C. Rose: Alicia Keys, Kanye West, and Jay Z

Dope video. Im clearly obsessed with interviews, bio's and background info on Money makers/artists/ Influentials.

Myanmar Cyclone: 4000 dead more expected

GodBless them.

Pennies to millions

Ever wonder who came up with the idea of 99 cent stores. . . This article was written in 2002. Still super relevant and glorious. Im sure alot has changed for better of for worse since this article was first completed. But nonetheless there are some gems in here.

[Kitschy promotions, memorable bargains and low overhead (it's based in a no-frills warehouse in run-down City of Commerce, Calif.) have made 99 Cents Only one of the most successful retailers around and put Gold, 70, on The Forbes 400 (2002) this year, with a $650 million fortune. He joins 18 other retailers on our list. It is perhaps surprising to discover that the combined retail fortunes on these pages come to $113 billion, just shy of the total for technology. And while Bill Gates is easily the world's wealthiest person, $43 billion by our reckoning, if Sam Walton were alive today and had not dispersed shares to descendants, his stake in Wal-Mart shares would be worth $99 billion.

Over the past five years, combined sales at 99 Cents and three similar chains have grown 20% annually, far more than in any other retailing segment, says Merrill Lynch analyst Daniel Barry. For the moment, no one runs a dollar store better than Gold. His cast-off merchandise is so attractively displayed that a photo of one store interior by the famed Andreas Gursky has hung in Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. Even officials in Lancaster, Calif., who tried last year to invoke an urban-blight law to force 99 Cents out (to make way for a Costco expansion) admitted to the court that they "loved" the store. Gold won the suit.

Gold's 142 stores, all in California, Nevada and Arizona, pull in on average $4.7 million a year from 15,000 square feet of space. Gold's gross margin is 40%, meaning that a 99-cent item costs him only 60 cents. That's double the gross margin at Wal-Mart, and Gold's net margin of 8% is better than double Wal-Mart's, too.

Every 99 Cents location opens 15 minutes earlier and closes 15 minutes later than the posted hours. No small shopkeeper would ruin a sale simply because closing time has come, Gold explains. And he has never allowed any kind of negative signs like "No shoes, no service" or "We don't make change," only positive signs saying "Come as you are" or "We gladly make change."
The son of Russian immigrants, Gold started helping out at their Cleveland fruit stand as soon as he started grade school. Retailing was in his blood; academics wasn't (he dropped out of L.A. Community College). In the early 1960s Gold and his wife, Sherry, owned a liquor store in central L.A. In an attempt to goose sales of slower-moving wines, they stocked a shelf with a banner offering: "Wines of the World. Your Choice: 99 Cents." Gold dreamed, and talked, about running a whole store full of such bargains, but he was 50 by the time he reached his decisive moment. As Gold and his wife were driving back from the airport, a since-deceased friend, James Wayner, lost patience with Gold when he yet again mentioned the 99-cent idea. "Damn it!," Wayner shouted, "I'm sick and tired of hearing you talk about the 99-cent store! Look, there's a store for rent right now. Why don't you grab that one?" He made Gold pull over and inquire about the space. Gold struck a deal that day.

"Rich people love bargains. That's how they got rich," he says. That's how he got rich, too. ]-Forbes

The Road Not Taken- R. Frost

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Roc Nation: Thee Grind never stops.

[Live Nation closed the Jay-Z 360-degree deal Wednesday night (April 30), sources say.

The company yesterday (May 1) filed a Form-8K with the SEC which states that the artist is getting 775,434 Live Nation shares, plus an option on an additional 500,000 with the exercise price of $13.73. The shares go to Marcy Media, the company affiliated with Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter), in connection with the formation of Roc Nation LLC, a joint entertainment venture between Live Nation and Jay-Z.

Talk that Live Nation and Jay-Z were on the verge of closing a major deal began last December and broke April 2 in The New York Times. The roughly $150 million pact includes Roc Nation, as well as the rapper's own recordings and tours for the next 10 years.

Live Nation will reportedly contribute $5 million each year in overhead for five years and offer $25 million to finance Jay-Z's external acquisitions and investments, plus $10 million per album for a minimum of three albums within the deal's term. Jay-Z will also receive another $20 million for other rights including publishing and licensing. Live Nation is already producing the current Jay-Z/Mary J. Blige tour, which is putting up sellout numbers.]-BillBoard

And this ladies and gentlemen is an example of maximizing your brand. Mr. Carter has come a long way from pushing cd’s out of the trunk. . . well done. So many glorious business lessons in this deal. Wow.

NEEVVVVV Complacent!!!

If you have a moment Google "Charlie Rose - Jay Z" under the video option. Pretty glorious interview with Jay for an hour! Its not directly related to this article. But im sure your in the mood for some Carter insight. So peep it.

