Entrepreneurial Profile - Scott Griffiths, 18|8 Hair Salons

In this second of my entrepreneurial profile series I’m going to profile Scott Griffiths, a buddy and enterprise colleague from my executive MBA plan at the UCLA Anderson organization college.

My last profile was of Matt Remuzzi, owner of CapForge.  Matt is a quiet, thoughtful, understated man with a dry wit, a very good listener who generally opines when he feels he has one thing essential to say.  In contract to Matt, Scott is a lively, gregarious, boisterous man given to loud aloha shirts and lengthy sea, interesting stories.  My level in drawing this distinction is that I’ve noticed all types of personality sorts in productive entrepreneurs, from introverts (on the Myers Briggs scale I go as far on the introverted scale as it goes) to extroverts, charismatic revenue individuals to people with various degrees of Aspergers syndrome.

Scott has been an entrepreneur for nicely over twenty many years. He has a quite powerful advertising and product sales background, and his newest and most productive gig has been as the co-founder of the 18|eight chain of men’s hair salons.  Scott started this venture in 2001 right after the MBA system and had a series of problems and setbacks, but his business has dramatically taken off by means of his choice to group with a franchise group and franchise out his companies.  In 2013 his goal was to promote thirty franchise retailers and he doubled that objective by offering 60 merchants.  In buy to begin this business Scott invested his retirement money and did a close friends and household fundraising.

Like nearly every entrepreneur, Scott has had his successes and failures.  His successes have included the 18|eight idea and execution, the Mitch for Guys brand, the Crystal Cruises brand, and the Vertu brand for Nokia.  His failures have included a microbrew known as Rhino chasers.  He had clear lessons discovered from this failure, nevertheless, and notes that the speedy growth of the Rhino Chasers brand triggered him to burn up via all of his friends and household funds and go to a Venture Capital company for money.  The VC firm demanded that he place in an “MBA CEO”, who very rapidly drove the company into bankruptcy, a story that I have heard from several entrepreneurs more than the many years.  This failure prompted Scott to go to the UCLA plan and get an MBA, to which he attributes significantly of his reason for accomplishment in his most current venture.

Scott is a brand and marketing guy by nature, but also counts as his core strengths a robust correct-left brain balance, (he describes this idea in his guide “Beyond Genius”), his tenacity, the capability to visualize one thing in his head as well as the information of how that picture will perform out in time, a “strong enough” capability in finance and math to be capable to construct numbers all around situations, the ability to articulate these situations in a compelling way to others, and the capability to stimulate and orchestrate other people.

His weaknesses are typical of a lot of entrepreneurs I’ve met.  In his words he “doesn’t endure fools”, can be impatient and arrogant.  Numerous successful (and unsuccessful) entrepreneurs I’ve met have these same weaknesses, although many would not label them as weaknesses.

With respect to his success with the 18|eight brand, Scott credits currently being a pupil of Starbucks and Apple – he tries to emulate and bring characteristics of people icons into 18|eight, specifically Steve Jobs’ layout genius and Howard Schultz’ revenue and advertising genuis.  Scott states that “Jobs was a enormous fan of style ‘design helps make a difference’, and that Schultz practices “retail and detail” to develop a merchandise that is better than the sum of the components, generating an expertise all around a commoditized cup of coffee.  Scott credits his success with 18|8 with emulating the two of those iconic firms.

“Men shouldn’t be going to a women’s salon” – with that as a premise, Scott came up with a organization idea.  “A guy spends $ 40-60 every single two-3 weeks to go to a women’s salon and really do not want to be there, so I decided to conceive what a guy would want to locate in an best men’s salon.”  Scott invested 10 many years creating and proving his notion, and the final couple of years perfecting the model for franchising.  Howard Schultz continually looked at the buyer knowledge and enhanced upon it, a practice Scott also emulates.  Scott’s self stated fashion of entrepreneurism is to create a brand. He started out doing this as a advisor, made the decision that he desired to do it for himself, and now has had a amount of successes and setbacks in the approach, and a very profitable ongoing enterprise.

