Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts

Your Favorite Companies used Unethical Business Practices to Grow their Business

By Any Means Necessary

We often hear entrepreneurs say they are going to make it by any means necessary.Many entrepreneurs and e-commerce professionals for example wrestle with questions like should I buy reviews and followers, or should I grow things naturally?

You may be surprised to learn about some of the business practices of some of your favorite companies and some of the largest and most popular companies around today and some of the ruthless and questionable business practices they took in their early days.

I remember years ago hearing about the Uber/Lyft debacle where Uber scheduled and cancelled more than 5,000 rides from competitor Lyft. This got me thinking about many of the questionable tactics we hear about companies taking, especially new startups dead set on succeeding.

Many of these companies lied to you, many of these companies spammed you, and many outright sabataged their competitors. A few of these companies even had lawsuits filed against them for this stuff.

Most of these short cuts or growth hacks that these companies did were technically legal, but bordered on unethical. Some worked and some of these companies grew to be worth Billions of Dollars while others lost their users trust and fell off the map into obscurity.

This is my personal spin on this but I feel some of these practices were sketchy as in harmful, distrustful, and something these companies shouldn't be proud of having done while others are more scrappy or hustlers which I would define as achieving a goal with limited resources and not harming anyone while maybe bending the rules as bit. As they say, if you're given a 10 foot wall to get over and a 5 foot ladder you need to get creative.

Reddit is probably the biggest public forum on the internet. In their early days they created fake accounts or bot accounts and stuffed the site full of their own content. They did this as it allowed them to shape how Reddit would eventually evolve. As a real userbase grew, Reddit's direction remained the same. Slowly over time this allowed the fake accounts to fade away. Reddit is now ranked in the top 100 websites on Alex, a website which ranks websites.

I would chalk this one up to scrappy and hustling. They didn't really harm anyone. They needed to make their forum have some value for early users, something an empty forum with no content wouldn't do. How do you grow a site when there's nothing for people to come for? Without users the platform is useless. Reddit in this case made a very effective move without harming anyone.

Paypal

Paypal is probably one of the best known if not the best known company in the payments industry. Paypal all but has a monopoly on eBay payments. But before that, in the early days, Paypal created a bot that purchased items on eBay and paid using Paypal. After Paypal became the norm for payments, eBay wound up purchasing them for 1.5 Billion Dollars.

This story essentially proves that you can indeed buy your way into business. Though this has nothing to do with SEO, this may be considered somewhat of a "greyhat" method, not blackhat and outright bad but clearly not whitehat either. Overall though we'll call this scrappy as nobody was really harmed.

Tinder

Dating websites are notorious for creating fake accounts to increase user demand. Anyone who's visited any non-mainstream dating site is probably aware that the vast majority of profiles are fake bots. Tinder's first 1,000 users were all bots. Tinder however today is valued at 5 Billion, yes you saw that right 5 Billion Dollars.

Like Reddit, in order to make a community work you need others on that marketplace. Though what Reddit did and what Tinder did are very similar, Reddit made fake profiles to throw up content which probably still had some value, where as what Tinder did was decieve their user base, as well as waste their time replying to and answering fake bots. Although technically no rules were broken I would consider this slightly sketchy, and as someone who has used dating sites in the past I would also consider this very annoying.

I think this is the tough thing about starting any type of business or website that revolves around a community whether it's a commerce website, dating website, or even a forum. Nobody will come without other users, but you can't really obtain users without existing users. It's sort of a catch 22 and almost forces companies to do things like this.

AirBNB

AirBNB, the peer to peer housing rental services years ago created a bot that automatically responded to housing posts on their rival Craigslist website. They stole people from Craigslist and converted them into their own users on their own website. This led to much of their early growth. Today AirBNB is valued at around 24 Billion Dollars.

Is this sketchy or scrappy? It's a little bit sketchy but pretty much every internet marketer, affiliate marketer, etc comments on other people's blog posts, on other people's Youtube videos, etc. Everyone is trying to steal everyone else's traffic so it's pretty much the norm. Since they didn't really harm or lie to their users we'll say this is cool.

Facebook

Facebook had access to all of Harvard students e-mails and regularly blasted e-mails to them about Facebook. The Facebook platform spread to different college campuses and eventually obtained 1.2 Billion users.

