YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, SO DO IT THE SMART WAY (Post 1 revised)

YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, SO DO IT THE SMART WAY.

How to make driving Maseratis, (and not only) Financially sustainable.

http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/millennials/

Have you always wanted to drive an aggressive sport car, and live the good life, but as all the other Millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000), you struggle with overcharged credit card and long term payments? This post will explain how you can turn your dream into action without abandoning a responsible money management.

William Strauss and Neil Howe in a famous research (Research) described us, the Millennials as similar to the generation of the roaring twenties, the era that accelerated the most consumer demand and aspirations. Everything at the time seemed to be feasible through modern technology just like today.

A survey by market-research firm Harris Poll, showed that last year 78 percent of Millennials spent more than they could afford to have luxury experience.

This trend had clear effects on the market:

·      Uber boomed, and reached an evaluation of 62.5$ billions (Uber) with the vision to provide a driver (one of the most famous status-symbol of luxury) to everyone. 

·      Ski operator Aspen Resorts Inc, a company who managed lifts in the famous resort village in Colorado, increased value more than 700 percent since 2009, selling tickets for 140$.

·       Airbnb Inc, founded with the goal to provide tourists amazing houses at a cheaper price than hotels, had a $25.5 billion evaluation by TechCrunch ( Airbnb).

 In other words?  People want to enjoy the life.

The trade-off of all this fun? Savings. Silicon Valley geniuses understood this, and they boomed, trying to provide smart and cheap solutions for luxurious experiences.

“I don’t put much of my monthly salary aside at all,” told me Tom (Interview 1) when I interviewed him at Ronald Tutor Center. We know he is not alone! More than half of Millennial credit-card holders say they charged over the credit limit. A research conducted by Forbes (Forbes) reported a majority of Millennials having too much debt, difficulty in making payments, and worries about it.

Is solving this problem possible? Can we pursue our high end standards without ending in a terrible recession? Providing an answer for the entire society is hard, but this post will give you smart tips to live like rock stars, even when there isn’t an app run by Stanford genius to help us.  

http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/millennials/

How?

It is only about making things happen, and believing that is possible. I will give you a specific example with the car industry to make the core of the message clearer, however the strategy I suggest is a common behavior people could apply to many different situations.

The majority of buyers buy cars taking already in consideration that these goods will depreciate over time. Don’t you do the same?  

WRONG APPROACH! You can always win the deal, and gain, but the first rule is being confident, and believing that is doable.

The market is made by people with different needs, dreams, backgrounds, and trade off costs. Price, as a consequence, is never absolute, but it has a range. As the last Mergent horizon’s report on car industry showed (Mergent Horizon), after the big depreciation the car has along the first months, the value changes slowly. You can make your own price!

You have to be confident, take your time to do research, find a good potential deal, and negotiate it effectively! You can buy what you desire under the average price, you can satisfy your bucket list, and sell the good after some months (I am sure, at that point, you will have found something else to dream about!). If you are a good dealer, and a little bit lucky, you can even gain some extra green backs.

There are some steps you may want to take to achieve good results.

·      Believe in the opportunity.

The rule number one for good dealers is being able to persuade. In order to make it happen you have to strongly believe in the terms you want to obtain.

·      Become familiar with second hand car website such as Autoscout24.com,subito.it or cargurus.com

In order to trade efficiently, every smart deal maker has to know the market perfectly. The price at which other sellers usually sell, the price at which other buyers usually buy, the price of similar cars, are all important factors to be able to drive the negotiation where you want to.

·      Analyze the websites mentioned above for a period of time to understand the range price of the car.

As I said before, there are no fixed price for pre owned cars and for other material goods. People have different needs and costs. As a consequence, some people prefer to sell cars less or more than the others. It is important to analyze the market, and to understand what are the extreme terms on the market of the item’s price range.

·      Close deals with mechanics, suppliers, car washers, document registration agencies.

In order to avoid problems, and to sell the car at the best price, you may want to find the right people to collaborate with. You have to find people in the industry that can help you to make your car perfect at the best price possible.

·      Understand when are the most profitable times of day to advertise your car announcements.

