Entertainment

The Good-Bad Thing About Jim Jefferies’ ‘Intolerant’ Is That It’s About Nothing Of Consequence

Published 5 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Netflix
Jim Jefferies' opinions on hot-button topics precedes him, but with this Netflix special, he's doing something different.

Congress could see an influx of QAnon conspiracists join its ranks following this year’s election cycle

Published 10 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Congress could see an influx next year of newly minted lawmakers who subscribe to the far-right, pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory. Ten Republican candidates who either explicitly endorsed or signaled support for the conspira... More »

Billie Eilish Is Guesting On A Podcast About ‘The Office’ Hosted By A Former Cast Member

Published 22 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Getty Image 'An Oral History Of The Office' will launch on Spotify later this month. More »

The Story Behind The Romeo Arrangement by Nicole Snow

Published 23 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Sign up for our email and we’ll send you the best new books in your favorite genres weekly. The post The Story Behind The Romeo Arrangement by Nicole Snow appeared first on NewInBooks. More »

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Tech

How Postmates went from multiple IPO setbacks to a $2.65 billion takeover by Uber

Published 24 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Tech

Rayni Williams, the cofounder of an estates group that closed over $620 million in deals last year, takes us through her daily routine from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m.

Published 29 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Rayni Williams is the cofounder of Williams & Williams Estates Group, a luxury real estate firm based in Beverly Hills.
With over $7 billion in career sales, Rayni and Branden, her husband and business partner, are one of the top-producing teams nationwide and the number one team on the West Coast, per Real Trends.
Living in Trousdale, Beverly Hills with their two young children, the pair have been learning to navigate a new industry landscape amid the coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview with Business Insider, Rayni breaks down the daily routine she follows that keeps her organized and focused.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.In the 15 years she's been in real estate, Rayni Williams has certainly made her mark.
Ranked as the top female agent in the US on Real Trends' list of top-producing small teams, Williams has closed over $7 billion in contracts over the course of her career, with north of $1 billion in Trousdale, a wealthy enclave of Beverly Hills.
She and her business partner and husband, Branden, are ranked second overall, and the pair are cofounders of Williams & Williams Estates Group, a luxury real estate firm based in Beverly Hills.
They closed over $600 million last year alone.
When the coronavirus locked down Los Angeles in March, business seemed to come to a halt. For the first two weeks of lockdown, Williams said, nobody knew what was what. "I was scared and not going out," she said. "Sellers didn't want people in their homes. We were taking a beat for about two weeks."
But springing back into action with caution by the end of the month, it became clear the pandemic was changing the industry. "After those first two weeks, it was like, this is what we're living with, in a field that requires personal contact. We took all the precautions and started working again," she said, adding that her team has taken it very seriously, with Covid stations, masks, gloves, and laminated disclaimers in front of every listing.
Between then and now, Williams has made it back to a full capacity schedule, the only difference being that she's stayed out of the office and is working out of her Trousdale home.
Where her pre-pandemic day consisted of anywhere between 12 and 15 appointments, the new climate has leant real estate's leading lady a new perspective, one where work-life balance has a little more value — she and her husband are working alongside their two young children.
"I can't speak for everybody but the general message from Covid is slow down, live life, take the vacation. Now I feel really good about four to five appointments a day as the new target."
Mindfulness aside, Williams' days are still jam-packed.
And she let Business Insider take a look at her day-to-day.
6:00 a.m.
Wake up. Work out in the yard with my trainer, we've been working out outside, in masks.
One hour of weights, cardio. Three times a week.
7:30 a.m.
Coffee and breakfast with the kids. I usually make breakfast, I love to cook.
Sit around eating at the table. Sometimes a playroom picnic.
Jump into the shower.
8:00 a.m.
At my home office-vanity, making calls. Do my hair and makeup if I have a showing or a Zoom.
I get a "hot sheet" from the office every day, it tells me what just came on the market as active, what's in escrow, what just came up as withdrawn. It shows listing turnovers, which was something so important to me in the beginning of my career, it was indicative of opportunity.
9:00 a.m.
Out the door, in the car. I try to make all my toughest appointments between 9:30-10:00 a.m. I love to start the day with my hardest tasks first.
10:30 a.m.
Showing a $30 million house on five acres, it took an hour to show. A guy loved the house and offered $17 million. No way. Spend some time negotiating.
I'm lucky to have a setup team to turn on the lights, AC, candles, fireplaces, etc., so as not to waste time. I walk in at showtime. That's a luxury of being a top agent. And I have a great team, it's a blessing. Time is money.
1:00 p.m.
Showing a $40 million house in Beverly Hills to a Hollywood guy. Super fun showing, really productive.
3:00 p.m.
Pop home to put out a fire, check on the kids. That's the beauty of the job, flexibility.
4:00 p.m.
Second listing appointment on a $50 million property with Branden. He's a machine, the ultimate closer.
7:00 p.m.
A second showing. People like to come at twilight.
I tell my team, "Schedule me promptly," but I always need travel and ad-lib time. It's a "now" business. You can't believe how spontaneous it is, people will call and want to see things immediately. I find that it's so important to be available to people.
7:30 p.m.
Dinner. I try to cook at least three nights a week. I'm Italian, I love to make bolognese. I cooked all through quarantine.
9:00 p.m.
Bedtime for the kids, then I jump into bed with my laptop. Scan the MLS. Look at what's trending. Search the market. Basically the same routine I do every morning all over again.
12:00 a.m.
Time for bed. SEE ALSO: Fredrik Eklund, the founder of a bicoastal team that signed $100 million in new contracts in one week, swears by this daily routine from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

