Freedom after the sharks

I recently wrote a blog called: ‘Do we forget our first love or how people have made us feel or are we still in love?’ and I was talking to one of my good friends who lives in Spain on the subject and I asked her whether she would remarry if the right person came along? She said politely ‘no’….. and since then I have asked friends and associates the same, to which I received a mixed response…. So, what exactly has happened to society? Do we believe we need our independence too much, that Mr. Right or Mrs. Right does not exist, has love faded away into the Ethernet or are we all living in fear?

About a week ago I watched a great movie called ‘A walk in the clouds’ – it’s based on an Italian film: ‘Four steps in the clouds’ (1942). The former film is a 1995 American romantic drama film about a young soldier returning home from World War II, who is looking to settle down and start a family with the woman he impulsively married just before enlisting. After learning she is not what he imagined her to be, he heads north alone to Sacramento in search of work. Along the way he meets a beautiful young woman who is heading home from college to her family vineyard to help with the grape harvest. When he learns she is pregnant and was abandoned by her boyfriend, he offers to stand in as her husband so she can face her Old World domineering father. During his stay at the vineyard, they fall in love and face the angry rejection of her father together (watch the trailer here).

The question I asked myself is how many people would actually marry someone who was pregnant with someone else’s child, and how many people would wear a chocolate gold wrapper out of his box of chocolates as a ring wedding ring in today’s world, all because of love?
There is a great quote by Stephanie Meyer “After all, what was more important, in the end, than love?” which I feel really resonates with the story and life.
Why should statistics be a spokesman for people in love, why pounce on increasing divorce rates and the fact that only fathers’ names go on wedding certificates, suggesting marriage is still linked to patriarchy, to an old world view that women should submit to men.?

The ‘Proposition of Marriage’ (those against the idea) delivered a mix of interesting and engaging reasons for why they thought marriage is outdated, including that if we’re all going to live until we’re 95, do we really need to be with just one person?
In ‘Opposition of Marriage’, (those in favour of the idea) people discussed that the concept of marriage is not outdated. And that’s because the reasons for marriage these days are far different from years gone by. Marriage itself is changing.

Couples, it appears, no longer feel the need to get married as a constitution or status symbol, to do so before they embark on their lives together. Most people live with their other half years before marrying them. Marriage is no longer the path to having children either. I know lots of people who have kids and then decide to get hitched later down the line.
The beautiful thing about marriage is that, in the West at least, you don’t need to do it as a part of growing up. Marriage is no longer a prerequisite of adulthood. You do it if and when you want to do it.
Of course, you can have a perfectly good life without marrying. I know many couples who cohabit but just don’t feel the need to tie the knot.
They don’t need a bit of paper or a wedding ring to prove to the world they’re in love. And that’s absolutely fine and their choice; nobody should ever feel forced into marriage if they don’t think it’s for them.
The number of marriages that took place in England and Wales was 247,890. That’s about one marriage every two minutes. Marriage is still incredibly popular.
By comparison, there is one divorce in England and Wales about every 4 and a half minutes, statistics show.

So are we less free or restricted to those we share love with?
Love is and has always been an essential value we obtain from other people. In giving love, we are responding to our own values realized and made beautiful by another person. In receiving love, we receive a kind of reward for the virtues, habits, and qualities we have cultivated in our own characters.
It is often said that true love is “unconditional,” or that “love is blind.” If this were true, falling in love would be akin to throwing darts, and we would simply happen upon certain people whom we loved for no reason whatsoever. And if love were unconditional, nothing they ever did, no matter how hurtful or evil, could make us abandon that love.

Love is actually our response to those few people we meet toward whom we feel the highest respect, admiration, and attraction. It is not a blank check granted to random passersby, but instead the result of our careful examination and approval of another’s character. Granting unconditional love is like appraising a piece of property without examining its size, quality, or location: one is likely to grant unearned love to the unworthy and withhold love from those who deserve it most.
Before you can really grant love to those you value, you must be in tune with your own values and character, and know what it is you believe to be the right and the good, what qualities you are looking for in other people.
Another popular view of love is that it involves a great deal of self-sacrifice, that it is a selfless act. After all, don’t most lovers spend an inordinate amount of time and money on their relationships with each other?
Don’t we have to comfort those we love through times of hardship and failure?
Sex is also an important part of a romantic relationship. Just as Objectivists do not accept the false dichotomy between mind and body, they reject the traditional dichotomy between love and lust. When two people love one another spiritually, it is natural and good for them to express that love physically. This is not to say that sex should be taken lightly; it is our most intimate act and joyous expression of our love for another person. But the old idea—encouraged by religious conservatism—that sex somehow destroys or undermines love, I have found to be false in conversation with others.

