Business Blog on The Huffington Post

Ty Morse is the CEO of Songwhale, an interactive technology company focusing on enterprise SMS solutions and Direct Response campaigns, both domestic and international.

In business, our goal is to have our product or service reach the broadest target market possible. We want everyone to have access to and want to use our thing. Success is seen as broad adoption across vast swaths of consumers. However, narrowing your focus can actually be a plus. Sometimes, you can adjust your product a little bit so that it is more attractive to specific groups of people. By creating a larger series of slightly varied products, you can actually reach more consumers.

For example, at Songwhale, our Cheapest Texting platform provides generic SMS text messaging service to everyone who wants to use text message marketing for their businesses. Our platform can be used in many ways by all different kinds of businesses, but by identifying niche markets (or groups of potential users), customizing our marketing and our tools for those particular groups, and creating isolated web pages to distinguish those groups from a broader consumer base, we have seen a dramatic increase in conversion rates.

Most people want to be catered to. They want companies to understand their needs and create products that respond to those needs -- niche marketing can do just that. Here's how you can make niche marketing work for your business:

Identify the most relevant customer segments.

Keep track of the people who are already using or expressing interest in your business. Do you regularly hear from local restaurants or international banks? Are your services and products being used by gym rats or stay-at-home moms? You might notice customer service inquiries from similar types of people who are interested in a particular color or feature. Looking at who is using your services now will give you a good idea of which niche markets you can isolate.

At Songwhale, we were working with a local restaurant owner on developing text messages for ordering and promotions. After customizing the platform to work for this restauranteur, we realized other restaurant owners would probably be interested in a similar setup. The effort we put into one client's platform could be easily mapped onto a custom platform for all restauranteurs to use, which is how our Cheapest Texting for Restaurants product began.

Determine which elements are most important and useful to each group.

Using current customers is the easiest way to figure out what customers like them will want and need. When you start working to design a product for a specific customer type, you can repurpose that work as a model for the demographic. For example, we developed a text-in showings and tours system for a realtor, so we added that option to our Cheapest Texting for Real Estate platform.

Create distinct websites and pages for those groups.

Creating unique landing pages shows that you have crafted your product specifically for that customer. These addresses and pages can provide more targeted examples of the product as it pertains to that market, and they make the individual customers feel more special because the product has been remade just for them.

For example, we created a Cheapest Texting for Churches website to offer examples relevant to the needs of churches. Now, when a pastor wants to look at how text messaging can be used to increase participation at his local parish, he can go to this landing page and see specific examples crafted for his group of marketers. Each group we target, from bars to small businesses to retail, has its own distinct landing pages, tool sets and sample texting campaigns.

Make your new websites search-friendly.

Most people searching for a particular product or service already have some ideas about what they want. Those ideas affect the words they use to search for a similar service. Performing some simple keyword research and optimizing your site's content and metadata can help the right users find you.

By focusing on a few niche markets, you demonstrate to each target audience that you understand them and what they are looking for. The consumer can immediately see how the product you offer applies to them, making them more likely to buy -- and helping you grow your business in the process.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This week, America is celebrating National Save for Retirement Week, established by Congress to raise public awareness about the importance of putting money aside for our golden years. For decades, traditional pensions, or defined benefit plans, have been the retirement savings tool of choice for employers in the public and private sector, and they continue to be the best way to provide the most workers with a secure retirement. Here are the top 5 reasons why pensions are best for workers, and a safe bet for taxpayers.

1. Defined benefit plans guarantee a reliable retirement benefit for life
Most Americans subscribe to the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can live a dignified life in retirement. Defined benefit plans are the only retirement system that is designed to provide a regular, pre-determined benefit regardless of how long a person lives. This ensures that aging individuals can cover the cost of basic necessities such as food, housing, and health related expenses. Rather than seeing our seniors in line at food banks or rationing meals on food stamps, pensions afford people the stability and peace of mind they have worked for throughout their lives.

When politicians gut these systems, they strip the people who pay into them throughout their working lives of their hard-earned retirement security, and that broken promise can have an enormous impact. For Gwendolyn Beasley, a librarian from Detroit whose benefits were reduced and healthcare plan nixed when the city filed for bankruptcy, it meant delaying important medical procedures until she could afford the co-pay. Gwendolyn didn't cause Detroit's financial problems; it was politicians who made illegal deals with Wall Street. But when the city's finances crumbled, it was Gwendolyn and her health that suffered.

2. Defined benefit plans pool risks, are professionally managed, and yield the best returns
The scale and structure of group accounts such as defined benefit plans allows professional managers to make smarter investments that yield higher returns in the long term. That's because in group accounts, younger workers who can assume greater risks offset older workers who would otherwise opt for safer investments. In contrast, those with 401(k)-style retirement plans take safer bets on less dynamic investments as they approach retirement to ensure funds are available when they need them. A study by the National Institute on Retirement Security found that defined benefit plans are a far more cost-efficient means of providing retirement income than defined contribution plans.

3. Defined benefit plans can absorb market fluctuations
After the financial collapse of 2008, retirement systems across the spectrum took a hard hit. Public pensions are rebounding, with the vast majority returning to financial health. A recent study by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that the health of defined benefit public pensions nationwide is up and expected to keep improving. The study found that pensions in 2014 were funded at 74 percent, up from 72 percent in 2012. Researchers project that funding levels will be as high as 80.5 percent by 2018.

The advantage of a pooled system is that all pension liabilities will never be due at once, so retirees can continue to receive payments during a downturn and recovery. If you were at retirement age in 2008 and vested in a 401(k) or individual market account during those years, you know how much it really does matter that a pension has time to recover.

4. Defined benefit plans attract and retain people who are committed to the long-term success of their employer
With defined benefit plans, workers have a stake in the long-term viability and growth of their employer, which gives them incentive to be more invested in their work. Defined benefit plans also encourage workers to stay the course, which means employers can also invest in worker development without the fear of losing their employees. At the same time, the sought-after stability of defined benefit plans gives employers who offer them an edge over those with less-competitive retirement savings options. That gives employers an extra chip to play when trying to recruit the best talent. In all, defined benefit plans produce a more loyal and skilled workforce.

5. Defined benefit plans are the most cost-effective retirement savings method available
The National Institute on Retirement Security has found that defined benefit plans deliver the same level of benefits as 401(k)-style plans at almost half the cost. Simply put, defined benefit plans are a better bang for the buck.

No matter which way you slice it, pensions are the most cost-effective and reliable way to provide a large number of employees with a secure retirement. So why do you hear so much about the need for pension reform? To start, there is a common misconception that traditional pensions, particularly in the public sector, are overly generous. The truth is most defined benefit plans provide retirees with a modest monthly benefit. In fact, retirees in Pennsylvania's public employee retirement system received an average of $25,889 a year in 2014, while retired Oklahoma teachers got by on $19,846.

The real story is that in recent years, right-wing ideologues like Enron-billionaire John Arnold have led a well-funded attack on defined benefit plans, pushing misinformation in order to sway policymakers toward alternatives that siphon money away from states and workers to the benefit of Wall Street.

Workers including teachers, firefighters, and police officers are the backbone of America's middle class. We can improve our economy by doing what's right for workers and for taxpayers - and that means protecting traditional pensions.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

My career has taken many, many (many) turns and detours. Most of my jobs have involved writing of some sort (thank goodness), and I've worked for all types of media: magazines, television, book publishers, online, and most recently, newspapers. The only media I am missing in my career are the ones my partner T has mastered: radio and satellite. Between the two of us, we've got communications pretty well covered.

And then there's Z. Math and science all the way, baby! He's very good at English and history, and is quite a skilled writer (however, if it is suggested he write more than a second draft of anything, the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins). He just doesn't enjoy those as much as math and science.

Overall, I'd like to think we're an academically well-rounded family.

Z wants to be an astrophysicist and has had his sights set on it since third grade. And although I love astronomy, I am limited by my poor, two-dimensional thinking brain and can barely keep up with Z's scientific explanations and theories of black holes, dark matter, and all other things celestial.

I am somewhat concerned about what I think most every parent dreads when their child goes off to college: the possibility that, after three years of school, you'll be hearing him announce that he wants to "do something different," and pursue Turf-Management, or Bagpipe Performance. Not that there's anything wrong with any field of study, but if he decides to switch majors, we just keep stressing he needs to figure that out within the first year and a half of school. We want him to find happy, but we're not prepared for the stop-and-smell-the-roses college plan.

My first job out of university (English major, advertising minor) was working in the public relations department of a non-profit arts organization. I LOVED that job, I loved my boss (best mentor I've ever had), and I had a lot of fun with the people I worked with. Medical benefits were ok for a non-profit, but the pay was, alas, also non-profit. Had I been able to make a viable living there, I would have stayed a lot longer than the couple of years I was able to manage.

After that, I worked for a family-owned business. Then a large corporation. Then a small university trying to act like a big one... a cable-TV company in the middle of a cornfield (really)... a magazine publisher at the corner of Park and 33rd in NYC... a book publisher across the river in New Jersey... myself as a freelance publication designer from my basement office... a veterinarian whose hours worked well for a single parent... a jeweler who desperately needed marketing help... and a newspaper.

