Getting the attention of investors isn't easy. 

Venture capitalists turn down thousands of offers from prospective entrepreneurs each year and receive multiple funding requests every day.

While having industry connections undoubtedly helps, cold emails, if done right, can be a very effective method of spearheading a company's fundraising efforts.

But how do you get the attention of a busy VC whose inbox is glutted with requests?

Niv Dror, founder of San Francisco-based firm, Shrug Capital, has been on both sides of the equation. Dror singlehandedly raised his own fund with contributions from high profile VCs like Founder Fund's Cyan Banister as well as Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz.

In an effort to raise his own fund, Dror spent a lot of time thinking about what makes the perfect pitch.

Now that he's receiving scores of cold emails from entrepreneurs by the day, Dror is offering his insights to founders seeking funding. 

Here are his tips on effectively pitching an investor:

1. Keep your subject line simple.

"If you have some really clever-sounding subject line, it comes off as gimmicky," said Dror. "It needs to be authentic."

Your best option in getting an investor to open your email is to keep your subject line as straightforward and simple as possible.

2. Make it personal.

You should be focusing on cultivating a personal connection from the very first sentence, suggests Dror.

"Make it very clear that it's personal. Offer up a sentence about yourself. The person on the other end of the email is wondering, 'Who are you? Why are you emailing me?' Give your name, say what you do, and then get straight to the point."

3. Don't apologize, ever.

Dror says he often receives emails from people who apologize for taking up his time.

While the person sending the email might think the apology makes them seem more considerate, Dror says it's more likely to rub him the wrong way. 

"When you email an investor, don’t be like 'Hey, sorry for emailing you. By the way, do you want to invest $100,000 of your own money in this thing I'm making?'"

The issue with this, says Dror, is that it makes it seem as though the sender of the email doesn't value their own time.

"When people say things like, 'Hey, sorry for emailing, I know you're very busy,' it shows that they don’t respect their own time. You're essentially telling the other person: 'I don't value my own time. I value your time more. Your time is more important than mine.'"

• Recruiting platform Greenhouse has raised $50 million in a series D funding round led by Riverwood Capital.
• The money will be used to scale the company's recently launched diversity and inclusion feature, which was created in conjunction with consulting firm Paradigm
• The feature surfaces "nudges" or small reminders in real time that point out how users can act more fairly when they're writing job postings, making referrals, and conducting interviews.

Recruiting platform Greenhouse has raised $50 million to expand its recently launched feature that helps companies manage unconscious bias during the hiring process, the company announced on Thursday.

The series D round was led by Riverwood Capital, bringing the company's total funding to $110 million.

Greenhouse is a popular recruitment platform used by buzzed-about startups, such as Airbnb, Warby Parker, Pinterest, and Squarespace. Its new inclusion feature, launched in April, has been in the works for more than a year and was created in partnership with Paradigm, a consulting firm specializing in diversity and inclusion.

"So many companies are waking up to this problem and now they're asking 'now what?'" Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait told Business Insider. "So that's why we think this is the right time to really be investing in this and taking on these challenges rather than just talking about it."

While there are plenty of other software solutions that aim to reduce bias in hiring, Chait says Greenhouse Inclusion is takes a more holistic approach.  The program surfaces "nudges" or small reminders in real time that point out how users can act more fairly when they're writing job postings, making referrals, and conducting interviews. These reminders, the program hopes, will prompt long-term behavior changes.

"We want to solve this problem at the main point where it occurs, the behavior of employees," Chait said.

Greenhouse Inclusion also collects and organizes demographic data, so companies can easily access how many women and underrepresented minorities are employed at the company and where those hire are being recruited from.

What about Greenhouse's own diversity?

The idea of creating features for diverse hiring came from Joelle Emerson, the founder of Paradigm. The consulting firm was brought on to help Greenhouse internally a little more than a year ago, and during the process Paradigm mentioned they already advise companies on how to use Greenhouse for better hiring practices.

Chait then asked Emerson if the company could make product improvements that would help what Paradigm was already doing. When Emerson said yes, the two started working together. 

While Greenhouse hasn't released a full demographic report for the entire company — Chait tells Business Insider it will release a full diversity report later this year — the company did say that 40% of its executive team is women and across the entire company, employees from underrepresented minorities has increased 12%.

