January
25, 2019

7 min read

This story originally appeared on PCMag

There was a time when many items littered my nightstand. There was a lamp, a stack of books and comics I had every intention of reading, a point-and-shoot camera in case my dog climbed into the covers and did something adorable, and even a landline phone for those late-night calls that wake one with dread. Also, a back scratcher.

Today those items are gone, save for the lamp so I don’t stub my toe, and the back scratcher, because I still have a back. They’ve been replaced by my iPhone and its plethora of apps to keep me busy, including those that turn my smartphone into a kick-ass futuristic alarm clock.

Amid this collection for iOS and Android, whether phone or tablet-sized, features can vary wildly. But they all tell the time and get your butt out of bed in the morning. Or after a nap. Some do it gently, some do it harshly, some do it with new-age special effects, and some make you work to wake. Whatever you’re waking needs, you’ll find them here.

Rise Alarm Clock ($1.99, iOS)

Rise isn’t about making you feel jangled in the morning. The multi-lingual app bills itself as a “work of art that wakes you up.” The lovely, minimalist settings require swiping up and down and left and right, but it’s filled with soothing alarm sounds with names like Grandma’s Clock, Gentle Chimes, and Jungle Morning. You can also wake to any song stored in iTunes. Setting multiple alarms for all different (or repeating) days and times is a breeze — though that feature requires a $0.99 in-app purchase. You can set the colorful clock option to monochrome and dim it down with a swipe. Snooze it with a shake.

Alarm Clock Xtreme & Timer ($2.99, Android)

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via PC Mag

Have you heard of those apps that won’t let you drunk-text someone until you do some math problems to prove you’re sober? That’s one option of Alarm Clock Xtreme, which aims to stop excessive use of the snooze option. It’ll even decrease the time between snoozes, so it’s not always that magic default 9 minutes. It can wake you gently with gradually growing volume. Hitting snooze can involve a shake, the side buttons, pushing the screen, or the previously mentioned math. It all comes with a sleep tracker, stopwatch, and timer option as well. If you don’t mind advertising in your clock, you can get a free version.

Alarm Clock for Me (Free, iOS or Android)

Alarm Clock for Me believes in customization, offering themes for the look of the digital digits, with names like Ultrasonic, Retro, Digital, Worky, Odometer, and C-Motion Clock. On start it’ll ask for Location services to be turned on, so it can also offer you weather updates. Inside the app is the full set of alarm options like using your own music and various snooze options, plus a sleep timer for cutting off music as you start to snooze, a timer, and a shake-to-turn-on-flashlight option. Unlike some other alarm clock apps, this one supports background alerts so you’ll get an alarm even if it isn’t running all night. The app comes with very annoying advertising, though — you’ll need to make a $3.99 purchase on iOS or $1.99 on Androidto be rid of them.

Timely (Free, Android)

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via PC Mag

Google liked this Android alarm clock app so much that it acquired its Zurich-based developer, Bitspin. Where it’s different is in using a cloud sync (via your Google account, naturally) so all your devices have the same alarms. It’s a beautiful clock app suitable for tablets, using gestures to set alarms, color schemes for the clock to suit you, challenges to ensure you’re up, a flip-to-snooze, and the option to quiet an alarm when the handset is picked up.

Sleep Cycle (Free, iOS or Android)

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Sleep Cycle is all about rest. This sleep analyzer app uses the phone’s or tablet’s microphone and accelerometer to track your snoozing and finds the best time (during your lightest sleep period) and method to wake you up. It’ll show how your sleep quality compares to the rest of the users of the app. If you’re still asleep, pick up the phone or tap it to snooze, but each snooze gets shorter if you use the Intelligent Snooze feature. iPhone users can sync the data into the Apple Health app, and it will talk to Philips Hue smart bulbs to come on at wake time, in simulation of sunrise.

Loud Alarm Clock (Free, iOS)

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via PC Mag

Is there much mystery around what makes this alarm clock stand out? As long as you leave the app on-screen all night, it will play — nay, blare — a sound at a preset time to wake even the soundest sleeper. While you can use your own music from iTunes, the app comes loaded with annoying noises like nails on a chalkboard and a fire alarm. The alarms can be randomized so you don’t get lulled into sleeping through a sound to which you’ve grown accustomed.

Alarmy (Sleep If U Can) (Free with ads, iOS or Android / $8.99 Pro edition on Android or $7.99 on iOS)

Is Alarmy the most annoying alarm ever? You’ll probably think so if you set it up for its best feature: you have to get out of bed and take a picture with your Android phone of a pre-set location in the house that matches a previously taken shot. Naturally, that place should be far from your bedroom. If that’s not enough, the alarm can also go into a shake-to-wake or calculations mode before you are allowed to turn it off.

I Can’t Wake Up! ($2.99, Android)

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If you absolutely can’t wake up, you need more tasks while the alarm is running. This is the alarm app with ALL the tasks. Memory puzzles, tile ordering, barcode scanning (put the barcode somewhere else in the house so you have to get up), rewriting text, shaking, math problems, and more. The app will play music during the snooze interval, which you may need to calm down after all that task completion. There is a free version with lots of ads.