Now I work for myself... which is a little scary, but a whole lot of happy.

Along the way, I experienced some professional satisfaction, and unfortunately dissatisfaction, too. A lot. I guess it just took me longer to find the right road.

I think all of us, when embarking on our education to prepare for our working lives -- whether it's college, apprenticeships, on-the-job training -- expect to use that education in our chosen field for a long time to come. When we suddenly find ourselves outside that field, whether by design or by accident, it can be disheartening.

I voluntarily left my field due to burn out, pure and simple. What wasn't so simple was that I expected to go right back to it. But that didn't happen for a long, long time, for lots of reasons. Although I'm not someone who typically believes in "regrets," I am sad that because of financial constraints, I had to take some jobs simply because I had to pay bills. I can honestly say those are jobs that made me wonder if I wasted time and money on college all those years ago...

Fortunately, I got out of that funk: I truly don't believe any sort of education is a waste. I felt that way for a time, but I don't really believe it. Life took a lot of unexpected turns, and the universe threw a lot of big bad awful at me. But I got through it, and got back on the way to happy, and now I'm doing what I believe I'm supposed to be doing.

Had I not gone through everything prior, though, I wouldn't have what it takes to do this writing gig.

Hmm.

Now, Z is starting his first part-time job search. Discussing the pros and cons of various jobs at this level is pretty basic: school comes first; dress appropriately; show up on time; be polite; and do your work to the best of your ability. He wants that paycheck -- although I don't understand how he's thinking he'll be making enough to buy a car in "a few months." I've tried explaining who FICA is and why he'll be taking a good chunk of each of his paychecks. It will also be part-time: no more than 12-15 hours per week during the school year, and at minimum wage, I'm sure.

I expect reality to be making a stop at our house in the near future.

Anyway, he has a few good possibilities lined up, including working at our public library. Which is kind of funny, because that was my very first job when I was in high school.

Maybe we're more alike than I originally thought... although I hope Z's career path to Happy doesn't take quite as many turns as mine. But this one will be a first step toward building a life of his own, learning what it means to be a good employee with good work ethics, and hopefully learning more about time management and juggling school, work, and still find time for fun and what makes him smile.

It took me a long time to find happy, and I intend to stay for a good long time. Not just for me, either; but to show my child what finding fulfillment, finding the Happy, in your chosen field looks like. As I said, it took a while, but I'd like to think if I had to travel so long on such a hard road, it was so that I could eventually light the way for Z so that he can find Happy sooner.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Far too many business leaders today define the success of their company solely by the profit it generates. That's one reason why so many Americans are losing faith in major corporations - they're tired of seeing a mentality that puts profit before people, whether those people be the companies' employees or their fellow citizens.

But there's a decision industry leaders can make today that would send a signal that we're serious about rebuilding the public trust: supporting a Department of Labor initiative that would finally make doing what's right for retirement savers the law of the land.

Earlier this year, the Department of Labor proposed a new "Best Interest Rule" that's so common sense most Americans believe it's already in place. Very simply, it requires brokers and other financial advisers to put the best interests of their clients' savings for retirement first, before their own bottom line. It closes a 40 year-old legal loophole that has been exploited by some in the financial advisory industry for decades, allowing them to rake in billions of dollars a year in commissions by recommending investments that drain away their clients' hard-earned savings through these commissions and low investment returns.

Of course, not everyone who gives retirement investment advice is taking advantage of their clients, and many do act in their clients' best interests. But because the law does not require financial advisors to do so, far too many do not act fairly.

Thus it is that selfish actions by some advisors are damaging the reputations of all of the 'good guys' in the financial advisory industry at the very time when we're seeing a new generation of innovative firms already embracing the spirit of this proposed rule and helping middle class savers get the kind of advice that just a few years ago was out of reach.

For example, advisers like Rebalance IRA, Wealthfront, Personal Capital and Financial Engine are using cutting-edge technology to provide workers and retirees with low-cost, high quality advice that puts the best interests of savers first. And these innovators are joining the hundreds of thousands of advisers at traditional firms already working face-to-face with modest savers and small businesses to provide them with advice under a 'best interest standard' while charging reasonable fees.

This is the kind of forward-looking leadership that all business leaders should demand of financial advisors serving their employees and retirees. Putting financial clients' best interest first is the right thing to do, and the proposed Best Interest Rule sets this higher standard while accommodating the financial services industry's demand to preserve its commission-based business model.

Supporting this Department of Labor initiative should be a no-brainer, but unfortunately some in the financial services industry are using the same tired tactics that have caused so many Americans to lose faith in business leadership over the years. Many bankers, broker-dealers, and other members of the industry have issued dire warnings that this modest and sensible rule will actually hurt low and middle income savers. This is the same tactic they've been using since the inception of financial regulation in the United States, including reforms enacted in the 1930s to prevent another Great Depression.

These attacks are false and misleading, and the public deserves an honest debate on such an important issue. Thankfully, well-respected and effective groups like Better Markets, AARP and the AFL-CIO are standing up and fighting back with the facts.

After their decades of hard work, Americans deserve to retire with dignity and security. The proposed Department of Labor Best Interest Rule will help them do just that if we can just get it over the finish line and beat back selfish opposition coming from within parts of the financial services industry.

This isn't just an opportunity to give all Americans the unbiased, fairly priced advice they expect and deserve. It's also an opportunity to shatter the stereotype of corner office executives focused solely on their companies' bottom lines, which is why all business leaders should be doing what's right and supporting this important initiative on behalf of our employees and retirees.

Leo Hindery, Jr. is Co-chair of the Task Force on Jobs Creation, founder of Jobs First 2012, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the former CEO of AT&T Broadband and its predecessors, Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) and Liberty Media.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

2015-10-19-1445268672-8138322-photo14294974198169ca5cfb4571a.jpeg

Innovation calls us to do the impossible: to build for a future we can't yet see. The very notion of innovation is riddled with paradoxes. It asks us to embrace wildly different--even contradictory--ideas at once: creativity and pragmatism, foresight and hindsight, breakthrough visions and incremental change.

In this way, innovation is unlike all the normal things we do on an everyday basis. That's why the conventional strategies we bring to organizational management are inadequate. Innovation requires its own unique set of skills. It's not so much thinking outside of the box as it is redefining what that box is.

There are three defining characteristics that differentiate innovation from all other forms of value. The first is its time-based nature. Innovation happens in the future for which we have no data now. We can't predict the future, but we can prepare for it. The other complication to innovation's timing is the inevitable expiration date: innovation has a shelf life. It goes sour like milk. Think about all the gear you bought for your kids at the Apple store last Christmas. This year, it will all be outdated. An innovation doesn't stay an innovation for very long.

The second key quality to innovation is positive deviance. What makes an innovation valuable is the amount of deviance it has from the standard or the norm. In all other situations, when we plan for something, we assume that there will be continuity between today and tomorrow. The opposite is true for innovation, where we seek out and depend on discontinuity. Just take a look at Tesla Motors. Everything about the company is deviant--the way its cars look, the way it sells its cars online without a showroom, the way it makes cars from stock parts you can get from any supplier. The only thing that's not deviant about Tesla is the individual pieces of technology it uses, which is usually what we think of as the most innovative thing about a cutting-edge organization. So the company is deviant not only in its process but also in the very way it conceives of innovation.

The third element to consider about innovation is that is happens horizontally. Typically, organizations strive for alignment, working to make sure that all the measures, or key performance indicators, line up nicely and that all departments are on the same page. In innovation, things don't work that way. That's because innovation cuts across all the boundaries and disciplines of business practice. Sometimes there's only one element of a product that's innovative. It could be in the packaging, like it is for Proctor & Gamble. It could be in customer service, like it is for Singapore Airlines. It could be in the distribution process, like it is for Federal Express. The challenge is in bringing out a single innovative aspect of a project while maintaining the contributions from all other sectors.

For this reason, innovation resists alignment but requires synchronization. We don't want straight lines--we just want everything to go together at the right time. This is not unlike an orchestra, where everyone is playing a different instrument but they're all playing the same piece of music. Or a football team, where everyone is in a different position, but they all need to be coordinated.

How exactly do we accommodate for all these innovation paradoxes, the challenges that make innovation such a distinct--indeed, strange--way of thinking and creating? This is exactly what I'll address in next week's continuation of this three-part article: the concrete steps innovators must take in navigating the thorny, twisty path to the unknown.

Jeff DeGraff is the Dean of Innovation: professor, author, speaker and advisor to hundreds of the top organizations in the world. You can learn more about his groundbreaking University of Michigan Certified Professional Innovator Certificate Program and Innovatrium Institute for Innovation at www.jeffdegraff.com/cpi and keynote speeches through BigSpeak Speakers Bureau.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

I've been in business for 13 years and started my business when my oldest child was just shy of one. I now have four children (14, 12, 9 and 5) and have managed to build my business, Baby Be Hip, while raising those kids. Let me tell you, it has not been easy, but it is doable. As you all know, you're going to get curveballs thrown at you, both in business and in life. But I have found one tool that enabled me to survive and even thrive. The power of a good team is critical to success.

