

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Aye-yi-aye! The past couple of days have been r-o-u-g-h! Hormone Rita has been raging but on top of that, I had to acknowledge that while I thought I was “past it”, my no-kid grief still lives in me. Yesterday I described it to Matt that I feel like little pieces of shattered glass live above me and they just hang out there sometimes reflecting light and others times missile down on me and stab me in my happiness.

My therapist told me I’m pretty good at helping myself and last week I mentioned to you all that I use my writing to help myself and that we all need to find something like this to stay high in order to stay afloat when things start to get wonky. So yesterday, I tried to take my own advice and put my head down and I got to work. Two new clients kept me busy (one for speech writing and one for copy editing her marketing book). I am grateful. And I also got back to working on my ancestry book, which was nice.

Alas.

If you’re following along, while during my residency, my goal was to write 30,000 words of my new novella. They didn’t have to be good words, but I thought, I can write 30,000 words in a month. Welp, last Sunday, three days before the end of the residency, I was only at 23,951 words and I freaked out. I started crying. I was in a beautiful home, seated at my own personal desk, in a quiet room with no one to bother me; I had all the things I yearn for and there I was at my computer crying. I knew I was having a form of a panic attack built up from self-imposed pressure exponentially souped up by my Instagram posts touting my daily numbers.

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</a> <p style=” margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;”> <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/B37655AleEI/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading” style=” color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;” target=”_blank”>What's Hot? Inspiration! Day 22 Bookcases inspire me. Those writers of the books on those shelves were exactly where I am right now. 15,234 words and wondering what to write next! #writer #residency #ancestry @thesquirefoundation</a></p> <p style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”>A post shared by <a href=”https://www.instagram.com/peppurthehotone/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading” style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;” target=”_blank”> Peppur Chambers</a> (@peppurthehotone) on <time style=” font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;” datetime=��2019-10-22T21:52:50+00:00″>Oct 22, 2019 at 2:52pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote> //www.instagram.com/embed.js

I was feeling like a failure, even though I knew (this time) that I wasn’t one. So, through the tears, I sent an SOS to my support girls. We are a group of six black women who have been together for almost ten years and we help each other with everything from freak-outs like this one, to motherhood stuff for those on that journey, to job referrals to snarky stuff to vagina creams. I messaged them:

“Matt says to think about changing the goal so I don’t beat myself up and still feel good. That feels like I’m being a wuss. But I did set the goal, no one else did. Or do I just say I will be happy with whatever I accomplish? I’m getting stressed. Started crying this morning. Not worth it to cry.”

My dear friend Morenike sent an audio clip back with the best advice, which I call, “The Goal is Not The Thing”:

https://blogtoprague.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/audio-from-peppur-chambers-1.wav

After listening to this, more crying ensued which was simply a true release of tension. I felt redirected and I was able to continue! I decided that I would use the remaining time to organize and research and to let that “30k” go. It was THE best thing to do and glad I did because I didn’t allow myself to ruin what had been a wonderful experience. I posed this picture to remind myself. #Winning

So yesterday, I got back into the story for the first time since being back and I was happy I had my notes to refer to and knew where to start up again. I looked at all the questions I have to answer about character and themes, and I wrote a dope paragraph on fear coming from a father perspective to his daughter, and then I got interrupted and had to do something else. But I realized I’d worked on the book for a good solid hour and that made me happy and I walked around in gratitude for awhile and I felt better emotionally.

Something else that made me feel better yesterday is that I received an early birthday present, sort of. For my birthday this year, which is Friday November 8th (best.day.ever), I made it a *goal* to have a completed draft of Harlem’s Awakening Pt 2. I had sent off my current draft to beta readers on Oct 1 so they could review it during my residency and therefore, when I got back this week, I could work like a beaver and chop away at their changes and voila have a completed draft on my birthday. Once again the goal was a little lofty. Not gonna make it. BUT, I did receive the notes. Yesterday I received great notes back from my reader friend Ruthy who four years ago read my manuscript and was like, “What the heck is this? Please tell me you didn’t send this to anyone.” Which I had and the agent passed and then it took two years to recover from the disappointment and now I’m back! So, Ruthy says this is a much better read and that there are still problems, but much better! My mom is my second reader, I know — family: not the answer — but she is my 1940s expert and her comment was, “Not enough time-period stuff”. So, I have that to work on. And a new author friend, Katherine Ross read a few chapters. I met her while doing a reading earlier this year and her debut book, Black Was Not a Label just dropped this month (please support!). She commented that the pacing is good, it feels colloquial in places and Magdalena may need some fleshing out. This is all great news; I’ve got work to do on my birthday and that’s what I’ll be doing!

One more “random” thing:

While I was in Santa Barbara, my new friend Sophia (who runs SoFar Sounds SB) told me about this amazing shop on State Street called Random. It is exactly that. A random flea market+vintage shop+bookstore+holy crapoloa I love it store. There are boxes of things like jeans and buttons and kitchen tiles and paintbrushes everywhere. I wandered to the back and found a box of someone’s personal stuff. This happens all the time; people pass away and then their stuff ends up in a world of Random for people like me to find.

Because I’m heavy into researching on Ancestry.com and would love to find anything random on my family, when I found this box full of vintage family photos, I got suuuper excited. As I dug further, I discovered this box most likely belonged to a WWII photographer (or someone who enlisted and was good with a camera). I really hoped that some of his war-time photos would have just even one black person and I could hope that maybe it was someone to whom I belonged. Alas, that wasn’t the case. However, it is the case for someone else. So, for Veteran’s Day on 11/11, I’m going to write a special blog post about the box and show more photos from it in the event that maybe we can find to whom these pictured people belong.

Their patch is for the 100th Infantry Training Division. While this is a staged shot, according to Wiki, they were called into active duty on 15 Nov 1942 and were sent into combat to St Remy France on 1 Nov 1944.

Family Day?? I love the ladies in the background.

Ann Caudiff (?), 25 mos, Dec 25, ’51

I love this photo. I’ve begun to research this “Ann” to see what I can find. So along with the Chambers family, Nigeria and Igbo culture, I’m now researching a bunch of people I don’t know.

Aye-yi-aye! The past couple of days have been r-o-u-g-h! Hormone Rita has been raging but on top of that, I had to acknowledge that while I thought I was "past it", my…

#100th infantry #conditionHER #hormone rita #igbo #miscarriage #nigeria #Squire Foundation

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alittlenomadchristina · 6 years ago

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Liveaboard Diving – Ultimate Guide For First-Timers

Are you thinking about going on your first liveaboard diving trip or have you booked one already? Congratulations! To make sure you have a fantastic experience, I’ve put together a few things you should know before embarking on your first safari diving adventure!

Should you book a liveaboard or dive from land?

If you’re a beginner to diving and you’ve only recently completed your Open Water course, a dive safari might not be the best choice for you. Many liveaboards require an Advanced Open Water certification and a certain number of dives, usually ranging from 25-50.

Diving in open water comes with its own challenges and often strong currents, which can be a bit overwhelming if you’ve just started scuba diving.

Reminder: Don’t forget to bring your log book on your first scuba diving safari.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1120"] Ras Mohammed, South Sinai[/caption]

Do you feel comfortable diving already? Then a liveaboard might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The main advantage of liveaboard diving is that you can reach more remote and therefore less visited dive sites that boast rich marine life which often can’t be compared to spots close to the shore.

But there’s also the amazing feeling of being on the sea day and night. You won’t have a care in the world and you’ll feel free like a bird. In addition to that, most of the time there is a strong sense of community on board and you easily make new friends and dive buddies for life.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="766"] Me during a beautiful sunset on a liveaboard[/caption]

13 Tips for a great first liveaboard diving experience:

Pack light!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1120"] A typical cabin on a liveaboard boat[/caption]

Space on a boat is very limited, so expect your cabin to be really small. You won’t need any shoes as soon as you hop on board, and towels are usually provided.

Bring travel-sized toiletries and travel with a backpack instead of a suitcase, or anything that can easily be folded away and not take up unnecessary space.

2. Bring motion sickness pills!

Especially if you’re prone to sea (and/or car) sickness, these are absolutely essential. Even when you’re usually not too much affected by waves, being on open water for several days is a completely different story and you never know how the weather will turn out.

Often, the organizers will provide this type of medicine, but you rather want to be safe than sorry, right?!

3. Act environmentally responsive!

Spend a little bit of extra money on reef-friendly shampoo, body wash, and sunscreen - it’s worth it. After you use the toilet, clean yourself with the douche-house next to it. Since the wastewater is expelled into the sea, it’s important you put toilet paper into the bin and don’t flush it.

4. Don’t forget to tip!

On every liveaboard, there is quite a big crew whose only job it is to make your dive safari a great experience - dive guides, captain, chef and many more.

Their work is physically challenging and involves very long hours, so a tip is customary. You can use a rough guideline of 10% of the cost of your liveaboard.

5. Consider diving with enriched air!

Since you’ll be spending a lot of time underwater, upgrading to Enriched Air Diving (Nitrox) may be very beneficial. It will extend your allowable bottom time and no-decompression limits over repetitive dives and generally makes you feel less tired than diving with regular air.

Often, you will have the opportunity to do the nitrox certification on board, it’s a quick and easy half-day dry course. Make sure you ask before!

6. Be prepared for weather changes!

It often gets pretty hot during the day (depending on where you’re diving of course) and the ocean’s reflections intensify UV rays, so you want to bring enough (reef-friendly!) sunscreen.

Once the sun sets though, temperatures drop and sometimes winds can pick up. Bring at least one warm sweater for chilly nights.

7. Remember no-flight times!

If you book your liveaboard and your flight separately, make sure you don’t forget to plan for a no-dive-time/surface interval of at least 18 hours.

8. Be considerate!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1120"] Food is always a big part of a liveaboard experience, especially in the Middle East![/caption]

You’re sharing a small space with a lot of people and you all depend on each other. Treat your dive buddies with respect. Don’t be late for dive briefings (just as meals, they’re usually announced by ringing a bell).

9. Bring spare equipment!

Not only is there no dive shop where you could get replacements for any missing or broken gear, there are also usually only one or two power outlets per cabin. You want to make sure to bring as many extra batteries you can for your cameras, dive torch, phone and any other electrical devices.

10. Wash your equipment in the end only!

There is very limited fresh water supply on a liveaboard, so don’t wash all your dive equipment after each dive, as you might have been used to doing before.

The only exception is sensitive equipment like your dive computer or your camera, there’s usually a dedicated tank for those.

11. Get up early!

It’s usually worth it not to sleep in because sunrise dives offer amazing marine sightings and photo shots. Preferences under divers vary - some love to party, others come for maximum diving possibilities.

