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Judging by the numbers, Max Levchin’s life has had a quantum-leap quality most people would envy. His first jump came in 2002, shortly after he sold off his ownership stake in PayPal to eBay for an estimated $34 million. He was 27 years old, flush with cash and adrift in an ocean of downtime.
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Getting a new airline off the ground isn’t all that difficult. Keeping one going, however, is a different story. Hence the decades-long casualty list of upstarts–everything from the bargain-basement People Express to the way-too-posh Eos–that had their wings clipped by competitors, the economy or management blunders. Bad business models don’t fly.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts didn’t mince words on Wednesday about two hot button topics: shoddy customer service and net neutrality.
Customer complaints have plagued Comcast for years, but the issue came to a head in July when a customer recorded a call with a service representative who refused to let him disconnect his Comcast service. The recording not only went viral but also motivated other frustrated Comcast customers to do the same.
At an event in San Francisco, Roberts said that he was “embarrassed” and “disappointed” when he heard the recording. “It was a teachable moment for employees and it was a teachable moment for all of us,” he said.
After the incident became public, Roberts appointed Charlie Herrin senior vice president of customer experience. Herrin, who previously oversaw the design of Comcast’s Xfinity products, faces the daunting task of improving Comcast’s overall customer experience.
Still, the Comcast CEO maintained that such customer service nightmares are not the norm. “We get 250 million phone calls a year,” he said. “The nature of our business is that we’re going to have these things.”
Roberts also tackled net neutrality, the concept that Internet service providers treat all web content equally in terms of speed. It’s a heated issue pitting consumer activists, who argue against companies paying for preferential treatment online, against telecom companies.
On Monday, President Barack Obama made waves when he introduced a 1,000-word plan to ensure a free and open Internet. Specifically, President Obama called for the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, to act on a set of rules from the 1996 Telecommunications Act that would prevent Internet providers from blocking or slowing lawful web content. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court struck down the FCC’s rules, which upheld net neutrality.
Just a day after President Obama’s introduced his net neutrality plan, Comcast leapt into the fray by releasing a statement claiming it “agrees with the President’s principles on net neutrality” and that Internet content should not be blocked or slowed. However, Comcast disagreed with President Obama’s calls for Internet providers to be regulated like utilities.
“There’s a better way to do that,” said Roberts said, who argued that Internet providers should keep their current largely unregulated status.
The battle over net neutrality is far from over. The FCC has yet to respond to President Obama’s proposal, although FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said he is open to the plan. And net neutrality supporters have public rallies planned.
Meanwhile, Robert emphasized that Comcast will cooperate with the government to find a common ground. “No blocking, and no discrimination — consumers need the certainty that this platform [the Internet] stands for those kinds of principles,” he said.
Here’s some good news for anyone who is now officially sick of pumpkin spice everything: Starbucks’ latest seasonal latte flavor has hit the market and it’s not pumpkin anything.
The Chestnut Praline Latte is the coffee mega-chain’s first new “holiday handcrafted beverage” in five years and Starbucks is hoping its latest flavor creation can prove as popular and profitable as the Pumpkin Spice Latte, which has spawned a cultish following to go with his abbreviated “PSL” nickname. Starbucks described the “CPL” (too soon?) as “a blend of fresh espresso and flavors of caramelized chestnuts, with freshly steamed milk, topped with whipped cream and spiced praline crumbs.”
The Pumpkin Spice Latte has proven so popular in recent years that Starbucks actually started selling it earlier this year to die-hard fans of the drink, which is typically a stalwart of the company’s fall drinks schedule. The latte helped Starbucks’ fourth-quarter same-store sales increase by 5%, though that number fell below analysts’ expectations. And, while Starbucks has boasted about the Pumpkin Spice Latte’s overwhelming social media presence, there has also been some concern that the drink — and the pumpkin spice flavor in general — has outworn its welcome.