AMdroid Alarm Clock (Free, Android)

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via PC Mag

From one-time alarms to recurring to countdowns, each alarm in the AMdroid app has its own settings. That can include challenges for waking, setting alarms that only work in specific locations, even setting it up so alarms do NOT go off during major holidays so you can sleep in. The app integrates with Android Wear smartwatches, so you can use voice commands to the wrist to set new alarms.

Sleep as Android (Free, Android)

Sleep as Android has your back, from notifying you the night before about your optimal time to go to sleep to the next morning’s alarm. It offers up white noise like ocean waves, crackling fires, and chants. Put the phone in the bed with you and the accelerometer measures how fitful or restful you are, then attempts to wake you at the best moment. It works with smart bulbs to wake you naturally at day break. Then come the alarms, with task options like shakes, math problems, scanning QR codes, entering Captcha codes, even counting sheep (which seems counterproductive).

Uhp Alarm Clock Pro ($1.99, Android)

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via PC Mag

Like many others, Uhp has features like showing you the weather, playing music from Apple Music to wake you, etc. And it has a requirement to get you out of bed by making you walk somewhere as the alarm goes off and confirm it. The difference is, Uhp will post to your Facebook or Twitter account to embarrass you if you don’t get going.

Walk Me Up Alarm Clock (Free, iOS or Android / $1.99 Pro version on Android)

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via PC Mag

If all you need to do is walk a little to get the waking juices flowing, Walk Me Up uses your phone’s accelerometer to make sure you actually walk a certain number of steps so you can’t just cheat it with a few shakes. There’s also an “evil mode” for disabling the snooze, among all the usual stuff. The app has ads, but you can ditch them for $1.99.

January
24, 2019

11 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Mike Peters will never forget the day his mother-in-law came to visit his family in Florida. She wanted to bathe his young daughter, but the water wouldn’t turn on. Embarrassed, Peters pretended he didn’t know why. The reality was he didn’t have the money to pay the utility bill.

“How did I get here?” the 30-year-old wondered. As a teenager, he’d been a rising tech star. He developed and sold his first software at age 13. At 16, he turned down a job offer from Microsoft. By 23, he’d saved $1 million.

But his dot-com startup, a messaging platform, burned through that cash along with $6.5 million Peters had raised from investors. In three years, his company failed to make a single sale.

Fast forward to today and Peters has bounced back and made enough money to last a lifetime. He’s the founder of the Yomali Group, an international e-commerce solutions conglomerate with over $1 billion in revenue. “My body is covered with scar tissue from the mistakes I’ve made along the way,” says Peters as he reflects on the ups and downs. “I made almost every mistake in the book.”

In high demand during the dot-com days.

Peters grew up in a middle-class family in Hod HaSharon, a small city near Tel Aviv, Israel. His computer obsession started early, and at age 10 he got his first, an Atari 800XL. He taught himself to code and created an accounting spreadsheet tool before Excel existed. He sold it to a neighbor for $500 — a lot of money to a 13-year-old. 

Peters’ first home in Hod HaSharon, a small city near Tel Aviv, Israel.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

At 14, Peters enrolled in the computer science program at the Open University of Israel. He convinced his parents to let him drop out of high school to complete his studies and work in the field. In 1991, he hosted one of Israel’s first bulletin board systems (BBS), an early iteration of today’s websites on which visitors played games and exchanged messages.

A Microsoft recruiter discovered the talented teen and offered him a job. The company wanted him to permanently relocate to the United States, but Peters was only 16, and he turned down the offer.

Instead, he accepted an Israeli-based gig developing software, which ironically brought him to the U.S. for six months. “I was 17, making bank doing what I loved in Laguna Beach, California. It was everything I’d dreamed of.”

Forced by the military to postpone his dream.

A week before his 18th birthday, Peters flew home to fulfill his duty as an Israeli citizen and join the military. “My friends didn’t understand how I could leave my comfortable lifestyle to lie in ditches and fire guns,” he says. “I had no choice. It was the right thing to do.”

In the artillery forces, Peters wouldn’t touch a computer for three years. “I had to put my life on hold for my country,” he says. “That’s when I learned life doesn’t always go your way.”

Peters joined the military a week before he turned 18.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

“I hated almost every minute of the army,” says Peters. “But in retrospect, those three years made me who I am today. I developed perspective and perseverance, and learned the importance of having the right mindset.”

Every four months Peters rotated between the border surrounded by enemies, Gaza, where he had a few close calls, and training. “The military teaches you to always be a student,” says Peters. “Most people think they’ve learned everything after university. They end up working for those who never stop learning. Formal education eventually ends, but self-education never stops. The more you learn, the more you earn.”

Finding love — and losing $6.5 million along the way.

Peters fulfilled his commitment to the military at 21, then spent the next two years at a cybersecurity company while selling software on the side. He’d been saving since he started working at 16, and reached $1 million by age 23. Peters decided to launch his own startup, a customer messaging platform.

That’s how he met his wife, Orit (pronounced Oh-reet) Tenenbaum. His company’s recruiter recommended her as a quality assurance manager, even though she was a 21-year-old fresh out of training. Peters gave her a shot, and she excelled. When they started dating, they kept their relationship secret, which wasn’t easy — especially when Peters moved to Silicon Valley for the company.

It was 1998, the peak of the dot-com era. Peters’ startup had raised $6.5 million from big-name investors. “At the time, the tech industry was all about eyeballs and downloads — and figuring out revenue later,” says Peters.

