Our society emphasizes friends, family and co-workers as essential parts of our emotional and professional support system. Friends can offer distraction and encouragement, family members give unconditional love and co-workers may provide a sense of camaraderie and even professional advice. However, there are times when we need a fourth type of support in the form of a personal board of directors.

A personal board of directors is usually made up of up to six professionals in your age group—but not necessarily in your industry—who meet once a month to for brainstorming and encouragement. In his book, Who’s Got Your Back (Crown Business), Keith Ferrazzi was one of the first to promote this idea of a small, intimate professional networking group.

If you’re not convinced, here are a few reasons a personal board of directors could be worth considering:

1. More Honest Than Friends and Family
   Friends and family can be wonderfully supportive and encouraging, but the often don’t want to be constructively honest or, if you are talking about Mom, Dad or Grandma, they think everything you do is spectacular no matter what. A personal board of directors is a great way to have a supportive but honest group of individuals to bounce ideas off of, and get advice and constructive criticism from, on everything from reports to resumes.
2. Break From Your Industry
   Sometimes it is good to take a break from your industry or co-workers and get an outside perspective. Often times this can help bring new energy to your ideas or career and get you to meet new people.
3. Creating Accountability
   Goals can be hard to keep. With a personal board of directors you can set goals and have your co-members help you stick to them. In a recent working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers confirmed the importance of having a small peer group to depend on. Their research suggests it’s best to motivate groups, not individuals. They compared compensation packages and found that group-incentive pay motivated workers better than individual-incentive compensation.
4. Hone Your People-to-People Skills
   In this digital age we spend less and less time with others—especially virtual workers. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management have found that groups of people who did well on tests had the most members who were also good at reading each other’s emotions. They had equal contributions to communications and were patient with each other’s answers and issues. One of the best parts of a personal board of directors is that you do not need a leader and you can solve problems as a group better than one of the individual members could by themselves.

]]> http://www.blackenterprise.com/benext/2013/05/22/how-and-why-you-need-to-assess-your-inner-circle/feed/ 0 http://www.blackenterprise.com/benext/2013/04/22/4-top-financial-goals-to-achieve-right-now/ http://www.blackenterprise.com/benext/2013/04/22/4-top-financial-goals-to-achieve-right-now/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:26 +0000 Jennifer Streaks http://www.blackenterprise.com/?p=279174 You might be in financial straits or planning for the future. Whatever the case may be, however dire your situation, here are a few things you need to be doing right now to open some doors:

1.) Savings/ Emergency Fund

If you do not already have 8 months to 1 year of expenses saved, then start now!

Before you get started with any other investment goals, you have to be financially
sound. Ensuring that your everyday expenses are covered is the best way to do this.

2.) Paying Down Debt

Start paying down off any outstanding or lingering debt that you may have. Now is a
great time to wipe the slate clean.

3.) Homeownership

If you are thinking of buying a home, start by getting a copy of your credit report and
making sure it is accurate and also start saving for a down payment. Try to amass at
least 10% for the downpayment so that your mortgage payment is reasonable.

4.) Retirement

The earlier you start here the less of a rush you will be in later. If you are still early in
your work life, now you can be more aggressive with your retirement investing decisions
and go for maximum return on your investment. If you are moving towards the middle
or later years in your work career, you should look to invest in stable investment options
with less risk.

Just a few quick tips to help you with setting your financial goals.

Black Enterprise Columnist Jennifer Streaks is a Financial Expert, Author & Pundit.
Continue the conversation by following her on twitter @ JStreaks or visiting her website
www.JenniferStreaks.com.

The transaction, according to CEO R. Donahue Peebles, marks the first time an African American owned company has acquired a major commercial property south of Harlem. “This is a barrier breaker in that regard,” he says.

Peebles Corp. is set to acquire the building for $160 million and subsequently convert the 418,991 gross square foot structure into a mixed-use property featuring a boutique hotel with 170 rooms and luxury residential condominiums. “I was committed to doing business in New York and building a business here in New York. I was attracted to the location because it’s Tribeca, which still has a lot of the original character of Tribeca,” says Peebles. “And it’s a significant building that’s iconic. It fits a lot of our company’s areas of expertise. It’s a good fit for us.”