Since safari diving is often a once-in-a-lifetime experience because it’s on the pricier side of hobbies, I usually recommend to make the most of your dive time and don’t waste energy on drinking and hangovers.

12. Freshen up your skills!

If you haven’t dived in a while, don’t worry. There will always be a check dive for everyone. It may be useful though to refresh or learn some new skills before your liveaboard diving trip. Practicing entries and exits for large boats and small RIBs/zodiacs could be one of those.

13. Plan in some downtime after the safari!

Living on a boat for a couple of days messes with your brain’s balance system, so it’s normal to feel like you’re still moving once you’re back on solid ground. It’s quite intense and makes some activities pretty hard.

For me, it lasted the same amount of days that I was on the liveaboard itself (4 days) and it was really difficult for me to get any work done (I work online) during this time because I felt so dizzy.

Where can you book liveaboard diving?

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1120"] A typical liveaboard in the Red Sea, Egypt[/caption]

Besides looking up individual liveaboard safaris in the destination you’re wishing to dive in, you may also have a look at a site such as divebooker.com. If you’re flexible and spontaneous, you might get a really good last-minute deal if the operator is trying to fill the last remaining spots. My first liveaboard in Egypt only cost me 300€ for four days for that reason, including full board and unlimited dives.

You can check here for liveaboard diving around the world:

(function(){if (typeof(window.dvbjs)=='undefined'){window.dvbjs = true;var dvbjs = document.createElement('script');dvbjs.type = 'text/javascript';dvbjs.src = 'https://divebooker.com/js/front/init_widgets.min.js';document.body.appendChild(dvbjs);delete dvbjs;}}())

Do you need dive insurance for safari diving?

Check with your operator if dive insurance is obligatory or not. Even if it isn’t, it makes sense to get one for the duration of your liveaboard. Divebooker.com, for example, offers free DAN insurance with their trips. Travel insurance is required for liveaboards.

Again, better safe than sorry! Diving isn’t necessarily a dangerous sport, but it does come with some risks. Additionally, travel insurance is often required on boat safaris.

What does a liveaboard boat look like?

Every boat is different, of course. This is an example of a liveaboard in the Red Sea in Egypt, my first safari diving experience:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1120"] Yes, we had a jacuzzi on board![/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1120"] Dining Area[/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1120"] Sea view cabin on a liveaboard[/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1120"] Typical bathroom on a liveaboard[/caption]

On my Instagram a.litte.nomad you can watch my whole boat trip live - look out for "Liveaboard Sharm" in my Highlight stories!

If you're interested in diving in Egypt, check out my scuba guide for Dahab and some of the things to do in Hurghada that are also dive-related! I've been living in Egypt for almost 3 years now, so I know the Red Sea pretty well!

Pin this "Ultimate Liveaboard Diving Guide For First-Timers" for later:

See Full, Original Article Here: Liveaboard Diving – Ultimate Guide For First-Timers

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lindyhunt · 6 years ago

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Lab Diamonds VS “Real” Diamonds: We Break Down the Ethics, Cost and Environmental Impact

In our Winter issue, FASHION editors rounded up the 100 people, products and experiences we think will blow up in 2019. It’s our inaugural Hot 100 Fuse List. From the workouts you’ll be doing, to the new designers and artists you’ll see on your feed, this is your guide to being in the know this year. With the FTC’s new stance on lab diamonds and the debate around the ethics and environmental ramifications of mined diamonds, we predict consumer interest in—and access to—lab diamonds will be bigger than ever in 2019.

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We’re here to make buying a diamond clear, easy and free of stress. #createdbyspence #spencediamonds #diamonds #diamondjewelry #bling

A post shared by Spence Diamonds (@shopspence) on Feb 5, 2019 at 10:48am PST

75: Lab Diamonds

Rue Saint-Honoré, in Paris, is the stuff of retail dreams. It’s not unusual to see a lineup snaking outside the Balenciaga boutique, a stone’s throw from Goyard’s flagship, while a Porsche idles in front of the Mandarin Oriental hotel. It’s also where Swarovski hosted a fall preview during Paris Fashion Week earlier this year. Tucked in the back of the showroom is a smaller room devoted to Atelier Swarovski. This is home to high-end pieces such as designer collaborations with Mary Katrantzou and Jason Wu. It’s also where you’ll find the brand’s Red Carpet collection, which features lab-created diamonds.

“Not even trained jewellers know the difference,” says one publicist of the lab- versus mined-stone debate. Nadja Swarovski, a member of Swarovski’s executive board, might be part of a crystal empire built on the idea of “a diamond for everyone,” but even she once described lab diamonds as a “conscious luxury” for people who “want to know where their products come from.” A few months later, Swarovski announced that its lab-diamond brand, Diama, would be integrated under Atelier Swarovski, with pieces starting at $595 U.S.

Lab Diamonds VS “Real” Diamonds: Pro: Jewellers cannot tell them apart. Con: They’re not billions of years old.

Mined diamonds, the ones we’ve learned to love in part because of De Beers’s post-Depression-era marketing campaigns, were formed over 150 kilometres below the earth’s surface, in the mantle. There, high pressure and temperatures turned carbon atoms into diamonds over the course of a billion years or more. A laboratory setting can recreate conditions present deep within the earth and complete the process in as little as 400 hours.

It’s space age, and a little freaky, to think that the world’s most “romantic” stone can come from a lab, but it’s not entirely new. Lab diamonds used primarily for industrial purposes have been around since the 1950s, but clean, gem-quality diamonds made an appearance in 2006, not long after the film Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which exposed the sinister side of high-priced gems and how mining in war zones can help finance warlords with illicit diamond sales. DiCaprio is also a backer of the California-based Diamond Foundry, one of the industry’s biggest lab-diamond producers.

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Buying a diamond shouldn’t be like buying a diamond. At Spence, you can reach into any display and try on as many styles as you like! . . . . . #SpenceDiamonds #CreatedbySpence #Spence #Diamonds #EngagementRings #DiamondExperience #JewelryAddict #RingSelfie #PutARingOnIt #Bling

A post shared by Spence Diamonds (@shopspence) on Jan 24, 2019 at 10:33am PST

At the Mississauga, Ont., showroom for Canadian retailer Spence Diamonds, display cases of engagement rings are divided into style categories like Modern, Solitaire, Vintage and Halo. The cases are open, so you can just reach in and try an item on. (All the engagement rings in the showroom contain placeholder glass.) Flip a ring over and you’ll see a tag with two prices: one for “mined” and another for “ACD,” or “artisan created diamond,” which is Spence-speak for lab diamond.

Innocently enough, I ask Spence CEO Eric Lindberg if lab diamonds are as good as mined. “‘Good’ is an arbitrary word,” says Lindberg. “I would say this: A lab diamond, from an atomic standpoint, is identical to a mined diamond in the structure of that stone. From a physical chemical property standpoint, it’s exactly the same as a mined diamond. Jewellers cannot tell them apart.”

“From a physical chemical property standpoint, it’s exactly the same as a mined diamond. Jewellers cannot tell them apart.”

And the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would agree. In July 2018, the FTC amended its jewellery guidelines to allow lab diamonds to be marketed as “cultured,” the way pearls are. The term “natural” is out because, as the FTC wrote, it’s “now possible to create products that have essentially the same optical, physical and chemical properties as mined diamonds.”

In the showroom, I admire a ring with a simple princess-cut diamond that would cost $8,550 for a mined stone and $6,600 for an ACD. The store’s director of sales shows me two diamonds: one mined, one lab. To my untrained eye, the only difference between them is that the mined diamond has a minor, yet charming, flaw.

“Ethically, if you have concerns about buying a diamond, a created diamond comes from a laboratory facility that is shipping that diamond directly to us; it’s trackable,” says Lindberg. “Tearing a big mine in the ground and then shipping diamonds around the world—that is not an environmentally-friendly practice.” Spence also donates a portion of its ACD sales to the global non-profit Not for Sale, which helps victims of human trafficking.

“Tearing a big mine in the ground and then shipping diamonds around the world—that is not an environmentally-friendly practice.”

There’s also the matter of pricing: Lab-created diamonds at Spence are 25 to 50 per cent larger than similarly priced mined ones. Which is how De Beers, the world’s largest diamond distributor, pulled the jewellery equivalent of a mic drop when it unveiled Lightbox, a subsidiary now selling lab-diamond jewellery online. Lightbox pieces are priced lower than those of competitors (a quarter-carat stone starts at $200 U.S.) and advertised in a way that recalls long walks on the beach, frosted doughnuts and pink Champagne.

It’s worth noting that De Beers was part of the 2015 “Real Is Rare” worldwide campaign by the Diamond Producers Association that targeted millennials and took aim at lab diamonds. David Johnson, head of strategic communications at De Beers, says that Lightbox is a response to exhaustive consumer research. “They [consumers] don’t see [lab diamonds] as having enduring value,” says Johnson. “They’re not unique or billions of years old; they’re not from nature. You could just produce more and more of them. So consumers didn’t feel they should be valued as highly.”

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This ring! It’s the trickiest and longest job I’ve ever taken on. Audrey and Bertie were adamant they wanted lab-made diamonds, and they loved a previous trilogy ring that we’d made. However, who knew 🤷🏻‍♀️ it’s so difficult to acquire lab-made diamonds in matching pear shapes! I literally scoured the world. I had suppliers in India, USA, Russia, China, Japan and Australia of course, hunting for these pears. After three months, I finally found one pair in the USA. The relief. This ring drove me ‘round the twist, but the outcome is worth it. Undeniably beautiful, ethical and made with love. I’m so happy Audrey and Bertrand never gave up on me 💕

A post shared by Bert Jewellery (@bertjewellery) on Dec 16, 2018 at 11:01pm PST

Value. What we value is a conundrum I remember well from my own engagement. My then-fiancé knew not to propose with a ring; I had to be involved because I was far too sophisticated to be bedazzled by a diamond. In the end, I proved to be more conventional than I thought—yes, there’s a diamond in my wedding band. But my next diamond will probably be lab-made because—what with a mortgage, kids and educations to finance now—it’s not as important to me as it once was.

It’s a similar story for Spence shopper Michael DoBush of Edmonton. He purchased a white-gold infinity band with a 3.10-carat round brilliant-cut diamond and 13 quarter-carat diamonds to replace his wife’s ring after it was stolen in a break-in. “Sounds like a sad story, but it was our fifth wedding anniversary,” says DoBush. “The end result was a larger ring for less money without sacrificing quality, and the ethical aspect was important.”