The Chestnut Praline Latte was in development for two years by the Starbucks Global Beverage Innovation team and now joins the likes of other Starbucks winter holiday drink flavors along with eggnog, gingerbread, and toffee nut. Starbucks sees the Chestnut Praline Latte as an opportunity to “add a new trend-forward flavor to U.S. markets,” the company said in a recent press release. The new drink was tested in a few U.S. markets last year, but is being released widely this Wednesday.
Guaranteed lifetime income has become the obsession of retirees, policymakers and the financial industry. Yet as the public pension debacle in bankrupt Detroit shows, we may never find a solution that completely eliminates the risk of your money running out.
The judge in Detroit’s closely watched proceedings said the recent deal the city cut with its retirees bordered on “miraculous,” as reported in The New York Times. That may be. But the deal still left the city’s 32,000 current and future retirees with diminished benefits and no certainty that they won’t be asked to give up more down the road. Their fate is largely in the hands of the markets—as is the case for millions of workers saving in 401(k) plans, and even many of those still covered by a private pension.
The problem is that there is only so much money we are willing to throw at the retirement savings crisis, an issue that has been exacerbated by an economy that until recently was growing far below potential. Every leg of the retirement stool is underfunded, including private pensions, though they are in the best shape. Many public pensions are in deep trouble. Social Security is on course for a funding shortfall. Personal savings are abysmal.
When government revenue or corporate profits or personal income are too low to allow for setting aside enough money for the future, we can only hope that the markets bail us out. In Detroit’s case, pension managers are counting on average annual returns of 6.75% for the next 10 years. That might happen, and it’s a lower expected rate of return than many public pensions are counting on. But given that stocks have already had a nice run, and that the bond portion of any portfolio will almost certainly come up far short of that mark, it’s probably an optimistic target. That means the city will likely have to raise taxes or cut pension benefits at some later date.
Private pensions face similar math, which is why many companies have frozen their plans or dropped them. Still, those that remain are generally on more solid footing. Profits have been strong and regulators hold companies to a higher funding standard. But by some estimates such stalwarts as IBM, Caterpillar and Dow Chemical will need to pay extra attention to their pension funding in coming years. The equation became more difficult recently, now that the Society of Actuaries has updated its mortality tables, which added a couple years to the life expectancy of both men and women at age 65.
Individuals in self-directed savings plans, such as 401(k)s, face their own funding problems. Workers may not have done the retirement income math but, like many pension managers, they haven’t been putting away the money they’ll need, while hoping for strong market returns to make it all work out. If they stay invested, and stocks keep chugging higher, they may be fine. Otherwise they will have to save more going forward or plan on spending less later—the do-it-yourself equivalent of raising taxes or having their benefits cut.
The good news for individuals is that you can act now on your own—you don’t have to stand by while a committee of actuaries and accountants blows smoke around the issue and kicks the problem further down the road. Steps you can take immediately include saving at least 10% of everything you make. Aim for 15% if your kids are gone and the mortgage is paid. Make sure you get the full company match in your 401(k) and automatically escalate contributions each year.
Young workers, especially, need to act now. Those just starting out are far less likely to have a private pension and more likely to suffer from future Social Security cuts. Many seem to have got the message. Millennials expect employment income and personal savings to account for 58% of their retirement income, Bank of America Merrill Lynch found. That compares to just 35% for boomers.
But even with greater savings, guaranteed lifetime income can remain elusive. As life expectancies have stretched, and interest rates have remained low for nearly a generation, fixed-income annuities have become relatively expensive. Even the so-called safe withdrawal rate of 4% per year now strikes some experts as too high for peace of mind. The push is on to make 401(k) savings more easily convertible into lifetime income. That would help because the big insurers that stand behind the promise of lifetime income are a lot more reliable than a city like Detroit.
Read Next: Retirees Risk Blowing IRA Deadline and Paying Huge Penalties
This story was originally published on StartupCollective.
Women get a bad rap in the work world, and we don’t have to look much further than pop culture for examples. Consider Monica from Showtime’s “House of Lies.” Being an addict, uninterested mother, and demeaning boss somehow makes her incredibly successful at work. Or take, for example, the famous caricature of Anna Wintour in “The Devil Wears Prada.”
