In Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, a 2011 documentary directed by Rodman Flender, O’Brien gives viewers an in-depth look into the months following his unceremonious departure from NBC’s The Tonight Show. After his last show on January 22, 2010, Conan found himself unemployed, sharing the same fate as 8.6% of Americans. The documentary is amusing and clever, for sure, but it is also a raw portrait of a man trying to find a new purpose after his greatest failure has been realized. Through the comedy shows and unscripted footage, the viewer sees a man’s journey to keep his career passion and craft alive, even after losing his job.

Although we are unable to host the video here, we can share with you a video of a commencement address Conan delivered last year that echoes many of the same lessons.  His audience may have been college students, but the wisdom Conan skillfully delivers is something we can all learn from whether we are twenty-somethings preparing to embark on what we believe to be a lifelong journey or businesspeople suddenly facing a daunting setback. He never once claims that it is easy to come back from a hard fall, but he is resolute in his belief that by nature, failing gives us a clean slate. And Conan’s advice for getting back in the game? “Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.”

He’s a comedian, so of course there is a lot of banter in the beginning—skip here to get to the really good stuff.

Vince has experience working at a national commercial finance consulting firm, a national bank and several national factoring companies. His acute understanding of both the financial and relational dynamics of our business is a great asset to our new Houston office. We are lucky and excited to have him on our team and we know he’ll give our clients what they deserve – a hands-on approach, unprecedented customer service and tailor-made solutions to help them grow their business.

Houston, Far West Capital has landed.

Please join us in welcoming Vince to the team. You can reach Vince at: vince@farwestcap.com, 281-698-0090 (office), or 281-770-3838 (cell).

Across the pond, Queen Elizabeth II is living proof blue blood is thicker than water. On February 6, Elizabeth II kicked-off the celebration of her Diamond Jubilee, marking a 60-year reign as queen, at a nursery school in the UK. This year, Accession Day was the beginning of a year-long celebration that will feature visits to Commonwealth nations throughout the world by members of the royal family. Festivities will culminate in the summer with a four-day UK bank holiday weekend in June. The Queen thanked well-wishers and re-dedicated herself in service as a symbol of unity and continuity for the British Isles and its Commonwealth, repeating a pledge she first took when she was 21-years old. Although we prefer presidents to princes, we still admire the Queen for keeping such a formidable commitment for that long.

Valentine’s Day was yesterday, but did you know the whole month of February is dedicated to the heart? Since February of 1963, organizations like the American Heart Association have used the February to raise awareness about heart disease, which claims millions of American lives each year. Show some love by visiting the Million Hearts Facebook page today to learn about heart-healthy foods, read stories of heart disease survivors, and find charities and events near you.

America’s leading business schools are beginning to actively recruit service members. The increase is attributed to the GI Bill and other federal programs, which fork over as much as $55,000 to veterans looking to pursue advanced degrees, as well as new commitments, from some of the nation’s most lucrative companies, to hire former servicemen. A disciplined leader and team-player who can handle high-stress situations—it doesn’t get much better than that when it comes to a business executive! If you ask us, these elite business schools could learn a thing or two from the veterans themselves.

What inspired us most about Manuel de los Santos was not that he refused to let a tragic accident take away the joy he found in playing sports, albeit this fact is amazing.  We were truly impressed by Manuel’s capacity to use old skills, as a baseball player, to adapt to a new challenge, as a golfer. Check out his amazing story here.

Just in case blogs and Twitter pages don’t already keep you glued to your computer and mobile devices, there is a new social media tool out there with the goal of making “deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling,” possible online. The new web tool has been dubbed “Cowbird,” symbolizing the fusion of the “slow and grounded” nature of the website with the fast and lively character of the Internet sites we are accustomed to today.  Cowbird allows users to craft interactive stories using high-quality videos, full-screen photos, audio clips, and other digital imaging media. Projects can then be sent and shared with family, friends, and other users. There is even a feature that connects you with other Cowbirds by finding similarities in user stories. We aren’t sure if this brainchild of computer scientist and artist, Jonathan Harris, is going to catch on, but his new application could be a memo that maybe it’s time we stop trying to reduce our lives down to 140 characters and a timeline.