His company was no different. Three years later, the $6.5 million was gone. They’d spent it all building the business without making a single sale. Peters had also spent most of the $1 million he’d saved.

Peters married his wife, Orit, in Israel before returning to the U.S.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

After the startup shut down, Peters returned to Israel to marry Orit. The newlyweds decided to start over in the U.S. “My father-in-law was concerned about what would happen if I failed again. I told him I would just keep trying,” says Peters.

“I don’t know a single entrepreneur who failed 10 times in a row. That rarely happens. The problem is that most people quit after the second or third failure. I knew if I kept trying, eventually I’d succeed.”

From broke to really broke.

At 27, Peters moved to New York City with his new wife and their remaining savings: $5,000. They rented a tiny studio in Times Square for $2,000 per month. “That was a lot of our money, but I wanted to force myself to figure things out,” says Peters. “To be successful you have to burn your boats, leaving no option of going back.”

For the next few years Peters worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week. Despite his software development experience, he settled for website development projects because he didn’t want to go back to investors.

For the first few years in New York City, Peters worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

After their son was born in 2003, the couple moved to Florida, where they had their second child, a daughter. They had no family, friends, or support there. “I could’ve made more at McDonald’s for the hours I was slaving away,” says Peters. “I had to look my wife in the eyes and tell her it was going to work out — even though I didn’t know how. Web development wasn’t my passion, but it was a way to keep the lights on until I found my passion.”

Except he couldn’t keep the lights on.

Shortly after their water was cut off, their car was repossessed and their house foreclosed on. “I couldn’t support my family, and my marriage was on the brink of collapse. Orit took the kids back to Israel, while I stayed in Florida to figure things out.”

His wife and children wouldn’t return for a year. “I questioned myself so much during that time,” he reflects. “I experienced imposter complex, and started thinking it was just luck that made me successful when I was younger. I spent long nights feeling like a loser who couldn’t support his family.

“Nobody talks about the hard times,” says Peters. “But every entrepreneur experiences them. Not just bad sales — I’m talking about broken marriages, losing everything. It takes the right mindset, perseverance, and passion to overcome the challenges. But with that, you’ll be unstoppable.”

“I owe everything to my supportive parents and the army, which taught me to get back up every time I fell down.”

Scaling a business with clients’ money.

When Peters began hiring freelancers to help with coding, things slowly started to improve. Four years later, hundreds worked for him. He began building different software, using clients’ money as financing to develop a new business model. His employees wrote all their code in a generic way so they could reuse it to create their own versions of the platforms they built for clients.

Peters transitioned to selling that software as a service. “Selling your time has a low ceiling. To double revenues, I had to double the workforce. So instead, we started selling subscriptions.” The bottom line increased significantly.

He later pivoted again, this time as an online retailer. “Our clients sold products online, and many of them outsourced the majority of the work to us,” says Peters. “We were making five figures while they made six.” The bottom line exploded again.

At this point, Peters had many services under one business. “Every business needs focus. You can’t be everything to everyone. We hit a ceiling trying to do everything under one name.” Peters spun out into eight stand-alone businesses under one umbrella, the Yomali Group.

Today, his businesses include an affiliate network, CRM platform, payment processor, business process outsourcing and call center, physical fulfillment automation, big data analytics, software development, and shopping websites — all helping businesses sell more online.

The three steps to business success.

“I’ve over-promised and failed to deliver, made bad hires, and failed to see the big picture,” says Peters. “A partner stole $1 million from me and an employee created a competing company using our code. It’s my mission to share what I learned from those experiences — so others don’t have to learn the hard way.”

Peters says there are three levels to business success. “The first is hard work and putting in the hours. You need to love what you do to sustain it.” He says you can build a $1 million business if you pour 10,000 hours into it. “If you spend seven hours a day mastering your craft, that will take you four years. But if you dedicate 14 hours a day, you’ll get there in half the time.”

Second, Peters says mindset differentiates a $1 million business from a $10 million one. “You need grit, to believe that nothing is impossible. Do whatever it takes and don’t take no for an answer.”

To exceed $100 million takes leverage, such as using distribution partners and affiliates, monopolizing a small niche, and using others’ time and money like Peters did.

Peters has made it his mission to share what he’s learned and help others avoid his mistakes.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

Legacy over currency.

Their third child was born in 2011. Now that he’s made all the money he’ll ever need, Peters divides his time between family, business, and helping others.

“No amount of money beats knowing you impacted others,” he says. In January 2019, Peters was invited to join the board of the XPRIZE Foundation, which is dedicated to solving big world problems. The elite group includes filmmaking legend James Cameron, publishing icon Arianna Huffington, and Google co-founder Larry Page. 

Peters with his wife, Orit, and their three children.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

Despite all of his successes, Peters has found the most happiness helping others. “My legacy is my driving force. I want to leave this planet better than when I came into it,” he says. “Empowering entrepreneurs to do great things creates a chain reaction that benefits many. That’s why I devote my time to building tools and services for them — it makes all the scar tissue worth it.”

Connect with Mike Peters on LinkedIn or learn more about his company here.

January
23, 2019

6 min read

In this series, Instagram Icon, Entrepreneur speaks with the individuals behind popular Instagram accounts to find out the secrets of their success.