Personally I've never been a huge fan of Facebook and to this day don't maintain a Facebook profile, at least not a realy one, I have a few throw away accounts for marketing purposes. This was somewhat sketchy as this was spam e-mail and they did not have permission to market to these users. No-one likes spam e-mail. That said they took the route of asking for forgiveness and not permission. This was a bit sketchy but ultimately led to their website becomming one of the largest around.

Myspace

Myspace, it's been a while since we heard that name. I used to be an avid Myspace user and though looking back, most people make fun of Myspace, I actually preferred it to Facebook and am somewhat surprised Facebook surpassed it.

Similar to Facebook, Myspace had a e-mail database of 100 Million e-mail addresses and spammed them all to announce their launch. As we said above with Facebook, nobody likes spam e-mail so we'll chalk this one up to being a bit sketchy.

Glide Video Texting

Glide is somewhat of a lesser known company but I tend to like to try out new apps when they come out. Glide is a video messenging app. They spam texted users to get them to download their app. They wound up doing one of the things I hate the most, without my permission they texted everyone in my phonebook asking them to download the app and signup. This is sketchy, no doubt about it.

Youtube

I love Youtube, it's one of my favorite apps and websites. I love it as a creator and a viewer. In the early days Youtube founders installed a feature which allowed viewers to spam their friends about a video. Youtube in the early days was also known for hosting copyrighted and pirated content. Somewhat sketchy but I have a hard time knocking Youtube as I like it so much.

LinkedIn, a social network for professionals tricked users into importing and inviting your contacts to join their platform. Users were not happy about this and it led to a lawsuit which cost them quite a bit of money over this decision.

Though they lost 11 Billion of their company value, LinkedIn, is the most established professional social network and boasts over 400 Million users. This is sketchy and apparently against the law as well. The last thing my co-workers wwant is a spam email from me inviting me to join something.

Amazon Sellers

This isn't knocking Amazon, this is more about sellers on Amazon. The fact of the matter is the products which sell the most on Amazon are not necessarily the best products, the sellers, don't necessarily provide the best customer service. It really boils down to who does the best job of doing a product rollout, of garnering reviews, and who can best game the algorithm. This isn't unique to Amazon, pretty much every search engine, everey marketplace, every site which has a search function, everyone is figuring out how to game the system and rank high.

Years ago you could potentially throw a product up on Amazon and have it sell organically. Today however Amazon is flooded with more goods than ever before. Rarely can you find a product with low competition, and even if you do, it's only a matter of time until other sellers take note of your products sales rank and swoop in to try to steal your sales.

Many sellers either directly pay for five star ratings or use review exchnages and review networks to bulk up their reviews. It's nearly impossible to get any ranking on Amazon without doing so. Good luck trying to roll out a product with 0 reviews when your competitors have reveiws numbering in the hundreds or even thousands, you just won't show up for buyers to see you period. And even if you are selling products maybe 1-3 out of every 100 buyers will actually take the time to leave a review.

It's somewhat disappointing it has gotten to the point where you essentially need to buy your way into business. Now this can be overcome if you're a good marketer and can drive your own traffic to Amazon, but just uploading a product and counting on Amazon to organically feed you sales and traffic just isn't going to happen.

So is this ethical? Well, it's legal to give away free or discounted products in return for reviews so long as it's an honest unbiased review and so long as the reviewer discloses in the review that they received the product either free or at a heavily discounted rate. In reality however, it takes away some of the legitimacy of reviews being something to count on when buying a product.

Sketchy or scrappy? We'll call this one a little of both.

Bing

The newer search engine Bing, has been striving to gain our business and take us away from Google. Some people raved about Bing when they came out, personally I've never really been crazy about the search engine.

Bing is owned by Microsoft. First Bing stole Google's search results, claimed them as their own, and then denied everything.

Prior to this, Bing had copied from Apple, then they moved on to stealing from Google. Google is an enormous company with a wealth of resources. If your going to steal from Google, then get caught, at least acknowledge it. Bing was definately some sketch balls.

Oracle

Oracle named the FIRST version or release of their software "Version 2". They thought customers were more likely to buy a version two which is more likely to have the bugs worked out. Typically a version two is a more polished product. Oracle is now worth about $200 Billion...WOW.

A bit misleading calling your first version of your software version two, however nobody was harmed and it's only minorly distrustful. We'll call this one scrappy. Keep hustling Oracle.

