success - tribunecontentagency.com€¦ · q: is the job market heating up enough to pro-duce...

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Q: Is the job market heating up enough to pro- duce multiple offers for some candidates? A: Yes. Applicants are likely to receive multiple offers in sectors such as technology, accounting, finance, mar- keting, human resources and legal services. Employers are hiring people who can develop mobile applica- tions, provide administrative support, protect company data and promote company brands through targeted marketing. Q: What should you do if you get more than one offer? A: When you are interviewing at multiple firms, it’s important not to accept an offer too quickly — too many people do. Let’s say you are interviewing at three firms: A, B and C. If you get an offer from company A, say thank you, note that you are in discussions with other firms, and ask for time to consider the offer. Call your contacts at B and C to let them know that you have an offer in hand and ask about their timing for making a decision. You won’t hurt your chances with A as long as you don’t keep the people there waiting too long. Depending on the role, one to two weeks is gener- ally okay. Q: What if you get an offer for your dream job after you’ve accepted another offer, or even after you’ve started working? A: Stay objective and ask yourself these questions: Does the second offer fulfill every aspect of my career plan? Will it meet my financial needs and offer stabil- ity? Will I learn the skills that will help me advance in my career? As you make your decision, seek advice from a mentor or professional adviser. (Your friends won’t be qualified to coach you.) If your answers to all these questions are yes, then take the second offer. Q: How can you do that without burning bridges? A: Make sure to give your current company plenty of notice. Keep the discussion businesslike, but be prepared to have a dissatisfied supervisor. Industries are small, and your paths might cross again. Someone at this company may be in a position to hire you again, so keep your interactions as professional and cordial as possible. Q: If you opt to stay at a less-than-perfect job, how can you get back on your preferred career path? A: Get the most out of the role by learning as much as you can and treating it as if it were your dream job. Work hard and keep networking in your industry so you are visible for new opportunities. Your work ethic could open a door at your current firm that’s a better fit. Your performance review is a great time to ask for training, more flexibility or other sweeteners. SUCCESS Your guide to managing money, work and the business of life After I went on TV recently saying that investors should try to fight the urge to do something amid the first stock market correction in nearly four years, I received an angry email from a viewer who questioned this advice. He believed that the market sell-off was just the tip of the iceberg and that inves- tors should bail out of all stock holdings. While many investors believe they can time the market, there is ample evidence that it does not work. Accord- ing to an analysis by the research firm Dalbar, the 20-year annualized return (through 2014) for the average equity mutual fund investor was 5.19 percent, compared to the 20-year annualized S&P 500 return of 9.85 percent. Inves- tors lagged the index by a whopping 4.66 percent annually. Dalbar reports that the biggest reason for underper- formance is psychology, highlighted by investor panic selling at the bottom and the lure of following short-term market trends. Dalbar CEO Louis Harvey says the idea that an investor can generate market-beating returns through proper timing is “totally fictional.” Consider this: If you had sold all of your stocks during the first week of the financial crisis in September 2008, you would have been shielded from another 40 percent or more in further losses (stocks bottomed out in March 2009). Sounds great, but how would you have known when to get back in? Most investors, from seasoned pros to mere mortals who are saving for retirement, lack the guts or lucky tim- ing to buy when stock indexes seem like they are hurtling towards zero! As a result, even if you made a decent sale in the fall of 2008, you most likely would not have bought the rock bot- tom in March 2009 and you might have missed a large portion of the near tripling in value of the indexes from the lows. The opposite of those panic-induced sell orders are those who fear buying at the top of the market, which is often the rationale for many who can’t pull the trigger on an investment. There’s good news here as well: Dan Wiener, editor of the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors, points out that the investor who had the bad luck of buy- ing Vanguard 500 Index on the Friday before Black Monday (October 19, 1987) when the index fund dropped 20.5 per- cent in a day, did just fine, provided he didn’t panic and sell. In fact, “he would have had a gain of 2.1 percent one year later, and a total gain of 19.3 percent three years later.” Wiener has conducted stock market research dating back to 1927. He found that for those who invest for a single day, the chance of losing money is 46 percent, but for those who invest with a 10-year investment horizon the chance of success improves dramatically — to 87 percent. Despite fielding an angry email or two, my advice to stay put and not be reactive puts me in good company. John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, wrote this about market timing: “After nearly 50 years in this business, I do not know of anybody who has done it successfully and consistently. I don’t even know of anybody who knows anybody who has done it successfully and consistently.” Bottom line: stick to your plan! Contact Jill Schlesinger, senior business analyst for CBS News, at [email protected]. Time in the market is the secret to success In essence, market timing re- quires two nearly impossible decisions: when to get out and then when to get back in. By Dandan Zou | MILLES STUDIO/FOTOLIA Jill Schlesinger Jill on Money Interviewing advice for a hot job market More than one offer? Don’t want to burn bridges? Kiplinger spoke with Paul McDonald, a senior executive director at staffing company Robert Half, about how job seekers can respectfully decline a job offer. Here’s an excerpt from our interview: Getting chores done One area where the app economy shows big promise is finding people to do small chores around the house. Taskrabbit matches "taskers" to do the job. Freelancers for five bucks Fiverr is an online community of freelancers who advertise small jobs starting at five bucks apiece. The site's vast array of "gigs" include everything from writing search engine optimization copy to making a video of a puppet promoting your business idea. Super-speedy delivery Postmates will deliver items from local businesses ranging from takeout food to running shoes to a charger for your smartphone. The Postmates promise? Delivery in one hour or less. Your personal shopper With Stitch Fix, customers fill out a detailed style profile and for a $20 "style fee" receive a box with five clothing items and accessories. The $20 is applied as a credit toward anything you purchase. Buy all five, and you'll get a 25% discount. SOURCE: Kiplinger Washington Editors We know. You're busy. Sometimes it's a struggle just to round up the family for dinner, let alone tick off all the tasks on your to-do list. Here are four outsourcing services that promise to save you time or, even more important, make your life less stressful: App services to make your life easier 4