SEE ALSO: A $2.7 billion rival to Oracle and Microsoft has signed on 1 million developers to learn how to use its databases better

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• The psychology of being passionate about something is complicated.
• A new paper distinguishes between college students who think their interests are innate and those who think their interests can be cultivated. The first group of students was more inclined to be interested in topics outside their field of study.
• The paper authors, as well as other experts, say it's dangerous to believe that passion is something you simply find because you may be unwilling to do the hard work necessary to develop it.

As a sophomore in college, I took an introductory chemistry class. To this day, I'm not entirely sure why.

I remember that semester as being spent mostly in the library with the teaching assistant, watching her draw the same image on a chalkboard dozens of times until I "got it" (i.e. understood just enough that I wouldn't fail the exam).

I suspect that I'd enrolled in the course because I thought that chemistry was "cool"— that learning more about atoms and molecules and… other chemical stuff would afford me a new understanding of the way the world worked.

Needless to say, my experience in the class disabused me of that optimism. I was clearly not a "science person," and I threw myself into my literature and psychology coursework with renewed vigor.

But what does it mean exactly to be a "science person"— and what happens when we decide that we are (or aren't) one? A new paper, forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science, yields some preliminary answers.

If you think interests are innate, you may be less intrigued by new topics than if you think interests are developed

The paper, which was highlighted recently in The Atlantic, describes a series of studies in which researchers at Yale-NUS College and Stanford University test the implications of having a "fixed" theory or a "growth" theory when it comes to academic interests.

These terms come from psychologist Carol Dweck, who was one of the authors on the study.

Dweck's years of research suggest that a growth mindset— believing that you can get smarter or better at something — is generally preferable over a fixed mindset — believing that intelligence and ability are innate. (It's worth noting that there's recently been some controversy over whether Dweck's past research is replicable.)

In the context of interests, a fixed theory means you believe core interests are innate, and you discover them; a growth theory means that you develop interests over the course of your lifetime.

In one study described in the paper, college students indicated whether they were interested more in technology, math, engineering, and hard sciences or in the arts and humanities. Then they indicated how much they agreed with statements such as, "You can be exposed to new things, but your core interests won't really change."

Finally, the students read articles that did and not correspond to their field of interest (i.e. the students interested in techy subjects read an article about the arts and humanities and then an article about techy subjects, and the students interested in the arts and humanities did the same).

The researchers wanted to know how interested the students were in the articles.

Results showed that students who displayed a stronger fixed theory (meaning they agreed more strongly with the statements) showed less interest in the article if it didn't match their field of interest. A follow-up study suggests that having a strong fixed theory actually causes students to be less interested in topics outside their field.

Further studies looked at how fixed theories might influence students' willingness to pursue an area that they were interested in.

The researchers had students watch a short video about black holes that was geared toward a general audience. Then the students read a journal article about black holes, intended for a scientific audience.

Results showed that most students were "fascinated" by the topic of black holes after watching the video, but less interested after reading the article — especially if they displayed a fixed theory of interest.

Believing that interests are innate isn't always a bad thing — especially because time is a limited commodity

The authors are careful to note that a fixed theory of interest, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing. I couldn't help but think of psychologist Anders Ericsson's research on the development of expertise: Ericsson suggests that focusing so intently on one skill means you necessarily sacrifice the ability to work on others.

But a fixed theory could be detrimental, the authors say, when it leads you to close yourself off to new interests, or to give up when the area that interests you proves too difficult.

"If passions are things found fully formed, and your job is to look around the world for your passion — it's a crazy thought," study co-author Greg Walton told The Atlantic. "It doesn't reflect the way I or my students experience school, where you go to a class and have a lecture or a conversation, and you think, That's interesting. It's through a process of investment and development that you develop an abiding passion in a field."

Walton's argument jibes with insights from Angela Duckworth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of "Grit." As Duckworth previously told Business Insider, "passions begin with interest and interests are not merely discovered"— as is popularly believed — "they're also actively developed and deepened."

Since reading through the Psychological Science paper, I've been thinking about my college self. Was I too quick to dismiss chemistry — and science in general — as a field outside my interest and ability? Maybe, but maybe not.

After all, there's a limit to how many courses you can realistically take as an undergrad, and I probably would have been sorry to miss out on all the literature and psychology classes I was drawn to.

Which is why, unfortunately, there isn't a neat solution to this problem. Perhaps the best thing to do is simply know that there's no career or area of study that's off-limits to you. You can try anything, within reason. And the worst-case scenario? You cut your losses and move onto something else.