In 2010, Chriselle Lim was a wardrobe stylist, spending her days at editorial shoots for magazines. In the early days of YouTube, at the suggestion of her friend Michelle Phan, she started posting style tutorials on the site and began to grow a following. In 2011, she launched her blog, the Chriselle Factor, to share her thoughts about fashion and style and to inspire other women who shared her passions.

Nine years later, Lim turned her love of fashion into a full-time career. She employs a staff of 13 people at her downtown L.A. office to create content for her blog and across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook for her 3.2 million followers.

The married mom of two has worked with some of the biggest names in fashion, including Dior, Gucci, Fendi, LV, Valentino, Cartier, Elie Saab, MiuMiu, Masion Margelia, Stella McCartney, SK-II, Armani, Chloe and Versace. Last year, she launched the Chriselle Lim Collection with Nordstrom. A second collection will arrive this March. She also started a branded content firm called Cinc Studios.

Entrepreneur spoke with Lim to get her social media insights.

How did you get your start with YouTube and Instagram?

I started on YouTube in 2010. Soon enough I realized that I wasn’t able to make as many videos as I wanted. So I decide to start the Chriselle Factor. Photos were so much easier to take and post. [I could share things] in between the video content. They both grew together simultaneously.

A year and a half into it is when I started to realize that I could possibly make this into a business because of the amount of viewership I was getting. I came from the fashion editorial world where I understood the business of ads and how magazines were making money. So I just viewed it the same way. I was getting close to millions of views per video. [So I believed] there was a possibility that I could actually make it into a business and someone can pay me to create a video. It took about two years for me to finally make my first real paycheck.

What’s your content strategy? How do you decide what and when to post?

We deliberately work on creating the best content for our followers on all platforms but especially with Instagram, because that is where a lot of the engagement and action happens. We have a strategy meeting every day just for Instagram. We’re always testing out things to see if the followers respond to it. What do they like most? What is the most engaging? We’re always trying to create content in the moment because they feel like they are there with you. But also we plan a lot of content as well, especially video content on Instagram. Those can take hours or days to create.

Related: Food Network’s Molly Yeh Shares How She Built Her Blog Into a Growing Farm-to-Table Empire

How do you leverage your account, and to what extent do you monetize it?

On Instagram we will see more and more brands that want to partner with influencers and celebrities on that platform because it’s an engaging platform and it’s immediate and you can interact and engage. Monetization on Instagram has just grown so much. I foresee it to continue to grow just because more brands are understanding the power of Instagram influencers. It’s the same across the board with YouTube and the blog.

We started off as more of a highly produced account. We shifted our branding on Instagram and that started after I became a mom. I have a 4-year-old and a 3-month-old. Because my followers been following me since I was in college, they’ve seen me get married and have kids and start this company and then have my second baby. They’re growing with me and they’re getting older with me so they’re just really craving authenticity versus this perfect imagery. But we do balance the two out because I have a passion for creating elevated curated content because I come from that world of editorials and fashion.

What advice do you have for other people who want to build brands on the platform?

To find a strong, unique voice. It is a crowded space especially in beauty and fashion. There’s a lot of content that feels very similar. I feel and I have noticed that once I became open about my life and who I am as a person being more raw and real and authentic to my followers, the voice became more obvious. That’s when my followers became a lot more engaged with me and just feel connected with me and knowing that I was a real person.

Second, hiring people that are better than you. I pride myself on being able to be creative but especially on YouTube with editing and the more technical elements, that was never my forte. I want to grow a brand, so whatever money I earn, I immediately invest it into hiring well-qualified people. That’s how I’ve been able to not only grow my numbers and my following but my company as well.

What’s a misconception people have about Instagram?

It’s important that brands understand who they are first before they go on Instagram. If they’re expecting to go on Instagram and get sales and more followers, then there is a misconception that Instagram is going to make them successful or wealthy or whatnot. It comes down to what the product is and what the brand stands for. That is most important.

“My pregnancy announcement was one of my favorites as I was keeping this a secret for so long and I was in the dreamiest Valentino dress.”

Image credit: chrisellelim | Instagram

“Our very first photo as a family of four.”

Image credit: chrisellelim | Instagram

“A very real and raw moment captured by my husband.”

Image credit: chrisellelim | Instagram

“A princess moment attending the Dior fashion Show in Paris.”

Image credit: chrisellelim | Instagram

“Launching my very first collection at Nordstrom.”

Image credit: chrisellelim | Instagram

January
22, 2019

10 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In 2012, Libby Crow received a phone call from a woman selling renters insurance. Little did she know that the seemingly mundane conversation with a stranger would save her life.

Crow was 25 years old. She had just dumped her boyfriend, quit her elementary school teaching job to become an entrepreneur, and moved to Denver, Colo., for a fresh start. Renters insurance seemed like a reasonable precaution — but she didn’t plan on living long enough to need it.

As she listened to the woman explain policy options, Crow repressed the pain of her father’s recent death, the loneliness of being a digital business owner, and the dark thoughts that had recently emerged in the vacuum of leaving her old life behind. Crow had already penned a goodbye letter to her mother, complete with banking account numbers and passwords. She was on the verge of giving up hope.