My first criteria when hiring is finding someone I can trust. As a sometimes "absentee" boss, it is crucial that I can trust my employees to do the right thing and treat the business as their own. There have been times when I have been in the hospital with a sick kid for a month at a time (one of my children has significant special needs) and trusting my employees allows me to be fully present with my daughter. To me, this is the most important trait in an employee.

The next key piece is my ability to transfer the company's values (which I have hanging in the shop) and standard operating procedures. This means that the company is able to operate as though I am there even when I am not. When I started the business, I knew I had to build it around my life because I wouldn't be able to be there all the time. I also knew that I shouldn't be spending my time on day-to-day order fulfillment, as my time is better spent working on the business rather than in the business. Having employees that understand and execute the values and processes is huge, as it eliminates a lot of questions and gives my employees the autonomy to make decisions without me.

Finally, I have learned the power in hiring domain experts versus jacks-of-all-trades. I'm still a work in process on this. I understand for many small businesses--including my own--the only option is to have a jack-of-all-trades, especially in the beginning. And even today, my employees--including me--have to pitch in and do it all at times. But once you start hiring or sub-contracting experts, it puts you on a different playing field. For years, my ads asked for a "jack-of-all-trades", and it wasn't until a mentor, Amy Larrimore, told me my business has a hiring issue that I realized this. Now that I've hired domain experts, our execution has improved and we're getting results. What a difference.

Of course, there are lots of other things that matter in finding the winning team but these are three things that really matter to me. I think we all need to figure out what works best for us and our businesses as well as our lifestyle. Let me know your thoughts as well as what is critical to your success in finding the right team.

This blogger graduated from Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses program. Goldman Sachs is a partner of the What Is Working: Small Businesses section.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Have you ever applied for a credit card?

A loan? A big one like a mortgage?

If so, you know that an ever more efficient (so they say) rating system, based on a myriad of data, is crunched through ever more complex algorithms in order to get you a quicker answer and faster access to your spending limits and at the same time to better protect the lender from default, fraud and the losses that poor human judgment can bring about.

Once, you applied at the bank or credit union, in person, filled out the background data, provided a few references, waited a week or so and, voila, you were in the money or not.

Today, you apply online, provide key data and the bots deploy to search and sweep in a digital quest following your trail (and there is a trail) and feed the maw of the ever-hungry, data-crunching algorithm and soon you are in the money or not.

So far so good.

Yet, we had a credit crisis that took down monolithic financial institutions; we continue to read about the fear of big bank losses due to poor vetting and overextension of credit and, of course, poor judgment still seems to be in the headlines on a fairly regular basis.

All in a day's work for Big Data.

In fact, I have heard from a few banks that for certain loans and such they have re-instituted the look-them-in-the-eye test -- a gut check of face-to-face evaluation -- in and of itself, as fallible as anything else, but linked to digital data, a good backstop and smart fail-safe system check.

But that's not my point.

I have written much about the digibabble surrounding Big Data and the ensuing surprise factor that more and more seems to be an outcome on blind reliance to its promise of predictive perfection.

Frankly, I am way more concerned about the addition of other personal data to the credit equation.

To that end:

I call your attention to a recent article in The Atlantic by Frank Pasquale... "Scores of Scores: How Companies Are Reducing Consumers to Single Numbers."

Pasquale's fear is not of credit scoring -- a good thing -- or other vertical scoring -- also potentially good and useful -- nor is it paranoia of "Big Data"... again important and a boon to our world.

His fear is that: "America's obsession with scoring has gone far beyond credit."

China is already mixing credit scores with political views. Imagine the impact that kind of social scoring could have on a society where only those who agree with the powerful elite can buy a house or start a business.

What if you were penalized for what your friends thought and posted? Think about that -- you have a good friend, from childhood, who has a divergent view from yours about the state of the world, but innocent friendship trumps politics (sometimes) and yet you are denied your new car or home.

This is not the stuff of George Orwell, folks... this is becoming very real and has some terrifying possibilities... as Pasquale points out:

Policymakers should discourage the expansion of credit scoring into life scoring -- or, at the very least, require disclosure of all the data and algorithms behind the scores to the people being scored.

There needs to be a recognition that scoring can be 'highly reductionist, atomizing complex, contingent relationships into simplified, one-dimensional measures that cannot provide a full and multidimensional picture' of individuals. It's not necessarily an innovation to celebrate. Rather, it can be a prelude to the discrimination that's rightly condemned.

And, I call to your attention Peeple -- an almost app -- that still might find the light of day.

But as you read about it, follow the backlash that has at least slowed it down.

There is so much good that scoring in some categories can do -- from disease prevention to employee reliability to better loan granting -- but mix and match them to create a bigger view and I'd posit we create more of a Frankenstein than a utopian model.

And, even Google likes to look data in the eye...

So here is a quote -- of sorts -- from Charles Dickens (but the text was shortened from a story, although the context is true and reflects his view of the world then and I'd be ready to bet today as well...) Listen:

Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another to be brave and true. Charles Dickens

I'd say he has hit it square on -- at some point we have to look life, each other, our credit ratings, in the eye, face-to-face, if not, we run the risk of a world controlled by hidden algorithms that reduce us all to one dimension.

And for all of us marketers, there is no greater threat to success and no quicker path to failure than turning our clients and customers and prospects into mere scores in a computer program.

As much as we can fool ourselves into believing we have somehow dimensionalized life by assigning us all scores based on torrents of Big Data, I'd bet on the companies and brands that valued real people with real needs and real unpredictability.

What do you think?

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

BEIJING -- On Oct. 5, 12 countries led by the United States announced the completion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, with all parties basically agreeing to the content of this pact. The TPP involves zero tariff, free flow of personnel and capital, protection of intellectual property rights, improvement in business environment embracing such fields as labor and environmental protection and restrictions on preferential policies for state-owned enterprises, which have never been touched upon by any past trade agreements. It sets new and high standards for global trade deals.

The 12 TPP countries include the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico, and their combined economies account for about 40 percent of the global total. The pact, if ultimately ratified by the countries, will complete the world's largest free-trade zone, and will also lead to the construction of a high-standard economic cooperation platform that caters to the trends of world economic development. It will be of great significance to the countries in driving sustainable growth, supporting jobs, promoting innovation and fostering inclusive development.

U.S. President Barack Obama also issued a statement after the deal was reached, saying openly that the United States could not let other countries write the rules of the global economy.

The TPP is a trade pact dominated by the United States, which seeks to be the dominant power in writing rules for global trade and investment in this century. Another goal is, via the implementation of the TPP, to create an Asia-Pacific economic sphere that is also dominated by the United States, and to get the U.S. deeply involved in the Asia-Pacific economic integration process. For instance, the partnership, through setting high standards on comprehensive market access and rules of origin, will significantly reduce trade barriers among TPP members, and will facilitate U.S. trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region.

Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, recently said that the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and the U.S. should not be satisfied with a mediocre deal that could not set high standards for Asia-Pacific trade in the future. He said the pact must be able to bring benefits to Americans and could meet the criteria in the bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority. U.S. President Barack Obama also issued a statement after the deal was reached, saying openly that the United States could not let other countries write the rules of the global economy. Obama said that the TPP will set high standards for protecting workers and the environment, and help level the playing field for farmers, ranchers and manufacturers. He appealed to Congress to throw its bipartisan weight behind the deal and ratify it, hinting that after it enters into force, the TPP members will eliminate more than 18,000 tariffs and taxes that various countries put on American exports.

The TPP has created a complete 'de-Sinicized' industrial chain.

China, a major country in the Asia-Pacific region and the second-largest economy in the world, is not a TPP member. Several Chinese economists and scholars observed that the TPP and the parallel Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership still under negotiation naturally constitute a "decelerator" in checking China's influence in global trade.

On the one hand, the TPP has created a complete "de-Sinicized" industrial chain. In the upstream of this chain, Malaysia, Brunei, Chile, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada could provide raw materials and mineral resources; in the middle stream, South Korea, Japan, the United States and Canada are all manufacturing powerhouses; and in the downstream, the TPP has the zero-tariff arrangements among the member countries in terms of sales and marketing. In the Asia-Pacific region, if the United States makes use of resources from Australia, Chile and Canada, teams up with Japan and South Korea in high-end manufacturing, and offers support to Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia in low-end industries, it will inevitably pose grave economic and trade challenges to China.

On the other hand, upon the opening of the financial sector, the partnership aims to construct a core financial system that will be dominated by the U.S. dollar, so as to guarantee the future position for the dollar in the world. Financial capital of the 12 members will undergo deep integration under the TPP framework and will be mutually pegged. This is one of the important reasons why the TPP, compared with the arrangements for the opening of financial services in other international trade agreements, is more profound and significant. Some people believe that through integrating the factors for economic, trade and financial development under the TPP framework, the United States could accomplish its goal of "containing China."

Among the steps already taken, the most important include pushing to complete at the earliest date possible the Bilateral Investment Treaty negotiations.

In fact, China's development strategy and path are clearly defined and transparent. On the domestic front, China works to modernize the state governance system, carries out reform and opening up to the outside world, adheres to rule of law, and enforces strict disciplines of the Party in the entire process of building a comprehensive well-off society.