“There are consumers under a certain age who have grown up thinking that technology solves everything and this is yet another example of ‘Well, of course technology solved this problem.’”

That sliding-value scale is what will either help or continue to hurt the lab-diamond marketplace. But people like Lindberg are optimistic. “There are consumers under a certain age who have grown up thinking that technology solves everything and this is yet another example of ‘Well, of course technology solved this problem,’” he says. “Technology now allows us to have a diamond that’s equally beautiful, and it’s bigger, and I know it comes from an ethical source. That makes all the sense in the world.”

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jessicakehoe · 6 years ago

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Lab Diamonds VS “Real” Diamonds: We Break Down the Ethics, Cost and Environmental Impact

View this post on Instagram

We’re here to make buying a diamond clear, easy and free of stress. #createdbyspence #spencediamonds #diamonds #diamondjewelry #bling

A post shared by Spence Diamonds (@shopspence) on Feb 5, 2019 at 10:48am PST

75: Lab Diamonds

Lab Diamonds VS “Real” Diamonds: Pro: Jewellers cannot tell them apart. Con: They’re not billions of years old.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Spence Diamonds (@shopspence) on Jan 24, 2019 at 10:33am PST

“From a physical chemical property standpoint, it’s exactly the same as a mined diamond. Jewellers cannot tell them apart.”

“Tearing a big mine in the ground and then shipping diamonds around the world—that is not an environmentally-friendly practice.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bert Jewellery (@bertjewellery) on Dec 16, 2018 at 11:01pm PST

“There are consumers under a certain age who have grown up thinking that technology solves everything and this is yet another example of ‘Well, of course technology solved this problem.’”

The post Lab Diamonds VS “Real” Diamonds: We Break Down the Ethics, Cost and Environmental Impact appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Lab Diamonds VS “Real” Diamonds: We Break Down the Ethics, Cost and Environmental Impact published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

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ronnykblair · 6 years ago

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My 2019 Financial Market Outlook – According to My Current Portfolio

“People ask me my forecast for the economy when they should be asking me what I have in my portfolio. Don’t make pronouncements on what could happen in the future if you’re immune from the consequences. In French, they use the same word for wallet and portfolio.”

–Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Over the next few days and weeks, you’ll see many year-in-review stories and predictions about what will happen in 2019.

I thought about doing something similar, but then I stumbled upon a better idea: instead of writing predictions that have no consequences, I’ll share my current portfolio.

After all, people reveal their preferences and beliefs through their actions.

Look at someone’s bank statements, brokerage accounts, and a time log of his/her activities each week, and you’ll get infinitely more information about the person than you would gain from surveys, conversations, job interviews, or Instagram.

This article does not directly relate to winning a job in the finance industry, but sometimes I like to write about other topics. And I suspect that sometimes you get bored reading about networking, interview questions, and exit opportunities.

So, here goes:

My Current Portfolio

First, I am not going to give dollar amounts because it’s a bit tacky and I don’t feel comfortable disclosing that information – so these will all be percentages of total investable assets.

Second, these figures are across a wide array of accounts (Vanguard, Fidelity, Wealthfront, etc.), and some are in tax-advantaged accounts such as SEP IRAs, while others are in taxable accounts.

This is important because tax-advantaged accounts make assets like corporate bonds, real estate loans, and even dividend stocks far more attractive.

Some accounts are completely automated (Wealthfront), while others are “passive” but with allocations I select (Vanguard), and still others are a mix of automated and manual (real estate).

Finally, this is not “investment advice.” I am not suggesting that you follow anything here – in fact, for reasons I’ll explain below, you probably shouldn’t follow anything here.

Here’s my current breakout:

Cash & Savings: 40%

U.S. Treasuries: 12%

Real Estate – Senior Secured Loans: 12%

Equities: 10%

Angel Investments: 8%

Municipal Bonds: 5%

Real Equity – Equity in Individual Properties: 5%

Miscellaneous (Risk Parity Fund): 3%

Crypto (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Others): 2%

“Investment Grade” Corporate Bonds: 2%

I have an extremely high allocation to Cash & Savings and Treasuries, and it’s there because I sold a lot of positions in the second half of 2018 and am sitting on funds right now.

You could view this portfolio as following the “barbell strategy,” where you invest mostly in safer, lower-yielding assets, and then put the rest in higher-risk, higher-potential-return assets.

However, my total percentage in “safer” assets (~60%) is probably too low to meet the traditional definition.

Unfortunately, I can’t change my allocation much at the moment because many higher-risk assets are also illiquid (real estate, angel investments, etc.).

If there’s an actual market crash and the S&P drops by, say, 30-50%, I would start increasing my Equities allocation to 30-40%.

Portfolio = Market View + Personal Circumstances

I mostly agree with Taleb’s quote at the top – ask someone what’s in their portfolio if you want to know what they think about the economy and the markets.

But I would add one point: your personal circumstances also factor in quite heavily.

As an extreme example, even if you’re very bullish, it would be crazy to invest 100% in high-growth stocks if you’re 70 years old, retired, and need to stay alive for another 10-20 years.

And if you have irregular income, or you just earned a huge windfall from selling your company, it would also be crazy to put everything into high-risk assets right away.

In general, I think people tend to place too much faith in the financial markets and overlook several factors:

The timing of contributions and withdrawals makes a huge difference – this is why you can’t take those online “returns calculators” seriously. Does anyone actually put $1 million in an S&P index fund at age 30, never touch it for 30-40 years, and then withdraw all the funds?

There is no way to know your “risk tolerance” until you start losing large amounts of money. A lot of people say they’re fine with losing 40-50%, but when it happens, they panic and immediately start selling. I still remember the markets in 2007-2009 when everyone thought the world was ending.

Government policy (QE, QT, interest rates) now affects the markets more than ever, so future performance is likely to diverge significantly from historical performance.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t invest, but I don’t think it’s a wise idea to rely 100% on an index fund to pay for your retirement.

My Current Market View

Over the last few months, everyone turned bearish as the S&P experienced a big sell-off and as stock markets in places like the U.K., Germany, and China fell by 10-20%+ for the year.

Nothing seemed to work, as ~90% of asset classes posted negative total returns for the year.

Many news stories have pointed to trade wars, political instability, doubts about global growth, and rising interest rates to explain the poor market performance and volatility in 2018.

I am also quite bearish, but for somewhat different reasons.

Put simply, the Federal Reserve and other central banks have massively distorted financial markets since the 2008-2009 crisis by injecting over $12 trillion of liquidity into the system with quantitative easing.

The Fed also dropped interest rates to ~0%, and banks in Europe and Japan followed, with some eventually setting negative rates.

These policies led to a big increase in stock markets worldwide, but barely affected the “real economy”; they also explain why the wealthy have become even wealthier over the past ~10 years and the middle class is on its deathbed.

Take a look at the charts, and you’ll see how much of a stretch it is to say that QE had any impact on GDP growth in the U.S., EU, U.K., or Japan.

I like this graph from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on the Fed’s Total Assets vs. the S&P 500:

Or, for even more fun, take a look at this one from Yardeni Research about the S&P 500 vs. the Total Assets of the Fed + ECB + BOJ:

Now that the Fed is enacting “quantitative tightening” by letting the bonds on its Balance Sheet mature, it’s only logical to expect market declines as it reverses its policy.

Yet the central bankers want us to believe that “everything will be OK” as they tighten monetary policy and reduce their Balance Sheets.

Well… sort of.

At least one central banker admitted the truth before ascending to his current position:

“Right now, we are buying the market, effectively, and private capital will begin to leave that activity and find something else to do. So when it is time for us to sell, or even to stop buying, the response could be quite strong; there is every reason to expect a strong response.”

-Jerome Powell, October 2012 FOMC Meeting

My Personal Circumstances

Beyond just my bearish views, I’ve also allocated very little to Equities for another simple reason: at this stage, I have more downside than upside from investing.

Put differently, if my net worth increased by 50%, my life would barely change. But if it fell by 50%, that would be a catastrophic loss.

Also, it’s highly unlikely that I will be earning the same level of income from this business far into the future.

I anticipate much lower income when I’m older, which means that I can’t take huge risks and then make up for next year’s giant loss 10 years from now.

It’s similar to a startup founder who ran his/her company for ~10 years, sold it, and earned a windfall from the sale: nicely done, but who knows if it will happen again.

My Current Portfolio

Now I’ll go through the different categories and explain my reasoning for each one:

Cash & Savings (40%)

I am parking cash here to earn 2-3% interest while I wait for the markets to drop further.

The 2-3% interest rates currently offered by high-yield savings accounts and CDs in the U.S. are not great, but a 2-3% yield is a whole lot better than losing ~6%, as the S&P 500 did in 2018.

And this yield at least lets me keep pace with inflation – unlike the rates offered several years ago before the Fed began hiking interest rates.

I am thinking of shifting some Cash into physical Gold or putting more into Treasuries or Municipal Bonds, but I don’t plan to make big changes until the end of the year.

U.S. Treasuries (12%)

I own a mix of short-term and long-term Treasuries, held in various low-fee funds.

The short-term ones are less sensitive to interest rates because of their short durations, while the long-term ones are much more sensitive.

I don’t own 100% short-term Treasuries because, contrary to expectations, I think there’s a decent chance that the Fed could slash interest rates if there’s a market crash or recession.

If that happens, 30-year Treasury prices should jump up, just as they did at the end of 2008.

I don’t plan to hold Treasuries long-term because I assume that QT and the massive deficits the U.S. is running will eventually make a very negative impact on prices.

Real Estate – Senior Secured Loans (12%)

Following the JOBS Act in 2012, dozens of real estate crowdfunding sites have sprung up.

I experimented with some of the more credible ones (Fundrise, PeerStreet, RealtyShares), but RealtyShares announced it was shutting down a few months ago, so maybe it wasn’t so credible.

So far, my debt investments have yielded about what I expected, with interest rates above those offered by savings accounts, CDs, and Treasuries, and no defaults.

I prefer senior real estate loans to P2P lending because the loans are all backed by collateral, and I can pick the types of loans more easily.

For example, I almost always avoid single-family owned homes because I don’t like the risks.

I like commercial real estate, especially multifamily and student housing properties, with occasional office/retail/industrial ones mixed in.

I don’t plan to increase my allocation here because I want to see how the loans perform over several years, especially if prices fall by 30%+ in the next recession.

Equities (10%)

These are a mix of growth and value-oriented stocks, divided between the U.S. and international markets.

I have these mostly because I experimented with Wealthfront, and it allocated a certain percentage automatically based on my “Risk Score.”

Most financial advisors would say that someone in my age range should have a much higher Equities allocation, such as 60% or 80%.

