16 Of The Most Profound Jokes Ever Told

Sometimes humor is the best way to drive a point home. It can communicate ideas that are lighthearted or serious.

In a Quora thread, users answered the question, "What are some of the most profound jokes ever?" Their responses touch on heavier topics like death, philosophy, and religion. Many of the punch lines are comments on how people live or instructions on how they should live.

Here are some of our favorites:

1. A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer, "This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you."

The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, "Which do you want, son?" The boy takes the quarters and leaves.

"What did I tell you?" said the barber. "That kid never learns!"

Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream parlor.

"Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?"

The boy licked his cone and replied: 

"Because the day I take the dollar the game is over!" —Vinaya Patil 

2. A boy and a man sit on a couch together. The boy says to the man, "Yeah, well, I didn’t believe in reincarnation when I was your age either." —Akshat Anand 

3. A man is flying in a hot-air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man below. He lowers the balloon farther and shouts, "Excuse me! Can you tell me where I am?"

The man below says: "Yes, you're in a hot-air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field."

"You must be an engineer," says the balloonist. 

"I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but it's no use to anyone."

The man below says, "You must be in management."

"I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going, but  you expect me to be able to help. You're in the same position you were before we met, but now it's my fault." —Amori Adesque

4. A climber fell off a cliff, and, as he tumbled down, he caught hold of a small branch.

"Help! Is there anybody up there?" he shouted.

A majestic voice boomed through the gorge:

"I will help you, my son, but first you must have faith in me."

"Yes, yes, I trust you!" cried the man.

"Let go of the branch," boomed the voice.

There was a long pause, and the man shouted up again, "Is there anybody else up there?" —Ahmet Kasan 

5. An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative."

A voice from the back of the room said, "Yeah, right." —Sai Kishore K

6. An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman replied that it only took a little while. The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish. The fisherman said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.

The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor."

The American scoffed. "I am a Wharton MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then L.A., and eventually New York City, where you will run your expanding enterprise."

The fisherman asked, "But how long will this all take?"

To which the American replied, "Fifteen or 20 years."

"But what then?"

The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions."

"Millions? Then what?"

The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends." —Andrew Udell

7. A masochist asks a sadist, "Please hurt me."

"No," replies the sadist. —Arnon Mishkin 

8. "Make me one with everything," says the Buddhist to the tofu hot dog vendor.

Then, after getting his tofu hot dog, the Buddhist hands the vendor a $20 bill.

The vendor takes the money and begins helping the next customer.

The Buddhist looks puzzled and asks the vendor, "Where is my change?"

The vendor replies, "Change comes from within." —Liam Gorman 

9. I'll stop at nothing to avoid using negative numbers. —Ren Walker

10. An engineer dies and reports to the pearly gates. St. Peter checks his dossier and says, "Ah, you're an engineer — you're assigned to hell."

So the engineer reports to the gates of hell and is let in. Pretty soon, the engineer gets dissatisfied with the level of accommodations and starts designing and building improvements.

After a while, they’ve got air-conditioning and flush toilets, escalators, elevators and so on ... and the engineer is a pretty popular guy.

One day, God calls Satan on the telephone.

"So, how's it going down there in hell?" God says.

"Hey, things are going great. We've got air-conditioning and flush toilets and escalators. There's no telling what our engineer is going to come up with next!" Satan says.

"What? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake — he should have never gotten down there. Send him back immediately!" God says.

"No way! I like having an engineer on the staff — I'm keeping him!" Satan says.

"Send him back up here or I'll sue!" God says.

Satan laughs uproariously and answers:

"Yeah, right. And just where are you going to get a lawyer?" —Sagar Shukla

11. A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A rabbit asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?" The crow answered, "Sure, why not." So the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow and rested.

A fox jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very high up. —Saurav Maheshwary

12. A taxi passenger tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him a question. 

The driver screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, went up on the footpath, and stopped inches from a shop window. 

For a second, everything was quiet in the cab. Then the driver said, "Look, mate, don't ever do that again. You scared the living daylights out of me!"

The passenger apologized and said, "I didn't realize that a little tap would scare you so much." 

The driver replied, "Sorry, it's not really your fault. Today is my first day as a cab driver — I've been driving a funeral van for the last 25 years." —Salil Gupta

13. A guy said to God, "God, is it true that to you a billion years is like a second?"

God said yes.

