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Palma Airport in Majorca is among those where passengers have faced delays, Abta says
New checks at many EU airports have left holidaymakers facing long queues, an airline lobby group has warned.
Rule changes brought in after recent terror attacks mean people entering and leaving the Schengen area, which allows passport-free movement across much of the EU, face more security checks.
Airlines For Europe (A4E) said people were having to wait for up to four hours and some had missed flights.
The European Commission said the delays were “the price of security”.
‘Devastated passengers’
The new measures introduced in response to attacks in Paris and Brussels mean the details of passengers from non-Schengen countries, such as the UK, are run through databases to alert authorities if they are known to pose a threat.
Practically it means that border staff in the affected countries have to swipe each passport through a reader, rather than waving British holidaymakers though as before.
This has taken up to two minutes per passenger which has led to delays.
A4E, which represents carriers including Easyjet, Ryanair and British Airways-owner IAG, said delays at some airports had increased by 300% compared with last year.
Managing director Thomas Reynaert said: “Travellers face long lines and can’t get on their flights. Queuing for up to four hours has been the top record these days.
“Airports like Madrid, Palma de Mallorca, Lisbon, Lyon, Paris-Orly, Milan or Brussels are producing shameful pictures of devastated passengers in front of immigration booths, in lines stretching hundreds of metres.”
A4E added that the situation could worsen in the coming weeks as the new regulations have not yet been fully implemented.
A spokeswoman for travel trade organisation Abta said: “New, stricter passport checks are resulting in longer queues at some airports, including Palma, which is already busy due to a significant increase in passenger numbers.
“Tour operators will ensure that customers get to the airport in plenty of time so that they are not in danger of missing their flights.”
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She urged independent travellers to check for delays with their airlines and “ensure they factor these longer queuing times into their travel plans when flying”.
Border check points should be kept “sufficiently resourced” to keep queuing times as short as possible, she added.
The European Commission has defended the changes, spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said: “More checks can lead to more delays and that is the price of security.
“We understand that there are concerns about EU rules leading to longer waiting periods, but let us be very clear – this is about the security of our citizens.
“All EU member states wanted to have the current rules. We cannot have on the one hand, a joint request from member states to have more checks and controls, to increase security, and at the same time have complaints about longer waiting periods.”
She said it was the responsibility of member states to provide enough resources to make the checks “as smooth as possible”, adding it was “very clear that member states had time to prepare”.
Smaller airports
The BBC’s Brussels reporter, Adam Fleming, said there were issues with smaller airports at the weekend.
There were big queues at Malaga and Palma, Majorca as they were not geared up for the delays. Orly airport in Paris was able to draft in extra staff when the management realised there was a problem.
He said the airlines were issuing this warning to let people know that any coming delays would not be their fault.
The BBC has contacted several airlines and airports. They have said there was no sign of huge delays on Tuesday or any change in advice for passengers with regards to checking in earlier.
Are you delayed at one of the affected airports? Have you been hit by delays? Email with your experiences.
Last week, Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman decided to clear the air. The executive took to Twitter — an account that largely hadn’t been active since 2011 — to make this statement about whether she would step into Uber’s CEO position vacated by Travis Kalanick.
(3/3) We have a lot of work still to do at HPE and I am not going anywhere. Uber’s CEO will not be Meg Whitman.
Her answer was a resounding no. So who is it going to be? Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and GM CEO Mary Barra apparently aren’t interested either. Two of the names that have floated to the surface are Jeffery Immelt, who will leave his post as CEO of GE this week, and Mark Fields, who was CEO at Ford.
Kyle Jensen, associate dean and director of entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Management, says he thinks that those leaders would be sensible choices.
“Each is a Silicon Valley outsider and each presided over complex multi-national operations, which is relevant as Uber races Lyft and others around the globe,” Jensen says. “Unfortunately for Uber, it’s culture was ill-shaped by the leadership of founder Travis Kalanick. Uber is in the enviable position of leading the ride share market, which will provide some breathing room and time to instill more sound ethics in the organization. Until the culture is fixed, it will be a tax on the company.”
As the search continues for a new person to helm the embattled ride hailing company, but reports indicate it hasn’t been the smoothest transition. And that’s before you get into turning around a company that has spent months beset by scandal.
