FOUR LESSONS LEARNED FROM HARDSHIP

Claire Angelle, an Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) Accelerator participant in Atlanta, founded Angelle Consulting--a mission-driven PR and consulting company--in 2018. Angelle fuels positive change by elevating the voices of business leaders committed to do well by doing good. We are following Angelle, who recently joined EO's business accelerator program, as she grows and scales her business. Here's what she shared about learning life's lessons during a recent spate of difficulties.

Successful entrepreneurs tend to be both dreamers and doers. We have the vision and know-how to execute said vision. Like many business leaders, I tend to surround myself with like-minded individuals who are typically go-getters with positive outlooks. But, what happens when life's hardships challenge that optimism?

In the span of six months, I lost my father-in-law to Covid, as well as a colleague who passed in violent circumstances while on the job. We welcomed a family member suffering from mental health issues into our home and had to say goodbye to our beloved family dog. While I'm usually a glass-half-full type of person, I grew increasingly anxious about the repercussions this trying time would have on my business.

I know I'm not alone in dealing with hardship. We are still in the midst of a global pandemic with disastrous human and economic consequences. Employee burnout is at an all-time high, and entrepreneurs around the globe are struggling with mental and emotional fatigue.

However, I'm a strong believer that there are lessons to be learned in any circumstance. Here's what I picked up from these past few months.

Authenticity goes a long way.

When life threw me curveballs, I was forced to cancel commitments and push deadlines. When I candidly explained the reasons why, I was astounded by the level of care, compassion, and understanding I received. As a result of remote work, our personal and professional lives are now more blended than ever. People understand that we are human before we are professionals. I expected varying levels of resistance to schedule changes, yet received none. If anything, I believe my clients respect me more for choosing to be there for my family. Through open communication, I found a community to lean on. I look forward to extending the same empathy and support in the future.

Necessity pushes processes.

While I was struggling, I had also just hired my first full-time employee. I originally imagined implementing a thorough onboarding process to ease Andie into her new role. As you can imagine, nothing happened as planned. Looking back, I realize that this forced us to establish processes and boundaries early on. I asked Andie where I was standing in the way of her progress. From her observations, we created parameters that allowed me to extract myself from the day-to-day more quickly than anticipated while allowing Andie to take full ownership of her work. I now have more time to dedicate to big-picture thinking, and Andie has a deeper sense of fulfillment in her position.

It also builds efficiencies.

These circumstances forced me to become the most efficient I've ever been. I've made a habit of batching activities to improve focus and productivity. I dedicate set times to respond to all my emails. Rather than short daily meetings, Andie and I consolidated our daily huddles into longer calls twice a week, which improved our communication and brainstorming. I also schedule calls with clients around the same time. Because of this, I've been more present in each moment and more effective in each task.

There's no better time to reassess goals.

Hardship inspires reflection. There's nothing like loss to make you realize how finite we all are. My circumstances allowed me to rethink priorities in both my life and business. Difficult times may lead some to make life-altering decisions, while others might make minor adjustments. Regardless of the outcome, taking time to reflect on goals, hopes, and dreams is one of the most important things we can do in the face of adversity. In today's society, where being busy is often perceived as a virtue, it's hard to rise above the noise and press pause. Taking time to step back, reflect, and pivot might be the best thing to happen to you as a person and business leader.

We all struggle at some point in our lives. Yes, deliverables and KPIs need to be met. But, more important, we must give ourselves the same compassion we extend to others when they face hard times. Many of us have been led to believe that vulnerability is a weakness instead of the strength it is. To be truly successful both in and out of the workplace, we need to acknowledge and celebrate our common humanity. The past few months have been humbling, to say the least. But, seeing mentalities change around what it means to be a leader--one who inspires and truly cares--has been a breath of fresh air.

SEVEN WAYS TO VALIDATE YOUR BUSINESS IDEA

Before you launch your business, it’s important to validate your idea. Even when you’ve nursed your business idea for years or decades, it’s simply not smart to pursue any business idea blindly.