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Page 1: SUCCESS - tribunecontentagency.com€¦ · Q: Is the job market heating up enough to pro-duce multiple offers for some candidates? A: Yes. Applicants are likely to receive multiple

Q: Is the job market heating up enough to pro-duce multiple offers for some candidates?

A: Yes. Applicants are likely to receive multiple offers in sectors such as technology, accounting, fi nance, mar-keting, human resources and legal services. Employers are hiring people who can develop mobile applica-tions, provide administrative support, protect company data and promote company brands through targeted marketing.

Q: What should you do if you get more than one offer?

A: When you are interviewing at multiple fi rms, it’s important not to accept an offer too quickly — too many people do. Let’s say you are interviewing at three fi rms: A, B and C. If you get an offer from company A, say thank you, note that you are in discussions with other fi rms, and ask for time to consider the offer. Call your contacts at B and C to let them know that you have an offer in hand and ask about their timing for making a decision. You won’t hurt your chances with A as long as you don’t keep the people there waiting too long. Depending on the role, one to two weeks is gener-ally okay.

Q: What if you get an offer for your dream job after you’ve accepted another offer, or even after you’ve started working?

A: Stay objective and ask yourself these questions: Does the second offer fulfi ll every aspect of my career plan? Will it meet my fi nancial needs and offer stabil-ity? Will I learn the skills that will help me advance in my career? As you make your decision, seek advice from a mentor or professional adviser. (Your friends won’t be qualifi ed to coach you.) If your answers to all these questions are yes, then take the second offer.

Q: How can you do that without burning bridges?A: Make sure to give your current company plenty

of notice. Keep the discussion businesslike, but be prepared to have a dissatisfi ed supervisor. Industries are small, and your paths might cross again. Someone at this company may be in a position to hire you again, so keep your interactions as professional and cordial as possible.

Q: If you opt to stay at a less-than-perfect job, how can you get back on your preferred career path?

A: Get the most out of the role by learning as much as you can and treating it as if it were your dream job. Work hard and keep networking in your industry so you are visible for new opportunities. Your work ethic could open a door at your current fi rm that’s a better fi t. Your performance review is a great time to ask for training, more fl exibility or other sweeteners.