Despite this, Crow remained calm and polite on the phone. That wasn’t hard for her: an honors student, prom queen, and star athlete, she was a natural performer. As the conversation came to a close, the stranger on the line said something that would change the course of her life.

Today, Crow runs a thriving global coaching business. She lives in sunny Venice Beach, Calif., with her husband, fellow entrepreneur Scott Oldford, and their long-haired dachshund, Cooper. The woman who had once lost the will to live can now be described as a human sparkler: one encounter with her will light you up.

At just 31, she’s mentored thousands through her online courses, group coaching programs, one-on-one consulting sessions, workshops, and retreats, teaching them how to effectively build and run online businesses.

The present-day Crow is a far cry from the small-town Wyoming girl who started her career as an overworked, underpaid teacher, numbing the grief that would eventually threaten her life and grasping at a dream that then seemed impossible.

Living from taquito to taquito.

“Where I grew up, you’re expected to go to college, get married, take a vacation once a year, and pay off your debt until you’re 60,” says Crow.

A dutiful daughter and emotional rock for others, Crow followed the script. After graduating from college, she promptly took a local teaching job making $2,200 a month to start paying off her $60,000 of student loans. While she did her best to make it work financially, she ate her fair share of 32-cent packs of ramen noodles and $2 taquitos to stay afloat.

All the while, a greater longing stirred inside her. “Even though I loved teaching, my gut told me I was supposed to be doing something else,” shares Crow. Grateful to be employed, she resigned herself to simply scraping by.

Then, Crow’s father died of alcoholism.

“My dad’s death shook my whole world. I started to wonder — if that’s how fast your life can be taken, what’s it all really for?” The tragedy led her to explore another path in life.

Life outside the box.

Crow says she is empowered by others’ breakthroughs, so it’s fitting that a girlfriend’s success inspired her to make a change. “I was on Facebook one day and saw a friend’s transformation story. She changed her lifestyle, started a business, and was glowing,” says Crow.

“At the time, I was feeling pretty unhealthy and wanted to shift my energy and habits. I reached out to this friend, and she became my wellness coach.”

The experience opened up Crow to the world of transformation and what was possible for her own life. She dove fully into entrepreneurship herself and over a short time matched her teaching salary and developed a lucrative side hustle.

Still, Crow avoided processing her father’s death by working around the clock. She would come home from her day job at school and stay up late into the night learning coaching skills. “I’d watch videos by business coaches like Brendon Burchard or Jeff Walker until 3 a.m. to escape from grieving,” admits Crow. “But it also gave me direction. I saw what they did with their online businesses and knew I could do it too.”

By working around the clock, Crow avoided processing the pain of her father’s death.

Image Credit: Libby Crow

Crow decided to quit teaching and invest all her time in building her own consulting business. It was risky, but she believed in herself. She needed to — because no one else would.

“A lot of people told me I shouldn’t go for it, that I needed a secure job with health insurance, or that I’d be back teaching by the following year,” remembers Crow.

Instead of heeding her critics’ advice, she took the leap. “I started to succeed externally, but with time and space away from the nine-to-five, all these feelings came up. I finally had to face them.” For Libby Crow, processing the grief of her father’s death would prove to be a reckoning.

An atheist’s prayer answered.

Months later, the feelings she kept shoving down had spiraled into a state of unmanageable depression. Crow sat huddled on the floor of her new home, with a broken heater in the dead of Colorado winter, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling boxes she was too overwhelmed to unpack.

A broken heater, floor-to-ceiling boxes, and an uncertain future left Crow overwhelmed

Image Credit: Libby Crow

She was afraid of the future and of how much energy and grit it was going to take to succeed. She felt alone and was exhausted from running from the grief of her father’s death.

“I remember just feeling like I was done: done having it together for everyone else; done having to push so hard to make a living. I thought maybe not being here would be easier.”

Crow had never been the praying type, but that night she made an exception. “I wasn’t spiritual at all at the time, but I asked ‘God’ to give me a sign that I shouldn’t die. I needed something, and I didn’t know what to do.”

The next day, Crow was driving down a mountain in Colorado when she received the phone call from the woman selling renters insurance. “Oddly enough, it was near one of the cliffs in the big canyon where I was considering ending it all.

“I wanted to hang up, but she was really nice. So, we had a whole conversation about the benefits of insurance,” says Crow. “The whole time I’m thinking, ‘This doesn’t really matter.’”

Then, out of nowhere, the stranger said, “This is going to sound odd, but I need to tell you about something. There’s this place in Denver that I think you might want to go to. It’s like a church, but don’t get freaked out. It’s kind of like where you’d go if you were a yogi.”

Crow listened, skeptical. Then something clicked. “Maybe this is the sign I prayed for,” she thought. “But then the atheist part of me was like, ‘Nah.’”

Nonetheless, Crow decided to give it a chance. “I looked up the place and dragged myself in there. I remember thinking, ‘Libby, you know you’ve hit rock bottom when you’re listening to the renters insurance lady for critical life advice.’”

That day was a turning point for Crow. It was when she finally let herself start to process the grief of her father’s death. It was also the day she recommitted to her journey of personal growth and full responsibility for creating the life she wanted. “The experience led me on my spiritual path. A path of self-love and self-care that inspired my company at the time.” Through Crow’s personal reckoning and new direction, her consulting business began to boom.