Got a craving for tomatoes and chocolate ice cream? Or perhaps its peanut butter and pudding that gives you your fix? When Austin food writer, Addie Broyles, wanted to unearth the secret behind our weird food fetishes, she sent out the call on Twitter, asking people to respond using the hashtag “secretfoodpleasures.” As it turns out, pregnant women aren’t the only ones jonesing for weird treats like pickles and ice cream—she received replies from people who confessed to eating tamales wrapped in white bread, saltine crackers dipped in lemon frosting, and just about every other random food combination. Cookbook author Deborah Madison, who wrote the book “What We Eat When We Eat Alone” with her husband Patrick McFarlin, believes when we indulge in these strange foods, we are tapping into food memories, and this experience takes us back to a time we are fond of. So what if the person in line in front of you just ordered a sour cream and jelly sandwich? She could be reliving the #happiestdayofherlife.

How much is your website browsing privacy worth? Google says $5 a month. In the attempt to find out how everyday people use the Internet to help it improve its own products and services, Google is offering a $5 Amazon gift card when you sign up and download the Screenwise browser extension, which monitors every website you visit. Participants are then eligible for another $5 card for every three months that you stick with the program until you reach a $25 max. This initiative is in strange timing when Google has been in and out of hot water for their privacy policy recently. Would you opt-in for a fee?

Merle Haggard is an American country music singer, guitarist, fiddler, instrumentalists, songwriter, and arguably the hardest-working man in the country. In a recent Men’s Journal interview, the 74-year-old singer said, “I would have liked so retire some time in the past 16 years, but then you look at your expenses and the people you’re employing. All the money just flew out the window.” With nine albums released and hundreds of concerts played, even surgery for lung cancer in 2008 didn’t set him back; he was back on the road seven weeks after the operation. In the interview, he says he wishes more Americans shared his work ethic. “I don’t think young people have a handle on what they’ve lost,” he says. “This country was built on three shifts every 24 hours, and now we’re talking about working three or four days a week. There’s nobody who wants to do the stoop labor, and there is a whole bunch of it to do.”

Hyundai is a smart company when it comes to their offerings and perks. The company started a car buy-back program in 2009, under which the company offered to buy back the car from any Hyundai owner who involuntarily lost employment within one year of purchasing it. Hyundai paid up to $7,500 for the differences in trade-in value and remaining balances on auto loans. This initiative formed the “Hyundai Assurance” program still used today, long after the buy-back program ended. Seeing Hyundai’s success, General Motors tried a similar program but the way it was set up (the company made payments for customers instead) was not successful. This is a good example of successful and unsuccessful trigger strategies.

The NY Giants won the Super Bowl this year, but if you were following the team, you know they were in danger of not making the playoffs earlier in the season. In their pre-game show, ESPN featured the story of how the team turned it around. The team chaplain asked a friend to come in to talk to the team. The speaker gave a poker analogy to motivate the Giants and gave each player a poker chip to remind them of their goal: to be “all in” and give everything they had to the team’s effort. After the talk, the Giants went on to win all of their games, including the Super Bowl. The speaker’s poker analogy is a great reminder. Are you “all in” for your team?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Whether her music and personality makes you ‘goo goo’ or just gag, Lady Gaga is a formidable force in pop music. Following the release of her debut album The Fame in 2008, Lady Gaga has 5 Grammy Awards and 13 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) to her name, just four years later. Despite her popularity, she is sometimes written-off as an overrated Madonna-lite wannabe; but know that wealth, fame, and fortune wasn’t always the Lady’s tune. Similar to any business trying to get off the ground, Lady Gaga and her management team had to make tough entrepreneurial decisions in order to get her where she is today.

Many thanks to Anat Bird, founder, president and CEO of SCB Forums, Ltd for this awesome article; we just had to share!

