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There is one rule for LinkedIn: Don't connect with total strangers — unless they seem interesting, have the potential to turn into clients or could serve as referrals sources. Research by Kredible Technologies Inc. suggests in-house counsel are more likely to hire lawyers with whom they have at least one connection in common. That said, here are 10 ways to quickly build your LinkedIn network.
1) Connect with "People You May Know." This is the low-hanging fruit for new connections. LinkedIn will display these on the top right-hand side of the home page.
2) Connect with co-workers. The point is opening your Rolodex to them and vice versa. When you need an introduction, this is useful information to have.
3) Connect with fellow alumni. Along the top of the screen at LinkedIn.com is a tab that says "Connect" that gives you the option to "Find Alumni." Maybe members of your old study group can send business your way.
4) Import your contacts from Outlook. This can be tricky. LinkedIn has a default setting that will "Select All" of your contacts; deselect that option and go through the list, checking off the people with whom you want to connect.
5) LinkedIn discourages people from connecting with total strangers, but if you both belong to the same group, LinkedIn figures you have enough in common to merit a connection. Don't just click the "Connect" button, though — click on the individual's profile and then click "Connect." This allows you to send a personalized message along with your connection request.
6) Every time you bring business cards home from an event, find those people on LinkedIn and send them personalized invitations.
7) If you like what people share and talk about on Twitter, connect with them on LinkedIn. Your crazy uncle might not be the best person to connect with on LinkedIn, but your brother-in the law investment banker might be. Try and get some cross-pollination going.
8) Sometimes your LinkedIn connections will share articles from people outside your network. If you like the article, send the author a message and get connected.
9) Read the newspaper. What companies are in the news? Which interview subject tells a great story? Send that person an invite through LinkedIn with a personalized message saying how much you enjoyed the interview.
10) Check your inbox. Too many lawyers have boxes full of unanswered connection requests — sometimes from general counsel or journalists.
Growing your network isn't an end in itself, but having a large, engaged network will give you a larger audience and valuable contacts. There is an old saying: "If you aren't growing, you are dying." So keep growing your LinkedIn network. You won't like the alternative.]]>
There's a joke that 50 percent of marketing is effective, we just don't know which 50 percent. The joke is even more exaggerated at large law firms, which tend to overlook marketing and business-development metrics.
Only 29 percent of large law firms engage in deep data analytics, according to a survey presented at the Marketing Partner Forum staged recently in Southern California by Silvia Coulter of LawVision Group and Steven Petrie of Faegre Baker Daniels. Data analytics, simply put, entails measuring the results of every action a law firm takes to guide decisions in the future.
The survey tells us that although all firms measure some things — profits per partner or revenues, for example — they lack systems to take a hard look at the big picture. Here are examples of potentially valuable data that law firms are ignoring.
• The cost of a seminar in terms of work hours plus actual dollars spent against the resulting growth of business in that market.
• The cost of creating a white paper against the size of its readership, quality of the identified readers and any subsequent follow-up with readers flagged as high-value targets.
• The cost of a new website against profile views, bounce rate (how quickly a visitor leaves the page), conversion and content. Does the firm track where the visitors come from? The first pages they view? Where they go next?
• How large is the firm's spend on business -development lunches each year? How does it measure the effectiveness of the lunches and the relationships built?
What gets measured gets managed. How can we manage anything if we aren't measuring?
Some of the most successful chief marketing officers in the legal industry come from the accounting industry, because they know how to follow the data trail. It is simple — yet why can't law firms pause, take a deep breath and get their analytics together?
The answer is simple. Most nonlegal businesses are addicted to data analytics because they know their survival depends on it. Lawyers track billable hours as though their lives were at stake but view everything else as secondary. The result is that major law firms leave management of a major business responsibility to busy partners who don't understand the value of data analytics and treat it as a hobby to look at as time allows. This needs to be flipped.
Some law firms solve this problem by bringing in a full-time chief executive officer who doesn't practice law; others hire chief financial or operating officers to analyze these data. Most firms aren't there yet.
That's no way to run a business. But like Richard Susskind says, it's tough to walk into a room full of millionaires and tell them they are doing it wrong.]]>
Social-media tools are easy to use. Changing our old behaviors can prove more difficult. To help lawyers make tools like LinkedIn and Twitter work for them and their practices, I've put together checklists — daily steps you can take. Recently, we talked about LinkedIn, and this week we look at Twitter.
• Follow to be followed. It seems counterintuitive, but the best way to gain followers and get others to follow you is by following them first. A Washington lawyer told me recently that journalists from The Wall Street Journal and other publications began following him after he first followed them. They have retweeted some of his articles and blog posts and he has had interview requests as a direct result.
• Listen and Engage. Ninety-nine percent of law firms use Twitter as a broadcast platform — one-way communication. But the power of Twitter lies in instant engagement with other very smart people. When you jump on Twitter while drinking your morning coffee, read what other people have to say and reply or re-share their articles.
• Set up a search. This probably is the most overlooked feature of Twitter. Think Google search, but instead of searching Web pages you search for shared articles and interesting conversations. Who is talking about litigation or merger trends this morning? Run a quick search on Twitter to find out. Enter larger conversations by searching for topics like #obama, #ISIS or #northkorea. Twitter search is a powerful tool that can prove to be of value to anybody.
• Build a list. There is a lot of noise on Twitter, but you don't need to read everything that your Twitter followers post. Set up an "A-list" of people you most want to follow. Then, when you only have a few minutes each day, you can just check to see what your A-list is posting. I follow thousands of people on Twitter, but my A-list has only about 150 people in it.
• Share. Sharing information is most users' most common activity, but the vast majority are doing it wrong. Don't share self-promotional flummery or tout your successes; share information that will help people do their jobs better; that gives practical advice on tricky legal concepts. The secret to social media is that the more you give away the more you will get back in return. Lawyers are some of the brightest minds and best writers in the country; sharing what you write and what you are reading will be of value to others.
• Unfollow. Protect your time. If you follow someone who spouts nonsense or distractions, simply unfollow them. They won't be notified and won't have their feelings hurt. Following someone on Twitter is not a long-term commitment. When you unfollow someone undesirable, your Twitter stream becomes more useful.
Give these steps a try and I guarantee you will boost your profile online. Happy tweeting.
Lets face it, we have reached an-all time high in narcissism in the United States. Facebook and Twitter seem to fuel the fire, giving some users the impression the world cares what they ate for lunch. This behavior is ruining the online experience for many experienced users of social-media sites and scaring new users away completely. All because narcissistic users more than a dozen times per day share articles and information that are irrelevant drivel at best and self-promotional spam at worst.
What's the solution?
First, don't feed the trolls. Unfollow people who share too much. Disconnect from people on LinkedIn who over-share. If they ask you why you un-followed them, simply respond that they share too much and that it makes it difficult to keep tabs on the rest of your network. (No need to call them attention hogs.)
Second, validate good sharing. When someone in your network takes the time to find and share an article that you really appreciate, that strikes a chord, let them know. And pass the article along to your network, giving the original sharer credit.
Third, don't opt out completely. Some of the most fascinating people I know aren't using social media because they can't stand the narcissistic behavior. LinkedIn would be a better place if it featured the ideas of people with unique ways of seeing the world, if only they were willing to share their perspective.
Most professionals want to be liked by their peers, they don't want to be seen as selfish and narcissistic. Sharing online can seem a risk, but that's not true, the bigger risk is staying silent, preventing your network and your potential ideal clients from ever finding you.
How much should you share?
Ten times a day is far too much. Once a month, not enough. A few times per week is a great place to start. As long as your posts aren't all self-promotional, you will never be seen as a narcissist, but instead as a helpful professional generous enough to share your insights with those fortunate enough to be in your network.]]>
"I'm a creature of routine," a successful law firm partner told me. "If I only had a list of things to do on LinkedIn, I know I could get those tasks completed on a daily basis. I just don't know what to do."
OK. Here is that list of daily tasks:
• Listen. Log in to the LinkedIn.com homepage and check out what people in your network are posting, who has moved jobs and who has written a blog post or LinkedIn publication.
• Give to receive. Congratulate contacts who have won promotions. Pass along what your contacts have shared with you (presuming it is relevant and of value to your people in your network) and comment on interesting articles your contacts have shared.
Remember: LinkedIn is a community, and every community includes people who give and those who only take. People notice your type.
• Make it personal. Send quick thank-you messages to people who have connected with you recently. Reach out to new people you would like to connect to using customized messages. You can get ideas about whom to follow on the top right-hand corner of the homepage, where it says, "People You May Know." Don't just hit the connect button — it won't let you send a customized message. Rather, click on the person's name, then hit "connect" on his or her full profile; LinkedIn will allow you to send a personalized greeting.
• Share. On the top of the homepage on LinkedIn there is a little box that says, "Share an update." All you need to do is copy the link to an article and hit "Share."
When sharing articles to LinkedIn, what's great is the enemy of what's good — in other words, be liberal about what you share. If you only share great articles, you won't end up sharing much at all.
What types of material should you share? Articles that are helpful to your practice; articles written by other attorneys in your firm; general business or economics articles that you love or that made you think. If you love it, most likely your contacts will, too.
And by all means, don't confuse sharing with oversharing. Although people who share perhaps once a week or month will likely go unnoticed, those who share multiple times a day are annoying. Don't make either mistake. Share once a day, or at least make an effort to.
• Make an appointment. The purpose of all online tools for professionals should be to facilitate richer offline interactions. Set up a lunch or telephone call and get out of the office. LinkedIn isn't meant to replace real-life meetings, but to rather to augment them.
