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Cal Wilson / May 21, 2021

Master New Skills by Adopting a Beginner’s Mindset

We are never too old or too experienced to learn something new. Often, the thing standing between us and mastering new skills is mindset. One way you can help yourself is by embracing a ‘beginner’s mindset’ approach to learning.  

Children are encouraged by their families and the community at large to try a wide variety of skills. You may have been made to play chess or learn folk dancing in school, even if these skills have never played an important role in your career life. Children can and will pick up new skills quickly and with relative ease, simply for the sake of enriching themselves. How can we, as adults, bring that same capacity to learn into our lives and workplaces? 

Author of Beginners, Tom Vanderbilt, has done significant research into learning better as an adult. Inspired by his daughter’s keen ability to pick up a wide array of hobbies, Vanderbilt decided to spend a year pursuing a new range of skills, including singing, drawing, juggling, and even surfing. The point was not to become a pro-surfer or bestselling singer, but rather to fully immerse himself in the pleasure of the learning process. It is this ‘beginner’s mindset’ that takes the pressure off learning and allows you to truly develop quality skills.  

Vanderbilt has laid out some important guidelines for this style of learning that just might help you pick up that new instrument you’ve been meaning to try, or improve a skill you thought you’d lost.  

Learn from your mistakes:  

It may seem obvious, but it is an area where pride or laziness often get in the way. Be deliberate and analytical when training any new skill, and rather than getting frustrated or proud, ask yourself what went wrong and what went right.  

Make sure your practice is varied: 

Change things up from time to time. Don’t keep the variables the same every time. Can you really play the piano if you only know one song? Variance in your practice leads to the brain’s flexibility. It also helps build your resilience to a great array of challenges you may face.  

Teach what you learn: 

Do you remember having to present what you learned in school, or be a ‘peer-teacher?’ There’s a reason for this. We learn better when we know we will have to teach what we have learned to others. The expectation of teaching increases curiosity and retention. Passing on knowledge is rewarding neurologically, as well as emotionally, as many find it one of the most exciting parts of learning.  

Be Open and Vulnerable: 

Part of the reason kids are great learners is because they do not have the same sense of embarrassment or social shame that hinders a lot of adults. Take singing, as an example. Children sing all the time with no mind for who hears them. As an adult with no singing training, it may be nerve wracking to open up and practice with an instructor for the first time. Pushing past these nerves and being vulnerable leaves you receptive to instruction and improvement.  

Applying this to your career life. 

So juggling and surfing might not help you in the business world – or maybe they will, in which case, great! These tips for learning do not just apply to artistic talents of recreational activities. There are lots of situations where this advice can be applied to help you grow your career. 

Maybe you’re stuck on learning a second language to help expand your business, or you’re taking a class on a software that seems above your paygrade. Keeping these ‘beginner’s mindset’ tools in your toolbox can make all the difference.  

More than that, learning new skills keeps your mind sharp! There has been clinical research that shows learning and practicing new skills can offset some of the mental decline associated with aging. 

Cal Wilson / May 17, 2021

Merchants using P2P apps — protect yourself from online fraud.

Just like everything else, merchant services have changed over the course of the pandemic. Your business may be trying to navigate contactless payment options or accepting orders over ecommerce platforms, like Instagram. No matter the situation, it’s important that you protect your business against the risks associated with online payments, so you can focus on optimizing your use of this developing technology.  

Social distancing has really changed the ecommerce landscape. Some businesses find themselves relying on person-to-person, or P2P, payment apps to make transactions online. PayPal, for example, saw an increase of usership from 325 million to 375 million active customers between spring 2020 and spring 2021.  

If your business is making use of these tools, here is some crucial information that just might protect your bottom line.  

Be careful with P2P apps.  

It’s important to recognize that not all P2P apps, like PayPal, Cash App, or Zelle, are built with business protections in mind.  

Although it is easier for the consumer to use an app, in comparison to a credit card, it is often more secure for retailers to accept credit card payments. Credit cards have certain built-in protections that make them less vulnerable to scammers. 

One problem with P2P apps is that money sent cannot always be recovered if, say, the sender no longer wishes to go through with a payment. This makes processes like returns more difficult, but also leaves your customers more susceptible to scams. Let’s say someone is pretending to be your business over social media, and accepts a payment for one of your products; once they make some money, they can delete the account and disappear, with no recourse for you or the victim of the scam.  

On the other side, fraudulent transactions that target the retailer, are very expensive scams. The cost of fraud for merchants is not only the merchandise or the value of the service, but also the labor and resources that go into fulfilling an online order. 

“E-commerce draws a crowd of fraudsters and many merchants that may not have been used to the online sales channel and what it brings with it–the fraud–were unprepared. And I think their eyes were opened [to the fact] that they really need to undertake a dynamic fraud strategy,” said Raymond Pucci, Director of Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group, to Payments Journal.  

Online fraud is a significant risk.  

