iPhone 6 Concept Design With New Corning Curved Gorilla Glass

With most smartphone companies gearing up or having already released curved phone designs in some Asian markets, Apple most likely also has something up its sleeve. Curved glass manufacturer Corning has just announced that their 3D-shaped Gorilla Glass is ready for production, prompting speculation of how Apple might use the material in upcoming products. Among the most mentioned are the iWatch and iPhone 6 with a larger curved display. Dutch designer Lewi Hussey, a member of the Apple Fantasy Prototyping League (AFPL), has created images and a video imagining how the iPhone 6 could look with the technology. The results are undoubtedly impressive, with a thinner body and more user-friendly silhouette. Of course for now it’s just a concept, but who knows what Apple might have in store for us in 2014

Read More

Why Learning To Keep Track Of Your Money Is The Best Resolution You Can Make For 2014

Whether it’s published by Forbes, the Guardian or New York Times, there’s usually one study that is certain to be quoted time and time again when it comes to cynicism regarding New Year’s resolutions. Out of the 45 percent of Americans who make resolutions for the New Year, only eight percent of them actually follow through, research from Scranton University suggests.

Whether that’s a valid reason to have a lack of interest in resolutions or not, it does suggest that it might be more worthwhile to make simple gestures leading up to the bigger habits, which one wishes for the discipline to practice. We’ll call these smaller successes “gateway resolutions,” the steps before the big step.

Take budgeting, for example. It’s a big habit that few people really desire to enforce, never mind actually do. Making projections, estimating how much you’ll spend next month on that or next week on this, is hardly the most exhilarating task. Let’s just be real about this: You’re more likely to be tempted to check your Instagram timeline than to spend an uninterrupted hour crunching numbers and calculating percentages.

There’s no doubt that learning to manage your money is important, but it can also be a pain. Thus, we bring you back to the reason an alternative should be considered: the all-important gateway resolution that will make your life easier and you a bit richer.

“The essence of building wealth requires someone to spend less than they bring in, and tracking your spending against a budget is the scorecard to which you can hold yourself accountable,” says Greg McBride of The Wall Street Journal.

Tracking your spending, if only for a month, is a simple practice that can have a big reward. It is, by no means, difficult — all it really takes is a pen, pencil or phone that was made during this century — and allows you to see, before your eyes, the effects of your spending habits that you might otherwise dismiss at the instant you leave the register.

“We’re talking about everything from housing, food and clothing to movie-going, dining out and getting manicures and pedicures,” writes Jennifer Waters of Market Watch. “It’s pretty simple to calculate if you’re spending more than you’re bringing in. Now you can see just how, where and why you’re doing it. Acknowledging the problem is the first step to solving it.”

Once you have the facts down, you’ll see what expenditures you can make room for, what has to go and what purchases have to be limited. That, in essence, is what budgeting is, and when you begin to track your spending, you just might find yourself doing it subconsciously.

At that point, you’ve basically tricked yourself into doing the responsible thing, the trying task you knew was important but were not interested in doing. Tracking your spending can prove invaluable in the long run. Just try it to see. After all, who wouldn’t change their habits after realizing that all those dates with that girl last month — which were only kind of fun — were really a huge waste of money?

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Read More

Mentally Strong People: The 13 Things They Avoid

For all the time executives spend concernedabout physical strength and health, when it comes down to it, mental strength can mean even more. Particularly for entrepreneurs, numerous articles talk about critical characteristics of mental strength—tenacity, “grit,” optimism, and an unfailing ability asForbes contributor David Williams says, to “fail up.”

However, we can also define mental strength by identifying the things mentally strong individuals don’t do. Over the weekend, I was impressed by this list compiled by Amy Morin, a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker,  that she shared in LifeHack. It impressed me enough I’d also like to share her list here along with my thoughts on how each of these items is particularly applicable to entrepreneurs.

