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It takes a lot of chutzpah to walk up to television personality and Skinnygirl founder Bethenny Frankel, put a pair of sunglasses in her hands, and tell her, These are for an oblong face. But that bold act paid off for Kari Dowiak, founder of sunglass brand Memorí Eyewear, which specializes in sunglasses for petite and narrow faces. The result? Frankel posted a 47-second TikTok video recounting the exchange and showing off the sunnies, calling them cute and high quality. The video went viral, racking up more than 1.3 million views as of mid-April, and skyrocketing the companys sales. Of course, it wasnt all happenstance. Dowiak had signed up for a networking event and noticed that Frankel was a late addition to the speaker lineup. The founder immediately went to work analyzing Frankels social media posts to find out more about her interests and figure out a strategy to get the sunglasses in front of her. She refined and rehearsed her six-second pitch in advanceincluding noting that Frankel had called her face oblong in a post and adopting that language. Dowiak positioned herself at the location where speakers entered and exited the stage, ensuring she would have access to Frankel. It was a professional event, so approaching Frankel wasnt making it weird, she says. You have to be aware of your environment. I would never have approached Bethenny if she was getting out of the Uber with her daughter, Dowiak says. But the situation was right. ASK to receive Negotiation and leadership expert Linda Swindling says a research-based approach like Dowiaks is essential if you want to turn a big introduction or chance meeting into an opportunity. She uses the acronym ASK to map out her action plan when sussing out the potential for a sale or collaboration. First, comes awareness. You may be aware of the person or that they have a similar interest. Then, you seek greater understanding. That may require asking questions or doing research. Finally, the know phase is know your next step, once youve gathered your information, refined your pitch, and are ready to make the ask. Natalie Dawson and her husband, Brandon, used a similar approach when they sought out entrepreneur and investor Grant Cardone to partner with him on a business opportunity. They purchased front-row tickets to a 35,000-person event at which Cardone was speaking. When they had the opportunity to meet him face-to-face, they came prepared, which Dawson says is a key step in turning intros into relationships and opportunities.We’d already done enough research to know what they were offering and what they weren’t offering, and we created a solution for an opportunity that they didn’t even know that they had, she recalls. We already had a track record. It wasnt like we were asking him for a favor. Orchestrating networking introductions With social media making many folks just a post away, some of these introductions dont even need to be face-to-face. Tim Sharp found his next big opportunity on LinkedIn. He noticed Michael Browning, the founder and CEO of Unleashed Brands, pop up on his feed and was impressed by the entrepreneurs energy and enthusiasm as well as the companys Urban Air Adventure Parks, which are indoor adventure parks for children. He began interacting online, responding to some of Brownings posts. The engagement caught Brownings attention, and he asked Sharp to get in touch with members of his management team. Sharp met with some of the companys senior executivesand soon became one, being named vice president of operations in 2019. Within a few days, he was in Toronto, opening a new park. That year, the company opened 54 parks in 52 weeks. This year, Sharp was named brand president. Leveraging opportunity for the long-term Natalie says asking Cardone to partner on business consultancy Cardone Ventures was just the first step. Their pitch made the business opportunity potentially lucrative for Cardone, offering a 50% partnership. In addition, she says, the couple kept showing up. In other words, they put in the time and effort consistently to make the business successful. Last year, the companys gross revenue was $220 million. But whats more impressive is the thousands of business owners whose businesses have grown since working with us, Natalie says. Sharp says that authenticity drove his relationship with Browning and his team from the start. Sometimes, people get caught up in trying to sell themselves. The best way to find the right fit iswell, dont sell yourself and listen to what the appeal is, he says. If it speaks to you, and youre able to match that energy and that feeling, youll find that once-in-a-lifetime game changer on both sides. Playing the long game And if you dont? Swindling says that sometimes, an introduction or meeting is the first play in a long game. If you get a no, ask questions about why to get to the heart of that decision. It could be as simple as asking, I heard you say no. Can you tell me about that? You might find that getting to yes simply requires more information, adherence to a process, or some other fixable step. And, if not, it may be the start of a relationship where you build trust and interest and get to yes over time. And while Dowiak doesnt know what the future holds with Frankel, she is using the cash infusion from the sales uptick to invest in her business, negotiate better terms with her supplier, and even invest in some advertising, all of which will help make her business stronger. Before Bethenny, I never ran a single ad, she says. Now the kind of return on ad spend that we’re going to be able to get is so much higher because so many people have interacted.
