An Entrepreneurial Perspective on Philanthropy

Philanthropy is not about giving money but about solving problems. While well-meaning, the idea of writing a check and calling it "philanthropy" is extremely short-sighted and unfortunately, extremely pervasive.

Instead, philanthropist should think like an entrepreneur and think of social challenges as an opportunity to create large enterprises. It's really easy to create a $1 billion company-you just have to solve a $10 billion problem. Most of these large $10 to $100 billion problems happen to be social problems. That's why I think that some of the largest opportunity exist for an entrepreneur in solving humanity's grand challenges.

True philanthropy requires a disruptive mindset, innovative thinking and a philosophy driven by entrepreneurial insights and creative opportunities. To disrupt the status quo, drive philanthropy at tremendous scale, and develop long-term economic vitality through giving, we must apply the same models for success in our philanthropic endeavors as we do in business.

As a lifelong entrepreneur, I see philanthropic organizations the same as any other business venture. Much like today's start-ups that accept VC money but never turn a profit, a philanthropic venture that does not create a self-monetizing, sustainable financial model will ultimately fail.

In short, philanthropy requires disruption. This disruptive mindset hinges on a practice I call Entrepreneurial Philanthropy, which is designed to support innovation that creates sustainable, thriving economies in communities with tremendous need. Further, it requires the utilization of several principles rooted in today's successful enterprises.

Sustainable Solutions
A venture that's not profitable is not sustainable. Philanthropic funds should be treated as venture capital that should only be used to bootstrap a business and to scale the business once the business model has been proven on a smaller scale.
I recently met with a woman who operates a homeless shelter for women in my community, and like most shelters, it is constantly looking for donations. In speaking with me, the woman was seeking advice on how to create a successful operation. I encouraged her to rethink the complete model for the shelter, making it self-sustainable instead of dependent on outside investment.

"What is your product and who is your customer?" I asked her.

"The shelter is my product and the women are my customers," she responded.

"What if you were to think differently and consider the women at the shelter as your product and local businesses as your customers? These businesses certainly need people who can work, and if you provide services that empower the women, you can help provide them with jobs that could help determine their status for residency or other services at your shelter. As surprising as it may sound, sometimes you can create a successful venture relatively easily by taking your current model and completely turning it on its head," I told her.

This is the underlying philosophy that I was conveying-by creating a thriving community within her shelter, she would create a strong and sustainable business model. Sustainability is the root of business-and should be the root of successful philanthropic endeavors.

Dreaming Big
Truly disruptive philanthropic endeavors, much like business ventures, need to think big, targeting tremendously large markets and opportunities. Solving a problem in the millions will never catapult your business into the league of billions. In other words, if you want to create a company worth $1 billion, you must solve a $10 billion problem.

There are many philanthropists and volunteers who act locally, giving tirelessly, donating their time and money to help the sick, poor and other individuals most in need. But why stop there? Philanthropic work on the local level is wonderful, but time and again it has proven incapable of reaching the scale we need to foster economic development and leading to the monumental changes we all seek.

Doesn't philanthropy deserve, indeed require, the same level of audacious hope and limitless opportunity as do our business ventures? Our power to impart positive change goes well beyond our communities. We can surely think about both-our communities and the world beyond-and act on the same.
To do that, we need scale. There's nothing wrong with testing a product locally in small markets, but we have to be sure that the solution is scalable once proven successful. If we go into a philanthropic endeavor afraid of success on the largest of scales, we do that cause no justice. This requires rethinking the solution and the problem, which generally requires us to convert infrastructure problems into information-gap problems. Our job, indeed our collective goal, is to bridge that gap.

Education should not be about building more schools and maintaining a system that dates back to the industrial revolution. We can achieve so much more, at unmatched scale with software and interactive learning. Similarly, think about the healthcare diagnostics we can address through connected sensors and artificial intelligence without the need for expensive, out-of-date physical infrastructure like hospitals.

Build Great Teams
While most philanthropists tend to flock together and build their teams around friends, family, or others who happen to be retired or with a lot of free time on their hands, a great entrepreneur knows that success is directly related to the quality and talents of their team. We cannot just partner with whoever might be available or share our passion during their retirement.

Successful ventures in business or philanthropy are built around great teams who can help us overcome tremendous challenges-and have the right experiences and relationships to do so.