But there’s no way I’m willing to risk losing 30% or 40% of everything if global stock markets decline by 50%.

So, this one is “wait and see” until QT finishes, markets decline by 50%+, or something even worse happens.

Angel Investments (8%)

Back in 2014-2015, when the Fed finished QE3, I thought the markets were overvalued and that everything would come crashing down.

I was a few years early on that one, but as a result of this thinking, I started looking into alternative investments that weren’t as correlated with the stock market – such as early-stage tech startups via AngelList.

I’ve had a few exits, a few shutdowns, and a few cases where I doubled down on companies that were doing well.

This one is in the “too soon to say” category because it might take 5-10 years to see the full results of these deals, and there’s no liquidity until exit or shutdown.

I’m not planning to put much more into this category because 8% is more than enough for my highest-risk, least-liquid asset.

Also, individual investors are at a disadvantage in angel investing due to dilution in later funding rounds.

And I do not live in Silicon Valley and do not have special insight into most startups, so maybe I shouldn’t even be here in the first place.

Municipal Bonds (5%)

Wealthfront automatically allocated this one due to my relatively low Risk Score.

I might put more into this category and buy a muni bond fund; unlike Treasuries, they do have credit risk, but in my tax bracket, the favorable tax treatment makes a big difference.

Real Equity – Equity in Individual Properties (5%)

I like real estate as an asset class for many reasons, but a big one is psychological: I’m not tempted to check prices every 5 seconds and flip out when there’s a decline.

Also, there are many different ways to invest, including different strategies (core, core-plus, value-added, opportunistic), different property types, and different geographies.

Prices of coastal real estate in the U.S. have been “elevated,” to say the least, so I’ve focused on multifamily and student housing properties and eREITs in less expensive regions like the Midwest and South.

This one is in the “too soon to say” category because some of these deals have multi-year holding periods.

I don’t plan to allocate much more here because I’m afraid that more of these crowdfunding sites will shut down or otherwise not survive.

Miscellaneous (Risk Parity Fund) (3%)

This is another one in the “Wealthfront automation” category. The intent was to imitate AQR’s “Risk Parity” fund, but it did not work so well – and it didn’t work so well for AQR, either.

I probably should have disabled this setting in Wealthfront, but I’ll leave it for now and see if it improves this year at all.

Crypto (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Others) (2%)

Ah, crypto.

I bought (some) Bitcoin for under $1,000 back in 2013, held on for years as the price fell, and then sold it for $15,000 – $20,000 in late 2017 and early 2018, earning almost 20x.

Then, I put a portion of the proceeds into altcoins and lost around 70%.

Thus, crypto has the distinction of delivering both my best returns and my worst returns of the past year.

I don’t plan to put more into this category because 2% is more than enough for something that is, essentially, pure speculation.

I think blockchain as technology is promising, but I have less confidence in cryptocurrencies as “assets.”

There’s a chance that Bitcoin could reach $100,000, and there’s an equally good chance that it could fall to $0.

“Investment Grade” Corporate Bonds (2%)

These are here because of a Vanguard fund that invests in conservative stocks and corporate bonds.

I have no interest in increasing my allocation here because I’m very bearish on corporate bonds.

The credit quality of most corporate bonds is overstated (see: the percentage of “covenant-lite” loans), and high corporate leverage is one of the biggest risks for the entire economy right now.

Up Next in This Series

Over the next few weeks, I’ll cover a few related topics and outlooks in different areas:

The Bull Case and the Bear Case for the economy and markets as a whole.

Which finance jobs look appealing going into 2019 (and beyond), and which ones you should avoid.

And how recruiting might change in coming years.

Stay tuned.

And feel free to laugh at my ultra-bearish views, especially if the market is up 30% this year.

The post My 2019 Financial Market Outlook – According to My Current Portfolio appeared first on Mergers & Inquisitions.

from ronnykblair digest https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/2019-financial-market-outlook/

#ronnykblair digest

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alwayssummerblog · 6 years ago

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Why We Love Miranda Lambert

For years now, Miranda Lambert has topped the country music charts and remained a fan favorite in the country realm! The talented singer-songwriter is humble, kind, funny, relatable and we can’t help but want to follow her career every step of the way. With Lambert’s birthday right around the corner, November 10, and the release of the highly anticipated Pistol Annies third studio album, we came up with a list of reasons we are obsessed with this artist!

1) Miranda Lambert Twists Her Pain Into Clever Girl Power Anthems!

A single from Pistol Annies’ Interstate Gospel, “Got My Name Changed Back” is lead by Lambert and the perfect response to what many would consider a difficult time in anyones life. Referencing her divorce from country star Blake Shelton, the song is a hip-popping tune that, instead of crying over her past relationship, serves as a strong and powerful message of moving forward.

Check out the “Got My Name Changed Back” video below:

youtube

2) Miranda Lambert Is A True Horse Loving Cowgirl

This country queen is truly in touch with her roots and not afraid to flaunt it. Lambert is one of our favorites because this girl doesn’t just sing about cowboys and horses, but really lives the lifestyle. The country star loves her ponies and often takes to her instagram to share photos and videos featuring her beautiful animals.

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With the #bandwagontour rehearsals under way and the tour starting in less than 2 weeks, I decided to spend my last weekend off on one of my other passions. Gypsy Vanner’s. I got to show with some great people and amazing horses at the Feathered Horse Classic in Clemson SC. It has been one of the best weekends of all time. My horses performed well and I smiled so much my face hurts. I am still green and have so much to learn but I’ve come a long way in 4 years. And thanks to my team and friends we left with ribbons, memories and a few reserve champion titles!!! It’s just a reminder to take time out for what you love and what recharges you. I can’t wait until the next one. But until then I’ll see y’all on the road! (More pics in my stories. I’m a proud horse mom) #gyspsyvanner #geton #FlyingPistolsRanch

A post shared by Miranda Lambert (@mirandalambert) on Jul 1, 2018 at 6:29pm PDT

3) Miranda Lambert’s Not Afraid To Make Fun Of Herself

We all have old school photos we would rather our friends and family not see, but Lambert isn’t afraid to share her awkward photos with all of her fans. While she may not have been a star on the volleyball court back in her 8th grade days, she sure is a star today on country music stages around the world!

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#TBT.. My 8th grade self pretending to be good at sports! #benchwarmer #thosebangstho #dishwaterblonde #throwbackthursdays #braceface 🙋🏐

A post shared by Miranda Lambert (@mirandalambert) on Jun 22, 2017 at 5:39pm PDT

4) Miranda Lambert Still Owns Her First Truck (It’s name is Tammy, like Tammy Wynette)

Speaking of high school days, the singer-songwriter still owns her first high school vehicle! Lambert got her first truck when she was just 17 and named it Tammy after the famous Tammy Wynette! While she may not need to drive her old truck now, she still holds on to it due to sentimental value!

5) Miranda Lambert Owns 16 Rescue Animals!

We love the truck in the photo above, but what we love even more is seeing Lambert alongside all of the animals she cares so deeply about. The "Weight of These Wings” singer is passionate about the welfare of animals and has even taken it upon herself to adopt 16 rescue animals!

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"Play me a song Curtis Loew Curtis Loew" ....When your friend @harps226 comes to visit and says "oh by the way I picked up a stray kitten on the highway in Arkansas and it's in the garage". And then she smile's this innocent smile. Guess who has a kitten now? @muttnationfoundation #friendsthatrescue #curtisloewcat #cateyes #ohlordy

A post shared by Miranda Lambert (@mirandalambert) on Oct 1, 2015 at 9:50am PDT

6) Miranda Lambert Started A Non-Profit That Helps Prevent Animal Abuse

The organization, MuttNation, was founded in 2007 and helps raise funds and awareness for a worthy cause across the nation. Since it’s beginning, MuttNation has provided support for shelters in all 50 states, has put on adoption drives and has helped provide emergency disaster relief for animals in need. In addition to this, there is an annual benefit concert that Miranda has performed at for fans and animal lovers multiple times! Check out the full website HERE!

7) Miranda Lambert’s Humble Roots Have Helped Shaped Her As An Artist

This country star was not always living a glamorous lifestyle, and even experienced homelessness as a child. Due to her humble past, Lambert has made an effort to always be sensitive to those in need and give back where she is able to. She is extremely composed and kind-hearted, making her one of the celebrities we want to be just like!

Growing up without much, Lambert got extremely close with her family and gives credit to them for helping her start off her career and for being by her side throughout it all. We love this photo of her and her dad back when she first got her start on Nashville Star!

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Dad dropping me off at the Nashville Star house in 2003. What a journey we have been on. When I was 17, he taught me 3 chords on the guitar. He said that's all I needed. For the most part he was right. Thanks for giving me life, love and dimples! And thank you for sharing your love for music with me. Love you dad. #RickLambert❤️ #happyfathersday

A post shared by Miranda Lambert (@mirandalambert) on Jun 18, 2017 at 4:41pm PDT

8) Miranda Lambert Is One Of The Most Talented Singer-Songwriters In The Business

The country sensation has set the record for most consecutive ACM female vocal wins and continues to impress us every time she puts out something new. We’re already listening to the Pistol Annie’s new album Interstate Gospel on repeat! The full album is available on all major platforms including Apple Music and Spotify.

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WE’RE BACK. #InterstateGospel is out now. (link to listen in bio)

A post shared by Pistol Annies (@pistolannies) on Nov 1, 2018 at 9:10pm PDT

#country #MegaCountry #miranda lambert

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years ago

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Roman is a rocket ship, and I’m not talking about how it sells Viagra and Cialis. Less than a year after launching its cloud pharmacy for erectile dysfunction with $3 million in funding and a five-person team, Roman has grown to seventy team members and a revenue run-rate in the 10s of millions — up 720 percent since January. It’s sparked over a million patient-physician visits, phone calls, and text conversations through its telemedicine portal for getting diagnoses and prescriptions.

And now Roman is ready to expand beyond men, so it’s dropping the ‘Man.

Today, the newly renamed ‘Ro’ unveiled its next product, Zero, a $129 ‘quit smoking’ kit. It contains a month’s worth of prescription cessation medication bupropion and nicotine gum, plus an app for tracking progress and learning how to stay motivated through hunger, nausea, and cravings. Pre-orders open today.

“Erectile dysfunction medication is a knee brace. It helps you to walk again but the goal would be to not need a knee brace” says Ro co-founder Zachariah Reitano, who started the company because he lives with ED himself due to a heart medication side effect. “Some people will need ED medication but we’re hoping that a lot of people, through lifestyle changes or quitting smoking, won’t need us any more.”