The conclusion to this subject is in the essence of a healthy, loving relationship is often trade: one offers it as a recognition of others’ characters, and receives it as recognition of one’s own.

My belief is as Max Muller once said ‘A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.’

To Love and be Loved is in essence everything in life.

Turning a small business into a big one is never easy. The statistics are grim. Research suggests that only one-tenth of 1 percent of companies will ever reach £250 million in annual revenue. An even more microscopic group, just 0.036 percent, will reach £1 billion in annual sales.
Is research correct, will most businesses start small and stay there?
A large percentage of entrepreneurs recognise that lifestyle models and staying small does not necessarily guarantee business survival, there are examples of companies out there that have successfully made the transition from start-up to small business to fully-thriving large business.

Some thoughts for entrepreneurs and companies on how they can create a growth strategy:

Developing a Growth Strategy: Intensive Growth
Part of getting from start up to large company is fundamentally down to leadership and a growth strategy, maximising performance driven results from the least amount of risk and effort. Growth strategies resemble a kind of ladder, where lower-level rungs present less risk but maybe less quick-growth impact. The bottom line for small businesses, especially start-ups, is to focus on those strategies that are at the lowest rungs of the ladder and then gradually move your way up as needed. As you go about developing your growth strategy, you should first consider the lower rungs of what are known as Intensive Growth Strategies. Each new rung brings more opportunities for fast growth, but also more risk. They are:

1. Market Penetration. The least risky growth strategy for any business is to simply sell more of its current product to its current customers.
2. Market Development. The next rung up the ladder is to devise a way to sell more of your current product to an adjacent market.
3. Alternative Channels. This growth strategy involves pursuing customers in a different way such as, for example, selling your products online.
4. Product Development. A classic strategy, it involves developing new products to sell to your existing customers as well as to new ones.
5. New Products for New Customers. Sometimes, market conditions dictate that you must create new products for new customers.

If you choose to follow one of the Intensive Growth Strategies, you should ideally take only one step up the ladder at a time, since each step brings risk, uncertainty, and effort.

Developing a Growth Strategy: Integrative Growth Strategies
If you’ve exhausted all steps along the Intensive Growth Strategy path, you can then consider growth through acquisition or Integrative Growth Strategies. The problem is that some 75 percent of all acquisitions fail to deliver on the value or efficiencies that were predicted for them. In some cases, a merger can end in total disaster, as in the case of the AOL-Time Warner deal. Nevertheless, there are three viable alternatives when it comes to an implementing an Integrative Growth Strategy. They are:

1. Horizontal. This growth strategy would involve buying a competing business or businesses. Employing such a strategy not only adds to your company’s growth, it also eliminates another barrier standing in your way of future growth – namely, a real or potential competitor.
2. Backward. A backward integrative growth strategy would involve buying one of your suppliers as a way to better control your supply chain. Doing so could help you to develop new products faster and potentially more cheaply.
3. Forward. Acquisitions can also be focused on buying component companies that are part of your distribution chain

As astronaut Chris Hadfield once said:

“Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it’s starting a new business, whether it’s leaving home, whether it’s getting married, or whether it’s flying in space.”

One Sunday afternoon early this year, I was editing my new book, “Meaningful Conversations“, and found myself reading the same paragraph over and over, a half dozen times before concluding that it was hopeless to continue. I simply could not marshal the necessary focus.
Instead of reading and absorbing the written words, I was distracted by the alerts of my device on apps, email and twitter.
“The net is designed to be an interruption system, a machine geared to dividing attention,” Nicholas Carr explains in his book “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.” “We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the division of our attention and the fragmentation of our thoughts, in return for the wealth of compelling or at least diverting information we receive.”

