Tags
Posted by experiencebusinesssolutions | Filed under Management Consultancy
16 Tuesday Apr 2013
02 Tuesday Apr 2013
Posted Inspiration, Interesting Blog, Tools
inWatch “A Day Made of Glass” and take a look at Corning’s vision for the future with specialty glass at the heart of it.
Inspired, let us know your thoughts…….
20 Wednesday Mar 2013
Posted Advice, Business, Expert Resources, Interesting Blog, Methods & Techniques
in
Doubling sales means spending twice as much time and money selling, right? Wrong. You can double sales by making relatively small incremental improvements to your sales process, according to Donal Daly, CEO of The TAS Group.
Here’s how it works:
The higher the quality of your sales leads, the less likely you are to be calling the wrong people. To make your sales leads just 20% better, take a look at where you’ve been selling successfully and where you haven’t been doing so well.
Create a quick profile of your ideal customer and, using that as a point of contrast, define your most-likely-to-not-buy customer. Now go through your list of sales leads and cross out the ones that, based on these profiles, probably won’t buy.
Even after you’ve winnowed your list, there will still be prospects on it who don’t really need for your offering or have no money to buy it. Wasting time on these false opportunities means less time working on real ones.
Early in your first conversation, ask “what’s the priority of this problem?” “How will you handle it if you don’t buy a solution?” Then listen carefully. Politely end the conversation if your offering isn’t all that important to them.
Obviously, the more opportunities that you close, the more customers you win and the more sales revenue you produce. While doubling or tripling your close rate is probably impossible, anybody can achieve a 20% improvement.
The easiest way to increase your close rate is to stop trying to sell and instead listen carefully for “go ahead signals” during conversations with potential customers. Put aside your fear of failure and ask for the business. It’s that simple.
There is a fixed amount of time and resources connected to every sales effort. Making two deals for $10,000 each take far more time and effort as making single deal with one customer for $20,000.
Therefore, when you’re involved in an opportunity, constantly be aware of additional ways that your firm might be help that customer. This is not upselling; it’s providing better service to the customer.
These four changes act cumulatively on your sales revenue like so:
Geoffrey James writes the Sales Source column on Inc.com, the world’s most visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World’s Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source
Let us know your thoughts…
15 Friday Mar 2013
Posted Advice, Business, Business Processes, Expert Resources, Graphics, Prersentations, Tools
in
Most business presentations are about as interesting as watching paint dry in slo-mo, so the last thing you want is to make your presentation MORE boring by misusing your graphics.
Here are some simple rules based on a conversation with psychologist Stephen M. Kosslyn, author of the book Clear and to the Point.
Note: I’ve included some very rough examples to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Needless to say, your own slides will be somewhat more polished.
Graphics are particularly good at communicating that one thing is larger than another. If you attempt to express this with words and numbers, you’re forcing your audience to do mental mathematics. Why not make it easy for them?
WRONG:
RIGHT:
If your data contains multiple elements (like sales over time), a graph is the best way to communicate. However, don’t crowd the slide with data lest it become a puzzle-solving exercise. Keep it simple.
WRONG:
RIGHT:
It’s very difficult for an audience to absorb a complicated graphic. Rather than present it as a massive wall of visual data, break the graphic into chunks and show how each chunk relates to the previous chunk.
WRONG:
RIGHT:
You: “Here is our basic organizational structure.” (Click)
You: “We are now going to focus on the R&D group.”
Actually, Kosslyn didn’t say anything about this, but it needs to be said: enough with the happy workers who look like they’ve stepped out of a soap opera!
WRONG:
RIGHT:
Geoffrey James writes the Sales Source column on Inc.com, the world’s most visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World’s Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source
15 Friday Mar 2013
Posted Advice, Business, Business Experience, Industry Experience, Interesting Blog
inGeoffrey James writes the Sales Source column on Inc.com and we found this article very interesting, let us know your views………
Being a know-it-all is a great way to make people question your common sense.
When it comes to credibility-building, the three most powerful words in the English language are: “I don’t know.”
Many salespeople and most managers think that they’ll lose credibility if they admit ignorance, especially about something about which they “ought” to know. However, the exact opposite is the case.