The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch: Diddy

The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch is one of my favorite shows. I hardly ever get a chance to watch it because THEE Grind keeps me occupied. . . I didn’t even realize Diddy was a guest but hey if hes making millions of dollars a year. . . Why not hear about how he did it/ does it right? Always some gems to apply to any aspect of life in every thing you come across.

Background on the actual show : "Donny Deutsch is the host of The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch... Your Daily Roadmap to The American Dream. The American Dream is doing what you love, and making millions... every weeknight at 10p/1a ET, Donny interviews everyone from budding entrepreneurs to Billionaires, discovering their secrets to success and showing YOU how to turn your idea into a BIG IDEA.

As Chairman of Deutsch Inc., he implemented his "leaner, meaner, faster, smarter" philosophy to transform a small advertising shop into one of the nation’s top 10 agencies. The $2.8 billion full-service agency has provided clients with strategic marketing programs that are intrusive, effective and talked about. Prestigious clients include GM, Johnson & Johnson, DirecTV, Novartis Worldwide, and IKEA."-CNBC

Hollywood to Harlem

[Sean Combs is getting a star Friday on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an event most honorees mark by turning up at the assigned time, smiling for cameras, and going about their business.

"It inspires them," Combs said. "It inspires, you know, millions of young people all over the world that are in a place that I grew up in right now, and they want to make it to that point. I don't know if we know where Brad Pitt came from, or George Clooney.

"People are familiar with my journey, so it may inspire them more," Combs said. "So whether it's Eminem or Britney Spears or myself, you know of that journey. Whether it's coming from a small town, coming from a trailer park in Detroit, or coming from Harlem, New York. So when certain things happen to us, it's bigger than us. It inspires people."

"I'm a definition of how to build a brand and a 360 model. I feel like I'm the definition of that," Combs said. "This new concept that people have, I've been doing it for years. Creating a way out of no way, making lemonade out of lemons, that's what I do.

"So if the music industry's getting cannibalized by the Internet, I figure out how to work with it, I figure out how to survive. You throw me in the jungle butt-naked, I come out with a lion's head, some bearskins and a bunch of food. I may be driving a Maybach."]-AP


Indeed it is inspiration my friend. . . Mind you im always coming for thee financial aspect of it. And this dude stock is rising with this move for sure. Well done. Cool little montage . . . DANCIN ALL THEE WAY TO THEE BANK!! lol

"Yes just this 360 Billion Dollar check. . . . yes 100's will do. . ."-IDIOT

[A man in the US state of Texas has been arrested for allegedly trying to cash a cheque for $360bn

Charles Ray Fuller had said he wanted to start a record business, authorities in the state said.

The 21-year-old's attempt to cash the money in a bank in Fort Worth failed when staff spotted the 10 zeros on the personal cheque.

Mr Fuller was arrested on a charge of forgery and was released on bail of $3,750 (£1,900).]-BBC

Pretty ridiculous.

Perez Hilton

So this morning im listening to Big Boy’s neighborhood as I normally do for a few minutes before I switch to ESPN radio and then to some “Purple Rain Soundtrack-Prince” and they have Perez Hilton on. . . (I know your like WTF?! where are you going with this), ofcourse there was lots of B.S. about “celebs” and all that crap that does not matter at all but thee one gem that I did enjoy is that he said he still works on his site all by himself and spends 16-18 hours a day on his work. I think that’s respectable. Do I care about the content? No. Do I care that his site is pink? No. Is he maximizing profits from B.S. that millions of people enjoying reading about everyday. Yes.

So I have respect for his Grind. Grind’s come in all shapes and forms. And I respect any (With in moral means) that takes considerable time and effort. I strongly believe as Earl Nightengale said that “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal” and that ideal is created by thee individual. Grind on.

He also had me cracking uppppp when he said he wants to be thee Queen Latina OPRAH lmfao. or some Randomness like that. . .

“we are closer to the end of this problem than we are to the beginning.”-Paulson Jr.

[Main Street may be struggling, but Wall Street is on a bit of a roll.

Despite a drumbeat of bad economic news, the stock market is up — almost 11 percent in the last few weeks. Junk bonds, those risky corporate I.O.U.’s, are rallying. The value of financial shares, bank loans, tricky credit derivatives — up, up, up.

Many on Wall Street, the epicenter of the credit mess, seem to think that the worst is over. For the first time in months, analysts and executives sound upbeat again. Many of them see a broad, sustained recovery in both the economy and the financial markets coming in the second half of this year, a prediction some market strategists call hopeful at best.

