Would you like to feel less stressed and overwhelmed for the holidays?
Watch this video…
Take Action Challenge:
This week, notice when you find yourself expecting someone to act like someone else.
Then, stop doing that.
Your stress level will fall almost instantly.
Noah’s Note: Expect the expected.
PS. Leave a comment below if today’s message resonates
For many, a big part of the American Dream is being able to start your own business. Being able to make a business successful and then go on to sell it is what has made fortunes for many entrepreneurs. But what most entrepreneurs cannot lay claim to is having started, successfully built and then also sold a successful company, all by 21 years of age. That is exactly what 21 year old entrepreneur Lee Lowden has done. Not only that, but he has started five companies by 21. All while balancing his college education. His fifth and latest venture, StockBattle.com, has just been introduced and through it, Lee’s mission is to pioneer the “FinTech” (finance/tech) business.
How old were you when you started your first company and what was it?
I started my first legitimate company as a sophomore in High School, 16 years old. I launched an Internet e-commerce textbook buyback service. People from all around the country would come to my website to receive an instant buyback price quote on their textbooks. Once they placed an order, they received a pre-paid shipping label. Once I received and processed their books, I sent them their check and re-sold all of the textbooks on Amazon.
How did you get it off the ground?
I hired a development agency to build out my entire buyback website and integrate shipping API’s. I familiarized myself with the re-sale market, and calculated the profits that I could make from buying low and selling high. From a marketing perspective, I did a lot of research and taught myself all about Google’s pay per click advertising, which I used on a daily basis for acquiring customers all around the United States.
How many companies have you started since then?
Since then, I have started around five businesses in total. Textbook Buyback Website, Clothing Line, Cell Phone Buyback website, Cell Phone Buyback Price Comparison Search Engine, Business News Aggregator, and a Telecom Inventory Auction website. Many have failed, and I have learned tremendously from those failures. I sold my first successful business at 21 years old.
What kind of obstacles did you face as a young entrepreneur?
As a young entrepreneur, I faced many obstacles in regards to learning how to market, scale, and grow a business. I had to learn and teach myself everything via Internet articles, personal research, and through moments of failures and successes.
What is your most recent venture and how did it come about?
My older brother came up with the idea for our new company. When learning about the stock market and finance, he was never truly motivated to do research and trade in his virtual portfolios. He wanted to feel the thrill of stock trading and feel a sense of motivation and competitiveness when trading.
Our venture is StockBattle.com, a Pay-to-Play virtual stock market trading competition platform with real cash prizes in every competition. Similar to “white hot” daily fantasy sports, but for stock market trading competitions. You trade stocks with virtual money and compete against your friends to win cash prizes.
What is it that makes this mission so important?
Stock Battle is innovating financial education and getting amateurs and students interested and involved in finance and the stock market through competitive gaming – this is something, which usually does not occur at a young age. Through real-money gaming, finance students, amateurs, and even professional stock traders are attracted to and are signing up with our platform for the thrill and competitiveness of our Pay-to-Play real money gaming platform.
We are completely changing the virtual/paper trading industry by implementing this Pay-to-Play gaming platform. This is the beginning of the Finance Fantasy Gaming Industry.
What is on the horizon for Stock Battle? Where do you see the company being in another year?
The horizon for Stock Battle is a focus extreme growth in order to grow our user base, increase competition sizes, and increase competition prize pools. We plan to attract as many users as we can. As our user base grows, we can offer larger tournaments with larger prize pools. As these prize pools grow, more users will be attracted to our competitions and thus, growth will drive growth.
In another year, we would love to see upwards of 100,000 members on our website, trading in daily, weekly, and monthly competitions.
Where do you see the FinTech space going in the future?
I see a massive potential in the FinTech (Financial Technology) gaming space. With the Stock Battle platform, we are spearheading this space and are creating an entirely new finance real-money gaming industry. The FinTech industry is growing at an extremely rapid rate, and we expect to see the same type of growth on our platform.
What was your proudest moment as an entrepreneur?
My proudest moment was signing the purchase agreement papers for the first business that I sold. It was a great feeling of satisfaction to have someone purchase something that you built from the ground and up. Other proud moments include firsthand witnessing successful marketing campaigns pay off with high conversion rates.