Hope springs eternal in the new year, so if you feel inspired to finally start bringing in business through your online efforts, set aside 10 minutes per day, print out this list and get cranking. Make it a great year.]]>
Countless articles have been written about how professionals should strategically use social media to gain recognition and bring in business. But what about the completely mindless? You know actual zombies. How would they use social media?
Zombies don't think. They lack high-level brain function, so if they post at all it's in a purely mechanical way. This may work for zombies because, you know, they are undead. But for the rest of us, sharing great articles in a thoughtful way is a much more powerful strategy for building relationships and being seen as an expert in your field.
Some zombies won't shut up. They post 10 times per day but the content is irrelevant or uninteresting. Eventually, people zone them out. Of course, others never share at all. Professionals should avoid both extremes.
Research from Bufferapp shows that the ideal number of times to share per month on LinkedIn is 20, or about one share per business day. If you don't make it every day, getting as close to that as possible is a great goal.
Zombies don't converse. Look, they're reanimated flesh they can't be expected to hold conversations with people online, unless responding will immediately lead to a chance to feast on the brains of an unsuspecting victim. The big difference between the way professionals and zombies use social media is that the former are real people with thoughts, feelings and opinions. Professionals care about their industry and their community. They care about giving back and aren't just fixated on consuming human flesh.
Zombies put precious little thought into their appearance online. They don't post updated pictures of themselves and their LinkedIn summaries lack their most recent relevant experience. (Most also have clothes that have almost completely rotted away and body parts falling off embarrassing how little effort they put into making a good first impression.)
Experienced professionals with great reputations need to make that clear online. A survey showed that the average managing partner is 10 years older than the average corporate chief executive officer. Older lawyers can't expect all of their clients to communicate in the way they are used to. That means getting your stuff together online.
Zombies disappear. One day they are posting a picture of their cat on LinkedIn and then they go away for months. Nobody notices when zombies disappear. Professionals use tools like LinkedIn and Twitter regularly because they know business development is about staying top-of-mind with the right people.
Check-in daily on LinkedIn, even if only for 5 minutes. Share an article, add a new connection or read and respond to an article posted by someone you trust.]]>
San Francisco, California (PRWEB) October 15, 2014
ClearView Social, an online social sharing application created by noted authority on social media for lawyers, Adrian Dayton, will officially launch at the Legal Marketing Technology Conference West in San Francisco on October 15.
At the event, the company will also unveil the results of its beta test phase with multiple AmLaw 100 law firms and showcase several new software features.
We had a phenomenal response during the beta phase and are excited to officially roll out the software, Dayton said. Lawyers have become prolific bloggers and content creators, but they are often too busy or hesitant to share the content on social media platforms. ClearView Social addresses a critical missing link in many firms marketing strategies.
A former practicing attorney, Dayton was named the #1 Social Media Consultant in the legal industry by The National Law Journal in 2014, and is the author of two books, Social Media for Lawyers and LinkedIn and Blogs for Lawyers (co-authored by Amy Knapp.) Dayton has seen the powerful effects of social media firsthand, helping clients bring in millions of dollars of new business over the past six years through effective use of social media and blogs. Helping organizations become better at sharing was the next step.
Many lawyers would like to participate in social media, but often they encounter difficulty with the fundamental question of "what should I say?" said Steve Bell, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer, Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice. ClearView Social makes it easy for staff professionals to suggest posts that lawyers should make, and easy for lawyers to follow through. The postings have been profitable for us. Using ClearView Social, we have established new relationships and – yes – landed new business.
ClearView Social makes it simple for lawyers to share content across networks including Twitter and LinkedIn: a marketing professional creates a simple list of content, then sends an email to each attorney. Individual attorneys can then click and choose which articles or blog posts they'd like to share. By clicking a link directly in the email, they immediately spread the content across their social networks and help build relationships with clients and prospects.
The technology has already met rave reviews by the law firms participating in the beta phase, which include AmLaw 100 firms such as Dorsey & Whitney, Shearman & Sterling, Akerman and McDermott Will & Emery, as well as more than a dozen AmLaw 250 firms. In only six months, one AmLaw 100 firm saw a 500 percent increase in sharing by its attorneys.
ClearView Social is a no-brainer, it makes it so easy for me to share. All I have to do is open the email and click a button, said Nick Akerman, Partner at Dorsey & Whitney. With ClearView Social, every attorney in the firm can participate in some aspect of business development, added Jonathan Fitzgarrald, CMO of Greenberg Glusker.
New features include IP-address tracking so attorneys can identify the companies viewing their content; tools that allow segmentation by practice areas and industry teams; and advanced analytics to measure the effectiveness of the content being shared across the entire organization.
In recognition of the technology's potential in a high-demand market, ClearView Social received $400,000 in funding from technology incubator Z80 Labs Inc. and several angel investors earlier this year. In beta since April 2014, the technology will now be available to law firms worldwide starting October 16, 2014.
About ClearView Social
Founded at Z80 Labs Technology Incubator in 2014 by attorney turned author and social media evangelist, Adrian Dayton, ClearView Social is designed to help lawyers increase their social engagement with little time investment. Top AmLaw 100 and AmLaw 250 firms across the country are using this scalable social marketing tool with proven results. Learn more at clearviewsocial.com.
About Z80 Labs
Z80 Labs mission is to serve as a catalyst, transforming Buffalo and Western New York into a technology hotbed. By creating an environment that gives entrepreneurs exposure to industry leaders typically available only in New York City or Silicon Valley, Z80 Labs kick-starts entrepreneur-driven tech businesses within an accelerated environment, bolstering the local economy.
Z80 Labs main focus is on digital media, mobile and internet based companies, providing valuable support across a wide range of service areas to help Buffalo-based entrepreneurs grow into self-sustaining businesses.
In addition to Z80 Labs co-founders Jordan Levy and Ron Schreiber of Softbank Capital, several luminaries have committed to help the incubator including Brad Feld, Foundry Group; Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital; Eric Hippeau, Lerer Ventures; Roger Ehrenberg, IA Ventures; Woody Benson, Prism VentureWorks; Mo Kaufman, Spark Capital; Jonah Peretti, Buzzfeed and co-founder of The Huffington Post; Jordan Cooper, Hyperpublic; Dan Porter, OMGPOP; Mark Pincus, Zynga; Gary Ginsberg, Time Warner; Mike Perlis, Forbes Media; Jim Spanfeller, Spanfeller Media Group; and Andrew Siegel, Advance Newhouse.
Adrian Dayton
Everyone can be a publisher with LinkedIn's web platform. But is that a good thing?
Blogs and self-publishing venues have opened up audiences to anybody with a computer and a dream. Many new and talented authors have attracted followings, but an unfortunate side effect is that more rubbish is being written than ever before. "Too much noise," I hear people complain almost on a daily basis.
How does LinkedIn publishing fit in to all this? LinkedIn now presents itself to its users as a blog platform they can draft and post their articles right there on the web service. There is no charge, and LinkedIn even helps distribute your writing to your network.
Sounds pretty great, right? It would be if your network were an extremely focused group of potential clients and referral sources with a keen interest in what you have to say, but that isn't how LinkedIn shares your articles. Basically, it notifies your entire network using red flags in the top right-hand corner of the home screen.
Previously, LinkedIn used this notification box to let users know who had viewed their profiles, accepted their LinkedIn requests or endorsed them for a particular skill. Now I'm notified every time any one of my almost 2,000 LinkedIn connections has written anything on any topic targeted to personal injury lawyers, for example.
Even though I know and like many of these people, I'm just not interested in the topics they write about. I didn't ask to receive articles from these people but here they are, served right up as notifications on my page.
I'm not really terribly annoyed to receive these notifications but, honestly, the vast majority of them aren't relevant to me, so I don't end up reading them. LinkedIn has just added more noise to my life that I don't need.
In my experience, most writing is average but only the really good writing stands out. Twitter.com does a great job of filtering out the junk by allowing you simply to unfollow people. But LinkedIn sends it all to you via these notifications.
I have heard that some very good writers are finding success using LinkedIn's publishing platform. My friend Aviva Cuyler, co-founder of JD Supra, published an article on LinkedIn that went absolutely viral, attracting more than 100,000 views. Other connections of mine have used the publishing platform with less remarkable results.
There definitely is potential in the LinkedIn publishing platform, but don't go abandoning your blog just yet. I plan to experiment with the platform myself during the next couple of months, so please don't be too annoyed if you are notified by LinkedIn that I have written another article that you're just not that interested in reading.]]>
The pace was too fast. I couldn't breathe. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, careful not to catch my crampons on my boots and trip into a crevasse. My heart was racing, it was still pitch black and we were a long way from the top. I wasn't ready for this. As I felt a wave of nausea coming on I took a deep pressure breath like they taught me. It has two parts, first a deep inhale filling your lungs, and then a fast sudden exhale- as if blowing out a candle. With each breath, the fresh new oxygen that filled my lungs kept the nausea and headache at bay. But how long could I keep this up? It was only a few hours into a very long night…
Three days earlier
We pulled into the RMI offices just after 2pm on a hot sunny Monday afternoon. We collected the rental gear we had ordered and checked in at our Wellspring cabin near the tiny town of Ashford. "Is there any place to buy groceries around here?" we asked the lady cleaning our cabin (who may have also been the owner.)
"You have two options, the Country Store just down the road or the gas station. I recommend the gas station, plus my sister works there." After grabbing some gatorades, ear plugs and a few other necessities for the hike we headed back to RMI for our orientation.
We were welcomed by Casey, our guide. He was extremely personable and had arms that looked liked they belonged on a gymnast. If that wasn't enough to set our minds at ease about the upcoming climb, the fact that he had summited Mt. Everest three times certainly didn't hurt. We sat down on comfy leather couches (perhaps the last time I would be really comfortable in the next three days) and after brief introductions he started a slideshow to explain what we could expect the next few days.
|Notice the overstuffed leather couches. Nothing like the rest of the trek.
