Muratov noted that investigative journalists are crucial to helping people understand current affairs and despite growing risks, they must continue to dig for facts. “As the great war photographer Robert Capa said: ‘If your picture isn’t good enough, you aren’t close enough,'” Muratov said.
Ressa and Muratov also noted the sacrifices journalists have made, especially those who work in authoritarian states. Both journalists are known for their extensive work in the field and have angered their respected countries, facing threats as a result. Multiple colleagues of Muratov have been murdered or persecuted due to their work. “I want journalists to die old,” Muratov said.
“There are so many more journalists persecuted in the shadows with neither exposure nor support, and governments are doubling down with impunity,” Ressa said.
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2021 Nobel Peace Prize award recipient Maria Ressa chokes up while honoring fallen journalists like Jamal Khashoggi and Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Ressa says she stands there as a representative of all journalists who sacrifice to “bring you the truth and hold power to account.” pic.twitter.com/D7l5emSOp3
She noted the importance of giving this reward to not one but two journalists.
“By giving this to journalists today, the Nobel committee is signaling a similar historical moment, another existential point for democracy,” she said, pointing to the disruptive impact of social media in fueling the spread of misinformation and creating fertile ground for divisive, authoritarian leaders.
“Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with our world’s existential problems: climate, coronavirus, the battle for truth,” Ressa said.
This led the two to talk about social media and the spread of misinformation it contributes to.
“Our greatest need today is to transform that hate and violence, the toxic sludge that’s coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritized by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us.”
Ressa said: “Silicon Valley’s sins came home to roost in the United States on January 6 with mob violence on Capitol Hill. What happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media.”
Muratov also had something to say regarding social media.
“Manipulation leads to war,” he said. “We are in the middle of a post-truth period. Now, everyone is concerned about their own ideas and not the facts.
“Social scientists have shown that, when even knowing what is the truth and what is a lie, 75 percent of people will consider the lie as truth as they like the lie better. This is happening already. We are at the very bottom of the manipulation of the human mind.”
Their speeches follow recent announcements from Facebook’s parent company, Meta, in which a new feature that gives people more control over what appears in their news feeds is being introduced. The news follows criticism regarding not only the spread of misinformation over Facebook but recent crashes of the company’s communication app, WhatsApp.
The period in which Limits to Growth first appeared came at the end of a decade that included Rachel Carson’sSilent Springand Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. It was a period that saw the birth of the modern environmental movement, the passage of the Clean Air Act, the founding of the EPA, and large numbers of dystopian novels and films warning of an over-crowded, over-polluted, resource-poor future. In 1970, Ehrlich made the first of several appearances on The Tonight Show, then hosted by Johnny Carson, where he talked about the need for programs of mass sterilization and birth permits to an audience with a reach that no modern show can match.
Both for people who lived through that period and those born after, the idea that we made it to 2021—and a world population of just under 8 billion—without falling into a global conflict over diminishing supplies of oil, or seeing the population drastically reduced from famine and disease, seems like a clear signal that all those old books were exaggerated. On further review, Ehrlich made a lot of bad assumptions in The Population Bomb—mostly because he was deeply enmeshed in a privileged white, Western culture that made him reject the idea that everyone would want anything other than to live like him. He also populated his work with a number of racial stereotypes, making academics and the public increasingly leery of his work. As for Silent Spring, well, we banned DDT, the eagle made a comeback, so … all good now.
The number of people on Earth has doubled since Limits to Growth was first published. There seem to be few signs of the kind of resource-shortage declines that the work predicted in a world where the amount of material each person consumes—from food, to electronics, to automobiles—is still trending up on a global basis. That makes it easy to believe that all of these old tomes, LTG included, can be safely ignored.
But earlier this year economist Gaya Herrington from international accounting and consultancy firm KPMG took a new look at the old book. With decades of new data and much more detailed information available than the original MIT team, Herrington found that the scenarios outlined in the 1972 work still “aligned closely with observed global data.” In particular, two possible futures matched up with what she collected in 2020.
One of those scenarios indicates a slowing, and eventual halt, of economic and technological growth over the next two decades. The second scenario is one in which pollution, chiefly in the form of greenhouse gases driving the climate crisis, brings population and economic growth to a halt over the same period.
In the first scenario, the end of growth is followed by a gradual decline in both average wealth, and in the size of the sustainable population. In the second, there is a devastating collapse. The likelihood of both of these scenarios seemed nearly even, and any better outcome failed to match Herrington’s data so well. “This suggests,” she writes, “that it’s almost, but not yet, too late for society to change course.”