Since the goal of all this time investment is saving money, you do not want to subscribe to an expensive website to sell your car. Don’t worry! You are lucky! There are really good, free websites such those one mentioned above and many others according to the country where you live, where is possible to buy and sell cars for free ( I suggest to check subito.it group to find the most effective website to sell in your country). The only problem is that visibility is crucial to get the calls, and then the meetings to negotiate and sell. You have to work hard updating your announcement constantly to have it always in the first page specifically when the website has the highest traffic.

·      Create a story to sell, and learn how to understand your buyers in order to let them be comfortable in trading. You are young, and you have to learn how to deal with different people.

Every time you will trade with customers with different background. It is up to you to let them feel comfortable and trust you. The best way to communicate self confidence is to tell a story, and let your buyers understand that you are offering them a once in a life opportunity. For example, selling long term rental corporates car, I used to pitch the car as a corporate’s employee. People see teenagers playing Call of Duty and smoking weed so it is hard for adults to trust our generation.  Instead of being a high school kid who wanted to make money to pay for his college, I always presented my self as a well dressed company’s employee who needed to sell the car to have the new one. Many people may think that is not correct, but I always provided perfect car at the cheapest price on the Italian market: I just hacked people’s bias.

As an article published by Bloomberg (Bloomberg) in march said: Millennials want to buy fun and experience, “Experiences help them shape their identity and create memories, to a greater degree than for older generations.” (Bloomberg) Let’s do it!

WE ONLY LIVE ONCE, BUT LET’S DO IT IN A SMARTER WAY!

WORKS CITED

Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-01/millennial-splurge-on-lifegoals-giving-leisure-stocks-a-boost

Research: Neil Howe, William Strauss Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation,2009        Neil Howe, William Strauss Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, 1992                                                                                        Mergent Horizon  http://www.mergenthorizon.com.libproxy2.usc.edu/carindustryusa                                                                                                                          Airbnb https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/airbnb#/entity                                     Uber https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber#/entity                                               Harris Poll http://www.psych.cornell.edu/2015/12/14/a-wise-guys-guide-to-happiness-prof-thomas-gilovich/                                                                                                          Interview 1: Thomas is a USC student, interviewed for research purposes only on February 10,2016 at Ronald Tutor Center USC.                                                                  http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/millennials/

A World We Dare To Imagine (post3)

After I had been accepted to USC, my girlfriend wanted to find a way to visit me without using her parents’ money. Initially she tried to find some short term job options for the summer, but she quickly found the process to be riddled with scams, time consuming, and ineffective in giving her feedback to improve her search. In most cases she wouldn’t even hear back from the places she applied to, leaving her unable to improve her strategy. Our relationship had ended before I left to USC, but the obstacles she ran into with something that should have been an easy process continued to bother me. Having worked in different industries, I saw that undoubtedly there were other people our age facing the same problem, and then realized that for whatever the reason of wanting a short term job, it was a process that needed to be improved. Without the ability to experience and to achieve independence Millennials struggle to growth professionally. Youth unemployment increases day after day. In order to have a world I dare to imagine, I need to provide my peers the opportunity I had in my past. My motivation for starting Yobs Technologies came from this context, of wanting to make it possible for anyone with any reason for being self made to be able to find a job effectively and efficiently.

I AM AND I FIGHT HARD TO BE AN ENGAGED GLOBAL CITIZEN WITH AN ITALIAN HEART. A WORLD WE DARE TO IMAGINE.

"Today we are redefining the geography of community and accepting shared accountability for common human values. We have the chance to extend the notion that all men are created equal to every human being on the planet. This will require global structures and products we are only beginning to imagine.... Each of us in his or her own way can contribute something by thinking -- and acting -- like a true global citizen. We have only one world for all of us on earth, and the future really is ours to create, in a world we dare to imagine together."

Every one of us has his/her own uniqueness, it is a must to put effort to express and share it with the entire world. To live the world we dare to imagine together we have to work hard to live our positive footprint and create value. 

On my path I tried to do some things in this direction, something has been done, yet a lot has to be done. 