The guy said, "God, is it true that to you a billion dollars is like a penny?"

God said yes.

The guy said, "God, can I have a penny?"

God said, "Sure, just a second." —Mark DeBolt

14. Two young salmon are swimming along one day. As they do, they are passed by a wiser, older fish coming the other way.

The wiser fish greets the two as he passes, saying, "Morning, boys! How's the water?"

The other two continue to swim in silence for a little while, until the first one turns to the other and asks, "What the hell is water?" —Craig Weiland

15. Pessimist: Oh, this can't get any worse! 

Optimist: Yes, it can! —Bharat Jakati

16. How many Freudian analysts does it take to change a light bulb? 

Two. One to change it, and the other to hold the penis.

From Business Insider

The 6 Biggest Myths About Millionaires

Many people believe that — while it’d certainly be nice — they’ll never become millionaires. That it’s an utterly unattainable dream.
The truth is: Hitting the $1 million mark is more attainable today than ever — and more important. That’s because, in order to live comfortably in retirement through your eighties, many people will need a nest egg of at least $1 million.
“A general rule of thumb is that you need to save $1 million for every $40,000 of annual income you need to replace at retirement, not including Social Security, pension income or any other retirement income,” says David Fernandez, CFP, of Wealth Engineering in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to do it. While doing research for my book, “The Eventual Millionaire,” I interviewed more than 100 millionaires who came from all walks of life and made their first million in dozens of different ways, from starting their own businesses to investing in the stock market or real estate. And those aren’t the only paths to becoming a millionaire, either: Others hit the mark by simply living below their means and saving portions of each paycheck.
Before you can make a million, though, you need to get past the mystique and the myths surrounding it. Here are 6 common myths about millionaires debunked. 

1. Millionaires Are Smarter

People tend to put millionaires on a pedestal: They must be better or smarter than everyone else in order to achieve that goal. But that general statement simply isn’t true. Millionaires are ordinary people who have achieved extraordinary goals, but they make mistakes like everyone else. They may misspell words; they may even have learning disabilities. They’ve likely been in debt and had to dig themselves out. They’ve had ideas and businesses fail. Most of the ones I interviewed for my book have worked their way up the ladder, learning and stumbling along the way.
Rather than having lots of book smarts, what most millionaires have is a knack for setting goals for themselves and working toward them — without letting excuses get in their way. They, too, have to deal with unexpected expenses — plumbing leaks, health insurance increases, car trouble. They just keep moving forward despite the inevitable obstacles they have to overcome.

2. Millionaires Are Just Luckier

Millionaires are the luckiest among us, right? They won the lottery, struck gold with their very first attempt at launching a business or haphazardly landed their dream jobs with massive salaries. Not so: Pure luck is not a factor in achieving success. Rather, truly successful people make their own luck. After all, a million-dollar idea is worth nothing without execution.
Bobby Casey, founder of asset protection firm Global Wealth Protection, told me the story of starting his first business building bikes for stores like Wal-Mart — a company that would eventually earn more than $6 million. “I went to at least 60 stores before I finally found one that said, ‘Okay, we’ll hire you. How much do you charge?’”
Casey had no money at the time — actually a “negative net worth,” as he describes it. “I racked up a bunch of credit card debt … driving around for several weeks at a time, only hearing no, no, no, no.” I asked him what he thinks might have happened if he stopped before he hit that 60th store. His response? “I wouldn’t have stopped if it took me 300 stores.”
Casey would say it was hard work, not luck, that got him over the million-dollar threshold. After getting an “in” at that first store, he worked 12-hour shifts — sometimes several in a row, at various stores, without stopping to sleep in between — to assemble thousands of bicycles for the Christmas season. Assembling bikes for Walmart turned into assembling grills and lawn equipment at Home Depot and Lowe’s and pool tables and other sporting goods equipment for Dick’s Sporting Goods and other chain stores. After 12 years, Casey sold his assembly and installation company in 2008.

3. Millionaires Live Lavishly

When you think of millionaires, you may picture people living in luxurious mansions and driving expensive sports cars. The reality? Millionaires are often the people next door: They drive Hondas and Volvos. They’re frugal (57 percent of the ones I interviewed described themselves as such). They often spend their money on necessities and a few things that are very important to them. Think Warren Buffett: The celebrated multi-billionaire famously still lives in the Omaha, Neb. house he bought in 1958 for $31,500.
In most cases, millionaires have gotten to where they are precisely because they've practiced excellent savings habits and live frugally. They learn to make smart choices, and they don’t stop just because they hit the $1 million mark. If anything, they’re validated by seeing the choices they’ve made paid off.