To get the word out about Zero to women and men alike, as well as build a physician’s electronic medical record system, Ro has also raised a jaw dropping $88 million Series A round. It was led by FirstMark Capital and joined by SignalFire, Initialized Capital, General Catalyst, Slow Ventures, Sinai Ventures, Torch Capital, BoxGroup, and Tusk Ventures. Initialized and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and FirstMark managing director Rick Heitzmann will both join Ro’s board to steward this massive infusion of capital.

Roman board member Alexia Ohanian sporting a Roman Zero hat while cheering on his wife, tennis star Serena Williams

“The plan for the money is to continue to build out our own pharmacy” as well as “a lot of the backend infrastructure that we call ‘Ro’ that will allow us to launch these other products and verticals over the next two to three years, including women’s health products, Reitano tells me. Ohanian writes that “The only thing that exceeds Ro’s execution to date is their vision for the future of healthcare. Unlike other companies in the space, Ro is full-stack and is actually rebuilding the health care experience from the ground up, which means they are able to deliver unrivaled care for patients across the country.”

Ro’s Zero kit

Until recently, 80 percent of Viagra sold online was counterfeit. That not only made it awkward to buy medication for erectile dysfunction, but also dangerous. Yet that number is starting to drop thanks to the explosion in popularity of Roman, as well as fellow direct-to-consumer men’s health startup Hims. “Roman doesn’t lend itself to the typical Instagram unboxing experience, but we get a lot of one-to-one word of mouth” Reitano says with a chuckle. SEO has also been key to revenue growth, as it’s the first organic search result for ‘buy Viagra’.

“One of the thing that’s helped has been me sharing my story [he’s dealt with ED since he was 17], and this ‘check engine light’ concept” that views erections as indicators that a man’s body is in working order. Roman even built a somewhat-silly app called Morning Glory to help men track morning erections. Roman’s whole experience is designed to make patients comfortable with a fundamentally uncomfortable topic. “The fact that this stigma exists is why people don’t talk to their doctor or their partner” Reitano says.

Roman co-founder Zachariah Reitano

Now Ro wants to take the same clear-eyed approach to helping people quit smoking, starting by getting you to chat with its “telehealth assistant” to get paperwork sorted before you speak with a Ro doctor. The startup says that of the 37.5 million people in the US who smoke, 70 percent want to quit and 50 percent try to quit each year, but only 3 to 5 percent are smoke-free after six months. But with medication, nicotine replacement therapy like gum, tapering down smoking before stopping, and counseling, the quit rate drastically improves to 33 percent after six months.

You get all that from Zero’s kit for $129 per month, compared to $120 on Amazon for just the nicotine gum. Reitano admits that “the margin actually is not fantastic to start. Let’s say it’s slightly below what a typical commerce purchase would be.” But the idea is that if Ro and Zero can help someone quit smoking, patients will turn to it for more of their online pharmacy needs.

One barrier for Ro is that it currently doesn’t accept insurance for its $15 telemedicine appointments, Roman pills, or the Zero kit. Eventually it wants to accept FSA cards for tax-favored spending in hopes of reducing the cost for some patients, but otherwise Ro will require people to pay out-of-pocket, restricting it to wealthier segment of the population. Reitano admits that “In any space that’s incredibly competitive and highly regulated, there are things out of your control. In our control, there’s an incredible opportunity to make sure we take advantage of the infrastructure we have.”

Reitano concludes, “Honestly, I hope we can live up to what we want to build.”

Roman is a cloud pharmacy for erectile dysfunction

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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phatjosh180 · 6 years ago

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RACE RECAP: Revel Big Cottonwood Half Marathon

I love this race. Absolutely love it. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise. I kinda talk about it year round. Between this, Nebo and Run Elevated this pretty much is the heart of my race schedule each year. These are my three “A” races. It doesn’t hurt that I absolutely love each canyon as well.

Going into the Revel Big Cottonwood Half Marathon I was feeling pretty good. Over the previous month I hit my two fastest half marathons over the past 18 months. I felt confident that I could hit a year best time at Revel, especially a sub-2:40 time goal. Especially since I knew the course so well.

And, as much as I would love to say that I hit that benchmark — I didn’t. And, there were a number of factors for that. For one, going into the race I was simply sick. I had a chest cold that got the best of me that week. It was weird because it was only focused within my chest, otherwise I felt fine. So I still felt that I’d be okay.

HA.

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A post shared by I’m Josher … (@josherwalla) on Sep 7, 2018 at 10:36pm PDT

I probably shouldn’t have gone into the race with such expectations, but I knew I had it within me. Plus, Jill was going to be running it with me and I always run better when I run with others. I wanted it, bad.

The day before the race I felt pretty good. My legs felt fresh and I wasn’t coughing as much as I was earlier in the week. The discomfort in my lungs were there, but I wasn’t too worried. I was too worried about my pace once I got to mile 10 and outside of the canyon. I knew miles 10-12 were going to be on me — there’s a deceiving gradual uphill that’ll kill ya.

The night before a bunch of us from the Trails & Pavement group met up for a pre-race dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. It’s always fun to socialize out of a running atmosphere. It’s also a great reminder that we all wear things other than running clothes. It was just a fun evening of a lot of laughs and fun times — it helped me get even more excited for the race the following day.

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Pre-Revel Dinner! @trailsandpavement #thisiswhereweeat

A post shared by I’m Josher … (@josherwalla) on Sep 7, 2018 at 9:27pm PDT

Race morning was pretty typical. I got my drop bag of stuff ready — which was pretty much my race fuel, hoodie and breakfast. I didn’t eat anything out of the usual from the past few months. My typical race morning meal consists of one or two chicken bacon sausage links, some brie cheese and a handful of pecans — a great ration of fat, protein and carbs. It’s not too heavy on the stomach, but it’s sustainable enough to give me enough energy fro the run.

After commuting to bus pick up I walked over to the Maverik to grab a Smart Water as well while waiting to meet up with Jill and Mark to take the bus up the canyon with them. I started munching on my breakfast during the ride up and while waiting up in the canyon for the race to start. It was a good morning and I was really feeling good.

Which was a total flip from the year before when I (stupidly) ate a salad right before the race — which ended up all over a Honey Bucket when I try to slip into one after the gun went off. I have a very low tolerant gag reflex. Something that you’ll want to keep in mind for later in my race story.

>>>

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Checklist for tomorrow’s pre-race food — ✅ Bacon Sausage ✅ Brie Cheese ✅ Pecans All ready to run @runrevel BC in the morning! #half152 #revelbigcottonwood @josherwalla.run

A post shared by ＪｏｓｈｅｒDoes Keto (@josherwalla.fit) on Sep 7, 2018 at 10:40pm PDT

The race started at 6:45am and Jill and my goal was to stick together as much as we could and go for that sub-2:40 — and for Jill this would be a PR attempt. We wanted to help pace each other along. We inched our way across the starter’s mat about 12 minutes after the gun sounded and soon the shuffle turned into a jog, run and then sprint.

But, that sprint didn’t last long as we tried to consciously calm our excitement and nerves. Plus, starting a goal race like this TOO fast is one of the biggest cardinal sins of running. So we slowed down and let the crowd pace us for a bit.

The first few miles were not only fast, but absolutely gorgeous. The sun was rising over the mountains and gave the canyon a feel that not only autumn was almost here, but like you were almost running in a Bob Ross painting. There were literally happy little trees everywhere.

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A post shared by I’m Josher … (@josherwalla) on Sep 8, 2018 at 3:12pm PDT

Around mile 4-5 I started feeling fatigue inch into my legs and lungs. I wasn’t too surprised by that because I wasn’t running intervals — I was just keeping up with Jill. But, at the Mile 5 aid station we ran into Amanda, Mike and Brandy — who were running intervals. I told Jill to go ahead so I could stay back with them. I wanted Jill to get her PR.

Intervals were a welcome change of pace. They allowed my legs a small reprieve from the steep decent and having trained mostly in intervals (and fartleks) it was something my body was used to and happy about doing at that point of the race. And, quite honestly, I probably should have been doing since I crossed the starting mat.

But, that’s a story for another day.

I had a blast running with the Bjarnsons and Brandy. It’s always fun running with those three. We posed for a couple of pictures. Mainly at the S curve with my Hokas and then when we were running down ‘the fastest mile’ like Phoebe Bufay. Like I said, we had a blast!

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A post shared by ＪｏｓｈｅｒDoes Keto (@josherwalla.fit) on Sep 8, 2018 at 3:36pm PDT

It was right after ‘the fastest mile’ when we ran past the electrical plant that my body just started wanting — well — more like needing to slow down. I let the Bjarnsons and Brandy go ahead. At this point I just kind of conceded my race because my chest cold cough decided to make an appearance.

By Mile 8 I started cough a bit uncontrollably and without much effort — I threw up. Usually after I throw up … I’m fine, if not better. But, I wasn’t. My stomach soon got the message that it needed to get rid of EVERYTHING in my stomach. That included my breakfast and dinner from the previous night.

Not fun.

I got to the Mile 10 aid station and knew I needed rid more of my stomach contents. Not wanting to barf in front of volunteers and runners I grabbed a trash can and went behind the row of Honey Buckets to spew. It was less graceful than my upheaval at Mile 8, but definitely not the worst at the end of the day.

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A post shared by I’m Josher … (@josherwalla) on Sep 9, 2018 at 6:34pm PDT

I carried on and just focused on the last three miles in front of me. By this time I knew I was well past my sub-2:40 time and more than likely past a sub-2:50 time. I still wanted a sub-3 time, but at the same time — I just didn’t want to die. Not only wasn’t my stomach stable, but being out of the canyon exposed me to the sun. There were no happy little trees to give me shade.

The weather was doing me dirty. Those last three miles went from a hot clear sky to overcast in what seemed like every half mile. It was horrible. As soon as I got used to the shade of the clouds BAM there was the sun. This just seemed to make things worse for me.

At Mile 12, I was done. I knew I had nothing left in me and I tried to walk. But, I couldn’t. The simple act of walking made me cramp — yet — running didn’t?! It was a cruel punishment, because I really didn’t want to run. And, while I was in that moment lamentation — I threw up again.

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A post shared by I’m Josher … (@josherwalla) on Sep 8, 2018 at 3:57pm PDT

At this point that last mile seemed like an eternity. My focus now was to simply not pass out. I was worried about that, because I could feel that my body was dehydrated. I couldn’t stomach hardly any water as evidenced by my last aid station stop. I just wanted to stay up on my feet, finish the race and then die.