In future blogs I’ll concentrate on other entrepreneurial profiles.  My purpose in carrying out this is to give enough examples to aspiring entrepreneurs to inspire them to comply with their own ideas to produce their own organizations.

Entrepreneurial Profile - Scott Griffiths, 18|8 Hair Salons

Profile of Gilles-Éric Séralini, Writer Of Republished Retracted GMO Corn Rat Study

Gilles-Éric Séralini has republished his retracted study of herbicide resistant GMO maize examine in an obscure European open source journal. The Genetic Literacy Project’s Jon Entine gives a detailed factual profile of the embattled French molecular biologist (along with a compilation of reactions from scientists from close to the planet).

Gilles-Éric Séralini (born August 23, 1960 in Annaba, Algeria, then recognized as Bône) is a French scientist who has been a professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen since 1991. He is very best recognized for publishing research concluding that genetically modified food is unsafe for human consumption. He is president and chairman of the board of CRIIGEN (Committee of Independent Investigation and Info. He has published multiple research alleging overall health dangers linked with plant biotechnology which have been referred to as flawed and biased by numerous regulatory and academic groups.

Séralini Occupation

Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Caen, Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, I.B.F.A., Esplanade de la Paix, 14032 Caen Cedex, France electronic mail: gilles-eric.seralini arobase unicaen.fr Séralini studied in Great and became a Medical professional in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Montpellier in 1987. He left then for North America to carry out fundamental investigation for 4 years, at the University of Western Ontario and Laval University Medical Center, doing study on corticosteroid-binding globulin. Qualified to supervise investigation, he passed, at the age of thirty, the French nationwide competitive examination for University Professors.

Séralini chose to target on the interface of cancer study and endocrinology at the University of Caen, exactly where he was appointed professor in June 1991, a place he has held ever considering that. He wrote about 100 scientific content articles and conference papers for global professional symposiums, and a number of lectures with a nation-wide impact, he assumes a number of roles in the Commissions of the University of Caen, where he prospects a research group linked to CNRS (French Nationwide Centre for Scientific Investigation) and INRA.”

Research at CRIIGEN (Committee of Independent Analysis and Info on Genetic Engineering

Under the auspices of CRIIGEN, Séralini has published several research claiming wellness risks related with GMOs and the glyphosate-primarily based herbicide Roundup on human cells and the enzyme aromatase in vitro, as properly as rat testicular cells. His in vitro study has concluded that Roundup (the formulation with adjuvants, not just glyphosate) is toxic to cells in a dish, as effectively as that it is an endocrine disruptor. In 2013, the Séralini lab published a review in the Journal of Applied Toxicology that examined the effects of Cry1ab and Cry1ac insecticidal Bt toxins, as effectively as their effects in conjunction with Roundup, on HEK cells

In his most controversial research, in 2012, Séralini et al published a examine in the journal Foods and Chemical Toxicology (Volume 50, Problem eleven, November 2012, pages 4221-4231) titled “Long phrase toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize”. Here is the original abstract of the Foods and Chemical Toxicology paper.

This review informed the banning of genetically modified food items by the Kenyan government in November 2012[2]. On November 28, 2013, nevertheless, the journal[3] retracted the article due to strong criticism from the scientific local community about the way the study was conducted. The editor, A. Wallace Hayes, wrote that he retracted the  paper simply because it was “inconclusive,” claiming that this was steady with Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) recommendations, although others disagreed.

On June 24, 2014, the retracted research, in expanded kind, this time such as the data, was republished with the tile “Republished examine: extended-term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize” in an obscure open source journal, Environmental Sciences Europe—where Seralini has published ahead of. The journal, portion of SpringerOpen, is too young to have an official Influence Element (IF). Using the very same calculation, however, the journal would have an IF of .fifty five. That would area it about 190th out of the 210 journals in the “environmental sciences” group at Thomson Scientific. (For comparison, Meals and Chemical Toxicology has an IF of just over three, and a ranking of 27th.)