4. Most Millionaires Were Born Into Money

Another common myth is that millionaires were born into money or inherited it. But that's not often the case. In a recent survey, Fidelity Investments found that 86 percent of millionaires are self-made. And among the more than 100 millionaires I interviewed for my book, each was self-made and only 26 percent of them said they even had connections to important people beforehand.
Take Dani Johnson. The speaker, bestselling author of “First Steps to Wealth” and “Grooming the Next Generation for Success” and producer of highly popular success seminars, started at the very bottom. After growing up on welfare and living with abuse throughout her childhood, Johnson ended up pregnant and single at 17. After a brief marriage at age 21, Johnson was left homeless and in debt. But she wanted to make a better life for herself.
She’d been introduced to a multi-level marketing business a couple of years earlier and decided it could be a chance to change her situation. After attending a panel session in which four millionaires talked about how they’d built their incomes through the business, Johnson decided it was worth a try. “I was told my whole life up to that point that I was nothing but a failure and I could never do anything right. I just sat there and thought to myself, ‘Man, if I’m the dumbest person in the room and it takes me 20 years to figure this out and to learn how to do what they do, and if I fail their income by 90 percent, then I would still do better in business for myself than I ever would staying at my job that I had at the mall.’”
For Johnson, the key to success wasn’t being born into money; it was being willing to give herself a chance. She started her first business from the trunk of her car and a payphone booth, and in her first four days, managed to sell $4,000 in products, generating $2,000 in profit for herself. The next month, while still working part time as a cocktail waitress, she made $6,500 and her income “just continued to skyrocket from there,” she says. Today, she teaches others how to build success, no matter where they start out.

5. Millionaires Have to Be Fearless

Though it may seem like the only way to become a millionaire is to forge full-steam ahead and assume a lot of risk, fears are totally normal — even for the ultra-successful. Fifty-seven percent of the millionaires I surveyed said they were scared before starting their own business — scared of failure, disappointing their spouses or their families, scared of losing everything.
Anita Crook, founder of Pouchee, a purse organizer showcased on “The Today Show,” Fox Business and other media, started her company without any prior business experience. “Anybody who knows me knows I am not a salesperson,” Crook says. “I was scared to death to go into my first store to try to sell them something, especially something I had produced. I don’t take rejection well, so I was really afraid I was going to run out of the store crying if they had not liked it.” But Crook knew she had to try — it was the only way to sell her product. Once she heard “yes” from a few stores, she built the confidence to keep moving forward.
Success requires some risk, but wise millionaires don’t want to take uncalculated gambles. Millionaires have learned how to examine an opportunity and analyze the risk. They will even do small tests beforehand to see if an idea will work before going all in. They prefer to know as much information as they can ahead of time so they don’t make a bad investment.
Most millionaires find a happy medium between optimism and pessimism; they figure out how to examine opportunities realistically. They acknowledge amazing potential, but work tirelessly to learn and predict beforehand to make sure their investments pay off.

6. They Earn Million-Dollar Paychecks

It’s true that many millionaires have earned their money by starting (or selling) their own businesses or finding high-paying positions within organizations. But this certainly isn’t the only way to amass $1 million. In his book “Millionaire Teacher,” Andrew Hallam explains how he saved over $1 million as a teacher well before retirement age, outlining how he used low-cost index funds and a disciplined approach to saving, investing and living on a budget to build a nest egg most of his fellow teachers would envy.
In addition to investing in the stock market, like Hallam, other millionaires boost their bottom lines by adding second jobs or passive streams of income. For instance, investing in real estate can allow a middle-income wage-earner to develop rental income as a second, reliable income stream. Artists who pay the bills and invest with the income earned through a day job might sell paintings for hundreds or thousands of dollars on the side and bank the extra income. Those who don’t earn million-dollar paychecks can still reach the $1 million mark; it just requires discipline, creativity and focus on the goal.