On the international front, China will play its role as a responsible country, adhere to the road of peaceful development, abide by the principles for win-win outcomes and mutual benefits, and assume international obligations that are commensurate with its actual strength. China and the United States should seek to better understand each other, eliminate mistrust and misunderstanding, and surmount the "zero-sum" mindset. They should also build up confidence in their friendly cooperation and development, face up to their disagreements, engage in frank communications, and work together to unleash positive energy for the construction of bilateral relations.

In the face of challenges for the global economy, China and the United States should consider regional and global interests, abide by the preset rules, and make joint endeavors to build economic and trade relations. The two should seek to become the twin engines driving the growth of the world economy, and two major players in promoting reforms in the global governance system.

The United States could help China join the TPP while China helps the United States join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

For China and the United States, a new type of economic and trade relationship is in the best interest of the two major powers, and they should work towards this end. Recently, the two sides have further deepened cooperation in a range of areas, including the mutually reciprocal and beneficial economic and trade ties, more open and inclusive regional economic cooperation, a policy environment favorable to innovation and cooperation, and sectors such as energy, climate change, medical services, infrastructure and financial services. Among the steps already taken, the most important include pushing to complete at the earliest date possible the Bilateral Investment Treaty negotiations, to start at an appropriate time the feasibility study on the Bilateral Investment and Trade Treaty and officially launch negotiations when conditions are ripe.

The United States could help China join the TPP while China helps the United States join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and China and the United States jointly promote the construction of the Asia-Pacific Free Trade Zone and try to complete the construction of the world's largest free trade zone by around 2030.

To be specific, the measures include: to reach a high-standard bilateral investment treaty to encourage mutual investment; to promote trade liberalization and facilitation in the Asia-Pacific region; to continue to promote market-oriented financial reforms; to promote innovation and cooperation in sectors such as energy, environmental protection, medical services, high technology, infrastructure and connectivity; to elevate cooperation in agriculture; and to make progress in cyber and information security. All these are areas that matter to the interests and well-being of both China and the United States, and all countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

These are exciting times in the so-called "sharing economy," and not just for Silicon Valley techies and billionaire investors. The moment has finally arrived for the people who actually do the work of moving, sharing and renting their goods through businesses like Uber and AirBnB to get some much-needed attention.

Uber drivers in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas and a number of other cities called for a strike this past weekend to address issues surrounding tips and rates. Earlier last week, Oregon's labor commissioner said in an advisory opinion that under Oregon law, Uber drivers should be seen as employees. This move opens the door for Uber drivers to assert all the rights normally afforded to employees in Oregon, including the right to a minimum wage, safe working conditions, and workers compensation and unemployment benefits. The advisory opinion contrasts sharply with the company's current practice of classifying its workers as independent contractors.

Oregon and Los Angeles aren't alone. In Seattle, Councilmember Mike O'Brien introduced legislation that would give Uber drivers a new way to work collectively to improve their jobs. In California, Uber faces a class action lawsuit by drivers alleging Uber has misclassified its employees as contract workers -- meaning they miss out on worker protections. And change isn't just coming to the ride share industry. In Los Angeles, Partnership for Working Families affiliate, LAANE, has crafted data-driven policy solutions to create some of the most comprehensive, enforceable legislation in the country to ensure AirBnB's operations are truly about "sharing" an extra room or sofa.

The new policies, legal actions and organizing efforts (like Silicon Valley Rising) that are sprouting up around the country aren't merely one off attempts to challenge the Uberization of economies locally. Instead, these initiatives are important signs that workers and communities caught in this precarious labor model are ready for Silicon Valley to use its innovation to benefit all those it employs.

Working people have good reason to be concerned about the rapid rise of the on-demand economy. As noted by a number of observers, the "new" gig economy actually looks like a familiar continuation of temporary and contingent labor models that working people have been fighting for years. Under this model, workers do not know how many hours or when they will be allowed to work or how much they will earn in a given week or month. It creates instability for workers and their families and ultimately our entire community. While supporters argue that people should have the opportunity to pick up extra cash on the side, offering multiple precarious jobs in place of one good job is not the answer to inequality.

That's not to say that the on-demand economy is entirely bad. It has offered consumers an easy way to access goods. Its innovative model of connectivity has the potential to revolutionize everything from shopping to political action. Yet, if the sharing economy is going to be a major source of work in the future, we need to make sure that it is providing the kind of jobs our communities need. That means a decent wage, access to benefits like workers' compensation, and the right to organize, regardless of the avenue through which those benefits are earned.

No matter how you feel about the sharing economy, the one indisputable fact is that it can't be ignored. With 1 million active drivers globally, Uber is quickly becoming one of the largest global employers. Its current model has major implications for the stability of jobs beyond the transportation sector and across the world. That's why it's so important that our cities and communities are developing new organizing and policy models to match the innovation in the tech sector.

On-demand workers are rising up. It's up to sharing economy innovators to keep pace.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Last week, the Democrats received an unexpected gift from the Federal Reserve Board. Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed's Board of Governors, gave a speech in which she questioned the need for the Fed to raise interest rates. Brainard pointed out the asymmetric risks in the current situation, where a pre-mature rise in interest rates could lead to slowing growth and reduced employment. By contrast, there is almost no risk that delaying a rate hike will lead to serious problems with inflation, since the inflation rate has long been well below the Fed's 2.0 percent target.

Brainard's comments are enormously important for the future course of the Fed's interest rate policy. First and most obviously, she is one of the ten people currently sitting on the Fed's Open Market Committee (FOMC) that sets interest rates. (Two of the governor positions are currently vacant.) However the Fed has a tradition of trying to move by consensus and it is extremely rare for a governor to dissent. A rate hike became even more unlikely when Daniel Tarullo, another governor, seconded Brainard's position.

The opposition of two governors, coupled with weaker than expected economic data, make the prospect of a rate hike in the remaining months of 2015 highly unlikely. It is a safe bet that we will not see an interest rate hike at least until the FOMC meets at the end of January.

This is very good news for the Democrats because history has shown a strong relationship between the strength of the economy in an election year and the prospects for the incumbent party. If the economy is growing at a reasonably healthy pace in 2016, and people are getting jobs, then the Democrats have a good chance of hanging on to the White House. On the other hand, if the economy begins to stagnate, and job growth slows, the Republican presidential candidate will likely be occupying the Oval Office.

The Fed's interest rate decisions can play a central role in this story. Most immediately the Fed will be raising the interest rate that banks charge each other on overnight reserves. This only directly affects the banks, but when this rate increases, we are likely to see higher interest rates rise across the board, including interest rates on home mortgages, car loans, and credit card debt. When these rates rise we are likely to see less demand in many key sectors, slowing growth and job creation.

We have seen this story before, most recently in 1994 when the Fed began to raise interest rates because it was concerned that the unemployment rate was getting too low and the labor market was getting too strong. In that year events pretty much followed the textbook. Housing construction was most effected, falling by 8.1 percent from the second quarter of 1994 to 1995. Largely due to the slowdown in housing construction, the economy grew at just a 1.4 percent annual rate in the first half of 1995.

Slower growth gave the Fed its desired weakening of the labor market. In the first four months of 1994 the economy added an average of 320,000 jobs a month. In the four months from April to July of 1995 job growth averaged just 120,000 a month. The unemployment rate, which had been dropping rapidly, actually rose by 0.2 percentage points in the second quarter of 1995 compared with the first quarter.

If the Fed had started tightening this fall then we would likely be seeing the effects in the form of slower growth somewhere in the middle of next year. In other words, the rate hikes would be hitting the economy just in time to hurt the Democrats' prospects for the fall election. Now that rate hikes seem out of the question until next year, the timing of their impact is likely outside of the election window.

Of course most of us care about the Fed's actions much more because of their impact on the economy and the labor market than their impact on the Democrats' election prospects. And here it looks like Brainard very much made the right call. The data that has been released since her speech show there is no evidence of inflationary pressure to be found anywhere. In fact at the wholesale level, most price indices are declining.

The latest data also show retail sales weakening and Walmart, the country's largest retailer, expects sales to lag through the rest of the year. Recent data from the Fed shows manufacturing output continuing to trend downward.

These are not the conditions that would typically warrant a rate hike. If we got a reprieve at least through January, that is a very good thing.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Last week, the Democrats received an unexpected gift from the Federal Reserve Board. Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed's Board of Governors, gave a speech in which she questioned the need for the Fed to raise interest rates. Brainard pointed out the asymmetric risks in the current situation, where a premature rise in interest rates could lead to slowing growth and reduced employment. By contrast, there is almost no risk that delaying a rate hike will lead to serious problems with inflation, since the inflation rate has long been well below the Fed's 2.0 percent target.

Brainard's comments are enormously important for the future course of the Fed's interest rate policy. First and most obviously, she is one of the ten people currently sitting on the Fed's Open Market Committee (FOMC) that sets interest rates. (Two of the governor positions are currently vacant.) However the Fed has a tradition of trying to move by consensus and it is extremely rare for a governor to dissent. A rate hike became even more unlikely when Daniel Tarullo, another governor, seconded Brainard's position.