SUCCESSYour guide to managing money, work and the business of life

After I went on TV recently saying that investors should try to fi ght the urge to do something amid the fi rst stock market correction in nearly four years, I received an angry email from a viewer who questioned this advice. He believed that the market sell-off was just the tip of the iceberg and that inves-tors should bail out of all stock holdings.

While many investors believe they can time the market, there is ample evidence that it does not work. Accord-ing to an analysis by the research fi rm Dalbar, the 20-year annualized return (through 2014) for the average equity mutual fund investor was 5.19 percent, compared to the 20-year annualized S&P 500 return of 9.85 percent. Inves-tors lagged the index by a whopping 4.66 percent annually. Dalbar reports that the biggest reason for underper-formance is psychology, highlighted by investor panic selling at the bottom and the lure of following short-term market trends. Dalbar CEO Louis Harvey says the idea that an investor can generate market-beating returns through proper

timing is “totally fi ctional.”Consider this: If you had sold all of

your stocks during the fi rst week of the fi nancial crisis in September 2008, you would have been shielded from another 40 percent or more in further losses (stocks bottomed out in March 2009). Sounds great, but how would you have known when to get back in?

Most investors, from seasoned pros to mere mortals who are saving for retirement, lack the guts or lucky tim-ing to buy when stock indexes seem like they are hurtling towards zero! As a result, even if you made a decent sale in the fall of 2008, you most likely would not have bought the rock bot-tom in March 2009 and you might have missed a large portion of the near tripling in value of the indexes from the lows.

The opposite of those panic-induced sell orders are those who fear buying at the top of the market, which is often the rationale for many who can’t pull the trigger on an investment. There’s good news here as well: Dan Wiener, editor of the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors, points out that the investor who had the bad luck of buy-ing Vanguard 500 Index on the Friday before Black Monday (October 19, 1987) when the index fund dropped 20.5 per-cent in a day, did just fi ne, provided he didn’t panic and sell. In fact, “he would have had a gain of 2.1 percent one year later, and a total gain of 19.3 percent three years later.”

Wiener has conducted stock market research dating back to 1927. He found that for those who invest for a single day, the chance of losing money is 46 percent, but for those who invest with a 10-year investment horizon the chance of success improves dramatically — to 87 percent.

Despite fi elding an angry email or two, my advice to stay put and not be reactive puts me in good company. John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, wrote this about market timing: “After nearly 50 years in this business, I do not know of anybody who has done it successfully and consistently. I don’t even know of anybody who knows anybody who has done it successfully and consistently.” Bottom line: stick to your plan!

Contact Jill Schlesinger, senior business analyst for CBS News, at [email protected].

Time in the market is the

secret to success

In essence, market timing re-quires two nearly impossible decisions: when to get out and then when to get back in.

By Dandan Zou |

MILLES STUDIO/FOTOLIA

Jill SchlesingerJill on Money Interviewing

advice for a hot job market

More than one offer? Don’t want to burn bridges?

Kiplinger spoke with Paul McDonald, a senior executive director at staffi ng company Robert Half, about how job seekers can respectfully decline a job offer. Here’s an excerpt from our interview:

Getting chores done One area where the app economy shows big promise is finding people to do small chores around the house. Taskrabbit matches "taskers" to do the job.

Freelancers for five bucksFiverr is an online community of freelancers who advertise small jobs starting at five bucks apiece. The site's vast array of "gigs" include everything from writing search engine optimization copy to making a video of a puppet promoting your business idea.

Super-speedy deliveryPostmates will deliver items from local businesses ranging from takeout food to running shoes to a charger for your smartphone. The Postmates promise?Delivery in one hour or less.

Your personal shopperWith Stitch Fix, customers fill out a detailed style profile and for a $20 "style fee" receive a box with five clothing items and accessories. The $20 is applied as a credit toward anything you purchase. Buy all five, and you'll get a 25% discount.