This isn’t as bad as it could be. Previous analysis had suggested the world would continue on a “business as usual” course until right about … now. A steep and irreversible decline would then begin over the next decade. But resource scarcity (much of it related to metals and rare elements that have been heavily mined over the last century) seems less of a threat in Herrington’s evaluation. Instead, it’s greenhouse gases that act as the greatest threat, That leads Herrington toward a scenario that isn’t too far off from past predictions, just shifted about a decade down the line.
However, the paper is not all doom. There is another scenario called “stabilized world” or SW. That scenario involves rapid worldwide adoption of technologies like renewable energy, as well as shifting social priorities that encourage lower family sizes, paired with prioritizing individual health and education. That’s a pattern that’s been seen in country after country. Unfortunately, it’s not happening fast enough, and it’s not happening without pushback, especially in some authoritarian regimes.
The best thing about that SW model isn’t just that it represents a world that’s become “stable.” It’s also a world that becomes stable at a high level, where every person has access to health care and education, and the relative wealth of every individual is high compared to today. That scenario could come by the middle of the next century.
But to get there means passing through the bottleneck of the next two decades.
Note: I shouldn’t end this without mentioning that many scientists, economists, and sociologists have found the models and principles endorsed by the Club of Rome in LTG to be short-sighted, simplistic, ethnically-biased, or all of the above. Many researchers have been dismissive of the model’s results from the beginning, and having to rejigger the inputs frequently (as has happened several times) hasn’t made the project seem any more capable of predicting the future. But it is an interesting exercise to check in on these predictions, and there are genuine limits on every system.
Before January 1, 2022, will the United States Olympic Committee announce that it is boycotting the 2022 Olympics?
Nicolás Ortega
I am in a virtual workshop that will test my abilities to forecast the future, and I have 10 seconds to answer. I’m scanning my brain. (Simone Biles, not relevant. Moscow, 1980, yes. Uyghurs?) But time’s up. I guess 20 percent. Then it’s on to the next questions: What is the probability the U.S. will regulate cryptocurrencies on the stock market by January 2023? Will China attempt to take Taiwan over the next five years? How big is the surface area of the Mediterranean Sea in square kilometers?
“I bet you didn’t wake up thinking you had to answer that question today,” says Warren Hatch, who is co-leading this workshop.
There are about 12 of us taking this training, including a guy from the Department of Defense. Over the next two days, we scratch our heads, trade bits of insight, try to shed our cognitive biases (more on that later), and see if we have the chops for predicting things professionally. I am definitely out, but I suspect a couple in this group qualify. Those who do will be a step closer to gaining an elite, though geeky, kind of status: It’s called a “superforecaster.” And if you are one, you can join the global network of über predictors, the best of the best, who work with the company that arranged this workshop in the first place. It is called Good Judgment. Hatch is its CEO.
While I’m at my laptop sweating it out for Good Judgment in September, experts are making headlines in the real world answering similar questions. “Inflation is elevated and will likely remain so in coming months,” predicts Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell; “There is a chance that we will see big declines in coming years,” wagers a Yale economist on home prices. Anthony Fauci, meanwhile, says a Northeast surge of Delta is “possible.” It’s an interesting contrast. As a culture, we’ve come to accept “Likely,” “Possible,” or “There’s a chance in the coming years” as the best our top authorities can tell us about what lies ahead. But what does likely mean, in a concrete way? Is it a 51 percent odds of happening, or 85 percent? Are 2022 and 2023 considered “coming years,” or are 2024 and 2025?
We may not demand this level of specificity from our experts, but we sure need it in business. And as Good Judgment proves, you actually can quantify vague hunches like these with scalpel-like accuracy — simply with the human brain, no AI or big data.
Few people do it with more Olympian skill than Good Judgment’s superforecasters. But as with most sports, we can all get better. We just need to train.
Unlike many companies that begin life in a dark bar scribbled on a cocktail napkin, Good Judgment was born in the belly of the U.S. government. In a way, it goes back to 9/11. After analysts appeared to miss signals of the catastrophic terrorist attack, a group called IARPA (or Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) was created in 2006, modeled after the defense agency DARPA. Its goal was to conduct daring, innovative research that improves American intelligence. By 2010, the intelligence community had started using an internal classified prediction market where top-secret-cleared employees could make trades on whether an event would happen. But IARPA wondered if there was an even better way to use the wisdom of the crowd to foresee what was coming.