In 2014, Séralini et al. published a examine in BioMed Investigation International claiming that pesticides had been more toxic than regulatory bodies had previously considered. The review prompted Ralf Reski, one particular of the editors of the journal in which it was published, to resign. Reski mentioned, “I do not want to be connected to a journal that supplies [Séralini] a forum for such type of agitation.”

Séralini Affair

What became acknowledged as the Séralini Affair began in September 2012, and involved the publication of an experiment conducted by a group led by Séralini involving the feeding of of Monsanto’s Round-Up-resistant NK603 maize (called corn in North America) and the herbicide Round-Up to rats, more than the rats’ two-year lifespan.

Séralini had needed that journalists, in purchase to acquire a copy of the paper prior to the press conference, signal a confidentiality agreement prohibiting them from contacting other researchers for comment prior to the press conference. Throughout the press conference, Séralini also announced he was releasing a guide and a documentary film on the study. The press conference received substantial coverage in the media.

In the paper and in the press conference, Séralini claimed that the benefits showed that Round-Up-resistant maize and Round-Up are toxic. The abstract signifies: “The well being effects of a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize (from eleven% in the diet), cultivated with or without having Roundup, and Round-Up alone (from .1 ppb in water), were studied 2 years in rats. In females, all handled groups died 2–3 instances a lot more than controls, and a lot more swiftly. This distinction was noticeable in 3 male groups fed GMOs. All results have been hormone and sex dependent, and the pathological profiles have been comparable.” The review used 200 Sprague-Dawley rats, 100 male and 100 female, and divided them into twenty groups with ten rats every 10 experimental circumstances had been examined on male rats and separately on female rats for two years.

Other long-term studies, which had been publicly funded, have uncovered no wellness concerns. The Japanese Department of Environmental Well being and Toxicology launched a 52-week feeding study of GM soybeans in 2007, locating “no obvious adverse result in rats.” In 2012, a group of scientists at the University of Nottingham School of Biosciences released a review of twelve extended-term research (up to two many years) and twelve multi-generational research (up to 5 generations) of GM meals in the identical journal that published the Seralini paper, concluding there is no proof of health hazards.”

The release of the book and film in conjunction with the scientific paper, and the necessity that journalists sign a confidentiality agreement, have been also criticized and negatively peer reviewed.

Scientific evaluation

As summarized on Wikipedia, the study was widely criticized. The London-based Science Media Centre, which assists reporters when key science news breaks, posted an entire web page of criticisms,Scientists claimed that Séralini’s conclusions have been impossible to justify provided the experimental style – the modest sample size collectively with the length of the research collectively with the known high incidence of tumors in the species of rats employed.

The paper was also challenged by several foods standards companies. A lot of claimed that the conclusions had been not possible to justify given the statistical power of the examine. Sprague-Dawley rats have a lifespan of about two years and have a higher tendency to get cancer above their lifespan (1 research discovered that above eighty percent of males and over seventy % of females got cancer beneath standard conditions). The Séralini experiment lasted the typical lifespan of these rats, and the longer the experiment went, the far more statistical “noise” there was – the more rats get cancer naturally, regardless of what was done to them. For the experiment to have ample statistical energy, all the groups – manage groups and check groups – would have to number at least 65 rats per group in buy to kind out any experimentally induced cancers from cancers that would arise normally – but the Séralini review had only 10 per group.

OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Advancement) suggestions recommends twenty rats for chemical-toxicity research, and 50 rats for carcinogenicity studies. In addition, if the survival of the rats is less than 50% at 104 weeks (which is likely given the Sprague-Dawley rats utilised in the review) the advisable quantity of rats is 65.

Dr. Francis Nang’ayo of the African Agricultural and Technology Basis[four] criticized the research for having utilised rats that have been susceptible to cancer. “In science, the sample dimension for a research of this kind of a magnitude ought to be at least 50 but Seralini used only 10 rats which to me tremendously compromise the findings,” added Mr. Nang’ayo.

