Documentary Addressing Inequity in America

Pistis DBM presents
Your Light Will Rise
Addressing Inequity in America

And if you give yourself to the hungry And satisfy the desire of the afflicted, Then your light will rise in darkness And your gloom will become like midday. ~ Isaiah 58:10

Following in the footsteps of people such as Jack London and George Orwell, Terrance Jackson spent over a year homeless in New Rochelle, NY and discovered the power of empathy to fuel innovation and creativity:

I believe that empathy – the imaginative act of stepping into another person’s shoes and viewing the world from their perspective – is a radical tool for social change and should be a guiding light for the art of living. Over the past decade, I have become convinced that it has the power not only to transform individual lives, but to help tackle some of the great problems of our age, from wealth inequality to violent conflicts and climate change.

It is important to understand what empathy is and is not. If you see a homeless person living under a bridge you may feel sorry for him and give him some money as you pass by. That is pity or sympathy, not empathy. If, on the other hand, you make an effort to look at the world through his eyes, to consider what life is really like for him, and perhaps have a conversation that transforms him from a faceless stranger into a unique individual, then you are empathising. ~ Roman Krznaric

Six Steps Governments Need to Take to Help Small Businesses

Small businesses and startups are the backbone of the American economy, and according to a report done by Tim Kane for Kauffman Foundation:

[W]ithout startups, there would be no net job growth in the U.S. economy. This fact is true on average, but also is true for all but seven years for which the United States has data going back to 1977…. Startups create an average of 3 million new jobs annually. All other ages of firms, including companies in their first full years of existence up to firms established two centuries ago, are net job destroyers, losing 1 million jobs net combined per year.

As we go through the political drama of the “sequestration,” the truth of matter is that the only way to reduce the deficit is by reducing unemployment. According to an article written by Business Insider‘s executive editor Joe Weisenthal:

History is pretty clear on how you reduce the deficit: Get growth, and reduce unemployment.

We ran this chart earlier this week to show how nicely deficit/GDP and the unemployment rate correlated with each other. Throughout these decades tax and spending policies have changed a lot, but it clearly hasn’t mattered. When unemployment drops, deficit/GDP drops. When unemployment rises, deficit/GDP rises. Growth is the only deficit reduction policy that matters.

Combating Groupon-type Deals Sucking $280M from Independent Restaurants

Gramercy Tavern selected 2nd best restaurant in the United States by a panel of 176 food critics for The Daily Meal

In 2011, Americans ate out 60.6 billion times. That’s down from 62.7 billion in 2008 and flat compared to 2010. Of the 2.1 billion visits lost, 2 billion would have been to independent establishments.

This lost of visitors was compounded by daily deal providers sucking value away from local merchants. In 2011, revenue for daily deal providers like Groupon grew 138% but visits to independent restaurants were down 4%. According to Bill Bice of Coverboom this works out to $280M lost by independent restaurant owners.

“The number one way small businesses can compete with chains is by nurturing the relationships they have with the customer,” says Joe Erickson, editor of RestaurantOwner.com, an online resource and networking tool for independent restaurateurs. “Collect their names, birthdays, anniversaries, and their specific likes, and use that [information] to start a direct mail campaign.”

Does Your Business Get Women?

• Most small business owners don’t get women yet two women in a store is a shopping machine.

Did you know?

At home, the majority of women (90 percent) still control the family’s purse strings, from stocking up on household items to having the final say on home and car purchases and health care.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/infographic-women-control-the-money-in-america-2012-2#ixzz2KcusOnpj

Consider the following:

• Most small business owners don’t get women yet two women in a store is a shopping machine.
• There’s a very strong consumer bias for well-run local businesses. Look at the popularity of farmers markets. But it has to have an energy, freshness and evangelical joy to it.
• Don’t neglect cleanliness. Hygiene is very important, especially to women.
• Most women will U-turn and leave an aisle if it’s so narrow that another shopper gives them a “butt-brush.”
• New windows and reorganization on the floor is necessary to create a sense of evolution that brings excitement to the space.
• Engage all five senses. Shoppers are conscious of what they see, taste, smell, touch and hear. Sense marketing is an inexpensive way to impact the customer experience.
• 85% of people have used the Internet to search for local businesses, yet only 3 percent of small business total advertising dollars flowed online, compared to as much as 16 percent for big companies.