That’s why, in 2011, it launched a huge forecasting tournament for the public. At the beginning, there were five teams, and over the next four years, thousands of ordinary Joes and Janes would answer about 500 questions, like: Will North Korea launch a new multistage missile before May 10, 2014? Will Robert Mugabe cease to be president of Zimbabwe by September 30, 2011? The teams had to reach certain benchmarks of accuracy; if they failed, they were eliminated. After the first two years, only one team remained. It was led by Philip Tetlock and Barbara Mellers at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and called Good Judgment.
Tetlock was already deep into the science of prediction. Back in the 1980s, he’d become curious as to why so many foreign policy experts had failed to predict the Soviet Union’s fate, and it inspired him to analyze broad swaths of predictions. As it turns out, the average expert was roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee. (That’s not quite how he put it, but close enough that he doesn’t mind the joke.) So he developed a more systematic approach — not just to predictions but to identifying the kinds of people who are good at making predictions. To compete in IARPA’s tournament, he and Mellers recruited 3,200 volunteers, then winnowed them down to the top 2 percent, which they called superforecasters. Among that group was Hatch, a Wall Street guy who’d left Morgan Stanley to set up his own small investment firm, and who was trading on a forecasting platform on the side.
By the fourth year of the tournament, the Good Judgment team was 50 percent more accurate than IARPA’s control team recruited from the public; in some cases, it even outperformed intelligence analysts using IARPA’s internal prediction market with access to classified information. The researchers learned a lot, and they put together a guide that the intelligence community began using to train many of their analysts, according to IARPA program manager Steven Rieber. “It’s not what we expected to find,” he says of the tournament. “The fact that there are these people who have unusual skill across domains in making accurate forecasts came as a surprise to me as well as to many others. And that we ordinary people can become more accurate in our own predictions.”
But the government wasn’t the only one to see opportunity here. As the tournament was a year from concluding, in 2014, Tetlock, Mellers, and another colleague transformed Good Judgment into a forecasting company — with a plan to use its elite superforecasters to answer clients’ questions about the future. They asked Hatch to help run it with them. And, based on his own predictions, he decided it was a good idea.
Are you overconfident? Most people would say no. But most people are wrong. That’s what Good Judgment has found—and why, when evaluating whether someone has the skills to be a superforecaster, it tests for overconfidence.
To see what that looks like, another member of the Entrepreneur team submits to Hatch’s questioning: Jason Feifer, editor in chief.
“What year was Gandhi born?” Hatch asks. Specifically, he wants a range — the earliest and the latest year Feifer thinks Gandhi could have been born. Not only that, Feifer should pick years that he is 90 percent confident he’s correct about.
Feifer laughs, because he simply has no idea. “I’m going to say 1940 and 1955.”
“It turns out,” says Hatch, “Gandhi was born in 1869.”
“Oh, I don’t know anything about Gandhi!” Feifer exclaims, embarrassed by his ignorance.
“That doesn’t matter,” Hatch tells him. The real point of the exercise, he explains, is this: Despite not having a clue of what the answer is, Feifer picked a narrow range — just 15 years. He could have instead said, “Gandhi was born between 1600 and 1980,” which would have been technically correct. But Feifer was overconfident; he wasn’t willing to consider (or reveal) the things he didn’t know, and as a result, he needlessly narrowed his options and therefore his chance of being accurate. That, Hatch says, is why overconfidence leads to bad predictions.
Outside academia, in a culture where people want definitive answers, terms like “90 percent confidence” and “67 percent probable” may seem useless or arcane. But the world isn’t binary, argues Hatch; it is filled with uncertainty. “So rather than dealing with that uncertainty by guesses, or going from your gut, instead hold yourself accountable by using numbers,” he says. Why? The process forces you to sharpen your thinking, cast for good information, and pay attention to nuance—all of which leads to making better decisions. This requires a mind shift. If you only feel 67 percent confident in your answer, you’re acknowledging some failure up front—and creating a window for yourself to learn more.
That’s why, when Good Judgment’s superforecasters are trying to answer a client’s question, they push outside their own bubble and take time to understand other people’s experiences and opinions (and also share their own). Scattered around the world, many of them are retired or doing this work on the side, and they often bring in unusual bits of data from wherever they are. Among the ranks is Paul Theron, an investment manager in South Africa, who once tracked down a spokesperson for the Muslim Brotherhood to get inside scoop on a question about Egypt. Another superforecaster, JuliAnn Blam, is an American who has lived in China producing theme park attractions with her company; when answering questions about that country, she goes through her back channels. “Not everything is in the press,” she says. “Sometimes you just have to listen to locals—and even then, you have to read between the lines because in China they can’t really tell you.”