Planned building amenities are set to include a state-of-the-art fitness facility, 24/7 concierge, two levels of parking – which is much prized in the congested metropolis. “It’s an all-marble building. It’s got ceiling heights of up to 18 feet. On the second floor, where we’re going to down townhouses, it has 30 foot ceilings,” explains Peebles. “We’re going to have apartments that are going to range up to $30 million. We’re looking at a five-star boutique hotel that would be about 170 rooms.”

Despite lingering issues with the US economy, Peebles asserts that the real estate market is doing very well in New York City. “Manhattan is a global market. New York is one of the few cities that are almost immune to the domestic economy,” he says. “The economy here had a hiccup after the Lehman failure and the recession, but international buyers came in and picked up the slack nicely.” The plan, according to Peebles, is to begin construction the hotel at end of the first quarter of 2014 and construct the apartments beginning the first quarter of 2015.

This is also one of the company’s few transactions since the Great Recession hit some five years ago. More transactions are to come, with the company about to launch a new property on Miami’s coast. “This is our re-emergence,” states Peebles. “Really since 2008 to now, we’ve had one acquisition because the country as a whole was in a recession and the markets we were involved in were hit exceptionally hard.”

With the average cost of tuition, fees, and room and board at a private, non-profit four-year college topping out at more than $39,000, you’re likely looking for alternative financing to bridge the gap. Crowdfunding, which involves asking a group of people to help fund a project or need, has traditionally been used by artists looking to fund creative projects and by entrepreneurs seeking to raise start-up costs. But recently, students are using this method to help finance education. By the first quarter of 2012, there were a total of 452 crowd funding platforms across the globe that have raised roughly $1.5 billion  for various causes, according to crowdsourcing.org, a crowdfunding industry website.

Here are three sites to consider for crowdfunding some of your education costs:

GradSave: This college savings registry, which has more than 4,000 members, allows parents, friends, and family members to donate to your education fund. Account setup and maintenance are both free of charge. However, there are transaction fees for donations, starting at $2.99 and $3.99 for gifts made via eCheck or credit card, respectively. In addition, the site allows members to link their GradSave account to a 529 Savings Plan. Unlinked funds are stored in an FDIC-insured escrow account with Bank of America. Once members sign up for an account, and create a profile, they can post their fundraising effort on Facebook, Twitter, and email. In addition, members can track who’s donating to the account with the site’s tracking feature.  Furthermore, donors can also purchase a college savings gift card, which can be used toward any 529 Savings Plan or Prepaid Tuition Plan.

FiPath: Account users set a savings goal using the site’s tuition estimator tool, and then invite others to help meet the goal. Contributions are received via PayPal and can be transferred into one’s college savings account. The site allows contributors to see the total donation amount so they can follow the goal’s progress—and also see if funds have been withdrawn prematurely.

Funding4Learning: Dedicated to funding traditional degrees as well as educational projects, this platform is ideal for those raising money for a certificate program or continuing education class. Funds raised go into a PayPal account. There are two fund-raising options, and each with a different fee structure. The “all-or-nothing” approach–where fund-raisers agree to meet their goal, or forfeit the donated money–has a 5% fee on  funds raised if the goal is reached. There are no fees if the goal is not reached. In the direct contribution approach, where fund raisers accept contributions directly as the campaign is in progress—a 5% fee is applied to funds raised, regardless of the outcome.

What now?

Here are a few tips for getting an added boost to your credit score.

1) Ask for an increase in your credit line. Your credit utilization ratio — the percentage of available credit you’re using — accounts for 30% of your FICO score. By increasing the amount of unused credit, you can raise your score. However, before you do this, ask whether the issuer will run a credit check. Note that if your credit-card issuer requires a credit check before granting an increase, you could possibly lower your score. When a potential lender requests a credit report (due to you voluntarily applying for credit), this is considered a “hard” inquiry, and it might cause you to lose roughly five points from your FICO score. If you have a short credit history (few accounts) and several hard inquiries have been made over an extended period of time, you’re more likely to lose a few points. But if you have a long credit history, and relatively few hard inquiries, you may not be affected at all. A “soft” inquiry, which is when you pull your own credit report, does not affect your credit score.