From Business Insider

7 Ways That SEO Is Uniquely Important For Entrepreneurs

Although nothing can compete with having a compelling product or service that’s a true game-changer, there are certain marketing tactics that can make a distinctive difference for entrepreneurs. Search engine optimization (SEO) is equally important for startups as well as established firms. Google , Bing, and other web searches are often the starting point for consumers seeking information or looking for businesses on the web.
According to Vocus, 82% of mobile shoppers use search to influence their purchasing decisions, and 70% of mobile searches for products or services will result in a sale in the near future. As such, being easily findable and accessible via search engines is a vital element of operating any kind of business. For entrepreneurs, that importance is magnified. Here are the top seven ways that SEO is uniquely important for entrepreneurs.
1. Reputation management is essential; and it’s much easier to suppress negative information or reviews about your brand by taking a proactive approach to prevention rather than a reactive approach when problems are already being caused. Entrepreneurs’ startups can live or die on their first impression and reputation, because cashflow is the lifeblood of any startup; and a bad reputation can stifle cashflow.
From the perspective of organic search, reputation management is all about dominating the first page of search results for branded queries, or queries that include your brand name. Your website should rank #1 for your brand name, and your social channels, such as Facebook, Twitter , Youtube, Google+, and LinkedIn , should round out the top six results. These are channels where you control the content, enabling you to control the messaging that new customers see when they research your brand.
Owning the top search results for branded queries is an extremely effective way to ensure that current and prospective clients get the best possible impression of your company when they search for your brand name or related keywords.
2. Keyword research is the most strategic way to get inside the minds of your target market. Understanding what keywords are being used to find your website (as well as your competitors’ websites) can inform your overall marketing strategy on many different levels, from subject lines used in newsletter emails, to press release titles, and more.
Not only does proper keyword research result in valuable insights into your customers’ minds, needs, wants, problems, and questions, but it can also be used to inform and optimize the copywriting on the company website, blog, and landing pages.
Keyword research is a discipline perhaps most well-understood to SEO professionals, and is often preached as the starting point for any SEO campaign (though PPC professionals are well-versed in keyword research as well, it differs significantly from the kind of keyword research SEO professionals are trained to perform). Entrepreneurs need every advantage they can get, especially with startups. Understanding a target audience and appealing to their needs is not only crucial from a content marketing standpoint, but also from a customer service and product standpoint.
SEO-professional quality keyword research informs and enables this customer intelligence, and optimizes content production as well as goal identification and targeting. These benefits, collectively, result in happier customers, better content, and better search engine rankings, which leads to more traffic, leads, and sales.
3. Organic traffic increases are a big indicator of future growth. Good ideas, products, or services tend to spread, and this buzz results in better search rankings due to inbound links, brand mentions, and social signals.
Entrepreneurs need to prove to investors the long-term viability of their company in order to secure funding, and organic search traffic increases are a major factor in establishing current trends, and can help inform future trends.
Organic search traffic is free, so conversions have huge ROI. Investors know this, which is one reason why entrepreneurs put so much effort into boosting organic search traffic.
4. Competitive gamesmanship is a basic element of any SEO campaign; it’s also a common trait in entrepreneurs. Getting ahead of your competition in organic search is a major way to set your business apart from the competition. And with every step up the organic search ladder, a competitor must fall lower; as such, climbing the rankings not only benefits your brand, but it simultaneously hurts the competition.
In a crowded startup environment filled with hungry entrepreneurs, claiming as much of the pie as possible is crucial for establishing long-term success.
5. Social media marketing has become intertwined with SEO; not only do social signals play a role in organic search rankings, high rankings in organic search results drives more traffic to your website and social media channels, accelerating their growth. As I explained in my article, “The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014,” social media is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity. As such, savvy entrepreneurs bolster their social media efforts with strong SEO campaigns, and vice versa.
6. Trust is an important factor in online success, especially for startups that haven’t yet established a recognizable brand name. Users tend to have more trust in sites that rank well for the keywords they’re already searching for. According to a study reported at Search Engine Land, “student subjects are heavily influenced by the order in which the results are presented, and, to a lesser extent, the actual relevance of the abstracts.” Additionally, users tend to click on the organic results as opposed to the paid search results. According to Search Engine Watch, organic search rankings essentially win over users 94% of the time, which means that if you can’t be easily found in organic search results, you can’t just make up for it in paid search. Your competitors that rank higher than you will have more inherent trust, and attract a larger share of customers. Consequently, high rankings in the search engine results pages can help a fledgling company or startup position itself at the top of the market, at least in the eyes of the target audience.

