Thiel’s Deals | Paul Thiel

Thiel’s Deals is a compilation of transactional and capital raising leads from throughout Southern California. Are you or your clients looking for funding? Trying to put capital to work? Have a personnel need? Want to let others know of a recent success?

The rules are simple: Send us a disguised note on what you need. Be sure to include enough detail to make it interesting and useful to our network of more than 1,200 professionals. When someone contacts us with an interest in your post, we connect him or her with you. The referral network stays intact, but you have access to a broad audience of attorneys, insurance professionals, accountants, consultants and other professional advisors.

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Great Expectations | Peter Mehit

Probably the most important thing we do in business is manage expectations. If your customer expects a hot juicy steak, it better not be cold. If they are expecting a white sedan, a blue coupe will not do. Whether or not you can get them to accept what they didn’t ask for is irrelevant. They won’t be back and they tell others not to use your business. In fact, an unhappy customer is seven times more likely to share their bad experience than a satisfied customer.

A lot of business people focus on the pleasantness of an interaction as their basic method for meeting customer expectations. Others focus on price. But if you don’t take a step back and ask what the customer really wants from your business, you may get it wrong.

Encourage Your Crush To Break Up With Creepy Facebook App | Mashable

“If you’re already in a relationship,” the app’s site says, “WaitingRoom will give you the confidence to become single again — if that’s what you really want.”

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R.I. city votes to fire all teachers | The Boston Globe

 

 

The mass firings come little more than a year after officials in Central Falls, R.I., a small community just north of Providence, fired every teacher in the academically struggling high school. They were rehired after agreeing to work a longer school day and make other changes.

Teachers in Providence voiced anxiety about the city’s moves.

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DOE Asian/Pacific Islander Program Open For Public Comment | DOE

The Office of Economic Impact and Diversity would like to invite you to submit comments to the White House’s Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) agency plans.

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Weekly Economic Information | LAEDC

THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:

* Southland Home Sales and Prices Dip in January

* January Port Figures – Fourteen Consecutive Months of Growth

* Higher Energy Costs Push Wholesale Prices Higher in January

* Consumer Prices in January

* Events of Interest

o Wednesday, March 2: USC Gould School of Law: 2011 Real Estate Law and Business Forum

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A Million and Two Great Marketing Ideas (NEW POST)| Barry Davis

In my last article, “A Million Great Marketing Ideas-Here’s One”, I told you about the “bain” of every small business.  Exactly how do you get your message out to the most number of people, without having to take out a second on your house?  In today’s media savvy environment, we are getting hit with thousands of messages each day…how do customers pick your company to do business with….and just exactly how do you stand out?

I have a few new ideas that might just make you “different” than all of your competitors and won’t break the bank.

The Death of Free | Peter Mehit

The New York Times recent announcement of a metered online pay model got me waxing nostalgic. In the early 2000s I participated in the launch of an internet services firm.  Based in Seattle, we occupied an entire floor of an office building in the Queen Anne district.  Most of the staff were in their early twenties. Their chief attributes were enthusiasm,  their knowledge of html, perl and how to come to work loaded and look normal. During the day, they looked productive. At night, visions of stock options danced in their heads.

I took over management of the development group well after a number of critical design decisions had been made. One of them was to base the design of the system on open source software created by people who do so for bragging rights instead of pay. In the developer’s workspace, which was part play room, part college dorm, I would frequently debate with the team the lack of revenue that open systems generated. The response invariably was that once people understood the value of the product through free versions, they would be willing to pay.

Predicting divorce: U-M study shows how fight styles affect marriage | University of Michigan

A brief on a sixteen year study of 373 couples. Includes a survey you can take to see how you and your spouse compare to the study group.

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January/February 2011 SBA Advocate Newsletter | SBA

Release Date: February 2011

Volume 30, number 1

The Small Business Advocate is a periodic newsletter that details economic developments and regulatory trends related to small business as well as the latest initiatives of the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy.

In This Issue

Executive Order 13563 to Improve Regulatory Review, 1

Text of E.O. 13563, 6-7

OSHA Withdraws Two Rules, 1

Startup America Launched, 2

Rodgers Appointed Deputy Chief Counsel, 11

New Advocacy Staff, 11

Message from the Chief Counsel

Small Business Talks; Advocacy Listens, 3

Research Notes

Small Business Economy Released, 2

Legislative Focus

Freshmen Senators Schooled in Small Business Values, 4

Regional Report

Nine Regional Advocates in Place, 8-10

Regulatory News

IRS Modifies PTIN Rule, 12

Financial Rule Delayed, 5

Major Clark Receives Public Service Award, 5

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Small Business Issues Survey Results | Small Business California

Small Business California states that is it is a non-partisan advocacy group concerned with issues facing small business in California.  Each year, the organization compiles a survey of small business regarding the issues facing them. The 2011 survey was just released. 1,341 business owners or managers participated in the survey.  Among the results:

• 70% believe California is going in the wrong direction
• 79% believe the business climate is poor to very poor
• 79% saw flat or declining revenues over the last 12 months
• 73% don’t plan to hire in the next 12 months

The top three issues for the respondents were:

• The economy
• The quality of public education
• The cost and availability of health care

View Survey Results.

Cops: Teen kills fish to eliminate ‘witnesses’ | Arlington Heights news, photos and events — TribLocal.com

This is real. Scary.

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Required Reading: How To Fake An Economic Recovery | Niethercorp Press

‘You can take the blue pill and wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want. Or you can take the red pill and see how far down the rabbit hole goes…’ That line from ‘The Matrix’ applies to this piece by Giordano Bruno. If you’re having a tough time wondering how the stock market can go up while people are losing jobs and homes, this will give you something to hang your hat on.

WARNING: You can’t unlearn this information.

This may be a highly distasteful proposition, but just for a moment, I want you to sit back, and imagine that you are a member of the corporate banking elite. You are a walking talking disease ridden power mad pustule who naively believes himself intellectually superior to the vast majority of humanity and above the inherent laws of conscience, honor, and general good taste. You are a villain in the purest sense, in that you not only do great harm to the world, you actually SEEK to do great harm to the world, if only to benefit yourself and your exclusive circle of “friends”; a clan of degenerate blood thirsty sociopaths with delusions of omnipotence that stalk the night like Armani wearing Chupacabra exsanguinating the joy from poor unsuspecting cultures. You are capable of anything, and sadly, you take “pride” in this fact…

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Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone Politics

…the justice system not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting financial criminals. This institutional reality has absolutely nothing to do with politics or ideology — it takes place no matter who’s in office or which party’s in power. To understand how the machinery functions, you have to start back at least a decade ago, as case after case of financial malfeasance was pursued too slowly or not at all, fumbled by a government bureaucracy that too often is on a first-name basis with its targets. Indeed, the shocking pattern of nonenforcement with regard to Wall Street is so deeply ingrained in Washington that it raises a profound and difficult question about the very nature of our society: whether we have created a class of people whose misdeeds are no longer perceived as crimes, almost no matter what those misdeeds are.

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Homeowner Forecloses on Wells Fargo | Philly.com

A folk hero in the making!

The result: At least for the moment, the contents of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, 1341 N. Delaware Ave., are scheduled for sheriff’s sale on March 4 to satisfy the judgment and pay about $200 for court and sheriff’s costs.

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