2. Give Away Their Power. Mentally strong people avoid giving others the power to make them feel inferior or bad. They understand they are in control of their actions and emotions. They know their strength is in their ability to manage the way they respond.1.    Waste Time Feeling Sorry for Themselves. You don’t see mentally strong people feeling sorry for their circumstances or dwelling on the way they’ve been mistreated. They have learned to take responsibility for their actions and outcomes, and they have an inherent understanding of the fact that frequently life is not fair. They are able to emerge from trying circumstances with self-awareness and gratitude for the lessons learned. When a situation turns out badly, they respond with phrases such as “Oh, well.” Or perhaps simply, “Next!”

3.    Shy Away from Change. Mentally strong people embrace change and they welcome challenge. Their biggest “fear,” if they have one, is not of the unknown, but of becoming complacent and stagnant. An environment of change and even uncertainty can energize a mentally strong person and bring out their best.

4. Waste Energy on Things They Can’t Control. Mentally strong people don’t complain (much) about bad traffic, lost luggage, or especially about other people, as they recognize that all of these factors are generally beyond their control. In a bad situation, they recognize that the one thing they can always control is their own response and attitude, and they use these attributes well.

5. Worry About Pleasing Others. Know any people pleasers? Or, conversely, people who go out of their way to dis-please others as a way of reinforcing an image of strength? Neither position is a good one. A mentally strong person strives to be kind and fair and to please others where appropriate, but is unafraid to speak up. They are able to withstand the possibility that someone will get upset and will navigate the situation, wherever possible, with grace.

It takes much practice to hone mental strength

6. Fear Taking Calculated Risks. A mentally strong person is willing to take calculated risks. This is a different thing entirely than jumping headlong into foolish risks. But with mental strength, an individual can weigh the risks and benefits thoroughly, and will fully assess the potential downsides and even the worst-case scenarios before they take action.

7. Dwell on the Past. There is strength in acknowledging the past and especially in acknowledging the things learned from past experiences—but a mentally strong person is able to avoid miring their mental energy in past disappointments or in fantasies of the “glory days” gone by. They invest the majority of their energy in creating an optimal present and future.

8. Make the Same Mistakes Over and Over. We all know the definition of insanity, right? It’s when we take the same actions again and again while hoping for a different and better outcome than we’ve gotten before. A mentally strong person accepts full responsibility for past behavior and is willing to learn from mistakes. Research shows that the ability to be self-reflective in an accurate and productive way is one of the greatest strengths of spectacularly successful executives and entrepreneurs.

9. Resent Other People’s Success. It takes strength of character to feel genuine joy and excitement for other people’s success. Mentally strong people have this ability. They don’t become jealous or resentful when others succeed (although they may take close notes on what the individual did well). They are willing to work hard for their own chances at success, without relying on shortcuts.

10. Give Up After Failure. Every failure is a chance to improve. Even the greatest entrepreneurs are willing to admit that their early efforts invariably brought many failures. Mentally strong people are willing to fail again and again, if necessary, as long as the learning experience from every “failure” can bring them closer to their ultimate goals.

11. Fear Alone Time. Mentally strong people enjoy and even treasure the time they spend alone. They use their downtime to reflect, to plan, and to be productive. Most importantly, they don’t depend on others to shore up their happiness and moods. They can be happy with others, and they can also be happy alone.

12. Feel the World Owes Them Anything. Particularly in the current economy, executives and employees at every level are gaining the realization that the world does not owe them a salary, a benefits package and a comfortable life, regardless of their preparation and schooling. Mentally strong people enter the world prepared to work and succeed on their merits, at every stage of the game.

13. Expect Immediate Results. Whether it’s a workout plan, a nutritional regimen, or starting a business, mentally strong people are “in it for the long haul”. They know better than to expect immediate results. They apply their energy and time in measured doses and they celebrate each milestone and increment of success on the way. They have “staying power.” And they understand that genuine changes take time. Do you have mental strength? Are there elements on this list you need more of? With thanks to Amy Morin, I would like to reinforce my own abilities further in each of these areas today. How about you?