Uber

This story is pretty much the story I had in my head when I came up with the idea for this post. I had heard about this in the news years ago.

Uber employees ordered and cancelled more than 5,000 rides from Lyft, the rival peer to peer ride sharing company. This decreased the availability of Lyft drivers, and hurt Lyft drivers revenue and earnings which they count on to earn a living. The employees who did not cancel got in the Lyft car and had them drive to Uber headquarters. Lyft drivers began to doubt Lyft.

We're going to call this pretty sketchy. Though somewhat clever, and though Uber has beaten out Lyft as the better known peer to peer ride provider, it was a sketchy thing to do. Futhermore, the people this affected most were the actual drivers just trying to make a living, even more so than Lyft as a company. Shame on you Uber.

The Wrap-Up

Ethics are subjective, we all have our own code we live by, we all have our own standards of what is right and what is wrong and what we are willing to do to get ahead.

You can be the judge of the above stories and decide for yourself whether the ends justified the means and whether they were right in doing what they did.

You can also decide for yourself if the above tactics are above board enough to use on your own business, or if that's a direction you don't want to head in.

How Earning $135,000 Can Put You In The One Percent of Earners?

We all hear about the super rich and the one percent right? What if I were to tell you that making $135,000 could put you in the one percent, would you believe that? Probably not, typically when we think about the one percent we think about the super rich. We think about people sailing the world on yachts living a life of luxury.

Though $135,000 is a good chunk of change, it's definitely not mega yacht money. So how can it possibly be that if you make $135,000 your in the one percent? Well if your 31 or younger, that figure puts you ahead of 99 percent of others your age.

The one percent is a very fluid club to be in. Out of the one percent, the top half turns over about ever year. To remain in the top one percent, a 30 year old earning $130,000 would need to raise their salary by $80,000 by age 35. They would then need to raise their salary another $70,000 before they hit 45.

Though many of us think of those with tens of millions and even billions of Dollars as being the one percent, the one percent actually begins with those earning about $450,000 a year a few years ago, depending upon who's stats your going off of it could be as high as a household income of $541,000 per year.

So what's the point of all of this?

I regularly get e-mails from people who say hey I just wanna make $20,000 a month. Wouldn't we all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's also not easy. If you were to make $20,000 a month, that's an income of over $240,000 a year. Who wouldn't like to be making that money. Again, not to say it's impossible, or it can't be done, or even that you can't do it.

That said if $135,000 puts you in the top 1%, then $240,000 is nearly double that. Are you smarter than 99.7% of your peers? Do you put in more hours working than 99.7% of your peers? Are you more creative and do you have more perseverance than 99.7% of your peers? If you can honestly answer yes to those questions then sure maybe you can make $20,000 a month. If you cannot, you have some changes to make in your life before that goal is actually a realistic aspiration.

I don't say this to discourage you. In the coming days I'm going to be releasing a couple blog posts and videos talking about both how easy it is to make money and specifically make money online, as well as how difficult it can be. Success isn't an overnight thing that happens, it's something that happens through hard work and not being scared to try new things.

When it does happen however, you kind of have this epiphany of why did it take me so long to figure this out. And honestly, in many scenarios it's not even that you figured out this magical formula, it's that you just finally got off your ass and took some action.

I watched a great Alex Becker video the other day. He talks about essentially what your approach should be when first starting making money online, as well as further stages down the road once money starts coming in. He said that essentially when your first getting started people get way too hung up on educating themselves on everything and learning everything. It's understandable. You basically spent the first 18 years of your life being told that you need to learn before you do. Should you choose to go on to college your essentially told you can't do anything in the business world until you spend 4 more years learning, and even after that college has essentially taught you nothing about what your job is and what your actually going to be doing so you have to spend more time learning.

Though information is very valuable as well as an education, doing beats learning and doing beats planning. So many people spend so much time learning and planning, and are so focused on having things perfect they never take any action.

I literally talked to a buddy of mine the other day. He has an idea he's been working on for five years, no exaggeration, literally 5 years. Despite me telling him to just do something he was always talking about how he didn't have the right parts. He needed a CAD designer, he needed more money. The other day I gave him a book to read, it's called "The One Thing". He read the book, got motivated, and literally what had taken him 5 years thinking about doing he actually completed in literally 10 minutes. I'll attach our text conversation below.