The opposition of two governors, coupled with weaker-than-expected economic data, make the prospect of a rate hike in the remaining months of 2015 highly unlikely. It is a safe bet that we will not see an interest rate hike at least until the FOMC meets at the end of January.

This is very good news for the Democrats because history has shown a strong relationship between the strength of the economy in an election year and the prospects for the incumbent party. If the economy is growing at a reasonably healthy pace in 2016, and people are getting jobs, then the Democrats have a good chance of hanging on to the White House. On the other hand, if the economy begins to stagnate, and job growth slows, the Republican presidential candidate will likely be occupying the Oval Office.

The Fed's interest rate decisions can play a central role in this story. Most immediately the Fed will be raising the interest rate that banks charge each other on overnight reserves. This only directly affects the banks, but when this rate increases, we are likely to see higher interest rates rise across the board, including interest rates on home mortgages, car loans, and credit card debt. When these rates rise we are likely to see less demand in many key sectors, slowing growth and job creation.

We have seen this story before, most recently in 1994 when the Fed began to raise interest rates because it was concerned that the unemployment rate was getting too low and the labor market was getting too strong. In that year events pretty much followed the textbook. Housing construction was most affected, falling by 8.1 percent from the second quarter of 1994 to 1995. Largely due to the slowdown in housing construction, the economy grew at just a 1.4 percent annual rate in the first half of 1995.

Slower growth gave the Fed its desired weakening of the labor market. In the first four months of 1994 the economy added an average of 320,000 jobs a month. In the four months from April to July of 1995 job growth averaged just 120,000 a month. The unemployment rate, which had been dropping rapidly, actually rose by 0.2 percentage points in the second quarter of 1995 compared with the first quarter.

If the Fed had started tightening this fall then we would likely be seeing the effects in the form of slower growth somewhere in the middle of next year. In other words, the rate hikes would be hitting the economy just in time to hurt the Democrats' prospects for the fall election. Now that rate hikes seem out of the question until next year, the timing of their impact is likely outside of the election window.

Of course, most of us care about the Fed's actions much more because of their impact on the economy and the labor market than their impact on the Democrats' election prospects. And here it looks like Brainard very much made the right call. The data that has been released since her speech show there is no evidence of inflationary pressure to be found anywhere. In fact at the wholesale level, most price indices are declining.

The latest data also show retail sales weakening and Walmart, the country's largest retailer, expects sales to lag through the rest of the year. Recent data from the Fed shows manufacturing output continuing to trend downward.

These are not the conditions that would typically warrant a rate hike. If we got a reprieve at least through January, that is a very good thing.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

I'm feeling like a mad scientist this fall.

I had been grappling with two big questions this summer and decided to explore them both through one grand experiment.

My two big questions were:

Why am I here? What's my purpose and how do I know when I'm living it?

Can we scale the depth of human connection through technology?

They seem like two totally different questions, right?

Here's how they are connected in my mind. I've learned that you can't discover or live your purpose in a vacuum or by sitting at home alone with a self-help app in hand (believe me, I've tried it). The a-ha moments typically happen when you're out in the world interacting with other people. Someone says something to you and a light bulb suddenly goes off like a hand-delivered message from the universe.

I was craving more of those a-ha moments and thought, "Wouldn't it be amazing to explore this daunting purpose question with other people and learn from their experiences too?"

But I wanted more than a daylong workshop or an extended retreat. Those experiences felt too ephemeral. I wanted a group journey, but something longer lasting and more embedded in my daily life.

That's when the online purpose exploration was born. I would find a way to use technology to connect with others who wanted to go on a similar journey of self-discovery.

Once it was decided, my friend and I went to work. We designed a six-week online experience with two short purpose exploration activities a week, which we affectionately called "group missions." After each mission, we posed a reflection question prompting participants to share their stories, insights, and discoveries.

I couldn't wait to try it. But it felt risky. I was nervous and scared that people wouldn't participate. Or, they would feel obliged to sign up but not really participate. Or, they would participate but share superficial, impersonal things like what people share with their 10,000 friends on Facebook.

Here's the thing about trying to live your purpose. Once you get the a-ha, you can only ignore the message for so long. At some point, the message gets louder and louder or it keeps hitting you over the head over and over again. You eventually have to do something about it.

And so the experiment was launched.

On our six-week group journey, I (along with my fellow travelers) mapped key decision points in my life and included the critical places and people who were with me during those times. I added adjectives and pictures to describe those moments in time. I studied the patterns and pieced together a short story that helped me make sense of those defining moments.

Through this online purpose exploration, I learned that travel helped me gain the perspective I needed to see my life in a clear, new light. I learned that when I surrounded myself with people who represented who I aspired to be, I gained the courage to take bigger risks because I could see an alternate reality, a more authentic possibility for me. I didn't need to wait for external validation or to have all the answers to make a decision. I just needed to get quiet enough for the clarity and intuitive voice to come about.

I was relieved to find that my fears, insecurities, and realizations were shared by many of the thirty multi-generational women who were on the journey with me. The group missions gave us a shared experience and an anchor for deep connection. Many of us had allowed the external world to guide our decisions for a long time, and it was time to listen to our inner voices and let that guide us on our purpose path. The reflections and stories that people shared highlighted our common joys and struggles and also punctuated the uniqueness of our journeys.

I discovered that it is possible to have meaningful, authentic, and vulnerable connections online if you invite people to explore something they deeply care about and create a safe and reflective space to let their stories unfold.

We often blame technology for making us more distracted in our daily lives and more shallow in our human interactions. Despite the abundance of communication technologies and social networking apps, we are more unhappy and isolated than ever before.

Technology has become the scapegoat for the shadow side of our humanity when it could actually be a superpower that we use for the common good. The challenge is finding ways to use our superpowers consciously and responsibly.

Want to explore this with us? Join us on our next journey.

We are are partnering with the Heroic Imagination Project to launch an online Hero in Training challenge, a HiveQuest experiment in using technology for social good.

Let's write the next chapter of this journey together!

Share your insights via twitter @hivequest and #tinyhumanexperiment.

Belinda Liu is a teacher, connector, creator and explorer. She is the co-founder and CEO of HiveQuest, a startup on a mission to catalyze self-transformation and community-building through the intentional use of technology. Want to learn more about her tiny human experiments or share your personal story? Connect with Belinda at belinda@hivequest.co or on Twitter @hivequest.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Dear Illustrious Member of Generation Y who believes I should bow down at your feet,

Listen up: you want it all, and I'm sorry to say, you're not always prepared to earn it the hard way, like people of my generation had to. You have high expectations and big dreams. Nothing wrong with that -- as long as those dreams and expectations are mixed with a healthy dose of realism and common sense. And I know, the last person you want giving you advice is your folks. Fine. Uncle Kevin's here. You'd better listen to what I have to say.

So you've graduated from college or trade school. Congratulations! The world is your oyster, right? You heard about that one guy in your class who sold his startup for $2 million a week before graduation -- now it's your time to shine. After all, according to you, you deserve a windfall of cash, a closetful of Armani and some really nice dating prospects, right?

Wake up and smell the slow-brewed coffee, my young friend: Few waltz into that kind of fortune right out of college. If you're lucky, you will eventually find work that is meaningful and fulfilling, but it's not instant. We've all got to pay our dues.

The 20s are a battlefield. Never before will you have been under so much pressure to spend large amounts of money on things you don't really need -- the perfect apartment, the perfect suit. It's like everyone in the world is screaming, "You're finally an adult! Now spend like one!" You've got a legitimate adult job and a nice little paycheck. At first, you're careful. But then you go out for drinks with people from work, and then a couple of nice dinners, and you don't want to look like the cheapskate, so you charge it all to your credit card. Suddenly, you've got a big balance that you can't pay off with your flimsy paycheck, especially while you're bleeding cash on rent for the studio apartment of your dreams. And you really do need a new designer briefcase for work. And look! There's a sale on drapes -- wouldn't those look nice in your apartment?

Do you see the problem? All the little expenditures add up -- and you may also be paying off your student loans. According to a recent survey from PNC Bank, the average 20-something is $45,000 in debt. Yikes. It gets even worse when you take into account that you might not be able to find a job. In 2013, a Gallup poll showed that only 43.6 percent of young adults had full-time jobs. As more young people enter the workforce, there are fewer and fewer jobs available for them. This puts an even greater strain on your finances. If you are unable to find work, you may start leaning too heavily on your credit cards, or worse, crawl back to Mom and Dad and ask if you can move back into your childhood bedroom. And nobody -- not you, not me, not your parents -- wants that.

Best of luck. You're going to need it.

Mr. Wonderful

Read more about finding financial freedom in my newest book, Cold Hard Truth on Family, Kids, and Money.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

SPY 5 MINUTE Wheeeeee, what fun!

As noted in our Weekend Portfolio Review, we are in CASH!!! so we really don't give a crap which way the market goes. Despite having plenty of long positions (short puts in our Long-Term Portfolio), we'd be thrilled to actually get to buy the stocks cheaply and we'd also be thrilled to do a bit of bargain-hunting if we get another nice dip - so that's what we're rooting for.

