The modern resume has become a digital resume. You no longer need to print out a stack of your resumes and hand them out in person. If you live in LA, you can email your resume to an employer in NY before you plan on moving there. With everyone becoming more tech and design savvy, you need your resume to stand out. You still need to tailor your resume to each position you are applying to and showcase your strengths through experience and accomplishments. However, you need to make sure you are using fonts and colors that are easily read on a computer screen. If you have any links, you can now make that hyperlinks so your potential employer can click on them. Colorado Tech University has put together a nice infographic to help you out with your resume.

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How many times have you told yourself you were going to do something and ended up not doing it? Next time, write it down. Better yet, tell someone. Don’t you think you would be more likely to follow through if you told someone what you wanted to do?  You could get some feedback and possibly a partner to help you out. Most importantly, you are now accountable for making your idea happen because someone else knows and likely wants for you to do it. Here are some things to note:

Share your ideas liberally. The benefits from accountability and feedback outweigh the risk that someone steals your idea! Many productive creative professionals and entrepreneurs claim that they become more committed to their ideas after telling people about them! The fact is that great ideas are plentiful, and very few people have the discipline and resources to make them happen. When you feel accountable to others, you are more likely to stay focused.

Broadcast your idea to generate valuable feedback. Great ideas don’t develop in isolation. You can become drunk on your own kool-aid without any candid feedback from others. A critical component of pushing ideas forward is gathering feedback to refine the idea.

Engage a few “partners” in every project. The more people you work with, the more pressure you will feel to provide further updates (and have some progress to report)! Why do publishers insist on offering advances to authors even when the author prefers to put off the advance in favor of a more lenient time schedule? The importance of deadlines has been a common theme across Behance’s profiles of creative professionals. It is no surprise that novels are less likely to end up in a drawer, half-written, when there is an advance cashed and a deadline looming. Use other people and externally-generated deadlines as a way to boost your accountability!

(via 99%)

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Success is difficult but it is attainable. You’re obviously gonna make mistakes and learn from them throughout your life, especially on your career path. Mistakes means you tried and that’s one step closer to success. There are definitely some avoidable mistakes and assumptions though. Here are some you want to avoid when starting a business or company:

1. Think of a plan as an end result. Say you’re agonizing over a business plan; somewhere along the way you’ve forgotten your goal is to actually start the business. Establish goals, create long-range plans, make to-do lists, and get going.

Most successful people are solid planners and excellent adapters. Get started so you can start adapting.

2. Assume style indicates substance. Logos, identity packages, killer wardrobes, eccentric work spaces… none of those matter if you can’t deliver. Businesses are built on go, not show. Your business or personal style will create a memorable brand as long as you deliver.

Just be you. And get to work.

3. Think of business as all-you-can-eat. Ideas are thrilling. Opportunities are tantalizing. Dreams are exciting.

Great, but execution is everything. Take on too much and you do few things well. Keep getting distracted by the latest trend and your best ideas get ignored.

Check out everything on the business menu, but only select a few items at a time. Don’t be afraid, or have too big an ego, to start small. Small is almost always your start-up friend.

4. Underestimate the time required. Nothing ever goes as quickly as you predict; in a start-up, time passes in reverse dog years. Create timelines but always factor in scenarios and sensitivities. If you don’t reach your estimated sales in six months, what will you do?

An estimate is theoretical. Plans are more concrete. Know what you will do if your timelines are wrong. They will be.

5. Assume perfection is required. Trying to create a product that meets every conceivable customer need? Sooner is almost always better than later, so do a Tim Gunn and make it work. Get to market and then start refining your products or services based on actual customer feedback.

6. Underestimate the money required. It’s easy to underestimate cost when you let hope creep into your calculations. A start-up, no matter how bootstrapped, always has unforeseen costs. Just because you really want something to work out doesn’t mean it will magically cost less.

Apply sensitivities and create plans in case your estimates are wrong. Just like your time estimates, they will be.

7. Give up too soon. Success rhymes with excess for good reason: Entrepreneurs who succeed do so because they work harder and longer. Before you give up, take a step back and decide whether additional effort is all that’s required to overcome roadblocks or hurdles.

Sometimes it’s not the business or the market. Sometimes it’s you. Never quit until you’re sure it’s not you.

8. Stop acting silly. If you’re like me your favorite childhood stories involve something stupid you did. (How else would I know the right mixture of sulfur and saltpeter will burn hot enough to turn a Tonka truck into a glop of metal?)

