When we were in the very thick of lockdown, I spoke to one of my best friends who has lived in Hong Kong for some years now. I was, quite naively, talking to her about it all as though she too was in lockdown. It is a global pandemic, after all.
After listening to me list the reasons why lockdown was necessary but very stressful, she stopped me and said: “Oh. I’ve been going to work. Loads of places are open. Things aren’t like that here.” Reeling, I asked what she meant. “Well, we all just wear masks over here. Like, all the time. It’s just commonplace.” She told me, with a shrug.
Masks! To contain and prevent the spread of illness! So simple. So easy. So unselfish. But it’s not like we didn’t know that already, is it? I am, of course, wearing a mask in the places that it’s required. Why wouldn’t I? Yes, it’s a bit uncomfortable and if you’re wearing lip balm it sort of gets all over it, but having seen what some medical staff have to wear, we really can’t complain. I have seen one too many selfies of mask-free people in supermarkets, and I worry that sometimes we forget about doing things for the collective good. So please, I implore you. Don’t be one of those people.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Leaving the comfort zone and initiating the challenges necessary to achieve your goals will always represent the beginning of the road to success for those who are successful. This is exactly the case of Francesco Rivera, an Italian entrepreneur and professional salesman, who, at only 25 years old, has managed to forge a renowned career in elements such as marketing and e-commerce.
From a very young age, the passion and dedication to study the functioning of the Web and online marketing were constant in Rivera's life. That is why, at the age of 20, he decided to embark on a new path.
Already a graduate in accounting and with extensive knowledge of Facebook Business, as he had spent much of his time studying this tool, he developed Tesoro Communication. A marketing agency focused on social management and content development.
This represented the beginning of its growth, as clients were not long in coming, allowing both the company and Rivera to reach a high level. But this was just the beginning. Soon after, the company positioned itself as ‘GIFKING’, having first launched Instagram's custom gifs in the European market, which further increased its recognition.
Today, it has produced more than 3,000 animated gifs in one year. Companies, events, public figures, artists, influencers, have requested his services. Among the most prominent are Philipp Plein, 6ix9ine, Stefano Gabbana, Willy William, Philippe Model, Radio Italia, Laura Pausini, Vasco Rossi, Italian singers and rappers, among others.
From accountant to GIF King of Instagram
Surrounding himself with local family businesses has been a great opportunity for Rivera to approach different marketing processes. However, it has been his constant curiosity in technological advances and the evolution of marketing processes to the internet that has motivated him to turn his passion into a successful business.
Starting his idea from scratch was the biggest challenge he has ever faced. Obstacles and fears were not lacking along the way. However, focus and persistence in achieving his goals were the engines that drove him to start and still do.
For this young entrepreneur, it is possible to sell anything nowadays, you just need to have the mentality to adapt to the situations, transmitting the exact objective and message of what you want.
How to do this? From his perspective, success in a venture comes by considering the following aspects:
The results of building day-to-day
For this young man, it is necessary never to give up thinking that there is really a winning strategy. Marching step by step, error by error, is the technique to which he adjusts his goals. For it ensures that results are built with effort on a daily basis and not shortly after they have begun.
Overcoming fear and ignoring others' judgments
According to Rivera's perspective, the greatest limitations of an entrepreneur are the fear and negative judgment of people in your environment. Overcoming the former and ignoring the latter is elementary from his perspective.
“Usually, you will only be criticized by people who do not have the willpower and the thinking that you have.” Overcoming the fear of failure will allow you to see a path more clearly towards the top. "Keep in mind that to succeed you have to make mistakes, make mistakes all the time, and establish a performance-based life routine."
Philosophy 80-20
One of the keys to success for this young entrepreneur is the philosophy where mentality represents 80 per cent and skills 20 per cent. Having a very high goal, confidence, and security in it, is what will open a wide list of possible actions to carry out what you propose.
Back to the base
Things will not always be positive or easy. And it is precisely at this point that Rivera proposes “return to base”. Work on self-evaluation and analysis processes to correct mistakes, work on it, and start again to scale up all the objectives.