Tech

I worked in PR for over a decade before writing a novel. Skills like writing for executives actually helped make me a better novelist — here’s how.

Published 29 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Rachel Beanland writes fiction and essays — but before turning to writing full-time, Rachel worked in public relations and nonprofit management.
"FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS FOREVER" is her debut novel.
For over a decade, Beanland worked in public relations; while that type of writing felt very different from working on her novel, she realized it helped her become a better novelist.
She learned the power of conciseness, how to effectively research, and the importance of telling a story transparently and honestly.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.I worked in public relations for more than a decade before becoming a novelist. I'd set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. and write fiction and essays before I went into the office and cranked out press releases and media alerts, social media posts, and website copy.
At the time, the writing I did in the morning and the writing I did during my 9-to-5 felt worlds apart, but when I sold my first novel, I came to realize that my career in PR had actually helped me become a better novelist.
Working in the public relations industry taught me to hone my sentences, to strip my writing of subjective words like most, best, and biggest. I also learned to edit out hyperbole, words such as revolutionary and innovative, which sound great but mean very little. Facts, it turns out, do much more work. In fiction, we also prize the concrete detail. Writers quote the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who coined some derivation of the phrase, "Show, don't tell." It's not good form to write that your character is frustrated — you describe the way he kicked his kid's abandoned soccer ball over his neighbor's fence.
I was taught that the opening paragraph of a press release should never be more than 25 words long — that to hook people, it was important to get right to the point. If I pitched a story to journalists, my goal was always to write an email so concise they didn't need to scroll. The same premise applies to novels. When I shaved 20 pages off my novel's opening, the pace picked up considerably.
PR pros try to be concise both on and off the page. When we prep senior leadership for media appearances, we coach them to speak in soundbites — short sentences that are easy to excerpt because they have a clear beginning, middle, and end. We love a good elevator pitch because people who can clearly and succinctly describe what their organization wants or needs are more likely to get what they ask for. Just like the largest corporations, novels are big and messy. I've found that when I can clearly articulate my novel's main themes and what each of my characters really want, I'm in far less danger of straying off course.
I once worked as the PR manager for a zoo, and one of my jobs was to promote a successful, multiweek trick-or-treating event that had a tough time earning continued media coverage after opening weekend. When our candy supply dwindled, midway through the event's three-week run, I knew I had the perfect news angle. I called all our local TV stations and ruefully admitted the event had been so popular we'd run out of candy. Within a few hours, multiple news crews were on site, cameras rolling, as we unloaded a truck full of Dum-Dums. In PR we call running out of candy a news hook; in fiction, we call it a plot device. Frequently, in PR, I was called upon to write speeches and correspondence for executives. For me, it was always one of the best parts of the job. I studied the way these executives constructed their emails and even their PowerPoint decks and listened carefully when they spoke with their colleagues or addressed their employees. I was making note of their word choice and speech patterns. Did they ask rhetorical questions? Make a habit of ending sentences with prepositions? Use humor to deflect unwanted attention? Learning to mimic the voice and tone of the executives I worked for helped me, in my fiction, write distinguishable characters who used realistic dialogue, and when I decided that my novel called for seven rotating points of view — with seven unique voices — I wasn't nearly as intimidated as I might otherwise have been.
In 2006, I earned my accreditation in public relations. The accreditation process requires PR practitioners to present a portfolio of work to a panel of industry professionals, then sit for a comprehensive examination. The easiest way to flub the portfolio presentation or fail the exam is to underemphasize the importance of the communications planning process: research, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Try to launch a PR campaign without conducting the proper research, or call a campaign a win without the metrics to back it up, and you'll be sitting in the same chair the following year.
My novel is set in 1934 Atlantic City and features a young woman who's training to swim the English Channel. I conducted extensive research as I was writing the book, learning about everything from popular 1930s boardwalk amusements to Trudy Ederle's bid to become the first woman to swim the Channel. As is the case with any piece of historical fiction, it was tempting to share every detail I'd learned with readers. But we caution fiction writers against doing that. The goal is for research to inform the novel, not overwhelm it.
PR professionals know that there's always more than one story, and that to effectively tell our organization's we've got to strive for transparency and authenticity at all times. In this era, no one can hide behind empty platitudes and evasive catch phrases like "no comment."
With novel writing, the same principle applies. My story may not be your story, but if I'm doing my job right, I'm writing toward a truth so universal you'll recognize it as your own.
Rachel Beanland writes fiction and essays. Her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction and Broad Street, among other places. She has an MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University and holds bachelor's degrees in art history and journalism from the University of South Carolina. Before turning to writing full-time, Rachel worked in public relations and nonprofit management. She lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and three children. FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS FOREVER is her debut novel.SEE ALSO: I'm a professional bridesmaid: Strangers hire me to pretend to be their close friend during their wedding — and yes, I have way more than 27 dresses
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: How waste is dealt with on the world's largest cruise ship