SOURCE: Kiplinger Washington Editors

We know. You're busy. Sometimes it's a struggle just to round up the family for dinner, let alone tick off all the tasks on your to-do list. Here are four outsourcing services that promise to save you time or, even more important, make your life less stressful:

Getting chores done

We know. You're busy. Sometimes it's a struggle just to round up the family for dinner, let alone tick off all the tasks on your to-do list. Here are four outsourcing services that promise to save you time or, even more important, make your life less stressful:

App services to make your life easier4

Page 2: SUCCESS - tribunecontentagency.com€¦ · Q: Is the job market heating up enough to pro-duce multiple offers for some candidates? A: Yes. Applicants are likely to receive multiple

Keep an eye on the mail for credit and debit cards that contain a microchip as well as a magnetic stripe. Starting Oct. 1, if a thief uses a counterfeit card to make an in-store purchase, any issuer that hasn’t added a chip to its card and any merchant that hasn’t made its payment terminals compatible with the new tech-nology (called EMV) may be liable for the fraudulent amount. Previously, card issuers took responsibility for such trans-actions. Consumer protections remain the same: You’ll have zero liability for credit card fraud, and you likely won’t have to pay for an unauthorized debit card purchase.

EMV transactions are more secure than those involving a magnetic stripe

because the data moving between the card and payment terminal is unique, which makes it useless to criminals who want to clone cards. But despite the obvi-ous incentive, banks and merchants are a long way from completing the shift.

Eight financial institutions, which

represent about half of all the payment-card volume in the U.S., estimate that 63 percent of their credit and debit cards will have chips by the end of the year, according to the Payments Security Task Force. Chip-enabled debit cards are behind schedule because they have to meet stricter compliance regulations than credit cards. Small banks and mer-chants, who lack deep pockets, are also more likely to miss the deadline. If you haven’t received a chip card, your issuer may provide one on request, says Randy Vanderhoof, director of the EMV Migra-tion Forum.

EMV won’t prevent crooks from using stolen card numbers to make purchases online. Continue to guard your card information closely and to check state-ments for suspicious charges.

SUCCESS

A common question I hear from readers is: How can I be sure that I won’t run out of money in retirement?

There are good reasons to be concerned. Everyone is living longer, especially women. Interest rates are historically low. The rate of return for conservative assets, including bonds, common stocks and income-oriented mutual funds and ETFs, are low in comparison to past periods.

Traditionally high-dividend invest-ments, such as oil and gas stocks, are less attractive thanks to the dramatic fall in oil prices. And most corporations are transi-tioning from defined-benefit to defined-contribution retirement plans, transferring risk to employees.

For most retirees, the only steady income will be from Social Security. However, when one member of a married couple dies, the total family Social Security income is reduced. The surviving spouse receives only the greater of the two ben-efits, not both.

Given all these factors, many, if not most, individuals and families in retirement have a legitimate concern that their assets will not last their lifetime while maintaining the lifestyle they are accustomed to.

One alternative to consider to ensure a continuous income for life is a single-premium immediate annuity (SPIA). To buy this type of annuity, you pay a lump sum to an insurance company. In return, the company guarantees a fixed income for the rest of your life. In its simplest form, called “life only,” the amount of income will be based on two factors: age and sex. (Since life expectancy of a female is longer than a male, a woman’s annuity income would be lower.) If you live for 40 years, the insurance company is obligated to pay you a fixed amount of income for 40 years. However, if you die shortly after you purchase the policy, income stops at that point and none of the premium is returned to your heirs.

Additional options are available. For example, an annuity may cover not only you but your spouse as well, allowing the widowed partner to receive a fixed amount of income for life. As you would expect, choosing that option decreases the monthly annuity income.

Consider these life-only policy examples, based on a single premium of $100,000: For a man aged 65, the annuity income would be approximately $565 per month. For a heterosexual couple, both 65, the income would be approximately $480 per month.

