Sallie Krawcheck Had a Few Things to Say About Women, Younger People, and the Finance Industry

Yesterday, Sallie Krawcheck had a few things to say about the wealth management industry. Krawcheck has had an extensive work history in finance and previously had been voted one of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” by Forbes in 2005. She recently was ousted from Bank of America in September as the company claimed it was part of a “restructuring”.  According to “Wall Street needs women, younger clients to compete: Krawcheck” by Suzanne Barlyn and Ashley Lau, Krawcheck placed her comments on the subject of women and young people:

“The securities industry ‘doesn’t do a great job for women or being appropriate’ for the next generation, said Sallie Krawcheck”

On young people:

“Indeed, becoming more relevant to a younger generation of prospective clients and building more diverse teams of advisers are among the changes Wall Street will have to make to compete in the future”

“Younger prospective clients have become skeptical of the industry through press images of advisers being untrustworthy and repeated messages to avoid the markets”

Jonas Bevacqua, Co-founder of LRG Passed Away

Jonas Bevacqua co-founder of LRG, Limited Research Group clothing, died Tuesday.  The cause of death has not been released. Bevacqua died at 34 and started his company in 1999. The style of his clothing was a hybrid between skateboard style and hip hop with eclectic splashes added. According to “Jonas Bevacqua,Co-Founder of LRG Clothing, Dies at 34” by Douglas Martin of NYtimes.com, “In 2002, Entrepreneur magazine estimated the company’s annual revenue at $150 million and ranked LRG fifth among the 500 fastest growing companies that year”.

The clothing was embraced by many celebs within and outside of the hip hop industry. The company also embraced its style into a full brand by “[promoting] underground recording artists and [having] its own skateboard team.” He started the company when he was a parking valet and worked his way up to a successful entrepreneur. It’s truly sad to hear of his passing. The LRG team has written a tribute letter, which is on the homepage.

Two Young Men Bring the Tailor Experience Online

The customized business has taken off online. Companies, like Zazzle.com, allow customers to design their own products using various blank canvas that the website provides. Websites like these are not considered tailored clothing and are usually simple in design, unless the customizer is really good at graphic design. Fan Bi and Danny Wong are two young men, 23 and 19, respectively, who created Blank Label. The website has the customized method as described before but the spin with this company is the product involves choice of various fabrics and more tailored-like options.

According to “Dressed for Success” by Joel Holland on Entrepreneur.com, the inspiration came from a trip Fan Bi took to Shanghai. He was exposed to a myriad of fabrics and came up with the idea to offer a service, in which customers tailor make a shirt online. While studying abroad in the U.S., Bi worked on his business model and met Danny Wong who helped translate the business to an e-commerce platform. With Blank Label, customers “can build a custom shirt by selecting a fabric, color combination and style of cuff, collar, placket, pocket, button, monogram, even custom label—all for less than $50” (although, I tested the options and my somewhat simple custom shirt came to an estimated $77).

Million Dollar Listing: a Career Saboteur in Action

Be very wary of career saboteurs. As in, people in your life who try to prevent you, with no valid reason, from moving up in your career. Last night on “Million Dollar Listing”, I saw first hand the creation of one. In the second to last episode, Madison’s assistant Heather, decided she was ready to move up. She has her real estate license, wanted to work as an agent, and wanted to do so in the West Hollywood, CA. She has been assisting Madison for two years and works in Malibu, which is a distant drive from West Hollywood. She approached Josh Altman, another agent on the show and the guy she’s dating, for advice; his advice was she should definitely take the step if she wanted to.

Heather approached Madison with a proposal: to regionally extend Madison’s Malibu agency, adding her on as an agent in West Hollywood. If Heather couldn’t work as an agent, she would quit as his assistant. Madison was pissed.

On last night’s episode, Madison decided to confront Josh Altman for giving career advice. Let me state this again: Madison is mad at Altman for giving career advice. To Madison, for Altman to give advice to a real estate agent on her next career move was Altman’s way to sabotage Madison. According to Madison, Heather is possessed and Altman has no position to give career advice, even if Heather asks for it, considering Altman and Heather have just started dating,

Million Dollar Listing: When Being Nice Comes Off as Less Confident

Bravo has a show called “Million Dollar Listing”. I was not inspired to watch the show because the previews made the show out to be this playboy dramatic show. But I have been watching the show since the last three episodes. I must say… I am hooked. For the hour, you will be exposed to amazing properties, client/ agent drama, and the ways in which the agents work to sell, buy, negotiate, and run their business.

I am writing this post to talk about Madison. He is a young real estate agent on “Million Dollar Listing” and he sells in Malibu. He tends to wear business casual clothing to sell his properties, which I find annoying because I believe you should look presentable for your million-dollar property. Aside from that, Madison is very nice. In fact, he is too nice. In the episodes I’ve seen, Madison has come across a pushy buyer who fired him, a seller who would not accept that his property was not worth the price it should be listed as, a seller who expected Madison to sell a property in a month, and a prospective buyer whose very low offer was barely contested. In almost all situations, Madison would make a statement or two about the reality of the deal in today’s market, but he would do it with a “kind of” tone. He barely would put the client in check (respectfully). On the other hand, the other two agents, Josh Altman, and Josh Flagg, would boldly inform clients of the reality of the market. Generally, if a client insists on selling a property at a too high price, you can’t stop them, but the other two agents, make their point that it is delusional.

Daniel Gross: 19-Year-Old Creates a Service thats Indexes Online Life

I discovered a new service by reading about its creator. The service: Greplin, a search tool on all-things-you online. The creators: 19-year-old Daniel Gross and 27-year-old Robby Walker. I specifically read about Daniel Gross who was interviewed by Christine Lagorio of Inc.com in article “How This 19-Year-Old is Taking on Google”. Both creators are from my generation and I love reading stories about young entrepreneurs. Daniel was interviewed because of his age; he hasn’t gone to college and joined Y-Combinator, a start-up funding program, right after high school. Within the last two days of the program, Gross and Lagorio created Greplin. The idea received support and now it has $5 million of funding and the site launched last week.

According to the article and the Greplin website, the service provides an account in which all social media is indexed and users can search for anything within the index. Example: you can search “Inception” and the results will include the word mentioned in all of the your social media from email to Facebook. Gross’s inspiration for the service:

“I had this very long list of things I thought would be cool. Greplin was always near the top…Greplin was the one project idea I had for which I was the target audience…if you look at a product like this, it’s useful. There’s a need. And the question is why hasn’t someone built it already?”