SEE ALSO: Psychologists just debunked the idea that you have to find the perfect job fit to be happy at work

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• Marie Forleo is a life and business coach with hundreds of thousands of followers, many of whom pay for her classes.
• At the start of her career, she had a brief stint in finance and then media before starting her own business, which she supported by bartending and teaching dance classes.
• She said that having creative control over all of her products is of utmost importance, and she’s turned down deals for that reason.

For Marie Forleo, this is success: "I like who I am as a person. I love how we do business. There's nothing that I would be ashamed of people knowing. I love our team. I love everything we do."

Forleo is a life and business coach with an audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and for an episode of Business Insider's podcast "This Is Success" she told us how she built her business.

When she first started giving strangers advice almost 20 years ago, Forleo barely had her own life together. She was working two jobs to scrape by, and when she wasn’t bartending or teaching dance she collected emails for her newsletter. Now she's got more than 40,000 members of her $2,000 "B-School" class, which she started in 2010.

As Forleo's business grew and she learned what it took to be an entrepreneur, she shared those lessons with her audience. Today she's managed to incorporate all of her passions — including dance — into her YouTube channel, podcast, performances, and online lessons. And she has found followers who want to be there every step of the way.

Listen to the full episode here:

Subscribe to "This Is Success" on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. Check out previous episodes with:

• Skinnygirl CEO Bethenny Frankel
• GOAT CEO Eddy Lu
• Girl Scouts CEO Sylvia Acevedo
• Best-selling author David Sedaris

Transcript edited for clarity.

Marie Forleo: I was always the kid where adults would ask me, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I had 17 answers. And they would always change, but some of the commonalities were I wanted to be a dancer. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be a fashion designer. I wanted to be an animator for Disney. I mean, you just run the gamut. There was always a multitude of things that I was interested in, and it was confusing as a kid because I'm like, "Doesn't everybody want to do 17 different things?"

And even when I graduated college and I thought working on Wall Street on the floor with the New York Stock Exchange was like, "Oh, this is going to be it! I have a lot of energy. This is an incredible opportunity. I've always dreamed about this." But when I was there, it felt very narrow and very limited, and I was like: "Oh, gosh. This isn't it."

And I started to really doubt myself and question, "God, how am I supposed to find my place in this world?" Even working at the magazines, which again, there is a lot of variety in those jobs. I was on both the ad side of magazine and the editorial side of magazine and the people that I worked with were fantastic, but as the days would go on I would look ahead and see my bosses and know intuitively I didn't want to become them. The publisher of the magazine, she was amazing. She was a great leader. She was kind. She was strong. But I knew that I didn't want her life. And even on the other side at the editorial side of magazine, the editor-in-chief. Fantastic. Creative. Kind. Smart. Brilliant. But when I looked at her life, something wasn't aligned for me.

So I just remember going through this panic of, "Oh, my goodness. Am I just terminally unemployable because I want to quit every job I have?" And it wasn't until I discovered, at that time, this new profession called coaching that something just lit up.

Finding a new focus

Richard Feloni: Yeah. And to step back, did you even go to the New York Stock Exchange because you thought this is a successful career path?

Forleo: Yeah. So when I was about 8 or 9 years old, my parents got divorced. And it was a really painful experience for a young kid like many of us go through. And the thing I remembered from that time in my life was that basically all of the fights in my household were around money. That was it. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money.

And I remember when my parents finally signed those divorce papers, I was at home with my mom and she was in the kitchen and she was crying hysterically. I'd never seen my mom quite like this before. She had lost 20 pounds and tears were streaming down her face and she was on the phone with her mom who was in Florida and she was saying through these tears: "I have nothing. I have nothing. I don't know how I'm going to take care of the kids. My whole life isn't what I thought it would be. I don't know what I'm going to do."

She hung up the phone and she bent down to where I was, which was short, and she grabbed my shoulders so that her face was near mine and she shook me and she said: "Don't ever, ever let a man control your money. When you grow up, I need you to be smart. I need you to be independent. I need you to take care of yourself."

And so she's saying this through all of these tears and a lot of emotion, and as an 8-year-old that made an impression on me. And I made this promise to myself that no matter what happened when I grew up, that I was going to make sure that I could earn enough money to take care of not only my family but other people. Because I made this connection that not having enough money equals loss of love and pain and fighting and all of this stress.