Other options include:n An annuity that pays for a specific

timeframe regardless of how long you or your spouse lives (the range is generally from five to 30 years). If you selected a 10-year guarantee and died within that period, your named beneficiary would receive the income for what remains of the 10-year pe-riod. (With a 10-year guarantee the income would be approximately the same as a life-only policy without the guarantee.)

n “Life with installment refund,” in which, if you die before receiving 100 per-cent of your initial premium, the balance is paid your beneficiary in payments.

n Inflation protection. You may select a cost of living adjustment, such as a 3 percent rider.

Naturally, if you select any of these options, the cost will be reflected in the payment structure of the annuity.

An SPIA is not for everybody. Those with a great deal of retirement funds don’t need it. Nor is it suitable for those with limited savings. No one without sufficient funds for an emergency should tie up their assets in this type of vehicle. Rather, the most suitable buyers are retirees or near-retirees who can afford to invest a portion of their assets to insure that they will not run out of resources in their lifetimes.

An excellent source of information on these annuities is “The SPIA Owner’s Manual,” a readable booklet written by Stan Haithcock. He also supplies estimates using top-rated insurance companies at his website, StanTheAnnuityMan.com.

Elliot Raphaelson welcomes your questions and comments at [email protected].

This annuity sets floor under

retirement income

One alternative ... to ensure a continuous income for life is a single-premium immedi-ate annuity. ... You pay a lump sum to an insurance company.

By Lisa Gerstner |

Using credit cards with microchips

WIROJSID/FOTOLIA

Fitbit, maker of the must-have namesake accessory for the obses-sively active, is sprinting toward a $9 billion valuation following its recent IPO. With 20.8 million bracelets sold through March, the San Francisco-based company owns 85 percent of the market; it sold 10.9 million bracelets last year. Maintaining that momentum is going to be one of the next big chal-lenges for CEO James Park and CTO Eric Friedman, both 38, but they have a plan.

Park: Our inspiration was the Ninten-do Wii. In late 2006, I waited at Best Buy at 6 a.m. to get one. I was amazed by the way Nintendo had combined the hardware and the sensors with amazing software to create this holistic experience that made gaming into something that was active, fun and positive. We started Fitbit in early 2007, just months after the original Wii experience. The mission has been the same since then — how do we use technology to help people get healthier and more active, specifically by giving them data and guidance and inspiration?

At the start, we were pretty naive. Our background was in software, and we had no experience building hardware other than a class in college. Close to the launch of our first prod-uct, we were at a contract manufac-turer in Singapore when we discov-ered at the last minute that the radio range of our device was one inch. We hadn’t assembled the product in its final form until the late stages, because of delays. The

problem was that a cable from the display was too close to the antenna and interfered with its performance. As a stopgap, which I hit on in our ho-tel room the night before the factory was supposed to finish a big order, we put in a balled piece of tissue to push the cable away from the antenna. It helped increase the range.

But the hardware is only half of Fitbit. More than two-thirds of our engineers are software engineers. The reason we invest so much in software is because the real magic of the expe-rience happens at the software layer. A big part of what makes the Fitbit experience so special is the social ex-perience — people can compete with friends and family across a variety of metrics, they can communicate, they can cheer and taunt. It’s the social features that keep users engaged long term.

Friedman: We are neither a software company nor a hardware company — it’s the dynamic of the two. The great hardware makes the bracelet very wearable and fashioncentric, and the software collects the data and makes the experience, so the Fitbit magic is that both sides go hand in hand.

Park: You can think of Fitbit as the world’s largest fitness social network that has been monetized by the sales of hardware.

We have grown our market share effectively over the years, even though we’re in such a crowded segment, with Jawbone and Garmin being our closest competitors but still pretty dis-tant. In the case of Apple, our thought is that this category is incredibly large; in 2014, there was more than $200 billion worth of consumer spending on health and fitness services. There are a lot of opportunities for multiple companies to succeed spectacularly. Our strategy is to give consumers a lot of choices and a lot of ways to enter the Fitbit ecosystem and stay there.

Friedman: We don’t focus on beat-ing competitors. We are just trying to build great stuff for users, which has been our mission since day one. Part of the fun in building a consumer company is to build things consumers

want. If you keep building stuff they like and love and stay focused

on that, that’s the most im-portant thing.