2) Check your credit report. It’s been said over and over by financial experts, but it’s an important piece of advice that many people don’t follow. In a recent study, the Federal Trade Commission found that as many as 42 million Americans have errors in their credit reports. And some who had credit reporting errors corrected saw their score change by as much as 25 to 100 points. If you haven’t seen your credit report lately, go to  annualcreditreport.com to get it right now — it’s free.

3) Apply for a secured credit card. If you don’t have a credit card, perhaps due to discharging debt in a chapter 7 bankruptcy, you can rebuild your credit this way. A secured credit card requires you to make a cash collateral deposit with the issuing bank. This amount becomes your credit line. After you’ve made timely payments for about one to two years, you might be eligible for an upgrade to an unsecured card. But before you look into this option, make sure that the bank reports payments to all three of the major credit reporting bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). Try to find a card with low fees and favorable terms. For help finding a card that’s right for you, check out Bankrate.com’s handy list of secured credit card issuers.

4) Pay off your balances. Another way to increase your credit utilization ratio is to completely pay off your debt. In addition, having more available credit will cause potential lenders to view you as less of a credit risk.

A word of caution: If debt settlement is part of your “get-out-of-debt” plan, be aware that forgiven debt that is more than $600 is viewed by the IRS as miscellaneous income. Consequently, it will be reported to the IRS and you will receive Form 1099-C, Cancellation of Debt. The amount on this form must be included on your tax return as taxable income. That means that you’ll be expected to pay taxes on the forgiven debt.  (However, there are some exclusions, such as debt discharged in bankruptcy and some mortgage defaults as outlined in the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act). So keep an eye on your mail.

Acting on behalf of deceased Dutch programmer Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer and his widow, a patent-holding company called Rembrandt Social Media says in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Virginia that “Facebook’s success is based in part on the use of two of Mr. Van Der Meer’s patents without permission.”

Van Der Meer, who died in 2004, was instrumental in building a  social network called Surfbook and obtained the patents in 1998, five years before Facebook came on the scene.

According to legal papers filed, Surfbook was “a social diary allowing users to share information with friends and family and to approve posts using a “like” button.”

The papers also say Facebook knew about Der Meer’s patents as it has cited them in its own patent applications. Another social media company, Add This is being sued as well.

Facebook  had no comment on the lawsuit.

Image: Thinkstock

Gina Moore-Herring was devastated when she got the news that her sister, Brenda, had been diagnosed with AIDS. It was 1992.

Fortunately, Brenda throughout her illness had the resources to pay for medications and medical visits.

“My sister was blessed to have coverage for most of her services and medications through Medicaid and disability,” says Moore-Herring. “The rest was covered by family members.”

Unfortunately, however, Brenda’s 21-year battle with AIDS ended last September. She was just 53. Her body was ravaged with lung cancer, liver and kidney disease, and she’d suffered a heart attack and stroke. Years of untreated hypertension and inadequate healthcare eventually caused Brenda’s kidneys to shut down, causing her to go for dialysis three times a week. Each visit cost roughly $3,000.

“Brenda relied on us to pick up personal items and necessities for her whenever she was admitted to the hospital, but that was it. We didn’t experience a huge financial burden like many other families.”

Not everyone has the same experience when it comes to handling the financial implications of being diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. In fact, some have a tremendous amount of difficulty keeping up, with many even losing their homes in the process.

Feb. 7 marks the observance of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, which is meant to raise awareness and increase education about AIDS and HIV in the black community. More than 1.1 million people in the United States are living with the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control. About 44% of new HIV cases in 2009 (the most recent CDC data) were found among blacks.

Often forgotten during this observance is the fact that many HIV and AIDS patients struggle to pay the bills. In honor of this day, here are four resources to help ease the financial strain of living with HIV or AIDS.

1)  The Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program is managed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Program grants are awarded to assist AIDS patients with housing and social services. Specifically, grant money is used to acquire, rehabilitate, or construct new housing units. Money from the program is also used for rental assistance, payments for the operation of facilities, short-term payment assistance to prevent homelessness, health care and mental health services, and assistance with daily living.