In 2009, Lady Gaga was set to launch a tour with Kanye West—yes, Kanye West of the acceptance-speech-crashing variety. After stealing the microphone from Taylor Swift and insisting that Beyoncé deserved the award, instead, at the 2009 MTV VMAs, the beleaguered rapper made a public statement declaring he was taking a break from the music industry. West’s departure left Gaga with three options: continue the tour solo, which would require millions more in production costs but could possibly achieve sold-out revenues of $2.5 million per concert; move the tour to smaller venues, reducing investment risk but also potential payback; or cancel the tour and lose the $4 million she had already invested. Lady Gaga chose the first option and ‘The Monster Ball Tour’ was strategically launched November 27, 2009, three days after the release of her second album, The Fame: Monster.

Besides the singer’s talent and flair for the dramatic, Anat Bird underscores another ingredient in Gaga’s recipe for success, a passionate marketing strategy. Lady Gaga built her fan base using social media sites like YouTube and Facebook and she was writing her own Tweets, long before every other celebrity. Because of all this, Lady Gaga’s fans feel a deep and genuine connection to the artist. Affectionately calling them “little monsters,” it is not unusual to see Lady Gaga personally reply Tweets from fans who send her tiny pics of anything from portraits they have drawn of the singer to tattoos bearing her name. Gaga has even used social media in lending her celebrity to It Gets Better, a project started to show LGBT youth there is happiness past what may be turbulent adolescent years.

To tie it all in, Anat emphasizes how banks can implement passionate marketing strategy through social media. “Social media is a powerful tool if used effectively,” says Anat, and at Far West Capital, we can vouch for that statement. We’re on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and we like being able to connect with our fans and provide insights to help them grow their business. We’re in the business of helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals and we love it when any entrepreneur, anywhere, finds success like this! And like Lady Gaga, we know that discovering your passion and then assembling a great team willing to take on challenges alongside you, is what business is all about. We should all be more like Lady Gaga, minus the meat dresses.

Contest Question: Our CEO was caught by photo laughing it up with a famous rapper last October. What is the rapper’s name? (All monikers which this rapper goes and went by will be accepted.)

Only persons residing in the United States who are at least 18 years of age can enter. The contest prize does not include travel accommodations.

[The submission form has been deleted. The contest has ended.]

At this annual conference, participants immerse themselves in music, film and technology to find the newest and brightest musical acts, directors, products and trends. The event first began as a music festival in 1987 and had 700 attendees but the event has grown to 197,000 attendees in all parts of the event in 2011. Today, the event revolves around panels, educational sessions, screenings and shows where key industry people bring their expertise, knowledge and talents to the stage. Attendees come for the entertainment, education and networking, and with a jam-packed schedule, opportunities for all three are readily available. If you win the platinum badge, you’ll be able to attend all three parts of the conference!

2012 Schedule

Interactive: March 9–13

Film: March 9–17

Music: March 13–18

Good luck!

• Storing contact information on email servers like Microsoft Outlook can create incompatibility issues, especially if an employee attempts to share contacts with another using a different email client. Opt to move all of your company’s contact information into a single database allowing employees to seamlessly update and share information from wherever they are. Some databases are now even accessible on mobile devices.
• Email can take up a ton of time you don’t have each day. The key is to find an email management strategy that works for you. If you are not quite ready to sign off on TED Curator Chris Anderon’s Email Charter just yet, then set your email server to automatically prioritize your incoming mail. Configure mail settings to mark incoming emails, with symbols or colors, from important senders or emails containing specific keywords.  Answer these high-priority messages immediately, or sort them into folders, broadly labeled according to project or subject, to be addressed later when you have had time to find answers.
• Speaking of email, Social Media sites are notorious for sending you lots of email notifications that can clog your inbox. Try creating a separate email account to receive and track updates from your favorite sites. Make a habit of only checking these notifications at one predetermined time during the day.

Want more tips? Check out Sean Captain’s article at Entrepreneur.com.

“There are over 23 million self-employed Americans. They account for nearly three-quarters of American business, with over a trillion dollars in receipts. The labors of the self-employed are as old as agriculture, and as new as computer programming. The self-employed cut across political party, age, sex, education, religion, creed, and geography. They are the backbone of rural and many local urban economies.”

Mark traveled to the ‘Live Free or Die’ state, a few days before the nation’s first primary, challenging GOP presidential candidates to take on the cause of small-businesses and the self-employed head-on.