As you can see from Dave Fry's SPY chart, yesterday's move was, as we predicted in the morning post, complete and utter BS and, in fact, declining volume outpaced advancing volume on the NYSE by 50% in an "up" day. This is classic end-stage manipulation - try not to fall for it!

2,035 on the S&P is, of course, the 10% line on our Big Chart. That means it's no surprise that we're getting rejected here and the run-up was from 1,850 so that's just under 200 points so we'll look for a 40ish-point pullback to 2,000 and holding that would be bullish but a fall to 1,950 would be bearish again and anything below that signals we're probably going to be seeing 1,850 again:

It's useful to have a magical chart that tells us what's going to happen before it does. Thanks to our fabulous 5% Rule™, we're usually able to stay well ahead of the markets and we're also going be watching 4,925 on the Nasdaq, 10,450 on the NYSE and 1,180 on the Russell as potential rejection points and the Dow is already in a dead zone at 17,200 so that's the bull/bear indicator of the moment (whichever side it's on).

While we are waiting for market clarity, we've been cashing in on our Futures trades. In last week's Live Trading Webinar, we went long on Natural Gas (UNG) Futures (/NG) and this morning we closed out our /NGX5 (Nov) contracts at goal and let our Dec contracts ride. As you can see, we did quite well with the trade but we're expecting to do even better on the December contracts - now trading at $2.68 off our $2.6515 entry. Our goal is $3, so that's still 0.32 to go at $100 per penny, per contract if all goes well.

We will have a FREE Live Futures Trading Webinar today at 1pm, EST and we'll be tweeting out a link from our account, which you can follow HERE. Another way you can play bullish on Natural Gas (our favorite play of the moment) is to buy the UNG ETF, which is currently at $11.21 - we already have an aggressive spread on UNG in our Options Opportunity Portfolio, which you can follow by signing up HERE.

I'm sorry I don't have specific trades for the cheapskate readers but it's earnings season and we don't to free trades during earnings season. Don't worry though, in late November we'll be happy to give away some more free trade ideas so don't sign up or you might get ideas like these from last weeks' Morning Posts (and no, I'm not leaving out bad ones - go check!):

10/13 - FXI Nov $40/38 bear put spread at $1, now 0.85 - down 0.15 (15%)

10/14 - 20 AAPL 2017 $80/110 bull call spreads with 20 short 2017 $75 puts for net $32,540, now $33,760 - up $1,220 (3.7%)

10/14 - 10 BHI 2017 $40/50 bull calls spreads with 10 short $45 puts at net $2,100, now $4,200 - up $2,100 (100%)

10/16 - Short Russell Futures (/TF) at 1,160, fell to 1,150 - up $1,000 per contract.

10/16 - Long SDS at at $20.71, now $20.60 - down 0.5%

10/16 - CASH!!! at 94.50 (Dollar index), now 94.75 - up 0.26%

10/19 - FXI Jan $41 puts at $3.20, now $3.42 - up 6.8%

That takes us back to our October Top Trade Review, where you can check out another 10 trade ideas, some of which are still playable. I've been criticized for giving away too many free trade ideas but I think it's important to let you know that, when I do have an idea like going long UNG (can't specify a trade) and say it's my favorite - perhaps you may see that I might have some clue as to what will happen in the markets.

Also, these are a mere sliver of the trade ideas we have for our Members each week and the funny thing is that PSW is not even a "trading" site. We are an education site that teaches you how to identify your own opportunities and we simply make these calls as examples to demonstrate the usefulness of our system. The fact that they often happen to work out is a testimony to the system more than anything else.

In addition to today's FREE Live Trading Webinar (and now I have the link), where we will de-mystify Futures Trading for you - we are having a Live Seminar in Washington, DC on Nov 14th where we will focus on the Butterfly Portfolio which is, by far, our most reliable trading strategy, year after year.

Apparently, according to the splash page, I'm also going to talk about my "Top Picks for 2016" - gosh, that's a lot of pressure - I'd Better Make a decision soon!

This morning we already decided to short the Futures in our Live Member Chat Room but, unfortunately, I can't discuss that with you as it's earnings season but there's a clue as to where at the beginning of this post if you are a clever reader!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

America's highways can be a dangerous place for motorists. That's why it makes no sense that some in Congress want to cave to trucking industry interests and approve the use of even longer double trailers on over-congested highways. Such a move further hampers highway safety and could potentially cause an uptick of deaths on the nation's thoroughfares.

The Teamsters aren't sitting idly by on this issue. In fact, the union will be front-and-center demonstrating its opposition to allowing trucks to pull twin 33-foot trailers nationwide during a Capitol Hill media event Wednesday. There is no reason lawmakers should force states that only permit the current 28-foot doubles to jeopardize safety all in the name of higher profits for the trucking industry.

More than 4,000 lives are claimed each year on U.S. highways in accidents involving tractor trailers. And that will almost certainly increase if the 39 states that currently don't allow "twin 33s" on their roads are forced by Congress to open their highways to these up to 91-foot behemoths.

Longer double trailers would add an additional 10 feet to the length of existing double trailers, making it harder to pass these trucks and harder for truck drivers to see who's beside them. Longer trucks also need greater stopping distances, and already over-capacity thoroughfares leave little room for driver reaction times when it comes to changing lanes and reduced speeds. Even the Department of Transportation is recommending lawmakers make no changes to truck size rules.

The debate over trailer length comes at the same time as elected officials grapple with a host of transportation-related issues, many of which could affect motorist safety. They include allowing teenage truckers to drive in interstate commerce; trying to dismantle the ability of states to create meal and rest breaks for their drivers; and making it harder for regulators to improve safety rules. Several of these issues could be included in legislation set to be considered by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday.

Meanwhile, transportation funding continues to hang in limbo. Once again, rather than solve the problem, Congress is poised to kick the can down the road again with a temporary short-term band-aide. Those on Capitol Hill might ensure highway spending is allowed to continue into next year, but that won't be a substitute for a long-term infrastructure investment plan for roads, rails and bridges.

Since 2008, Congress has used more than $62 billion in taxpayer dollars to keep the Highway Trust Fund afloat, and it has been over a decade since lawmakers have passed a long-term highway bill. At the same time, the transportation system continues to crumble and the safety of those who work and travel along the vast network of U.S. roads and rails is being jeopardized.

Infrastructure investment is key to creating new, better-paying jobs and getting the U.S. economy back on track. It's a point the Teamsters have stressed as part of its "Let's Get America Working" platform. Working on transportation projects will put thousands to work in construction jobs across the country. It will also improve our transportation network, which in turn will help business and improve the U.S. economy.

The Teamsters have a lot at stake on these issues. More than 600,000 members turn a key to a truck for a living. The nation's roadways are their workplace. Naturally, highway safety and infrastructure investment are important to our union. But anyone except the trucking industry special interests can tell you that these changes being considered by Congress are no way to improve the safety or security of Americans.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Alejandro Amor, the former owner-CEO of for-profit FastTrain College, is scheduled to face a jury trial in Miami Wednesday morning. Amor and his co-defendant, former FastTrain admissions staffer Anthony Mincey, face criminal charges of defrauding the federal government to obtain about $6.5 million in student aid -- Pell grants and Direct Loans.

Two other FastTrain employees charged in the case, Jose Gonzalez and Michael Grubbs, already have pled guilty and are on the government's witness list.

Amor and FastTrain gained national attention in late 2014 when federal and state prosecutors alleged in court papers that the school "purposely hired attractive women and sometimes exotic dancers and encouraged them to dress provocatively while they recruited young men in neighborhoods to attend FastTrain." (Republic Report reported about this FastTrain marketing strategy back in May 2012.)

Gonzalez told investigators that Amor had told him to "hire the sluttiest girls he could find." Gonzalez said he responded, according to a witness summary, "that he was a Christian man and did not know how to hire those kinds of women." Accordingly, a helpful FastTrain colleague, Juan Arreola, turned up "with three women who he said were recruited from Miami area strip clubs who now worked as admissions representatives" for FastTrain. "They all wore short skirts and stiletto heels.... ARREOLA routinely told female admissions representatives at all the campuses to wear shorter skirts and higher heels to help enrollment numbers. ARREOLA also took the women to area homeless shelters to help recruit ineligible students."

But while the stripper angle excited the Internet, the actual offense for which Amor is on trial is something less flashy, but still quite abusive: The school allegedly enrolled some 1,300 students who had no high school degree or other eligibility to receive federal aid, and then simply lied to the government, representing the new students as high school graduates, with fraudulent diplomas from places like Cornerstone Christian Academy. FastTrain also allegedly misled its students, telling them a high school diploma was not needed, or that they could earn one while attending the college. Other students allegedly were coached to say they were high school grads.

Confronted by investigators several years ago, Gonzalez agreed to wear a wire, and recorded this conversation with Mincey:

Gonzalez: Let's just say my estimation is that FastTrain has about 700 students. I would say 400 don't even have a diploma, bro.

Mincey: Mm-hmm, that's a fact.

In a separate civil whistleblower lawsuit against Amor that has been joined by the U.S. Justice Department and Florida attorney general Pam Bondi (R), former FastTrain admissions officer Juan Peña alleged that the company's "business model is to enroll as many students as possible in order to become the beneficiary of more federal funding.... Many of these students do not read or understand English [and] cannot write their own name."