I kept shuffling along and by complete surprise from me — I was passing people. It really didn’t have much to do with my athletic ability or speed. It was probably a combination of other runner’s struggles and the fact that if I stopped to walk I would have cramped.

I got to the finish line and as my friend Nick gave me my finisher’s medal I immediately felt a familiar feeling — the brewing of another stomach eruption. I desperately looked for a trash can. Nick pointed me toward the medical tent. But, within two steps toward the tent everything came out all over.

All over.

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A post shared by ＪｏｓｈｅｒDoes Keto (@josherwalla.fit) on Sep 9, 2018 at 10:39am PDT

I made this desperate attempt to catch the vomit with two of my cupped hands. That was a joke. After I deposited my load a medical volunteer handed me a vomit bag and pointed me toward the tent and a cot.

To my surprise Jill was laying next to me with taped up calves sipping on water. After throwing up again — this time in my vomit bag — I asked Jill how her race went. Obviously, she got in before me, but I wanted to know if she got a new PR. Which she did! She came in at 2:34 — an eight minute PR!

While reveling in that accomplishment for her the nurses were assessing my situation. They gave me an anti-nausea pill — which helped. But, I still couldn’t really stomach water — which I needed. Knowing this I asked for an IV.

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A post shared by I’m Josher … (@josherwalla) on Sep 8, 2018 at 4:18pm PDT

An IV is usually a last resort, but I could feel my body’s need for hydration — fast. And, I’ve had IVs after a couple other races in the past. They can really turn the tide after a hot depleted race. And, this IV did the trick.

After hanging out in the med tent with the IV and sipping water afterwards for about an hour I hobbled over to the Run4fun tent to continue my post-race rehab. Once I got my legs back underneath me I made the long — yet short — walk back to my car for the ride home.

I was exhausted, but much better than when I crossed that finish line. I just needed a nap. And, a few more hours before thinking about food. But, more than that a nap. So, when I got home and collapsed for a couple hours. It was perfection.

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A post shared by I’m Josher … (@josherwalla) on Sep 8, 2018 at 4:30pm PDT

In retrospect, I know what went wrong. I know what I need to do to avoid this kind of outcome again. I need to stick with intervals — or at the very least race the way I train. I got overeager with my goals and wanting to stick with Jill. I needed to run my race and let Jill run her race.

I also should have put into account that I was sick that previous week when making race plans. That really was just dumb. I tried to mentally avoid that key fact of reality. Should I have not raced at all — no, of course not. I am not going to miss this race. I am a Legacy Runner and I take pride in that. But, I should have slowed down and been more conservative.

But, the good that came out of all of this I guess is that I finished under three hours (2:56:46) — and it really could have been much, much worse. There were a number of runners that didn’t make it to the finish line and that just wasn’t going to happen to me.

And, it didn’t.

Revel Big Cottonwood Half Marathon Times

2013 – 2:12:37 (42) 2017 – 3:10:21 (128) 2018 – 2:56:46 (152)

Revel Big Cottonwood Marathon Times

2012 – 5:39:09 (2) (PR) 2014 – 6:42:21 (6) 2015 – Swept (8) 2016 – Swept (9)

Join the Trails & Pavement Revel Big Cottonwood 2019 Team

Registration is now open for the 2019 Revel Big Cottonwood Full & Half Marathon — happening next year on September 14th! For many runners here along the Wasatch Back this is THE race of the year. It’s not only fast, beautiful and well organized — it’s a full out party!

The Trails & Pavement Facebook Group will have a team at next year’s race! Being a part of the team comes with some perks — you get a $5 off discount for joining, we have special bibs with our team name on it and we’ll have a canopy tent at the finish line of the race.

With registration open for 2019 if you join our team AND use the code GOBIG at checkout, you’ll get $15 off your registration. That’s the lowest price you’re going to get for next year’s race! Just sign up using this link >>> https://bit.ly/2wYxsNS or search for trailsandpavement when registering at www.runrevel.com/bcm.

My Next Five Races

Moonlight Half Marathon; September 21 Ragnar Sunset Relay; October 6 The Haunted Half: Salt Lake City; October 20 The Haunted Half: Provo; October 27 Holiday Hero 5K; November 3

A post shared by Trails & Pavement (@trailsandpavement) on Aug 30, 2018 at 7:04am PDT

RACE RECAP: Revel Big Cottonwood Half Marathon was originally published on PhatJosh | My Life Running.

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adamandbrittanyinhawaii · 7 years ago

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Australia: Day 9

It doesn’t hit you immediately in the morning, but as we gather things in the morning you slowly become aware that a general unclean smell is emanating from the body. It isn’t horrid, but also it isn’t completely placated by deodorant applications. Oh well it is part of the adventure and if my wife who is all about her 30-40 minute showers can handle this setup then I have no excuses.

Today’s hike is unique because we are headed out onto one of the capes and then doubling back which means most of the hike today is without our big packs. We get to drop those at a shed near the cabins and catch them on the way back. So despite 17km of hiking today, only the last 3-4km will be with big packs as we will double back for an hour through the “red hands” stretch of trees.

The journey was gorgeous the whole way even with some light showers. It opened up at a few points so you could see the rolling landscape that gives way to sea side cliffs. As you move closer to the point, the land slowly narrows around you. This day was full of great wild life too. We came across a sleeping owl right near one of the “story time” stops, lots of blue birds, red breasted birds and even a green parrot flew overhead. Of course not all of our nature experiences were these Instagram-worthy moments as we came across tons of wombat poop and yet didn’t get to see any wombats. They are truly nature’s ninja pooper.

While on the topic of wild life, we were also informed last night that there is a snake living under the main cabin that we were relaxing in during the evenings. The ranger was very excited about this but I was fairly nonplussed. I feel like you are enjoying nature a little too much if you think the prospect of snakes nearby is a good thing.

As we approached the end of the Cape, there were plenty of lookouts to Tasman island. It seems strange that there would be a small island that gets to score a name like Tasman (after all we are in Tasmania) but the Cape has a unique history. Port Arthur was a major port and there were constantly boats coming and going back in the day. As you swing around this cape there is a pass in the rocks that is pretty wide for ships to go through but the water, unbeknownst to most, is too shallow to pass on, usually causing tragic shipwrecks should captains get trapped in taking the shortcut. There are also just a lot of rocks as you make the turn around the southernmost point that we were hiking out towards. Just off the point is Tasman island and up until the 1970’s people lived out there full time to run the light house. As you look out to the island you can still see the 3 houses and the lighthouse. They figured out how to operate the lighthouse remotely since that time which probably came as a relief to people living a life of full time isolation. Fun tidbit about life on the island is that they had messenger pigeons to send in case of emergencies back to Port Arthur and when the first emergency arrived when they needed to use them, the pigeons were too out of shape to complete the journey because of lack of use. So they all either died or got lost on their way to Port Arthur. Point of the story is don’t get seriously injured living out there because you may not make it out alive!

We made it out to the tip of the island which is this elevated rock face structure called the Blade. In my photos you’ll find a 360 degree panorama that is really the best photo of the spot. It is truly breathtaking. From atop there you can see the seaside cliffs of Tasman island where they used a pulley system to get folks onto the island. It was like the Swiss Family Robinson type of contraption. I guess life imitates art, or something like that. Here’s a view of the blade an a picture of us out on it later.

We ate lunch at a nearby lookout and soaked in the views with our hiking ohana. As we headed back it started raining lightly on us. It was actually just enough that it felt refreshing. When we got back to the cabins, we grabbed our packs and after a short rest, finished our journey for the day. We were nearly the last ones to the cabins. It seemed that most everyone except the large family relished getting up early and being done by early afternoon. Britt and I loved the leisurely pace of the days, enjoying coffee for a long while in the warm cabins and then breaking at all the story time stops and of course taking so many photos that even my mom would be impressed. Also, when you tote 30lbs on your back, your core heats up quickly making hiking in shorts and a t shirt the most comfortable despite temperatures being 60 degrees at best. With that much body heat being generated you become pretty hungry which means even more breaks for snacking along the way.

After gathering our bags we went back through the Maori red hand part of the trail and found all the hands! The ranger at our 3rd cabin though wasn’t very social like the first 2 so we didn’t share this news with him even though we were told by the first ranger that nobody had found all the hands. Oh well, their loss!

Our favorite unexpected surprise about this trip is how much of a camaraderie forms among the group as the days pass. The first night everyone is still feeling the others out. The second night people start mixing it up a bit more and branching out. By the 3rd evening we are all just swapping stories and jokes and roaring at full volume all afternoon and evening in the cabin. Everyone was making light of how bad the dehydrated food tastes (I stayed quiet cause I thought the meals were delicious!) and swapping all sorts of fun stories. We were at one point trying to name all the famous Australian celebrities that us Americans would know. It ended up being a lot of actors like Mel Gibson, Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger, etc. Apparently we don’t import too many famous athletes or musicians from Australia. One couple ended up giving us their dehydrated meal which we devoured because we thought they were tasty and also because we were a little on the hungry side.

We stayed up later than any other night despite the fact that tomorrow’s hike needed to start by 7am to catch a bus. This was because we ended up befriending an older couple (maybe early 50’s). Ros (pronounced “Roz”) and Rich were so fun and down to Earth. They were from Hobart, the town we had stayed at before arriving in Port Arthur. I think they latched onto us because we reminded them of their kids who were young adults. They were sharing a bunch of family photos with us and even friended Britt on Facebook. We had a blast as I taught them how to play “10 & 2”. I told them they had to spread the game in Australia since it has now gone from Luxembourg with my host dad, to me in Ohio, to my relatives in Pennsylvania to our friends in California and now to Australia. So I couldn’t figure out he went by Rich or Mitch and with the accents I was sure they were saying Mitch, but the last name is Mitchell so I didn’t know what was going on name-wise! Regardless it was a joy spending the evening laughing with them and it reminded me of another older couple that we share lots of meals and pool time with at home: Charlie and Jan. They like to bike around and soak in the outdoors of Hawaii so we grill with them often. It is inspiration for us and we want to be a lot like either of these couples as we age. Rich/Mitch and Roz have hiked places like the Na Pali Coast in Kauai and she works for the parks service overseeing advertising for the 3 Capes Track. So they are just loving life and having a great time. They even invited us over for dinner after the hike was ending but since we had a full itinerary we couldn’t swing back into Hobart. It’s funny how you head out into nature and the best moments still end up being related to people!