One candidate vowed to do more research on the tax conditions of the self-employed—too bad he’s no longer in the race. Another candidate chose to focus on Thomas Jefferson’s crackdown on marijuana (we were confused, too). But just as he was about to pack up and head back to New York, Mark found one candidate with answers so sincere, he could bet the farm on ‘em.

What issues are you focusing on when you cast your presidential vote this November?

Target Corp. is the 33rd largest corporation in America, according to Fortune Magazine, and has seen revenues in the last year up 3.1%. The company has made a name for itself by selling designer products, like Isaac Mizrahi and Missoni, at discount prices. For any consumer who has ever been drawn in by the stylish packaging and design inside stores, you know the Target brand aims to provide patrons with a trendy, high-end shopping experience without having to fork over a high-percentage of their wallet.

So, in this new consumer-age of artisan and local-shopping, Target has reinvented itself again, teaming up with small businesses all over the United States to offer limited edition merchandise to its customers. This year, Target will showcase new products, like dog treats, home goods, and sweets, from local, independent stores in stores nationwide. This is a sure sign that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in our country. The venture also highlights the way partnerships can drive a business forward. Millions of potential customers will now have access to these locally made products, no doubt increasing profits for both the mega-retailer and small boutiques, like The Candy Store out of San Francisco, which sells unique and hard-to-find candies. Target has initially partnered with five specialty shops around the U.S. for its experiment launching May 6. The shops will be open for six weeks and then closed and replaced with others in the fall.

It’ll be interesting to see the results of this initiative of giving small businesses a national stage. Will it propel these small businesses to great success, giving Target a new, successful business model, or will it cripple the small businesses due to the overwhelming demand? Also, how will this affect the local economies and communities and how will other corporations respond? Target may just prove that when big-chain retailers come ‘round, Mom-and-Pop should think twice about skipping town.

“Recently, the debt of the federal government surpassed 100% of GDP for the first time ever.” Courtesy of www.theeconomiccollapseblog.com, the statistics in this post are intense and extreme, but it illustrates the burden of debt on our economy.

Speaking of debt, take a look at this satirical video about how the national debt applies to one family.

If you’re one of our Facebook fans, follow us on Twitter or are connected with us on LinkedIn, you know that we frequently post blog posts and articles with business tips and advice for entrepreneurs and business owners. Once in a while, we post pictures from speaking events. But who would have figured we would have the most comments and “Likes” of approval on a picture we posted of our CEO, Cole Harmonson, laughing it up with Rapper Snoop D-o-double-G. Just another day in the life of a Far West Capital team member.

Speaking of one of our favorite rappers, you might want to file away that piece of information for our new contest coming in a few weeks. You could win a coveted pass to a big conference happening in Austin this March. Follow our blog, Facebook page, Twitter page and LinkedIn profile for your chance to win!

It’s not every day that one of your old math notebooks sells for $388, 375—unless, you’re a rocket scientist, of course. Originally valued at $25,000, the checklist book of astronaut James Lovell was sold by Heritage Auctions in December. Lovell says he had forgotten about the notebook, since most of his other artifacts from the Apollo 13 mission had already been donated to museums and given to his children. After his co-pilot Jack Swigert radioed his famous lines back to NASA headquarters—“Houston, we’ve had a problem,” —Lovell used the book to calculate a safe reentry into earth’s orbit following the explosion of an oxygen tank aboard the ship. The calculations on the checklist made by Lovell are credited for turning NASA’s third expedition to the moon into “a successful failure,” as they allowed the astronauts to travel 200,000 miles back to earth in a lifeboat, of sorts. Looks like brushing up on your arithmetic goes a long, long way.

Good news for all you living south of the Red River—Texas annual job growth will reach about two percent in 2012, marking a three consecutive year increase. The rate of job growth was 2.1 percent last year, nearly double the rate of the U.S. But what do you expect from a state with the second-largest economy in the United States and about the 14^th largest in the world? In the coming year, 200,000 new jobs are expected to be added statewide. While the energy, high-tech, and exports industries job growth will likely fall, these loses will be offset by the addition of jobs in areas like construction of private and public buildings. Traditionally, the public sector has been the greatest sources of jobs, with about 15 percent of jobs in Texas tied to local and state governments. So Texans, I guess the question is not what your government can do for you, but rather, which department is hiring?