Carrying out a product or a business idea validation is important for several reasons:

• It allows you to assess whether there is a real need or demand for your product or service.
• It helps you to identify your target market and understand their needs.
• It allows you to gauge whether your business idea is feasible and viable.
• It will help you build a solid report that you can show to investors when you seek funding

While your business idea validation needs to be detailed, it doesn’t have to be hard to do. In this post, I’ll share ways you can validate your business idea. Let’s get started.

How to validate your business idea

Let’s break down a few simple but useful ways to learn whether your business idea will work.

1. Customer interviews

This involves talking to potential customers to get their feedback on your idea. What do they think of it? Would they be willing to pay for it? What needs does it meet?

Arrange customer interviews by going to where your target market hangs out and striking up conversations, or by sending out emails or LinkedIn messages.

2. Competitor analysis

This is all about research. Look at what similar businesses are doing and see what’s working well for them and where they could improve. This will give you some ideas on how to make your business stand out in the market.

Use competitor analysis tools like SEO platforms and social media management tools to track the content your competitors create. You’ll also learn about what their customers are saying which will help you in your own business development efforts. 

3. Landing pages

A landing page is a single web page that’s designed to capture a visitor’s attention and get them to take a specific action, such as signing up for a newsletter or requesting more information.

You can use a tool like Seedprod to create a landing page for your business idea and test how effective it is at converting visitors into leads.

4. Social media

Social media is a great way to validate your business idea. You can use it to gauge interest in your product or service, get feedback from potential customers, and even drive traffic to a landing page or website.

Use a social media management tool to gather data on your social media activity, such as how many people are talking about your idea and what kind of sentiment they have. A solid tool will create feeds that mention your brand name, an industry, trend, or a topic. You’ll find it easy to find what people are saying.

There are platforms that even carry out sentiment analysis and give you a report on how positive or negative the sentiment is.

5. A/B testing

A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a method of comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better. It’s important to split test every aspect of your new business idea.

You can study your brand image, content, ads, products, and more. While A/B testing may seem difficult, it’s something you can automate with the right tools.

It also saves you money in the long run as you’ll be able to make informed decisions about what works and what doesn’t, instead of guessing.

6. Do a controlled launch

A controlled launch is when you release your product or service to a limited number of users in order to get feedback and make improvements before rolling it out to the general public.

This is a great way to validate your business idea as you’ll be able to gather data and see how people are using your product or service.

It also allows you to make changes based on feedback before you launch to a larger audience.

To do a controlled launch, you can create a landing page and use social media or email marketing to drive traffic to it. Then, offer your product or service at a discounted rate or for free in exchange for feedback.

7. Work with a user-testing platform

A user-testing platform allows you to get feedback on your website or product from real people. This is different from A/B testing as you’re not testing different versions of a page, but rather how users interact with your site or product.

User-testing platforms will give you insights into what people are doing on your site, what they’re struggling with, and what they like or don’t like. This information is valuable as it can help you improve your site or product before launching it to the public.

Try out a platform like Usertesting.com, it’s been around for a long time and your app, website, or online product gets tested by real people. You’ll get verbal feedback as users work with your product and get a recording of how people use it.

Make sure you share the results of such user testing with your development team and sales team. They’ll benefit from the feedback you get and will be able to improve how they build and sell your products.

Final thoughts

There are many ways to validate your business idea. The best way is to use a combination of methods to get the most complete picture.

Remember, you’re not looking for perfection, but rather a confirmation that people want what you’re offering and that you have a viable business idea. So don’t be afraid to test, measure, and gather data. It’s the only way to be sure that you’ll create the best product or service possible as a result.

WHY STRATEGIC LEAD GENERATION IS VITAL TO EXISTENCE

Thanks to advances in email and smartphone technology, we now have access to our leads in some way, shape or form 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 

As a society, we can check our email messages and social media platforms anytime and anywhere which means your leads and potential customers are merely a finger swipe away. 

But, it’s not always that easy. First, you have to cut through hundreds of emails and social media posts that your leads are receiving from the competition, other businesses, work, family and friends. 

Focusing on your lead generation marketing strategies can help, but where do you even begin?

What is Lead Generation Marketing?

