By: Barbara Lipkin
Although many poo poo the printed words of newspapers, I have read some excellent articles recently in the Los Angeles Times. Yesterday on Super Bowl Sunday, Rosanna Xia interviewed Gil Elbaz notorious for co-founding Applied Semantics Inc. This company built technology that connects related online subject matter and was purchased by Google in 2003 for $102 million.
What I found most interesting though, is Elbaz’s perspective on work and motivation. He describes a summer job during college when he sold vacuum cleaners door to door. He discovered that 1 out of every 10 people would buy a vacuum and he earned a $200 commission. He turned that around by saying he was earning $20 for each presentation. Today, he is the founder and chief executive of Factual Inc., a company that aggregates and organizes huge amounts of online data. Obviously he is hugely successful. However, his perspective is valuable for all of us.