Distractions turn on different part of our brains and do so more quickly than the daily grind of paying attention, neuroscientists have discovered.
Separate regions are responsible for the different ways our brain focuses on the world around us, according to the study by MIT researchers, and our brain waves even pulsate at different frequencies depending on the type of outside stimulus.
“Neural activity goes up and down in a regular periodic way, with everything vibrating together,” said study co-leader and neuroscientist Earl K. Miller. “It is faster for automatic stimulus and slower for things we choose to pay attention to.”

Addiction is the relentless pull to a substance or an activity that becomes so compulsive it ultimately interferes with everyday life. By that definition, nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet. It has arguably replaced work itself as our most socially sanctioned addiction.
According to one recent survey, the average white-collar worker spends about six hours a day on email. That doesn’t count time online spent shopping, searching or keeping up with social media.
The brain’s craving for novelty, constant stimulation and immediate gratification creates something called a “compulsion loop.” Like lab rats and drug addicts, we need more and more to get the same effect.
Endless access to new information also easily overloads our working memory. When we reach cognitive overload, our ability to transfer learning to long-term memory significantly deteriorates. It’s as if our brain has become a full cup of water and anything more poured into it starts to spill out.

Are all the modern devices and digital conveniences we have at our disposal — from the web and social media to smartphones and tablets — making us more distracted and less able to concentrate? And is this harming our ability to think and be creative, and therefore by extension harming society as a whole? It’s a big question, the question is can we face the reality of the answer or are we afraid of missing something?
Is multi-tasking just a myth?

Joe Kraus of Google Ventures says he has an “unhealthy relationship” with his phone and is constantly pulling it out to check things, and that if he lets it, that behaviour “fills up those gaps in my day — some gaps of boredom, some of solitude.” The effect of all of this, he argues, is that we are increasingly distracted, and less able to pay attention to anything for a reasonable length of time, and this distraction is a “worsening condition.” We may think that we are getting things accomplished or multi-tasking, he says, but brain studies show that multi-tasking is a myth, and in reality we are just trying to do too many things at once and overloading our brain’s ability to concentrate.
The Google Ventures partner and former co-founder of Excite.com also quotes sociologist Dr. Sherry Turkle, to the effect that: “We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connections offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. We expect more from technology and less from each other.” This explains the constant desire for virtual contact, Kraus says — and that contact gets in the way of real relationships.

To live life with less distraction, consider implementing one or more of these 10 unconventional habits:
1. Turn off smart phone notifications.
2. Read/Answer email only twice each day.
3. Complete 1-2 minute projects immediately.
4. Remove physical clutter.
5. Clear visible, distracting digital clutter.
6. Accept and accentuate your personal rhythms.
7. Establish a healthy morning routine.
8. Cancel cable / unplug television.
9. Keep a to-do list.
10. Care less what other people think.

There is little doubt our world is filled with constant distraction which is effecting real relationships. And there is little doubt that those who achieve the greatest significance in life learn to manage it effectively.
As Bryan Adams once said:

“Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that’s fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.”

My good friend has recently moved his life and business to Jávea in Spain. Jávea is a coastal town in the comarca of Marina Alta, in the province of Alicante, Valencia, Spain, by the Mediterranean Sea. Situated on the back side of the Montgó, behind a wide bay and sheltered between two rocky headlands. The area was first inhabited in prehistoric times, 30,000 years ago by cave dwellers on Montgó.

My role was to assist him on business structure matters in Europe, focus is incredibly important when you are transitioning life and business to a new country and environment.
We decided to take the weekend off and on the Sunday climb Montgó, which rises to 753 metres (2,470 ft). It is the last spur on the Cordillera Prebética Mountain Range. The mountain rises dramatically from the valley floors. surrounding it and dominates the skyline for miles around. Its craggy cliffs are home to some of the most unusual flora and fauna in Spain. The mountain is renowned for its rock formations, cliffs, caves and natural harbours. From the Xàbia side Montgó is often said to resemble the head and trunk of an elephant and a real endurance test in 35 degrees of heat!
We always have many high energy discussions and decided, as the hike up the mountain was 7km and potentially 5 hours of climbing by the cliff edge, that talking about human 2 human and robo-automation maybe a good way not to focus on the sheer drop of the mountain edge.