Admitting ignorance makes everything else you say more credible. Admitting ignorance marks you as a person who’s not afraid to speak the truth, even when that truth might reflect poorly on you.
Needless to say, the “I don’t know” should be followed by a plan to discover the information that’s required, if the issue is truly important. And you WILL be judged on whether you deliver on that promise.
But here’s the thing: people dislike a know-it-all. They can often sense, at a gut level, when they’re being BSed. Even if they’re taken in, when they find out (as usually happens) that they’ve been BSed, they never trust the BSer again.
15 Friday Mar 2013
We discovered this interesting article on INC.Com
What seems like a disaster is actually the best news you’ve heard all day.
It’s easy to become discouraged when you’re selling, especially if you don’t recognize when something good just happened. Here are five very common situations that many people who sell for a living interpret as “bad news” when in fact they’re actually minor victories.
When you’re cold-calling, the last thing you want is to waste time having conversations with people who aren’t likely to buy. When a prospect hangs up immediately, you can move to the next person on your call list, secure in the knowledge that you weren’t going to make that sale anyway.
While this seems like a setback, the implication is that what you’re selling is of interest to the prospect and that there will, at some point, be a good time to talk about it. Therefore, your best response is to ask for an appointment sometime in the future. Make certain it’s a specific time and date. (Because of “setback” 3, below.)
Ouch! The prospect blew you off. Actually, no ouch. Hooray! As Tom Gimbel, CEO the staffing firm LaSalle Network recently pointed out to me, when a prospect stands you up, it creates a sense of obligation and even guilt. The prospect is now bound, by social convention, to say “yes” to another meeting and then to actually meet with you.
It’s not true that an objection means that the customer has found a reason not to buy. In fact, as sales guru Tom Hopkins once told me, an opportunity isn’t real until the prospect raises an objection. The objection proves that the prospect is now actually thinking about buying which means that you’ll likely make the sale once you’ve overcome the objection.
This is not good news, it’s great news. Chances are, if there’s already a budget allocated to what you’re selling, it’s already allocated to go to a competitor. You now have the opportunity to help the prospect change priorities so that budget IS allocated, with specific requirements that favor YOUR solution.
Geoffrey James writes the Sales Source column on Inc.com, the world’s most visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World’s Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source
15 Friday Mar 2013
Tags
Experienced Business Professionals, Happy, Interesting Article, Management, Management Consultancy, Motivation, Office Politics, professionals, Resources, solutions, workers
Here is a simple four-step process to ensure that the right decision gets made.
Most people think that office politics is bad for business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Office politics are an integral part of getting things done, regardless of whether you’re the CEO, a salesperson, or an intern working over the summer.
The word “politics” comes from the Greek politikos which means “of, for, or relating to citizens.” Far from being something negative, it is the art and science of influencing people when there are more than two people involved.
This post describes a four-step approach to office politics that doesn’t resort to tricks or deception (aka “dirty politics,” which IS bad for business.)
Playing politics consists of balancing the needs of multiple people so that they can come together to make a decision. In business, there are four general types of needs:
Once you understand your own needs (on various levels) and the needs of other people involved, you’re ready to play some politics.
Office politics consists of making deals where you’ll support the satisfying of the other person’s needs in return for that person’s support for satisfying your needs. In theory this is a simple concept, but in practice there are infinite variations. Kinda like sex.
For example, if you’ve got a colleague who wants to be “head programmer” and you want to be “manager of quality control,” you’d tell the colleague: “I’ll support the idea of you becoming ‘head programmer’ if you’ll support the idea of me becoming ‘manager of quality control.'”
As you can see, the keys to making an alliance work well are 1) figuring out what you want, and 2) figuring what the other person wants, and 3) agreeing to get there together. I’ll refrain from the sex analogy this time.
Great care must be taken in the building of alliances. As a general rule, you want to work with people who can be trusted both to hold up their side of the deal, and also can be trusted to do the right thing by the rest of the firm.
For example, you probably don’t want to make a deal that involves promoting a complete idiot to be “head programmer,” at least, not if you want your firm to succeed. However, if all things considered it really doesn’t matter all that much whether Jack or Jill gets the promotion, it’s okay to make a deal with Jill that puts Jack out of the picture.