Business is serious enough. Every once in awhile, do something silly. Silly is memorable. Silly makes you feel like a kid again. Laughing at yourself will make the toughest day a lot easier.

9. Adopt expectations. We are all influenced to some extent by what other people think about us. But what do you want? What really matters to you? Live your life based on the opinions of others and you live their lives, not your own.

What matters most is what matters most to you. Always be sure you’re living your life. It’s the only one you get.

(via Inc.)

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Oprah Winfrey. Bill Gates. Richard Branson. Steve Jobs. These are people that have impacted the world. Their passions, hard-work and innovation set them apart and contributed to their success. Whether you aspire to be in a position similar to any of theirs or in any position that you would define as success for yourself, there are lessons to be taken from these entrepreneurial individuals.

1. Start with purpose: Perhaps the greatest common denominator amongst great world changers is the centrality of purpose in their organizations. Google’s mission is to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Whole Foods’ motto is “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet.” And Facebook’s mission is “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” This purpose is what serves as a compass for the company and its employees. Finding and articulating your purpose are critical to launching a world-changing enterprise.

2. You’re not too old: Too often, we view entrepreneurship as a young person’s game or something for which you must be uniquely suited. Rather, entrepreneurship is about having an idea and the courage to pursue it — no matter your age. Did you know that when Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank started Home Depot, they were 34 and 48 years old, respectively? Further, neither was an entrepreneur: Marcus was a former pharmacist, and both had just been fired from their jobs at Handy Dan Improvement Centers.

3. Seek advice: It’s difficult to start and grow a company in isolation, and mentorship and peer counseling are critical to maintaining your focus and direction. Find those who have been through your experience before and seek their guidance on the situation. Even great entrepreneurs like Howard Schultz seek advice when confronted with difficult situations. Schultz reassumed his leadership post at Starbucks, at least partially, as a result of a bicycle ride with Michael Dell. Schultz and Dell ran into each other vacationing in Hawaii, and during a three-hour ride along the Kona coast, Dell advised Schultz on how to handle Wall Street and the company if he resumed leadership at then struggling Starbucks.

4. Be the expert: Many MBAs, in particular, are tempted to launch businesses they know little about because they seem to have big “upside” — but to change the world it pays to be an expert. Find something you love, become an expert, and see what it would take to innovate in the space. Larry Page and Sergey Brin succeeded at Google at least partially because they were experts on search. To quote Page: “[W]e really benefited from being real experts…we understood all aspects of search. We talked to all the search companies. We really knew a lot about what was going on.” They didn’t know exactly how to bring their product to market or build a world-class organization, but they knew more about how to comb the web for useful information than anyone on the planet.

5. Start small: World-changing businesses are rarely world-changing from day one. Sometimes they’re not even fully formed concepts. Many groundbreaking entrepreneurs simply start with a small idea and grow with it as the idea evolves. If you’re waiting to launch your business because you can’t see the path to changing the world, you may be missing an opportunity to learn through experimentation. One of the most shocking lessons of World Changers was how few of these entrepreneurs started “big” or even with “big things” in mind. Oprah Winfrey launched her career as a TV reporter in Nashville and worked as a reporter of local talk show host until entertainment lawyer Jeff Jacobs encouraged her to create her own show and company. Richard Branson sold records out of the trunk of his car, and Michael Dell got into business for himself, upgrading personal computers from his college dorm room.

To read their stories and learn some more, check out the book, World Changers.

(via HBR)

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Many of us wish the socket at the bottom of our iPhones and iPads fit a USB drive. Since we do much of our work on these devices, it would be quite convenient to access files via a thumb drive. Well, iFlash is here to make your day better.

Supported file formats include
for pictures: BMP, TIF, TIFF, XMB, GIF, ICO, CUR, JPG and PNG
for video: MPV, M4V, MOV, MP4
for audio: MP3, CAF, ACC, AIF WAV AIFF and M4A

We haven’t heard of most of those file types either but all you need to know is that this baby can hold photos, videos, music and even documents (with the proper app) for your mobile device.

Get the 8GB for $99 or the 16GB here.

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Everyone has ideas. Many people probably some some pretty damn good ideas. Few people make their ideas happen. We want you to be a part of that group of few. Stop getting distracted with unnecessary ”work”. Push yourself over the difficult parts of the project. Founder of Behance, Scott Belksy‘s goal is make ideas happen. Here is how:

1. Avoid A Reactionary Workflow
Without realizing it, most of us have gradually adopted a “reactionary workflow.” We are constantly bombarded with incoming communication: email, text messages, tweets, Facebook posts, phone calls, instant messages, etc. Rather than be proactive with our energy, we spend all of our energy reacting, enslaved to the last incoming item.