7. Long-term brand equity should be the goal for any entrepreneur, and SEO is the most strategic long-term investment for a brand’s online marketing initiative. As I outlined in my article, “SEO Vs. SEM: Are You Investing, or Just Paying Rent?” a website is a lot like real estate, and SEO is like building equity in a property whereas SEM (PPC) is like renting a home.
“For every dollar you spend on SEO, you build up long-term value, just like paying a mortgage when you buy real-estate. In contrast, SEM is a lot like renting a house. You pay to rent ad space in order to get traffic NOW, delivering short-term benefits only, with no long-term benefits. It’s like paying rent for the short-term benefit of living there now, but those dollars are not building you any sort of long-term equity in the house.”
SEO success requires traveling a long road, but it’s a Warren Buffett-type investment.
Conclusion
While there’s a wide variety of digital marketing tactics valuable to entrepreneurs, SEO yields the most strategic long-term investment. Despite the fact that SEO is time-consuming and requires lots of resources (copywriters, developers, designers, and more) in order to be successful, the long-term results can be much greater than short-term ad buys or similar tactics. SEO is a remarkably valuable investment for entrepreneurs looking to kickstart their business, establish credibility and trust, secure investments, and build a sustainable business for long-term success.

From Forbes

Top 15 Entrepreneurs Who Give Back To The Community

As a successful entrepreneur, some consider it their obligation to give back to the community. For them, it’s not “just a tax write-off” or a way to boost their PR campaign. In fact, with the world’s leading entrepreneurs such as Tej Kohli, Mark Zuckerberg and Charles Johnson constantly making Top Philanthropist lists, it’s clear that it goes deeper than an angle. When someone is blessed with a lucrative business they started from scratch, they come to learn that nothing feels better than earning money on hard work, sweat and tears—except, perhaps, giving much of it back.
According to a survey backed by Ernst & Young and conducted by Australia’s Fidelity Charitable Gift Trust, 89 percent of entrepreneurs donate to charity. An additional 70 percent donate their time as well. If a company is led by an entrepreneur, their charitable giving is on average more than double of their peers who aren’t led by entrepreneurs. Here’s a look at the top 15 entrepreneurs who give back.
1. Mark Zuckerberg
The Zuckerbergs regularly top the charts of most giving entrepreneurs. In 2013, they donated $1 billion (yes, with a “B”) to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation via company stock. Known for setting a great example as an entrepreneur and a philanthropist at a young age, the 29-year-olds have been moving Facebook shares over to non-profits for the past several years.
2. Tej Kohli 
The real estate investment tycoon is so invested in giving back that he established his own philanthropy arm, the Tej Kohli Foundation. Some entrepreneur-philanthropists do this because they’re so invested in what they believe, they want to not just give back financially but also help direct the programs. Committed to fighting poverty, ignorance and disease via human intervention, the Foundation sets the bar high.
3. Charles Johnson
Head of Franklin Resources , Charles Johnson donated $250 million in 2013 to Yale University. A former graduate, the 80-year-old takes giving back to his alma mater seriously. It might not seem “necessary” but private universities including Yale depend largely on the generosity of alums to keep producing world leaders.
4. Sergey Brin
One of the co-founders of Google, Brin donated $219 million to his own foundation in 2013, which was founded along with his wife (whom he is now separated). The couple also generously donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. The Brin Wojcicki Foundation distributes funds to a variety of diverse non-profits.
5. Paul Allen
In 2013, Allen donated $206 million largely to his own foundation, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, but also notably to the EMP Museum. The founder of Vulcan Capital and co-founder of Microsoft, he focuses on culture, education, arts and social services program largely in the Great Northwest. Like Brin, his foundation also distributes funds to other deserving organizations.
6. Mark Cuban 
You might know Mark Cuban, the well-known American business man and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, from his appearances on TV’s Shark Tank, but you might not be familiar with his philanthropic work. In 2003, Cuban started the Fallen Patriot Fund to help families of United States military personnel killed or injured during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Cuban matched the first one million dollars in contributions with funds from the Mark Cuban Foundation, which is run buy Mark’s brother Brian Cuban but does not directly operate any charitable activities. Rather, the Mark Cuban foundation supports charitable activities in the Dallas area and throughout the United States. Cuban is also reported to give freely to other charitable organizations.
7. John and Laura Arnold
The Texas couple founded the Laura and John Arnold Foundation after Mr. Arnold founded the Centaurus Energy hedge fund company. In 2013, they donated $296.2 million mostly to their own Foundation. It supports K-12 public education, public policy reform, and scientific research. 