For now, policy makers are echoing the mood on Wall Street. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday that “we are closer to the end of this problem than we are to the beginning.”]-NYT

"Failure"

Super dope commercial. I love Jordan commercials where he reveals things that you wouldn’t have otherwise known unless you studied him religiously like I did. So id like to share. . . this one may be a bit dated . . .But indeed its timeless. . .It relates to any scope of life you can think of . . . Sales. . . closing deals. . . landing auditions you want. . . getting the perfect class schedule you want. . . making the perfect trade. . . getting your wife pregnant on the first shot. . . waking up without hitting the snooze button. . . getting to the coffee before the whole office has already annihilated it. . . . . dropping your kids off at school on time. . . winning the science fair. . .

Umm I think its obvious I could go on for days and hit every aspect of life . . . This 30 second gem will do.

The Ultimate Money Machine

[Casino moguls Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta bought a violent fight club called Ultimate Fighting Championship--and built it into a billion-dollar sports empire.

UFC co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta, 39, wandered tunnels around the arena. He dropped in on a broadcast booth to pepper producers with questions about which countries would be receiving the night's pay-per-view event, and then checked in with the commentator, Joe Rogan of NBC's Fear Factor, to learn more about the matchups. He made small talk with some of the 18 fighters on the bill before joining the crowd to watch the fights taking place inside an eight-sided ring surrounded by a chain-link fence.

Americans will never understand cricket. The British can't grasp American football. But you can't get much more universal than this. "What makes UFC so great," says Fertitta, "is that every single man on the planet gets it immediately. It's just two guys beating each other up."

It's the Ultimate Money Machine. That night before the Super Bowl 10,700 fans packed the arena, paying an average of $340 for a ticket to witness nine mixed martial arts fights. Another 500,000 fans paid $45 ($55 for high definition) to watch five of the nine fights at home. The total haul from the event: $25 million.

This year UFC is likely to generate $250 million, capturing perhaps 90% of mixed martial arts revenue. The majority of UFC revenues come from the monthly pay-per-view events. Additional cash is made from ticket sales to live fights and licensing fees from its Spike cable shows The Ultimate Fighter and UFC Fight Night . These shows in turn act as promotional tools to drive fans to pay-per-view events. More scratch comes from sales of DVDs and T shirts, as well as downloads from UFC's library of past bouts.

The brothers each own 45% of UFC (White owns the rest), which is operated through their holding company Zuffa (Italian for "fight"), LLC. Add in personal assets and their stake in Station Casinos (nyse: STN - news - people ), which they took private with buyout maven Thomas Barrack for $9 billion in cash and assumed debt last year, and each Fertitta has a net worth of $1.3 billion, ranking each 380th on The Forbes 400.]-Forbes

Read the rest at Forbes.Com

Its a superb article. . . to say thee least. Anytime someone is willing to write a story on how Billionaires made their Billions im alllll about it!!

Out of Sight out of mind

[WASHINGTON — With consumer confidence slipping and gasoline and food prices soaring, President Bush delivered an unusually dark assessment of the economy on Tuesday, saying the nation was in “very difficult times, very difficult.”

There are no quick fixes, Mr. Bush said, to ease the pain Americans feel. Mr. Bush used a Rose Garden news conference to go on the offensive against the Democratic-controlled Congress, accusing lawmakers of being uncooperative on bills that would address pocketbook issues.

Democrats pushed back, accusing Mr. Bush of trotting out old ideas and of favoring big oil companies at the expense of average Americans.

The sharp exchanges struck a different tone from when the two parties joined forces on an economic stimulus package, including tax rebates that are being issued. Since then, the president and Congress have not agreed on addressing the economic troubles, and by Tuesday they mostly blamed each other.

“If there was a magic wand to wave, I’d be waving it, of course,” Mr. Bush said, referring specifically to gasoline prices, which have climbed $1.40 a gallon in 18 months. “But there is no magic wand to wave right now. It took us a while to get to this fix.”

“He says he’s concerned with high gas prices and high food prices and student and home loan problems. But the truth is that the president has closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears as these crises have grown.”]-NYT

Little growth for thee American Economy

[The American economy remained stuck in the slow lane over the first three months of the year, expanding by a modest 0.6 percent annualized rate, the Commerce Department announced Wednesday morning.

The weak performance reflected the increasingly thrifty inclinations of American consumers in the face of plummeting real estate prices, tightening credit and a deteriorating job market. Economic growth was also hampered by a continued pullback in construction and business investment.

Still the number was slightly better than expected and helped to push the major market indexes higher on Wednesday.

The only factors preventing the economy from sliding backward were the growth of American exports — aided by a weakening dollar — and a buildup of inventories by businesses. Exports and inventories set aside, final sales of American goods and services domestically dipped at a 0.4 percent annualized rate in inflation-adjusted terms, the first decline since the end of 1991.