As we tucked in for the night I found that we were short on Advil PM. I had packed 2 pills per night for myself and Britt ended up needing them so we had split them 1 apiece per night. However, I didn’t know she’d need them so I had popped 2 the first night before I learned this so we only had 1 pill left for the 3rd night which I gave to the lighter sleeper. I called the 3rd night “Snorage Wars” as I tossed and turned listening to the old couple in the next room over seemingly compete each hour as to who can make the louder noises. It’s really saying something if I can’t sleep. I can sleep through a hurricane so these folks officially qualify as more devastating than a hurricane.

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topicprinter · 7 years ago

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Hey folks, so I recently interviewed a Shopify Merchant, named Mostapha Hijazi, who sells pocket bikes. The story was really interesting so I wanted to share with the community here if anyone is looking for inspiration. Basically, I found this to be a lemons to lemonade story.So some background, Venom Motorsports was started in 2012 by Mostapha Hijazi out of his mom's garage and has grown into a $1M+ per year online store.Full disclosure, I run an ecommerce app company and wanted to interview Mostapha, one of my clients, to learn more about his business because I saw his business was doing so well. I planned to use the points in his interview answers to add to a case study but this interview was just too good and I wanted to share it because I think it might help the community. I’m just going to paste the answers from our email interview.—Question: Just to start, so that we understand the scale of Venom Motorsports, what's been the approximate monthly revenue or monthly orders you get.Mostapha: Revenue wise in the last 30 days we've done US$135,000 in sales, and over the last 90 days we've done around US$350,000.Q: Which ecommerce platform do you sell on and why?M: Shopify because they make it easy and I really like the “Cha-ching” sound the app makes when I make a sale.Q: Why did you start Venom Motorsports? Where did you get the idea to sell motorsports products?M: When I was 13 I had bought a gas pocket bike off eBay from the US. After getting it and riding it for a week the police showed up to my house saying I cant ride it and fined us. My mom was so scared she made me sell it, so I put it up on Kijiji, which is like the Craigslist of Canada, and sold it for $50 more then I bought it for. At 13 that was a lot of money considering it was used, so I wondered how much I could make if I sold it as a new product and from there I ordered a few more from the US and eventually went right to the manufacturer in China, and soon ordering containers of them. —Marketing StrategyQ: When you first launched Venom Motorsports, did you have an audience to sell to right away or did you build your audience as you went? How have you continued to build your customer base over the 5 years you’ve been in business?M: We built our audience. When I first started I was only selling locally on Kijiji. Then I expanded on to eBay and eventually our Shopify store. There was an audience out there looking for bikes like ours so we just had to make sure we got to them. What really made my business take off was a YouTuber. He made tons of pocket bike videos and had a huge share of potential customers who wanted bikes but he would talk about how he was having a hard time finding where to buy them. So I sent him a free bike to advertise us and that took our website from having 40 views per day to over 400 per day. We also build and acquire customers through our Facebook page and advertising videos of our bikes. We also generate new content every month for other blogs about our bikes that helps us drive clients as well as our own YouTube channel showing you how to maintain and fix bikes.Q: How have you approached your marketing strategy? How does customer service play into your marketing strategy?M: Yes 100%. Without excellent customer service your business is nothing. Nowadays with the internet, bad reviews can break you even if you have an excellent product. If customers don’t have someone to talk to when they need to after-sale, your business wont go anywhere. So hire someone to manage that and promote the good reviews you get from it.Q: The motorsports market is fairly saturated with other brand name businesses, how do you make your products stand out in the market? How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?M: The motorsport market is saturated with big brand name companies like Honda and Yamaha and they also mainly offer bigger sized bikes like 500cc-1000c and their prices are really high even for their smaller bikes. So Venom comes in as the alternative brand that’s more then 50% cheaper than the leading international brands. And what's nice is people give us a shot because they see these bikes are beginner bikes, bikes they will outgrow in a few years so why spend $6,000 on a brand name bike when they can spend $1500 on ours and get the same experience and training without the huge upfront costs. Also our bikes don’t weigh near the same as the leading brands. Imagine first time riding a bike and you get to a red light. The Hondas are very heavy making it hard to balance and ride for beginners so our bikes help in that way as well.Q: Which marketing channels do you find the most lucrative (your own social media, working with influencers, email marketing, referral marketing, paid advertising, etc.)?M: For us its influencers and paid advertising and also blogs and forums.Q: How did you make your first 10 sales? Your first 100 sales?M: Our first 10 sales were using eBay listings. Reaching 100 sales was via eBay, Kijiji and our own Shopify website.Q: You sell both directly to consumers as well as wholesale to other businesses. How have you balanced serving both markets, have there been any unique challenges involved?M: Wholesale is fairly new to us. It was only in 2017 where wholesale took off for us. To balance it I made a separate wholesale department where I had my cousin manage it. He would go out looking for stores and answer the wholesale deals. Major challenge is we offer free shipping and the wholesale clients not only want a big discount on the bikes but also still want the free shipping. We also have some wholesale customers wanting more bikes to order but we cant meet the demand due to not having enough bikes for our direct customers and wholesale. We also don’t have the warehouse space to order more but we are currently building our own warehouse so by next year this wont be an issue at all. We will have enough inventory to support the wholesale demand. —Tools to GrowQ: What’s the best tool you use to stay organized with your Venom Motorsports?M: Shopify really helps us stay organized. My team consists of my brother, two cousins and myself, and so weekly meetings also help us all stay on track and stay organized with our most important tasks. Also, I really like the tried and tested to-do list. Anything you think of write it own and tackle it the next day or throughout the week!Q: What core services or resources have you used to grow Venom Motorsports that you wholeheartedly recommend?M: Find influencers on YouTube and Instagram. Also Facebook! Facebook advertising is so powerful you reach a lot of people for such a little investment. Outside of these channels I'd also have to recommend the Scout App. It's basically like a lead magnet which we call up and close over the phone.Recovering Abandoned CartsQ: Seeing that your products are large and expensive, I'd guess you would have many abandoned checkouts. When it comes to managing cart abandonments, how do you use Scout to engage directly with customers and recover revenue?M: Scout has helped us grow a lot! I say that because I sell expensive items, average shopping cart is $1,000 so customers don’t necessarily buy right away. So when Scout tells us that someone abandoned their cart it gives us a reason to call them right away. Turns out the reason they did not buy is because they had questions that were not answered on the site. And more often than not it leads to a sale just by giving them a call quickly while they are still "hot" and in the mood to buy a motorbike.Q: *What kind of impact has recovering abandoned carts had on your overall revenue? Has it been a successful use of your business’ time and resources or is it something you could manage without?M: Our revenue has jumped almost 20% since using Scout! I don’t know how we'd recover carts without it. Like, yes, Shopify lets who know who abandons your cart but what Scout does is let you know instantly and right to your cell phone that I always have on me. Calling a customer right away gives you almost 99% chance of closing them on a sale then calling them 2-4hrs later or even the next day. I cant go a day without using Scout its used everyday and we close customers everyday because of it. —ChallengesQ: What challenges have you faced shipping your products? Your motorbikes are still pretty big and heavy compared to the average product bought online. Are there certain methods you use or practices you have to be cognizant of? What tools/apps/products do you use to help streamline your shipping strategy?M: Challenges were definitely dealing with damages! Our bikes are fragile and shipping companies don’t really care when handling your bikes. They drop them, throw them, or even just mistakes happen and they get damaged. How we fixed it was got much better packing from the factory in China as well as started to use LTL freight shipping companies that handle shipments on pallets/skids and moved from truck to truck with forklifts. A little more expensive to ship that way sometimes but bikes arrive in perfect shape, customers are happier, and we don’t deal with the headaches the damages come with.Q: What’s your business’ biggest failure to date?M: Importing products that did not meet regulations and having them sent back to the manufacturer. Do you research before taking action because it can be costly sometimes. —Lessons and AdviceQ: What advice would you give to other business owners when it comes to recovering their abandoned carts?M: Call them instantly and ask for feedback around why they didn’t end up buying. Was there something wrong with the site or did they have any questions and they will tell you. Most of the time they just needed answers and by you calling them it makes them have trust in you. I doubt the other brands selling motorbikes are calling them, so your customer service also looks better. We also learned that sometimes people abandoned their cart from the price, so by calling them while they still have the item on their mind and giving them a discount that also leads to a sale!Q: What’s your business’ biggest success to date?M: Taking advantage of Black Friday and Christmas. Expanding to wholesale was also good for business.Q: What’s the best advice you’ve been given in regards to business?M: Be diligent with your daily to do list and tackle it everyday.Q: What advice would you give to entrepreneurs just starting their first business?M: Just start. Don’t overthink it. Start and it will all come together because what you thought your business was going to look like will be completely different once you actually get started and take off.Q: What is the one thing you attribute the majority of your success to? This could be a strategy, a tactic, something that happened unexpectedly. What was the one thing that made the biggest impact for your business?M: Biggest success is honestly the way you work. Being an entrepreneur is hard because you don’t have a boss or manager watching you and telling you to work. You have to put in the work and if you don’t, then no work gets done. I actaully have to attribute going to university as the reason for how I work. Running an online store, the things that come with it, and to grow it is like being in school. You have all these little assignments that you have to tackle, projects, and content you have to produce that are exactly like being in school and school taught me a good work ethic and I use it everyday in my business.I've spent alot of time after his interview just learning more from Mostapha, let me know if you have any other questions about his story and how he leveraged what he had to keep growing.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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wayneooverton · 8 years ago

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How to win friends and influence people on Instagram

Oh man, Instagram. That old thing. That photo app we love to hate. I wonder how sorry I would feel for myself if I knew the exact amount of times I opened Instagram and hit refresh per day. Shivers.

If I had to hanker a guess, I’d say around 20,000. You know, just to err on the side of caution.

Like most things in life, I go through phases on Instagram, of being so in love with it I have to be on for 24/7 and then other times where I consider deleting it. “Man, my latest sunset mountain photo only got 2,500 likes, what’s wrong with me? This is shit. I’m shit. Everyone hates me. I give up.”

Somehow, often my self-worth is tied to how successful I am on Instagram, or even worse, how successful OTHER people are. What. The. Fuck. How did it come to this?

My goodness, what is the world coming to when you feel like you are no longer validated because only 2,500 people you’ve never met before liked a picture you took. Then you upload a shot that gets 4,000 likes, and hot damn you’re back in business.

It’s a vicious cycle guys.

I’m the first to admit, I’ve been a dedicated slave to the Instagram for years. I mean, we go way back. Like iPhone 3 way back. Almost 5 years we’ve been together.

You see me and Instagram, we’ve had a tough relationship. You know, love hate. Hot and then cold, yes and then no. Or something like that. It’s the same with McDonald’s. You don’t people to know you actually like it, but then you end up drunkenly taking a taxi through the drive-through at 4 am. Nobody wants to admit that actually, on the inside, they really want those chicken nuggets. Badly.