Fortunately, executives like Facebook COO and Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg are fostering an important discourse that is reaching female and male executives alike to spark change. And we’ve already come a very long way. Women can be executives who drive results, empathic mentors, and loving mothers all at the same time.
Nevertheless, female CEOs remain subject to intense scrutiny. Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer has been widely criticized for working through her maternity leave and for putting a nursery next to her office, and recently she’s been in the media because “good-looking CEOs get better returns.”
The question is, does this type of scrutiny have a trickle-down effect for other professional women?
There are socioeconomic factors at play that we cannot solve overnight. We need to teach women how to be confident in the workplace so they can succeed on their own merits. I offered some tactics in my previous piece, “Confidence Breeds Success — And It Can Be Taught.” However, individual confidence is only part of the equation. We also need to support and champion women in the workplace, particularly when we, as women, are the executives.
The best mentors I’ve seen are those who do the following:
Godspeed, Marissa Mayer! May many come after you and because of you.
This post is in partnership with The Muse. The article below was originally published on The Muse.
Having spent the last decade recruiting, I’ve had many a conversation with hiring managers after a candidate exits the interview. And, while I always hope for exceptional feedback, sometimes the news is not so glowing.
Sometimes, the candidate has done something so annoying to the interviewer that, at best, she is now questioning her interest in keeping this person in the running.
What are the things that drive interviewers the most crazy? Listen and learn.
Everybody knows that you’re an idiot if you show up late for an interview. It’s completely disrespectful of the interviewer’s time.
But showing up insanely early is also going to make you look like a jerk. Why? Because, when you arrive more than five or 10 minutes before your meeting, you’re putting immediate pressure on the interviewer to drop whatever she may be wrapping up and deal with you. Or, she’s going to start the interview feeling guilty because she knows she just left you sitting in the lobby for 20 minutes.
A secondary problem with showing up early is that it says, “Hi, I have absolutely nothing else going on in my life, so I’ll just park it here in your company lobby.” You don’t want that. If you arrive super early, hang in the parking lot or a nearby coffee shop until just a few minutes before your scheduled time.
Once again, we all know not to show up to an interview completely unprepared.
Fewer of us, however, realize that it’s entirely possible to arrive over-prepared. Are you someone who thinks through every possible question that you suspect might be asked, writes out verbatim “best answers,” and then practices them in the mirror (or with a friend) until you’re beyond exhausted?
You might think you’re doing yourself a solid, but what you’re actually doing is putting yourself at risk for coming across as robotic or, worse, disinterested. (More on that here.)
When you’re hyper-prepared and hanging on the edge of your seat waiting for certain questions for which you’ve prepared to be asked, you will likely have a very hard time engaging in genuine conversation with the interviewer.
And interviewers don’t tend to hire detached people who can’t seem to have a genuine conversation. Certainly, walk in prepared, but force yourself to not memorize or over-rehearse the practice questions.
Is your underwear riding up your rear end as you sit in that interview? Did you totally run a red light (and nearly sideswipe a school bus) so that you could be on time? Did your husband lose $15,000 at a craps table in Vegas last weekend? How interesting—yet all completely off-limits conversation topics while you’re in the interview.
Even if you’re interviewing for a role within the most free-wheeling, fun-loving organization, the fact remains that you are in an interview. Never, ever get wooed into believing that the casual nature of the environment frees you to enter the TMI zone.
Be friendly and conversational, for sure. You want this crew to feel that you’ll fit in around the joint. Just never, and I mean do not ever, cross the line into TMI. When in doubt, leave it out.
Guess what interviewers want to know when they meet with you? First and foremost, they want to know what you can do for them. What can you do to make that company money, improve businesses processes, grow the organization and, importantly, make their lives easier?
That said, when you bust out with an immediate litany of WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) questions, you look both arrogant and, frankly, unappealing.
Of course you want to know what the benefits are, how much vacation you get, and if you get a cell phone, company car, and corner office. But in the early interview stages, all the hiring managers and HR people really care about is what you can do for them. This is a business they are running, not a club.
