The Executive Digest

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (Others)

2010-02-25T22:03:00.000-08:00

Just watched Invictus directed by Clint Eastwood starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Great movie!

I want to share with you this haunting and powerful poem the movie was named after, Invictus, written by British poet William Ernest Henley. This poem is Nelson Madela's favorite and served as one of his greatest inspiration and source of power during his 29 years of prison before his presidency.

When he became President of South Africa, he saw the opportunity in Rugby as a means to unite his racially divided people with adamant belief that the universal language of sport can break the barriers of apartheid. He then meets with South African Rugby Team Captain Francois Peinaar and tasked him for his team to champion the coming Rugby World Cup. As was evident in Francois' expression the hesitation and disbelief in the seemingly impossible task appointed to him, Nelson Madela gave him a hand written copy of Invictus for inspiration.

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

Truly an evocative piece most famous for its last couple of lines. Just wanted to share this with you hoping it will have the same effect on you as it had with Nelson Mandela, Francois Peinaar and the many more unknown men who have drawn courage and strength from it.

Here is the theme song from the movie Invictus, 9000 days, performed by Overtone and Yollandi Nortjie, which lyrics was also inspired and some lines even taken from the poem. 9000 days is equivalent to the 27 years Nelson Mandela spent in prison.

Never Be Late Again with These Innovative Alarm Clocks (Others)

2010-01-01T02:48:00.000-08:00

There are just those days when it's hard to get out of bed. And don't we all have experienced that nerve wrecking moment when your boss told you not to be late for tomorrow's very important meeting at 9:00 am and you wake up the next day and it's already 8:45?

If you're late, superiors and peers always assume you're not that serious about your career and we don't want that kind of impression at the workplace. Check out these innovative alarm clocks that'll make sure you get out of bed on time.

1. "Silence" Alarm Clock

It's technically not an alarm clock since it doesn't have an alarm but has something way much better at waking you wake up. Before going to bed, you wear a wireless rubber bracelet with a built-in vibrating device that goes off on your set time. The snooze function is engaged by shaking your hand. However, each successive snooze you desire, more movement is required to engaged it again making you finally wake up from the physical activity. Isn't it brilliant?!

It's still a conceptual alarm clock though so it's not yet available in the market, but we're be definitely waiting for it.

2. SnūzNLūz Wifi Donation Alarm Clock

Here's one that'll make you jump out of bed right away!

Here's how to set it up. Just connect the SnūzNLūz online via cable or wifi. Once connected, select you online banking institution from the list of supported banks (1600 banks are supported). Input your login information. Then select a charity or non-profit organization of your choice from 6,200 supported charitable institutions.

What this alarm clock does is that every time you snooze it, it automatically transfers money from your bank account to your choice of charity. So when you fail to get-up, it actually costs you. That's one hell of a reason to wake up. Cause if you don't, you might go broke! Buy it here.

3. Blowfly Alarm Clock

This alarm clock comes with a flying propeller that is activated on your set time. The siren then begins to wail and the only way to stop it is for your to to get out of bed, find the plastic propeller and put it back on the clock. By the time you stop the siren, you're already awake. Buy it here.

Here's a video demo.

Lastly, we have the...

4. Carpet Alarm Clock

The only way to turn this clock's alarm off (yes, it's still considered a clock because of it's small lcd screen that displays time) is to step on it, therefore physically forcing you to get out from bed and stand. Genius! If you want to make sure you really wake up, place it far from the bed so you'll be forced to walk as well.

These are some inventive stuff we have here. Get one and you'll have no more late days at work! Make that your 1st new year's resolution.

Facebook Founder is World’s Youngest Billionaire (People)

2009-12-17T21:07:00.000-08:00

Mark Zuckerberg is world’s youngest ever self-made billionaire according to Forbes Magazine. And just who is Mark Zuckerberg? Mark Zuckerberg is the now 23-year-old co-founder and CEO of the the currently biggest and most used social networking site with 350 million active users worlwide, Facebook. And yes, that’s right, he’s only “23 years old”.

The former Harvard student is approximately with $1.5 billion based on a supposedly conservative valuation of Facebook that is $5 billion with an approximated annual sales of $150 million. Zuckerberg owns roughly 30 percent of Facebook and the remaining shared by co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes.

Mark Zuckerberg originally launched Facebook as a Harvard thing back in 2004 in his dorm room in the said university then decided to spread Facebook enlisting the help of his roommates and fellow Computer Science students Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes to Stanford, Darthmouth, Columbia, Cornell, Yale and other schools with social contacts with Harvard. It then later expanded to include any university student, then high school students, then anyone aged 13 and above.

Because of the addictiveness of Facebook, it has been blocked intermittently in Syria, China, Iran and some other countries. It has also been banned in many workplaces to discourage employees being distracted and wasting time on Facebook.

In 1008, Time magazine added Zuckerberg as one of The World's Most Influential People.

So where and what were you doing when you were 23 years old?