So this little equation that I made up as a young girl carried over to me eventually being on the Stock Exchange thinking, well, this is not only a place for me to use my gifts but potentially create wealth. And so that was one of the inspirations actually for going on Wall Street. But being there for about six months and doing as best as I could, I realized that while a lot of people around me financially were wealthy beyond anything I had ever imagined, spiritually they felt bankrupt. And that wasn't OK for me. And so I had to just keep searching to find what I was meant to do.

Feloni: If the security of money and making your own money was important, how did you make the decision to just go out on your own?

Forleo: Basically what happened was I at Mademoiselle and I had signed up —

Feloni: The magazine?

Forleo: The magazine, yeah. Now defunct, but it was awesome in the day. So I was working there in the fashion editorial department and I had already just discovered the life-coaching world and I signed up for this coach-training program. And in the day, I was doing my magazine job.

One day I got a call from the HR department at Vogue magazine, and they offered me a promotion. So it was an opportunity not only for a better job, more money, and the top fashion magazine in the world.

So I had this fork-in-the-road moment. I was like, "Either I'm going to do this and take this promotion and have the steady paycheck, have the health benefits." People understand what you do when you say you work in magazine. Or I'm going to quit and do this weird coaching thing, which I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. I have never started a business. I had no money. I'm in debt. But God this feels right in my bones. So I turned down that promotion, and I quit my full-time job and I went back to what I was doing in college, which was bartending and waiting tables.

But I was willing to take that risk because of all of the pain, the pattern of the persistent failing that was happening before, and the fact that I was willing to live on the cheap. I didn't care if I was eating mac and cheese all the time. I wasn't trying to keep up with the Joneses. I mean, I had this little voice in my head because many of my friends were going off to law school, getting MBAs, having stable jobs. Some of them were getting married and even starting families. And here I was back at bartending, back doing something that I did as a teenager.

Feloni: And what were you studying? How do you define being a life coach?

Forleo: Well I took a course from a place called Coach University and they had a whole training program and it was learning about how to support people. And I actually started my undergraduate career as a psych major. But when I stepped foot in my first class as an undergrad as a psych major, and I sat down in that auditorium and the professor started talking about how everything in your life is basically the result of your crappy childhood, I literally got up and left. It just didn't feel right to me.

Feloni: You actually left the class?

Forleo: I actually left and I went straight to the bursar's office and the other thing that I was interested in was business. So I changed my major in that moment. And so when I graduated and went through all this stuff and then found this world of life coaching, the positioning was very different. It was not about healing people in a psychological framework. It was going: "Hey. You can actually work with people and help them create a strategy to have a life that really works for them." It felt less about blaming your history on your parents or the past and very proactive, very positive, very kind of inspiring and collaborative, and those words perfectly describe me.

Feloni: And why did you think that you'd be able to help people find their own path if you had all of these questions about yourself?

Forleo: I was excited about the topic area. I was insatiable about the world of personal development. So once you kind of open that Pandora's box, at least for me, I had felt like that there was this whole world of personal development that I was just discovering that I felt like everyone else should know about.

And as a woman from New Jersey who just likes to talk, any time I find out about something that's great or wonderful or that I think is valuable, I tell everyone about it. If it's the best pizza, if it's the best ice cream, if it's whatever.

So there was something in me that was discovering this whole world of knowledge that I felt needed to be shared beyond this tiny little realm of folks that were either interested in spirituality or personal development and for whatever reason, something inside me said you can do this, so I just followed it.

Building an audience

Feloni: So when you started out as an online business coach, you were one of the only people doing it. So this was 1999, 2000, 2001.

Forleo: Yeah, and just to clarify, I didn't even know what online business was. I started off as a life coach, which I hated that term, but it was the closest thing that matched what I wanted to do. But I was the ripe old age of 23, so I had that part of my brain that was like: "This is dumb. This is insane. Who the heck's going to hire a 23-year-old life coach? You haven't lived life yet. This is ridiculous."

But I couldn't deny that part of my heart and my soul and that deeper knowing that just was like, "You need to do this." It doesn't matter how ridiculous it is. You need to follow this and at least try this because working on Wall Street, working in magazines, doing all the things that I did previous to it that were traditional, steady paycheck, healthcare, prestige, none of that worked. I quit all of those jobs because I was miserable.

Feloni: So what was it that was fulfilling about what you're doing now that the other jobs that you had in the past didn't get it?

Forleo: One of the things that's very different that I realized is I am allergic to going to an office every day. I literally cannot do that. It's not how I'm built. I'm also not very good at having people tell me what to do. Like having a boss. So those are two things that are very different.