Making you happy will be important if they want you, but you’re not even going to get to that stage if you make your list of demands clear too early.
I’m not just talking about the after-interview thank you note here. Surely, sending an immediate thank you out to each person with whom you’ve met is critical. But it’s also super important to thank the interviewer enthusiastically before you even part ways.
Certainly, it can be stressful and exhausting to shuttle through hours of interviewing at a company, to the point it all starts feeling like a bit of a blur. But if you really want this job, you need to stay focused and energized, and you absolutely must end strong. A strong, genuine, “Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me—it was great to meet you” will go a long way.
Interviewing can be among the most stressful things we do as adults, especially when we need the job badly. It’s definitely never a breeze. But keeping a cool head, arriving prepared to engage in conversation, and staying focused on the value you can bring to that organization is going to help you make it through with flying colors. People hire people, not robots, not jerks, and not people who don’t value their time.
Keep this top of mind as you march forth and conquer.
This post is in partnership with Inc., which offers useful advice, resources and insights to entrepreneurs and business owners. The article below was originally published at Inc.com.
The “most successful investor of the 20th century” has a thing or two to teach you about being a great leader. Warren Buffett is a famed philanthropist, business magnate, and sharklike investor. As the CEO and biggest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway and someone who consistently ranks among the richest people in the world, he’s smart, business savvy, and slick, even into his 80s.
However, the “Oracle of Omaha” is also a notoriously frugal spender and reveres value investing. Having pledged to donate 99 percent of his wealth, he’s proof that sometimes old-school techniques work. If you’re an up-and-coming leader (or just want to be), check out what Buffett can teach you about leadership, wise moves, and humility.
1. On Risk
“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing,” says Buffett, which means you can do one of two things. Either you can be a big risk taker and gambler, or you can learn what you need to do, play it a little slower, and minimize your risks. Obviously the latter approach is best, but it doesn’t lead to instant gratification. Put those multimillion-dollar fantasies on the back burner long enough to get in control of your risk factor.
2. On Reputations
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” This is especially true in the digital era, when, if something’s in writing or on video, it’s forever. You can even take a screencap of a Snapchat, so be diligent when building your reputation—online and off. Remember Congressman Anthony Weiner tweeting pictures of his genitalia? Yeah, don’t be that guy. His reputation is toast.
3. On Who You Surround Yourself With
“It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours, and you’ll drift in that direction.” Birds of a feather flock together, and you’re probably not in the position to be anyone’s mentor yet. If you surround yourself with better people, they’ll inspire you to do better yourself.
As I tell my children, “If you want to soar like an eagle in life, you can’t be flocking with the turkeys.”
4. On Hindsight
“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield,” quips Buffett. Of course, this is true in every other aspect of your life, too. Stop focusing on that rearview mirror, though, after you’ve gleaned the necessary lessons from it. Move forward, even if that direction isn’t quite as streak-free.
5. On Stupid Mistakes
“I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave away about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. It’s part of the game.”
No successful person is mistake-free, and that’s a good thing. Each stumble is a chance to learn and a warning when you’re tempted to do something similar in the future.
6. On Knowing When to Quit
“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” In other words, ditch the stubbornness and know when to call it quits. Not every project is worth saving.
7. On Frugality
Buffett is legendarily frugal. He lives in the same house in Omaha, Nebraska, that he purchased in 1958 for $31,500. He is well known for his frugality, which includes enjoying McDonald’s hamburgers and cherry Coke, and his disdain for technology, such as computers and luxury cars. Despite a net worth measured in billions, Buffett earns a base salary of $100,000 a year at Berkshire Hathaway. It’s a salary that has not changed in 25 years.
Today, many top leaders take as much as they can and live as extravagantly as possible. More leaders should take a page from the book of Buffett.
Listen to the Wisdom of the Oracle of Omaha
These words of wisdom come from decades of experience, success, and failure. Why make the same mistakes somebody else has already made all over again if you don’t have to? With the likes of Buffett doling out advice by the shovelful, take advantage of it–then spend that saved time putting his words into practice.