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E-Commerce
Every day, people are constantly learning and forming new memories. When you pick up a new hobby, try a recipe a friend recommended, or read the latest world news, your brain stores many of these memories for years or decades. But how does your brain achieve this incredible feat? In our newly published research in the journal Science, we have identified some of the rules the brain uses to learn. Learning in the brain The human brain is made up of billions of nerve cells. These neurons conduct electrical pulses that carry information, much like how computers use binary code to carry data. These electrical pulses are communicated with other neurons through connections between them called synapses. Individual neurons have branching extensions known as dendrites that can receive thousands of electrical inputs from other cells. Dendrites transmit these inputs to the main body of the neuron, where it then integrates all these signals to generate its own electrical pulses. It is the collective activity of these electrical pulses across specific groups of neurons that form the representations of different information and experiences within the brain. For decades, neuroscientists have thought that the brain learns by changing how neurons are connected to one another. As new information and experiences alter how neurons communicate with each other and change their collective activity patterns, some synaptic connections are made stronger while others are made weaker. This process of synaptic plasticity is what produces representations of new information and experiences within your brain. In order for your brain to produce the correct representations during learning, however, the right synaptic connections must undergo the right changes at the right time. The rules that your brain uses to select which synapses to change during learningwhat neuroscientists call the credit assignment problemhave remained largely unclear. Defining the rules We decided to monitor the activity of individual synaptic connections within the brain during learning to see whether we could identify activity patterns that determine which connections would get stronger or weaker. To do this, we genetically encoded biosensors in the neurons of mice that would light up in response to synaptic and neural activity. We monitored this activity in real time as the mice learned a task that involved pressing a lever to a certain position after a sound cue in order to receive water. We were surprised to find that the synapses on a neuron dont all follow the same rule. For example, scientists have often thought that neurons follow what are called Hebbian rules, where neurons that consistently fire together, wire together. Instead, we saw that synapses on different locations of dendrites of the same neuron followed different rules to determine whether connections got stronger or weaker. Some synapses adhered to the traditional Hebbian rule where neurons that consistently fire together strengthen their connections. Other synapses did something different and completely independent of the neurons activity. Our findings suggest that neurons, by simultaneously using two different sets of rules for learning across different groups of synapses, rather than a single uniform rule, can more precisely tune the different types of inputs they receive to appropriately represent new information in the brain. In other words, by following different rules in the process of learning, neurons can multitask and perform multiple functions in parallel. Future applications This discovery provides a clearer understanding of how the connections between neurons change during learning. Given that most brain disorders, including degenerative and psychiatric conditions, involve some form of malfunctioning synapses, this has potentially important implications for human health and society. For example, depression may develop from an excessive weakening of the synaptic connections within certain areas of the brain that make it harder to experience pleasure. By understanding how synaptic plasticity normally operates, scientists may be able to better understand what goes wrong in depression and then develop therapies to more effectively treat it. These findings may also have implications for artificial intelligence. The artificial neural networks underlying AI have largely been inspired by how the brain works. However, the learning rules researchers use to update the connections within the networks and train the models are usually uniform and also not biologically plausible. Our research may provide insights into how to develop more biologically realistic AI models that are more efficient, have better performance, or both. There is still a long way to go before we can use this information to develop new therapies for human brain disorders. While we found that synaptic connections on different groups of dendrites use different learning rules, we dont know exactly why or how. In addition, while the ability of neurons to simultaneously use multiple learning methods increases their capacity to encode information, what other properties this may give them isnt yet clear. Future research will hopefully answer these questions and further our understanding of how the brain learns. William Wright is a postdoctoral scholar in neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego. Takaki Komiyama is a professor of neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Just a few months into Donald Trumps second term, are the manosphere influencers who championed him already starting to backpedal? In a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, host Joe Rogan raised concerns about the presidents decision to send undocumented immigrants directly to El Salvadors mega-prisonswithout trial, lawyers, or, as critics argue, any semblance of due process. “What if you are an enemy of, lets not say any current president. Lets pretend we got a new president, totally new guy in 2028, and this is a common practice now of just rounding up gang members with no due process and shipping them to El Salvador, youre a gang member. No, Im not. Prove it. What? I got to go to court. No. No due process,” said Rogan. We gotta be careful we dont become monsters, while fighting monsters. For those who had been sounding the alarm during Trumps campaign, it was a painful watch. Watching Joe Rogan figure this shit out in real time is painful, one commenter wrote. That ol Even a broken clock is right twice a day idiom comes to mind, another added. As one Reddit comment pointed out, Why does he need to use a hypothetical president to make this point? This entire commentary describes the current administration. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler) This election cycle, Trump owes at least part of his victory to Rogan and other manosphere influencers who endorsed him. After hosting the now-president on The Joe Rogan Experiencein what became one of the most-watched podcast episodes of all time, with 58 million views at the time of writingRogan followed up with a full-throated endorsement just one day before the 2024 election. Are we now seeing the first cracks appear? Rogan isnt the only vocal Trump supporter expressing unease in recent weeks. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who publicly backed Trump during the campaign, voiced frustration after the presidents rollout of sweeping tariffs sent markets into a nosedive. Portnoy claimed he lost $7 million in the aftermath. So, Trump rolls out the tariffs, right? Portnoy said in a livestream posted April 7. This is a decision that one guy made that crashed the whole stock market. Thats why were calling it Orange Monday and not Black Monday. Just days earlier, Portnoy had reaffirmed his support for Trump. I voted for Trump, I think hes a smart guy, he said in a clip. I also think hes playing a high-stakes game here. Im gonna roll with him for a couple days, a couple weeks, see how this pans out. By Monday, he said his estimated losses had climbed to $20 million.
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