As Kalanick remains on Uber’s board, how much of an impact the former CEO will have on the day-to-day operations of the company remain somewhat unclear, but it would seem that he isn’t quite comfortable with the idea of taking a backseat to new leadership.
According to Kara Swisher in Recode, some are concerned that Kalanick is “trying to game the outcome in his favor, after he told several people that he was ‘Steve Jobs-ing it.’ It is a reference to the late leader of Apple, who was fired from the company, only to later return in triumph.”
In April, Uber’s valuation was hovering around $50 billion — still high, but a significant dip from the $70 billion valuation that made it the most valuable private company in the world. For the members of the board who have put money and time into the growth of the company, finding a new CEO isn’t just about righting Uber’s cultural woes but also getting a return on their investment.
“This next CEO could potentially be the CEO to take the company public,” notes Dr. Marsha Ershaghi Hames, managing director of strategy and development at LRN, a firm that specializes in helping companies build cultures and systems of leadership that promote ethical behavior. But in order for the new leadership to succeed, it can’t just be about the money.
“We’re in this era where we’re doing well when we’re doing the right thing,” Ershagi Hames says. “My advice to whoever is leading the recruitment and evaluation for the next Uber CEO is there isn’t going to be one individual or one silver bullet. That individual put into the position of leadership needs to lead by building trust, by driving an open and transparent dialogue, by being willing to listen first and by connecting profit with purpose.”
One of the central tasks that a new CEO will have to contend with is recreating the company’s culture. The investigation conducted by former attorney general Eric Holder highlighted the most toxic elements that need to be removed in order for Uber to move forward, but Heather Huhman, career expert and the president of Come Recommended, says that it can be tough to impose a new culture, especially if it is seen as coming from an outsider.
“Culture is discovered rather than created — and a new leader will need to listen very carefully to the people inside Uber to find the stories and values that they can amplify to propel them forward,” she says. “This will be the defining trait of the right person — that they are able to find a voice for the people that are there, rather than bringing all the ideas from outside. These are hard questions that the company needs to grapple with, and they will require an extremely skilled listener and communicator to turn the ship.”
Brett Stephens, the CEO of executive search and leadership consulting firm RSR Partners, agrees. He says that he thinks the main trait that a successful CEO leading a turnaround must have is a capacity for empathy.
“Uber is a perfect example of how artificial intelligence and digital disruption are quickly recalibrating the CEO’s desired skillset,” Stephens says. “These chief executives need to be experts in collaboration, engagement and human interaction. This ability to connect with others will likely be the defining leadership trait of our generation. If deployed adeptly, empathy will enable a new CEO to not only excel at reshaping the company, but also build a culture that empowers employees, strengthens the company and rewards investors.”
While Uber’s first era was marked by sharp elbows and a win-at-all-costs mentality, for the company to succeed in its next chapter, the person at the helm will do well to listen rather than talk.
It took just four days in 2016 for a river in northern Canada to dry up completely; painted crosswalks in New Dehli melted earlier this year due to record-high temperatures; and NASA recently learned Earth is experiencing its highest levels of carbon dioxide for the first time in roughly 4 million years.
Let that sink in.
Many of us will read such startling information and go on with our daily lives. But if we’re smart — and we’re conscious — we’ll invest in saving the planet, if not for ourselves, then for future generations. So as entrepreneurs (who, at a basic level, make it a goal every day to improve the world where and how we can), doesn’t it make sense to start doing it on a global scale?
Promoting sustainability is not only a great humanitarian move — it’s also a highly lucrative one. In 2015, asset manager company BlackRock analyzed the performance of close to 2,000 companies and found eye-opening results: 20 percent of companies that were the strongest in cutting carbon intensity beat the global stock market by nearly 6 percent. “Renewable energy is at the core of sustainable economic growth,” Grete Faremo, the executive director of the United Nations’ Office for Project Services, told me. “We will need cutting-edge solutions to meet our joint ambitions. Only through applying the potential of new technologies we will be able to include all.”
So the question becomes: In what ways can entrepreneurs make a difference while still turning a profit? Innovation in the sustainability industry is plentiful, and entrepreneurs can capitalize.