It’s certainly worked for Buffett.
Monsanto agreed Wednesday to pay almost $2.4 million to settle a lawsuit filed by U.S. wheat farmers, after a genetically modified strain of the grain was found in an Oregon field and spooked importers of American wheat.
No genetically engineered wheat has been approved in the U.S., but in 2013 wheat matching a strain of an experimental type developed and tested by Monsanto a decade earlier was found growing in a field in Oregon, the Associated Press reports. The modified wheat was not approved by federal regulators, and the seed juggernaut had said it had destroyed the crop.
A government report judged the incident to be an isolated case, but it did not conclude how the errant wheat had come to be in the field. Nations wary of genetically modified crops were alarmed: Japan and South Korea briefly stopped importing American wheat, and American farmers cried foul over the damage done to their revenues and reputations.
The St. Louis–based company’s settlement includes giving $2.1 million to farmers in the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho who sold soft white wheat between May 30 and Nov. 30 of 2013, as well as paying $250,000 to multiple wheat growers’ associations.
[AP]
Read TIME’s full interview with Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift has been paid less than $500,000 in the past 12 months for domestic streaming of her songs, Scott Borchetta, the CEO of Taylor Swift’s record label, the independent Nashville-based Big Machine, told TIME Wednesday.
His statement is the latest salvo in an increasingly heated disagreement between Swift and Spotify. The disagreement has sent ripples through the music industry, with the country’s most successful musician removing her work from an admired new online music model.
According to Borchetta, the actual amount his label has received in return for domestic streams of Swift’s music—$496,044—is drastically smaller than the amount Spotify has suggested the artist receives. That sum represents only a portion of the amount paid out by the streaming service. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said Tuesday that the label for an artist of Swift’s popularity could expect to receive $6 million in the next year from the streaming service as the site’s audience grows. Borchetta said his label had made more from streaming Taylor Swift’s videos on the video site Vevo than it has from putting her music on Spotify.
A Spotify spokesperson told TIME that the total payout for Swift’s streaming over the past 12 months globally was $2 million.
MORE: Spotify CEO “really frustrated” with Taylor Swift
“The more we grow, the more we pay artists, and we’re growing like crazy,” said Jonathan Prince, Spotify’s global head of communications and public policy. “Our users, both free and paid, have grown by more than 50 percent in the last year, which means that the run rate for artists of every level of popularity keeps climbing. And Taylor just put out a great record, so her popularity has grown too. We paid Taylor’s label and publisher roughly half a million dollars in the month before she took her catalog down—without even having 1989 on our service—and that was only going to go up.”
On Nov. 3, Swift pulled her entire catalog from the streaming service, which claims over 50 million users, more than 10 million of whom have paid subscriptions. No artist today can match Swift’s popularity: her new album 1989 has sold nearly 1.7 million copies nationwide in its first two weeks on sale, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Swift and Borchetta both say that removing her music from Spotify is meant to make a larger point.
“The facts show that the music industry was much better off before Spotify hit these shores,” Borchetta said. “Don’t forget this is for the most successful artist in music today. What about the rest of the artists out there struggling to make a career? Over the last year, what Spotify has paid is the equivalent of less than 50,000 albums sold.”
At first, Spotify asked Swift to come back in a blog post. But after Borchetta said on a radio show on Nov. 7 that he had been hearing from other artists and managers who also want to leave Spotify—country star Jason Aldean just pulled his latest album from the service—Ek posted a broader defense of Spotify’s model. He claims Spotify has paid $2 billion to labels and publishers since its founding in 2008, and says the service, through its mix of paid and ad-supported subscriptions, is replacing revenue the music business had lost to piracy.
This isn’t the first time a major recording artist has tussled with Spotify. In October 2013, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke pulled his solo songs off the site to protest the size of its payouts.
–With reporting by Matt Vella
Read next: Taylor Swift on 1989, Spotify, Her Next Tour and Female Role Models