As a society, what do you think we can do to encourage more young entrepreneurs and help them succeed?
In order to encourage more young entrepreneurs and help them succeed, we need to drive innovation, drive creativity, and provide these young entrepreneurs with the resources and connections needed to accomplish their ventures and ideas. Many people have business ideas, but rarely attempt to implement and build out the idea. I believe that if these young entrepreneurs were to have these resources, there would be a much higher conversion rate of young entrepreneurs attempting to implement and start their ideas or inventions.
The holiday period is fast approaching and you know what that means… parties, parties and more parties! It’s the time of year everyone always asks me what beauty must-have they need in their makeup bag. My answer? Red lipstick. Just like the little black dress is a wardrobe classic, a swipe of red lipstick is all you need to always look chic and glamorous. However, no one shade of red lipstick will suit every woman, which is why I’ve created a how-to guide to finding the right red for your skin tone this holiday season.
FAIR SKIN (Cara Delevingne & Taylor Swift)
Red lippies with an orange hue work best on fair complexions. The hint of orange brightens up your entire look without washing you out. If you want to make things flirty and playful, finish with a gloss like my Luminous Lip Veil Scarlet Fever. The shine and additional sparkle is perfect for parties.
MEDIUM SKIN (Jennifer Lopez & Miranda Kerr)
Women with sun-kissed or olive skin tones should reach for a fiery shade — instead of a reddish brown or a berry — to suit their warmer complexions. Make a statement! Try a shade with an on-trend, matte finish for a real punch of color.
DEEP SKIN (Kerry Washington & Naomi Campbell)
Opt for reds with burgundy and maroon undertones. Dark reds make for a romantic finish to your holiday look! Step it up a notch by lining your lips last with a plummy brown lip liner, like my Lip Pencil Hot Mocha. Blend well to create an ombre effect to your pout. Important note! When you’re trying out a brand new lippie, you need to give yourself time to adjust to the color. Sit with it on for a few minutes before making a final decision. You might have reservations at first, but after a few minutes, you may just have found your new fave colour!
Once you’ve found your perfect shade of red, it’s time to ensure your lippie lasts through the hors d’oeuvres and cocktails. Make sure your lips are properly hydrated by applying a lip balm (like my Auto Pilot Overnight Lip Balm) to them the night before. This helps your lip color last and blends seamlessly. Next, apply your red lip and follow with a lip liner. Lining lips last helps keep the color from feathering and defines their natural shape. And finally, when you’re just about to head out the door, swipe a cotton tip through the center of your mouth. This will keep any lipstick from transferring onto your teeth.
Photo Credit: Cara, Taylor, Jennifer, Miranda, Kerry, Naomi.
“Rosewater,” the feature film directorial debut by Jon Stewart, was released in theaters Friday. It depicts the experiences of Maziar Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian journalist who was arrested in Tehran and imprisoned for 118 days. Bahari had previously appeared on “The Daily Show,” which prompted Iranian authorities to detain him as a spy. HuffPost Entertainment spoke to Gael Garcia Bernal about his role as Bahari and what it was like to be a part of Stewart’s first movie.
What was it like working with Jon Stewart? Tell me about his directorial style.
He’s a very experienced director. What I mean by that is he’s been working with a large group of people for 15 years. He was capable of growing “The Daily Show.” So, there are many things that are no so different from that experience in the groundwork of it. It is not that different. But there are things that make it very complicated and different from making a TV show. He’s a very intelligent person. Very mature. He’s doing the film for the right reasons. Therefore, he was very willing to learn and open up, to understand.
There’s a lot of humor here considering this is a film about torture. How did you find that balance?
The humor was found by Maziar Bahari, through his imprisonment and through his recount of the imprisonment he expressed the ridiculousness of the situation. It’s all there. It was all there in Maziar’s book and then Jon’s interpretation and whatever we had to do, we just had to find the balance. There’s sometimes not a balance even. Sometimes it was more tragic than funny and sometimes it was more funny than tragic.
You also worked very closely with Maziar. What was it like being in such close connection to the man you were playing?