How Fitbit got its fitness tracker in top shape

FITBIT PHOTOS

The Fitbit Surge, shown above, is just one of the products Fitbit co-founders Eric Friedman, below, and James Park have created.

Elliot RaphaelsonThe Savings Game

By Will Yakowicz |

Page 3: SUCCESS - tribunecontentagency.com€¦ · Q: Is the job market heating up enough to pro-duce multiple offers for some candidates? A: Yes. Applicants are likely to receive multiple

SUCCESS

Terry SavageThe Savage Truth

Summer flew by again, and the school year has started. Remember when “back to school” signaled the real start of a new year? Back when you moved into a new grade, got a new teacher and a new fall wardrobe, and made new friends? Fall is still the most efficient time to get organized. Why wait until the calendar year turns? Start now and avoid the rush!

Here are five financial steps you should take now, ahead of the crowd:

1. Assess your retirement plan asset allocation. Even if the market weren’t volatile right now, this would be a good time to make adjustments, before the year-end rush to lock in gains and harvest losses. If you can’t do it alone, seek advice from a fee-only financial planner — or from the man-agement services at major mutual fund companies. Or go to www.TerrySavage.com and click on the link to Finan-cialEngines.com, which will get you a year’s free advice from this investment adviser to major company retirement plan participants.

2. Check your credit report and credit score. Do this before the holiday shopping rush. Go to www.AnnualCreditReport.com for your free report from each of the three major credit bureaus. (You can get a free credit score at www.CreditKarma.com or on your Discover Card monthly statement, among other places.)

And if you don’t plan on shopping for a major purchase such as a home, car or life insurance, you might want to pay a small amount to “freeze” your credit, so that scammers can’t open a new account in your name.

3. Do a life insurance checkup. Ask your insurance agent for an “in-force ledger” which will reveal how your cash value policy is doing. Many of these policies were sold years ago, with illustrations that there would be enough cash buildup to maintain the policy into your old age. Now, after years of low interest rates, those poli-cies are running out of money, neces-sitating huge premiums to keep them in force.

If you can’t find that agent, you might consider the service offered by insurance guru James Hunt at www.evaluatelifeinsurance.org. It costs $100 to get an impartial look at the perfor-mance of your policy and an additional $70 for each additional policy submit-ted at the same time.

4. Make holiday reservations im-mediately. The longer you procras-tinate, the more expensive flights will be — especially this year, with a strong economy. If you’re not sure, make the reservation and buy trip insurance. Even that extra cost is likely to save you money over the price you will pay if you delay.

5. Start your holiday shopping ear-ly. Don’t wait for year-end sales around Christmas to do your shopping. The same facts about the relatively strong economy mean that supplies may be limited and prices are likely to stay firm — especially for toys and technology.

And finally, buy your holiday turkey now. No joke. The avian flu has hit poultry farmers hard. Supplies will be down, and you can expect headline stories about the cost of Thanksgiv-ing turkeys being at least 20 percent higher. If you have a big freezer, buy your bird before retailers use the head-lines to boost prices even more.

If you’re one of those people who was well-trained during your school years, starting the new year in fall will make intuitive sense. And it will give you a head start to financial success. That’s the Savage Truth.

Terry Savage responds to questions on her blog at TerrySavage.com.

5 financial tasks to take care of

in the fall

You might want to ... “freeze” your credit, so that scammers can’t open a new account in your name.

Q: I’m going through my late moth-er-in-law’s belongings, and I see that her bank statements from the 1980s and 1990s often included her Social Security number. Do I need to shred them? — D.D., Washington, D.C.

A: You should shred any documents

with information that thieves could use to steal someone’s identity, even after they pass away. “Recently deceased individu-als are a prime target for fraudsters,” says Rod Griffin, director of public education

for the credit bureau Experian. ID thieves can do the most damage during the period after the person dies but be-fore the credit bureaus, financial institutions and government agencies are notified.