"Tomorrow we head up to Paradise to train on a snow field. Bring your crampons, ice axe, helmet and all your gear except for your sleeping bag and your cold weather gear." It would be a dress rehearsal for the actual hike that would begin Wednesday. The hike Wednesday, he explained, would be done with our 40 pound packs and would begin with a 2.2 mile hike on dry trails until we reached the snow and ice fields that we would trudge up for the next 2.3 miles to Camp Muir where we would spend the night. Then the real challenge would begin.
I expected the dress rehearsal to be pretty straight forward. Our packs were only 25 pounds, we were only hiking for an hour and we were still at pretty low altitude. We got our packs together, lined up in single file with Casey in front. And then it started.
Do you know what guide's pace is? Have you heard that term before?
It basically means, taking slow rest steps so that each time you front foot goes forward your back leg holds the weight while your front leg can "rest" for just a moment. Casey did not start at guide's pace. He took off. And we had to follow him. Eight of the nine of us were breathing hard as we followed, but we were keeping up. Dave, who was 71 years old with a sturdy frame, unfortunately couldn't keep up.
"Shouldn't we slow down for Dave?" I asked Casey, trying to appear as strong as possible, as if the pace was no problem at all for me.
"We need to test everyone in the group, to see if they are ready for tomorrow."
(So it's just a test, I thought to myself. Good thing we won't be going this fast on the real hike.)
We eventually reached the snow fields, that we would train on the for the next few hours. We practiced hiking with and without crampons on, we practiced the french step, which entails climbing up sideways with on leg crossing above the other. We practiced the duck step (no explanation needed). We practice the American step (Not to be left out, the Americans came up with a step that involves putting one foot sideways and one foot straight up the mountain.)
After a surprisingly exhausting afternoon, we headed back to Ashford for one more good night of sleep before the real trek began. Natalie and I went to bed early, but neither of us slept. The mattress was lumpy, but that wasn't the problem, there was just too much running through our minds. Finally, morning came and it was time for the real adventure to begin.
|With our packs loaded, we were ready to take on the mountain.
|At our very first rest stop we were told tore-apply sunblock. With bright sun and snow all around us, glacier sunglasses
and copious amounts of sunblock were a must.
Starting with the first morning, this was no walk in the park. We always walked for at least 60 minutes, then took a fifteen minute break. The break was our only time to: drink, eat, apply sunscreen, relieve ourselves and rest. "Time to go," Casey signaled by putting his pack on. And I hadn't even had time to eat my Swedish Fish. Originally I had planned to bring a mixture of cliff bars and protein bars, but Casey strongly encouraged us to bring food the was easy to eat and would still be appetizing at high altitude. I can't imaging being so sick that Swedish Fish wouldn't sound good.
After that first rest stop I also switched from my sneakers to my hard plastic boots. We didn't put our crampons on yet, but we would be hiking the rest of the way through hard packed snow. After three more 60 minutes segments and three more too-short-to-rest breaks, with sweat pouring down my forehead and stinging my eyes we hobbled into Camp Muir where we removed our packs, unloaded our clothes and sleeping bags and headed into the bunkhouse to claim a place to sleep. Seventeen men and my wife Natalie in one small bunkhouse. Almost from the minute the place filled up, man stench and cursing filled the air. Sorry Natalie.
On a positive note. We were able to get the top corner two bunks, which Natalie was able to choose as the token woman in the group. It had the most privacy and a small window. It was cool peering out above the clouds, but we didn't really have time to relax. We got out of our boots, prepared our sleeping bags, used hot water to prepare a quick re-hydrated dinner, got all of our gear in order and threw on eye masks and ear plugs to try and grab a few hours of sleep. The goal: fall asleep before others started snoring.
I took a few ibuprofens for my aches and pains and pretty quickly fell into a restless sleep. When I finally stirred enough to become completely awake, I took off my eye mask and couldn't see anything. It must have been 10pm or so. I tried to get back to sleep, not knowing for sure what time it was, but I couldn't keep my mind from racing with questions. How would my body respond to the altitude? What if I got nervous crossing a huge crevasse? What if I had to go to the bathroom during the hike and had to pack out my human waste in a blue bag? (That's a real thing) What if I stumbled and fell to my death, taking my entire group with me into an icy grave? You know, the usually stuff people think about when they can't sleep before climbing mountains.
Suddenly, the light flashed on in the bunkhouse.
"Time to get up, have breakfast, and get ready. You have one hour," Casey explained.
To be honest, I was a little relieved. I was getting pretty anxious, so it was time to start hiking. Walking out of the bunkhouse under a clear sky, no moon, and billions of stars is a moment I won't forget. I clicked on my headlamp and could see the reflection of tiny particles of snow in the air.
"My group at the bottom of the stairs," Casey requested. Natalie, Phil, and I would be in the lead group. At first I thought this meant that he trusted us to be first, then I realized it may have been because he was most worried about the three of us making it to the top.
We set off on the first section, which was pretty straight forward. We traversed the mountain on a long flat section that worked its way up the mountain until we reached a point where the trail turned to rocks and dirt. We coiled up the ropes ahead of us and walked through this section close together so that the ropes wouldn't catch on the medium sized boulders that ran across the trail. As we came around the corner at Cathedral Gap we hit the snow again and saw three hikers from another group sitting down taking break to the right of us. To the left of us, massive car sized blocks of ice hung off the Ingraham Glacier about 200 yards away from us.
"You guys may want to get moving," Casey mentioned to the three strangers taking a break, "11 people died at this spot in 1981." We moved quickly past. At one point we hiked up the crest of a hill, and on the left and right side were gaping crevasses. It was really dark though, probably a blessing, because it might have been terrifying to cross this area in the day light. Finally we reached our first break just after sixty minutes of hiking. A trail of light on the heads of hikers followed behind us. "We may have a longer break here," Casey explained. "Dave is turning back, so Stoney (one of the other guides) will have to return with him. We will have to rope one more person onto our group.
Now I know originally I had complained about breaks being too short, but this break took almost 30 minutes, and by the time we took off I was freezing. During the rest breaks we pulled out our heavy parkas, but I only had a medium sized parka and hadn't put on any other layers, so I was shivering when we pulled out of that rest stop. This worried meed a little because it was only 2am and we were going to go much higher and the temperature was going to get much lower. The upcoming stretch was the most dangerous of the entire climb. Disappointment Cleaver. It was very steep, mostly over rocks and scaling small sections of cliff. Â Although we only hiked 60 minutes at a time for the rest of the trek, this section would be 90 minutes long without a break. They explained that taking a break anywhere along the Cleaver would be too dangerous. So, no rest breaks, in total darkness, scaling loose rocks in freezing weather. Awesome. In the orientation the day earlier I had asked Casey, "it this the crux (or the hardest part) of the hike?" He told us the hike with heavy packs we had just completed was the crux. (Turns out he just didn't want to scare us, the Cleaver was very challenging.)
"We need to shorten the ropes," Casey called out. Disappointment Cleaver is so much more dangerous that it required us to short rope, which means we shortened the length of the rope between climbers. This decreased the momentum someone could pick up if they slipped and fell, but it also kept us hiking almost in unison as we picked our way up through the Cleaver. The guides kept referring to it as simply "The Cleaver," I guess they didn't want to psyche us out by using the word disappointment over and over. With my ice axe in my uphill hand and my right hand reaching up for handholds I matched the pace of Natalie in front of me. I had probably done ten thousand squats and mountain climbers at CrossFit over the six months before. Suddenly they didn't seem so pointless.
Eventually we reached the top of the Cleaver. Time for another break. I immediately pulled out another layer, putting on my Gore Tex jacket, then my down coat next. As I took a large gulp of gatorade and choked down a peanut butter sandwich I had Phil and Natalie huddle in close to me for warmth. It was literally freezing, and I had been sweating for the last 90 minutes. The next group below us caught up in a few minutes but hiked right past us to find a good rest spot. "See you at high break," the other guide said.
"Just one more break after this, and then we reach the top?" I thought to myself. "I might just make it." I was exhausted, but I could make it to one more break, couldn't I? I had underestimated the effect of the altitude on me though. It was time to get moving. "Everybody leave your parkas on," Casey warned us.
As we started hiking again, I was immediately exhausted. It felt like I hadn't taken a break at all. I was dizzy and as we walked along a flat section and I was having trouble walking straight. Phil was behind me, and I'm sure he noticed. My head started to throb, and then I took a big pressure breath. That helped a little. A few steps later, I did another pressure breath, then another. Pretty soon I was taking a pressure breath ever other step, and then once the trail got even steeper I was taking a pressure breath every step. It was slow and exhausting, but it was the only way for me to get enough oxygen for my body to keep moving. I looked up to the top of mountain, and it seemed like were weren't even close. It had only been ten minutes since our last stop, I didn't know how I was going to keep this up for another 50 minutes. Then suddenly the sky turned a deep red across the horizon. The sun wasn't rising, but it would be soon. I'm not sure if it was psychological or the pressure breaths, but to know that I wouldn't be this cold and tired forever gave me hope. After another twenty minutes the sun began to peak out from behind the horizon, and I'm not sure if I was driven by the beauty or the exhaustion, but I asked Casey if we could stop to take a quick picture.
|Natalie up ahead of me, rocking the hike like it was no big deal.
|Sunrise from Rainier
|Sunrise selfie? I'll allow it.
|Phil is smiling way too much.He never complained or asked for a break. Kind of humbling to have your50+ year old Father-in-law out-hiking you.