Read More

Good Guy Billionaires: 115 Of The World’s Richest People Pledge To Donate Half Their Wealth

115 billionaires from around the world have signed a pledge to give away half of their fortunes.

This agreement is the result of a campaign called “The Giving Pledge” started by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda in 2010.

The pledge intends to give the wealthiest people in the world more control of where their money will be donated over the course of their lives.

Twelve billionaires from nations such as Russia, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Ukraine and Maylasia have signed on.

The Giving Pledge is a chance for the rich to give in a “smarter” way, Gates told the Wall Street Journal last September.

“This new group brings extensive business and philanthropic experience that will enrich the conversation about how to make philanthropy as impactful as possible,” he said. “Their thoughtfulness and deep commitment to philanthropy are an inspiration to me, and I’m sure to many others as well.”

Russian media mogul Vladimir Potanin wrote last year that he joined to teach his children a lesson about certain essential values.

“The decision I made is not just an attempt to be remembered as a philanthropist,” he wrote. “I also see it as a way to protect my children from the burden of the extreme wealth, which may deprive them of any motivation to achieve anything in life on their own.”

By 2012, Gates and Buffett had already recruited 92 billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

Charlie Rose recently caught up with Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett to discuss the morals behind the pledge and just how natural this promise came to them.

From Top Info Post:

Charlie Rose: Is it necessary to join the Giving Pledge that you promise 50 percent of your net worth?

Melinda Gates: Yes. In your lifetime or in your will.

Charlie Rose: Or in your will?

Warren Buffett: Right.

Charlie Rose: Are people shocked by that?

Warren Buffett: I don’t think so.

Melinda Gates: We’re asking them to be bold. We’re asking them to step out and to do something big. But a lot of them were already on their way there and just hadn’t put a numeric number behind it. And I think now also the Giving Pledge has gotten going, people know that’s the expectation.

Warren Buffett: And we don’t, we don’t, we don’t find a lot of people that say, “I want to join if it was 40 percent.”

Charlie Rose: Some may say I’m happy to give much more than 50.

Warren Buffett: Oh, most of them. Most. My guess is that a very significant percentage of our members, I mean, way over half are going to give a lot more than half.

Gates and Buffett are already leading by example in terms of this prediction. According to Top Info Post, Bill and Melinda Gates have committed to giving away 95% of their wealth, while Warren Buffett has pledged 99%.

H/T: Top Info Post, Top Photo Credit: WENN

Read More

Singapore's Newest Billionaire Made $2.1B Fortune From Nothing

Liang Court Complex (Source: Wikipedia)

Goh Cheng Liang is one of Singapore’s best-known and least-celebrated tycoons. He has neither featured in any rich lists nor ever talked to the press,  save for a one-off interview in 1997.  Yet some of Singapore’s most prominent landmarks, like the high profile hospital Mt. Elizabeth and the Liang Court shopping mall at Clarke Quay, have been built by this reclusive businessman.

Business was booming when an opportunity to tie up with Nippon Paint of Japan surfaced. Goh took the plunge with a 60-40 holding in a joint venture called the Nipsea Management Group. From nothing rose a paints conglomerate whose Nippon brand is today a household name in Asia. The Nippon brand now sells in 15 countries outside of Japan with some 15,000 employees and factories in 30 locations. Its annual turnover stands at $2.6 billion. Son Goh Hup Jin oversees the company run by professional managers.Goh never went to school. He was born to a poor family in a one-room tenement in 1928, one of four siblings. As a boy, he sold fishing nets and worked in a hardware store, learning business skills that were to shape his destiny. In 1949, when the British were auctioning off surplus stocks from World War II, Goh bought all the barrels of rotten paint for a song. With a Chinese dictionary of chemicals in hand, he went about mixing solvents, pigments and chemicals to make his own brand of paints called Pigeon. The following year, the Korean war broke out and an import ban landed Goh a whopping profit windfall.