If your friends or family ever accuse you of rushing into a relationship, just tell them the story of Megan Lawless and Jasper Jasperse. The couple met while playing the popular online game Words With Friends, which allows users to compete against family, friends, or other anonymous players to see who can build the best words. The two began flirting on Jasper’s birthday, and after flying from his home in the Netherlands to meet Megan, they married a year later in July 2011. The holidays may be over, but Hugh Grant was right when he said that love is all actually around us.

MRI, CT scan, CBC, IPS; that last one stands for Ion Proton Sequencer, or simply put, DNA decoding. Life Technologies Corporation has announced the development of a new machine that can identify the exact sequence of a person’s DNA and the countertop machine will only cost $1000. The inexpensive price tag on the machine is expected to make for more practical use of the product, allowing physicians to use it to tailor medical treatments to patients. But before you rush out to your doctor to find out if being late to everything really does run in your family, take note that the machine will only be able to read your DNA’s code, an important function, but it may be a long time before medical practitioners are actually able to tell you what the arrangement of those 3.4 billion nucleotides actually means for your health.

There’s no doubt, the upcoming presidential election will be one to watch. From his messages about tax, spending, foreign policy, military spending and civil liberties, candidate Ron Paul and his policy proposals is resonating with many Americans. Learn why in this article, “Why Ron Paul Matters.”

The recent Italian cruise ship disaster has cruise ship companies on high alert and families waiting anxiously. The Costa Concordia ship, owned by Carnival Corporations, had 4,200 people – 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew members – aboard when it was steered too close to the Tuscan coast on January 13 and ran aground an island. At least 11 people are known to have died in the disaster, and 21 are still missing. Amid the accusations of the captain abandoning the ship, confusion about what went wrong and the desperate search for the people still missing, the story about Sandor Feher, a 38-year-old violinist working on the cruise ship, has made headlines. A passionate violin teacher who had worked on the cruise ship for a month, Feher helped put lifejackets on crying children as the ship was sinking. He then headed back to his cabin to pack his violin but was last seen in the lifeboat boarding area. His body was found inside the wreck. Rescue operations are still in progress on the grounded yet shifting ship.

You might have seen an email “from” Warren Buffet about the debt ceiling floating around. In an interview with CNBC, Warren Buffett, had some great thoughts about the debt ceiling, including this one:

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes,” he told CNBC. “You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election.

To see the full interview, check out this link.

Do you remember in our October 2011 newsletter we brought you information about the social movement Occupy Wall Street and its local sister movement, Occupy Austin? Not to beat a dead horse, but it appears that the protestors are not just occupying Austin City Hall, but police time and money, as well. Since the movement set up camp, the Austin Police Department has placed four to six officers, round-the-clock, to monitor and provide safety in the area. There have also been more than 100 arrests made since the movement began late last year. Now, new data shows that Occupy Austin has cost the Austin Police Department an extra $700,000. We are all in favor of the Constitutional right to assembly, but that is a pretty steep price tag for a protest of, well, we still don’t know for sure. In a city like Austin, there are definitely more productive ways to advocate for “change,” whatever that may mean to you, like contacting your district house member or buying local goods.

The Mattel-manufactured doll Barbie has a lot of fan pages, but none quite like this one. The Facebook page, calling for the doll maker to make a bald Barbie in a show of support to children affected by cancer, was started by Rebecca Sypin and Jane Bingham. Both women have been affected by the disease—Bingham lost her hair while being treated with chemotherapy for lymphoma and Sypin’s daughter lost her hair fighting leukemia—and believe that a bald Barbie would greatly increase awareness for children with cancer. There is no doubt that a bald Barbie would be inspiring for both children and adults, if nothing else, for the fact that she would show that there are many kinds of beautiful. And if Barbie can be a news anchor, lawyer, and astronaut, there’s no reason why she can’t be all these and bald.