Thirty minutes later, under a bright morning sun we arrived at High Break. Our last rest before reaching the top. We only had 45 minutes of hiking left to reach the top of Rainier. The last 45 minutes weren't the hardest, but they were definitely the longest. Our progress just seemed so slow as we inched ahead. Pressure breaths every step now. We finally inched our way over the ridge of the crater and we had made it. I let out a whoop and once we reached the middle of the crater Casey had us sit down and take a well deserved rest. I wanted to lay down. I wanted to take a nap, but my next nap was still over 16 hours away. We had reached the summit, but not the "tippy top" as Casey called it. After a short rest, eating and drinking and applying sunscreen, we took a fifteen minute hike that wrapped around to the top of the crater. We had made it to the top. My eyes started to water, and it wasn't the altitude. I felt a wave of emotion and warmth that I had only experienced a few times before. Completing a marathon, reaching the top of Kilimanjaro and witnessing the birth of my first and second child. It was a completely unforgettable moment that made it all worth it.
"It isn't the people that are in the best shape that make it to the top of Mt. Rainier," Casey had explained the day before, "it's the people that want it the most. You've got to really want it."
I'm sure there is a metaphor in there somewhere for life. But due to the altitude at 14,410 feet, I'm not sure what it is.
The sad part of the story is that in reality we were only halfway done. We had completed the mentally challenging part, but the real physical test was only 50% over. Our legs were done, but we still had a long way to go. The next four hours we had an exhausting but breathtaking decent over glaciers and crevasses that were only shadows on the way up.
|As you can see the snow was very soft on the decent, Casey really pushed us to hurry because as the snow melts the conditions can become perilous very quickly. He kept telling us to stop talking and listen for snow and ice falls.
|In the darkness we had crossed this massive crevasse on a 2X1′ piece of plywood stretched across an aluminum ladder.It was much more intimidating in the light. You had a small chord that you pulled up on with your left hand while you carried your ice axe in your right hand to walk across the ladder. I think it was pretty awesome. Phil and Natalie didn't think it was quite as much fun.
I'm not going to go into a ton of details on the rest of the decent, but it was exhausting. After we got back to camp muir we loaded up are sleeping bags and gear in our bags, took off our crampons and switched to our trekking poles for the final three hour hike back down to civilization. There was a lot of sledding and stand up skiing down for the last stretch until we got back to the dirt trailed. We were dirty, smelly and sunburned and as we got down to the main trail we eventually started passing little kids and elderly folks out for a short day hike. "Did you guys make it all the way the top?" A kid in hawaiian shorts asked us. "All the way to the tippy-top," we responded proudly. With over 150 summits of Rainier and 3 of Mt. Everest, I'm sure Casey was just shaking his head. We may not be professional mountain climbers, but we sure felt like it today.
|These shots were snapped in our last mile as we reached the end of our journey.
A cooler full of lemonade welcomed us to the trail head where the RMI shuttle was waiting to drive us home. I had three glasses. Char' was waiting for us back at the RMI offices, and as we loaded into the van she was nice enough to pretend we didn't stink.
We took one final shot of Rainier as Charlotte drove us back to our hotel in Seattle. It was a great adventure, but I'm glad to finally have it my rearview mirror.]]>
"Sales" is a dirty word at some law firms one that brings to mind "Glengarry Glenn Ross" or a fast-talking used car dealer. But in an increasingly competitive marketplace, where firms fight one another to land work, business development is necessary to survival. How can lawyers sell online and offline without losing their dignity? Here are five simple techniques:
Skip the small talk. It's fine to be friendly, but buyers are busy and will choose you only if they are confident you can solve their problem. Whether in person or on Twitter, nobody wants to talk about the weather.
Stop talking about yourself. Nobody cares where you went to law school, how many lawyers are in your firm or if you made Chambers this year. The best salesmen ask great questions to learn to understand the problems confronting the potential client. A few months ago a law firm marketing department responding to a request for proposals asked the lawyers to pose a few questions to help match the client's needs. The lawyers refused they preferred to assume they already knew what the customer needed than stoop to asking questions.
Be a consultant. I've heard many lawyers claim that they stand out because they understand the client's business and not just the law. How do they prove that to the client? Remember the old adage: Don't tell me, show me, by the quality of the questions you ask. A while back, I spoke to a few lawyers about a small legal problem at my software company. Each offered expensive legal solutions but none asked me any questions involving the business consequences of my decisions. (I didn't hire any of them.) Good consultants ask great questions. Preparing a list of essential questions is a great way to prepare for any interaction with a potential client.
Stop trying to close the deal. "Always be closing," Alec Baldwin's character says in "Glengarry." That might work for someone selling shoes or a necktie, but won't when the purchasing decision is very large. In "Spin Selling," Neil Rackham examines research on thousands of sales presentations and concludes that overly aggressive salespeople were better at irritating potential customers than selling.
Always be setting appointments. That doesn't mean another sales call; it means to keep working on better understanding the needs of the potential client. Some sales take months and others take years, so every appointment that ends in another appointment is a small victory. The lawyers most effective at using LinkedIn and Twitter aren't incredibly tech savvy they just use these tools to help set up more appointments.
It's time for lawyers to embrace their responsibility to cultivate potential clients while leaving the tired sales tactics behind. Stop "selling" and bring in the business.]]>
We connect with our clients and contacts in many different ways telephone calls, emails and by sharing on social networks. The quality of those interactions determines how we make our contacts feel. If we do it well, we make them happy. Compare this to gift-giving.
Consider two scenarios: One Christmas morning years ago, the one gift remaining was for me, and it was from my little brother. I tore the gift open and was a little crestfallen to find "The Simpson's Fun Book" a kids' book that he clearly wanted for himself.
Fast forward almost 15 years. I was enjoying Christmas with my soon-to-be bride. "Are you ready to open your present?" she asked. I tore open what looked like a giant picture frame to find a map of the world carefully mounted on cork-board. It came with a plastic container of red pins. "Everywhere we travel together, we can mark with the red pins," she said. It was a perfect gift she had anticipated exactly what I wanted.
When we share articles and information with our contacts, are we too self-serving? Do we share information in tune with their needs and struggles? Or do we share self-serving material clearly designed to get people to hire us?
Just as I could tell the difference between two gifts, so can your clients.
Barger & Wolen marketing director Heather Morse tells a story about the firm's founding partner, Richards Barger. He could often be found at the photocopy machine, running off articles to send to contacts, clients and other attorneys within the firm. Didn't you love it, she asked attorneys during a marketing session, when he took the time to send something of interest to you?
LinkedIn can work the same way. Sure, there's no handwritten note. But you can still personalize your message.
A lot has been said and written about the impersonal nature of social media, but the problem isn't the technology it's the way we use it. We can blast our network with every article we write, never taking the time to read what other people post or to answer their questions, but that isn't the highest and best use of tools like LinkedIn. The best use is to facilitate both sharing with a large number of people and personal engagement with individuals. No more trips to the copy machine now you can copy and paste a link, add a personal note and send the article off via email or post it via your favorite social network.
This is not marketing, at least not in the traditional sense. It is truly business development. You are working to build stronger relationships with people who you already know.
Take the time to share good information. Make thoughtful decisions about the information you choose to share. That will make your clients and contacts smile for years.
What do lawyers and Pakistani factory workers have in common? More than you think. Especially when it comes to innovation.
Columbia University researchers looked at how innovation spreads in a seemingly simple area the manufacture of soccer balls. They identified a far more efficient way to cut out the fake leather used to make the balls. This basic design improvement increases profits by 12 percent at factories that use it.
To help spread this innovation to factories in Pakistan, the researchers provided the design and specific instructions to more than 100 soccer ball factories. A year later, only six had actually implemented the change. Why was the number so low?
The factories were all in favor of this clear improvement in the process, but the factory workers were highly resistant. A factory in Siakot, Pakistan, for example, pays workers for each piece of leather they cut. Learning the new process meant they would have to slow down in the short term, so they resisted. It seems very shortsighted, but the truth is the goals of the bosses weren't in line with the workers' goals. At other factories, however, managers gave bonuses to the workers willing to learn the new process, or provided some other incentive.
What does this have to do with lawyers and law firms? For more than two decades, law firms have had opportunities to benefit from major innovations in project management that would drastically reduce the costs and increase the effectiveness of litigation, yet most still haven't adopted these practices. More recently, new customer-relationship management software can exponentially increase the value of the combined networks of law firms, yet most lawyers either don't share their contacts or are unwilling to take the time to learn the power of the tool.
Take a look at LinkedIn and other social media finally, every member of a firm can take control of his or her own business development, but at most firms fewer than 5 percent of the lawyers actively use social media.
In short, firms preach the benefits of these practices, but almost none of them ties compensation to their use. The message sounds a little like this: "Please use all these new innovations, but we will only reward you for doing things the old way."
Law firms are filled with workers who instead of getting paid by the piece are getting paid by the hour. Where is the motivation to provide better service, more efficiently, at a lower cost? It isn't there, and until firms provide a carrot in the form of compensation, lawyers will keep cranking out the hours. Innovation isn't easy, but firms that make it a priority can make more money and provide superior service. That should be all the incentive they need.
"I've been on LinkedIn for five years, but nothing good has ever happened as a result." That is repeated by at least one lawyer in every group I speak to about LinkedIn.
I call this the "Magic Bean Strategy." You remember the story Jack planted the magic beans and climbed the stalk into the clouds? It worked for Jack, but it won't work for lawyers. They need to use LinkedIn to further their specific business-development goals.
Here are five simple ways lawyers can get more out of LinkedIn:
Share an important piece of news or information to your network as a LinkedIn update. This is the easiest thing to do on LinkedIn simply copy and paste an article you think is important or helpful to your clients and hit "share." You are already reading the news why not share the good stuff with your network? Research by Bufferapp.com reports that if you post 20 times each month, 60 percent of your network will see at least one of your posts. It's important to remember that LinkedIn doesn't email your updates to anybody; they are available to anybody logging in that day.