But really, I think the third thing is what I do each day. So, for example, when I would go into, let's say the New York Stock Exchange, right? It was very repetitive. The same things we would do over and over and over. You'd take lunch, you'd come back, you'd do it again. Yeah, there were a little different interactions, but it was very repetitive.

When I went into the ad sales, it was like yeah, typing up stuff on a computer and selling things, but I don't feel I really believed in, not that there was a lack of integrity, but it was selling advertising space for safe travel companies and yeah, I loved to travel, but it wasn't connected to my heart and soul or changing people's lives. Same thing in Mademoiselle, where it's like, yes, I appreciate fashion. That's cool and it's lovely, but it doesn't tug my heartstrings.

Whereas people and the quality of their lives and seeing them go from a place of maybe frustration or pain or even just confusion and then having cross this chasm to where they are living in their full potential. They are doing the things they want to do. They are on this path where they feel great about themselves and there's tangible results. They're making more money. They're happier at home. They're taking better care of their kids. They're taking better care of their health. When I see that I can play such a small part in having someone go from that point A to point B, I want to spend my whole life doing that, and that's what I get to do every single day. So that's how it was very different than what I did before.

Feloni: And was there always the online component there?

Forleo: Well yes, because I used the internet to effectively mask my age, because I was so insecure because I was so young. I got headshots done and I actually showed my friend the other day that made me look, probably like, I don't know, 15 or so years older than I was and that was what I put up on —

Feloni: Oh, that's funny.

Forleo: — my bartered website. One of my dad's friends helped me build my first website, cause that's what you did in the year 2000. There wasn't anything else.

Feloni: So coming in early into this, you really got to build a brand, kind of ahead of a trend. Now you look and there's so many people online. You can even find them on Instagram who are trying to offer things, and many of them don't really actually have much to offer, but there's a lot of hype around it. How do you stand out from all of the noise that's going on now?

Forleo: For me, I never even really give any attention to that. I've always been one of those people who just puts my head down and does work. And I think especially in this time, we're so inundated with so much information and we're so starving for wisdom.

I feel like I'm uniquely positioned to be able to say: "Hey guys. Focus over here." Or, "This is something that I try that's really worked for me. You might want to try it, too." So I just consider myself a really good communicator, and I strive to, whether it's my own ideas or my own spin on old ideas or other people that have incredible wisdom, but their expertise is not necessarily sharing it on a large scale, I'm trying to do my best to get those ideas and concepts and people out there so that people can have better lives.

Feloni: Do you think there's value in being a kind of jack-of-all-trades?

Forleo: When I started reading success books and how to be a success in business or how to be a success in life, a lot of the messaging was around niching down and choosing a very specific thing that you're going to be great at and getting known for it. I was like, but wait, there's all these things I want to do, and I found no examples in these books for someone like me.

So I do think that there's those people like my partner in life, Josh. He knew since he was a little boy that he wanted to be an actor. That was the thing that he wanted to do, and while he has other interests, he was very, very clear. And I've met other people like that as well, who from the time of even when they're 6 or 7, I want to be a writer or I want to be an astronaut or I want to be whatever, and they wind up either pursuing that or something close to it. I think that there are others of us who have a multitude of passions and talents and that we're just coming into an age where that is not only acceptable but needed.

I call myself a multi-passionate entrepreneur. If you're built somewhat similarly to me where there are many things that you want to do and explore, you should do them. Because there will likely come a convergence point at multiple areas in your future where everything you've done before comes into play and then all of a sudden, like in my case, it creates such a unique strength set and talent set that is unmatchable by anyone else.

So for example, as I was growing my coaching practice, it was super tiny, and part of what I was doing was doing that personal-development work on myself. And I felt really uncomfortable calling myself a coach because I had an interest in spirituality, and digital marketing, and business, in health-and-fitness, in hip-hop dance. How do you fit those things?

People would ask me at cocktails parties, "So what do you do?" And I would basically want to run into a corner and cry because I was so embarrassed. I never had a good answer. I never had that one party line I could trot out that actually made sense and so I just started actually going well do you want to know what I'm doing tonight? I'm going behind the bar and making drinks and then tomorrow I'm going to be doing this thing called life coaching and then on Friday I'm going to be doing something completely different.

But here's my point: I realized that I had this passion for dance and for fitness and that I wanted to give it a go. I wanted to have that be a part of my career. Not just something that I did as a hobby.

Feloni: As you were doing everything else?