Goh’s career has been the gritty journey of an entrepreneur. He never missed an opportunity to create, build and sell businesses to unlock their value. Over the years, he invested some of his profits from the paint business into property by building shopping malls, hotels, serviced residences, as well as a retail distribution business with Japanese partners, a contract manufacturing electronics business, specialty packaging, logistics, a food manufacturing operation in America and even a mining company in China! When his U.S.-educated son, Hup Jin, set about professionalizing some of the group companies and taking them public, Goh carved a parallel private empire with his longtime partners and employees under Yenom Industries. It owns serviced residences, gold courses, marinas, hotels and housing developments in Gulf Habour and elsewhere.

Over the years, Goh has been selling his stake in the publicly listed companies. He sold his 59% holding in Liang Court for $175 million to Pidemco Land in 1999. The $1 billion electronics service maker Omni Industries was sold to Celestica CLS -2.95% of Canada in 2001. Mt. Elizabeth was sold off, too. More recently, along with Crown Holdings CCK -1.93% of the U.S., he is taking listed Superior Multi-Packaging private.

Goh has come full circle, retracing his steps to his core competency in paints. Early this year, he made a $751 million bid for an additional 30% stake in Tokyo-listed parent Nippon, but quickly retreated in favor of growing the Asian business. He still makes news, though more for his generous endowments to scholarship funds, cancer research and education through the Goh Foundation, rather than his business moves.

Read More

10 Powerful Quotes From The Steve Jobs Movie And What They Teach Us About Leadership

Ashton Kutcher portraying Steve Jobs

The script for Jobs, the new movie starring Ashton Kutcher as the visionary Apple co-founder, is heavy with quotes that reflect Jobs’ business philosophy and approach to life. I’ve listened to the director, Joshua Michael Stern, and I recognize most of Kutcher’s lines in the movie as being either direct quotes from Steve Jobs or compilations of his quotes. Here is my vote for the ten best quotes from the movie and what they can teach us about leadership, creativity, communications, and success.

1. I’m not dismissing the value of higher education; I’m simply saying it comes at the expense of experience.

According to Jobs film directorJoshua Michael Stern, Steve Jobs felt that life experiences were critical to being creative. Stern included pivotal scenes in the movie showing a young Steve Jobs taking a college calligraphy course and visiting India with his friend, Daniel Kottke. “Absorbing culture, art, and history were extremely important to Jobs. He believed in taking life experiences and using it as a subtext for something else you’re doing, like helping to form the product you’re creating,” said Stern. This is one of the most powerful success principles we can learn from Steve Jobs: a broad set of life experiences is essential for creativity to flourish.

2. The greatest artists like Dylan, Picasso and Newton risked failure. And if we want to be great, we’ve got to risk it too.

Steve Jobs didn’t hesitate to take risks. If he wanted something, he would ask, even at a young age. When Jobs was twelve years old he called up HP co-founder Bill Hewlett and asked for spare parts. Hewlett gave Jobs the parts and a summer job. “You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far,” Jobs once said. “Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.” I’ve rarely interviewed a successful entrepreneur or CEO who hasn’t risked failure. In fact most successful people don’t even see ‘failure;’ they see a result that didn’t have the intended outcome.

3. How does somebody know what they want if they haven’t even seen it?

Steve Jobs didn’t believe in focus groups. Actually, he avoided them like the plague. Jobs believed in building great products that he would want to use himself. To a large extent he had a point. For example, in 2010 how many of us would have asked for a third device in between a laptop and a smartphone? Most people would never have asked for an iPad, but once millions of consumers saw it, they couldn’t live without it, and it opened up entirely new categories of business applications. When I spent one year researching a book on the Apple Store, I learned that Jobs revolutionized the retail business because he asked better questions. For example, Jobs did not ask, “How do we build a better store than our competitors?” Instead he asked, “How do we reinvent the store?” Don’t do things better; do things differently.

4. Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Ashton Kutcher likes this quote so much he used it in a short speech at a recent award show, explaining that it’s one of the most profound things he learned while preparing for the role as Steve Jobs. The quote itself is taken from a rare 1995 interview for the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association. The entire clip is available here on YouTube. The rest of the quote is equally as profound: “When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life and try not to bash into the walls too much…that’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact—everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you…shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just going to live in it versus make your mark upon it. Once you learn that, you will never be the same again.” Don’t just live a life; build one.