Procrastination Is A Dream Killer

Anyhow, Alex Becker says in that beginning stage just doing something, throw stuff at the wall until something sticks. Many things won't work but eventually you'll find something that does. When you do invest more time and focus on that thing. If it continues to work and improve continue to scale it. Assuming your not dumping tons of money into this idea you really have nothing to lose and honestly in the world of making money online not many things require you to dump a bunch of money in to get started so you really can't lose.

The point of this post is take action, do something. Quit making excuses for why you can't do something and just do it. Quit worrying about how things won't be perfect, you can fix mistakes later. The most important thing is just start doing something and if you do, the money will come.

Mark Cuban and Tai Lopez Talk About Spotting Trends

This morning while I was drinking my coffee, I was watching a Youtube video where Mark Cuban visits Tai Lopez at his house and they talk business as well as other things.

This is a very informative and interesting video for a number of reasons but the main thing that jumped out at me that both Mark Cuban and Tai Lopez mentioned was being curious and being able to spot trends.

What does this mean exactly? People who are curious are always looking into all types of topics, businesses and products which interest them. By being curious and explosing yourself to lots of things you are more likely to stay on top of trends, and also more likely to have a lightbulb go off in your head of a new idea or how to improve an existing one.

As for spotting trends. Why is it so valuable? In my opinion if your able to spot a trend and get in before others, you don't necessarily have to be the best at it, you just have to be the first and you can learn and educate yourself and become an expert in that future trend before anyone else even knows it exists.

Watch it for yourself and if anyone else picks up any helpful or important knowledge please drop a comment below and share with us.

Learn What Periscope Is And How To Use It In 11 Bullet Points

Chances are you've probably heard about Twitter's new live streaming app called Periscope but you may not have downloaded it or tried it out yet. Here's a quick 10 points to tell you a little about the app and what it does...

1. Periscope allows you to stream anything live from anywhere right on your smartphone. It allows you and your phone to become a broadcaster.

2. Titles are uber important. Your title is basically the only thing you have to attract watchers to your broadcast and tell them what it's about.

3. You may notice while watching others broadcasting that if youu tap your screen there's some fluttering hearts which will float up the screen. This had me confused at first as to what the point of these are, however I've learned it's essentially like giving the broadcaster an applause and letting them know you enjoy their content.

4. These hearts mentioned in number 3 are used as a measure of popularity on Periscope. Think of these like a thumbs up on Youtube.

5. The chat box allows you as a watcher to communicate with the broadcaster and you as a broadcaster to also communicate with your viewers.

6. Acknowledge your audience. If someone asks you a question respond to it. If someone asks to look in your fridge don't ask why just open your fridge and show them. Don't ask why there's this wierd thing about looking in peoples fridges trend happening on Periscope.

7. Once you end a stream an analytics box will pop up. This box will show you your number of views, retention rate, duration of video, and the number of hearts you received. This is how to rank your channel by doing good in these scoring areas.

9. When you complete a stream you will also have an option to save it to your camera roll which will save it to be viewed later. People who follow you will be able to watch your past streams similar to how on Youtube your vieos will always be up to be viewed.

10. Privacy... before you start a broadcast you will see 3 little icons. One icon on the left is the location icon, one for privacy and one for Twitter. The location icon if clicked will show people your location. If your doing this from your house you may want to hide the location privacy as this will show people on a map literally right where you are. A a public event of on the streets of a big city you could probably leave it on without concern. The lock or privacy button allows you to ;ive stream only for certain people. If you want to stream an event and only share it with certain people you can do that. Lastly is Twitter, if this is turned on a notification will be Tweeted out on your Twitter profile saying your currently streaming. If you Periscope a lot maybe don't do this for every broadcast as you may overload your followers with notifications.

11. When watching a broadcast if you want to follow someone swipe to the right and their profile will show up. You can see their profile photo and follow them if you like.

Periscope is a fairly new app and there definately still working out some kinks, however I'm super impressed thus far and see this becomming huge. Get started now and be an early adopter as this is going to blow up and this will give you a legup on others. LIve streaming takes engagement to a whole new level for marketing.

How Maintaining A Good Credit Score Can Help You Start A Business For Free

Did you know a good credit score can allow you to start a business for FREE??? Well maybe not for free, you will eventually have to pay back the money, but you can oftentimes get not only 0% interest but also no payments for anywhere from a few months to up to a year.