Thinking “if I give up, how do I do it" is the point to notice that failure is part of learning and it will always be possible to start again.
A winning team
Teamwork is a fundamental strategy for this Italian entrepreneur. In his opinion, "A winning team, with its own ideas, is the basis for success in business.” And it is this that helps forge a path to victory.
After overcoming his fear of online exposure, he turned down hundreds of clients for not considering them committed to the work at hand and enjoying great achievements. Rivera believes he still has some way to go.
His main goal has been to become an online business coach through social media, thus contributing to supporting people who want to turn their lives around in this environment.
Traveling, achieving financial freedom, and feeling that he has achieved all the goals he has set for himself is the approach that keeps Rivera growing and learning. Even though he is an experienced entrepreneur, he believes that there is always something new to learn in order to move towards the goal.
A few years ago, while I was president of the Writers Guild of America, East, several union members and I went down to Washington to hold a midday briefing on Capitol Hill about net neutrality.
We were in the House Judiciary Committee hearing room in the Rayburn office building. To lure an audience, on a table at the back, we provided a pile of free paper bag lunches for the small crowd. As usual with this sort of event, most of the people who showed up were hungry young congressional staffers but at one point, a colleague poked me in the ribs, pointed and said, "Look—an actual congressman is grabbing a couple of our lunches!"
"Doesn't count," I replied. "It's Louie Gohmert."
Yes, Louie Gohmert, the man the Lincoln Project's Steve Schmidt described just this week as "America's dumbest and craziest congressman." The man who claimed the Obama White House had been infiltrated by "many Muslim Brotherhood members" and once tried to nominate as Speaker of the House a man who had just been beaten for reelection. The man who once declared that same-sex marriage caused Noah's flood and that Charlottesville was a "false flag" operation, with people posing as KKK and Black Lives Matter protesters bused in to make trouble. The man who outed the alleged whistleblower during the impeachment proceedings and voted against a Federal anti-lynching law. And on and on…
In the latest chapter of the ongoing saga of East Texas US Rep. Gohmert holding onto his title as the biggest blockhead in Congress (admittedly, there are a lot of contenders), it was revealed that Gohmert tested positive for COVID-19 after weeks of walking around the capitol and congressional offices without a mask. His condition was caught when he was prescreened by the White House as he was getting ready to fly to West Texas with Donald Trump on Air Force One. Who knows how long he'd been walking the halls and corridors spreading contagion along with his own innate cheer and charm?
Previously, he had claimed that he didn't needed to wear a mask because he was being tested on a regular basis. The day before his diagnosis was announced, he was sitting maskless at the House Judiciary Committee hearing with Attorney General William Barr and at one point was seen leaving a nearby men's room with Barr. There was minimal social distancing and Barr wasn't wearing a mask, either.
Upon receiving word of Gohmert's positive test, the following occurred:
Rather than call and immediately self-quarantine, he went to his office to personally inform the staff of his status. It's uncertain as to whether he was wearing a mask.
A Gohmert aide tweeted Jake Sherman at Politico, "When you write your story, can you include the fact that Louie requires full staff to be in the office, including three interns, so that 'we could be an example to America on how to open up safely.' When probing the office, you might want to ask how often people were berated for wearing masks." Gohmert denied the beratement accusation.
Subsequently, Sherman tweeted, "Ive gotten a flood of emails from republican staffers who say they too are being forced to come to the hill without a mask now." (sic)
In a video, Gohmert idiotically argued that wearing a mask – assuming he ever was wearing one -- might have made him sick. "I can't help but wonder if by keeping a mask on," he said, "keeping it in place -- if I might've got some germ, some of the virus, on the mask and breathed it in."
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accidentally referred to Gohmert as "Congressman COVID."
As per The Washington Post, on Wednesday night, Gohmert "told Fox News host Sean Hannity he and his doctor already had agreed on a treatment: hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug pushed by President Trump and his allies despite warnings from the Food and Drug Administration and medical experts that it isn't effective as a coronavirus treatment and could carry significant health risks. 'My doctor and I are all in.'"