Often just flipping a question (from “Is it a good time to do a capital raise?” to “Is it a bad time to do a capital raise?”) can help you see the fuller picture. Another key practice is frequently tweaking your forecast as new information comes in. “The strongest predictor of rising into the ranks of superforecasters is perpetual beta, the degree to which one is committed to belief updating and self-improvement,” Tetlock writes in his book, Superforecasting. “It is roughly three times as powerful a predictor as its closest rival, intelligence.”
Back at the workshop I’m taking, Marc Koehler, a former U.S. diplomat who is Good Judgment’s senior VP, asks us to imagine being at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding. He’s setting up another core tactic of good predictions: Start with the base rate.
With Koehler’s guidance, we imagine someone at the wedding asking us what the probability is that the happy bride and groom will stay married. We think 100 percent, right? The look in the couple’s eyes is unmistakable, and there’s Charlotte with the flowers; we can already see their kids. Koehler stops us there. Our minds love a good story, he says, but that’s another thing that can derail a forecast. Instead, we should go straight to the divorce rate, which in the U.S. has been reported as high as 50 percent. “It does matter who Prince Harry is and who Meghan Markle is. It does matter that they’ve left Buckingham Palace. All I’m saying is consider that second,” says Koehler. “We know that people who start with the outside view or the base rate, and then move to consider the particulars of the case, are going to be about 10 percent more accurate.”
After the workshop, I challenge this point with Tetlock, since he’s the one who has done the science. Sure, starting with the base rate makes logical sense, but doesn’t it discourage risk? Nobody would get married if they thought that way — and for that matter, few would start a business considering the statistics on how many startups fail. I suggest that if you’re an entrepreneur, you may need to ignore these things — and to be overconfident! — in order to start the ambitious projects most people predict will fail. “Great point,” Tetlock says. “Success requires inspiring people, and it is hard to inspire people with a lot of ‘howevers’ in your pep talks. Overconfidence is linked to charisma. It is also linked to disaster. So think like a well-calibrated superforecaster in private — and project confidence in public.”
“It’s been a busy morning,” says Hatch at his desk in Good Judgment’s New York office via Zoom this fall, as he waves around the day’s undone New York Times crossword puzzle. He isn’t doing it just for fun. Pattern recognition is an important skill for superforecasters, so Hatch does a daily crossword, sometimes two, to stay up to speed. “Detecting the patterns and seeing what the picture might be before everybody else,” he says, “is ultimately what forecasting is about.”
But building this company has tested all of Hatch’s superforecasting skills and more.
How do you monetize the ability to find, train, and coordinate brilliant minds at seeing the future? Teaching their prediction tactics seemed logical, so Good Judgment started workshops for both individuals and companies. It also created Good Judgment Open, a free site for anyone who wants to mingle with superforecasters and try their hand at predictions, which has served as a recruiting ground. The much bigger question has been how to leverage the actual predictions from its network of superforecasters, now about 170 active members, in ways clients would actually pay for. “And this is where we’ve had our fair share of bloopers,” says Hatch.
As it turns out, many potential clients in the financial, legal, and government worlds already believe they have the top experts making the best predictions. What’s to be gained by hiring a bunch of amateurs picking away on the internet? And the truth is, superforecasters are not infallible. The group, for example, had around an 80 percent probability that Clinton would win in 2016. But overall, the superforecasters continue to beat the competition in tournaments held by the government. And Good Judgment was correct and early in its predictions about COVID-19—which has proven instructive.
The first hint of something COVID-like appeared in September 2019 at a workshop for a Canadian financial firm. Participants were practicing a “pre-mortem” — another critical forecasting practice intended to anticipate surprises. Say you think an event is going to go one way. Before making your prediction, step back and tell the story about why it went the other way. The Canadians were doing that, trying to imagine an unusual or freak event that would change their forecast on China’s economy, and someone came up with a SARS-like epidemic. “When COVID started showing up in the headlines,” says Hatch, “they were better equipped to deal with it.” And so was Good Judgment.
In January 2020, thanks to early chatter on Good Judgment’s platform about COVID-19, Blam (the superforecaster who has done a lot of work in China) turned down another lucrative three-year theme park job in the country. “We all knew it was going to be bad,” she says. “And I didn’t want to get stuck over there.” Hatch and his team also acted quickly, realizing that people were suddenly desperate for exactly the kind of insight Good Judgment could provide. The company created a public dashboard and put its elite team to work forecasting on everything from caseload levels to vaccine timing. Soon financial firms like Goldman Sachs and T. Rowe Price started referencing its forecasts in their work. “It put us on Broadway,” says Hatch, “even if we were in a small theater.”