Add one new connection every day. You can go the "People You May Know" section to find people worth reaching out to because of a common personal or professional connection. You also can search for specific individual former classmates from college or law school.
Upload a recent article or PowerPoint presentation to your LinkedIn profile. I'm not talking about sharing these as updates (although you should do that as well); I'm suggesting you permanently add these media to your LinkedIn profile by selecting the "Profile" tab, then "Edit Profile" and, under the "Summary" section, select the box with the plus sign on the right to upload your PowerPoint or video interview. Anybody can add media to their LinkedIn bios, but in my experience vanishingly few lawyers take advantage of this simple way to set themselves apart.
Use LinkedIn to set up a meeting. LinkedIn makes it easy to work your list of prospects. Shoot them messages and schedule lunch, coffee, breakfast or golf. Do it once each day.
Schedule 10 minutes each day for LinkedIn. Put it on your calendar. Don't tell me you don't have 10 minutes, either. You eat, don't you? You drink coffee? Schedule 10 minutes and take one of these suggestions every single day. It's not that hard.
The lawyers who bring in business via LinkedIn have a process, and by repeating this process over and over they eventually find success. Great status updates or brilliant comments won't make LinkedIn work for you, but rather consistent, deliberate efforts to advance your goals. It isn't complicated, but it requires more than planting magic beans and waiting for something awesome to happen.]]>
There's no point in connecting to the other lawyers in your firm on LinkedIn, right? I mean, you already know them.
Wrong. LinkedIn.com, the premier social network for professionals across the world, isn't just about connecting with people you want to do business with; it's also about being connected.
Let me explain the difference. You may know the 10 lawyers who work down the hall, but do you know the 250 connections each of them has? Do you know the approximately 62,500 connections those 250 people have? I didn't think so.
LinkedIn isn't just about direct connections; there also is real value in connections that are one degree removed. Have you ever played the game, Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon? Pick any actor and connect him or her to a movie in which one of their co-stars was in a different movie with Kevin Bacon" in seven steps. Adept players can do it in three or four moves.
This same game is playing out for professionals on LinkedIn. Here's an example: Last year, I worked with a large law firm with offices on the West Coast. One of the partners planned to pitch a major technology company in Silicon Valley, but didn't know anybody who worked there. He asked the other partners in his office and searched the firm's client -management software, but came up with nothing.
Then he searched LinkedIn for a couple of the people he would be making his pitch to. Surprise! It turned out that an associate in the firm's Orange County office had a personal relationship with the target company's general counsel. An associate!
You may think you know everybody in your firm, but you can never predict whom they know.
Does this mean you should make sure that every lawyer in your firm is connected to every other lawyer? There is certainly an argument to be made for this extreme stance. Firms pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for client-relationship management systems that are not nearly as dynamic as LinkedIn. What do I mean by dynamic? When someone changes jobs, you have to manually enter it into the client -relationship system. LinkedIn is completely web-based when any of your contacts updates his or her profile, you see it automatically. This free software in many ways runs circles around the clunky software most firms pay for.
I don't expect law firms to stop using client-management systems, but lawyers should be extremely liberal about who they connect with via LinkedIn inside their firm. You just never know whom the other lawyers know.
Cross-selling doesn't have to be painful; sometimes it can start with a simple step like accepting that LinkedIn invite from the associate down the hall.]]>
How did I find an audience? Very simple, I enlisted the help of allies.
Some of the allies had small audiences like I did, but by joining forces our combined audience was much larger. Then I met friends like Julio Varela, Gini Dietrich and Justin Bracket and all of our networks grew together.
What did my allies do for me? When I was first writing my posts, they would share them with their networks. If the content was really good, they would comment about it in their blog posts. I was hitting more than ten times the people.
My audience back then: 1,000 followers
The combined audience of myself and my allies: 20,000+ followers
In the same way, lawyers within the same firm need to be allies to each other. When lawyer A writes a new blog post, lawyer B should share it to his LinkedIn network. When lawyer B writes a new post, lawyer A should do the same. Just imagine if every lawyer shared the content that their neighbors created. The potential audience of that content would go from 250 (the average number of connections on Linkedin by an AmLaw 100 lawyer, according to our research of over 5,000 profiles) to 25,000!
What about crossover? What if some of them have the same connections? Will those connections feel like they're being 'spammed?'
Good question, but to answer the question we need to understand the nature of social networks. These aren't inboxes filling up with information, they are rivers of information, with articles constantly flowing by. When the first article is posted, if you don't happen to be online that morning, you miss it. The second article, you might just see when you logon to LinkedIn. If the article is posted repeatedly, you may think, "looks like this is something I should read, people keep sharing it."
Crossover and shared connections is a good thing. We could take this to the extreme and ask, "What if 500 lawyers at the same firm share the same article at the same time?" This would not be a good thing. But let's face it, does any law firm ever have the ability to get all 500 of their lawyers to do the same thing at the same time? At most they get 10% to 20% of their lawyers to share something, but each will share what they want, when they want, in their own way.
The internet is a lonely place sometimes; That's why you need allies. Every lawyer who is blogging, writing, and sharing online shouldn't have to look any further then their own firm to find allies to help build them up and create a larger audience for their content.]]>
Waking up early feels a little bit like that old episode. Everyone is asleep in their beds, and the roads and sidewalks are almost completely empty. I've discovered early mornings this year, and I love it. I've been waking up at about 5:30 and heading to Cross Fit or hitting the golf course. I can complete 9 holes of golf before many people are even awake. I'm not the only one out there, but I might as well be.
I've really been enjoying these early mornings, and it got me to thinking that staying up late doesn't compare. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy binge watching shows on Netflix and staying up late with a good book, but there is something magical about early mornings. No distractions, just the chance to accomplish what matters most to you.
I've been a night owl for the last few years, it was really the only way to keep my sanity after working a long day and finally getting the kids to sleep. Staying up late was the only way to get a break, until I joined the early shift. I may be behind on Luther, Orange is the New Black, and Sherlock – but I'm getting stronger and my golf game is showing signs of improvement and those things are more satisfying to me than a great episode of my favorite show.]]>
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"If you show the lawyers how to build their individual reputation so that they can bring in their own clients, what do they need the law firm for?"
Are lawyers that learn to bring in their own business more likely to leave the firm?
Before I answer that question, lets look at the two options:
Option A: Lawyer learns to blog, and begins to build his own business and may consider leaving the firm.
Option B: Lawyer doesn't learn to blog, is incapable of bringing in business and stays.
Isn't the idea to create a law firm full of Option A partners, and then make it worth their while to stay at the firm? If firms live in fear of creating growth opportunities for their lawyers, then they aren't creating a very positive work environment. Additionally, if lawyers don't feel like they can learn and grow in your firm, they may just leave anyway.
Now there is a counterpoint — most large law firms want to build the firm's reputation, not the individual lawyer's reputation. They want to be known for their "deep bench" not just for a handful of superstars. That makes some sense, but it is a much tougher sell from a branding perspective. Compare your firm to a basketball team: Which pitch will sell more tickets?
Option A: "Come see Lebron James play tonight, the best basketball player since Michael Jordan"
Option B: "Come see the Generals play tonight, all of our starters and all of our bench players are better than the average NBA player."
It isn't all about the stars, but icons within law firms can be very persuasive in bringing in new business. Clients don't want a lawyer with ERISA experience, they want THE expert on ERISA. They don't want a real estate lawyer that has worked on every type of commercial transaction, they want the lawyer that has specialized in what they are specifically looking for. Having more stars at your firm doesn't dilute the firm's brand and message, it amplifies it. When a firm has a number of lawyers that are seen as the very best, it creates a sense that every lawyer at the firm has a similarly impressive background.
Do blogging lawyers leave law firms? Sometimes, but lawyers that never learn to blog may stick around forever without ever reaching their potential. Don't be afraid of creating stars, instead find a way to put them in the right place at the right time with the tools to be their very best, and your firm will reap the rewards.]]>
One option is to have the lawyers create business plans, but in my opinion this is generally ineffective. They create a 2-3 page plan, and then don't look at it again until the next year. In normal businesses in the real world, the business plan is everything. All decisions are made based on what the plan and strategy indicate. Many lawyers like to think that they live in a different world, where the same business realities don't quite apply to them. They don't have the luxury of thinking about plans and strategy, they are too busy working for clients and stretching to hit their billable hours for the month.
Having no plan or a plan that is rarely looked at, aren't good options, so how do we change this mindset? This past week I came back with a lot of great ideas from the Legal Sales and Service Organization's (LSSO) Raindance Conference in Chicago. But I think the best idea came from Beth Cuzzone, the Director of Business Development at Goulston & Storrs who shared with me something they do at her firm. For the Partners they create a one page Contribution Plan. This plan asks the lawyers five simple questions regarding the contribution they are expected to make to the firm. Here they are:
1. What measurable goals have you set for yourself?
2. What are the search terms for your practice? (Or how would potential clients search for you using a Google search)
3. Who are your top three clients?
4. Who are your top prospects?
5. Who are your top referral sources?
Bonus: other ways you contribute
This is a great approach for lawyers because it frames the business plan in a different light. The contribution plan recognizes that the lawyers aren't expect to run their own business, but they are expected to contribute as partners, and that contribution must be more substantial than billable hours. Your contribution above and beyond billable hours doesn't have to be rainmaking, but it has to be something measurable and substantial.
Some legal marketers try to change the lawyers, but you can't change lawyers into business people anymore than you can turn a dog into a cat. Lawyers are experts at a certain type of thinking, they sometimes just need help focusing that brain power in the right direction. These five questions provide a simple and accessible way for lawyers to adopt more of a business mindset, while maintaining their unique status as lawyers.