This is why it's so very important to monitor your credit score, dispute any errors you see on your credit report, and keep your credit score as high as possible.

If your a regular reader of my blog or watcher of my Youtube videos you already know how important I feel it is to have multiple income streams. Whether those streams are full fledged businesses, or just little side hustles like some affiliate accounts, a few books on Amazon's Kindle KDP Marketplace, and a few blogs. It's important to have multiple hustles and multiple revenue streams.

Recently myself and my business partner decided to start another venture. A landscaping company. Now granted it's not a glamorous business and it's tough to scale, you can only make so much money. I greatly prefer ecommerce where I make money in my sleep and work from a desk in the comfort of my office to outside in hot weather doing manual labor and busting my butt. That said I felt the need for another revenue stream, I had an employee lined up so this would be a pretty passive business and we decided to give it a go.

At the outset we debated on saving money and buying used equipment which would mean paying outright from the start. The other option we looked into was financing. We found out we could finance all our equipment with no only 0% interest for 48 months, but also no payments til September. We started this in late April so the idea of no payments til after the summer when we made the bulk of our money was appealing, and after that we could use proceeds from the business to pay down the loan at 0% so no harm in taking our time paying it back.

Now granted, this didn't allow us to start a business for free, we eventually will have to pay back the $13,000 and change we spent on equipment. The key however is that we did not have to lay out that cash at the outset. We were able to get all our equipment and have almost 6 months to earn that money to pay it off. Now granted we probably won't make a ton of profit the first year, but hopefully by the end of lawn season we can pay off the loan in full, hopefully with a little bit of profits in the bank. At that point we will probably invest a couple thousand in a snow plow for the winter and have another revenue source, snow removal.

The Importance Of Maintaining A Good Credit Score

This story highlightes the importance of monitoring your credit, paying your bills on time, and maintaining a good credit score. Not only will it help you when you want to buy a home, a car, a boat, do some home remodeling. It will also allow you to pay less for pretty much all credit that you get.

Recently I had a few dings to my credit due to a mistake by a credit card company and was denied a mortgage on a rental property I've been eying for months. This was hugely disapointing, and though I know this will be remedied, it's most likely going to prevent me from buying this particular home. I imagine it will sell before I'm able to get this corrected and adjusted on my credit file. I'll do a follow up post and video in more detail about this but just wanted to write this post as a quick reminder how important maintaining a good credit file is.

The Best Thing About Leaving My Day Job - Perks Of Being An Entrepreneur - Flexibility & Freedom

It seems almost everyone has a dream of someday working for themself and not working for somebody else. Almost everyone at some point or another has dreamed of being an entrepreneur.

Being an entrepreneur can be very rewarding and there are many benefits to working for yourself. It seems a lot of people think if they didn't work for someone else they wouldn't have stress or they wouldn't have to work as many hours.

Image result for entrepreneur flexibility

I can tell you nothing could be further from the truth. Most entrepreneurs probably work many more hours than someone working a 9-5 for someone else. I can also attest to the fact that being an entrepreneur doesn't eliminate stress from your life. In some ways it can be even more stressful. Where as most people know how much effort they have to put in to stake by and keep their job, when you're an entrepreneur, your livelihood and your income lies on your shoulders and you alone. If you don't make sales, if you don't have success, you don't get a paycheck.

So though entrepreneurship does isn't the Holiday many people envision it being, it does have it's perks.

I quite my job a little over a month ago and my favorite part of being an entrepreneur has to be the freedom and flexibility. It's not that I'm not working as many hours, I am probably working more hours than I was at my day job and in some ways it's even more stressful. What I do have however, is flexibility.

When I worked at my day job I was pretty much tied down there from 9:00 to 5:30, I really didn't even have much flexibility to leave for lunch. If I had to pickup my nephew from school, or get an oil change, or have a workman come to the house, it meant I had to take a day off work if I could even arrange one which typically I could not.

That is one of the things I enjoy most about being an entrepreneur, is that I make my own schedule. Granted my cusotmers are my boss and I have to be available to them. That said due to the nature of my business if I want to stay up a bit later, sleep in a bit longer, enjoy my coffee and read the paper leisurely before heading into work I can do that. I'm not worried about getting fired if I'm not in by 9AM, I can stroll in at 10 or 10:30 and it's not a big deal. If I want to make a lunch date and take a long lunch I can do that as well.