Entrepreneurial Philanthropy is not just a philosophy or a dream. It is a promise that philanthropy is at its best when it is founded on entrepreneurial zest and agility. Investors are right to demand a clear path to self-sustainability from every business they invest in, and I believe we should ask for the same from philanthropy. Indeed, there is a direct correlation between fulfilling people's needs as a successful entrepreneur and as a philanthropist. This is why the work of entrepreneurial philanthropists has a compounding impact that reverberates far beyond the reaches of charity, aid and relief efforts. Money can certainly solve some of the world's problems, but without an entrepreneurial bent it will only merit short-lived solutions to long-term problems.

Here is a link to my additional thoughts on philanthropy: Time and tech, not money, is what changes the world.

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4 Simple Ways to Help Protect Your Business From Cybercrime

Years ago, if we wanted to protect our homes and our businesses from theft, the main thing we needed to do was install good locks and security cameras, purchase insurance, and be aware of how to avoid hold-ups. In today's technologically-driven world though, it's not that simple. These days, global cybercrime requires individuals and companies to be wary of thieves who operate from the relative safety of their personal location, and who can simply sit behind a computer to steal personal data, trade secrets, and money.


Image Credit: Flickr, Creative Commons: Perspecsys Photos

In fact, when it comes to businesses specifically, cyberattacks generally cause small and medium-sized firms to lose around $200,000 on average each year. Many of these companies (around two-thirds) actually end up forced out of business within just six months of the attack, because it takes such a toll on the organization. Similarly, on a personal level, even tech products and apps created by giants such as Apple can come under threat, with a recent malware attack on the iOS app store being evidence of the issue.

If you want to do what you can to help protect your business, it pays to stay up to date on the best ways to go about it. To really study the area, you can learn about the history and current trends in cybercrime by enrolling in an online cybersecurity degree or encourage one of your IT employees to increase their training. If you just want some quick takeaways that you can implement today to help keep your business protected from online thieves, read on for four main ways you can keep confidential information away from prying eyes.

1. Choose Good Passwords
One of the most basic things to do in order to protect your systems from cybercrime is to make sure your employees select secure passwords that can't be easily guessed by hackers. Even though you might think people know better, the most common passwords used around the world today are still things like "123456" and the word "password."

If you want to be smart about your business's digital security, make sure that employees use passwords that contain a combination of letters (both lower-case and capital), numbers, and symbols. Ideally, passwords should be between eight to 12 characters in length, and should avoid referring to personal data such as the name of children, partner, pets, or family birth dates.

In addition, encourage that employees try to vary passwords on different devices and for different websites, so that they don't just have the one code used everywhere. This way, if a password does happen to be hacked, a criminal won't be able to access all of your accounts. Furthermore, you should also have your employees update their passwords on a regular basis, around every eight to 12 weeks.

2. Install Protective Software and Firewalls
Another simple yet effective way to protect your data and systems from being accessed is to install protective software and firewalls. Purchase anti-spam and antivirus software and spyware, and then install it on every computer and other Internet-connected device in your office. This protection helps to avoid malicious viruses and software from getting into your systems via a Wi-Fi connection, websites, or spam emails.

Unfortunately, many hackers use malware that gets into computer systems and then installs codes that run in the background on your computers. You won't even know that your keystrokes and all your login details are being captured by this code and then relayed back to cybercriminals, but it's actually one of the biggest money and information-generating techniques used by hackers. If you install (and keep updated) proper protective software though, you should be able to stop this malware from doing harm.

Firewalls are also a must, especially for businesses who take customer data and other sensitive information via Internet-based programs. Firewalls are designed to protect computers from thieves who try to access things like credit card numbers, passwords and personal details. You can potentially turn on the firewalls that come already installed on many operating systems, or else choose to purchase a more comprehensive third-party version.

3. Keep Computers Updated
Another safety technique you can employ is to ensure that all of your business computers' software and hardware is updated regularly. You'll find that the latest versions of operating systems are the safest, and are the ones you should be utilizing. In addition, if you update programs often, this will help to identify any security holes or other potential issues that sometimes pop up when programming changes are made or new software is installed.

4. Educate Staff
Lastly, if you run a business, you should also discuss cybercrime with your team. Educate your staff on common hacking techniques, and require all employees to update their logins on office software and hardware on a regular basis -- with, of course, only strong passwords!

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Man Pays For New Truck With $12,000 In Small Bills And Coins

A candy seller in China paid for his new truck with a mountain of small change.

He brought 80,000 yuan ($12,000) in small denomination bills and coins to the auto dealership in Southeast China last Monday, the South China Morning Post reports.

The cash weighed at least half a ton and was stuffed inside 10 crates in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, according to the People's Daily Online. 