Forleo: Yes. And I would seven days a week because I could at that point. I didn't have family obligations. I was just on my own, and I loved it. And quite frankly, I needed to do it to keep a roof over my head. That's part of what I did. And when I made fitness videos, for example, I was a background person. Then I choreographed and starred and there's like four of them.

If you walk into some Target or Walmart, you will see this cheesy face but like a smile and my hands on my hips and dance off the inches. People often on social media will be like, "Is this you?" I'm like, "It's totally me!" They're like, "You helped me lose 30 pounds!" I'm like, "Awesome!"

Anyway, understanding how to be in front of people and teach what folks could consider a complex dance routine, break it down, make it simple, and get people actually doing it, those skills serve me now. The fact that I have my own show. My ability to be comfortable on camera is absolutely related to different parts of my career earlier, but I didn't know that I was going to have a show. So many of the things that I did earlier come into play now, but I could've never predicted it. And if I never gave myself permission to pursue all of my passions and kind of take the path that's a little bit off to the side, I don't think I'd have the business or the life or the satisfaction that I have today.

Business as an extension of herself

Feloni: Now at what point did you make yourself the brand? Where you weren't just some life coach, you were Marie Forleo.

Forleo: Yeah. I think that was just kind of a natural evolution. At first when I started my business, I had all these different names. One of them was The Good Life Inc. because I thought to be an official business I should have an official name. And I tried that a bunch of times, and I kept failing because I would outgrow the name. Like: "Ugh. I'm over that." And then I finally realized the one thing in my life that's never going to change is my name, so I left all of that behind and I was just like you know what, when I teach dance, when I am teaching hip-hop, when I'm doing a fitness class, when I am working with someone as a coach, if I'm speaking, whatever I'm doing, I'm Marie Forleo.

Feloni: Yeah. And then in 2008, you had a book.

Forleo: That book was an e-book in 2002.

Feloni: Oh, OK. So that was, yeah. Way back when.

Forleo: Way back when. I had taken this class online about how to use e-books as a marketing tool for your coaching practice, and I was so into this class cause it sounded like such a great idea. And the instructor said, well, pick a topic that is always coming up on any of your coaching calls. And so majority of my clients were women. We would talk about relationships. I was engaged to be married at that time, so that was kind of a hot topic.

And then the teacher said you have to come up with a great title because if you don't have a great title, no one's going to buy the book. It doesn't matter how great your information is, a title is everything. And I really took that to heart and I said, wow, I have to come up with a great title. And one day, I remember it so clear in my mental theater, the title, "Make Every Man Want You: How to Be So Irresistible You'll Barely Keep from Dating Yourself!" It literally popped into my mind. I was like, "That is a damn, sassy, great title." I would eat that up. And it was a little tongue-in-cheek, which is very me, and so I wrote that as an e-book.

But after kind of writing that book, doing my best, it was full of pink highlighter, so many exclamation points because that's who I am, but I had no clue how to write, and I put this thing out there. I had started selling it, and in my personal life I realized I didn't want to be married to the guy I was engaged to. I was like, "OK." Clearly, I should not be selling a book about dating and relationships when this part of my life is totally a shitshow. So I actually took that e-book off the market.

But after a few years, when I had some new wisdom and got some coaching and kind of straightened out a few things within myself, I rewrote the book, self-published it myself, sold about 8,000 copies fairly quickly because I was starting to understand online marketing, and then eventually sold it to McGraw-Hill, and they republished it. Now it's in 16 languages.

Feloni: Yeah. With that title, even though it's cheeky, it kind of seems off brand from the stuff you do now.

Forleo: Yeah.

Feloni:"Make Every Man Want You"?

Forleo: Oh, yeah. You have to get, this was early 2000s, right? I wouldn't say it's off brand. I would say it's an earlier version of me. The book is actually, it's quite a spiritual book and it's about personal development and living in the present moment. But I knew, at that point, if I had called the book "How to Be Present," no one would have bought it. So I was playing a little bit with the idea of a Trojan-horse concept. Sell them what they want; give them what they need.

So if someone's in a point of pain, particularly a woman, around that area of her life and she happens to have a little bit of a cheeky sense of humor, she might pick up that book and get so much more, and I actually still hear that to this day.

Feloni: Yeah. And how did you end up getting thousands of followers. How did you go from —

Forleo: Oh, nothing?

Feloni: — completely nothing to having a following? How does that happen?