Before we begin, let’s start with an official definition - “lead generation marketing is the initiation of consumer interest or inquiry into products or services of a business. Leads can be created for purposes such as list building, email acquisition or sales leads. The methods for generating leads typically fall under the umbrella of advertising but may also include non-paid sources such as organic search engine results or referrals from existing customers. Lead generation can be useful for any type or size of business, and for both B2C and B2B customers.” (

Ultimately, lead generation allows you to find customers, but creating a winning lead generation marketing strategy takes effort. 

If not done correctly, you could miss making that connection and ultimately lose a customer and potential revenue. We’ve put together a quick list of the top 4 issues that many businesses often face in developing a lead generation strategy and how to resolve them.

Lead Generation Issue #1:  Limited Resources and False Expectations

Whether it be time, money, employees, or knowledge, limited resources are one of the biggest obstacles in creating an effective lead generation marketing strategy. If you lack the budget to hire a full-time, tech-savvy staff, then your lead generation marketing strategy doesn’t have the chance it needs to succeed. Nothing happens overnight and a lack of resources will just compound the issues. Setting an intention now to devote the necessary resources to your lead generation strategy can help to align expectations and outcomes.

Lead Generation Issue #2:  Current Strategy is Lacking or Too Complex

Even if a current strategy is in place, perhaps it’s missing something or overly complex and not achieving the desired result. It’s important to have a clear direction and a plan, but sometimes we all need a little help. This is one of the benefits of lead generation marketing because it helps you to set a clear path. To succeed today, you need to rise above the competition and do things better, faster and smarter.

Lead Generation Issue #3:  Missing That Personal Connection

Let’s face it – we all want leads. But sometimes we try too hard to reach as many people as possible as quickly as possible and we miss creating that personal connection. Instead, messaging seems canned, impersonal, robotic and overly salesy. When leads and prospects open your message or see your social media, they know thousands of other people received the same message and the connection is lost before it can even begin.

Lead Generation Issue #4: Lack of Optimization

Too often, we spend all the time up front creating the perfect campaign and implementing. Then, we lose steam when it comes time to track the data and analyze results to determine next steps. Sometimes, it’s because we lack the staffing resources or data analysis savviness. But the best laid plans are wasted if we don’t track results, create next steps and assess success. Tracking results and optimizing effort will pay off in the end.

Know When to Ask for Help

Lead generation is just a small part of the process yet requires continual nurturing and constant attention. Converting those leads to customers requires so much more time and effort and every part of the process is equally important. 

It’s not enough to focus on creating a stellar campaign that drives traffic. It’s not enough to focus on data and metrics. 

What is enough?

Focusing on a multi-step, multi-channel approach that gains attention, creates trust and builds relationships is what is needed to start the process. It’s a journey and any journey is easier when you’re not alone. 

HOW DOES A TIME MANAGEMENT MATRIX WORK?

The time management matrix is based on the basic principle that efficient time management can help us achieve our goals. Success in almost everything involves time management, after all.

While it may seem like there is not enough time in the day to complete everything, there are simple ways to organize your time so it doesn’t feel like you are always running out of it.

The time management matrix can act as a tool to understand your priorities and goals.

It is particularly helpful if you struggle with distractions and time-wasters or if you feel overwhelmed when planning out your tasks.

The time management matrix gives you a structure for your goals, allowing you to focus more on achieving them rather than planning to achieve them. 

By incorporating better time management habits in your personal and professional life, you can reduce your overall stress, produce better work, and even improve your career opportunities.

How To Create Your Own Time Management Matrix

Now that you know how a time management matrix can help you, it’s time to make one for yourself.

Creating a time management matrix is as follows: draw 4 boxes, each containing four words around the left and top sides: Not important, important, urgent, and not urgent. Then, you write your activities into the appropriate cross-section box and take action from there.

Create Your Quadrants

Use the descriptions below to see where each of your particular activities would fall into.

QUADRANT I:

Tasks in this quadrant should include important, urgent things that are somewhat rare, and as the name suggests, they’re tasks that require your immediate attention.

With quadrant I tasks, there will almost certainly be instant consequences if you do not complete them within the deadline.

These consequences could be a missed opportunity, a setback at work, or a bad performance review.