Volunteer Online Now! (Others)

2009-12-09T23:46:00.000-08:00

Many pass up volunteering, though they’re very much interested to, for lack of time due to work or family. Thus rendering them unable to spare time and travel. Well, that’s not a problem anymore. United Nations Volunteers (UNV) has now launched an online volunteering service site where you could easily sign up for online volunteering work.

www.onlinevolunteering.org is one of the United Nations Volunteers programme’s corporate tools to mobilize more volunteers for development. It connects volunteers to organizations working with the United Nations for sustainable human development who are in need of volunteers.

All available volunteer work listed on the site can be done from volunteers’ homes. No need to travel and work can be done by the volunteers’ own pace. Communication will all be done online as well for everybody's convenience.

Volunteer work of all kinds are available in the site. From projects ranging 2 weeks from 2 months and projects from simple editing to research. You’re bound to find volunteer work that well fits you.

If you’re interested, just go to www.onlinevolunteering.org and register. Once you’ve registered, you can easily go over the list of available volunteer work as the site is very easy to navigate. Just to make sure you do find volunteer work best suited for you, the site allows you to filter available volunteer work based on your specific skills and interests (i.e. writing and editing, translation, research, IT development, etc.).

You could also filter available volunteer work based on your desired advocacy (i.e. education, youth, crisis prevention and recovery, gender, environment, etc.)

You can even filter available volunteer work based on which region you want to offer support (i.e. Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Arab States, etc.)

You can use all three filters at the same time to find something specific for you.

After selecting your chosen volunteer work, you will be asked a few essay questions on your motivation, experiences, and skills to be submitted to the organization you are offering your volunteer work to. Depending on the organization, they might also let you submit sample works.

Once they accept you, you’ll get the project briefing and you can do your work at home and at your own pace until date of submission. At the end of the project you will be given a certificate of appreciation for your work from the United Nations.

It’s now very easy to volunteer given such online program. There’s no more excuse of not being able to travel or being too busy. What are you waiting for, volunteer now! Go to www.onlinevolunteering.org.

Get Extra Revenue From Online Graphic Competitions (Extra Revenue)

2009-12-09T02:48:00.000-08:00

If you’re looking for some extra revenue and happen to be good with graphic design, you should go to www.graphiccompetitions.com. It’s an index site of online graphic competitions where you could easily find a well-paying online graphic competition to make your spare time something of use and money-worthy.

Go to the site, look through the online graphic competitions that are listed, pick the ones you think is suited for your skill and the time you can spare, check whether your eligible for that online graphic competition and whether their mode of payment is applicable to you.

You can also see the list of online graphic competitions sorted by deadline of submission or by highest prize money. They also list, other than graphic competitions, animation, illustration and multiple discipline design competitions and Prize money can go as high as thousands of dollars. Check it now, click here.

Things to Prepare Once You Start Earning to be Financially Secure (Finance)

2009-12-01T01:34:00.000-08:00

First salaries usually go to treating yourself, friends or family to celebrate the start of your career. With the prospect of more paychecks to come, people usually spend away all their first salary and save, at best, very little. Not a lot think of what to prepare once they start earning to be financially secured.

The moment you start earning, 1st thing you should keep in mind is to be financially secured - being financially secured meaning not only getting a stable salary for the long run but also being able to prepare for unforeseen circumstances that might affect your income.

Here are the things you need to take care off and save for first once you start working and before you start investing.

1. Obtain ample health insurance.

You shouldn't save to be able to pay hospital bills of you get sick but instead save to obtain medical insurance for the former is much more expensive than the latter. Also, any major health problem could easily drain all your wealth for treatment and recuperation and entail you to take along leave of absence. Better be prepared if such happens. Not being able to prepare for such may lead to huge debts.

2. Obtain ample disability insurance.

Disability can also drain all your wealth, if not more than, just as fast as a major health problem. Not to mention, depending on the gravity of disability, it can affect you and your income stream for the rest of your life. Note that a 35 year old person is 3 times more likely to be seriously disabled for at least 3 months than to die. A 50 year old person is 4 times more likely to be disabled than to die. And when it happens, it's best you were able to put into insurance an appropriate amount of money to offset the more or less permanent effect to your income.

3. Build up a cash cushion of 3-6 months worth of expenses or salary.

Don't go into investing just yet without having a cash cushion of 3-6 months. If any emergency happens that would entail you to shell out money on the spot, you at least have money that is ready to spare. Investments are not easily converted to cash and may take a week or more to do so. Not being able to pay emergency expenses may lead to accumulation of debts. This is different from acquiring health and disability insurance for not all emergencies are health related and covered by those insurances such as friends and family borrowing money, unexpected travel expenses from work, additional purchases due to special occasions, etc.

Building up a cash cushion also helps in case of sudden unemployment in which case you have money to spare while looking for a new job. Saving up for a cash cushion may take some time to gather. For more tips on how to save, click here. Once you have prepared these three, you're only a few steps away from being financially secured for life. The next step is to "invest your money" which a handful of articles regarding such will be posted on this blog very soon. One last piece of advice before I end:

"Don't acquire life insurance just yet."