Myriad opportunities exist in the sustainability arena, and several entrepreneurs — even the bigwigs such as Elon Musk and his “gigafactory,” among his other innovations to battle climate change — are cashing in on the movement. Currently, some areas boast more potential growth than others:
Autonomous driving: The notion of self-driving cars has been on the tips of tongues for years now, but the environmentally friendly aspects attached to the concept aren’t usually the top reason why. For entrepreneurs, however, they should be. Research highlighted in an Elsevier report found that in five years, close to one-third of trucks in the U.K. could be self-driven; by 2040, three-quarters of all cars in the region could be.
It’s clear the automated vehicle industry is worth investing in, but what do these driverless cars do for the environment? The Scientific American suggests they could slow pollution, ultimately slowing climate damage: “We are on the cusp of a new era in automotive technology with enormous potential to save lives, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transform mobility for the American people,” said former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx in 2016.
Health: Taking care of ourselves goes hand in hand with taking care of the planet: The better we do, the better the environment does. Leading healthcare organizations such as Kaiser Permanente are doing what they can to instill environmental stewardship, recognizing the symbiotic relationship between good health and good earth: “We understand the clear connection between a healthy environment and the health of individuals,” said Kathy Gerwig, a vice president at Kaiser Permanente. “Preventing environmental causes of illness is the main objective of our sustainability program. We also recognize that the health care industry’s impact on pollution and waste is substantial, and we want to be proactive in combatting it.”
The healthcare industry is embracing the movement through the use of renewable energy, purchasing more efficient products and practicing the same diets it encourages patients to (such as eating homegrown, sustainably farmed foods). The use of renewable energy (as opposed to harmful fossil fuels) significantly lowers global warming emissions. According to the aforementioned article on Kaiser Permanente, the use of “greener” equipment greatly reduces the amount of hazardous waste disposal.
Lastly, consuming foods from homegrown sources lowers pesticide consumption, as well as workers’ exposure to harmful chemicals in the field.
Agriculture: Investing in agriculture, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, can greatly reduce the effects of climate change. In 2016, the FAO’s deputy director said, “Agriculture can play a crucial role in making the response to climate change responsible and more effective.” Agriculture, in particular, is severely impacted by the damaging effects of climate change. Consider the ongoing El Niño phenomenon that has already affected 60 million people, particularly smallholder farmers and the rural poor. Entrepreneurs who invest in the industry — such as Bill Gates, who founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (one of the largest advocates of agricultural research and development) and who also happens to be the No. 1 funder of genetic engineering research — can help combat these devastating consequences, which in turn makes a small dent in the road to climate change recovery.
So, entrepreneurs, now you know what to invest in. The next challenge is actually doing it. But you don’t have to go it alone — here are the two most important steps to follow:
1. Seek out new nontraditional funding paths.
Due to recent changes in U.S. climate policies — as well as recent pullback from top venture capitalists — seeking new ways to gain funds is a must. Consider reaching out to your closest circle (e.g., all the other entrepreneurs you know) who are committed to this space. Beyond that, install a crowdfunding campaign to kick-start whatever innovation you hope to introduce to combat climate change. It’s already happening successfully throughout the industry — proof that you can do it, too.
2. Leverage the power of AI for climate solutions.
Artificial intelligence isn’t just a cool trend; it’s also an incredibly effective one, and its implications are being explored for climate change and food security concerns. “The power of AI technology is it can solve problems that scale to the whole planet,” said Facebook’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer. He’s not wrong: Recent developments in AI for sustainability purposes include anything from identifying deforestation and how fast it’s occurring to predicting energy demands to ensure a matching supply. Now is the time to tap into the limitless potential of AI, especially if you plan to tackle the ever-changing climate and its insidious effects. Perhaps the most effective way to use AI as an entrepreneur is through mining big data involving the cause of your choice, and then having your team decipher that data and plan your course in detail.
So while you’re no Captain Planet or Superman saving the world one good deed at a time, you are an innovator, and you’re one who can make a difference for future generations — our children and their children. Don’t they deserve a clean, sustainable world? You may not be a superhero, but you’re an entrepreneur with a big heart — add some funds and the power of tech to the mix, and you’ve got the world in your hands.
What sets apart the most effective workers from their colleagues? A new study from corporate and leadership training firm VitalSmarts took a look the traits that top performers share.
In a survey of 1,600 managers and employees, the researchers found that 83 percent of leaders and 77 percent of workers say that top performers have less stress and increased productivity because of their habits.