Tech

Stock funds posted their best return since 1999 in the 2nd quarter as the market rallied

Published 29 mins ago - iNFO Vi

In the second quarter of 2020, equity funds posted their best quarterly performance since the fourth quarter of 1999, according to data from Refinitiv Lipper. The average equity fund returned 20.22% in the quarter, and Lipper's US Diversified Equity Funds macr... More »

US digital travel sales will fall 45% this year, down more than $93 billion

Published 31 mins ago - iNFO Vi

8 Black investors discuss the intersection of race, tech and funding

Published 31 mins ago - iNFO Vi

My company hosted a successful 3-day virtual conference that brought in over 14,000 attendees. Here are my 4 best tips on organizing an online event that people will want to attend.

Published 32 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Turn All Your Brownies Into Frozen Chocolate Bars

Published 32 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Shutterstock Pro tip: Ina Garten’s Outrageous Brownies are even better after freezing This post originally appeared in the July 6, 2020 edition of The Move, a place for Eater’s editors to reveal their recommendations and pro ... More »

Interview with Angelina J. Steffort, Author of Shattered Kingdom

Published 33 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Sign up for our email and we’ll send you the best new books in your favorite genres weekly. The post Interview with Angelina J. Steffort, Author of Shattered Kingdom appeared first on NewInBooks. More »

Nathan Ake, Arsenal transfer target, and Kalidou Koulibaly – Possible centre-backs for Manchester United as Ole Gunnar Solskjaer seeks to strengthen

Published 36 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Right now, Manchester United don’t look far off being Premier League title contenders. They’re on a brilliant run in 2020 and have gone nine games unbeaten since late January when they lost to Burnley. Not only has the arriva... More »

Guinea Pigs in Museums, FIAC Fair Plans Move Ahead, and More: Morning Links from July 7, 2020

Published 36 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Here's what we're reading this morning. More »

The best deals and sales happening on Amazon right now⁠⁠ — save $43 on a Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker

Published 37 mins ago - iNFO Vi

Amazon regularly changes prices on its products. We'll update this list regularly with the new discounts as they crop up. Highlights include discounts on Instant Pot appliances and Clarisonic Mia Smart facial brush. If y... More »