2) Partnership for Prescription Assistance provides resources for AIDS Patient Assistance and co-payment programs.

3)  In concert with city, state, and community-based organizations, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program offers services to HIV/AIDS patients who are underinsured and have limited financial means. Part of this program, called The Minority Aids Initiative, is tailored specifically to minority populations. Through this initiative, medical services are provided in addition to education services and access to medication.

4)  In addition to blogs, health articles, and general coping tips, The Body, an HIV/AIDS education website, has a resource page for HIV and AIDS patients with a directory of programs around the nation offering financial assistance.

Moore-Herring, a member of AMFAR (The American Foundation for AIDS Research) since 1998, continues to be a crusader for HIV and AIDS awareness in her community. She is working on a documentary, called Not Just Another AIDS Story, to honor Brenda’s life. Moore-Herring is also working to keep her sister’s business alive. As a result of constantly being hooked up to the dialysis machine, Brenda developed a fistula, or a growth on her arm where the line entered the skin (this area on the arm is also called an access). Gina, Brenda, and her family started a small side business in 2010 called B. Moore Inspired Access-ories, selling fashionable arm bands to help kidney patients cover their fistulas, since they can grow to become quite large and unsightly.

Moore-Herring is also working to create a foundation in Brenda’s name (B. Moore Inspired) that will help others dealing with the emotional and financial toll of HIV and AIDS.

“I’m hoping that people will  be blessed by Brenda’s story,” says Moore-Herring, “and how she overcame despite her illnesses.”

“From my family to yours,” Beyonce wrote in a letter to her fans. “Wishing you a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.”

Wayne Sutton, a co-founder of the NewMe Accelerator, is now founder of PitchTo.co

Last November, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien explored Silicon Valley through the eyes of eight African-American entrepreneurs. All participants of the inaugural NewMe Accelerator class, the Black in America: The New Promised Land – Silicon Valley cast invited viewers into their journey as startup founders competing in an industry comprised of less than 1% of entrepreneurs that look like them. BlackEnterprise.com caught up with the tech innovators to see what they’ve been up to one year later.

There would not be a NewMe Accelerator without Wayne Sutton. When Angela Benton of BlackWeb2.0 contacted him in 2011 for advice about launching a mobile app and how they were apart of the 1% of  African Americans startup founders, together the team came up with the idea for a three-month accelerator. Since way before the age of Twitter, Sutton, who also blogs as and goes by the moniker SocialWayne, has been at the forefront of social media, blogging about all things tech related. Now, Sutton has many more notches on his belt and technophiles of all races turn to him for his expertise on any number of topics including location-based digital services, startup and pitch strategy, User Interface/User Interaction (UI/UX), mobile interface design, business development, and content strategy. Read ahead to learn more about why Sutton joined forces with Benton, whether the accelerator was a success in his eyes, and what’s next on his to-do list.

As co-founder of the NewMe Accelerator my vision was to…

Launch a successful program to work with the brightest minds in Silicon Valley. To help first-time and experienced minority entrepreneurs learn what it takes to build a technology startup.

I’ve learned a lot since launching and leaving NewME such as…

The importance of having great mentors and advisers, along with making sure every founder of the team understands their role before moving forward with the company. Overall, the experience of launching an accelerator in Silicon Valley was priceless.

I moved to San Francisco from North Carolina in February to keep the vision of the NewME Accelerator going. I worked with another class of founders from February to May of 2012, to help develop their product, connect with mentors and prepare them to pitch their products to VC firms and press.

What many people don’t know by just watching the CNN Black In America 4 documentary is…

That I was the co-founder of a mobile location-based startup in North Carolina that was founded in 2009. That’s the startup I was working on before my former NewME partner, Angela Benton, called me asking for advice about launching a startup. After NewME started, I decided to put our NC-based startup on hold, which allowed me to focus on maintaining the accelerator. Due to the CNN cameras, I still had to pitch at the end of the program so I came up with two app ideas from July to August one being Vouch and pitched it on demo day.