This all would be funny in a sardonic, blackly humorous sort of way if not for the fact that Gohmert consistently has spread misinformation about the virus, and hails from a state where the governor and other elected Republican officials were in denial about COVID, reopened too early and as of this writing have 436,402 confirmed coronavirus cases and 7,107 deaths.
And then there's this: last Sunday, competing demonstrations were held at a public square in downtown Tyler, Texas, part of Gohmert's district. One was a pro-police protest—with MAGA hats, Trump 2020 signs and tee shirts and at least one Confederate flag—the other a smaller counterprotest in support of Gohmert's Democratic opponent for the House and against the presence of anonymous Federal law enforcement in Portland, Oregon.
Earlier in the week, Esquire's Charlie Pierce gave a heads up as to what happened next. Here's part of an account, as reported by a local news site, The Gilmer Mirror:
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Armed supporters of Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Tyler) brutally beat and assaulted Ryan Miller, the campaign manager for Gohmert's opponent, Hank Gilbert (D-Tyler) around 2:30 PM CST Sunday during a peaceful rally organized to protest the unconstitutional occupation of Portland, Oregon on the courthouse square in downtown Tyler.
Miller was attacked by at least four protesters, some of whom were armed, and sustained blows to the head and other parts of his body, as well as a large gash under his eye. The incident occurred as officers from the Tyler Police Department drove around the square idly, waving at the Blue Lives Matter counter-protesters who had come to support Gilbert's opponent.
Gohmert's supporters disrupted the rally by shouting, 'Louie! Louie! Louie!' repeatedly, including while Miller was being brutally attacked.
A police report has been filed with Tyler police, who showed up on the square after the violence was well-underway.
Tyler police say their investigation is ongoing. But when Louie Gohmert was asked about the incident, he refused to condemn the attack and characteristically, turned the situation on its head. He responded (in part), "[W]hat came to my mind is the violence Democrat leaders paid to create at Trump campaign events in 2016, followed by Democrats then claiming Donald Trump incited violence. They created the mess, then blamed candidate Trump. There are Democrats and Marxists doing the same thing this year, as well.
… It is unfortunate that extremists wanted to bring the violent protests and riots we've seen around the country to our peaceable area here in East Texas. …The goal of the Marxist groups is to destroy this great nation through violence and intimidation, which calls into question why anyone of sound mind would want to support and replicate these violent activities in Tyler. That comes from either terrible judgment or an intent to use Bolshevik or Mao tactics.
Contrast that inflammatory lying nonsense and all his other bloviating rhetoric with the final words left us on Thursday by another congressman, the late John Lewis, laid to rest in Atlanta with bouquets of righteous eloquence from friends and colleagues, among them House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Presidents Bush, Clinton and Obama.
"Democracy is not a state," Rep. Lewis wrote in his farewell. "It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself… In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring."
We can make fun of Louie Gohmert; he's an easy target. But for all the buffoonery, he's a very dangerous fellow, an enabler of Donald Trump and the forces that seek to undermine and destroy everything that John Lewis and the speakers at his funeral represent, especially true freedom and patriotism, unity and equal justice under the law.
You can go ahead and laugh at Louie Gohmert but remember, he represents the views of far too many of our fellow Americans—and he's probably heading for re-election to his eighth term in the House.
San Antonio – With the limited supply of disinfectant spray available in stores these day, The Deal Guy, Matt Granite shows us an inexpensive and easy way to always be stocked with disinfectant that stacks up with any store bought brand.
The only ingredients you need:
Water
1 tablespoon of salt
And that’s it.
Add these to a Pur-Well spray bottle and plug it in to allow the electrochemical reaction to take place in just 8 minutes! The result is a disinfectant that kills 99.99% of germs and bacteria in an environmentally friendly solution. The cost comes out to less than 10 cents per gallon.