Financial institutions are usually notified about a death from the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File, but that can take a while. It’s better to send copies of the death certificate to creditors, financial institutions, insur-

ers, government agencies and even the credit bureaus as soon as possible, says Adam Levin, chairman of IDT911, which provides ID-theft protection programs for consumers through employers and banks. The fact sheet at www.idtheftcenter.org has a checklist of companies to contact and sample letters to send.

Preventing identity theft after death

By Kimberly Lankford |

JACOLINE SCHOONEES/XINHUA

Angelina Jolie Pitt, right, speaks with African Union Commission Chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma at a panel discussion June 12 in Johannesburg. Jolie Pitt blew open the debate on genetic screenings when she revealed she had a preventive double mastectomy.

TAPGENES

ZIMMYTWS/FOTOLIA

Health care providers are increasingly asking for family health histories, yet few people know them. Many of us only look into our genetic risks when a family health crisis arises.

That inspired Heather Holmes in July 2013 to create Chicago-based TapGenes, a health family tree that’s like ancestry.com with an okcupid.com interface.

Holmes, the company’s CEO, was cre-ating the platform in 2013 when actress Angelina Jolie Pitt revealed that she had a preventive double mastectomy and blew open the debate on genetic screen-ings. Holmes discusses the “Angelina Effect” and why DNA alone isn’t enough to predict health risks.

Q: How important has the “Angelina Effect” been in highlighting the role of family history in preventive health care?

A: What she has done is help people take that conversation home and make it more relatable. For some it may be contro-versial, but what I love about what she’s doing is she’s making decisions that make sense for her based on what she knows about her family history. Because she knows that, she’s able to confidently make decisions that she feels comfortable with. That’s what this is about.

Q: Shortly after that, the Supreme Court ruling against gene patents opened the market for lower-cost ge-netic tests. How does that affect your business?

A: We find that exciting. The thing people have to remember is that a genetic

Heather Holmes founded TapGenes, to help families assess DNA risks

By Kate MacArthur |

test is one level of testing. What that doesn’t tell you is what genes are going to express themselves. Actually, family health history is considered to be the first and original genetic test and is shown to be the strongest predictor for most com-mon diseases out there.

It’s that piece that all those genetic tests are missing out on. You need to be able to understand some of the lifestyle, behav-ioral or other things that are captured within a family history that help you find the clues about why your genes are turn-ing on or off and what is happening in a family.

Q: It can be a challenge to get family members to share facts for genealogy, let alone disease risks. How do you ad-dress that?

A: We allow individuals to choose what they share and whom they want to share it with. Our intention over time is to help them understand that it doesn’t have to be scary to share more.

We thought if we did it electronically that it wouldn’t be an uncomfortable,

face-to-face conversation. What we found is it’s not so much that they’re afraid to have the conversation; it’s that they just never knew how to start asking loved ones about this in a way that felt like it was beneficial to everyone.

Q: What do you see in the culture toward prevention in health care?

A: I think we’re coming up on this perfect storm. With all the changes of the Affordable Care Act and people being more responsible than ever for their own health care and being hit with the cost of high-deductible plans, they’re realizing, “What can I do to avoid these problems?”

From a population health perspective, we do a good job in the U.S. of treating people for diseases and conditions. We don’t do a good job of getting people to make choices earlier. But if on a popula-tion level we can help families to better care for themselves and give them the basic tools and understanding, then hope-fully we can make a better impact that way.

Q: Where do you aim to fit into the culture of prevention?

A: We see ourselves as a connector and empowering those consumers and fami-lies and then connecting them to the right services or help that they might need. That can be on the provider side.

Part of what we’re seeing now with the higher deductibles and people feeling the effects of their health care choices, we’re seeing people not going to their regular doctors as much. We’re seeing a trend of people going to clinics for one-off types of things.

Those are all great opportunities to help gather all that information together into one place. But then also being able to access what other kinds of care they might need, whether it’s additional screenings and stuff like that, that they may not be aware that they would qualify for based on their family history.

The role of the

‘Angelina Effect’ in preventative health care

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Q: How should I handle a bad review of my company?