I AM A GLOBAL CITIZEN WITH AN ITALIAN HEART

In May 2013, I was fortunate to enroll in the University of Pennsylvania course, International Leadership. After this course, I founded a Non Governmental Organization which helps fight female genital mutilation and gender inequality. I was able to relay my vision and its possible future impact to the director of the program, resulting in him financially backing an endeavor that grew into both the successful launch of the Dreamless foundation campaign and of my newfound passion for social entrepreneurship.

https://www.facebook.com/savedreamsethiopia/

          

After returning to Milan, Italy, I interviewed and was able to obtain an internship at Telethon, an Italian nonprofit foundation which cares about funding research for genetic diseases.  

 These experiences gave me the opportunity to focus better on my future and my goals. I understood values and culture are fundamentals for any of us: I started to feel the crave and the need to find a way to give an added value to the society as an engaged global citizen with an Italian heart.

My grandfather had a major formative influence on me growing up, which he does also to this day even if he is not anymore with us. He was able to successfully manage uprightness, both on civil commitment, business venture and in the more intimate family responsibilities. He has been the symbol of a ruling class evocation who has known how to honor our country. He touched with hands the awareness that life is deemed to be lived only if devoted to family, persevered in working and finally at the service of social benefit, and he educate me to work for similar endeavors.

His mentorship let me think, and understand how is possible to create value also with pure business.

As a consequence, I started to organize concerts with famous DJS to change people idea about music. Everybody always links concerts to drugs and alcohol, I worked hard to promote music as an international powerful language which can link people all over the world, raise awareness about social issues and provide value.

                

I had different experiences in my past, and I always wanted to allowed my peers to understand the benefit of being self-made. I am aiming to fight youth unemployment, and because new generation does not want 9to5 anymore but it wants flexible schedule I found a possible answer in leveraging technology to make short time job industry easier.  

My girlfriend wanted to find a way to visit me without using her parents’ money (we did not live in the same city). Initially she tried to find some short term job options for the summer, but she quickly found the process to be riddled with scams, time consuming, and ineffective in giving her feedback to improve her search. In most cases she wouldn’t even hear back from the places she applied to, leaving her unable to improve her strategy. Our relationship had ended, but the obstacles she ran into with something that should have been an easy process continued to bother me.

I decided to start Yobs technologies, and I moved to California to do it at best I could. My motivation for starting the company came from this context, of wanting to make it possible for anyone with any reason for wanting a short term job to be able to find one effectively and efficiently.

Yobs is the new digital staffing service that leverages powerful technology to become the personal manager of college students. We find work environments that match the needs of Gen Y in an affordable, simple, and humanizing way.

At the same time, Through Yobs, employers get exclusive access to a modern-workforce of millennial talent with the goal to fight youth unemployment.

http://youtu.be/kpCm9vdoOqw

     

RANDOM POST: A WORLD OF FILTERS.

Instagram bursts like a summer storm. It brought a significant change in its users’ life. It

 provided an eloquent twist on people’s life style, decisions and behaviors.

it as a worldwide hub with efficient tools to feel followed, appreciated. On one hand this power can be seen as an illusion, on the other as an effective skill that provided a meaningful change to the society hierarchy. The first perspective analyzes the app cozying people about warp popularity, the second its meaningful support in giving courage and fortitude to repress people to speak aloud. The first consequence is generally more evident and it is what characterizes most of the users. Till ten years ago, people used to read about famous people free time and

admire how and where actors, football players and politicians spent their vacations.

Nowadays, everybody shares on a platform with millions of members what and where

they are going to eat, where they are going to shop, how they are going to party for the

best friend’s birthday and so on. It follows that, earning hundreds of likes, they feel as

important, as stalked and as noticed as the famous people they used to read about to

fulfill the time spent to commute every morning or to fulfill the boring winter evenings at

home in the past. through these dynamics Instagram has been an opportunity to please

different implicit needs such self esteem needs through the decision of sharing and telling something of private life and eventually self-realization needs. It satisfies the necessity of realizing the personal identity, of accomplishing personal expectations, the desire of filling a relevant position in a significant group. This is a primary key of Instagram’s success: users utilize it because, the app remunerates them with a sort of illusive compensation and a sort of delight.