King’s University London Professor Tom Sanders wrote that because Sprague-Dawley rats are vulnerable to mammary tumors when meals consumption is not limited, data ought to have been presented about how much food the rats had been fed (as nicely as the presence of fungus in the feed, an additional confounder). Sanders also wrote of this review, “The statistical strategies are unconventional … and it would seem the authors have gone on a statistical fishing trip.”

The Washington Submit quoted meals activist and GMO critic Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor in the Division of Nutrition, Meals Scientific studies and Public Overall health at New York University: “‘[I] cannot figure it out yet….It’s weirdly difficult and unclear on crucial issues: what the controls have been fed, relative costs of tumors, why no dose connection, what the mechanism may be. I can not believe of a biological purpose why GMO corn ought to do this…..So even though I strongly help labeling, I’m skeptical of this examine.’” University of Calgary Professor Maurice Moloney, between others, wondered why there have been so numerous photos in the study, and in sympathetic information reports about it, of taken care of rats with horrific tumors, but no pictures of the rats in the handle group.

Profile of Gilles-Éric Séralini, Writer Of Republished Retracted GMO Corn Rat Study

Henning Mankell: chronicler of his very own decline | the Observer profile

For the duration of a prolific career stretching back nearly half a century, the Swedish author Henning Mankell, greatest identified for his Wallander series, has developed many million phrases, many of them dealing with ghastly crimes. But couple of of his sentences have carried quite so disturbing resonance as the a single published in the Göteborgs-Posten newspaper last week.

“When I returned to Gothenburg the following day I came back with a serious diagnosis of cancer,” he announced. Mankell had gone to see an orthopaedic surgeon in Stockholm with what he assumed was a slipped disc, but tests exposed he had a tumour in his left lung, an additional in his neck and there was evidence to propose that the cancer had metastasised elsewhere in his entire body.

Monday is Mankell’s 66th birthday. A couple of years in the past, he informed an interviewer he was not afraid of dying. But not currently being afraid is not the very same as not caring, especially when the prospect leaps forward a couple of decades. “My anxiousness is extremely profound,” he acknowledged in Göteborgs-Posten, “despite the fact that by and massive, I can maintain it underneath control.”

Like numerous writers just before him, he has decided to channel his nervousness into writing a chronicle of his disease. It should make a compelling account. One particular of the strengths of the Wallander novels is the way that he documented the detective’s ailments and frailties. Brooding and introspective, Kurt Wallander was handed diabetes by Mankell, who appeared to consider a writerly delight in describing male bodily decline.

By contrast, Mankell has usually been a guy of action. His childhood was shaped by the divorce of his mothers and fathers when he was one particular. His mother left her 3 children to move in with yet another guy. Mankell barely noticed her until he was 15, and in her absence he came up with an imaginary model of his mother. It was a inventive talent that he would later put to lucrative use a writer, but such was his talent for invention that he was severely disappointed when he at some point met the real female. Although he belatedly got to know her, they had been in no way close.

He has since stated that what she did in leaving was only what several males do. There may possibly have been a note of self-criticism in this observation, simply because he has four boys from distinct relationships and, as he later on admitted, he invested two many years in Mozambique partly to escape from “domestic ties”.

His mother died comparatively youthful, at 55. And his father, a judge, took his younger young children to dwell in a little neighborhood in central Sweden (he died when Mankell was 24).

The motherless loved ones lived above the law courts. “Ever because I was a youthful kid,” he later on remarked, “I have been interested in the justice system and how it performs.”

At 16, he left college to turn out to be a merchant seaman, dreaming of romantic journey and exotic locations. But as a stevedore on a coal ship, the spot he most often visited was Middlesbrough. He moved to Paris at 18 and it is stated that he nevertheless carries a scar courtesy of a police baton wielded for the duration of the 1968 événements.

He was and remains avowedly leftwing. In the 1970s, he lived in Norway with a lady who was a member of a Maoist get together and the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet stated that he took element in the actions of the Workers’ Communist party of Norway. Most of all, Mankell’s politics are informed by an previous-fashioned internationalism in which the west performs the part of ruthless imperialist.