The point is this, sensational headlines just like my celebrity spotting can grab attention, they get people to click on articles, but they don't really serve much of a purpose beyond that. If you are a brilliant litigator for example, you can write an article with Justin Bieber in the title that will get hundreds, maybe even thousands of clicks and even generate some comments, but how do those views advance your reputation as a litigator? Will they even be viewed by any potential clients? It is highly unlikely. In the world of content marketing, sensational headlines are referred to as "link bait." These headlines get you to click and view because hey, I'm curious about "10 ways to use Duct Tape to make money," or "5 child celebrities that turned out to live completely unremarkable lives." But lawyers need to do more.
As we continue the discussion, I want to add that headlines do matter. The headline is almost more important than that body of the article, because if the headline doesn't get people to read, then the article will not succeed. But here are a few guidelines for creating excellent headlines:
1. Keep it short.
Twitter only allows tweets to be 140 characters long, yet our attention span for headlines is even shorter. No more than six or seven words is ideal. My headline is eight words long, but I can cheat because I'm writing the article.
2. Include urgency or a call to action in your headline.
Don't you hate those newscasters that announce the upcoming news, "Tonight at 9, learn why your drinking might kill you." Seriously? I have poisonous drinking water, and you are going to make me wait until 9 to find out why? News is the worst at this, making everything overly urgent. If you are sharing news with people that is time sensitive, you should let them know. It makes for a compelling headline and once they actually read the article they will understand why you had the need to make it urgent.
3. People love list.
"Top 5 reasons your drinking water may be killing you." Just kidding, your water is just fine. Or is it?
People love lists because they know exactly what they are going to get. Before your intended audience takes the time to click on any article you write, they are going to ask themselves, "what am I going to get out of reading this article?" Putting things into list format may be overdone online, but it is still very effective, especially if you deliver great content and information through your list.
Now back to sensational headlines. What if you are a trusts and estate attorney, should you write an article with an angle about Donald Sterling's family trust and the Clippers. The answer is actually yes, because this news is relevant to your practice! Will all the traffic be relevant and come from potential clients? Absolutely not, but some of the traffic may be relevant. What if your are an environmental lawyer, can you include Donald Sterling's name in a headline that says, "Donald Sterling May Be Toxic to the Clippers, But How Can Brownfield Redevelopment Help You Clean Up Toxic Waste From Your City?" Absolutely not. You are grasping for straws.
Use sensational headlines only when the sensation is directly relevant to your expertise.
I know what you are thinking, but wait Adrian, you just used a celebrity siting to create a sensational headline, didn't you violate your own rule? Well, I actually get an exception because my article is actually about sensational headlines. Anyway, for those that were wondering, I did get a picture of Mr. Reeves, but I had to real subtly take a selfie with him in the background.
In the words of Bill S. Preston from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: Write excellent headlines, not just sensational ones (he might not have actually said that.)
I'd like to start by clearing up one major misunderstanding. Just because the software makes it easier for lawyers to share, doesn't mean it removes their responsibility to share in a thoughtful way. Here are six reasons my software will lead to more genuine sharing.
1. ClearView Social encourages lawyers to share articles to individuals by email. When you receive an email from my software, you can choose to preview an article, share that article by email to a personal contact or share it online with two clicks. Engaging in 1-to-1 sharing with personalized messages is the highest and best use of a lawyers time, and the software encourages this.
2. ClearView Social promotes personalization of messages. Each lawyer that clicks to share using my software is prompted to personalize the message before sharing. They can add their thoughts of how it might impact their contacts, their practice area or their industry. They are not required to personalize, but they are always given that option.
3. ClearView will decrease SPAM by tracking the success of articles. The software tracks every article shared, and how many clicks and likes those shares receive. If lawyers share content that nobody in their network wants to read, then nobody will click on it. It makes the entire law firm smarter about sharing. If hundreds or even dozens of people are reading the articles, that isn't spam. That is effective content distribution, notice I didn't say lead generation, because that isn't the point. The point is sharing content that is useful to others in their network.
4. ClearView reminds lawyers on a daily basis to share good, quality content. Receiving a daily email with suggested content makes it easy for lawyers to share pre-approved firm content, but it is also a simple reminder to share daily. ClearView Social gives lawyers the option to bring in their own outside research and articles to share or share those suggested by the firm. If these articles are successful, others lawyers in the firms can learn from their success.
5. ClearView provides opportunities for lawyers to start conversations. Less than 3% of lawyers are sharing online right now, this is dreadful! We can do better. I've spoken to over ten thousand lawyers over the last five years, written two books on the topic and over 100 articles. Robert Ambrogi, Kevin Okeefe and anybody else that cares to listen should know by now, I am committed to getting lawyers to engage in real conversations online. Sharing isn't a lead generator, it isn't the end game, it is the beginning and it is a great way to connect with new people for the first time and re-connect with contacts that have sat dormant. ClearView can help new lawyers get started in a positive way.
6. ClearView takes something scary for lawyers and makes it simple. Some lawyers may never read an article, copy the link and open LinkedIn to share that article. They just don't think that way. I want them to though, and if ClearView Social can make it just a little bit easier for them to figure out what great tools LinkedIn and Twitter are, then we will be getting somewhere.
Robert, I appreciate your insights, and it made me look at my software in a different way. Your concerns are all valid ones. My software is currently in beta with a handful of firms for this very reason, I want to make sure it is the best sharing software possible when it launches. If that hasn't come through in my messaging, then that is on me. Yes, my software makes it simple, and that could lead to lawyers sharing in a less than thoughtful way, but that isn't the goal. The goal is to encourage engagement, encourage cross-selling and make sure that big firms can get their best ideas out to a larger network of potential clients where lawyers have existing relationships.
You can find out more about ClearView Social at http://clearviewsocial.com or email firstname.lastname@example.com to setup a demo.


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Pension Filip, Prague
Located in Prague (Strahov), Pension Filip is close to Strahov Stadium, Old Town Square, and Strahov Monastery. Also nearby are Prague Castle and Lennon Wall.
Property Features.
Guests are served a complimentary breakfast each morning. In addition to barbecue grills and a garden, Pension Filip features concierge services. Wireless Internet access is complimentary in public areas.
Pension Filip has 11 guestrooms. Complimentary wireless high-speed Internet access is provided. In addition, amenities available on request include hair dryers and irons/ironing boards. Housekeeping is offered daily.
Before you book, you should know that this is a cash-only hotel. Make sure you are…
Impressive staff, especially Daniel. Very clean and warm place.
Enter dates to check prices
Hotel Info: 866-539-8117from $26
- Single Room
- Triple Room
- Quadruple Room
- Double Room
Recommended hotels
At a glance
Key facts
Hotel size
- This hotel has 11 rooms
- This hotel is arranged over 3 floors
- Check-in time 2:00 PM-8 PM
- Check-out time is 11:00 AM
Required at check in
- Cash deposit required
- Government-issued photo ID required
Travelling with others
- Pets allowed (dogs only)
- 1 per room
Extra people
- Roll-away beds available, charges may apply*
- Free WiFi in public areas
- Free WiFi in rooms
- Free nearby parking
Nearby Three Star Prague hotels
In the hotel
- Free buffet breakfast daily
- Barbeque grills
- Concierge services
- Luggage storage
- Number of buildings/towers - 1
- Safe-deposit box at front desk
- Garden
In the room
- Iron/ironing board (on request)
- Private bathroom
- Shower only
- Hair dryer (on request)
- Desk
- Free WiFi
- Refrigerator
- Daily housekeeping
- Connecting/adjoining rooms available
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Pension Filip, Prague's small print
Also known as
- Filip
- Filip Prague
The property has connecting/adjoining rooms, which are subject to availability and can be requested by contacting the property using the number on the booking confirmation.
This property does not have elevators.
Optional extras
Rollaway beds are available for an additional charge
We have included all charges provided to us by this hotel. However, charges can vary, for example, based on length of stay or the room you book.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
With the Dow Jones Industrial Average having just cracked 15,000, most of the 15 investment managers who spoke at the 18th annual Sohn conference on Wednesday in New York still found plenty to buy, including Procter & Gamble pg -0.9429400386847195% Procter & Gamble Co. U.S.: NYSE USD81.94 -0.78 -0.9429400386847195% /Date(1427835661239-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 8292155 AFTER HOURS USD82 0.0600000000000023 0.0732243104710764% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 357503 P/E Ratio 23.985715122065454 Market Cap 223386191304.333 Dividend Yield 3.1418110812789846% Rev. per Employee 692110 More quote details and news » (ticker: PG), and Google goog -0.730032788073112% Google Inc. Cl C U.S.: Nasdaq USD548 -4.03 -0.730032788073112% /Date(1427835600087-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 1518528 AFTER HOURS USD548.1 0.100000000000023 0.01824817518248175% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 65149 P/E Ratio 27.041297192738327 Market Cap 378819564442.62 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 1228170 More quote details and news » (GOOG); a bevy of U.S. housing plays; a yellow-pages company; a Norwegian offshore driller; and the preferred shares of Korea's Samsung Electronics and Hyundai.