What I enjoy the most is the flexibility and though I still have things to do, flexibility in many ways equals freedom.

Land Banking Something Worth Looking Into - Passive Real Estate Investing

land·bank·ing

ˈlandˌbaNGkiNG/

noun

noun: land banking

the practice of buying land as an investment, holding it for future use, and making no specific plans for its development.

Land Banking A Passive Real Estate Strategy

Land banking is pretty simple. Like many things it boils down to buy low sell high. Buy cheap land in an area currently uninhabited, undesirable, or just plain cheap. If you think an area could grow and develope and get nicer over time there may be an opportunity to make some money as the property appreciates.

In some cases to further add value, someone who land banks, as a real estate strategy may bring in power, water, sewers, and develope and subdivide the land for larger profits. This however is over my head and over the heads of probably most new or small-time real estate investors like myself so personally I would prefer a buy and hold strategy, selling off at some point down the road for a profit.

Lnad banking as an investment is nothing new. Several self made billionaires began by purchasing large tracts of land in California where the development opportunities hadn't happenned yet. Two of these individuals are Bob Hope and Donald Trump who have both been rewarded greatly from buying large areasa and holding the property until the market commanded a substantial return and that is when they sold.

That said tread carefully as scams are a plenty in the sale of land and you run the risk of paying way over value for land if you're not a saavy investor.

Currently I'm just beginning the process of looking at buying raw land in Tulum, Mexico as it's a popular destination already, however as Playa Del Carmen and the Rivera Maya continue to develop further south, at some point probably all the way to Belize, I think it could be a good buy. I am hesitant buying property outside the country and from what I've heard to actually get good deals and quite honestly the way things are done down there, your not going to find much on sites like Realtor.com or online and the little you do find typically isn't deals.

You really need to have some feet on the ground scouting out land for you, or even better you need to be in the area developing contacts. I'm also somewhat turned off that I will not be able to hold the property in my own name. This is typical and has been safely done for years, however it just seems odd as it's not the way it's done here at home. In Mexico you have to be 32 miles out from the coast or border to own land as a non-Mexican citizen. Obviously everything that appeals to me for the most part is beach towns and not the interior of Mexico

I'm still at the very beginning states of investigating land banking. I will do a follow up post and share what further info and strategies I find and will report back if I wind up buying anything.

In the meantime, if you have experience having done this or have info to share or even questions to ask just leave a comment in the comments section below.

Just Setup My Lending Club Account - Why I Chose Lending Club Vs. Prosper

Recently I've decided to try out some different ways of making my money work for me as opposed to just buying individual stocks with my Scottrade account. I opened a WealthFront and Betterment account and just recently did a write-up on those which can be read HERE. I also however opened an account with Lending Club and am going to be giving that a try as well. The reason of this post is to tell you why I decided to try Lending Club as opposed to Prosper.

Lending Club Vs. Prosper

I just funded the account so havn't really had a chance to use it yet, however I was able to setup the auto-investing setting and also take a look around at the platform as a whole as well as the available notes, interest rates and ratings. I'll report back and do another post in a few weeks or months to comment on the ease of use of the platform as well as returns. In the end however after doing some research and reading some blogs I wound up deciding to use Lending Club instead of Prosper.

As far as the Pro's and Con's of each platform, both are well reviewed and well liked. In the end however there are a few reasons why I chose Lending Club over Prosper. First off most people seem to say Lending Club has a simpler and easier to use dashboard and website. Lending Club also has many more lenders and borrowers, I don't have the specific numbers in front of me but Lending Club has significantly more money being lent through the company.

One area however where Prosper beats out Lending Club according to many is it's possible to get higher interest rates through Prosper than lending club, I believe even on more well rated notes you get slightly higher interest but where this is a bigger deal is if you deal with the riskier grade notes.

As I said, in the end I wound up going with Lending Club. I can't say one is definitively better than the other but after reading many blogs and doing research I decided Lending Club was a better fit for me. Once I get the hang of how the system works I'll probably open up an account with Prosper as well and do a comparison of returns for you guys within the next few months.

Have you thought about taking the plunge and trying to make some money with peer to peer consumer lending? Why not give it a try?