Tasks that are important and urgent are frequently referred to as “firefighting.” If your organization has a huge client deadline but the project lead is out sick for a week, you and your team are likely putting all your focus and energy on getting the work done with less guidance than usual. 

Or if a customer calls and they’re ready to buy the biggest deal your company has seen all year, it’s one of those “drop everything you’re doing” critical moments.

QUADRANT II:

Quadrant II duties are important, but they aren’t necessarily urgent tasks or may not require immediate attention. If it feels like all your important tasks are also urgent, this might mean you have a backlog of important tasks on your to-do list that have become urgent since you have pushed them off for so long.  

While not urgent, these quadrant ii tasks are significant to your long-term and strategic goals, personally and professionally.

These tasks are the kind that create the most impact. Improving work processes, completing extra training, and relationship-building are all examples of quadrant ii tasks.

If you have the ability, arrange large blocks of undisturbed time to work on urgent, non-important issues. The longer you can stay in a flow state and genuinely focus, the better.

QUADRANT III:

Quadrant III duties are those that you should delegate or automate whenever possible. These tasks are urgent, meaning they need to be completed within a deadline, but they are not necessarily critical activities.

For example, your colleague asks you to help them with the PowerPoint presentation they are presenting tomorrow.

Though there is a deadline to this project, it’s not as important to you as it is to them. Rather than taking a significant amount of time out of your day and your tasks to help them step by step with this project, offer your support in checking their work once they feel like it’s ready.

These are the kind of tasks you want to spend as little time as possible on. They can often be counterproductive to your workflow, don’t contribute much to your overall aim, aren’t high on your priority list, and add a layer of fog to your daily life that makes it difficult to see through.

QUADRANT IV:

Quadrant IV tasks are neither urgent nor important, thus they are probably not worth your time. Consider quadrant IV as a black hole.

You get dragged in deeper and deeper as you spend more and more time there until you’ve lost all momentum and energy to focus on important things.

The following activities are examples of low-importance or low-urgency activities: Idlily scrolling around social media, watching mindless television, sorting through spam mail, attending meetings that have nothing to do with your job, etc.

I’m sure there are many tasks each of us can name in quadrant IV.

These meaningless tasks feel like a waste of time, and we often feel shame when we spend too much time on them.

Writing them down and seeing them on paper will act as a reminder not to partake in them as often.

WHAT IS A SUCCESS MINDSET?

If you want to get ahead in life, it's helpful to adopt a few practices in order to grow and invest in your future. A success mindset is about how you go about your journey: key things to focus on that will always push you forward if you use them properly. 

Asking the right questions, embracing change, accepting criticism and never giving up are all key to helping you achieve whatever success looks like for you. 

In this article, we’ll share with you different success mindset tips to help you get through life without quitting and burning yourself out.   

5 Tips to Cultivate a Success Mindset 

1. Ask the right questions

Successful people are not afraid to ask questions. But they don’t just randomly ask questions! They make sure that they take the time to figure out the right questions to ask. Once they’ve done that, it’s easier for them to get the answers that they need and use that to their advantage. 

Knowledge is indeed power. It doesn’t make you stupid if you ask the right questions to your boss and colleagues. In fact, it shows them your willingness and initiative to learn more and that’s attractive. 

The next time you want to put your hand up in a meeting, or have an idea for a project, share it with the group. If you aren't ready for that yet, write it down and mull it over, until you feel more confident about what you want to ask. If you practice this, you will eventually feel comfortable bringing up questions in the moment. 

2. Expect and embrace changes

“Don’t fear change – embrace it.”- Anthony J. D’Angelo 

Having a goal map is a smart way to know where you’re heading. However, life is unpredictable. It has many twists and turns so unexpected surprises and bumps along the way is something you should embrace and expect. 

Let’s be real. Our greatest life lessons usually come from the journey, not the destination. With that said, don’t be too hard on yourself if you take a wrong turn and your efforts go in another direction.

Sometimes life has bigger things planned for you, so even though things may not always pan out the way you want them to, just have faith and believe in the process of how things are unfolding for you.

Who knows? Maybe what’s behind that door wasn’t meant for you or this new direction is better and will propel you faster to your path faster than you can imagine.

Everything happens for a reason and one day you’ll realize and look back that certain things didn’t happen and fell into place because you were meant for something else.   