Bears coach Matt Nagy inspired 1,000 blogs and 10,000 snarky tweets this winter when he detailed what he wanted to see from Mitch Trubisky in 2020:
"Number one is going to be--we talked about decision-making, but I want him to be a master at understanding coverages, you know?" Nagy said at the team's end-of-season press conference on December 31st. "So when these defensive coordinators, they have different ways of showing different coverages, and they’re good at it. Our first year here, I thought Mitch did a really good job of understanding the importance of getting in and out of the huddle with the verbiage that we have.
"We’ve also learned, not just with him but with our players, how to use that. The next step, we talked about it last year, was level 202, right? Now, how do you see the defense? Is that front, stunts, blitzes? Is that first Y vision with a shift in the mike, a rotation? Let’s now put that all together and understand how defenses are going to try to trick you, and let’s not get tricked."
The 'master of understanding coverages' grabbed headlines – both serious and extremely not – for the next few news cycles, and in hindsight was clearly the starting gun in the team's coming quarterback comeptition. On Friday afternoon, both quarterbacks in said competition talked to the media for the first time during 2020's "training camp," and Trubisky spoke to what he thinks becoming a 'master of coverages' entails. And while those around Halas Hall have always had laudatory things to say about Trubisky's work ethic in the film room, this summer's given the QB a chance to reevaluate how he's watching film.
"I think it's just being more detailed," he said. "How you're studying film, how you're labeling coverages as an offense and really as a whole staff. How we're talking through plays, getting guys on the same page and we're all thinking like one mind. When we're seeing something as a defense, we're all reacting the same way and we're identifying it the same way and communicating it the same way as well so we're able to play faster. Seeing a lot of different coverages and making sure everyone is seeing the same thing."
Skepticism regarding how much that'll translate on the field is fair, and Trubisky will be the first one to admit that. But outside of hanging with his girlfriend and the occasional round of golf, the Bears' QB has spent his summer – like everyone else – holed up at home in Chicago. That's a lot of time spent watching a lot of unflattering tape.
"So I watched a lot of ball over this past year and over the summer and you see the mistakes," he said. "You see really good plays. You see some really bad plays. And you see just some dumb things that just shouldn’t happen. But I think everyone just being on the same page and doing their jobs and me making smart decisions, that’s where you see a lot of the good plays happen. And so I think all the bad mistakes, they’re easily correctable, and I think you just talk through those things to be on the same page with your guys."
New Hampshire has just made it relatively easy to register your Samson Switchblade - or other flying ... [+]car - for the road in hopes that early adopters and roadable aircraft makers will come to the state.
Samson Sky
The dream of the “flying car” has captured public imagination since the post WWII era but it has always been checked by reality. Flying isn’t the same as driving and despite a few actual road-air vehicles being available - from the Aerocar in 1949 to today’s Samson Switchblade, PAL-V and Terrafugia TF-X - actually using them on-road simply hasn’t been a practical proposition. That may have begun to change.
On Tuesday (July 28) New Hampshire Governor, Chris Sununu (R), signed NH HB1517. It has quickly been nicknamed the “Jetson Bill” after the 1960s animated sitcom “The Jetsons” in which George Jetson squired his family in a flying car.
The state law addresses “roadable aircraft” and establishes a commission to study vehicles that can be driven on public roads and fly through public airspace. Crucially, from the point of view of companies looking to build and sell flying cars, the bill provides for the road registration of such vehicles along with the establishment of rules for inspections and accidents.
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The notion of roadable aircraft is clarified by the Bill which stipulates that you can drive your flying car in its “car” configuration but you won’t be allowed to takeoff from or land on public roads in airplane mode. In essence, the legislation makes it more practical to drive your flying car to and from an airport.
“I consider this ideal legislation for allowing this type of vehicle to become part of the broad, regular system of travel,” says Sam Bousfield, CEO of Oregon-based startup, Samson Sky. Bousfield’s company is building the “Switchblade”, a three-wheeled vehicle with the ability to swing its wings out and extend its tail for flight in under three minutes.