According to the study, there are a number of factors that contribute to this reduction in stress. The participants said that top performers “ask for help” and are “not afraid to ask questions”, whereas the top complaints about average performers were a “lack of communication” or that they are “slow to respond.”
And these communication practices lead to very different outcomes. Top performers were described as “organized” and as having “good time management” and an “attention to detail.” Meanwhile, average performers were docked for having “not enough time”, a “lack of attention” and “no follow through.”
The researchers then had 2,072 participants answer a series of questions about how their productivity practices (or lack thereof) contributed to their feelings of stress.
People who scored high on the productivity assessment were 10 times less likely to agree with statements such as “I live in a mess — cluttered office, buried desk, disorganized home” and “I often feel distracted. Can’t focus on one task at a time,” than those who received lower scores.
In response to the statement, “I often feel anxious. I’m never sure that I haven’t forgotten something,” high performers were 21 times less likely to agree than low performers. And when posed with the statement, “I often feel inadequate. I disappoint myself and others because I lose track of important commitments,” high performers were 88 times less likely to agree than low performers.
Ultimately, the researchers found that those high performers were also 55 times less likely to start projects that never get finished, 17 times less likely to have an inbox with too many unread emails and 18 times less likely to feel overwhelmed.
So if you find yourself wishing that you could level up at work, think hard about how you are spending your time. The study shows that you don’t need to chain yourself to a desk to be seen as more productive. Creating more of a balance for yourself will be reflected in your work and how others perceive you.
Would you like to pay less tax? Make a sandwich: specifically, a “double Irish, Dutch sandwich”.
Suppose you’re American. You set up a company in Bermuda and sell it your intellectual property. It then sets up a subsidiary in Ireland.
Now, set up another company in Ireland: it bills your European operations for amounts resembling their profits. Now, start a company in the Netherlands.
Have your second Irish company send money to your Dutch company, which immediately sends it back to your first Irish company. You know, the one headquartered in Bermuda.
Are you bored and confused yet? If so, that’s part of the point.
Tax havens depend on making it, at best, very difficult to get your head around financial flows, and, at worst, impossible to find out any facts.
Accounting techniques that make your brain hurt enable multinationals such as Google, eBay and Ikea to minimise their tax bills – completely legally.
You can see why people get upset. Taxes are a bit like membership fees for a club: it feels unfair to dodge the fees but still expect to benefit from the services provided to members – defence, police, roads, sewers, education, and so on.
But tax havens haven’t always had such a bad image. Sometimes they’ve functioned like any other safe haven, allowing persecuted minorities to escape the oppressive rules of home.
Jews in Nazi Germany, for example, were able to ask secretive Swiss bankers to hide their money.
Avoidance v evasion
Unfortunately, secretive Swiss bankers soon undid the good this did their reputation by proving to be just as happy to help the Nazis hide the gold they managed to steal, and reluctant to give it back to the people it was stolen from.
Nowadays, tax havens are controversial for two reasons: tax avoidance and tax evasion.
Tax avoidance is legal. It’s the stuff of double Irish, Dutch sandwiches.
Image copyright Getty Images
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Like other major technology companies, Google has come under pressure over its tax arrangements.
The laws apply to everyone: smaller businesses and even ordinary individuals could set up border-hopping legal structures too. They just don’t earn enough to justify the accountants’ fees.
If everyday folk want to reduce their tax bill, their options are limited to various forms of tax evasion, which is illegal: VAT fraud, undeclared cash-in-hand work, or taking too many cigarettes through the “nothing to declare” lane at customs.
Secrecy boost
The British tax authorities reckon that much evaded tax comes from countless such – often modest – infractions, rather than the wealthy entrusting their money to shadowy bankers.
But it’s hard to be sure. If we could measure the problem exactly, it wouldn’t exist in the first place.
Image copyright Getty Images
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In 1934, the Swiss made it a criminal offence for bankers to disclose financial information
Perhaps it’s no surprise that banking secrecy seems to have started in Switzerland: the first known regulations limiting bankers’ ability to share information about their clients were passed in 1713 by the Great Council of Geneva.
Secretive Swiss banking really took off in the 1920s, as many European nations hiked taxes to repay their debts from World War One – and many rich Europeans looked for ways to hide their money.
Recognising that this was boosting their economy, in 1934 the Swiss made it a criminal offence for bankers to disclose financial information.