3. Just keep on trying 

“Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill 

Nobody is perfect. Everyone is bound to fail at one time or another. That’s the reality of life. Therefore, don't be afraid to fail and try and try again. 

Failure is inevitable but you know what? There’s beauty in failing. It gives you hope and offers a new chance to grow and make things right or better. And it doesn’t matter how many times you fail. A success mindset is about how you respond to and deal with failures.

With that said, don’t choose to stay stuck when you fall. Instead, pick yourself up because you have nowhere to go but up! 

Also, remind yourself that failing doesn’t mean it’s already the end of the road for you. Remember that you were born and destined to do great things so never ever underestimate what you can be and can do from here on out. Just get back up and keep on trying even when the going gets tough.

4. Be open to positive feedback and constructive criticism 

Successful people are open to feedback and criticism. They use and thrive on them to learn about themselves, see things from a new perspective, use it as an opportunity to improve themselves, etc.

But they’re also smart and do not accept just any kind of feedback and criticism! They only accept and are open to positive and constructive ones and drown out negative and destructive ones. 

Successful people who get ahead in life know that not every feedback and criticism will help them. Some provide no benefit to them and only aim to hurt their feelings and bring out negative feelings and emotions.

This is the reason why it’s vital to only listen to people who want to see you improve your performance and help you succeed in achieving your goals in life. Don’t listen and take to heart what insecure bashers and critics have to say. Their goal is to destroy you or demonstrate their ego or power over you. 

5. It’s okay to take a break 

There is so much more to life than the hustle and grind. It’s not weak to take a break! In fact, taking breaks makes you more productive and happier.

Don’t be one of those people who work to death and glorify and idolize folks who work extremely long hours. Sometimes it's better to take one step backwards in order to be able to take two steps forward.

Having a Success Mindset Will Get You Ahead in Your Life 

There you have it!

Being successful is personal for each of us, but we can all benefit from adopting a success mindset. When you start to believe in yourself, anything becomes possible. Keep trying, don't give up and be open to improving and learning more about yourself along the way.

We hope these simple but powerful tips above will help you get ahead in life! 

INFORMATION THEORY - COMMUNICATION

Communication is one of the most basic human needs. From smoke signals to carrier pigeons to the telephone to television, humans have always sought methods that would allow them to communicate farther, faster and more reliably. But the engineering of communication systems was always tied to the specific source and physical medium. Shannon instead asked, “Is there a grand unified theory for communication?” In a 1939 letter to his mentor, Vannevar Bush, Shannon outlined some of his initial ideas on “fundamental properties of general systems for the transmission of intelligence.” After working on the problem for a decade, Shannon finally published his masterpiece in 1948: “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.”

The heart of his theory is a simple but very general model of communication: A transmitter encodes information into a signal, which is corrupted by noise and then decoded by the receiver. Despite its simplicity, Shannon’s model incorporates two key insights: isolating the information and noise sources from the communication system to be designed, and modeling both of these sources probabilistically. He imagined the information source generating one of many possible messages to communicate, each of which had a certain probability. The probabilistic noise added further randomness for the receiver to disentangle.

Before Shannon, the problem of communication was primarily viewed as a deterministic signal-reconstruction problem: how to transform a received signal, distorted by the physical medium, to reconstruct the original as accurately as possible. Shannon’s genius lay in his observation that the key to communication is uncertainty. After all, if you knew ahead of time what I would say to you in this column, what would be the point of writing it?

A schematic diagram of Shannon’s model of communication, as taken from his paper.

The Bell System Technical Journal

This single observation shifted the communication problem from the physical to the abstract, allowing Shannon to model the uncertainty using probability. This came as a total shock to the communication engineers of the day.

Given that framework of uncertainty and probability, Shannon set out in his landmark paper to systematically determine the fundamental limit of communication. His answer came in three parts. Playing a central role in all three is the concept of an information “bit,” used by Shannon as the basic unit of uncertainty. A portmanteau of “binary digit,” a bit could be either a 1 or a 0, and Shannon’s paper is the first to use the word (though he said the mathematician John Tukey used it in a memo first).