And so much the better if you’re certain that Jill is the better choice.
In addition to alliances, politics consist of the less formal trading of favors. It’s a simple concept: you do a favor for somebody else and then, at a later date, you get to “call in” the favor by asking that person to do something for you.
And vice versa, naturally.
Playing office politics therefore requires that you keep close track of 1) whom you owe and about how much, and 2) who owes you and about how much.
Knowing the first keeps you from being blindsided by unexpected requests. Knowing the second allows you to assess how whether or not you’ve got the political power to achieve your goal, if politics is needed to achieve it.
It need hardly be said that trading favors is a great way to strengthen your alliances.
In addition, there’s usually some negotiation involved in assessing the value of favors past versus the value of favors in the future. No biggie, just be aware that everyone has their own “tally book” that might not agree 100% with yours.
All of this effort comes to fruition when it’s decision-making time. Your goal is to make certain (as far as possible) that everybody is supporting the decision you prefer, through the use of your alliances and favor-trading.
For example, suppose your firm has a choice between two software vendors and you’re certain that vendor “A” is the right choice, but you’re aware that some of the misguided dunderheads you work with believe that vendor “B” is a better option.
When the big meeting to decide which vendor to hire takes place, you want as many people possible at the conference room table pre-disposed to agree with you that the company should go with vendor “A.”
It could be argued that such decisions should be made based simply upon the merits of each vendor’s product. Maybe so, but that’s not the way the world works.
Office politics makes certain that the right decision gets made, even when it’s maybe for the wrong reasons. And that’s always better than making the wrong decision for the right reasons. Right?
Geoffrey James writes the Sales Source column on Inc.com, the world’s most visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World’s Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source
14 Thursday Mar 2013
Posted Advice, Expert Resources, Interesting Blog
inHow do you lose weight? Substitute diet drinks for sugary drinks. Eat low-fat foods. Just eat less of the bad foods — it’s all about the calories. We are told, “Just have more willpower.”
These ideas are false. They are food and diet industry propaganda that make and keep us fat and sick. Lies by the food industry combined with bad government policy based on food industry lobbying are the major cause of our obesity and diabetes epidemic.
Now, more than 35 percent of Americans are obese, and almost 70 percent are overweight. This is not an accident but the result of careful marketing and money in politics.
We are told it is all about making better choices. If we all took more personal responsibility, we could stop this obesity and diabetes epidemic. We have been told there are no good or bad foods, that the key to weight loss is moderation. And, of course, if we all just exercised more, all of us would lose weight. These ideas hold us hostage.
What the Food and Diet Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know
Diet Soda and Diet Drinks Make You Fat and Cause Type 2 Diabetes
Diet soda makes people fat? Really? How does that happen?
If losing weight were all about the calories, then consuming diet drinks would seem like a good idea. That’s certainly what Coca-Cola wants us to believe in their new ad highlighting their efforts to fight obesity. They proudly promote the fact that they have 180 low- or no-calorie drinks and that they cut sugared drinks in schools by 90 percent.
Is that a good thing? In fact, it may be worse than having us all drink regular Coke (and the other food giants making diet drinks also push the same propaganda).
A new 14-year study of 66,118 women (supported by many other previous studies) found that the opposite seems to be true. Diet drinks may be worse than sugar-sweetened drinks, which are worse than fruit juices (but only fresh-squeezed fruit juices).
The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, discovered some frightening facts that should make us all swear off diet drinks and products.
You might say that people who are overweight and just about to get diabetes drink more diet soda, but they scientifically controlled for body weight. And they found the artificial sweeteners increased diabetes independent of body weight!
This and other research shows how diet sodas make people fat and sick.
And that diet drinks may be even worse than regular sugar-sweetened sodas! How does that happen?
I love Taylor Swift. I met her last summer. She is a wonderful person with great integrity. I don’t think she knows about this research, and I hope someone shares it with her so she can save millions of children and fans from drinking Diet Coke because she endorses it.
Bottom line: There is no free ride. Diet drinks are not good substitutes for sugar-sweetened drinks. They increase cravings, weight gain, and Type 2 diabetes. And they are addictive.