If convicted of carrying out this fraudulent scheme, Amor faces up to five years in prison. (While I and others have sometimes criticized the Department of Education for lax enforcement of its own regulations aimed at curbing for-profit college abuses, investigators from the Department's Inspector General's office deserve credit for building this case.)

Amor used his income from FastTrain to help finance a lavish lifestyle, as pictures that Republic Report harvested last year from Facebook suggested -- Caribbean vacations, $2 million waterfront home, a 54-foot yacht called "Big One," a private plane.

FastTrain, founded in 1999, operated campuses in the Florida communities of Miami, Plantation, Tampa, Jacksonville, Pembroke Pines and Clearwater.

Like many for-profit college owners, whose schools often receive nearly 90 percent of their funding from federal aid, Amor made friends with politicians -- at least before the FBI raided its campuses in 2012. He built especially strong ties to U.S. Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL), one of the biggest defenders of for-profit colleges on Capitol Hill and a big recipient of the industry's campaign cash. Amor gave contributions not only to Hastings, but also to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), former Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R-I-D-whatever), and the Florida Republican Party.

FastTrain, until it ceased operations, was also a member of APSCU, the for-profit colleges' lobbying group, which continues today to use your tax dollars to press Congress -- and to hire expensive lawyers to try to convince a federal appeals court -- to overturn Obama Administration regulations aimed at curbing the kinds of abuses that have occurred at FastTrain and other predatory companies.

For more than a decade, bad actors, large and small, in the for-profit college industry have used a toxic mix of deceptive marketing, high-pressure recruiting, astronomical prices, low spending on instruction, and false reporting to authorities to rake in tens of billions in federal tax dollars, ripping off taxpayers and ruining the financial futures of countless students. The industry all told has received up to $33 billion a year in federal student aid.

Federal and state law enforcement is finally catching up with these scams, with major investigations of big industry players like EDMC, University of Phoenix, ITT Tech, Kaplan, DeVry, Bridgepoint, and Career Education Corp. But while these probes of for-profit colleges have proliferated in recent years, most are civil, rather than criminal.

Corinthian Colleges, one of the worst actors in the sector, collapsed after the Department of Education imposed financial sanctions, amid fraud investigations by at least 20 states and four federal agencies. The company, which was getting as much as $1.46 billion a year in taxpayer money, has filed for bankruptcy and claims it has no money to pay back its creditors or any of the students it abused. Where did all the money go, and what is the personal responsibility of executives like CEO Jack Massimino, who was taking in more than $3 million a year?

Amor's trial, if it goes forward Wednesday, will be the only one of its kind in recent memory.

Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against a handful of other for-profit college officials. Those cases have led to guilty pleas before any trial could occur. Last fall, Doyle Brent Sheets, 58, the former president of Texas-based American Commercial College, was sentenced by a federal judge to two years in prison, fined $5000, and ordered to pay almost $1 million in restitution for stealing federal student aid; his school was fined another $1.2 million. Staff members of Baltimore's All-State Career School pled guilty last year to comparable offenses.

In 2009 and 2010, three top executives of Vatterott College pled guilty to a criminal conspiracy to fraudulently obtain federal student grants and loans for ineligible students in 2005-06 by providing false general equivalency diplomas (GEDs) and doctoring financial aid forms.

The similarity of the Vatterrott crimes to those charged against FastTrain show that the lure of huge federal financial dollars can spur unscrupulous acts at companies owned by operators from all walks of life, from the Miami entrepreneur behind FastTrain to the Wall Street owners of Vatterott, which was owned from 2003 to 2009 by the New York-based private equity firm Wellspring Capital Management and since then by a larger Boston-based private equity firm, TA Associates. (One investor in TA and Vatterott is Mitt Romney.)

Given the powerful evidence of fraud at numerous for-profit colleges, Amor's criminal case should be the start of a major effort to hold personally accountable the operators of institutions that have broken the law.

***

The imperative of making individuals accountable was underscored late Monday, as the Department of Education passed on an opportunity to take decisive action against an institution, ITT Tech, which has consistently demonstrated both predatory behavior and financial irresponsibility. The Department, in a letter to ITT, found repeated failure by ITT to meet its fiduciary obligations and account for federal student aid.

ITT is also under investigation or being sued for deceptive practices and fraud by 19 of our nation's 50 state attorneys general, plus the U.S. Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said last night that ITT, "deemed 'not financially responsible' by the U.S. Department of Education, continues to receive billions in federal Title IV dollars." He added, "Isn't it time to protect students and taxpayers and turn out the lights at ITT?"

But instead of declaring a 21-day delay on the receipt of federal money, as the Department did when finding similar misconduct at Corinthian, or even a 30-day delay, which ITT's conduct surely warranted, the Department imposed a 10-day lag, which may prevent ITT's immediate collapse. The Department also could have, but did not, impose a freeze on new student enrollments.

It may be that ITT will soon fall of its own weight anyway. But it again appears that the Department, under Secretary Arne Duncan, is unwilling, post-Corinthian, to take responsibility for pushing another big for-profit to the brink. Unfortunately, continuing to send federal taxpayer dollars -- and thus more students -- to predatory schools will only create a bigger bailout mess than the one the Department already faces.

This post also appears on Republic Report.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Jared Fuller is a Co-Founder of JobHive and is a 3x entrepreneur obsessed with sales, marketing and SaaS. Jared is currently Head of Partnerships at PandaDoc.

Sales doesn't have a textbook. You can't get "certified" as a sales professional. That poses a problem because there's lots of gems and lots of junk out there when it comes to training sales teams.

In my 10 years of sales experience as either a founder/CEO or VP, I've read, consumed, and implemented a ton of ideas. Some worked, though most didn't. I came to realize that the problem for growing and training my sales teams wasn't that we needed to have the latest idea, it was that we needed a framework to analyze each deal. This is what I call the "Six Gateways of Sales," and it applies to every deal in your funnel right now, for every sales rep. Simply put, the six gateways represent each step of a sale you must clear in order to advance to the next.

Gateway 1: Vision = Alignment

The first stage is about creating alignment with your prospect. If I were to try and sell you on an "innovative new group chat for teams," just a year ago, you'd call me crazy. Your team already uses Skype, Hipchat, Google Hangouts, etc. Why add another? We'd more than likely have zero alignment because my vision would not align with yours.

But if I were to set the vision of my product for "changing the way teams communicate" (like Stewart Butterfield of Slack most eloquentlydetails), you might listen. I could create alignment between the two of us surrounding the vision of the product. It's not the features that create alignment, it's the vision. If you can't create a vision for your product that isn't based on "more features, better price," you'll create friction before ever moving to the next gateway.

Not everyone will see the vision of what you're selling. They shouldn't. Don't try to sell to them. They won't buy; they will muddy your pipeline, and your metrics and reporting will suffer as a result. If you can't create a vision alone that's worth selling first, the problem isn't with your prospect -- it's with you. Go back to the marketing board and work out what is the "why" that you're starting with.

Gateway 2: Validation = Trust

I will say this boldly and without reservation: salespeople aren't the best at gaining trust. I've seen this gateway kill more deals than any other. Navigating it requires an intelligent approach, a delicate balance of marketing, customer success and sales all working together. Your prospect needs to see case studies, testimonials and proven validation from others before they will trust what you're selling.

When you listen intently, you also gain trust. Mark Roberge, the CRO of HubSpot says, "Gain trust with your prospects like your doctor does with you." Because doctors provide solutions only after listening to problems and asking questions, you inherently have more trust in their solutions.

Are you gaining trust on every single call and email? Be respectful, be on time, show that you have their best interest at heart - even going so far, especially going so far, as to tell people what you can't do for them.

Lastly, people need to know they can trust you after they buy. Paint your prospects a very clear picture for customer happiness and emphasize that their continued success is the most important thing to you, because it sure as heck is the most important thing to them.

Gateway 3: Pain = Value

I get it, you're passionate about what you sell. That's why so many entrepreneurs and salespeople "show up and throw up."

But great sales strategy is steeped in the truth that you have to identify specific, real pain points and correspond them directly to the value of your product. And to get even more sophisticated, you will gain more trust by identifying pain points your product does not solve and recommending solutions (paid or free) that might help.

It's far too easy to get stuck in the third gateway when you're solely focused on the supposed value you provide. If your prospect cannot clearly, both quantitatively and qualitatively, articulate the value of your product, the pain it solves, and the cost of not adopting your solution, you're probably stuck in the third gateway indefinitely.

At the end of the day, if you can't correlate your prospect's pain to your product's value, or they just don't see it, move on; it's a dead deal.

Gateway 4: Decision Makers

So you finally get past the discovery call, the demo or office visit, and you send out your proposal in hope of closing the deal. A typical response you get is: "We just need a little time to review pricing."

My first question always is: "Who?" Who is reviewing your pricing? Are you selling to an internal advocate, or the decision maker (DM)? Ask intelligent questions early on in the deal cycle to identify who the decision makers are so you don't waste time talking to people who can't sign the dotted line. Don't get me wrong, I think internal advocates are great, but good salespeople sell to decision makers. Period.