First, Shannon came up with a formula for the minimum number of bits per second to represent the information, a number he called its entropy rate, H. This number quantifies the uncertainty involved in determining which message the source will generate. The lower the entropy rate, the less the uncertainty, and thus the easier it is to compress the message into something shorter. For example, texting at the rate of 100 English letters per minute means sending one out of 26100 possible messages every minute, each represented by a sequence of 100 letters. One could encode all these possibilities into 470 bits, since 2470 ≈ 26100. If the sequences were equally likely, then Shannon’s formula would say that the entropy rate is indeed 470 bits per minute. In reality, some sequences are much more likely than others, and the entropy rate is much lower, allowing for greater compression.

Second, he provided a formula for the maximum number of bits per second that can be reliably communicated in the face of noise, which he called the system’s capacity, C. This is the maximum rate at which the receiver can resolve the message’s uncertainty, effectively making it the speed limit for communication.

Finally, he showed that reliable communication of the information from the source in the face of noise is possible if and only if H < C. Thus, information is like water: If the flow rate is less than the capacity of the pipe, then the stream gets through reliably.

While this is a theory of communication, it is, at the same time, a theory of how information is produced and transferred — an information theory. Thus Shannon is now considered “the father of information theory.”

His theorems led to some counterintuitive conclusions. Suppose you are talking in a very noisy place. What’s the best way of making sure your message gets through? Maybe repeating it many times? That’s certainly anyone’s first instinct in a loud restaurant, but it turns out that’s not very efficient. Sure, the more times you repeat yourself, the more reliable the communication is. But you’ve sacrificed speed for reliability. Shannon showed us we can do far better. Repeating a message is an example of using a code to transmit a message, and by using different and more sophisticated codes, one can communicate fast — all the way up to the speed limit, C — while maintaining any given degree of reliability.

Another unexpected conclusion stemming from Shannon’s theory is that whatever the nature of the information — be it a Shakespeare sonnet, a recording of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or a Kurosawa movie — it is always most efficient to encode it into bits before transmitting it. So in a radio system, for example, even though both the initial sound and the electromagnetic signal sent over the air are analog wave forms, Shannon’s theorems imply that it is optimal to first digitize the sound wave into bits, and then map those bits into the electromagnetic wave. This surprising result is a cornerstone of the modern digital information age, where the bit reigns supreme as the universal currency of information.

Shannon’s general theory of communication is so natural that it’s as if he discovered the universe’s laws of communication, rather than inventing them. His theory is as fundamental as the physical laws of nature. In that sense, he was a scientist.

Shannon invented new mathematics to describe the laws of communication. He introduced new ideas, like the entropy rate of a probabilistic model, which have been applied in far-ranging branches of mathematics such as ergodic theory, the study of long-term behavior of dynamical systems. In that sense, Shannon was a mathematician.

But most of all, Shannon was an engineer. His theory was motivated by practical engineering problems. And while it was esoteric to the engineers of his day, Shannon’s theory has now become the standard framework underlying all modern-day communication systems: optical, underwater, even interplanetary. Personally, I have been fortunate to be part of a worldwide effort to apply and broaden Shannon’s theory to wireless communication, increasing communication speed by two orders of magnitude over multiple generations of standards. Indeed, the 5G standard currently rolling out uses not one but two practical codes proved to achieve Shannon’s speed limit.

HOW ELON MUSK WILL MAKE MONEY IF TWITTER REJECTS HIS TAKEOVER OFFER

Elon Musk has launched a hostile takeover of Twitter. He is offering $54.20 per share in cash. This values Twitter at about $43 billion. Musk announced the offer in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, after turning down a board seat at the company.

I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.

However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.

As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.

Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.

Elon Musk

Of course, Musk had to fit a “420” in the offering price!

Two things can happen: the Twitter board can accept the offer or reject it. If they accept it, then Twitter’s stock price will rise to near Musk’s take over price. If they reject it, then the stock will fall, especially with Musk stating that “I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.” However, don’t expect Elon to lose money when the stock price of Twitter goes down.

In all likelihood, Musk has hedged his bet on this takeover. He would do this by buying a ton of out of the money put options on Twitter. A put option (or “put”) is a contract giving the option buyer the right, but not the obligation, to sell specified amount of an underlying security at a predetermined price within a specified time frame.

