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by Derek Loosvelt|March 05, 2014
At the age of 12, Marcus Lemonis, star of CNBC's "The Profit,"
owned a lawn cutting business that made $1,000 a week. At 22,
without any prior political experience (other than a summer
internship on Capitol Hill), Lemonis ran for a state seat in
Florida and nearly beat a three-term incumbent. Not long afterward,
Lemonis joined AutoNation, the largest car retailer in the country,
and quickly rose the corporate ladder.
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by Derek Loosvelt|February 21, 2014
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not
doing anything very innovative." "Many of life's failures are
people who did not realize how close they were to success when they
gave up." "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail
again. Fail better." These quotes of failure (from Woody Allen,
Thomas Edison, and Samuel Beckett, respectively) have been
popularized for a reason. And that reason is failure is the route
to success. That said, failing stinks.
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by Derek Loosvelt|February 14, 2014
This past week several men and women put in performances of their
careers @Sochi2014. Americans Sage Kostenburg and Jamie Anderson
put in fine final runs to take gold in men's and women's snowboard
slopestyle, respectively. The Japanese nineteen-year-old Yuzura
Hanyu skated a world-record short program on his way to take gold
in men's singles. The speedskating men and women of the Netherlands
dominated the ice, picking up all kinds of golds, silvers, and
bronzes.
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by Derek Loosvelt|February 12, 2014
Before I address AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's public justification for
scaling back his firm's 401(k) plan on rising health care costs
such as those associated with "two AOL-ers that had distressed
babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make
sure were O.K.," I'd like to make a few observations gleaned from
my two decades as part of the so-called American workforce.
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by Derek Loosvelt|February 07, 2014
Although Wall Street punished Twitter earlier this week for its
slow new-user growth-following Twitter's first earnings release as
a public company, its share price plummeted 18 percent-the social
media site regained more than 8 percent of its market value in
trading today. And so, it appears that TWTR has the following new
user, among others, to thank for joining its growing (albeit not
fast enough) network of micro bloggers: @SochiProblems.
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by Derek Loosvelt|February 06, 2014
Today, the New York Times published an op-ed entitled "Detroit's
Immigration Solution," which criticizes the plan that Michigan
Governor Rick Snyder has to fix the down-but-not-out Motor City.
Snyder has proposed "to attract 50,000 [immigrants] over five years
using a visa program for people with advanced degrees or
exceptional abilities in the sciences, arts or business.
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by Derek Loosvelt|January 29, 2014
It's too bad that JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon isn't among the increasing
number of CEOs who tweet, because I would've loved to have read his
140-character blast after he received an $8.5 million
raise last week for his 2013 efforts (a/k/a cutting deals with
the Feds, keeping his options in the money, etc.). In any case,
below is a handful of other prominent CEOs who posted prominent
tweets in the past week. 1.
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by Derek Loosvelt|January 24, 2014
Dear Mr. Polk, I read (re-read) your January 18, 2014 New York
Times op-ed, "For the Love of Money," with great interest and
even greater admiration. Currently, I'm a third-year college
student at a school in Boston (☺), and, like the young Sam Polk,
before he realized that he was addicted to wealth, I, too, am very
enthusiastic, to say the least, about pursuing a career on Wall
Street. Which is the reason I'm writing you today.
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by Derek Loosvelt|January 16, 2014
Although 70 percent of the American workforce now works
shoulder-to-shoulder in football-field sized rooms without anything
as much as an iPhone-thin wall separating their desks, studies
continue to show that open-office plans are detrimental to
employees' concentration, productivity, creativity, stress level,
and job satisfaction, not to mention their health.
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by Derek Loosvelt|January 09, 2014
The greed is unimaginable. The hubris is pornographic. And the
smug, arrogant mask on the main character's face will make you
clench your fists and grit your teeth with rage. No, I'm not
talking about the latest Scorcese-DiCaprio collaboration but the
latest PBS Frontline documentary, "To Catch a Trader," which
follows the U.S. government's insider trading investigation of
self-proclaimed Hedge Fund King Steven A. Cohen and his eponymous
billion-dollar hedge fund empire.
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