To avoid this reactionary workflow, some of the most productive people I have met schedule what can be called “windows of non-stimulation” in their day. For two to three hours per day, these people avoid email and all other incoming communication. In this time, they focus on their list of big items: not routine tasks, but long-term projects that require research and deep thought.

Another idea is to aggregate all messages in a central location. Setting your social networks to email you, and using filters to automatically manage these emails, will reduce your “hopping time” (when you hop between sources of communication) and focus your attention. Some people even have their voice mails transcribed automatically and forwarded by email. In a world of many inboxes, you have to consolidate.

2. Strip Projects To Three Primary Elements
Every project in life can ultimately be reduced to just three primary elements: 1) action steps, 2) backburner items and 3) references. Action steps are tasks that can be articulated succinctly and begin with verbs. They should be kept separate from your notes and sketches.

Backburner items are ideas that come up during brainstorming or while on the run and that are not actionable but may be later on. Backburner items should be collected in a central location and revisited periodically as a ritual. One leader I met prints out his list of backburner items (which he stores in Word document) on the first Sunday of every month. He grabs the sheet (and a beer) and then sits down to review the entire list. Some items will be crossed off as irrelevant, some will remain on the list, and some will be transformed into action steps.

The third element of every project is references: the articles, notes and other stuff that collect around you. It turns out that references are overrated. Rather than spend hours organizing your notes, consider simply filing your notes chronologically (i.e. not by project or anything else) in one big file. In the age of digital calendars, we can search for any meeting and quickly find the notes taken on that date.

3. Measure Meetings With Action Steps
Meetings are extremely expensive considering the cost of time and interruptions they represent. Beware of “posting meetings” or meeting “just because it’s Monday.” Such meetings are usually scheduled for the morning—when you’re at your most productive—and often end without any action steps having been captured. A meeting that ends without any action steps should have been a voice mail or email.

When you do meet with clients or colleagues, end each meeting with a quick review and capture the action steps. The exercise should take less than 30 seconds per person. Each person should share what they captured. Doing so will almost always reveal a few action steps that were missed, duplicated or misunderstood. Reading your action steps aloud also cultivates a sense of accountability.

4. Reduce Your Insecurity Work
In the era of Google Analytics and Twitter, we spend too much time obsessing over real-time data because it’s all at our fingertips. Whether it’s your website’s traffic or bank account, checking these repeatedly doesn’t help make your ideas happen. They just make you feel “safe.” Insecurity work is stuff we do that (1) has no definable outcome, (2) does not move the ball forward in any way and (3) takes up so little time that we can do it multiple times a day without realizing it. Still, it puts us at ease.

The first step to reducing insecurity work is becoming self-aware. Identify the insecurity work in your daily life. The second step is to establish guidelines and rituals for yourself that create discipline. Perhaps you could try restricting all of your insecurity work to a particular 30 minutes every day? The third step, if applicable, is to delegate your insecurity tasks to a less insecure colleague, who can review the data periodically and report any concerns.

5. The Creative Process Is About Surviving The “Project Plateau.”
Everyone has their own approach to generating ideas. There’s no “best way” to be creative. But when it comes to the process of executing ideas, we all face one challenge in particular: sticking with it. Most ideas are abandoned at what I’ve come to call the “project plateau”: the point when creative excitement wanes and the pain of deadlines and project management becomes burdensome. To escape this pain, we generate a new idea (and abandon the one we were working on). This process can easily repeat itself ad infinitum, without us ever finishing anything meaningful.

Show your ideas some respect, and spend some energy improving how you execute. If not for you, do it for everyone else who will benefit from your ideas once they actually see the light.

(via Smashing Magazine)

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Company: RICH LIFE BRAND
Location: Downtown Los Angeles
Position: Graphic Designer

Job Description
Rich Life is looking for Graphic Designer capable of taking direction. Must be able to work in a extremely fast paced, team oriented environment.

Must have knowledge of fashion, specifically streetwear brands, sneaker culture and trends a plus. We are a new brand that is growing at a rapid pace, so there is room for growth and advancement within the company. Salary based pay. Must be able to work 40+ hours a week.

Job Requirements
Must be efficient in Illustrator, Photo Shop, In Design. Must have own computer and be flexible on hours.