Since the puts are “out of the money” (meaning the strike price is lower than the actual stock price) they are cheap to buy. Musk isn’t hoping to make money off the puts. It’s a hedge in case the takeover goes against him.

If The Twitter Accepts The Offer

If Twitter accepts Musk’s offer, he’ll have to find some way to come up with $43 billion, and it’s also a reason why Tesla’s stock price went down today. The fear is Musk would have to unload some Tesla stocks in order to buy Twitter.

Elon Musk would then become the sole owner of Twitter and he would let those put options expire worthless. The few millions he spent buying the puts would be written off as some kind of insurance or investment expense.

If Twitter Rejects The Takeover Offer

Twitter rejecting the offer would immediately send the stock price of Twitter down. Musk can then add to this by selling the 9.2% of Twitter he already owns. If he acts fast enough, he should be able to get out at break even or with a slight profit since the stock is up from when he bought it.

Musk’s Twitter dump would then be announced in a SEC filing. This will further depress the stock price and those out of the money put options would suddenly become “in the money.” The more the stock price of Twitter drops, the more money Musk will make.

No matter which way the Twitter board goes, Elon Musk will walk away from this a richer man.

HOW TO START A FINANCIAL ADVICE WORDPRESS BLOG

Have you ever thought about the concept of creating a financial advice blog? If you are doing anything in the personal finance or asset management space, you likely have. And you’ve probably already heard about WordPress and its ease of use when starting a new site or blog. In this article, we’ll discuss why finance is a great niche to focus on, how to create content for your finance-driven audience, and how to research keywords and search content to increase your blog’s visibility. Then, we’ll take a closer look at the legal aspects of creating a financial advice blog. Let’s get started! How to Start a Blog Using WordPress You can use WordPress to create a blog, and your content will appear in descending order as it’s published to your site. You can add new entries and change the themes and colors of your blog as you see fit. Gutenberg blocks let you add headings, quotes, media, and tons of other features. Once you have a blog design, you can start writing! To get started, you need to know a few basic steps. Install plugins. Depending on the source of your premium plugin, you can install them by going to Plugins – Add New. Then click on the Upload Plugin button. After installation, premium plugins will add a new menu to your dashboard. The settings of each plugin will be found in this menu, which may not be in the same place as the rest of your menu. Some plugins include their settings as sub-menus under the main menu. Choose a theme. Choose a theme that best suits your niche and style. WordPress themes come with many features, and they can extend the functionality of your blog by adding contact forms, ecommerce, or SEO improvements. You can also install and activate plugins to improve security and performance. Customization options are endless! Just be sure to choose a theme that is easy to use and does not require extensive knowledge of programming. Why Finance is a Perfect Niche to Focus On The finance niche is one of the most lucrative and evergreen. People are always interested in new ways to make money, whether it’s investing in stocks or personal finance. Luckily, there is a huge market for blogs about finance, so you can pick up an excellent topic for your new blog and earn a lot of money while doing it. Here are some tips to make the most of this lucrative niche: The financial niche is very broad, so choosing a sub-niche within that area is essential. You’ll want to have a regular publishing schedule in order to attract an engaged audience and build your analytics. There are many topics that fall within this niche, from debt management to bankruptcy, to budgeting hacks and money-saving tips — all of which focus on the concept of coming up with funds to help pay for life’s necessities. A great example of this would be if you were to focus solely on providing you the audience with common questions and answers to personal loans and financing. Such topics and common questions asked by millions monthly are: How does the personal loan process work? Can I get a personal loan if I have bad credit? Can I use a personal loan for any purpose? What’s the difference between a fixed rate and a variable rate? A finance blog can also discuss credit topics, such as student loans, credit company reviews, and debt relief. An investment-related blog may focus on how-to videos and tutorials on how to make investments, or it might cover the latest technology or investment firms. The best niche for starting a WordPress blog is one that you are interested in. People who read blogs will already be interested in the topic you choose. Research the audience and find out how they will react to your content. Make sure you are writing in a manner that makes sense to your audience. This will be a bit difficult at first, but if you’re willing to put in the hard work, you’ll be successful. Creating Content for Your Finance Driven Audience One of the best ways to get your readers interested in your blog is to make it personal. If you have a background in personal finance, you can use your blog as a platform to teach people how to manage their finances and save