Be proactive. “Mistakes happen. If it’s a public negative review, respond imme-diately and try to take the conversation offline. Most importantly, learn from the errors and look to improve processes. Try a proactive approach. Contact all clients/customers to learn their gripes before they go public. This gives your team enough

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Andy Dunn — known to readers of our 2014 Most Creative People in Business issue as the “master of men’s pants” — announced in May that he was giving up his role as CEO of Bono-bos, the digital-first fashion brand he cofound-ed. Instead, he’d be stepping into a new position as the company’s executive chairman. “My job now is to have a little bit of distance from the day-to-day and be able to be our No. 1 ambas-sador,” says Dunn. (Former Coach executive Francine Della Badia has been tapped to replace him as CEO.)

That’s not the only change at Bonobos, which sold its millionth pair of chinos earlier this year. In the past two years, the company has ex-panded to include the women’s brand Ayr and a line of golf clothes called Maide. Bonobos is also investing heavily in brick-and-mortar “Guide-shops,” where customers can pick out clothes with the help of Bonobos reps (and a cold beer). The company has doubled the number of Guideshops in the past year to 16 and plans to have 30 outposts by the end of 2016.

Dunn hopes to launch even more companies under the Bonobos umbrella. But he’ll still spend plenty of time contemplating khakis. “You have to be incredibly creative about what the future might hold, but really focused on what you should be doing for next season or next year,” he says. “That took me a long time to figure out.”

How to handle a negative

company reviewBy FounderSociety |

More than monkey business

By Sarah Lawson |

Bonobos co-founder moves into new role, but khakis still king

time to fix what’s broken.” — Rich Dematteo, Bad Rhino

Reach out to customers for good reviews. “After you’ve carefully read through the review, responded and learned from it, make sure that you seek out good reviews. Email specific custom-ers you know who are happy with your business and ask them to write a positive review. The worst thing that you can do is let that one bad review stand alone. Make sure you surround it with lots of good reviews.” — Lisa Curtis, Kuli Kuli

Take it to heart. “A bad review is your best source of information. For every one bad review there are many others that think the same but don’t take the time to say anything. Address the review so that others see you are listening and tell the customer you are working hard to improve

things. Then, do what you can to make changes so that future reviews are posi-tive.” — Jessica Baker, Aligned Signs

Use it to measure improvement. “You will make mistakes at times, and custom-ers might just not be happy, even if you think you delivered. What’s most im-portant is to take a look at the customer experience and see if there are any gaps or opportunities to improve it overall. Whether it’s the customer expectations, buying experience or post-purchase pro-cess, use that bad review as a benchmark for improvement.” — Thomas Edwards, The Professional Wingman

Respond and listen. “The worst thing you can do with a bad review is let it hang out on the Internet with no response. Ask the customer what went wrong and really listen to what he or she is saying. Do what

you can to remedy the situation. Then ask yourself if there is any validity to the com-plaint, and put a plan in place to fix the gap.” — Nailah Blades-Wylie, Wylie & Co.

Respond personally. “If there is any truth to it, then it’s important to consider what you could do differently to prevent this kind of situation in the future. Don’t internalize the negativity; instead, listen to what the reviewer is trying to say. Respond to the reviewer personally and/or publicly. Sometimes, a negative experience can be turned around with kind and consider-ate customer service.” — Jaime Derringer, Design Milk

BusinessCollective, launched in partnership with Citi, is a virtual mentorship program powered by North America’s most ambitious thought leaders, entrepreneurs, executives and small business owners.

Who would be on his most creative person list“Kanye West. I went by myself to his show at Madison Square Garden, and he does these 10-minute soliloquies about capitalism. It’s wild.”

JAMES RYANG

What inspires him “Travel. Fashion is fundamentally about the way that people self-express through their clothing. And how they do that around the world is really interesting.”

How he stays productive“Humans need to sleep eight hours a night, but for some reason, it’s a badge of honor to sleep six. I average eight hours, without fail.”

Quirky side project “Working on my dad’s book [which Dunn is editing]. He discovered a thousand letters written on the European front during World War II between his parents. It’s an amazing love story. I have a dream for it to be a film as well.”