In 1972, when he was 24, he ultimately reached the spot he’d been dreaming of on these icy trips across the North Sea to Middlesbrough: Africa. He 1st visited Guinea-Bissau but produced repeated return trips, living for a even though in Zambia, before taking up a position as artistic director of the Teatro Avenida theatre business in Maputo, Mozambique. Since 1987, he has divided his time amongst Mozambique, Sweden and, far more lately, his vacation property in Antibes in the south of France.

Theatre was Mankell’s very first adore. He began out operating as a stagehand in Stockholm and by the age of 20 he had written his initial play, The Amusement Park, about Swedish colonialism in 19th-century South America. Although Mankell has subsequently explained it was not extremely good, the perform was properly received.

In any situation, four many years later on he published his first novel, The Stone-Blaster. Even though Mankell was only in his early 20s, the book worries an old guy reflecting on his daily life and the need for social solidarity. As the two debut functions suggest, Mankell was not just a political thinker, he was also an overtly political writer.

In Sweden, crime fiction was transformed in the 1960s into a leftwing political genre by Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall, who are typically cited as the godparents of “Nordic noir”. But it was not till May 1989, after publishing a succession of other novels and plays, that Mankell came up with the thought of Wallander.

He had just returned to Sweden from two years in Mozambique and he was struck by an increase in racism and attacks on immigrants. “Racism is a crime,” he later explained, “and I thought: Okay, I’ll use the crime story.” Apparently he plucked the title Wallander from a telephone directory.

Even though the Wallander novels are political – the poor guys tend to be fascists or members of a shady elite or the two – the detective himself is not. For all his ideological instincts, Mankell the craftsman realised that a politically right hero would not be really appealing. So Wallander became a flawed human becoming with bad eating habits, a problematic romantic relationship with females and a tendency to drink too much.

Wallander also grew to become a large bestseller, although it took a whilst for him to catch on internationally. When he did, nevertheless, other Scandinavian authors quickly followed. Mankell has in contrast himself in this respect to Björn Borg, who just took place to be the very first in an amazing line of best Swedish tennis gamers.

If racism was the catalyst for Wallander, the crime genre was also given higher urgency by the murder of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister, in 1986. The nonetheless unsolved killing shocked the country and prompted an extended time period of self-analysis and moral doubt. Mankell has dismissed this reasoning, arguing that non-Swedes produced a false picture of a social democratic paradise that Palme’s murder supposedly brought to an end.

“We did not lose our innocence with his death,” he said. “Politics would have followed the very same course. Industry liberalism would have took place.”

This is no doubt accurate, but the shooting of the prime minister in the centre of Stockholm, and the method in which the killer vanished into the night, left a psychological appetite for answers, a deep-seated necessary for mysteries to be explained and crimes to be solved, and Wallander, in his very own idiosyncratic way, answered to this need.

That Mankell was fascinated by the crime is clear from the truth that he wrote each a play and a Wallander short story about Palme, and the politician also featured in the last Wallander book, The Troubled Man (published in Sweden in 2009).

Considering that Wallander’s death, Mankell has focused on his other writing, which, which includes children’s stories, makes up a lot more than 75% of his corpus. But it has been his political actions that have gained headlines, most notably his decision in 2010 to join an support flotilla that was bound for Gaza.

In the event, the boats were halted by Israeli troops in an action that left nine members of the convoy dead. Mankell was arrested and then sent back to Sweden. Mankell sees the democratic state of Israel as a criminal nation, likening it to the South African apartheid regime.

Known for his irascibility, the writer has in 1 sense softened in late middle age. When he turned 50, he embarked on his fourth and, it looks, happiest marriage – to Eva Bergman, a choreographer and theatre director who is the daughter of the movie-maker Ingmar Bergman and the dancer Ellen Lundström.