The euphemism for a tax haven these days, of course, is “offshore” – despite Switzerland’s lack of coastline. Gradually, tax havens have emerged on islands such as Jersey or Malta, or, most famously, in the Caribbean.
Image copyright Getty Images
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Many small islands have become tax havens as a pragmatic way to grow their economies
There’s a logistical reason for this: a small island isn’t much good for manufacturing or agriculture, so financial services are an obvious alternative.
But the real explanation is historical: the dismantling of European empires in the decades after World War Two.
Unwilling to prop up Bermuda or the British Virgin Islands with explicit subsidies, the UK instead encouraged them to develop financial expertise, plugged into the City of London. The subsidy was implicit, instead – tax revenue steadily leaked away to these islands.
Mind the gap
The economist Gabriel Zucman came up with an ingenious way to estimate the wealth hidden in the offshore banking system.
In theory, if you add up the assets and liabilities reported by every global financial centre, the books should balance – but they don’t. Each individual centre tends to report more liabilities than assets.
Zucman crunched the numbers and found that, globally, total liabilities were 8% higher than total assets. That suggests at least 8% of the world’s wealth is illegally unreported. Other methods have come up with even higher estimates.
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Zucman identified a gap between the global economy’s declared assets and liabilities
The problem is particularly acute in developing countries. For example, Zucman finds 30% of wealth in Africa is hidden offshore. He calculates an annual loss of $14bn (£11bn) in tax revenue. That would build plenty of schools and hospitals.
Zucman’s solution is transparency: creating a global register of who owns what, to end banking secrecy and anonymity-preserving shell corporations and trusts.
That might well help with tax evasion. But tax avoidance is a subtler and more complex problem.
To see why, imagine I own a bakery in Belgium, a dairy in Denmark, and a sandwich shop in Slovenia.
I sell a cheese sandwich, making 1 euro of profit. How much of that profit should be taxed in Slovenia, where I sold the sandwich, or Denmark, where I made the cheese, or Belgium, where I baked the bread? There’s no obvious answer.
Accounting tricks
As rising taxes met increasing globalisation in the 1920s, the League of Nations devised protocols for handling such questions. They allow companies some leeway to choose where to book their profits.
There’s a case for that, but it opened the door to some dubious accounting tricks.
Image copyright Getty Images
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Did a company in Trinidad really sell pens to a sister company for $8,500 (£6,600) apiece?
One widely reported example may be apocryphal, but illustrates the logical extreme of these practices.
A company in Trinidad apparently sold ballpoint pens to a sister company for $8,500 (£6,600) apiece, resulting in more profit booked in low-tax Trinidad and less in higher-tax regimes elsewhere.
Most such tricks are less obvious, and consequently harder to quantify.
Still, Zucman estimates that 55% of US-based companies’ profits are routed through some unlikely looking jurisdiction such as Luxembourg or Bermuda, costing the US taxpayer $130bn (£100bn) a year. Another estimate puts the losses to developing country governments at many times the amount they get in foreign aid.
Solutions are conceivable: profits could be taxed globally, with national governments devising ways to apportion which profit is deemed taxable where.
Political desire
A similar formula already exists to apportion national profits made by US companies to individual states.
Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us, given the incentives involved. Clever people can earn more from exploiting loopholes than trying to close them.
Individual governments face incentives to compete to lower taxes, because a small percentage of something is better than a large percentage of nothing.
For tiny, palm-fringed islands, it can even make sense to set taxes at 0%, as the local economy will be boosted by the resulting boom in law and accounting.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that tax havens mostly benefit financial elites, including some politicians and many of their donors. Meanwhile, pressure from voters for action is limited by the boring and confusing nature of the problem.
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Shelly Fireman’s career as a restaurateur spans more than five decades
Like other great success stories, Sheldon Fireman’s started with a sense of ambition, an understanding of the local culture, and nothing to do on a Friday night.
Hanging out in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of New York in the 1960s, Mr Fireman – Shelly to his friends – got the idea to open an all-night cafe specialising in serving breakfast food. It would be called the Hip Bagel.
“I fell in love with my idea,” says Mr Fireman, who wanted to create a place that was fun to hang out and be seen in at all hours.
He opened The Hip Bagel in 1964 at a cost of just $500 (£385).