Using that momentum, this spring Good Judgment launched FutureFirst, a subscription service for $20,000 a year that lets members vote on questions they want forecasts on every week, with customized options for a premium. By fall the product was already generating a third of the company’s total revenue, according to Hatch. Meanwhile, he has a lot of other ideas, including commercializing Delphineo — the collaboration platform it built for the workshops, which, naturally, was named by the crowd using the tool itself. For every major project, Hatch asks his team: “What would success look like? And what would failure look like?” Then he attaches probabilities to each, a process that primes him for signs of risk and opportunity ahead.
“That’s what a lot of this is about in my own head,” he says. “Let’s avoid surprises, good or bad.”
As Good Judgment grows, it must predict not only what will happen with its own business but also the future of the forecasting business at large. Because that will change, too.
“Machines already dominate prediction in all Big Data settings but struggle as the data get sparser and require more qualitative analysis,” says Tetlock, the man whose research initially launched Good Judgment, and who still enjoys engaging on the more challenging client cases while continuing his work at Wharton. “Human-machine hybrids will be the future for the types of problems we deal with in the next 20 years. For now, expect the stale status hierarchies to continue stonewalling efforts to introduce scorekeeping, especially in government, but in many businesses as well.”
One business, however, is bucking that trend. And it could signal good things for both Tetlock and Hatch.
David Barrosse is the founder and CEO of Capstone, a global policy analysis firm for corporate and investor clients. Back in 2015, when he picked up a copy of Tetlock’s Superforecasting, he was, to his surprise, impressed. “It has always stuck out to me that in the global securities research industry, which is a multibillion-dollar industry and covers every investment bank all over the globe, not one of them focuses on the accuracy of their predictions,” says Barrosse. “They don’t track it. They don’t talk about it. And 99 percent of them will not put a number on it.”
At first he passed the book around to his firm’s employees and sent five or six analysts to Good Judgment’s workshops to get the ideas in the bloodstream. But then he wondered what it would look like to radically change Capstone’s predictions systems, both inside the company and for its clients. To explore that, last year he hired Good Judgment to come in and design a training for all the analysts. “There was a lot of resistance and trepidation at first,” says Cordell Eddings, Capstone’s supervisory analyst, who is heading up the project. “But the training helped give people the tools to do it right. And across the firm, people ended up buying in wholeheartedly.”
It’s been a little more delicate to convince clients that they should change their prediction systems, “because they just think it’s utter bullshit,” says Barrosse. “Like, ‘How can you possibly know that it’s 67 percent?’ But it gives us an opportunity to talk about, ‘Maybe we started out with a 40 percent prediction and updated it so many times that it got to 67.’ And we debated internally, ‘Is this going to make us look like we’re bending with the wind?’ But even that is an opportunity to have a conversation with the client where we can say, ‘We’re telling you how things are changing based on information that’s coming in real time. We’re doing the homework, giving you a realistic dynamic prediction.’ Even if we’re not always right, it’s better to tell them, ‘We will be with you and stick our necks out and give you a probability in a distinct timeframe.’ ”
Barrosse now sees this as the competitive advantage of his company. And he is much more than 67 percent sure of it.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Credit rating is a crucial factor not just in securing a mortgage, credit card or loan — it can dramatically affect everything from car insurance and mobile phone contract rates to overall employability.
What is a credit score?
Put simply, this is a three-digit number any lender looks at to estimate how risky a borrower you are likely to be: the higher it is, the better off you’ll be in terms of acceptability and interest rates. Lenders usually use the FICO credit scoring model — its scores ranging from 350 to 850 — and incorporate five factors when calculating it: payment history (30% importance), total amount of debt owed (25%), length of credit card history (25%), credit mix (10%) and new credit (10%).
If potential lenders see you’ve been financially irresponsible in the past, you could be in a pickle. (After all, would you lend your money to a person with a history of not paying their debts?) And there’s slim chance of keeping anything from them, since they’ll likely consult all of the big three credit reporting agencies agencies: Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. Credit mix, meanwhile, is an assessment of the various types of accounts in your name (including credit cards, student loans and personal loans), while the new credit numeral shows how many times you’ve applied for a loan recently.