From personal healer to business mentor.

Crow let her inner transformation inform her business and what she created for her audience. She returned to her roots as a teacher, pivoting her business model from a healing one to a teaching one. “My first business model focused on helping other women overcome personal challenges that were holding them back,” she explains. “After years of leading clients in transformation and creating multiple successful businesses, I pivoted toward teaching new entrepreneurs how to build their own businesses online.”

Since then, she’s built a fleet of programs to teach skills ranging from social media management to list building and structuring your online business so it runs itself. She now focuses on helping service-based entrepreneurs build successful, six-figure businesses.

Crow and her husband co-founded a personal development company for entrepreneurs called The Daily Shift. “Scott and I both teach business strategy in our own companies, but we came together to help entrepreneurs grow and evolve themselves through our mindset programs,” she explains.

Crow found a life-changing partner in fellow entrepreneur Scott Oldford.

Image Credit: Libby Crow

She has also forayed into philanthropy. She recently made a substantial donation to Virgin Unite, a nonprofit that unites people and entrepreneurial ideas to create opportunities for a better world.

People often ask Crow how she keeps up with running her business and all of her other pursuits. “You need the right people in your life,” she answers. “You need the right friends and mentors, and you need to be dedicated to your own growth.”

Having a partner like Oldford has been life-changing, she says. “We have a thing where it’s not one plus one equals two. With us, one plus one equals infinity.”

“When you meet the right person, everything that you want to do becomes possible. With Scott by my side, I feel I can do anything,” explains Crow. “He sees me when I don’t see me. He believes in me when I don’t believe in myself.”

As she looks back on her journey, Crow has a few words for her younger self. “I would tell her that it’s okay to soften and to trust yourself. You don’t have to push and put pressure on yourself,” says Crow. “And any time you have an intuitive moment of deep knowing, follow that.”

One of Crow’s greatest achievements has been helping to support her mom.

Image Credit: Libby Crow

Reflecting on all that she has accomplished, Crow beams when she thinks of one achievement in particular. “My big dream was to be able to support my mom. I have helped her leave her job, move to California, and live right by the beach. Besides giving back philanthropically, that’s been my biggest success. I would do it all again 50 times just to be able to provide that for her.”

Learn more about Libby here or connect on Facebook and Instagram

January
18, 2019

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Modern-day marketing has changed drastically over the past decade. Back in the day, when companies wanted to tweak their advertising, they would have to sift through their sales data, click-throughs and general behavior of their audience.

Related: Here’s How Big Data is Changing The World

But big data has changed all that. It’s changed the way that businesses market to their customers, which in turn, helps companies increase their profits. According to a BARC research report, businesses surveyed that use big data saw a profit increase of 8 percent, and a 10 percent reduction in overall cost.

There are numerous ways you can use big data to adjust your business model for the better, especially as it pertains to advertising. Here are examples of how companies are using big data today, and how you yourself can use it to boost your sales.

Predict products that customers may want to purchase.

How often have you looked at your Amazon recommendations and thought, “Wow, I could really use that!” Chances are, that reaction happens fairly often considering that Amazon uses big data to figure out exactly the type of products you’ll want to buy in the future.

The retail giant — which hit a net worth of 1 trillion dollars late in 2018 — gives its customers insight as to what factors go into determining those recommended products. In this context, Amazon cites a variety of data points to figure out what its customers want. Those factors include:

• When customers make purchases
• How customers rate their purchases
• What customers with similar buying habits are purchasing

Obviously, the last factor is the most important one as pertains to big data. Amazon is able to correctly determine what kind of products you want to buy based on customers with buying habits similar to yours.

Similarly, you can use this kind of data to make predictions for your own customers. When you see a sales increase, you’ll start to notice trends. For example, Amazon noticed that people who buy TVs tend to also purchase a TV mount — which the retailer began to upsell in the hope that customers would buy them together.

Amazon “frequently bought together” example

Image credit: Amazon

Related: Big Data Combined With Machine Learning Helps Businesses Make Much Smarter Decisions

Get an edge against operational risks.

Back before the world was connected via technology, issues of fraud were few and far between. But now that so many of us are connected in one way or another, sometimes an entire business can be compromised in just a couple of keystrokes.

Operational risk is particularly high in financial institutes. Scammers are constantly trying to evolve schemes to take advantage of both people and companies. As big data has evolved, however, financial institutes have realized that they can use this information to stop scam artists in their tracks.

Banks, for instance, are now using big data to monitor their transactions on a “front-to-back” business line to help eliminate fraud at all levels. They look at information about who is sending/receiving money, how often those people engage in this behavior, where they live and how much money they are sending.

This type of technology can be helpful for any business, not just banks. As data is collected, trends emerge and anything that deviates from “business as usual” triggers a digital sticky note on that transaction. This makes it easy for companies to identify fraud when it occurs and to keep their operational risks at a minimum.

Use key data to influence the customer’s behavior.

Big data is absolutely vital for figuring out how to get customers to make important decisions when they land on your page. Companies are using this data to learn their customers’ behavioral patterns, and to help point them toward a sale or conversion.

Specifically, the data analyzes every single action a customer takes upon landing on your page. It can see the customer’s keystrokes and how he or she moves the mouse; it can predict the actions that will be taken next.