Samson Sky's "Switchblade" can cruise at about 200 mph aloft and go from zero to 60 mph on the ... [+]ground in about 6.5 seconds its maker claims.
Samson Sky
Powered by a turbocharged four cylinder engine, it will be capable of cruising at up to 200 mph and 13,000 feet once aloft. That has yet to happen though Bousfield was conducting high-speed taxi tests of the flying car when we spoke. Switchblade’s first flight is on track for later this year Samson Sky’s CEO says.
Why Advance a Flying Cars Bill Now?
New Hampshire Representative, Steven Smith (R), sponsored the Jetson Bill after former state representative Keith Ammon, who currently represents Dutch-owned flying car maker, PAL-V in the state, “brought me a list of stuff we needed to address,” Smith says.
Rep. Smith has long been interested in emerging transportation technology which he calls one of his “passions”. He currently chairs the State’s autonomous vehicle review commission. “I look for ways to boost our image as a state that embraces technology change. Maybe people will come here first.”
The new law takes advantage of the regulatory framework already in place for aircraft which are required to be certified by the FAA. Airplanes must have thorough annual inspections by licensed aircraft mechanics and their pilots must be licensed and undergo annual physicals. The FAA equivalent of a license plate is an “N” number or tail number.
With all of the above already in place, the New Hampshire legislation allows the vehicle to be registered for road use by paying a set fee, requiring no further compliances from the State - just go to the DMV. You will have to add a license plate to go along with your N number.
“If you fly into Manchester-Boston Regional Airport in one of these things,” Smith says, “the difference now is that instead of putting it in a hangar and calling a cab or Uber, you fold the wings up and you can drive to your hotel.”
Common Sense Precedent
The Jetson Bill could well be precedent setting for nationwide flying car regulations, perhaps even other hybrid forms of transport. Its adoption is owed to some common sense thinking by both flying car makers and state legislators.
Samson Sky, PAL-V and Massachusetts-based (Chinese owned) Terrafugia all provided legislators with input on the technical capabilities and safety aspects of their offerings as cars. While there are differences between safety requirements for airplanes and autos, there is some crossover, Sam Bousfield, notes.
“All three of these [roadable aircraft companies] have worked hard to offer a capable vehicle on the road as well as in the air. The FAA does require rollover protection and seatbelts. We went beyond that to provide laminated safety glass like an automobile. We went further to provide certified front and rear crumple zones [FAA requires only front crumple zones] and we also added side intrusion protection.”
The trio of flying cars also all run on unleaded pump gas rather the 100 octane low-lead aviation fuel used by light aircraft. This kind of design integration made legislators comfortable and motivated them to be practical Smith says.
“We decided that they really need license plates so that road patrol officers have a way to identify them. But what about a VIN (vehicle identification) number? Aircraft have different identification numbers. The state aeronautics division and the [state] Division of Motor Vehicles agreed that since it has to be registered as an airplane first, which receives a state ID number, that will also be what passes for the VIN number. That way, we’re not using multiple identifying numbers on one vehicle.”
The common sense approach could be an enabler for the flying car business, helping it get out of the gate well before much-touted Urban Air Mobility concepts which have many more regulatory, technical and market hurdles to overcome.
An artist rendering of the Switchblade on the commute home from the City.
Samson Sky
You’ll still need to be a licensed pilot but the simplicity of registering your roadable aircraft with the local DMV could encourage early adopters - and insurance companies - to actually move the flying car dream forward.
“I think it’s going to be the best way to introduce this type of vehicle,” Bousfield affirms. “If there’s a problem that crops up, governments have the opportunity to revisit it and make sure there’s enough safety for people and yet there’s enough flexibility so that something new like this could actually happen.”
August 01, 2020 at 01:00AM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2020/07/31/registering-your-flying-car-in-new-hampshire-is-easy-thanks-to-the-jetson-bill/
Registering Your Flying Car In New Hampshire Is Easy Thanks To The ‘Jetson Bill’ - Forbes
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