How To Apply
Email phillynicks@richlifebrand.com

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When you aren’t in school anymore, you don’t readily have the opportunity to sit, watch, learn and absorb knowledge. TED talks are probably the closest thing we have to a classroom lecture but those are more inspirational and mind-opening videos. When you are pursuing your dream career, a career that utilizes your key skills and interests, you are absorbing and applying what you directly learn on the job and/or from your mentor. However, some folks don’t have that opportunity yet. Some folks have that opportunity but still want to learn more. Why not have an easily accessible classroom for these people that want to learn something?

Taught by individuals who want to share their knowledge in-person and online, Skillshare gives you the opportunity to learn everything from knitting to bartending to project management. Classes range from around $10 to upwards of $60 (the highest we saw), but most one-time classes seem to be under $20. There are some classes that are even multi-class and week. Skillshare provides you with an place where you can develop a new skill set or better the ones you already have.

It’s free to browse classes, class descriptions, teacher reviews and student testimonials so why not just give it a look. Maybe you have some knowledge you want to drop of your own. It’s even free to post a class, share it and teach it. You can even make a few bucks off of it.

The future belongs to the curious. That’s you. Skillshare caters to that curiosity. Here is their manifesto:

At Skillshare, we are on a mission to reawaken the slumbering curiosity and that rampant drive in everyone. To act as an enticing reminder that we are all natural-born learners and teachers — from day one to twenty thousand and one. We want to push everyone to discover their passions and be brave enough to chase them. Skillshare exists to make everyone the greatest possible version of themselves.

Our vision is to democratize learning by empowering teaching. To build a world where you can learn anything from anyone. Powered by an endless cycle of learning and sharing passions. We will turn every community into a campus. Every address into a classroom. And every inhabitant into a student and teacher. Skillshare is for the doers, not the academics or the theorists.

We are building the new world of education. From now on, there will be no passion left undiscovered, no personal potential left unfulfilled and no skill left unshared. In short, we’re here to change the world by increasing the global passion index.

The future belongs to the curious. The ones who are not afraid to try it, explore it, poke at it, question it and turn it inside out.

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We wish our creativity juices were working at 110% at all times. However, creativity tends to come and go. So what are you supposed to do when you are working on something that requires your creativity A-game? We suggest relaxing, going to your normals avenues for inspiration, taking a long walk and keeping in mind the 10 following creativity hacks:

1. Color Me Blue
A 2009 study found that subjects solved twice as many insight puzzles when surrounded by the color blue, since it leads to more relaxed and associative thinking. Red, on other hand, makes people more alert and aware, so it is a better backdrop for solving analytic problems.

2. Get Groggy
According to a study published last month, people at their least alert time of day—think of a night person early in the morning—performed far better on various creative puzzles, sometimes improving their success rate by 50%. Grogginess has creative perks.

3. Daydream Away
Research led by Jonathan Schooler at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has found that people who daydream more score higher on various tests of creativity.

4. Think Like A Child
When subjects are told to imagine themselves as 7-year-olds, they score significantly higher on tests of divergent thinking, such as trying to invent alternative uses for an old car tire.

5. Laugh It Up
When people are exposed to a short video of stand-up comedy, they solve about 20% more insight puzzles.

6. Imagine That You Are Far Away
Research conducted at Indiana University found that people were much better at solving insight puzzles when they were told that the puzzles came from Greece or California, and not from a local lab.

7. Keep It Generic
One way to increase problem-solving ability is to change the verbs used to describe the problem. When the verbs are extremely specific, people think in narrow terms. In contrast, the use of more generic verbs—say, “moving” instead of “driving”—can lead to dramatic increases in the number of problems solved.

8. Work Outside the Box
According to new study, volunteers performed significantly better on a standard test of creativity when they were seated outside a 5-foot-square workspace, perhaps because they internalized the metaphor of thinking outside the box. The lesson? Your cubicle is holding you back.

9. See the World
According to research led by Adam Galinsky, students who have lived abroad were much more likely to solve a classic insight puzzle. Their experience of another culture endowed them with a valuable open-mindedness. This effect also applies to professionals: Fashion-house directors who have lived in many countries produce clothing that their peers rate as far more creative.

10. Move to a Metropolis
Physicists at the Santa Fe Institute have found that moving from a small city to one that is twice as large leads inventors to produce, on average, about 15% more patents.

(via WSJ)

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We always worry about what’s broken and follow the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” policy. Why not tweak what already works? Something may be 95% as good as it can be, why not make it 100%. We aren’t saying to make a complete 180˚ to change things up. Maybe alter your routine slightly or take on a project you may not be completely used to. This is what separates the good from the great.

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