Would you like to attract more women shopper? Consider sponsoring The ZinC HoPLo Lab:

The ZinC HoPLo Lab looks to address this situation by teaching girls skills. They will start by learning the basics of computer science and programming in this unique course taught by David Evans and Terrance Jackson. In this course they will build a working search engine. Google is the most well-known and popular search engine.

This course is a blended model of on-line instruction and in-person instruction. Students progress through the content of the course, on-line, with David. But students also meet weekly with other students and Terrance to work additional problems, share with and help each other, and have their questions answered directly.

For more information on the on-line content, click here and watch the video.

http://startupwestchester.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/the-lovelace-hopper-lab/

Pistis, Building Strong Communities

The Royal Portal at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres

Groupon grew out of a social activist website called “The Point” to became the fastest growing company ever with a great idea that seemed to serve the needs of small business owners. “The Point” got its name from The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, a book by Malcom Gladwell: “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.”

Yet this great idea at Groupon treated people as merely consumers and not human beings; and in hindsight, it is very obvious that this great idea would never turn into a great innovation. The difference between an idea and real innovation is the difference between masturbating and having a baby. People enjoy looking at baby pictures; no one wants to see stains on a sheet. In contrast, Pistis Database Marketing is creating real innovation and real value for locally-owned businesses by understanding people as human beings, not consumers.

The ZinC HoPLo Lab

• There are currently only 15 women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies this is less than 4%.
• Women make up only 3% of clout executives of media, telecom and e-companies.
• Women hold 17% of the seats in the House of Representatives.
• Only 34 women have ever served as governors compared to 2319 men.
• In 2011, women comprised 18% of all directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films.
• Source: http://www.missrepresentation.org/about-us/resources/miss-representation-sources/

Queen Nzinga	Queen Cleopatra pieced together from images on ancient artifacts by Egyptologist Sally Ann Ashton
Ada Lovelace	Rosa Parks with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1955	Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

The  Nzinga Cleopatra Hopper Parks Lovelace (ZinC HoPLo) Lab looks to address gender inequity by teaching girls entrepreneurial skills and also that there is not just one way for a woman to become successful. The girls will start by learning the basics of computer science and programming in this unique course taught by David Evans and Terrance Jackson. In this course they will build a working search engine. Google is the most well-known and popular search engine.

How to Get a Job Today

About 1.5 million, or 53.6 percent, of bachelor’s degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years.

More than half of all of African-Americans and other non-Hispanic blacks in [New York City] who were old enough to work had no job at all this year, according to an analysis of employment data compiled by the federal Labor Department.

The Power of Entrepreneurship to Create Value

Now consider that if you had invested $10,000 in Apple 10 years ago that investment would now be worth over $667,000. That is the power of entrepreneurship and there is no reason why you cannot tap into such power. Therefore, the best way to get a job today is to create your own job.

This past Sunday, there was a program at the Larchmont Village Center featuring Nassim Taleb promoting his new book Antifragile. In a Forbes article called “You Can’t Predict Who Will Change The World“, he wrote:

It is high time to recognize that we humans are far better at doing than understanding, and better at tinkering than inventing. But we don’t know it. We truly live under the illusion of order believing that planning and forecasting are possible. We are scared of the random, yet we live from its fruits.

So there is no reason why you cannot be the next person that will change the world, but maybe you are not quite ready to strike out on your own. With this in mind, Startup Westchester is developing an on-going series called “How to Get a Job Today.”