Some of the most provocative recommendations were on the short side, including bearish calls on disk-drive makers Seagate Technology stx -1.9781461944235117% Seagate Technology PLC U.S.: Nasdaq USD52.03 -1.05 -1.9781461944235117% /Date(1427835600293-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 3708749 AFTER HOURS USD52.26 0.229999999999997 0.44205266192581205% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 68073 P/E Ratio 11.237580993520519 Market Cap 17428182315.072 Dividend Yield 4.151451085911974% Rev. per Employee 272322 More quote details and news » (STX) and Western Digital wdc -1.5362977388293844% Western Digital Corp. U.S.: Nasdaq USD91.01 -1.42 -1.5362977388293844% /Date(1427835600301-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 2304382 AFTER HOURS USD91.01 % Volume (Delayed 15m) : 104501 P/E Ratio 13.706325301204819 Market Cap 21469803614.9695 Dividend Yield 2.197560707614548% Rev. per Employee 180619 More quote details and news » (WDC); Digital Realty Trust dlr -1.1983223487118035% Digital Realty Trust Inc. U.S.: NYSE USD65.96 -0.8 -1.1983223487118035% /Date(1427835798040-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 953576 AFTER HOURS USD65.96 % Volume (Delayed 15m) : 5565 P/E Ratio 65.96 Market Cap 9057996600.87889 Dividend Yield 5.154639175257732% Rev. per Employee 1896500 More quote details and news » (DLR), an owner of data centers; Canadian banks; and a South African lender.
The 15 presenters at the charity event, which raises money for pediatric-cancer research, featured some of the biggest names in the hedge-fund industry, including David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, William Ackman of Pershing Square, Jonathon Jacobson of Highfields Capital, and Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates. The program lasted nearly seven hours, with only a few short breaks.
The record of last year's Sohn recommendations was mixed (see table) and some investment managers who had the best picks in 2012, including Barron's Roundtable member and Eagle Capital general partner Meryl Witmer, didn't present this year.
Ackman pitched P&G, arguing that it should be able to boost sales-growth and profit margins, which if successful, could lead to $6 a share in profit by the company's fiscal year ending in June 2016, up from an estimated $4 in the current year. If that scenario plays out, P&G, now at $78, could hit $120 in two years. The activist Ackman called the consumer-products giant "one of the great businesses in the world," but said it suffers from a "bloated cost structure" and inefficient manufacturing facilities. P&G's sales growth has trailed that of peers Colgate-Palmolive cl 0.07216048491845865% Colgate-Palmolive Co. U.S.: NYSE USD69.34 0.05 0.07216048491845865% /Date(1427835614973-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 3966858 AFTER HOURS USD69.34 % Volume (Delayed 15m) : 213519 P/E Ratio 30.14782608695652 Market Cap 62834734834.7506 Dividend Yield 2.1920969137582924% Rev. per Employee 458276 More quote details and news » (CL) and Unilever un -2.793296089385475% Unilever N.V. ADS U.S.: NYSE USD41.76 -1.2 -2.793296089385475% /Date(1427835851817-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 1593476 AFTER HOURS USD41.8 0.0399999999999992 0.09578544061302682% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 48612 P/E Ratio 17.62017165207277 Market Cap 73664714880 Dividend Yield 3.163793103448276% Rev. per Employee 369947 More quote details and news » (UN). He also criticized P&G CEO Bob McDonald for being on 21 different boards, arguing that those responsibilities are taking valuable time away from the company. "A CEO on 21 boards shows where his head is at," Ackman said.
STAN DRUCKENMILLER, a former lead portfolio manager for George Soros' Quantum fund, made a quick pitch for Google, calling it one of the world's "better positioned" companies, with a relatively modest valuation at 16 times 2014 earnings. Druckenmiller, who's now focused on running his own money, spent most of his allotted 15 minutes on commodities, arguing that the "commodity supercycle" that lasted from 2000 to 2011 is over, thanks largely to weakening demand for raw materials from a formerly voracious China. That's bad news for commodity-oriented currencies, including the South African rand and Canadian dollar.
Hardest hit, he observed, could be the Australian dollar, which he said could "come down and come down hard." Australia has been a big beneficiary of the commodity boom, and Druckenmiller said the currency's appreciation has resulted in such things as $22 hamburgers in Sydney.
JACOBSON TOOK ON DIGITAL REALTY, a real-estate investment trust that operates corporate data centers. He said the company could be worth just $20 a share, a fraction of its recent price of $66. Its shares fell 5% on Thursday in the wake of the presentation. He argued that there is too much industry capacity and that Digital Realty vastly understates its capital expenditures when calculating adjusted funds from operations, a widely followed REIT earnings measure. Adjusting for capital spending, Jacobson contends, projected 2013 AFFO falls to about 87 cents a share, versus the Street's $3.90 estimate. The true AFFO, he said, is a fraction of the current $3.12 a share annual dividend. "Do you want to pay three times book value for this?" he asked, arguing that the company is burning through cash and that its dividend "is not sustainable" and "depends on continued access to the capital markets."
In discussing companies with what he called illusory yields, Jacobson briefly warned about Linn Energy line -2.1238938053097347% Linn Energy LLC U.S.: Nasdaq USD11.06 -0.24 -2.1238938053097347% /Date(1427835600260-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 1230125 AFTER HOURS USD11.2 0.139999999999999 1.2658227848101267% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 3677 P/E Ratio N/A Market Cap 3791726306.0667 Dividend Yield 11.305605786618445% Rev. per Employee 2098400 More quote details and news » (LINE), subject of a bearish Barron's article last week. Jacobson argued that "half of Linn's distributable cash flow comes from hedging gains" and that the company needs access to the capital markets to fund its distribution.
Another vulnerable high-yield stock, he said, is AT&T t -0.9705793145283591% AT&T Inc. U.S.: NYSE USD32.65 -0.32 -0.9705793145283591% /Date(1427835662017-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 27354340 AFTER HOURS USD32.73 0.0799999999999983 0.2450229709035222% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 545896 P/E Ratio 27.436974789915965 Market Cap 171119844265.342 Dividend Yield 5.758039816232772% Rev. per Employee 523506 More quote details and news » (T), whose cash flow has flattened. AT&T also is exposed to any weakening in the wireless market.
STEVE EISMAN made his reputation with his short bet against subprime mortgages prior to the credit crisis and for identifying abuses in for-profit education three years ago when Wall Street loved the sector. Eisman, founder of Emrys Partners, said the U.S. housing recovery is in its early stages and offers plenty of investment opportunities. He noted that some of the strongest housing markets, including California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida, were formerly among the weakest. Low housing inventories are fueling a boom in land prices in these markets; some have had 30% gains since the end of 2012.
He ticked off a list of "land rich" home builders like PulteGroup phm -0.9358288770053476% PulteGroup Inc. U.S.: NYSE USD22.23 -0.21 -0.9358288770053476% /Date(1427835738257-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 5279469 AFTER HOURS USD22.23 % Volume (Delayed 15m) : 728088 P/E Ratio 17.784 Market Cap 8220826535.98243 Dividend Yield 1.4394961763382816% Rev. per Employee 1386710 More quote details and news » (PHM), Lennar len 0.6214798990095164% Lennar Corp. Cl A U.S.: NYSE USD51.81 0.32 0.6214798990095164% /Date(1427835725582-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 3230828 AFTER HOURS USD51.7976 -0.0123999999999995 -0.023933603551437945% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 13300 P/E Ratio 15.7 Market Cap 10225951880.5917 Dividend Yield 0.3088206909862961% Rev. per Employee 1181080 More quote details and news » (LEN), and Standard Pacific spf 0.44642857142857145% Standard Pacific Corp. U.S.: NYSE USD9 0.04 0.44642857142857145% /Date(1427836067527-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 2611740 AFTER HOURS USD8.9882 -0.0117999999999991 -0.13111111111111112% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 132385 P/E Ratio 15.517241379310345 Market Cap 2440757822.89146 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 1948240 More quote details and news » (SPF), as well as Fortune Brands Home & Security, a maker of kitchen cabinets, faucets, locks, and doors for homes. He recommended Forestar Group for -0.7551919446192574% Forestar Group Inc. U.S.: NYSE USD15.77 -0.12 -0.7551919446192574% /Date(1427835893422-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 141497 AFTER HOURS USD15.767 -0.00300000000000011 -0.019023462270133164% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 3072 P/E Ratio 42.4952842899488 Market Cap 534205913.298454 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 2045160 More quote details and news » (FOR), a landowner recently profiled in Barron's ("Rich Assets, Cheap Shares," March 4) that he says could be worth $30, versus its recent share price of $23. He also likes Colony Financial clny 1.0526315789473684% Colony Financial Inc. U.S.: NYSE USD25.92 0.27 1.0526315789473684% /Date(1427835966662-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 1387617 AFTER HOURS USD25.92 % Volume (Delayed 15m) : 12917 P/E Ratio 25.663366336633665 Market Cap 2828322828.19138 Dividend Yield 5.709876543209877% Rev. per Employee N/A More quote details and news » (CLNY), a mortgage REIT that owns 25% of Colony American Homes, single-family rental-home outfit that recently filed to go public. Another play he likes: Ocwen Financial ocn 1.6009852216748768% Ocwen Financial Corp. U.S.: NYSE USD8.25 0.13 1.6009852216748768% /Date(1427836134136-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 2957215 AFTER HOURS USD8.25 % Volume (Delayed 15m) : 2815 P/E Ratio 6.7073170731707314 Market Cap 1021617805.42583 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 218788 More quote details and news » (OCN), the largest nonbank mortgage servicer. Its price/earnings is just seven on expected 2014 profits.