Once your financial history and habits are thoroughly dissected, you get a credit report — a summary of payment history, credit accounts and balances. Logically, negative payment history can damage your score. Moreover, should you be more than 30 days late to pay a balance, you will likely be reported to one of the major credit agencies. Once this shows up on a report, you’re marked as a risky borrower, which could stay on a report for up to seven years.
Building a credit score may seem like a daunting process, and in truth it does take effort and time, but there are specific steps to follow.
1. Build your credit file
This is a vital first step for laying down a good track record, and includes the opening of new accounts that will be reported to bureaus. Credit-builder loans or secured cards are great options if you’re just starting out. A way to attain a higher score is by mixing different types of accounts. Although it may sound strange to own debt in various forms, it’s proof of reliability as long as you’re paying bills on time, which brings us to…
2. Maintain good payment habits
Payment history is one of the most crucial factors. It’s simple: a long history of regular payments is the most important factor in score calculation, so make sure to keep track of loans, credit card balances and pay dates. And don’t wait more than 29 days after the “payment due” date, since 30-days-late payments could get reported to bureaus. A wise move to do is set up automatic payments, while securing any associated bank accounts from overdrafts. And if you’re having trouble putting together money for a bill, reach out to your card issuer to discuss options. It’s far worse to simply ignore the problem.
If you’re in trouble with a credit card debt, the wisest thing to do is to consult a credit counselor on creating a debt management plan, one aspect of which will be a negotiation of reduced payments and/or interest rates.
3. Review reports periodically
Obtain a copy of your current report (the FTC maintains a good site detailing how and where to get them): see where you stand and where you want to go from there. A point that’s often overlooked is that there might be errors hurting a score; if you notice any, notify the credit agency about them, which usually means explaining in writing what’s wrong and including documents that support you. For that reason, keep records of payments (banking apps are a blessing in this regard).
Keep abreast of your card limit and try not to use any more than 30% of it. Too much credit utilization can hurt a score, and it’s always possible to ask a bank to increase a limit to offer more flexibility. Pro tip: To keep balances low, pay credit card bills twice a month.
5. Minimize new credit requests
“Hard” credit requests for such things as credit cards, loans or lines of credit will most often lower a score (a few-points difference can make or break an application).
6. Don’t close accounts not in use
Don’t close that credit card from college. It doesn’t hurt to keep it open; in fact, closing the account might damage your score. For each account you decide to close, points will be lost.
What if you have no credit?
If you have not utilized any credit cards or loans in the past ten years, you might not exist in the credit report world at all. However, having no profile could pose a significant problem once you decide to put a roof over your head or a steering wheel in front of you. To avoid that happening, check with your bank or credit union to determine if you can get a secured credit card (which usually means putting down a deposit). But, of course, you must then use it responsibly and make regular payments.
Unfortunately, there is no definitive timeline for building or rebuilding credit. The first thing to do is find out what’s hurting (or fueling) yours, then set priorities. Suppose you missed just one payment. Relax: it should not take long to rebuild by keeping up with payments after a slip-up. However, if you start to miss them on various accounts and sink significantly behind, it will take longer to recover.
Once you start taking steps to build it, it may take some time for you to notice an impact on a report. Still, it’s important to persevere. And the truth is that no solution fits all situations, so it’s wise to ask for credit management help when in doubt.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
As we rapidly approach the New Year, it’s the time to start thinking about those resolutions that we’ll work on in 2016. The problem with resolutions is that they often fail because we’ll never reach these unreasonable and unrealistic goals. We’re entrepreneurs, we always try and conquer the unconquerable!
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However, if you set goals that are achievable if you stretch yourself, New Year’s Resolutions can help you gain perspective and achieve goals that can make you a stronger individual both personally and professionally.
For myself, New Year’s Resolutions can be a valuable assist in determining my long-term success. Here are 10 New Year’s Resolutions that every entrepreneur should consider as they welcome this upcoming year.
1. Understand your finances.
Don’t think that understanding the basics of accounting is unnecessary just because you have an accountant or even your own accounting department. The thing is, all entrepreneurs should familiarize themselves with at least accounting basics since this will help them;
Make financial predictions by examining future revenues, future operating costs, and assets needed to service future demand.
Pay off your bad debts
Lower your expenses as much as possible (both personal and business)
Measure the progress of your business so that you know whether or not you’re hitting targets.
How do you expect to effectively run a business if you’re exhausted and burnt out? You need to be healthy mentally, physically and emotionally. Give your immune system a boost. When you eat healthy and exercise, you are more productive and happier. That means you’ll have fewer sick days and get tasks accomplished on time. Good health habits help you avoid chronic diseases including hypertension and type 2 diabetes.