The very fact that economic activity expanded as opposed to shrinking challenged the broad assumption that the economy is ensnared in a recession. A government-appointed panel of economists ultimately decides whether a particular patch of trouble qualifies as a recession, which is defined as a “significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months.”

“It doesn’t get us across the chasm,” said Robert Barbera, chief economist at the research and trading firm, ITG. “It will make things look better than they are for a few months, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals. The underlying circumstances are unambiguously recessionary. It’s a fait accompli.”]-NYT

Cavs vs. Wizards

I really hope they close out this serious tonight. Wizards have been playing dirty in my opinion, trying to take LeBron out. Im a fan of success and hard work. I for sure want to see LeBron succeed. And speaking of LeBron he is a BEAST!!

Thee battle shall go down tonight on TNT.

Also for your delight. Some glory by Jay! Gotta love it!

Book of Glory: Volume 2

Its been a while since we were in the second round of the playoffs. "LETS GO LAKERS!!!!"

[They'll keep a low profile until the Utah-Houston series ends, which will be either Friday in Utah or Sunday in Houston. The Jazz leads the series, 3-2.
The Lakers will congregate today at their training facility in El Segundo, although it might be only a light workout.

Until an opponent is decided, they can ruminate on being the first team to sweep a best-of-seven series from the Nuggets in their 32-year NBA existence.

Along those lines, Kobe Bryant's 134 points were the most against Denver in four playoff games, easily topping the 112 scored by Kiki Vandeweghe for Portland in 1986.]-LAT

Basque on Fire

["We do have firefighters on three sides of the building to protect the nearby businesses," Davies said. Fire is on the northwest corner of Hollywood and Vine, in the center of numerous high-end redevelopment projects underway such as the new W hotel and residences. The building involved is home to Basque, a nightclub and restaurant.

The building on fire has not been declared a total loss yet but has been deemed as "under demolition," Davies said.]-LAT

Crazy!

Caleb Campbell: From Westpoint to the NFL

[When the Lions selected Army safety Caleb Campbell in the seventh round Sunday, the crowd at Radio City Music City Hall erupted into a "U-S-A" chant. Campbell is attempting to become the first football player to take advantage of a recently implemented rule by the U.S. Military Academy that allows athletes to play professional sports immediately upon graduation.

"This is unbelievable," said the 6-foot-2, 229-pound Campbell, who was wearing a Lions cap. "It gives me goose bumps."

On his off day, which is normally Tuesday in the NFL, he'll be required to speak to local high schools about opportunities in the Army.]-ESPN

More than literal groceries prices are rising. . .

"Food has moved around the world since Europeans brought tea from China, but never at the speed or in the amounts it has over the last few years. Consumers in not only the richest nations but, increasingly, the developing world expect food whenever they crave it, with no concession to season or geography.

But the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution — especially carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas — from transporting the food.

Under longstanding trade agreements, fuel for international freight carried by sea and air is not taxed. Now, many economists, environmental advocates and politicians say it is time to make shippers and shoppers pay for the pollution, through taxes or other measures.

Under a little-known international treaty called the Convention on International Civil Aviation, signed in Chicago in 1944 to help the fledgling airline industry, fuel for international travel and transport of goods, including food, is exempt from taxes, unlike trucks, cars and buses. There is also no tax on fuel used by ocean freighters.

The ability to transport food cheaply has given rise to new and booming businesses.

The European Union has led the world in proposals to incorporate environmental costs into the price consumers pay for food."-NYT

SHARP RAISE IN CREDIT CARD FEE'S!!!

"Even as the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates, financial institutions have sharply raised rates for credit card customers — even those who pay on time — as they grapple with losses from other bad consumer loans.

This month, Washington Mutual (WM) told some credit card customers that it was raising their rates by as much as 100%. Discover (DFS) is lifting its penalty rate to 31%, effective May 1, and may apply that maximum to consumers who exceed their credit limit twice in a rolling 12 months.

That's why even responsible consumers whose credit scores haven't changed are being hit, says Joseph Ridout, a spokesman for Consumer Action, an advocacy group.

He notes that as banks lose money on mortgage loans, it's logical they would try to boost credit card profits. "If one end of your business is suffering, you look to the other end to pick up the slack."

To boost profits, some banks have also imposed higher fees on consumers for paying late, transferring credit card balances and withdrawing money from an ATM.

The danger for card holders is that as some struggle to pay bills, steep rate or fee increases could nudge them toward default. Credit card delinquencies — a precursor to defaults — have been climbing, and overall consumer loan delinquencies are at their highest since 1992.

"If every (card company) raises your rate, you might have to write the debt off or go into bankruptcy," says Dan Blanton, of Pevely, Mo. He was notified this month that his Washington Mutual credit card rate would nearly double, to 24%."-USA Today