If I had to do it all over again…

I wouldn’t have pitched at all. I decided not to launch Vouch. Although I liked the idea, I wasn’t passionate about it. So decided to not move forward on the idea and focus on launching the NewME Community across the country and getting ready for the 2012 class.

In May, I decided to leave NewME to launch a new company call PitchTo.co. PitchTo is a mobile development lab which builds tools for investors to make smarter decisions and help entrepreneurs deliver exceptional pitches. The vision behind PitchTo came after seeing a disconnect between founders and investors around the pitch and feedback loop.

]]> http://www.blackenterprise.com/benext/2012/11/20/%e2%80%98black-in-america%e2%80%99-wayne-sutton-one-year-later/feed/ 0 http://www.blackenterprise.com/benext/2012/11/20/today%e2%80%99s-business-crisis-educating-tomorrow%e2%80%99s-workforce/ http://www.blackenterprise.com/benext/2012/11/20/today%e2%80%99s-business-crisis-educating-tomorrow%e2%80%99s-workforce/#comments Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:39:13 +0000 BLACK ENTERPRISE http://www.blackenterprise.com/?p=234324 In BLACK ENTERPRISE‘s award-winning series of reports on the state of public schools, our editors defined the urgency of the situation by paraphrasing an old maxim: “In the 21^st Century, the business of America is education.” It’s not just a mere play on words.  The reality is that nothing has become more vital to industrial competitiveness and advancement of corporations, large and small, than a literate, capable and critical-thinking workforce.

Judging by the stats on America’s school system, we have a failing grade: 70% of all American eighth graders cannot read at their level; a student drops out every 26 seconds; and according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, 25% of our students fail to graduate on time with the figure for African Americans and Latinos at a staggering 40%.

Due to the critical assignment of repairing our schools, BLACK ENTERPRISE and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation formed a partnership to address this problem and recently launched the first of a series of forums, “Today’s Business Crisis: Educating Tomorrow’s Workforce.”

The voting patterns that made it possible for President Barack Obama’s re-election signaled the nation is quickly becoming “majority minority” but school-aged children of color in urban hubs are not being prepared for the knowledge-based 21^st Century workplace and, as a result, will not move forward. So it’s up to all so-called stakeholders – teachers, administrators, parents, students, civic advocates, non-profits and especially, business leaders to become full participants in finding a solution to this potentially crippling conundrum.

BLACK ENTERPRISE President & CEO Earl “Butch” Graves, Jr. says in his opening remarks at the Nov. 7 Memphis-based event: “We must individually and collectively be accountable for the quality of public education, both for the health of our nation and its economy as well as for the viability of our respective enterprises. Indeed, the education of tomorrow’s workforce is not just a social crisis, or a human-interest crisis, or their crisis. It is a business crisis. It is our crisis. [We must fix] the American Public Education System because it is broken and we are all accountable for its repair. We must stop waiting for Superman and put on our own capes and get to work.”

“Our purpose today is to help galvanize business leaders, African American business leaders in particular, to play a larger role in creating the solutions necessary to ensure that inner-city high school students, the overwhelming majority of whom are of color, graduate readily to succeed and prepare to earn post-secondary degrees,” he continues, speaking before an audience of more than 100 – plus more than 136,000 accounts reached on Twitter. “I can think or no better city to have this discussion today than in River City, with its long and storied legacy as a battleground for civil rights of which public education is among the most basic. Memphis is also the site of some of the Gates Foundation’s most ambitious work, as well as the home of dedicated educators determined to change public schools for the better.”

Dr. Kriner Cash, superintendent of Memphis City Public Schools, echoed the need to raise students’ competitive levels.  In recounting a speech from renowned columnist Thomas Friedman, Cash maintains that “it’s no longer about cheap labor, it’s about cheap genius…The day of average is over. The day of the low-skilled but high-paying job is over. It is no longer about satisfactory in our job performances, and in our work, and in our inspiration and teaching to our young people. It’s only about good, better, and best. We have to move rapidly now from stack-and-pack to the head of the class in world knowledge economy. It’s how much you can innovate. It’s how much you can create, and what is the value add that you bring to your workplace and to your role.”

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