As a business owner, you can use this data to give your customers what they want when they want it. For instance, if you manage a marketing website and a customer comes to your website to read an article, big data can predict when this viewer is going to go up to the “X” to close out of the window. You can use this as an opportunity to make a curated pop-up appear, offering the customer more information by entering a personal email and joining your mailing list.

Here is how a sample exit pop-up looks to customers. Who doesn’t want 25 percent off their first purchase? Enticing, right?

Exit pop-up example 

Image credit: Banana Republic

It’s possible to combine this marketing technique with other strategies like the offer of a free ebook, gift or discount as the customer goes to leave. The benefits don’t stop there, though. You can use big data to predict when customers might leave empty carts on your storefront. If they already left the page but entered an email address, you can program the system to automatically send them reminders that they left a vacant shopping cart.

As more customers come to your website, you’ll start to learn their most common behaviors and plan ahead. Your marketing plan will flourish as you gather more data on what those customers want and need.

Over to you

These are three of the most common ways that companies are using big data every single day. Because technology is continuing to grow, big data is obviously here to stay. Statista predicts that the big data business world is going to be worth $77 billion by 2023.

Related: How Can Small Business Benefit From Big Data

Most people used to think that big data was only for big business. But, as time goes on, it is clear that this technology is for everyone. If you’re interested in pursuing big data in your small business, a little research can get you started, and before long you’ll be able to increase your revenue, boost your email lead list and expand your business in ways you never thought possible.  

January
17, 2019

7 min read

This story originally appeared on PCMag

A few years ago, ahead of a scheduled operation, I had to hire an attorney to draw up my last will and testament. Per the hospital’s instructions, I was also told to bring a copy of my Advance Directive, or instructions on when to pull the plug. It was scary, grown-up stuff.

As a digital native, it all felt a bit too real. I would have much preferred to sit on my couch, laptop at the ready, with an on-screen AI to talk me through the whole decision-making process and pop it up on the cloud. And that’s exactly what former healthcare executive Suelin Chen built in her Boston-based startup, Cake.

Aware that no one is thrilled about planning for the final exit — or having to talk loved ones through their own wishes — Cake is a no-nonsense online tool. You can lay out: how you’d like to go (hospice versus at home or maybe a remote cabin in the woods); who gets your stuff; the music you’d like at your memorial; and more.

You can also specify how you want to be remembered digitally. Perhaps you want to allocate funds for annual site management fees, domain registration, or deputizing someone to ensure a Wiki-profile is factually accurate.

I spoke to Chen to find out more. Here are edited and condensed excerpts from our conversation.

Suelin, how did you come up for the idea behind Cake?
With my background in healthcare and business, I saw not only the high costs involved in end-of-life care, but that in our country people often default to enduring more and more medical procedures without fully understanding the value, or the trade-offs. Three out of four people don’t plan for end-of-life, and I get why — the barriers to planning can be really high. Simply put, I saw an opportunity to help people plan better, to make their desires known, before it’s too late.

Because they’re too incapacitated to make their views known?
Right, it’s often brought up too late. Because, when surveyed, 80 percent of people would prefer to die at home — and yet, today, 80 percent of people die in medical facilities.

Planning for the final exit is a space ripe for disruption, then.
I knew there could be good digital tools for doing this but I couldn’t find any, so I found a great team and built Cake.

Is there also a generational shift? Due to social media, we get to “see” people die, many of whom we might have lost touch with over the years. Death is going to happen to us all. But it feels more “visible” now.
Absolutely. We have a lot of millennials on our platform, and we see that this generation is very pragmatic and perceives less stigma about death than older generations. Previous generations have been remembered through a gravestone or something similar. In time, those degrade. But our digital footprint, the traces of our lives, will persist online. I ask people, when your great-grandchildren search online for you in the future, what do you want them to find?

That’s a deeply unsettling and yet curiously interesting thought. You must have worked with many different partners to bring Cake to life.
Yes, we’ve spent hundreds of hours consulting with experts to develop all our online tools including: estate attorneys, funeral planners, physicians, social workers, and wealth managers.

How does Cake work? This is more than a basic will, right?
Yes, many of our users have done estate planning and have a will but realize that they still have gaps. We provide a personalized, comprehensive, and detailed checklist that helps people understand what planning they still need to do. It’s hard to know what legal fees are reasonable, because there’s a lack of transparency. Many of our users have seen an attorney but want more visibility into the process. It’s not just avoiding taxes on your assets after death (though of course this is very important). It’s also managing how you want to be remembered, your funeral or memorial service, your digital footprint, your digital assets (Bitcoin, etc.) — certainly doing more than putting all your passwords in an Excel doc and locking it (which has been recommended to several of our users).

How many data points is your AI gathering as it takes a Cake user through personal planning?
It’s fluid [and] really depends on the individual. Our Cake AI prompts you with questions, to capture data around many decisions that need to be made. But there’s also a freeform section for more personal wishes. Some of our users write (almost) novel-length answers to those.

What are some of the more “out there” requests?
Well, every employee at Cake has gone through the process and one of my team members loves the idea of having a tree planted for him. A lot of our users, including me, feel they’d rather have a celebration of life than a somber funeral. One of our users wants to be buried with a 6-pack of Bud Lite. Someone else I know has left instructions to rent out a movie theater for his. Your last wishes should be a true expression of who you are.