Mashable reports mammoth deposit stunned staff. "I have never seen so much cash in my life," sales manager Gu Liyuan said.

But dealership manager Yang Huai said the man, surnamed Cai, was a "loyal customer and has already bought four cars from us, so we have to help him solve this problem."

Thirteen employees spent more than 10 hours counting the money up, according to the South China Morning Post.

Cai, who sells candy and biscuits to villagers, said he usually received payment for his goods in change and had "too much to exchange for larger bank notes."

"Although some people might think that I'm flouting my wealth by paying for everything in small change, but it's all I have and I just hope that the other person will accept them," he added. It's not known what vehicle be bought.

 

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Millennial Mistake

"Millennials prefer life insurance to retirement savings as a workplace benefit." That was the headline on a life insurance company press release, highlighting a study by EBRI, the highly regarded Employee Benefits Research Institute. The report showed that younger workers prefer life insurance and paid time off as much, if not more, than retirement plans.

What a huge and short-sighted mistake. Life insurance will benefit someone else when you die - years from now, according to actuarial statistics. But retirement benefits will help you while you're alive in your older years, a far more likely outcome. Those who live for today will face a bleak tomorrow. Whatever caused this cynical attitude, someone needs to explain to millennials just how destructive it is.

The good news is that Fidelity has stepped up to the challenge, in a typically simple and accessible fashion. They've created a new Personal Retirement Score calculator on their website. Answer six simple questions about your current lifestyle and savings habits. Then click and you'll get your current score - a graphic "dashboard" that lets you know where you stand in terms of reaching needed retirement income.

If you're in the "red zone" (needs attention), you can see the impact of adjustments you could make now to increase your score. You'll see how saving more, investing more aggressively, or adjusting your expected retirement lifestyle could move you into the "green zone" (on track). The good thing about it for millennials is that they have time on their side. Smaller changes in savings behavior will be magnified over time, making it easier to reach retirement goals.

Fidelity's graphic calculator is deceptively simple -- and both hopeful and frightening at the same time! It's not unique in trying to move millennials into saving more and investing more wisely. Every robo-advisor and mutual fund company has some version of this tool on its website. You can't say the financial services industry isn't trying hard - for its own business reasons, and because it's the right thing to do - to get Americans to pay attention to their finances. And it's working - a little.

Along with its announcement of this new Personal Retirement Score, Fidelity released a survey of Americans' retirement readiness. They say that the number of people who are on track to live comfortably in retirement jumped seven percentage points since 2013, from 38 to 45 percent. While comforting, it still means that more than half of Americans won't be able to cover basic living expenses in retirement.

This is the political season. You're bound to hear promises from both parties that the government will be able to do things to make your older years more financially comfortable. Take all that with a grain of salt. In the end, the only thing government can do directly is to "print" more money - or take money away from those who have worked and saved for their own retirement. Those aren't solutions; they simply lower everyone's standard of living.

Millennials need to get a little perspective. Every generation has faced its challenges, whether wars, global unrest, or economic cycle extremes. Ask your elders. We lived through those tough times - and are glad we took advantage of every employee benefit plan and retirement investment opportunity. And we're hoping our heirs won't get to cash in on our life insurance anytime soon!

Tomorrow will come, for the vast majority of the millennial generation. You'll be glad you saved and invested for your future. That's The Savage Truth.

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Happy People Tend To Value Time Over Money

Meet Maggie and Tina.

Maggie is willing to work longer hours in exchange for a fatter paycheck. Tina is willing to take a smaller paycheck so she can work less and have more free time.

Now that we're all acquainted, who do you think you are more like: Maggie or Tina?

Researchers used questions like this to figure out what people valued more -- time or money -- and whether that preference affected an individual's overall well-being. 

Turns out, it does.

According to a study involving more than 4,600 participants recently published by the Society of Personality and Social Psychology, people who value their time more than their money tend to be happier than those who value their money more than their time.

To figure this out, researchers from the University of British Columbia surveyed working American adults, students at the University of British Columbia, and adults visiting a Vancouver science museum who volunteered to participate in the questioning.

Slightly more than half of respondents valued their time over money, and, on average, those individuals were also more likely to report higher levels of happiness than those who valued money over time.

"Imagine that the world is made up of Tinas and Maggies," Ashley Whillans, the study's lead author, told The Huffington Post.

"We're seeing that the Tinas of the world are walking around a little happier than the Maggies of the world because they are making everyday decisions that lead them to prioritize time over money."

The participants' income and gender did not affect their answers, although the researchers note that the study did not include participants living at the poverty level, who may need to prioritize money in order to survive.