Eating Fat Does Not Make You Fat
The diet and food industry has brainwashed us to eat fat-free foods, which seems like common sense. Eating fats makes you fat. Right? But the science tells us otherwise — not all calories are created equal. And even though fat has more calories per gram (9 calories vs. 4 calories of carbs and protein), eating fat can help you lose weight.
This low-fat idea was based on bad science. Our government told us in the 1970s to go on a low-fat diet and to eat 8-11 servings of rice, bread, and pasta a day. And unfortunately, we listened. This was the beginning of our obesity and diabetes epidemic. The food industry happily created a flood of fat-free foods.
But the science has proven that eating fat doesn’t make you fat — sugar does. And it is sugar, not fat, that raises your cholesterol despite what people and most doctors still believe.
A 20-ounce soda is fat-free, but that doesn’t make it a health food. If cookies were fat-free, then you can eat the whole bag, right?
But the fat is replaced with flour and sugar, and the result we now have is one in two adults with diabesity — that’s pre-diabetes or Type 2 diabetes — and almost one in four teenagers with pre-diabetes or Type 2 diabetes.
We did a 10-day sugar-free detox with our online community, and 600 people lost more than 4,000 pounds in 10 days!
So why does eating fat free make you fat and diabetic?
In a recent Harvard study, Dr. David Ludwig found that in two groups eating exactly the same calories, the group that had the low-fat diet (which means higher in sugars and starches) burned 300 calories less per day. Their metabolism was slower than the group eating the higher fat and higher protein diet.
If you ate the higher-fat, higher-protein diet (of exactly the same calories), it is the equivalent of running for one hour a day. In other words, if you just swap out sugars and starches for good quality fats and protein, it will be like you added an hour of free exercise a day to your life without any change in calorie intake!
Bottom Line: The key point here is that all calories are not the same. Swap out sugar and starch for good fats such as nuts, avocados, olive oil, and grass-fed animal products or wild fish. Be a “qualitarian.” Focus on quality, on real food, and the rest takes care of itself.
Being Overweight Is Not Your Fault
The food industry would have us believe that controlling our weight is about personal responsibility. Tell that to a 200-pound 5-year-old with diabetes and liver failure. Our taste buds have been hijacked by the food and diet industry. We are programmed to like sweet, salt, and fat tastes.
And those slick combinations of sugar, fat and salt in junk and processed food have hijacked our taste buds, our brain chemistry, and our metabolism. These foods are biologically addictive. We are held hostage by the food industry and we blame ourselves.
This is food terrorism!
How does food addiction happen?
New research shows that industrial food full of processed sugars, fats, salt, and chemicals are powerfully addictive. And sugar is the worst culprit.
One animal study found that sugar is more addictive than cocaine. When rats were given the choice between mainline cocaine right into their veins or sweetened water (in fact, they used an artificial sweetener), they found that sugar was eight times more addictive than cocaine. Even the rats already addicted to cocaine switched over to diet drinks!
And what’s even more interesting is that while cocaine and heroin activate only one spot for pleasure in the brain, sugar lights up the brain like a pinball machine.
If these foods are addictive and drive overeating, then the whole idea of moderation just doesn’t work. Hey, just have that one line of cocaine or that one hit of heroin.
We can’t stop eating, but we can stop eating junk and sugar! So we have to take back our taste buds, take back our brain chemistry, and take back our bodies from the food and diet industry. How do we do that?
Bottom Line: By eating real food — chicken, fish, veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, beans, and a little whole grains will reset your taste buds and your brain chemistry automatically.
Exercise Your Way to Weight Loss
The food industry and diet industry push exercise. Even Michelle Obama’s childhood obesity initiative focuses on exercise in its name, Let’s Move. But it should be really called Let’s Eat Real Food.
Here’s why. Sugar-sweetened drinks make up about 15 percent of our calorie intake every day. But you have to walk 4.5 miles to burn off one 20-ounce soda, which contains 15 teaspoons of sugar.
You have to run four miles a day for one week to burn off one supersize meal. If you have one supersize meal everyday you would have to run a marathon every day!
You can’t exercise your way out of bad diet — except if you run a marathon every day.