Eisman is bearish on the Canadian housing market, however, saying that it's starting to crack after showing resiliency throughout the U.S. housing downturn. If it continues, the trend could hurt big Canadian banks like TD Bank Group td 1.7814726840855106% Toronto-Dominion Bank U.S.: NYSE USD42.85 0.75 1.7814726840855106% /Date(1427835978829-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 2080175 AFTER HOURS USD42.7012 -0.148800000000001 -0.34725787631271876% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 36650 P/E Ratio 10.251196172248804 Market Cap 98560065752.2911 Dividend Yield 3.7869732852703386% Rev. per Employee 449511 More quote details and news » (TD) and Royal Bank of Canada ry 1.7017691659646166% Royal Bank of Canada U.S.: NYSE USD60.36 1.01 1.7017691659646166% /Date(1427835924485-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 2035301 AFTER HOURS USD60.22 -0.140000000000001 -0.23194168323392975% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 29473 P/E Ratio 10.0265780730897 Market Cap 108355335412.977 Dividend Yield 4.071587497423857% Rev. per Employee 555103 More quote details and news » (RY), which trade for more than twice tangible book value, way above the valuation of most large U.S. banks. Particularly vulnerable, he asserts, is Home Capital Group hcg.t -0.7925407925407926% Home Capital Group Inc. Canada: Toronto CAD42.56 -0.34 -0.7925407925407926% /Date(1427835600000-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 210199 P/E Ratio 9.5 Market Cap 3010378781.39038 Dividend Yield 2.0676691729323307% Rev. per Employee 1330530 More quote details and news » (HCG.Canada), a lender specializing in high-risk mortgage loans that aren't eligible for guarantees from the Canadian equivalent of Fannie Mae. At about $53, it trades for twice tangible book. "If housing rolls over, this company will have problems."
CHANOS OF KYNIKOS called disk-drive makers Seagate and Western Digital "value traps." He said the stocks, which have soared in the past year, are vulnerable to the eroding personal-computer market, a big source of demand. "PC sales have just begun to decline," he added.
Bulls point to the two dominant drive makers' low P/Es -- just seven on this year's expected earnings. But Chanos thinks their margins -- and profits -- could come under pressure, citing a forecast from No. 3 drive maker Toshiba 6502.to -0.6148353827846093% Toshiba Corp. Japan: Tokyo JPY501.1 -3.1 -0.6148353827846093% /Date(1427918400000-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 20m) : 30603000 P/E Ratio 25.24433249370277 Market Cap 2157786990128.54 Dividend Yield 1.5964877270005986% Rev. per Employee 33390200 More quote details and news » (6502.Japan) for a sharp decline in its margins during its current fiscal year. He also cited heavy insider sales at Seagate, led by CEO Steve Luczo. Seagate fell $2 on Thursday, to $40, in the wake of the Chanos call, while Western Digital slid $1.33, to $57.68.
EINHORN, BEST KNOWN for his prescient bearish calls on Lehman Brothers, St. Joe, and Green Mountain Coffee, made a bullish presentation, extolling Oil States International ois 0.4546602677443799% Oil States International Inc. U.S.: NYSE USD39.77 0.18 0.4546602677443799% /Date(1427835865790-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 703206 AFTER HOURS USD39.77 % Volume (Delayed 15m) : 1619 P/E Ratio 11.942942942942944 Market Cap 2033263295.4953 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 343971 More quote details and news » (OIS), an oil-field-services company trading at about $99. Einhorn said a sum-of-the-parts valuation points toward a higher price, as would a conversion to a REIT, which could boost the stock to $155.
Mortgage-securities maven Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital had some pretty good calls in 2012, including natural gas and Spanish stocks, and a short recommendation on Apple when bears were few. He didn't have much to say about stocks on Wednesday, except for critical comments on Chipotle Mexican Grill cmg -0.7354736328125% Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. U.S.: NYSE USD650.54 -4.82 -0.7354736328125% /Date(1427835628408-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 325409 AFTER HOURS USD650.6 -0.539999999999964 0.009223106957297014% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 6798 P/E Ratio 45.333797909407664 Market Cap 20348272045.1807 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 77383.1 More quote details and news » (CMG)."I hate the charts," he said. "I like the products. I don't like the P/E ratio at 40."
Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital recommended Dex Media dxm -1.411764705882353% Dex Media Inc. U.S.: Nasdaq USD4.19 -0.06 -1.411764705882353% /Date(1427835600018-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 403263 AFTER HOURS USD4.19 % Volume (Delayed 15m) : 9540 P/E Ratio N/A Market Cap 74910497.6654053 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 518571 More quote details and news » (DXM), created from the merger of two struggling yellow-pages publishers, Dex One and Super Media. He said that Dex Media, formed after its components emerged from bankruptcy a few years ago, isn't going down again, despite market concerns about its debt load. He argued that cash flow should stabilize as digital sales offset declines in print yellow-pages books. While acknowledging that Dex Media is "fraught with risk," Bass said the company's bank debt, now yielding about 15%, should get paid off in full. He also likes the stock, now at about $16, calling it a "really cheap option" with the potential to rise fivefold. Bass, best-known for his bearish views on Japan, reiterated that he sees a "full blown" bond crisis" there in a few years, given massive borrowings by the government. He has been bearish on the yen and bullish on gold.
Keith Meister, formerly a top lieutenant of billionaire investor Carl Icahn and now chief investment officer of Corvex, recommended two data-transmission providers, tw telecom (TWTC) and Level 3 Communications lvlt -1.1565999632825408% Level 3 Communications Inc. U.S.: NYSE USD53.84 -0.63 -1.1565999632825408% /Date(1427835813233-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 1030150 AFTER HOURS USD54.1953 0.3553 0.6599182763744428% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 96822 P/E Ratio 42.39370078740158 Market Cap 18821237215.6177 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 502000 More quote details and news » (LVLT), arguing the combination of booming data traffic and industry consolidation is bullish for both. The better-managed of the pair in his view, tw telecom, could rise to $38 from its recent $28. He said the company ultimately will be sold "at a substantial premium" to one of many potential buyers, including Comcast cmcsa -0.24730612965907084% Comcast Corp. Cl A U.S.: Nasdaq USD56.47 -0.14 -0.24730612965907084% /Date(1427835602181-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 16610817 AFTER HOURS USD56.47 % Volume (Delayed 15m) : 930482 P/E Ratio 17.429012345679013 Market Cap 143701642376.072 Dividend Yield 1.7708517797060386% Rev. per Employee 494784 More quote details and news » (CMCSA). Level 3 has rebounded after digesting numerous acquisitions. His target: $34, up from a recent $24.
Mitch Julis of Canyon Partners favors Clear Channel Outdoor (CCO), the leveraged billboard company that is controlled by the even more leveraged Clear Channel Communications. Julis likes the business, which has just a handful of players, and the parent company's desire for cash, which has resulted in large dividends paid to Clear Channel Outdoor holders.
Tor Olav Trøim works for John Fredriksen, the Norwegian billionaire whose largest creation is Seadrill sdrl -3.1088082901554404% SeaDrill Ltd. U.S.: NYSE USD9.35 -0.3 -3.1088082901554404% /Date(1427835879554-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 10820466 AFTER HOURS USD9.29 -0.0600000000000005 -0.6417112299465241% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 188702 P/E Ratio 1.04586129753915 Market Cap 4755133906.26526 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 557390 More quote details and news » (SDRL), an owner of a fleet of offshore oil rigs that are leased to big energy companies. He argued that the stock should benefit from a coming "rig shortage" that could drive up leasing rates and Seadrill's cash flow. He said deepwater wells are among the most productive investments for Big Oil and that Seadrill can recoup the cost of a new rig in several years with long-term contracts. "Can you find a better business?" he asked.
Li Lu, chairman of Himalaya Capital, counts among his admirers Charlie Munger, the not-easy-to-impress vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Lu recommended preferred stock issued by Korean companies, including Samsung and Hyundai. This preferred amounts to "nonvoting common shares" trading at a massive, average discount of 65% to the better-known and more liquid common shares. He said these issues give investors exposure to leading Korean companies at low-single-digit P/E multiples.
The boom in consumer lending in South Africa has gotten out of hand, said David Stemerman, the founder of Conatus Capital Management. He said that African Bank Investments (ABL.South Africa) is vulnerable to what he called an "unsustainable boom in unsecured credit."
Akamai Technologies akam -1.1891515994436717% Akamai Technologies Inc. U.S.: Nasdaq USD71.045 -0.855 -1.1891515994436717% /Date(1427835600137-0500)/ Volume (Delayed 15m) : 1288082 AFTER HOURS USD71.5249 0.479900000000001 0.6754873671616581% Volume (Delayed 15m) : 41562 P/E Ratio 37.78989361702128 Market Cap 12858164846.5485 Dividend Yield N/A Rev. per Employee 384696 More quote details and news » (AKAM) was favored by Clifton Robbins of Blue Harbor Group. A dot-com-era survivor, Akamai develops technology to speed the flow of information over the Internet. His "base case" analysis suggests the stock, recently at about $45, is worth $64. Earnings could rise to $3 a share in 2016, he asserted, from the about $2 projected for this year.
The conference sponsors a contest for the best investment pitch from an outsider, and the winner this year was Simeon McMillan, a student at Columbia University's business school. He recommended Tribune (TRBAA), the broadcast TV and newspaper company that came out of bankruptcy late last year. His analysis suggests a value of $88 per share, well above the recent price of $55. He based his analysis on estimated asset values for key Tribune divisions, including broadcast TV stations, the WGN cable network, and a stake in the Food Network.
Dimitra DeFotis contributed reporting for this story.
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As the old world is crumbling something new is coming into being. Many people are waking up to their true powers- their DNA changing somehow... You, Myo Hyori- an 18 year-old girl of Korean descent, are one of them.
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That's right. G String now features all sorts of post processing shaders.
Bars/grain are now hard coded
Multiple Overlays
God Rays
Motion Blur
Lens Flares
And much more…
Everything can be disabled in the main menu of course.
All credit for this goes to a guy named Biohazard (on youtube or steam)
Brilliant coder/shader author.
Unbelievable what he did here.
He did a great deal in a very short time span… ;)
As for me I still have tons of mapping/sound work to do.
Maybe in 2 months v 2.0 is ready for Testing and while it is being tested I'll replace some of the ghetto dialogue sounds.