*Crickets*

Wow, I’ve come a loooooong way since my first Instagram post!

But I digress. Over the years I have really loved Instagram – I still do, deep down. I learned to become a better photographer through the app, to try and become more of a visual storyteller. At the end of the day I’ve met so many incredible people through Instagram, shared so many unique moments and built my own community of followers of thousands of people, and that makes me smile. That’s what it’s for right?

Through Instagram I’ve become a keen photographer, and through it I’ve learned to challenge myself creatively.

But I’m also part of that small percentage of people who also use Instagram for business. I was New Zealand’s first professional Instagrammer, and I’ve built Instagram into my overall business strategy. In addition to my blog, it’s a large part of my work.

And when I see other people directly effecting my work, I get pissed. Guys, I’M SO PISSED

So here we go, the rant you all have been waiting for. It’s been a while, I’ve been letting you down, let me make it up to you. Are you ready?

There are two ways to be successful on Instagram; one is doing it the honest way – building up your brand, sharing high quality shots, being really active and engaged in the community, being creative and original in what you’re doing, and above all, actually be passionate about the photos and stories you’re sharing. You know, actually adhering to Instagram’s T’s and C’s, being ethical and honest, and authentic and genuine. What’s that word everyone forgets? Ah yes, having integrity.

Hell, I even co-launched my own conference called the Travel Bootcamp teaching people how to build a career in this industry.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Instagram

And then there is option B. Cheating and manipulating your way to the top, which has somehow become the popular choice these days amongst the youths and Instagram newbies. Why work hard when you can pay to get it done instead?

Cheating is rampant on Instagram these days. Rampant I say! It’s everywhere. I ignored it for the longest time, wanting to believe the best in people, many of whom are colleagues and friends of mine. But it’s getting so ridiculous now I can’t keep quiet.

So many people are exceptionally lazy. They want the success that comes with having a huge Instagram following but don’t want to put in the hours of hard work yourself. Don’t worry, I’ll make it easy . So check it out, how to fake being authentic 101. A step by step guide. Here are my best tips for cheating and manipulating your way to the top on Instagram. Good luck!

1. Go out and buy some followers

For less than $70, you can get 10,000 Instagram followers! That’s enough to start elbowing your way into this industry. But seriously, buying followers for your Instagram is so 2014. I mean come on, at least try to be more creative than that. There are far sneakier and better ways to get more followers fast than just straight up buying them. Jeez.

2. Get automatic likes on your photos

SO over the years most of us have really felt the drop on Instagram engagement, right? The number of likes and comments you get on your photos often matter more than the follower number. I’ve never worked harder on Instagram than I have been, and I follow all of their rules and suggestions to a tee for five years, and I’ve been suffering from it while watching other people cheat their way to the top without a second thought.

My engagement for my follower count actually isn’t that great, and no matter how hard I try, I can barely keep it steady let alone grow it with the way the algorithms are working. And as soon as I experiment with my shots, it plummets. And my numbers are so skewed because my followers keep growing, mostly from my blog I reckon. I’ve never been more proud of my feed and my photos than I am now, and I’m so bummed that so few of my followers or new people even see it. And I’m not alone.

But don’t worry, there are ways around it. Did you know that you can pay for a monthly service that dumps fake likes on your photos when you upload them? How great is that? You don’t have to do anything and if you get enough of them quickly, you might even show up on the Explore Page! And would you believe me if I told you dozens if not hundreds of people who might even be one of your favorite Instagrammers are doing that too! What’s a little casual fraud in between Instagram posts, right? It’s not like it inflates the entire platform and makes people who aren’t cheating look bad or anything. It’s also faking your own influence.

3. Originality is dead, guys

As much as Instagram touts the idea of being creative photographers and storytellers, does it actually back it up on the platform? Is creativity really rewarded these days on Instagram? Instagram’s own Instagram feed is all about creative projects, unusual themes and cool people doing cool stuff. But is that the content that is actually rewarded on the platform?

NOPE.

What is rewarded is people copying each other over and over and over again. The same pose, the same locations, the same outfits, even the same filters. How many people have become huge landscape travel Instagrammers because they’ve traveled to Iceland and the Faroe Islands, posed in front of cabins and woodpiles and laid on the VSCO moody PNW filters a little too hard. Cough cough, I can think of tons. I mean, Socality Barbie was popular for a reason.

I mean fads are fads, and trends are trends for a reason; and they are highly effective. Beautiful places are popular for a reason, but what about those spots that people have strategically shot over and over and shared repeatedly just to build an image. You know, wearing a fedora hat and a blanket.

But I’ve worked with people over the years, some of whom are huge btw, who blatantly admit that they look out for trendy places, then go there knowing that their photos will be the best. People who don’t consider going to places that might be under the radar, but actually look for locations to shoot in those spots from people who’ve been there before just so they can take a version that will be more popular. Or peruse Pinterest and rip off other people’s ideas as their own. Jesus Christ, does it get any lazier than that?

So come visit me in Wanaka! You might not have heard, but we have this Insta-famous tree in the lake AND a ridge view called Mt. Roy, both of which have been ruined by trendy Instagrammers! You post photos from here and you’re guaranteed double engagement!

4. Be hot and show your butt off

I’m mostly talking about girls here, just so we are clear. Statistically thinking, you have a 75% chance of growing your Instagram account by 50% if you post photos of yourself in underwear or bikinis with an emphasis on your bum. It jumps up another 10% if you have a thigh gap.* Too bad my thigh gap is limited by my nugget consumption.

2. You may not post violent, nude, partially nude, discriminatory, unlawful, infringing, hateful, pornographic or sexually suggestive photos or other content via the Service. Instagram’s Terms of Use

Um, good one!

*Disclosure, I just made that up.

5. Date someone bigger than you

Need to grow a following really quick? Start dating someone who’s Insta-famous, and be prepared to hang on for the ride! Even better if they are a good photographer. Instagram husbands anyone? And nothing grows a following quite like being a hot power couple on Instagram. Actually, if I’m being totally fair here, I am not quite sure there is anything wrong with this, I’m probably just being petty.

After all nothing is more annoying that oversharing oversexualized happy couples on Instagram, right? God I’m so bitter.

6. Steal other people’s ideas

I learned my lesson a few years ago. I have always been a candid person, and I talk about what I’m working on or goals I have openly. Til I got burned again and again by Instagrammers ripping off my work.

I learned the hard way not to talk about projects I’m in the middle of working on (at the risk of having them outpitched from under me – happened to me more than a few times), to shots I was planning to take, to my favorite locations to local spots to trips I was working on. I hate it, but it’s happened too many times that I’ve mentioned it to someone only to have that person try and pull the rug out from under me.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’m the kind of person that if you tell me something you’re working on, I’ll either try to help you get there or be supportive of it. It wouldn’t even occur to me to steal someone’s idea. As a creative, I find that behavior HORRENDOUS.

There is a big difference between being inspired by someone and ripping off other people’s work, and it’s something that happens all the time on Instagram, shamelessly.

7. Don’t hate the player, hate the game

There are so many games you can play on Instagram that are far from the Candy Crush variety. One of the biggest ways people game Instagram is following and unfollowing people. Back in the day, people used to do this manually. Follow a bunch of people per day, then unfollow the ones who didn’t follow you back or just unfollow again anyways. What trickery!

Then it got sophisticated and there are apps that you can use that will automatically follow and unfollow for you. Bear in mind it violates Instagram’s terms to authorize apps like that, and it’s pretty fun to go stalk people on SocialBlade to see who’s cheating this way. You just enter in the name of any Instagrammer on a desktop, then click on their IG page and then click detailed stats and have fun!

This is a highly effective way to grow your account because it brings real people in the meantime over to your page. The downside of course, besides being highly unethical, means you aren’t in control of your account anymore and god knows who you’re following. “Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to follow that nazi account, oops!”

8. Not who you seem to be

There are a few people, who shall remain nameless, mostly because I’m scared, who were the ultimate Instagram sneaks.

Like, having a feature account, which is to say a big account on Instagram that just reshares other people’s photos. Sometimes crediting the owners, most of the time just straight up ripping it off. Building a huge following only posting the best of the best, which isn’t even yours, then one day deleting all the photos and reposting your own as a personal account on Instagram.

Yes, people have done it, and some very, very successfully, though of course never admitting it.

I have two words for those people – dodgy motherf*ckers!

9. You don’t even have to be on the app

Did you know that you don’t even need to be on Instagram yourself? You can authorize apps that go and like and comment on stuff for you. I mean, I’m sure you’ve all seen it. Random comments on your photos that don’t make sense. I’ve called out bloggers who comment on all my photos but don’t actually follow me. Or better yet, friends of mine of leave comments on porn or other dirty pages. I’m sure you didn’t mean “wow what a great shot” of a teenager in a thong.

No one likes a spammer!

There are so many Instagrammers who are now super famous who got their start doing this one or two years ago. Because it brings real people over to your page, you get real growth and engagement, never mind that you didn’t even do it yourself and it’s super dodgy and straight up violates several of Instagram’s terms. Why you would do this is beyond me, let alone take the risk of losing your account.

10. Don’t be a dick!

It’s up to you whether or not you want to be a douche. I have to believe that at the end of the day, this kind of behavior will fail. It’s not a long-term solution to this kind of work, and I think that if you build a career on deceit and lies, it will blow up in your face.

Who said that breaking into this industry and being famous on Instagram would be easy? You have to work your ass off at it, often for years before seeing any kind of real success. I have been in this industry for seven years, that’s right seven years of work! It never stops!

Real influence and real success takes real work.

I’m mad because this terrible behavior is straight fucking up the industry on a big scale. It’s not a little problem, it’s rampant, and nothing is being done about it. It skews the numbers and screws over people who have worked and been ethical.

And here’s a shameless little self-promo: sick of seeing this kind of behavior combined with seeing a real lack of hard, credible advice to help break into the travel industry, my business partners Lauren Bath, Georgia Rickard and I co-launched our own conference, the Travel Bootcamp last year. An intensive one day, no BS workshop, we give you all the tools and facts no one talks about that will help you get paid to travel like us. Between us we’ve traveled to over 100 countries, worked for over a decade in the industry and make six figure salaries from it.

Our next Bootcamp is in a couple of weeks in Melbourne on April 29th if you want to come – we have a few tickets left.

Get your tickets to the Travel Bootcamp Melbourne here!

Have you heard of this stuff before? Can you believe it? What kind of terrible behavior have you seen on Instagram? Spill!

The post How to win friends and influence people on Instagram appeared first on Young Adventuress.

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