Drinking 32 ounces of Gatorade after a workout is a dumb idea, unless you run around like Kobe Bryant on the basketball court for 48 minutes. There are better ways to replenish your energy and electrolytes than colored sugar water with a few minerals sprinkled in.
To paraphrase my friend Bill Clinton, “It’s the food, stupid!”
Bottom Line: Exercise is critical to long-term health and weight loss, but you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet.
Thankfully, science is shedding light on the ideas that keep us fat and sick. Unfortunately, scientists don’t have billion-dollar marketing budgets. But we as a community of thinking people wanting real information can speak out, can spread the word and turn the tide of obesity and chronic disease together. Share this article with your community and friends.
Please leave your thoughts by adding a comment below – but remember, we can’t offer personal medical advice online, so be sure to limit your comments to those about taking back our health!
To your good health,
Mark Hyman, M.D.
Please let us know your thoughts on this interesting article………..
12 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted Expert Resources, Inspiration, Interesting Blog, Lifetime of Skills, Success
inThe Most Successful Leaders Do 15 Things Automatically, Every Day
A great article written by Glenn Llopis for Forbes found on the Huff Post
Leadership is learned behavior that becomes unconscious and automatic over time. For example, leaders can make several important decisions about an issue in the time it takes others to understand the question. Many people wonder how leaders know how to make the best decisions, often under immense pressure. The process of making these decisions comes from an accumulation of experiences and encounters with a multitude of difference circumstances, personality types and unforeseen failures. More so, the decision making process is an acute understanding of being familiar with the cause and effect of behavioral and circumstantial patterns; knowing the intelligence and interconnection points of the variables involved in these patterns allows a leader to confidently make decisions and project the probability of their desired outcomes.
The most successful leaders are instinctual decision makers. Having done it so many times throughout their careers, they become immune to the pressure associated with decision making and extremely intuitive about the process of making the most strategic and best decisions. This is why most senior executives will tell you they depend strongly upon their “gut-feel” when making difficult decisions at a moment’s notice.
More From Forbes:
— 14 Things You Should Do At The Start Of Every Work Day
— How To Be The One Who Gets The Promotion
— How To Pick And Stick To Career Goals
Beyond decision making, successful leadership across all areas becomes learned and instinctual over a period of time. Successful leaders have learned the mastery of anticipating business patterns, finding opportunities in pressure situations, serving the people they lead and overcoming hardships. No wonder the best CEOs are paid so much money. In 2011, salaries for the 200 top-paid CEOs rose 5 percent to a median $14.5 million per year, according to a study by compensation-data company Equilar for The New York Times.
(Click here to see the entire list from Forbes)
If you are looking to advance your career into a leadership capacity and/or already assume leadership responsibilities – here are 15 things you must do automatically, every day, to be a successful leader in the workplace:
1. Make Others Feel Safe to Speak-Up
Many times leaders intimidate their colleagues with their title and power when they walk into a room. Successful leaders deflect attention away from themselves and encourage others to voice their opinions. They are experts at making others feel safe to speak-up and confidently share their perspectives and points of view. They use their executive presence to create an approachable environment.
2. Make Decisions
Successful leaders are expert decision makers. They either facilitate the dialogue to empower their colleagues to reach a strategic conclusion or they do it themselves. They focus on “making things happen” at all times – decision making activities that sustain progress. Successful leaders have mastered the art of politicking and thus don’t waste their time on issues that disrupt momentum. They know how to make 30 decisions in 30 minutes.
3. Communicate Expectations
Successful leaders are great communicators, and this is especially true when it comes to “performance expectations.” In doing so, they remind their colleagues of the organization’s core values and mission statement – ensuring that their vision is properly translated and actionable objectives are properly executed.
I had a boss that managed the team by reminding us of the expectations that she had of the group. She made it easy for the team to stay focused and on track. The protocol she implemented – by clearly communicating expectations – increased performance and helped to identify those on the team that could not keep up with the standards she expected from us.
4. Challenge People to Think
The most successful leaders understand their colleagues’ mindsets, capabilities and areas for improvement. They use this knowledge/insight to challenge their teams to think and stretch them to reach for more. These types of leaders excel in keeping their people on their toes, never allowing them to get comfortable and enabling them with the tools to grow.