Forleo: I used to carry a yellow legal pad with me to the bar. So I would go on my bartending shifts and inevitably, when most people when they sit at a bar in a restaurant, which is always where I'd work, would be like, "So what else do you do?" They would always assume that I was an actress. I was like nope. I have a coaching business. And they're like, "What does that mean?" And so I'd tell them what it meant and I said, "Well, I also have this weekly newsletter and I write it every week and it's just tips to help you have a better life. Do you want to join?"

And of course, at that time, no one had really heard of email newsletters. So I would collect those names and email addresses. I would put them on. I remember doing Toastmasters. I would go to networking events. When I started kind of getting more active in the health and fitness world, every time I would teach a hip-hop class, every time I would teach a fitness class, I would have this yellow legal pad. And I would tell people at the end of every class about what I did. So I was doing everything I possibly could. It was like hand-to-hand combat to build those names. I didn't have money for advertising. I wouldn't have even known how to do it. I was a one-woman show. So it was completely built through me with that yellow legal pad and every single place I went —

Feloni: Was there ever a point, as you were building this, where you questioned what you were doing in the first place going out on your own?

Forleo: Gosh. I have a lot of moments of self-doubt just as a human, but once I got entrenched in this world and I spent my days learning and understanding human behavior and psychology. It feels like I am born to do this. That doesn't mean that there's not hard moments, but once I left, I never really questioned was that the right move. I questioned whether I would eventually make it, if that makes sense. If I was going to be successful enough to keep a roof over my head, but doing it always felt so right that that's what propelled me forward.

The importance of maintaining independence

Feloni: How important is it for you to have full control of your business?

Forleo: It's been really important. My first experience with the traditional publishing world, I told them I had this subtitle and I had already had created artwork for the cover and basically when they bought the book, they changed everything. And they said no you don't know who your market is. We know better than you do. And I was like, no, wait. I've been doing this. I've been talking to these people. I've been selling this.

No, I actually have understanding to who I'm connecting with. And I'm so grateful that they took the book — I'm grateful for where it is now — but as a creative it was really not a fun experience for me to watch my little baby and get parts stripped out of it and I didn't agree at all from a creative standpoint. So that actually inspired me to go, You know what? I'm going to do my own thing. And I love having complete creative control.

Feloni: Have you ever turned down potential deals because of this?

Forleo: Oh, my gosh. All the time. I mean, throughout the course of my career, people have approached me with ideas and possibilities in terms of my own television show or pitching different television shows and things like that, and honestly it's never felt right up until now. That's not saying that if something did come along that did feel right, but everything kind of always felt off in the past, and it was always as though they wanted me to be a version of me that didn't feel quite true or quite real, and let's be honest, I say four-letter words a lot.

There are kooky things that I want to do. With our show MarieTV, we have comedy sketches. I have people in wigs and people in outfits and doing crazy things on green screen and it's just a weird, quirky sense of humor that I get, that my people get, but I don't know, do you know what I mean? If somebody from a network is like: "No. You should be so and so." Yeah.

Feloni: You have a framed photo of you with Oprah Winfrey in your office?

Forleo: Yes. Yeah.

Feloni: So when did you meet her and what was that like?

Forleo: Oh, gosh. So first of all, I have been an Oprah fan since as long as I can remember. I've watched her as a child. I think it was in 2012, her team had reached out to someone on my team and they were looking to do this panel about thought leaders for the next generation for Oprah's "SuperSoul Sunday" show that she had on her network, OWN. And I just remember getting that call and being like, "Are you freaking kidding me?" It was just so unreal.

I remember flying to Chicago, and it was the wildest thing. They put me up in the same hotel where I believe that they put up all of their guests for the time they were in that city, and I could almost hear the VO of Oprah as I was in the elevator, like, "All of our guests stay at the JW Marriott." The thing that kind of happens almost at the end of every show. And I was in the elevator, I'm like: "Oh, my goodness. This is me! This is crazy!" So, that experience was incredible. I love her still. The more I learned about and the times I've met her and had a chance to interact with her, she just gets better and better. Her team's amazing, and I love her and I adore her.

Feloni: How do you personally define success?

Forleo: For me, I love echoing Maya Angelou's sentiment on this. It's liking who you are, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. And I feel like for me, I can check all of those boxes. I really do like myself, and there's always things that I need to work on. There's always weaknesses. There's always areas that I'm like: "OK. Great. I'm excited to get stronger there." But I like who I am as a person. I love how we do business. There's nothing that I would be ashamed of people knowing. I love our team. I love everything we do.