8. Stephen Ross 
Donating $200 million to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2013, Ross is the founder of Related Companies in New York—another real estate tycoon. When he made the massive pledge in autumn 2013, he said it was meant to inspire other alumni to give back and help reach the university’s massive $4 billion fundraising goal. 
9. Michael Bloomberg 
It’s no surprise that Bloomberg donated largely to improving city governments on a global scale, but he also gifted funds to education, arts, public health and environmental groups. In total, he gave $452 million in 2013. The founder of the Bloomberg news and financial group is best known as New York’s mayor from 2001-2013, but now is focusing largely on philanthropy.
10. Phil and Penelope Knight
As co-founder of Nike, Mr. Knight targets Oregon-based organizations. He donated $500 million to Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in 2013, after OHSU asked “boldly” for $100 million. After seeing the incredible work being done, he shocked the non-profit teaching hospital by drastically upping the gift.
11. Stephen Scwwarzman
As co-founder and current chairman of Blackstone Group, the investor directed $103 million towards Tsinghua University in 2013. The Beijing University approached him with a pitch for a campaign to attract international students. He sees China’s economic growth as a great haven for future leaders.
12. David Rubenstein 
As co-chief and co-founder of Carlyle Group, Rubenstein donated $121.7 million in 2013 largely to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, but also to a number of universities including Columbia and Duke. His goal is to donate to at least 10 non-profits each year.
13. Alfred Mann
As the founder of numerous health-based businesses, Mann is equally committed to charity. He donated $70 million in 2013 to the Nevada Community Foundation, although he has yet to report on which programs his funding will support.
14. Abraham Mitchell
Donating just over $50 million to the University of South Alabama, Mitchell co-founded the Mitchell Company and has always considered charitable giving a staple of his business practice. Specifically, he asked that half of his donation go towards scholarships.
15. Lyda Hill 
An entrepreneur from the start, Hill learned her way around business from her grandfather, oilman HL Hunt. She donated $63.2 million to a number of organizations in 2013 including the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and a Nature Conservatory.
Each of these 15 entrepreneurs understand the cycle of business, and life, is all about giving back. For them, “business as usual” includes spreading the wealth to causes they hold close to their hearts.

From Forbes

Do You Think Like a Successful Entrepreneur?

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

Richard Cantillon, the eighteenth-century economist who coined the term "entrepreneur," defined the term as "bearer of risk." Yet research shows that entrepreneurs are just as risk-averse as the rest of us.

"Only when it comes to starting a business are [entrepreneurs] daring," James Suriowecki writes at the New Yorker, and that's "because the fundamental characteristic of entrepreneurs isn't risk-seeking; it's self-confidence."

"The confidence necessary to beat the odds and sustain a new business seems to verge on delusion".

Indeed, the confidence necessary to beat the odds and sustain a new business seems to verge on delusion. The research on how entrepreneurs overestimate themselves is staggering. Here's a digest:

According to a 1997 study from the University of Houston, entrepreneurs are overconfident about their capacity to prevent bad things from happening to their business.

According to the same study, entrepreneurs are overconfident about their business's prospects.

In a 1988 Purdue University study of 3,000 entrepreneurs, more than 80 percent of participants thought that their business had at least a 70 percent chance of success.

In the same study, 33 percent of entrepreneurs thought they had a 100 percent chance of success.

A 2013 study from Erasmus University Rotterdam found that entrepreneurs think they will live longer than everybody else.

Delusion Is Necessary

Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says that the delusion is necessary, given that a third of American small businesses flame out within the first five years and two-thirds perish within 10.

"A lot of progress in the world is driven by the delusional optimism of some people," he said in an interview. "The people who open small businesses don't think, 'I'm facing these odds, but I'll take them anyway.' They think their business will certainly succeed."

A realist will have a harder shot at success in the world, Kahneman says, since people tend to favor optimists. They rise quicker in organizations because they believe they can.