How many people have signed up so far?
We don’t reveal exact user numbers.

Fair enough. It’s free to users, so what’s your revenue model?
We make money from affiliate links and from enterprise partners who distribute to their population. For example, we’ve built a Cake back-end for a large healthcare provider, an insurer, a bank, and other institutions. A premium product is also in the works.

You don’t share data with “interested parties” who might want to sell fancy urns then?
No, trust is the most important thing to us. We will never sell or share personally identifiable information with any third party without our users consent.

Why the name Cake?
It’s a warm, inviting symbol of celebrating and honoring life. Planning is a positive act, a true gift to your loved ones.

You’ve build a web-based service, rather than a mobile app. Why?
It’s much faster to iterate and improve the platform, and doesn’t require any download. We also know that many of our user base is more comfortable with web apps than downloading native applications.

Do you have a tech team in-house or are you partnering with a digital agency on this build?
All in house! We actually have more female than male techies, who span several generations, which I’m very proud of.

Are you wedded to any particular tech tools?
Choosing Microsoft Azure as our hosting platform made it easy for us to implement excellent security and scalability for our product early on, and our code base heavily utilizes the Microsoft .NET stack as well. We recently also switched our internal IT to Office 365 and were early adopters of Microsoft Teams; so I guess we’re fans of Microsoft technologies.

Why are you based in Boston rather than any of the other Silicon cities?
I love Boston. There’s a lot of activity in FinTech, MedTech, and healthcare here. It’s a great place to be, with plenty of talent and financial support from big institutions.

Talking of support, who are your backers?
We raised pre-seed from Pillar VC, LaunchCapital, Arkitekt Ventures, and Honeycomb.

Finally, what’s next for you?
We have an exciting growth plan for 2019, and a number of new partners in the financial sector that will provide new avenues for growth and new opportunities to add features that enable our users to plan and have peace of mind. Cake is in the FinTech cohort of Mass Challenge 2019, which kicks off orientation on Jan. 18. The initiative is aimed at startups which have an enterprise-ready solution, and helps them partner with large organizations. Cake will be working with MassMutual, Fidelity, and AARP Innovation Labs.

January
16, 2019

1 min read

Check out the infographic below to see which other freelance gigs made the report’s top 10. 

January
15, 2019

4 min read

This story originally appeared on Engadget

We knew they were coming, but Nike has officially introduced its first self-lacing basketball shoes, the Adapt BB. These new sneakers are designed to provide a “truly customized fit for every basketball player,” according to the company, thanks to a power-lacing system called FitAdapt that can be adjusted manually or with a smartphone app. The sportswear giant says that over the course of a basketball game, a player’s foot can expand almost a half-size, which can affect their comfort level and ultimately have an impact on their movement and performance on the court. That’s the problem Nike is looking to solve with Adapt BB.

Nike’s VP Creative Director of Innovation, Eric Avar, says the company chose basketball as the first sport to showcase Adapt (and its FitAdapt tech) because of the demands that hoopers put on their shoes. Giving players the ability to quickly loosen (or tighten) their sneakers during a game, he said, is a key element that the sportswear giant believes “will improve the athlete’s experience.” Adapt BB is essentially a step up from Flywire and Flyknit, two fabric-based technologies that were created to offer individuals the feeling of a custom fit in sneakers and apparel.

Image credit: Nike

The highlight of Adapt, which Nike is calling its “most advanced fit solution to date,” is that you can control its power laces manually via physical buttons on the shoe or a companion app on your phone. When you put on the Adapt BB, the built-in custom motor with trained gears senses the tension needed by your feet and adjusts itself accordingly to keep each foot snug in the shoes. Nike says its new lacing system can create 32 pounds of force, about the same energy needed to pull a standard parachute cord, allowing it to stay locked in through any range of movement from a player.

With the companion Adapt mobile application, players are able to input different fit settings over the course of a game, as well as change the LED colors on the sneakers. The other benefit to having wireless connectivity in the Adapt BB is that it will support firmware updates, which means it is expected to get extra features and improvements down the road. For instance, Nike says it’s working on a way to give NBA players different tightness settings for warm-ups, and they’ll be able to opt-in to these updates to get them as they become available.

The goal with those customization options, Nike says, is to sharpen the precision fit of the Adapt BB for athletes, along with giving them access to more “digital services” over time. A good example of this is Save Your Fit, which will let players use the app to lock in their preferred settings for the power laces. And if that doesn’t workout for them, then they can always adjust their power laces at their own discretion via manual touch. It’s good to have alternatives.

Of course, the Adapt BB wouldn’t have been possible without the HyperAdapt 1.0 from 2016. That shoe was more of a multipurpose model, but it showed Nike was capable of making a self-lacing shoe for consumers — not just a limited-edition Back to the Future Air Mag that sells for upward of $65,000. Better yet, with the Adapt BB, Nike was also able to bring the price down to $350, which is much easier to swallow than the $720 that the HyperAdapt 1.0 cost when they launched two years ago.

Nike says Adapt for basketball is just the start, as it plans to bring the technology to more sports in the near future (watch out, Puma). For now, if you want to get a pair for yourself, the Adapt BBs are set to arrive at the beginning of February.