If you are not thinking, you’re not learning new things. If you’re not learning, you’re not growing – and over time becoming irrelevant in your work.
5. Be Accountable to Others
Successful leaders allow their colleagues to manage them. This doesn’t mean they are allowing others to control them – but rather becoming accountable to assure they are being proactive to their colleagues needs.
Beyond just mentoring and sponsoring selected employees, being accountable to others is a sign that your leader is focused more on your success than just their own.
6. Lead by Example
Leading by example sounds easy, but few leaders are consistent with this one. Successful leaders practice what they preach and are mindful of their actions. They know everyone is watching them and therefore are incredibly intuitive about detecting those who are observing their every move, waiting to detect a performance shortfall.
7. Measure & Reward Performance
Great leaders always have a strong “pulse” on business performance and those people who are the performance champions. Not only do they review the numbers and measure performance ROI, they are active in acknowledging hard work and efforts (no matter the result). Successful leaders never take consistent performers for granted and are mindful of rewarding them.
8. Provide Continuous Feedback
Employees want their leaders to know that they are paying attention to them and they appreciate any insights along the way. Successful leaders always provide feedback and they welcome reciprocal feedback by creating trustworthy relationships with their colleagues. They understand the power of perspective and have learned the importance of feedback early on in their career as it has served them to enable workplace advancement.
9. Properly Allocate and Deploy Talent
Successful leaders know their talent pool and how to use it. They are experts at activating the capabilities of their colleagues and knowing when to deploy their unique skill sets given the circumstances at hand.
10. Ask Questions, Seek Counsel
Successful leaders ask questions and seek counsel all the time. From the outside, they appear to know-it-all – yet on the inside, they have a deep thirst for knowledge and constantly are on the look-out to learn new things because of their commitment to making themselves better through the wisdom of others.
11. Problem Solve; Avoid Procrastination
Successful leaders tackle issues head-on and know how to discover the heart of the matter at hand. They don’t procrastinate and thus become incredibly proficient at problem solving; they learn from and don’t avoid uncomfortable circumstances (they welcome them).
Getting ahead in life is about doing the things that most people don’t like doing.
12. Positive Energy & Attitude
Successful leaders create a positive and inspiring workplace culture. They know how to set the tone and bring an attitude that motivates their colleagues to take action. As such, they are likeable, respected and strong willed. They don’t allow failures to disrupt momentum.
13. Be a Great Teacher
Many employees in the workplace will tell you that their leaders have stopped being teachers. Successful leaders never stop teaching because they are so self-motivated to learn themselves. They use teaching to keep their colleagues well-informed and knowledgeable through statistics, trends, and other newsworthy items.
Successful leaders take the time to mentor their colleagues and make the investment to sponsor those who have proven they are able and eager to advance.
14. Invest in Relationships
Successful leaders don’t focus on protecting their domain – instead they expand it by investing in mutually beneficial relationships. Successful leaders associate themselves with “lifters and other leaders” – the types of people that can broaden their sphere of influence. Not only for their own advancement, but that of others.
Leaders share the harvest of their success to help build momentum for those around them.
15. Genuinely Enjoy Responsibilities
Successful leaders love being leaders – not for the sake of power but for the meaningful and purposeful impact they can create. When you have reached a senior level of leadership – it’s about your ability to serve others and this can’t be accomplished unless you genuinely enjoy what you do.
In the end, successful leaders are able to sustain their success because these 15 things ultimately allow them to increase the value of their organization’s brand – while at the same time minimize the operating risk profile. They serve as the enablers of talent, culture and results.
12 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted Inspiration, Methods & Techniques, Motivation
inTags
60 of the world’s happiest facts
1. A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance.
2. If you fake laugh long enough you’ll start to really laugh, really, really hard.
3. The book cover to the prize winning short story collection, Spellbound, was chosen because author, Joel Willans, bought his wife’s engagement ring with poker winnings.
4. The Beatles used the word “love” 613 times throughout their career.
5. The chances of you (as opposed to someone else) being born is about 1 in 40 million.
6. Every year, millions of trees grow thanks to squirrels forgetting where they buried their nuts.
7. On the day of his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. had a pillow-fight in his motel room.
8. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We’re all made of star dust.