Selling the Vision

They attract more funding for their enterprises by selling their vision. People will work harder for the optimistic leader because they want to be assured that it'll all be OK. Studies of meetings show that people don't listen to the most informed person in the room; they default to the loudest one.

That's why we say that these people have a "can-do spirit," Kahneman says. "Among other things, a 'can-do spirit' means you think you can do things you cannot do."

And sometimes, it's this semi-delusional thinking and a little luck that makes the seemingly impossible possible.

From Daily Finance

Steve Jobs Taught This Man How To Win Arguments With Really Stubborn People

Ed Catmull

Have you got any stubborn people in your life? Well, here's a brilliant life lesson shared by Pixar cofounder and Walt Disney President Ed Catmull.
He spent 26 years working with the notoriously stubborn Steve Jobs, one of Pixar's other cofounders. Jobs once told him that his method of working things out when people disagreed with him was to "just explain it to them until they understand."
So Catmull discovered a way to work with that without letting a conversation ever devolve into a heated argument, he said during a recent Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner event, first spotted by Upstart Business Journal.
Catmull was promoting his new book, "Creativity Inc.," which is loaded with anecdotes about Jobs, the famous late Apple CEO.
This is how Catmull dealt with Jobs:

"In all the 26 years with Steve, Steve and I never had one of these loud verbal arguments and it's not my nature to do that. ...  but we did disagree fairly frequently about things. ... I would say something to him and he would immediately shoot it down because he could think faster than I could. ... I would then wait a week ... I'd call him up and I give my counter argument to what he had said and he'd immediately shoot it down. So I had to wait another week, and sometimes this went on for months. But in the end one of three things happened. About a third of the time he said, 'Oh, I get it, you're right.' And that was the end of it. And it was another third of the time in which [I'd] say, 'Actually I think he is right.' The other third of the time, where we didn't reach consensus, he just let me do it my way, never said anything more about it."

So that's an interesting strategy: patience; an open mind; a willingness to be wrong; and a willingness to plow ahead when, after a fair effort, agreement didn't happen.

From Business Insider

What attorneys need to know about entrepreneurs

Many attorneys are trained to work with corporate executives. However, working with entrepreneurs can be very different. The entrepreneurial mindset is typically different than that of a corporate executive. This is manifested in their approach to risk, decision making, failure, and ambiguity. This difference can be confusing or challenging for attorneys and may create difficulties in effective communication. This article will discuss these differences and suggest some techniques to help attorneys be more effective when working with entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurial mindset

Understanding the entrepreneurial mindset can be helpful to become more effective in working with entrepreneurs. Cognitive psychology and social psychology can help us understand the differences between entrepreneurs and corporate executives. Specifically, it is important to understand psychological constructs such as risk taking, tolerance for ambiguity, optimism bias, locus of control, and tolerance for failure.

A myth about entrepreneurs is that they are big risk takers. In fact, they are not; for the most part they are calculated risk takers. However, the media tends to focus on the big risk takers like Richard Branson, which make a much more interesting story than the entrepreneur who has toiled quietly for 20 years building a successful company. Richard Branson takes big business risks and big personal risks such as flying balloons around the world. Culturally we can become biased that most entrepreneurs are big risk takers since our media sensationalizes the big risk takers. Often entrepreneurs want as much data as possible to understand the risk-to-reward ratio. They are willing to take a risk if they understand the likelihood of the corresponding rewards. In other words, they are calculated risk takers.

The next important characteristic is tolerance for ambiguity. Most entrepreneurs have a higher than average tolerance for ambiguity. For instance, they will not stress as much as the typical executive about whether the product will work, if they will make payroll, or if they will land the clients they need to be successful. It is not that they don’t stress about this stuff, it is that they have a higher tolerance for these ambiguities. Think of your peers when you graduated from college, did some want the security of a big company versus a smaller company that might provide more learning opportunity? Most corporations take measures to reduce ambiguity by putting in procedures and processes that remove risk and ambiguity. Entrepreneurs see ambiguity as opportunity.