for retirement. You can also help people invest wisely to make a comfortable living after you retire. In this day and age, achieving financial independence (FIRE) is a popular topic, and many blogs focus on the subject. To keep your audience interested in your blog, be sure to offer them products that can help them save or make money. John has plenty of excellent articles about starting a blog, and he lays out ideas for writing and promotion tactics. Just like any other type of blog, you’ll need to plan and organize your content ahead of time. One way to plan for this is to create an editorial calendar, which essentially acts as your content calendar. It helps you see what content will work and what won’t. Researching Keyword and Search Content When it comes to creating valuable content for a financial advice WordPress blog, you will want to use the research of other bloggers. Researching keyword and search content will help you make sure your blog posts deliver real value to readers. Using Google Trends, you can find out where people are searching for specific topics and what is trending in your niche. You will be able to write about these topics and create blog posts that will draw in more readers. Once you have an idea of the type of audience you want to attract, you can begin to research keywords and search content. You should start by researching keyword trends for the financial advice niche you are planning to write about. Popular topics during the holiday season will probably be Santa Clause or similar topics. Those searches will be high in volume and unlikely to rank on the first page of Google. However, you can leverage this advantage by writing about the topics that your audience is already searching for. Writing the Best Financial Content Possible As a newbie to the financial industry, writing about investing can be confusing. To attract readers, you must make your financial content accessible to the majority of people. Your content should cater to two specific audiences: those looking for general financial advice and those who want to hire you to advise them on their investments. For your best results, simplify complex financial topics and provide examples to support your reasoning. Listed below are great examples of top-ranking articles in Google for “how to get rid of student loans”, which can be used as resources to help you write the best financial content possible. Your blog name should be descriptive of your chosen niche. Your name should be recognizable to your audience and convey a sense of credibility and trust. This will make it easier for them to come back to you. While finance is a broad subject, try to focus on one branch of it and write about it regularly. For example, you can write about the latest stock trends, or share your expertise on retirement planning, cryptocurrency, or minimalism. Interviewing Other Financial Experts on Your Blog If you’re looking for ways to attract more readers, consider interviewing other financial experts on your WordPress blog. Forbes, for example, has several blogs devoted to investing and other financial opinions. Forbes also covers business news and other topics related to investing. Forbes‘ content is great for a blog, but you shouldn’t simply regurgitate the content you’ve read on their site (excerpt shown below). Instead, interview the experts in their field and use their answers for your blog posts and videos. Ranking Your Finance Content in Google You may already be aware that content is king, but do you know how to rank your finance content in Google when starting a WordPress blog for financial advice? First of all, make sure your finance content is rich in relevant keywords. You can determine your ranking by checking your link anchor text and on-page SEO. You can also use a Google map to locate your business. These steps can help you rank well in Google for relevant searches. You can also promote your finance blog using social media. Just make sure you post relevant images, links, and articles. Don’t forget to include relevant hashtags in your posts! This will help boost your content’s visibility and attract the right audience. Additionally, you can grow your social media accounts. The more you engage with your followers, the more traffic you’ll receive. Keeping these three tips in mind will help your finance WordPress blog rank well in Google. Promoting Your Blog through Social Media When you create a blog post about financial advice, the purpose is to attract more readers to read your content. Reposting content you’ve published elsewhere may seem counterproductive, but it is a great way to get exposure for your posts, and many users will end up visiting your own site after reading what they’ve reposted. You can track how well each of your posts performs through Google Analytics. Also, be sure to get involved in online communities and build your trust and following over time. By participating in discussions, you may catch the attention of other readers, website owners, and other bloggers. First, you should define your focus. This will guide your efforts during the remaining steps, including marketing to search engines, creating content, and monetizing your blog. A niche that is profitable for personal finance blogs is one that people are interested in. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced blogger, personal finance is a great place to start. And even better, there’s plenty of money to be made in this industry, with new success stories and examples being showcased daily!