Setting Up The Surveys

Each survey included at least one trade-off question that involved a major life decision (like the one at the top of this article) in order to determine the individual's overall preference of time or money.

Participants were then given a series of questions that involved more mundane, everyday decisions, such as if they were willing to drive farther to a cheaper gas station, or settle for a closer, more expensive option. Another survey entered the participants into a lottery, where they were asked to choose between two prizes: $50 cash or a $120 voucher for a time-saving service, such as housecleaning.

The answers to these questions were then compared to how the participants rated their general happiness or well-being at the start of the survey. 

While the results show that valuing time is linked to greater levels of happiness, Whillans said more research needs to be done to strengthen that connection.

The Takeaway

Whillans said she hopes the study's findings will inspire people to sacrifice money if it means more time to do things that will make them happier in the long run.

"All these kinds of everyday and major life decisions often require a trade-off between time or money that most people don't always recognize," Whillans said.

"Having more free time is likely more important than having more money," Whillans said in a statement. "Even giving up a few hours of a paycheck to volunteer at a food bank may have more bang for your buck in making you feel happier."

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Are You the Shark in the Pond? It's Time to Find a Bigger Pond

Whether you've been in business for 10 days or 10 years, whether you've got $10,000 in revenue or $10 billion in revenue, there will be competition in whatever pond you're in. As the pond starts to fill up, even if you're at the top, someone or something is gaining on you to knock you from your perch.

To continually innovate and keep things going, you must do one (or more) of these: find a bigger pond, explore new ponds, expand the pond you're in, or move to new bodies of water and go deep-sea fishing. It starts by asking yourself these questions:

• What's next?
• What do we need to do to reach our goals?
• How will our brand, services, products, technologies, and above all our people keep standing out from the rest?

For me, it was making myself big in my hometown of Sioux Falls, then the state of South Dakota. When I was big in South Dakota, I realized there are 49 other states I need to make myself big in. Once I've made myself big in the other 49 states, it's on to South America, Europe, and beyond. I started with my local pond of Sioux Falls and am working on expanding to global ponds and oceans.

The best way to look for and find new ponds is to be willing to start all over. To do it successfully, you must follow these three A's to success:

• Adapt
• Ask
• Automate

Adapt - Re-Envision the Pond

When I first launched C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett on Bloomberg Television, it took off like a rocket. When Season 2 never came to fruition on Bloomberg, haters thought it was because it was cancelled - and they couldn't be further from the truth. The show was so successful that I brought it in house on C-Suite TV and on the business channel on United Airlines. I knew there was something bigger out there and was ready to adapt and meet it head on.

Adapting means being ready to change at a moment's notice, and to be prepared for anything. I adapted C-Suite to be delivered online on C-Suite TV, breaking away from the traditional TV model because I firmly believe that's where the future of TV is heading. For me, personally, I don't ever take on a project without thinking at least five to ten years ahead, so I can map out how I can get it there.

The speed of business today makes adaptation more essential than ever. You must strike a balance between satisfying demand for who you are and what you offer now and adapting.

Ask - Find New Ponds

Traditionally, businesses find new ponds by building new stores, expanding their reach, tapping new markets, or buying competitors. But the concern here is overexpansion, which can lead to the pond drying up. What leads to overexpansion? Failing to translate your value proposition to new markets. What's effective in one market may not translate well whatsoever in another.

The key to expanding and finding new ponds? Asking questions and, more importantly, genuinely listen. Take the time to understand and listen to what your current and potential future customers are telling you before tapping them.

Automate - Move Faster in Your Pond

If moving to a new pond or growing the pond are not options, then you need to become the most efficient, deadly, fish in the pond you're currently in. Become the biggest, baddest version of you you can be through better communication, automation, and systemization.

However, don't confuse the word automation with personal. You can automate your communications without losing a beat of personalization. But by moving repetitive tasks to become automated, like welcome emails or drip campaigns, you're freeing up valuable time.

In business, we can't be so fixated on attracting new customers that we forgo our greatest asset - happy, current customers who keep coming back for more. If you can't expand or move ponds, then these people are your bread and butter, responsible for most of your profits, and who should be protected at all costs.

The Key

There's always someone bigger in you than your pond. The key to becoming the biggest and baddest? Always ask yourself what's next. This way, you can determine whether you should grow your pond, find new ponds, or do better in your current pond to decide how to grow and sustain your business.

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News Corp. Is Not Moving To The World Trade Center, After All

21st Century Fox and News Corp. won't be moving to the World Trade Center after all.

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