In his column about his cancer diagnosis, Mankell stated that he had no memories of the trip back to Gothenburg other than a deep sense of gratitude at his wife’s presence. Obtaining older, he stated three years in the past, alterations our notion of love. In his 60s, he has produced a touching and proximate sense of mortality.

“At my age,” he explained, “I would say that the greatest definition of adore is you are with the man or woman you want to hold your hand when you die.”

Born 3 February 1948 in Stockholm. His father, Ivar, was a district judge his mother worked on the Swedish National Biography. They divorced when he was a single.

Greatest of occasions The publication of Faceless Killers in Sweden in 1991 started one of the most successful recent crime series.

Worst of instances Some of his feedback on Israel and Palestine have brought on controversy. He as soon as said it was unusual that there are not a lot more suicide bombers.

What he says “Society and its contradictions become clear when you create about crime.”

What other individuals say Mankell’s works “transcend their picked genre to grow to be thrilling and moral literature”.

“Mankell’s series is the exemplary situation of the fate of the detective novel in our era of global capitalism.”

Henning Mankell: chronicler of his very own decline | the Observer profile

Campaign launched to raise profile of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ailment

Zahida Aslam, whose father died from IPF last 12 months, stated: ‘We want much more to be accomplished for patients and their households who are suffering with IPF.’ Photograph: David Levene

A campaign is to be launched this year to raise awareness of a fairly unknown but deadly lung disease, which is estimated to declare as several as five,000 lives a 12 months in the Uk.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) takes place when scar tissue builds up in the lungs and gets to be thick and difficult, creating breathing hard. Research suggests 15,000 men and women live with the ailment in the United kingdom. There are an estimated five,000 new instances each 12 months and it triggers far more deaths in the Uk every single yr than ovarian cancer or leukaemia.

Regardless of the bleak prospects for sufferers, the British Lung Foundation says there is a lack of help for individuals and quite tiny funding, or advice on how to tackle the condition, all issues it hopes to tackle. Zahida Aslam, whose father, Mohammed Aslam Butt, died from IPF in June final yr, less than four years following getting diagnosed, will sit on the charity’s new advisory committee on the illness. She stated her family members felt powerless and alone soon after his diagnosis at the age of 73.

“We want more to be accomplished for sufferers and their households who are suffering with IPF, so they will not have to have as troubling a time as we did going by means of this,” she mentioned. “We’d never heard of it. Practically nothing was actually explained to us. He was informed he had a fatal condition and practically nothing could be carried out about it, there was no therapy for it and they have been sorry to break the bad information. We had been astounded. We imagined: ‘Surely there is some thing that can support?’”

Aslam is setting up an IPF charity to enhance awareness amongst the public and politicians, and raise funds for research. About half of sufferers are dead inside of three years of currently being diagnosed and only a fifth will survive 5 many years.

Dr Toby Maher, consultant respiratory physician at London’s Royal Brompton hospital, said: “There is been a real boost in the number of incidences of IPF over the final 20 years or so. Nearly everyone with the condition will die, both as a consequence of respiratory failure due to the IPF itself or to do with a complication of it such as pneumonia or heart failure.”

Maher believes IPF has failed to get much more focus in the previous because lung ailments are linked with smoking and, until just lately, the prognosis for IPF sufferers was seen as hopeless. The lead to of IPF is unknown, despite the fact that it is far more widespread in smokers and in men and women exposed to dust from wood, metal, textile or stone. Maher explained higher awareness among clinicians and drug advances provided “a glimmer of hope”.

Last year, Pirfenidone, which aids slow the irreversible damage to the lungs, grew to become the first IPF drug to be recommended by the Nationwide Institute for Well being and Care Excellence, the public physique that chooses which medicines can be used by the NHS. Other clinical trials are underneath way.

Dr Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Basis, explained IPF was “a devastating disease that can impact grownups of all ages”. “In the United kingdom, we are at the moment extremely sick-prepared to deal with the increasing influence of IPF. The availability of treatments and support, consistency in the quality of care, investment in analysis – these are all places in require of urgent improvement,” she stated.

Campaign launched to raise profile of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ailment