Betterment Robo-Investing Platform - Pretty Good Customer Service

I despise bad customer service and let it be known on my blog and social media when it happens. I think it's also important however to recognize when someone or a company does a good job of customer service and to acknowledge that as well. Many times with online banks and investing platforms customer service is poor to non-existant.

I had signed up for my Betterment investing account the other day as I told you in a previous blog post which you can read HERE. Once you sign-up as with many things they put a couple small micro deposits in your account of a few cents. Reason being it proves you have access to and own that bank account. I had noticed my micro deposits hadn't showed up for Betterment or Wealthfront so I started a chat instantly on the Betterment website. I was helped immediately. The gentlement told me sometimes savings accounts don't take in the micro deposits like checking accounts. I asked to make the change and he said he could not help me with that but call the 800 number and they would be happy to help me.

So Far Happy WIth Betterment Customer Support & Platform

I called the 800 number. Someone picked up within about a minute. I was asked a few security questions to verify I'm me and they deleted the old account so I could add a new one. I believe if you have a larger bank like a Wells Fargo or a Chase I believe you can login on their site and verify instnatly, however with smaller banks you have to go the route of entering info and waiting for micro deposits which isn't a huge deal, Paypal and many companies do this to verify you are you.

I also sent a message to Wealthfront. I have yet to hear back from them but it's only been a couple hours. So far however I'm very pleased with Betterments customer service and customer support which is important when your dealing with an online company without a brick and mortar location for you to visit. So far I'm impressed. Will report back on how the investments go as well as how easy the platform is to use.

Wealthfront Versus Betterment - Which Robo Investor Is Right For You?

Automated investment platforms seem to be all the rage these days with new ones popping up everyday. The two which seem to be leading the pack are Wealthfront and Betterment. Many young tech start-up entrepreneurs are using these two investor platforms and reporting great success.

I just recently signed up for accounts which both Wealthfront and Betterment the other day. I'm still waiting for them to do the verification deposits in my account so it will be a few more days before I'm active on both platforms and can truly compare and contrast these two investing platforms. I'll do a follow-up review after I use them, as well as do a follow-up every few months down the road reporting results and which platform works out better for me. Though these two platforms offer a few different types of investments, overall I'll be investing the same amount of money in each and setting the risk profile to the same on each account so will be interesting to see which one outperforms the other.

For now this is about all I have to say about these two platforms, I'll report back soon once my account is open and show you guys the dashboards and my initial impressions but for now I'll post another versus blog post from InvestorJunkie.

Betterment vs. Wealthfront – How Do These Robo Advisors Compare?

Automated investment platforms seem to be springing up all over the web. Some are gaining a reputation well ahead of the pack. Two examples of this are Betterment and Wealthfront. In so many ways, the platforms function in similar fashion. But there are differences between the two that could serve you and your investments better.

Banks Offering Instant Debit Cards On The Spot - Chase Bank & Wells Fargo

Have you ever found yourself needing a replacement debit card on the spot? Whether you signed up for a new checking account and need a debit card right away or if you have an account and had your debit card lost, stolen, or compromised, I'm sure we all at one point or another have found ourselves wanting a replacement debit card quickly.

I recently found myself in this situation. I'm leaving the country Monday on a trip. Today, Friday afternoon, I stopped at a bank to do something for my business. I had to pull a few hundred dollars out of the banks ATM machine and it turned out to be one of those machines that suck your card, and give it back to you after the transactoin. I hate these ATM's as I'm notorious for leaving my card in them, however rarely do you come across those machines anymore these days.

Unfortunately, the bank I was at had one of these machines and it wasn't until about 4PM that I realized I had lost my debit card. I was at my bank when I realized it so I asked the personal banker if it would be possible to get a rush card sent, however the quickest they could do it was 3 days which I would be gone by then.

I hopped on Google and searched instant debit card. I think instant debit cards are going to be the wave of the future as I found lots of articles about instant debit cards, as well as press releases by companies offering this service to banks. I eventually stumbled upon two banks that issue instant debit cards whether for new accounts or replacement cards.

instant debit card chase bank wells fargo

Chase Bank & Wells Fargo Offer Instant Debit Cards On The Spot

The two banks are Chase Bank and Wells Fargo. Surprisingly a lot of small community banks and credit unions are offering these as well, but as far as the big chain National banks, Chase and Wells Fargo are the two offering this service.