One of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs face is being an effective leader. This means delegating tasks, rallying the troops when morale is low, creating an environment that welcomes creativity and outside-of-the-box thinking, never losing sight of where you want your business to go.
4. Get more social.
If for some reason you believe social media is unimportant, I’ve got some bad news for you — you’re 100 percent wrong. Social media is one of the best ways to engage and interact with customers, spread brand awareness and connect with influencers and investors in your industry. If you have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account that is dormant, spend the next year being active and optimizing these channels. It’s expected.
5. Spend less time in the office.
Working 60 hours per week might work for someone like Elon Musk, but for most of us, that’s just isn’t feasible or desirable. Spending almost every waking minute in the office is a surefire way in getting burnt out and losing sight of why you became an entrepreneur.
Make time for yourself, friends and family. Step out of the office from time-to-time to clear your head, refresh and improve your overall health. Trust me. The place isn’t going to burn down just because you took a vacation or a long weekend.
6. Keep up with current events.
Paying attention to the news keeps you cultured and assists in starting conversations. It provides entrepreneurs with insights into their markets so that they can make more informed decisions. Remember, we live in a small and connected world now. What’s going on around the world impacts your business.
Hiring the right people is crucial for business owners. They’ll bring out the best in you and your current team. They’ll help your business grow because they’ll be your biggest brand advocates. And, low turnover keeps costs low.
Hiring isn’t easy, but attracting and retaining talent that fits in your company’s culture greatly increases your chances of success.
8. Be more empathetic.
Empathy is “the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions; and the ability to share someone else’s feelings.” It is one of the most beneficial traits an entrepreneur can possess. Communicating empathetically with customers, employees, shareholders and investors helps your business succeed. You’ll understand what’s important to them and they will appreciate that you care enough about them to make that a priority.
9. Take some classes.
Whether it’s attending a class at your local college or participating in a free online course, learning a new skill such as accounting, marketing, programming or public speaking will make you a more well-rounded and productive entrepreneur. Here are a few amazing financial books to help you learn a bit more.
10. Remember why you became an entrepreneur.
Regardless if you’re in a rough patch or enjoying substantial growth, never forget why you became an entrepreneur in the first place. For most of us, we had an idea to make the world a better a place in our niche. Take the time next year to remember why you embarked on the entrepreneurial journey. Use that to guide you going forward.
Of those seven, Colorado has also passed legislation replacing the dehumanizing terminology in state language. “That language has been offensive for many people,” state senator and co-sponsor Julie Gonzales told the AP. “And some of the rationale behind that is really rooted in this idea that a person can certainly commit an illegal act, but no human being themselves is illegal.”
“An analysis by The Associated Press (which doesn’t refer to people as ‘aliens’ except in direct quotes) found that more than a dozen states still use the terms ‘alien’ or ‘illegal’ in statutes referring to immigrants,” the report continued. The Biden administration has sought to replace this dehumanizing terminology as part of an immigration overhaul, but because that package has stalled in Congress (this is different from what’s currently before the Senate), the terminology change in U.S law has also stalled.
But as recently noted, the Biden administration has ordered changes at federal immigration agencies. The Library of Congress has also, finally, implemented changes that have been years in the making. That came to the ire of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who wrote a letter slamming the changes. Get over it, Ted. “We are pleased that the Library of Congress is replacing these subject headings, which are both outdated and dehumanizing,” American Library Association President Patricia “Patty” M. Wongsaid in welcoming the change.
The AP reports that Texas has been among the states visiting this issue this year, where legislation passed a committee with bipartisan support but stalled on the House floor. Legislators will reportedly try again in the next session, but if Gov. Greg Abbott is still in charge at that time, it’s hard to see that becoming law even if it makes it through the legislature. He’s a big fan of “invasion” rhetoric, which doesn’t bode well for anything seeking to be just a bit kinder to immigrants.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Friday named an 18-man squad for the upcoming three-match ODI series against South Africa, starting January 18. With white-ball captain Rohit Sharma missing out due to a hamstring injury, KL Rahul has been appointed as stand-in captain for the series, despite the presence of Test skipper Virat Kohli, a decision which has raised a few eyebrows. Speaking on the same, former Pakistan captain Salman Butt hailed the decision and explained the logic behind it.
The former opening batter explained that with Rohit replacing Kohli as full-time white-ball captain last month, it was only logical to make a decision for the future and select a leader, albeit as a stand-in option, who could lead the India team in the future.