For the next 14 years the establishment lived up to its name – attracting celebrities such as Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand.
It also propelled Mr Fireman towards becoming one of New York’s preeminent restaurateurs.
He was in his 20s then. Today, 53 years later, his company, Fireman Hospitality Group owns nine restaurants in New York and Washington DC that continue to attract celebrities, and which brought in nearly $60m (£47m) in 2016 alone.
Image copyright FHG
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In the 1960s The Hip Bagel attracted New York celebrities looking for a late night bite
Mr Fireman grew up in The Bronx, New York, and started his career in the garment business before switching to hospitality.
“I had no mentors [in the garment business],” says Mr Fireman, “and I was impatient to be successful in life.”
Risky business
That impatience drove him towards a risky industry.
About 60% of restaurants in the US close in their first three years, and in New York the challenges are particularly acute. Rents are high, you need to attract both locals and tourists, and new establishments are more likely to get negative reviews.
There is also competition from approximately 24,000 other eateries around the city.
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Decades into his career, Mr Fireman keeps moving forward with new ideas
In 1974 Mr Fireman opened his second restaurant, Cafe Fiorello, just blocks from Central Park.
Like The Hip Bagel, the focus was on hospitality. It’s a theme he’s carried through to each successive restaurant, be they fine-dining establishments like Trattoria Dell’Arte or casual restaurants like the Brooklyn Diner.
Customers are more likely to remember how the place made them feel, Mr Fireman argues, than the food that they ate.
“Everyone has their favourite pizza. Who am I to say what the best is?” he explains. “But hospitality they remember.”
Adam Platt, a restaurant critic who has covered New York’s food scene for more than 15 years, says that for old-school restaurateurs like Mr Fireman, running a restaurant is a lot like putting on a Broadway show.
“He’s really a theatrical producer. The Brooklyn Diner isn’t really a diner and it’s not in Brooklyn, but he puts together this successful production,” says Mr Platt.
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The Brooklyn Diner on 57th Street is Mr Fireman’s tribute to casual American dining
While Mr Fireman likes to jump from one type of restaurant to another, there are characteristics common to all his establishments.
Each tends to be large and to have a clearly defined concept. Prices are also high, but not out of line with nearby competitors, and each relies heavily on its location to attract a high volume of customers.
The Brooklyn Diner, for example, serves on average 1,200 customers every day.
Mr Fireman has a “nose for location and for matching that location to the appetite of the neighbourhood”, says Mr Platt.
In 2010, the Fireman Hospitality Group also opened its first restaurant outside of New York – an outpost of its steakhouse, Bond 45, just outside Washington DC.
More The Boss features, which every week profile a different business leader from around the world:
While Mr Fireman has been reluctant to work with celebrities, he does rely on investors for financial support and business guidance.
He took on his first investors in 1992 when he opened Trattoria Dell’Arte, which is located opposite the famous concert venue, Carnegie Hall.
Since then he has taken on outside investors for every new project, giving up 10%-15% of the ownership, depending on the restaurant.
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Trattoria Dell’Arte was the first of Mr Fireman’s restaurants to take on outside investors
“Investors are wonderful, but you have to be able to hear their criticism,” says Mr Fireman.
Disagreeing with the businessman, who has been described as outspoken and eccentric, can be daunting.
Stephen Zagor, the former manager of Trattoria Dell’Arte, says those who plan to tell Mr Fireman he’s wrong better come armed with information to back it up.
“He loves a good verbal joust. If you don’t have your information together he will pick you apart,” Mr Zagor says.
Learning from failure
But Mr Fireman himself admits that not every project has been a success.
A restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan gave him particular difficulty. Over the course of 15 years, it failed to make a profit, despite repeated redesigns, name changes and menu updates.
A partnership to launch an outlet of the Brooklyn Diner in Dubai also failed. According to Mr Fireman, it failed to live up to the quality his partners had promised to deliver.
“You’re never going to do it perfectly; if you can’t take the pain of mistakes you can’t do this,” he says.
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With around 24,000 eateries in New York, there is a lot of competition facing Fireman group restaurants like the Redeye Grill
The company has also faced criticism from employees who complain that the intense focus on hospitality means the mantra “the customer is always right” can sometimes be taken too far.