9. Cancer death rates are down 20% in past 20 years.
10. The miles travelled by the Apollo 11 crew to the moon were greater than every single exploration mission to the New World combined.
11. Penguins only have one mate their entire life and “propose” by giving their mate a pebble.
12. Cows have best friends.
13. Despite high infant mortality rates and lower life expectancies, not one of your direct ancestors died childless.
14. Cuddling releases Oxytocin which helps speed healing and recovery from physical wounds.
15. Otters hold hands when sleeping so they don’t drift away from each other.
16. Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, wrote his daughter initials there. They’ll last at least 50,000 years.
17. There’s a type of jellyfish that lives forever.
18. Wayne Allwine (the voice of Mickey Mouse) and Russi Taylor (the voice of Minnie Mouse) were married in real life.
19. We now have less crime, a lower death rate and longer life expectancy than at any other time in human history.
20. The clitoris has 8000 nerve fibres, double that of the penis, and is the only organ in the body, which has evolved purely for pleasure.
21. Butterflies can taste with their feet.
22. For someone, somewhere in the world, today is the most amazing day of their life.
23. When you die, your body decomposes, and the atoms that contained “you” are recycled into Earth to be used again.
24. Every year the Netherlands sends 20,000 tulip bulbs to Canada to thank them for their aid in the Second World War.
25. Rats giggle when you tickle them. Their voices are so high-pitched you need special equipment to hear them, but when you do, their laughs are immediately evident.
26. Sea horses mate for life, are completely faithful and travel together by holding on to each others tails.
27. The guy at the end of this video exists.
28. If you say “my cocaine” you sound like Michael Caine saying his own name.
29. Male puppies, when playing with female puppies, will intentionally let the female win.
30. The next Star Wars will not be directed by George Lucas.
31. It takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown.
32.The kingdom of Bhutan use ‘gross national happiness’ as a key national indicator.
33. The majority of European children born in 2013 will live to see the year 2100.
34. There’s an animal called a Dik Dik. And it’s the cutest antelope you’ll ever see.
35. Neurologically speaking, seeing somebody else smile actually makes you happier.
36. Every human being spent about half an hour as a single cell.
37. There are people, ombrophiles, who have a passionate love for rain.
38. Once your brain realizes that you’re dying, it releases DMT, one of the most powerful known psychedelics. This dilates your perception of time and allowing you to live inside your own mind for hours or even days.
39. No matter how long you live there will always be an amazing new food for you try.
40. A group of porcupines is called a prickle.
41. Aside from a sample in a lab, Smallpox is completely extinct. No one else will ever die from it again.
42. A pig’s orgasms last thirty minutes.
43. We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.
44. Sloths only leave their tree once a week, to pee and poo.
45. Spinner dolphins sleep in pairs, one with the left hemisphere asleep, the other with the right. They each keep watch with one eye and half a brain. They are known to sleep-mate for life.
46. At the time of your birth, you were, for a few seconds, the youngest person on the planet.
47. Cows produce the most milk when listening to the song Everybody Hurts by REM.
48. Somewhere, someone is losing their virginity right now.
49. If you spell out numbers in order, the first time you get to the letter “a” is at one-thousand.
50. We’ve all been here forever. Every bit of matter we see has been here since the beginning of time and it always will be.
51. A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
52. Happiness is a skill. You can learn it and it’s not hard.
53. Except when breeding, the Common Swift spend their entire lives in the air, living on the insects they catch in flight. They drink, feed, and often mate and sleep on the wing
54. Baby rabbits are called kittens.
55. Baby puffins are called pufflings.
56. Costa Rica is statistically the happiest nation on Earth.
57. Worms communicate by snuggling.
58. 2013 is the first year since 1987 that consists for four different digits.
59. With our horseless carriages, flying robots, space travel, long-distance communication at the speed of light, cloning, lasers, connection to people all over the world, we are living in the future people dreamed of.
60. If you blend a sea sponge, it will re-form back into a sea sponge.
Thoughts and moments of a hacker, caffeinator, and creator.
Buy a product, help a person in need + see your impact.
Technology news, trends and analysis covering mobile, big data, cloud, science, energy and media
by tom tunguz of redpoint ventures