5. I would rather gamble on our vision than make a ‘me, too’ product.

Steve Jobs believed in dreaming big. In the 1970s personal computers were relegated to the hobbyist market. Jobs had the vision of ‘putting a computer in the hands of everyday people.’ He once said that Xerox could have dominated the entire computer industry because Xerox scientists in Palo Alto’s PARC research facility were developing the first graphical user interface. Jobs said Xerox failed because its “vision” was limited to making another copy machine. Never underestimate the power of a bold vision to move your career and the world forward.

6. We’ve got to make the small things unforgettable.

The devil’s in the details and few people were more obsessed with details than Jobs. We’ve all heard stories of Jobs driving his engineers crazy because he didn’t like the aesthetic of something inside the computer that nobody would ever see. Everything mattered. I recall visiting a cardboard box manufacturing facility in Modesto, California, to prepare for a keynote speech to industry executives. This company made boxes for Apple products. One factory manager said out of the thousands of brands they made boxes for, none were more particular than Apple. Steve Jobs demanded that the details of the box, the tactile design, had to be just right. The edges had to look and even feel a certain way. When customers opened an iPhone box, it had to set the tone for the experience. Far too many people and businesses overlook the details and the customer experience with the brand inevitably suffers. Details matter.

7. Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently…they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Jobs once said that what made the Macintosh great was the fact that the people he chose to work on the system were “musicians, and poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians who also happened to be computer scientists.” It’s a profound insight that speaks to building creative teams. Today it’s common for many companies to overlook creative individuals because they don’t fit in a hiring box. Jobs didn’t just think differently; he hired differently. See genius in diversity. Hire outside your industry from time to time.

8. You’ve got to have a problem that you want to solve; a wrong that you want to right.

I considered Steve Jobs one of the world’s greatest corporate presenters because he always explained the problem that his product would solve. The introduction of iTunes Music Store in 2003 is perhaps the best example of this approach. In one presentation Steve Jobs turned around public opinion, convincing customers that it was in their best interest to pay for something (songs) that they could otherwise get for free at the time. In this video clip you can watch Jobs demonstrate the “upsides and downsides” of the status quo, followed by his “solution,” the 99 cent song on the iTunes Music Store. Your audience needs to understand the problem your idea solves. Don’t leave them guessing. Explain it clearly.

9. It [what you choose to do] has got to be something that you’re passionate about because otherwise you won’t have the perseverance to see it through.

Steve Jobs believed that passion was a critical component of success. He talked about the role of passion constantly, so it’s no surprise that this quote would appear in ‘Jobs’, the film. The 2005 Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford University has been viewed millions of times and it’s the event where his thoughts on passion are most clearly articulated. Jobs told the graduates that day, “You’ve got to find what you love… Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” This could very well be the greatest piece of career advice ever given, with the exception of #10.

10. In your life you only get to do so many things and right now we’ve chosen to do this, so let’s make it great.

This quote is the best advice Jobs ever gave to Disney’s Chief Creative Officer, John Lasseter. Well before he became Disney’s chief animator, Lasseter recalls his first meeting with Steve Jobs after Jobs bought Pixar in 1986. Lasseter was working on a short film at the time and, at the end of the meeting, Lasseter says Steve Jobs asked him to do one thing: “Make it great.” The short, Tin Toy, went on to win the first academy award ever given for computer animation and set the foundation for what later would become Toy Story. Lasseter has told the story publicly a few times, most recently in this emotional tribute at Disney’s D23 Expo (the story begins at 8:30). Lasseter said those three words—make it great—have applied to every frame of every Pixar movie he worked on.

Is everything you do as great as it could be? This could very well be the most important question you ask yourself as a leader. Your customers deserve nothing less. Don’t just make it; make it great.

Read More