Another important psychological characteristic is optimism bias. In this context a bias is an inclination to see the world in a predetermined manner. Most entrepreneurs are higher in optimism bias than non-entrepreneurs. This is the bias that things will work out. They will figure out the product problems, fix the client problems, or work cash flow enough to survive. Obviously this has advantages and disadvantages. When an entrepreneur is launching a company, optimism bias can be very helpful. For instance, if every entrepreneur sat down and listed all the reasons why a startup could not work they would never launch. A common saying of successful entrepreneurs who started their companies when young is, “I was not smart enough to know I could not do it when I started,” or “If I knew what I know now, I would never have started this company.” Not knowing all of the things that can go wrong can help an entrepreneur to be less distracted and focus on success. However, being too optimistic can blind an entrepreneur and lead to failure. Although experience is almost always helpful, it can bias one into not doing things. It really comes down to a choice if you allow yourself to focus on why a startup will not work or how you can make it work. Entrepreneurs focus on how to make it work.

Entrepreneurs have been found to have a higher than average internal locus of control. Locus of control is a psychological continuum. On one end, there are those who feel they have little control of their life and career. In other words, their success at work is dependent on their boss or peers. People on this end have an external locus of control, or they believe control of their lives is dictated by others. People who believe they can control most things in their life are said to have a high internal locus of control. For instance, when they run into a barrier, they find a way to get around it; in fact they might simply ignore the rules and get “around the system.” When someone with a high external locus of control runs into a barrier, they quit. Entrepreneurs have been found to have a high internal locus of control. They attack barriers and find ways around them. Often, they simply ignore the rules and procedures, which they see as guidelines to utilize when convenient, rather than something rigid that they have to abide by every time.

Failure is a part of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs have been found to have higher tolerance for failure than average. They see failure as a learning experience. I am not suggesting they enjoy or seek failure. However, many entrepreneurs accept failure as part of the process. This is connected to calculated risk taking as mentioned earlier; most entrepreneurs calculate how much risk reward each action involves. They are willing to take the risk if the rewards appear to outweigh the risk. When you combine tolerance for ambiguity, optimism bias, and internal locus of control, you can imagine why entrepreneurs in general appear to be big risk takers. In reality, they are wired differently. They see the world differently and they focus on how to accomplish something, rather than why it cannot be done.

For those attorneys reading the portion on the entrepreneurial mindset, did you find yourself saying something to the effect, “Yes, but what if they don’t think of this, or miss that.” If so, you have confirmed that you have a different mindset than your entrepreneurial client. You are wired to look for what can go wrong; an entrepreneur is wired to look at what can go right. Attorneys are trained to avoid risk, remove all or most mistakes, and anticipate the things that can go wrong. They are focused on an external locus of control. They focus on how others, whether the law or other organizations, can negatively impact their client. In addition, attorneys are trained that failure, in a legal sense, is client and career failure. Although entrepreneurs want their attorney to be focused on what can go wrong, it is helpful to remember they look at the world differently. These differences can lead to a disconnect when communicating with entrepreneurs.

Tips for Attorneys Working with Entrepreneurs

Often when communicating with a client, style differences can create disconnects within the communication. It is important for attorneys to uncover the style your entrepreneur client prefers before you launch into a detailed conversation about legal issues. It is easy to let the training received in law school be the default style of communication. Few of us are trained to really understand what is going on in conversations. Uncovering what is unsaid is often much more important than what is being said. Until we have developed a trusting relationship with someone, we might skirt around the issues, not wanting to expose our weakness or ignorance about a particular issue. This can happen when an entrepreneur is embarrassed they did something that might be illegal or on shaky grounds in a legal sense. On the other side, some attorneys may be insecure about their lack of business knowledge or general understanding of entrepreneurs.

Consider how your clients want to interact and communicate risks and detailed data around those risks. Some like a summary up front and the data later, some like a build-up to the conclusion. It is important to uncover the style of your client to understand the most effective way to communicate.

Simply ask your client how they prefer to have a specific discussion. You can do this by asking them how much detail they want, if they would prefer you to start with a summary, or build the detail up to the conclusion. Be sure you are not doing too much talking without stopping to listen and ask questions. Find ways to probe your clients to see if they understand what you are explaining without embarrassing them. This can be done by putting the issue back on you rather than asking them. For instance, if you are not sure if they understand a particular issue, ask them if you are being clear or if they would like to go over the issue again. Stopping, probing and listening are crucial to building a good client relationship.

In summary, entrepreneurs are different. They see opportunity where you may see risk and ambiguity. The more you can understand their mindset and their desired communication style, the more effective you can be in helping them.

From Orange County Register