My origional plan was to withdraw some money tomorrow, Saturday, before my bank closes and put the money in my girlfriends checking account. However, I've been meaning to open up another account soon anyways, so tomorrow I'm planning on heading over to Chase and opening up an account so I can get a debit card on the spot.

Just wanted to share this information incase any of you have found yourselves needing a debit card on the spot or same day. These two banks can do this for you.

2 Banks Offering Replacement Debit Cards On The Spot

1. Chase Bank

2. Wells Fargo Bank

Entrepreneurship Does NOT Mean Leaving Stress Behind - An Entrepreneurs Mindset

I think many people long for the day they can leave behind their day job and strike out on their own and become an entrepreneur. I think many people, myself included think that you leave stress behind once you leave a job.

The fact of the matter is nothing could be further from the truth. You leave one type of stress behind for another type of stress and in many ways being an entrepreneur is actually more stressful and requires more hours than being an employee. Being an entrepreneur however is also much more rewarding both from a personal standpoint as well as to your pocketbook.

Leaving Your Job To Be An Entrepreneur - Trading One Type Of Stress For Another

If we are honest with ourselves I think we can all admit we have slacked at our job from time to time. Whether it's feeling lazy for a day, a week, heck some people skate through their whole career. Granted job stability and security isn't what it used to be but that said I think most people realize and know there's a level of efficiency and work they must meet at a bare minimum to keep their job and many people skate by working at that level. In all honestly I can't blame you, many people whether it's right or not only work as hard as they feel they are paid to work.

When you are an entrepreneur there's no lazyness and no skating as how much you make and your success or failure doesn't depend on others or a company, it all falls on your shoulders. You can't blend in with the pack and just skate by, you are the pack.

Another thing about being an entrepreneur. At your current or previous employer I'm sure there's always an IT department to run to when your having computer issues or you probably have some type of mentor or manager to run to when a problem occurs. When you are an entrepreneur there is nobody to run to, you are the problem solver. If a computer breaks you have to either fix it, hire someone to fix it or a new one. There's no expense account that comes out of your own pocket. You are your own problem solver and though you can reach out to consoltants and businesses to help this all requires time and money.

I think people fail to realize these elements of being an entrepreneur. As someone who has recently left my job to focus on my business I can tell you I expected to be on cloud 9 and life was easy and in reality I'm just as busy if not more so than I was before working a fulltime job and running my business, probably in large part because now I am 100% dependent on income from my business.

Though being an entrepreneur is a challenge it's also rewarding as well. Though some days are stressful I do find myself at times just being very happy and proud of what I started and that I'm doing things on my own. I also like that my destiny, my success, and how much money I make is on my shoulders and not dependent on if my boss wants to give me a 2% cost of living raise.

Here are some things to think about if you are or are thinking about becomming an entrepreneur. If you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

Nobody Gets Rich Working For Someone Else - The Entrepreneurs Mindset

Nobody gets rich working for someone else. This is something I feel far too many people fail to grasp. I see people thinking I'll get educated, work hard and I'll become wealthy. It doesn't work that way. Almost nobody gets rich working for someone else.

If you truly want financial freedom and even better yet wealth, you need to strike out and do something on your own. Now that could be starting your own company, it could be investing, it could be getting into real estate and buying properties, but it's almost gurnateed you will never get rich strictly or solely being an employee of someone.

Nobody Gets Wealthy Being An Employee

Now of course there's always exceptions to the rule. Look at Mark Cubans internet radio/television company where employees had a stake in the company and everyone down to the janitors got rich. Sure those things happen at start-ups, but that said most people working at startups doin't do it for the pay, they do it because they know there's a chance getting in on the ground floor and helping to build a company they will be rewarded for doing so.

You don't have to leave your job to start a business. I'm a big fan of what people refer to as "side hustles". Now a side hustle to me and I think to most, is a business someone can startup in their spare time that requires not a lot of startup capital or equipment and something someone can do while working a full-time job. Now occasionally side hustles may turn into a full time full fledged business to where you can quit your job, othertimes they may just be some supplemental income, however that supplemental income is money you can put into investments or put to work for you so that you can get wealthy that way.

Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with working for someone else and having a career, but don't fool yourself thinking your going to be financially independent or wealthy being an employee because it rarely happens.