“Virat Kohli will not lead this team any further. And, since he is no longer going to captain the team, they (the management) will pick the vice-captain as the stand-in skipper, who can lead the team in the future and has also captained in the IPL,” he said while replying to fan’s query on his YouTube channel.
Butt pointed out that the Indian team, for a long time, has been following the same pattern of grooming youngsters for captaincy, something which started during MS Dhoni’s captaincy, when Kohli and other youngsters were asked to lead the team against weaker opponents.
“This has been the pattern that Indian cricket has been following. Whenever there is a chance, they give youngsters the opportunity and hand him the responsibility to test him. So, I feel this is a good opportunity for KL Rahul.
“We saw this even during MS Dhoni’s time. Whenever India were up against smaller nations, he used to hand the captaincy to youngsters and the team used to win,” he added.
Promoted
Meanwhile, Jasprit Bumrah has been appointed vice-captain for the series while Shikhar Dhawan has been recalled to the side as well.
The first and second ODIs will be played at the Boland Stadium in Paarl on 19th and 21st January, respectively, while the third and final ODI will be played on January 23 at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg, which is also the venue for the upcoming second Test.
In the latest trading session, Cummins (CMI) closed at $218.14, marking a +0.14% move from the previous day. This move outpaced the S&P 500’s daily loss of 0.26%. At the same time, the Dow lost 0.16%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.04%.
– Zacks
Heading into today, shares of the engine maker had gained 0.9% over the past month, outpacing the Auto-Tires-Trucks sector’s loss of 4.25% and lagging the S&P 500’s gain of 4.82% in that time.
Cummins will be looking to display strength as it nears its next earnings release. On that day, Cummins is projected to report earnings of $3.14 per share, which would represent a year-over-year decline of 6.55%. Meanwhile, our latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $5.8 billion, down 0.47% from the prior-year quarter.
For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $15.20 per share and revenue of $23.98 billion, which would represent changes of +26.56% and +21.06%, respectively, from the prior year.
Investors should also note any recent changes to analyst estimates for Cummins. These revisions typically reflect the latest short-term business trends, which can change frequently. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company’s business outlook.
Based on our research, we believe these estimate revisions are directly related to near-team stock moves. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, which ranges from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), has an impressive outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks generating an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.02% lower. Cummins currently has a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
Valuation is also important, so investors should note that Cummins has a Forward P/E ratio of 14.33 right now. For comparison, its industry has an average Forward P/E of 12.89, which means Cummins is trading at a premium to the group.
We can also see that CMI currently has a PEG ratio of 1.28. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company’s expected earnings growth rate. CMI’s industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.28 as of yesterday’s close.
The Automotive – Internal Combustion Engines industry is part of the Auto-Tires-Trucks sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 247, which puts it in the bottom 3% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank includes is listed in order from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Make sure to utilize Zacks.com to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and more, in the coming trading sessions.
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The New Year is right around the corner and people are already starting to think about their resolutions. One of the most common, of course, is getting into better shape. Given how useful exercise can be to an entrepreneur, it’s not such a bad idea to resolve to get healthier in 2022.
BetterMe
With BetterMe Home Workout & Diet, you can get in your best shape with the least effort, spending more time on your business while making healthy improvements. Various subscriptions are all on sale for 20 percent off with code CYBER20 during our special Cyber Week Sale.
BetterMe is a health platform that focuses on both psychology and lifestyle changes to achieve lasting results. Utilizing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), BetterMe aims to create long-term behavior changes that begin with a mindset shift. In just about 10 minutes each day, BetterMe gives you informative content, quizzes, open-ended questions, diaries, scales, and tests that help you change how you consider your health. That way, you can tap into your true goals and core values.
As you progress toward positive change, BetterMe gives you personalized workout journeys to help you lose weight, increase your stamina, and achieve whatever else you’re looking to achieve. With workouts ranging from cardio and strength training to yoga and walking, there’s nothing you can’t do. Plus, BetterMe gives you personalized meal plans to help you eat healthier and support your exercise regimen. There’s even a water tracker and step counter to ensure you’re staying on track on the off-days, too.
BetterMe has earned 4.5 stars on the Google Play Store and 4.3 stars on the App Store for good reason. Find out why when you start your health journey at a discount today. During our Cyber Week Sale, you can get a one-year subscription for $15.99 (reg. $240), a three-year subscription for $23.99 (reg. $720), or a lifetime subscription for $31.99 (reg. $1200). Just use promo code CYBER20.
Nicolás Ortega
shutterstock
– Zacks
BetterMe