Recently, the Ponemon Institute, sponsored by PayPal, did a study called “The Real Cost of Online Fraud”. More than 600 analysts and senior leaders were surveyed regarding their organizations fraud prevention efforts. It came to the following conclusions: 

  • On average, in the United States, organizations lose $4.5 million to fraudulent transactions every year. 
  • Only 51 percent of respondents said their organizations are prioritizing protecting against online payment fraud. 
  • There has been an eleven percent decrease in effectiveness in organizations preventing against online fraud since the outbreak of COVID 19.  
  • Eighty one percent of respondents admitted their organizations are more vulnerable to fraud because of the recent surge in digital transformation.  

This is one of the consequences of sudden, rapid digital transformation.  

“Prior to COVID-19, 45 percent of respondents rated their effectiveness as high or very high. Today, only 34 percent of respondents rate their effectiveness as high or very high. Although digital transformation is important to organizations’ ability to support business goals, it challenges their ability to prevent online fraud incidents,” said the study.  

What can you do to prevent online fraud?  

PayPal and the Ponemon Institute suggest that success in preventing against online fraud begins with collaborative relationships between internal fraud and cybersecurity teams. Often, this also includes working with an external fraud prevention partner with a lot of industry experience.  

Likewise, when using P2P apps, research what fraud prevention tools each service provides. PayPal recently launched Fraud Protection Advanced: a service specifically for enterprise merchants. Zelle benefits from the security measures provided by the banks it partners with. Each app is different, and requires independent research.  

In short, make sure you have the best team, consider collaborating with third-party experts, and do your research and be selective about which P2P apps you use.  

Cal Wilson / May 10, 2021

Internet in the Age of COVID — Is your service enough?

From working and studying at home to an increase in online shopping, we, as a global community, have never used the internet more. Unfortunately, this has exposed some serious weaknesses in the strength of our networks.  

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, internet inequity was a pressing issue in North America. Connection to high speed broadband internet has been tied to better health, education, and financial prosperity. In a global crisis where isolation is part of the solution, this is more relevant than ever.  

In the past year, some analytics report a 50 percent increase in internet usage, just in the United States. For many families with two adults working from home, the home internet that had been working fine before COVID-19 is no longer sufficient. Especially if they also have children doing virtual schooling, streaming content, or gaming. The strain of the past year to networks’ infrastructure has meant that providers are having to come up with new solutions.  

Before lockdowns, networks were accustomed to peak activity times, as well as down times, based on typical consumer habits. Your office or institution’s peak times would be the inverse. Offices and institutions, such as universities, can typically support these heavier peak times, because they pay for “enterprise grade” internet broadband service, which utilize higher quality cables and piping than your typical neighborhood.  

As The New York Times explained it in an article last year, “many offices and schools essentially have the equivalent of a big pipe to carry internet traffic, compared with a garden hose for most homes.” 

This has created an obvious difficulty for business owners with employees working from home, as well as for employees already struggling with pandemic-related stress.  

In the United States, big carriers like Verizon, Cox, and Charter, among others, have taken measures to meet the increase in demand over the past year. The carriers’ challenge was to make home internet fit the expectations of business services. From upgrading plans, forgiving overages, and promising to improve infrastructure, measures have been taken by all major carriers to adjust to the new reality.  

In Canada, the situation has been similar, impacting rural Canadians most severely. Those working or running businesses out of small towns found they were out of options when it came to trying to adjust virtually. One study done in collaboration with the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) and Maclean’s found that “estimates just 46 per cent of rural Canadians have access to internet that meets that minimum standard, compared to 80 per cent for the country as a whole” and “in each of Canada’s 417 municipalities with more than 9,000 people–including the biggest cities, like Toronto–many people live with web connections that aren’t sufficient to work or study from home.” 

This is not just a Canadian problem. In Wisconsin alone, there are roughly 411,000 households without access to broadband speeds.  

Across North America, the answer to the dilemma posed by work from home seems to be improved infrastructure. This infrastructure is already implemented in downtown cores of cities, where multiple people on one residential network can be working or studying simultaneously. Outside of these cores, the current infrastructure can often only support one heavy user.  

The problem has been, as always with connectivity inequity, is that carriers only profit off investing in better infrastructure when there are enough residents in the area to purchase the service. This creates a problem for residents and business owners with employees working from home alike. The pandemic has seen an increasing urgency in adopting internet connectivity into the realm of public infrastructure.  

 

Cal Wilson / May 7, 2021

The value of your humanity in an automated future

When journalist Kevin Roose learned that AI could replace even his job, he experienced a generational panic about the inevitability of becoming redundant in a machine-based world. Rather than giving into despair, Roose focused on finessing the human-side of his career.  

Roose says we should refuse to compete with machines, and instead focus on fine tuning the parts of ourselves that are uniquely human. Our empathy, our humor – all those soft skills that are undervalued, but irreplaceable.  

To watch more, watch ‘The value of your humanity in an automated future,‘ presented by TED.