A 2006 lawsuit also pitted the Fireman Hospitality Group against employees who claimed that they had been underpaid and wages had been withheld. The company settled the case out of court, paying $3.9m (£3m).
None of this has shaken Mr Fireman from his desire to open more restaurants and test new concepts. After more than 50 years in the restaurant business, he is as hungry for success as ever.
He is currently working on a new idea for a fast casual restaurant that he plans to launch in New York and spread throughout the US.
“Every time I think about it and improve on it and tweak it, it’s like I’m finding gold,” says Mr Fireman.
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Serena Williams on 1 May 2017 at the Costume Institute Benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
Top tennis star Serena Williams has called on black women to step up their demands for equal pay.
Writing in Fortune magazine, the world’s highest-earning female athlete urges black women to be “fearless” and to “fight for every penny”.
“Speak out for equal pay. Every time you do, you’re making it a little easier for a woman behind you,” she wrote.
Her comments were published to highlight black women’s equal pay day.
Williams, who has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, has previously complained about racism and sexism, both inside and outside tennis.
In her article, she said that black women in the US were affected much more by gender discrimination than white women.
Black women earn only 63 cents for every dollar a man earns and black women earn 17% less than white female counterparts, she wrote.
She also argued that black female university graduates were paid less, and that this discrimination was as strong in the high-paying high-tech industries of Silicon Valley as among workers in inner cities.
That, she said, meant that black women would need to work on average eight months longer every year than their male counterparts just to earn the same amount of money.
“Unfair pay has prevailed for far too long with no consequence,” Williams said.
“The issue isn’t just that black women hold lower-paying jobs. They earn less even in fields of technology, finance, entertainment, law, and medicine,” added the tennis star.
Image copyright AFP
Her article argued that the injustice of lower pay can be tackled by legal changes, “employer recognition”, and courageous workers demanding more.
But a vital step, she said, was for the problem to be put in the spotlight.
“We need to push this issue to the front of conversations, so that employers across the US can truly understand that all male and female employees must be compensated equally,” she argued.
“Not close. Not almost the same. Equally,” she emphasised.
To some eyes, it might appear incongruous that one of the world’s richest women – she reportedly earned $27m last year – should be raising a standard for equal pay for poorer black women.
But in her article, Williams addressed that head-on.
“I am in the rare position to be financially successful beyond my imagination,” she acknowledged.
“I had talent, I worked like crazy and I was lucky enough to break through.
“But today isn’t about me. It’s about the other 24 million black women in America.
“If I never picked up a tennis racket, I would be one of them; that is never lost on me,” she added.
For some odd reasons, I feel I’ve had a pretty good career to date.
I’ve had a successful business. I’ve done the corporate thing. I’ve been an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur. I’ve done the side-hustle-internet-business thing.
After all of these pursuits, I began to evaluate what worked and what didn’t. I studied what people succeeding in their careers did and compared it with what those who are stalled and unhappy in their careers were doing.
I took some time to reflect and then write down what it was that made an excellent career. There were some humungous ah-ha moments as I wrote down each point. A career is not so complex when you strip away all the business jargon and rah-rah nonsense on the Internet.
Here are the 23 things I wish I knew at the start of my career:
1. Someone is upsetting you right now.
Right now, somewhere in your company, there’s someone doing something that upsets you. It upsets you because they are violating your rules for business and life. Stop letting people steal your happiness. Your rules are not the guiding principles of the universe. Your rules probably have holes all the way through them.
Everything you say about a work colleague could get back to them and probably will. Only say what you are happy to repeat to someone face-to-face. Don’t be a coward.
3. If you have the Monday blues then quit.
Monday Blues are a sign that you hate your career (or at least your job). If you get them regularly, then quit the business you’re in and don’t ask why. You’re a Swiss Army Knife, so try something else.
Assumptions will have a negative effect on your career. Assuming that a business wants experience is a convenient excuse when you don’t get your dream position. Recruiters and business owners don’t have a fixed checklist of what they want. They make it up as they go based on how you make them feel and whether they like you. Make people feel freaking amazing, inspire them and the rest should take care of itself.
5. Ask for the job title you want.
My buddy was going to take the job title “Partnerships Lead.” I told him that he should ask for something with the word “Manager” or “Head Of” because he deserved it. I told him that potential partners want to know they are dealing with someone who can make decisions.