Don't acquire life insurance just yet unless you have dependents. If you are still single, you don't need life insurance. If you are married and both of you are working with no children, you still don't need life insurance.

You definitely need life insurance if you have children, a spouse who does not or cannot work, liabilities that your family won't be able to pay without your support and assets your family cannot maintain without you. If are giving support to anybody in which the loss of your support would entail a great disadvantage to them, then you need to get life insurance. But until that doesn't hold true, it's better to put your money on something else like investments or on your health or disability insurance.

How Rich is that Food Stylist? (People)

2009-11-23T02:32:00.000-08:00

I just went to a talk by a Senior Unilever Executive about Marketing and Campaign Execution. On one of her sidetracks she mentioned about encouraging her daughter to be a food stylist.

She tells us that there is only a handful of food stylists in the country and that’s already today when food styling is starting to get attention. Back then, during the earlier days of her career, there was only one. And that one food stylist did all the food styling for all the commercial advertisements of big companies.

Our speaker continues that the food stylist she mentions can make ice cream look cool and delectable despite of the heavy lighting of shooting. She can perfectly bounce a tomato and other vegetables. She can make peanuts do back flips and mozzarella cheese stretch a meter long. Such tricks the food stylist perfected from an extensive work experience making him/her (I didn’t get whether it’s a she or he) the most sought after food stylist today despite the emergence of other food stylists. That food stylist demands a fee of P500,000, around $10,000! Wow.

But can you imagine how it was like during the early days of that food stylist’s career?

• How exactly did he/she land the job? Where did she look for the job, the classified ads? During that time, I don’t even think the term food stylist was already in use.

• And how exactly did he/she told his/her parents about his/her career choice?

• Did he/she even know that he/she would make such an amount now then? Was this all planned?

And how rich is he/she now? There is always a new food commercial every other week at a conservative estimate. If he’s/she’s been doing this for a long time now and earns P500,000, she should be very very rich by now. Well, even doing one makes her very rich, $10,000 rich.

So how can that food stylist demand a fee of $10,000? Well, what she does is very specialized not to mention rare to find as well. Is there even a school for what he/she does? That plus being the best in it and being very well experienced gives her the bargaining power to demand a fee of $10,000. How lucky is that food stylist?!

“Find something you love doing. Be the best at it. Then the money will follow” (Career Advice)

2009-11-23T02:15:00.000-08:00

Some food for thought. One of the judging panelists during the last screening for UNILAB Sales Management Trainees gave us candidates good advice. He said:

“Find something you love doing. Be the best at it. Then the money will follow”

It’s saying that in choosing a career, the beginning of your equation must start with what you love and what you can do and not how much you can earn.

Don’t be blinded by the money or fame. What you love doing and what best you can do may be hard to find and they may not always be the same thing. And when you do find it, it may also seem not a good career path at first. But if you build on it, there’s a lot more chance of being successful this way over choosing a career based on money but not actually liking the work.

What say you?

How much of your salary do you need to save? (Finance)

2009-11-13T03:48:00.000-08:00

It’s common to hear from people to save at least 15% of your gross salary for retirement. It’s the general rule of thumb. However, how much you need to save really depends on “when you start saving”. On the other hand, how much you “can” save depends on your lifestyle and marital status.

If you start saving when you’re young, in your 20’s or 30’s, you can save as low as 10%. This is so because your money has more time to grow, more time for interest to compound, compared to when you start saving in your 40’s. If you start saving in your 40’s, you my need to save around 30% and still postpone your retirement for a few years.

Then again, you may have a bigger capacity to save more than 10%, or even more than 15%, if you start saving in your 20’s or 30’s assuming you’re still single and living a moderate lifestyle. If that’s so, then go for 15% or more as it may prove harder to save the same when you marry and have children.

All these estimates presume that you put your savings in worthwhile investments with good returns. If not, you need to save twice as much to compensate for the returns you could be getting.

Bottom line, the best strategy is to save as early and as much as you can and invest. Doing so may entail you affording to retire early, financially secured of course.

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2009-11-12T03:02:00.000-08:00

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About The Executive Daily

2009-11-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

The Executive Daily is a blog dedicated to delivering essential information to young professionals on how to boost their career, find inspiration, learn from the experts and improve their financial status – in general, to holistically develop themselves.

The author of this site is a young professional himself who has a calling for teaching, an inherent interest in instilling positive energy and change in others, and an intrinsic delight towards people who want to achieve big in life. Once seeking to be taught and mentored himself and never finding such, the author wants nobody put in the same position and thus dedicated this website as a venue for him to mentor and teach others of his valuable learning.

The author of The Executive Digest is a business graduate in one of the top universities in Asia and is now into entrepreneurship.

“Knowledge is most valuable when given to those who want to learn.”