Gateway 5: Price

This is the gateway where far too many salespeople think their deal is stuck. And they're wrong, almost every time.

Recently, near the beginning of a presentation at an AA-ISP conference in Boston, I asked how many sales professionals thought their deals got stuck regularly when they came to price. The response? About 75 percent thought price was the most common sales objection.

This is hard to believe because, if you've successfully navigated your prospect through each prior gateway, price is almost always not the real objection. Just because price is the easiest reason for a prospect to say "no" doesn't make it the real reason. It's the objection people use who aren't aligned with your vision, who don't trust you, and who don't see that it can solve their pain points.

Once the sales professionals at AA-ISP presentation learned about the first four gateways, that 75 percent figure dropped to zero, literally. And it's probably true for you as well. If you actually traverse the first four gateways, price is the rarest (if ever) a legitimate objection. If you think you're stuck here, go back to the first four gateways because you probably aren't.

Gateway 6: Time

The time to buy is always now. That is, of course, only once you've traversed the first five gateways.

If a prospect tells you that they "need more time to look over price," it's not because time itself is the objection, it's because they are stuck in a different gateway. For instance, I once walked a solid opportunity through the six gateways a total of six times and they still weren't buying. Only after walking through the gateways a seventh time with them did I discover that they actually needed to loop in another person from finance! You see, time wasn't the real objection; they were hiding the actual decision maker and the deal was stuck in Gateway No. 4.

Time is like price: it informs you of whether or not your opportunity is ready to close. Because if they aren't buying now, you need to ask intelligent questions, walk the prospect back through the six gateways, and find out where the deal is actually stuck.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

An online search of the keyword gratuity yields the following origin: "Late 15th century (denoting graciousness or favor): from Old French gratuité or medieval Latin gratuitas 'gift', from Latin gratus 'pleasing, thankful'." Apply that definition to the service industry today and it begs the question: Since when did it become an expected reciprocation from the customer for someone who should be providing a certain level of service as part of their job? Yes, I am well aware that the required minimum wage for tipped workers is lower than the minimum wage in a region. I am in no way proposing that servers make less than a living wage. A number of simultaneous debates and conversations are occurring today on the issue of tipping in the restaurant industry. Recent articles include an op-ed piece suggesting that tipping is wrong based on its history at least in the United States while another highlights some high profile US restaurateurs leaning that way.

We are in our eight year at Cress Restaurant in DeLand, FL. When we turned seven on August 29th of this year, we made the conscious decision to eliminate tipping in a traditional sense. Our model now adds a fixed 18% service charge to everyone's bill. This is made clear on the menus. Historically, a guest at a restaurant in this country would feel obligated to pay at least 20% for decent service and would be happy to pay more should the service be stellar. Certainly, should the service be less than decent, guests would be justified (much to the chagrin of the server) in tipping a smaller percentage. In some instances, guests unfairly punish the service. Since we changed our concept at Cress, my sous-chef and I take you through (as in, not only do we prepare all your food, we are also your servers) the entire dining experience and each guest can avail of a certified sommelier (my wife and co-owner of the restaurant). A dining room staff member keeps each table stocked and unloaded. A guest receives all this for an 18% charge which is re-distributed equitably among all staff. Now, the front of the house staff makes an hourly wage comparable to the back of the house resulting in a smaller standard deviation for hourly rates at our restaurant. And to be clear, our average hourly wage is probably the highest in our town for our industry and almost twice the minimum wage for the state of Florida. We would consider raising our prices to absorb the service charge as we get more grounded in our new system. For the record, our menu prices have remained unchanged since the day we opened.

One of the criticisms of eliminating tips in restaurants and compensating service staff with a higher hourly wage instead is that doing so would weaken one's incentive to excel. This may be the case for the foreseeable future, but that argument is fundamentally flawed. When an 18-year-old high school student starts as a dishwasher in my kitchen, they already start at well above the minimum wage in our state. But it doesn't end there. With evidence of job improvement, they are always rewarded with increases in their hourly wage. The same should be true for the service staff. When the evidence points towards job excellence (yes, it is still only a job for most; pride in occupation is a dying trait), an increase in the hourly wage is definitely warranted.

Historically, the pay inequity between the front and back has been divisive, unhealthy, and plain unfair. We can attest to this because my wife and I wear both hats. We serve and manage every aspect of our restaurant. My wife provides her expertise as a trained sommelier and helps me with menu development, and I cook. Under the previous (more traditional) model, our own hourly wages as independent restaurateurs, who do it all, paled in comparison to what our servers were making (despite all their mistakes and sometimes, blatant apathy). Even though our new concept is still in its nascency, we are pleased with how matters are progressing and cannot imagine returning to the other model. We have the luxury of operating a small restaurant by most standards, so when a larger restaurant group announces a similar policy shift, it is that much more noteworthy and promising. Ultimately, transparency in all matters of food and its presentation is a key to improving failing aspects of the food industry.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

The moment I faced the boxing ring through the gym door I started walking from the parking lot to the pavement of the street, ready to go back home. It was 8:45AM. That morning, I had spontaneously signed up for an introductory boxing class online and I had walked 5 miles to get to the training spot. I hadn't given it much thought, I felt numb and sleepy but the moment I arrived, my instincts urged me to depart.

2015-10-18-1445188219-8613114-ScreenShot20151018at10.09.14AM.png

I remember taking an Art History class in College, where I was introduced to the widely-applicable concept of "accepting mechanisms". According to this theory, whenever a person is exposed to art that they are familiar with, they can make an "informed" decision about wether they admire the aura of the piece or not. Whenever that same individual witnesses a combination of what they know and something they have never seen before, resistance is raised and assessments are retarded. At the off chance that they come across a customary practice or an appreciated object of an unknown civilization, they- according to this theory - fail to grasp the artistic essence of the artifact in question, and reject it's value.

The byproduct of this incubated narration was what forced me to return to the building and take my chances at something unknown. While building my Today I Failed At Facebook page and game plan, I figured that in order to succeed professionally, academically and personally, I should turn the attention to my personal evolution rather than let things to luck. Graduating from the University, I realized that as one grows older, automatically appearing trainers around them tend to decrease in number and commitment. Instead of expecting other's initiatives to fortuitously lead me to my full potential, I strategized my personal business plan: that of making me, Daphne, a sustainable, productive and prosperous institution. Though this juxtaposition may seem vain and superficial, I choose to compare my presence in life to that of a profitable corporation. I strategize my path in order to turn my subsistence into existence by coaching my skills and amplifying my experiences.

2015-10-18-1445188283-6175626-ScreenShot20151018at10.09.00AM.png

As parents stop purchasing ballet classes, professors stop giving feedback with homework and mentors turn to younger candidates of inspiration, body, brain and social muscles are gradually shrinking. To keep fit and increase my "market value", I decided to set up a monthly "3 Piece Discomfort Challenge" that included the following steps:

1) Make a list of 3 things that you are terrible at
2) Force yourself to try them out during the period of a month
3) Revisit your predispositions and re-decide whether you like these things or not

This month, I challenged myself to tryout boxing, put together two 750+ piece puzzles and buy a book on math probabilities.

2015-10-18-1445188341-7738355-ScreenShot20151018at10.09.24AM.png

Having committed to the "3 Piece Discomfort Challenge" for several months, I have put together a 4-quote assemblage that consists my everyday guidebook on how to run my "Self-Business":

1) Never feel comfortable. Be a step ahead of those who judge you, know your limitations and train to alleviate them
2) Choose your interactions. Remember: "If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room"
3) Reveal peer pressure. Is your disinclination to sports endogenous or is it a result of family-practice accordance?
4) Adopt a dynamic sense of self. Besides your core values, don't restrict your self by awarding them immutable titles. Never say: I am not athletic, I am not a good student, I am not fashionable, I am antisocial

Manage your traits the way you would manage your business and enhance your competitive advantage through discomfort.

To contact me, email: spyropoulosdaphne@gmail.com
To learn more about my Today I Failed At movement, click here

2015-10-18-1445188450-2497410-ScreenShot20151018at10.09.37AM.png

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

How to Grow Your Business by Focusing on Niche Markets

Five Reasons Why Traditional Pensions Are Still the Best Way to Provide Retirement Security

Finding My Way to My Professional Happy Place

Finding My Way to My Professional Happy Place

Supporting the Department of Labor's "Best Interest Rule" Is Good for All Business

Innovating Innovation Strategy: Part 1

The Importance of Hiring Rockstars for Your Small Business

Is Your DNA Nothing More than a Credit Score?

Why the TPP Is an 'Economic NATO'

The On-Demand Economy Should Be Challenged By Workers

Democrats Get a Gift from the Fed

Democrats Get a Gift from the Fed

How Can We Scale the Depth of Human Connection?

A Letter to all 20-Somethings From Mr. Wonderful

Technical Tuesday -- Failure at 2,035 on the S&P

Congress Should Rebuild Roads, Not Lengthen Trailers

For-Profit College Owner, Who Used Strippers As Lure, Goes On Trial

The 6 Gateways of Sales

From the Ivory Tower Kitchen: Tipping for Change

How to Enhance Your Market Value Through Discomfort