He asked for the job title he wanted and got it. You’ve got nothing to lose, so ask for what you want.
6. Assume the answer is ‘yes’ until told otherwise
Stop asking for permission. Take action with the best interests of the business in mind and cool stuff will happen. Asking for permission in your career will stop you from innovating. People always have a reason to say no, so don’t give them a reason to. Take action and say sorry later.
7. Haggle the salary negotiation.
In any career, there is going to be a time when you have to put a price tag on yourself. Let the business give you the dollar figure first and then tell them you need to sleep on it. Go back the next day and ask for significantly more money.
At best they will say yes. At worst, they’ll come up from their very low base and give you more. You deserve to be paid well so don’t be afraid to ask for what you’re worth.
Don’t like the salary offer? Walk away. Feel like the business you are part of is going nowhere? Walk away. Even though you tell yourself there isn’t, there’s always an option to change direction.
9. Take a holiday.
My name’s Tim and I didn’t take a single day of annual leave or sick day in seven years. I burnt out, got very sick, became depressed, suffered anxiety and lost the plot. Take a bloody day off and remember to turn your phone off!
You’re being rude every time you answer the phone in the middle of a face-to-face conversation. You’re killing rapport.
Every time your phone rings loudly in a meeting, you’re disrespecting everyone present. At least put it on silent but ideally don’t take it into the meeting. Focus is power and your phone distracts you. Anything happening on your tiny little phone screen can wait.
The world won’t end because you are away from your phone for 45 minutes. Seriously, this should be common sense. For those of you who are old enough to remember, what did you do in 1996 when mobile phones were not a thing? Did all business collapse?
Sitting down all day will make you a fatso with no energy. Walk to meetings. Meet people for meetings and go for a walk instead of sitting. Buy a Fitbit and track your progress to feel good and stay motivated.
Whether you realize it or not, people helped you reach the point at which you are today in your career. Someone helped you to get where you are. Be grateful for that.
You may be a big shot manager, business owner, etc., or about to become one, but don’t forget where you came from. Don’t forget that we were all once one of the people who made coffee, swept the floor, took customer service calls and worked our butts off. You’ll be respected much more if you remember that.
The best career decisions I ever made were when I took a risk. Stop being a wimp. Do something that scares the pants off you.
15. Say what you think.
Product suck? Tell them. Taking too long? Tell them. Not happy about something? Tell them. People that tell the truth and say what they think in a respectful manner go places. Say what everybody is thinking, but is too afraid to say.
There’s not a single person you’ll encounter in your career who doesn’t have an opinion. Listen to the one’s that make sense to you and ignore the rest.
17. Learn new things.
Every day, learn one new thing that will help you in your career. Pretty soon, you’ll have a toolkit you can rely on when you need them. This habit will take you further than anyone else. Not because you have to win the game, but because you can use your gifts to lead other people.
18. Minimize negative people.
You’ll have to deal with plenty of negative nancy’s in your career. They can’t be avoided, but don’t let them take up too much of your time. These people will find something wrong with everything. It’s what they do best.
A typical business day involves loads of information. Your brain will forget most things, so write stuff down. Electronically is always best so you can find it again by searching for keywords.
20. Network your face off.
Successful careers are built on phenomenal networks. All the opportunities worth taking come from people who like what you do. Find quality people who understand your value and add them to your network. One day, one of them will give you an opportunity that you’ve always dreamt of.
These opportunities are not miracles. They’re created by networks full of high caliber people.
We all remember the nice people who treat us well. Be one of those people and you’ll stand out from the crowd. People who are good deep down, always finish first. It’s the secret tomato sauce.
22. Grow your social media presence.
Okay, this tip is not about that dumb phrase called “personal brand.” That whole concept is selfish and boring. No one wants to be around someone who blows their own trumpet to the Sound of Music every day.
I’m telling you to create a social media presence because it allows you to do the following:
– Be known for what you’re good at. – To become a teacher. – To remind yourself of what you stand for and what you’re passionate about. – To share stories. – To share key takeaways from events you attend.
23. As you grow as a person, so will your career.
The more I’ve developed as a person, the better my career has got. Work on yourself each day. Try to improve your mindset. Think differently to find unique ways to offer value.
Your career is a reflection of you. If your career sucks right now, then maybe you suck right now. That’s okay because you can fix that.
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