It is true to say that there has been about 35% of current jobs in the UK at high risk of computerisation over the following 20 years, according to a study by researchers at Oxford University and Deloitte. (‘The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to automation’. Data supplied by Michael Osborne and Carl Frey, from Oxford University’s Martin School). Figures on UK job numbers and average wages from the Office for National Statistics and Deloitte UK.)
Whilst this is not 100% it can cause a level of insecurity when reviewing certain media and developments by companies for the replacement of humans.

A robot anesthesiologist designed by Johnson & Johnson is going off the market. Only three years after approval, the company has stopped production on the Sedasys machine due to poor sales.
The Sedasys machine was designed to provide anesthetic to patients undergoing routine surgeries. The American Society of Anesthesiologists was especially alarmed because anesthesiology is one of the riskier aspects of many surgeries. The machine, which administered the drugs while monitoring the patient’s vital signs, was originally considered for use on a number of surgeries.
Johnson & Johnson agreed to use it only for procedures like endoscopies, colonoscopies, and esophagogastroduodenoscopy. By mid-2015 it was being used in four hospitals. Apparently, that was not enough to justify its continued manufacture.
It’s always unsettling to think that a robot could put a whole profession out of a job especially when that profession involves years of training and expensive education. Apparently, no one is entirely safe. On the other hand, more and more people are facing astoundingly high healthcare costs. The Sedasys system cost one tenth as much, per procedure, as a human anesthesiologist.

We discussed another sector: financial advisers and financial services, where robo advisers could potentially override human competence in areas. Robo advisers do a great job of maintaining client portfolios. But that’s only one part of the job of financial management and that is why human advisers are not going away anytime soon. Traditional human advisers deliver the kind of personal, hands-on service that investors consistently say that they want.
Just as important, advisers are able to offer the continuing coaching to address the challenges clients face along the way – from market-volatility to cash-flow needs to ensure that transitory issues don’t devastate their long-term strategy.
Some critics point to supposed advantages of robo advisers. For one, they say that a passive, robo-managed portfolio will outperform a portfolio actively managed by a human. But that’s a matter of investment strategy, not an argument for going exclusively with digital advisers. Many human advisers might recommend passive investment strategies, depending on the needs of the client.

The need for human help

Ultimately, it’s all about what investors want and what they seem to want more than anything is the human touch. Many of the most successful digital platforms already include access to human advisers, while others are being retrofitted to serve as portals for traditional advisory practices.
That does not mean, of course, that there’s no market for digital services. Some traditional human-centered advisory firms, for instance, are adding digital tools to their offerings. But they’re doing so as a complement to the kind of personalized service that only they can provide to clients, not as a replacement for it. Creating and coaching households through the realisation of an optimal comprehensive financial plan still relies on the responsiveness and rapport only a traditional adviser can provide.

An interesting report by A.T Kearney state assets under management by robo advisers are estimated to increase 68 percent annually to about $2.2 trillion in five years, according to a forecast from the firm. About half of that is expected to come from money that’s already invested and the rest from non-invested assets. The robots may prove to be even better than humans at one of the most important tasks required of an investment adviser: knowing how to dodge taxes.

“The dramatic collapse of commission prices and the rise of automation means that institutional-grade tax-loss harvesting is now within the reach of all investors,” reads a blog post from robo-adviser pioneer Wealthfront, whose claim to fame is programming a robot with all the wisdom of professor Burt Malkiel.
There is no question that robo automation is an innovation, brought on by the millennials, there is significant value to efficiency if robots can execute customer lifetime value and brand customer loyalty. However, all of this raises some important questions. Like, could growth in robo-advisers among the fattest part of the demographics curve lead to more crowded trades and more tightly correlated markets? What are the implications for government from robots armed with “institutional grade tax-loss harvesting” strategies? Will the conference circuit become filled with awkwardly dancing robo advisers and robo sales traders? And will they play hookie during the breakout sessions to go shoot a round of golf with handicaps of approximately negative 40?

If we start seeing portfolios with 90 percent allocations to the Robo-Stox Global Robotics & Automation Index ETF, we’ll know something went wrong.

All of the aforementioned gives us plenty to ponder, I feel…….