I was playing an interpretation of his account. So, there are conflicts that already exist there. Added to that is the fact that we were doing it in English. We weren’t doing it in Farsi. So, that creates an interpretation. Already, it is a different character than the real character. So, Maziar was there and he was kind enough to observe us, to enjoy the work that we were doing, to let us in that world, and it was fun. It was very kind of him.
There was some backlash to the fact that Jon cast you, a Mexican actor, as an Iranian character. How would you respond to that?
Well, it happened in Tehran, but it was shot in Jordan. It’s in English, not in Farsi. The person that plays Rosewater is a Danish actor. The person who plays my father is a Turkish actor. The person who plays the friend of Maziar is an English-Greek actor. There are Egyptians in the film. There are many artists with a background in Iraq or Palestine or Syria. So, we were from all over the world. And it was a director from New Jersey. And I’m from Mexico. And I understand the subject on a human level. Of course I do. But definitely I’m not from Iran, and I’m from the places or nationality of many characters that I’ve interpreted in my life. I’ve never interpreted a character from Guadalajara, from where I’m from. So, it’s part of the nature of all this, to create a bigger fable.
What do you hope audiences take away from “Rosewater”?
Many things, many questions. I think among the many questions the film asks, it highlights the persecution of journalists all over the world. This is a film about those big issues, not about Iran itself. There is a question about the nature of prison and how torture is systematically used all over the world to put people in a guilty position. In even the most sophisticated democracies, it is something that is commonly used. Like many stories, it is about the triumph of the human spirit.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Sony’s next smartphone may well be the first to leak its parts this season as we prepare for the whole 2015 batch. What we’re seeing here is said to be the Sony Xperia Z4, the next in a line of devices that look so extremely similar, you’d be forgiven for mistaking one for any one of the others. This device … Continue reading
Free, city-wide WiFi already sounds like a pretty awesome thing, but Gigabit? If you’re in New York City, that might be what you’re getting. Today, city officials are unveiling an enterprising plan named LinkNYC, which will use kiosks placed throughout the city as WiFi hotspots. There will be as many as 10,000 of these kiosks placed throughout all five boroughs, … Continue reading
The YotaPhone 2, shown off earlier this year at MWC 2014, will be making its official launch in a couple of weeks, according to the folks at Android Central. Yota Devices, the company behind the handset, will be having an event in London on December 3 for the second-iteration of the phone we saw back during CES 2013, and though … Continue reading
Back when Star Wars was first released, it quickly became common – at least with a classic like that – to go to a film more than once in the theater. The trend was summoned once again with Titanic, then again with the Star Wars prequels. AMC Theaters and Paramount Pictures have caught on to the trend at last, revealing … Continue reading
We often joke that our laptops, consoles and other devices get warm enough to cook on. A German company called Cloud & Heat took that idea seriously and is deploying it on a large scale. The company offers cloud computing and cloud storage services, but instead of having large data centers its servers are installed all over Germany and used as radiators and water heaters.
As you’ll see in Cloud & Heat’s commercial below, this setup has a multitude of benefits. First, it makes good use of the heat that the servers generate. According to the company 90% of the electricity that servers use is transformed into heat, which would otherwise be wasted in conventional data centers. Second, it (supposedly) results in lower prices for their cloud service clients, because the company saves on air conditioning and infrastructure. Finally, the reduced use of energy – from people using less heaters and the company using less air conditioners – is good for the environment.
Here’s another promo video for Cloud & Heat. It’s in German, but it shows the actual servers being used to heat water and air in buildings. According to Cloud & Heat, it will install air vents to let excess heat out so that the servers won’t be a nuisance during summer. Cloud service clients on the other hand won’t have to worry about their data being stolen or destroyed because the servers are encased in fireproof and sturdy cabinets.
Cloud & Heat’s cloud services vary in price, while German residents can procure server cabinets as heaters for a one time payment of €12,000 (~$15,000 USD). That’s good for at least 15 years, and the company will bear all maintenance, repair, electric and Internet costs associated with the servers. Float on to Cloud & Heat’s website for more info.
[via Slash Gear]
The supertall boom in New York City is happening . Although we’ve seen a few different visualizations of how this might look, here’s a series of brand-new images that puts the changing skyline in perspective, with two dozen proposed or under-construction supertalls that will irrevocably change the New York City skyline by 2018.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