So there's so much joy and fun in that. So for me, setting goals is exciting, and growth goals are exciting just so we have a place to go, but we were talking about this on the team the other day, we just don't like vanity metrics. I don't give a shit. Do you know what I mean? If someone has a gajillion followers like, oh, they're doing better than you. I don't know how you're measuring that, but are you happy? Are you healthy? Do you put your head on the pillow at night and feel like I really did great work today and I'm exhausted in all the right ways because I just squeezed every drip of my gifts out in a way that was fun, that touched other people, and that I feel like dammit, I really did it today? And I feel like that most of the time.

Feloni: What advice would you give to someone who wants to have a career like yours?

Forleo: I would say to really focus on the quality of your work. To really understand if helping people and supporting them is what you want to do. Start working with people as quickly as you can and start helping them create results. And that's where the majority of the growth really comes from. I have all my videos up online. I was creating content for a decade before MarieTV started. And when MarieTV started in 2010 or so, you can see those videos. You can even see the pre-MarieTV videos where I was talking into my MacBook Air with no lighting, I edited on iMovie myself.

I didn't know what in the hell I was doing, right? All of that is there. You don't need to have glitz. You don't need to have glam. Focus on the quality of your work, on making a difference to people, and continuing to improve your skill set. If you focus there, you're going to have an incredible career. But if you focus on the vanity stuff, you're going to be done in a minute.

Feloni: Well, thank you so much, Marie.

Forleo: Thank you.

SEE ALSO: Skinnygirl CEO Bethenny Frankel explains how she used 'Real Housewives' to build a brand worth $100 million

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Tony Robbins showed us the very first thing he does every morning to have more energy

• Teens once loved using Snapchat for the ability to send their friends disappearing messages.
• But now some Gen Zs are moving away from the app. A fifth told Business Insider in a recent survey that they're using the app less than ever.
• Instagram, which adopted many of Snapchat's most innovative features, is the leading choice for most teens. 

Ava Zuyus started using Snapchat in 2013 when she was in fifth grade. By middle school, all of her friends were using it.

"It was cool that you could send something that disappears," Zuyus, now 15, told Business Insider. "It got to the point that everyone was on Snapchat."

Of Snapchat's features to keep users interested in the app, like trophies and high scores, the most successful one is the Snapstreak, which marks the consecutive days you and a friend have exchanged at least one Snapchat with each other. The days are symbolized in the app by a number and fire emoji. The longest Snapstreak on record is nearly four years long. 

But those streaks aren't really communication, Zuyus said. They might just be a picture of the floor, wall, or a blank face with the caption "streak." 

And after years of maintaining these apparently meaningless streaks and racking up new trophies, teens like Zuyus say they're exhausted by Snapchat.

Now, they're moving to Instagram, which has integrated Snapchat's once-novel disappearing photo feature while combining it with the ability to craft a more permanent profile.

A fifth of Gen Zs say they are using Snapchat less, according to a recent Business Insider survey of more than 100 teens across the US.

Studies from Ypulse, a research and marketing firm focused on Gen Z and Millennials, also show a dip in Snapchat usage among 13- to 17-year-olds nationwide. 

Currently, 57% of teenagers say they use Snapchat — down from a peak of 64% in August 2017, YPulse chief content officer MaryLeigh Bliss told Business Insider. Daily usage has slipped from 56% in August 2017 to 49%, according to Bliss. 

And that's all added up to serious financial repercussions for Snap Inc., Snapchat's parent company. Its stock hit a record low in May, after first-quarter earnings were significantly lower than Wall Street estimates.

'Just tired of it'

Teens told Business Insider that the pressure to maintain Snapchat streaks has driven them from the app.

They said the feature dominated their lives for years, but now the excitement of having a streak of 400 or higher is exhausting and feels "pointless," as one 16-year-old told Business Insider.

Some of Zuyus' peers have maintained streaks for years with a dozen or more friends, and they've sometimes gone to extreme lengths to keep streaks going. If they went to camp, for example, where they're not able to access their phones, Zuyus' classmates would give their log-in information to other friends just to keep their streaks going.

One 17-year-old told Business Insider that Snapchat is "too much work." A 15-year-old told Business Insider, "Everyone on Snapchat was annoying about 'streaks.'"

Zuyus said she now uses the app twice a week, at most. Rebecca Lubera, 18, has also moved away from Snapchat. 

"The social pressure of everyone seeing what you've seen and keeping streaks is too high, so I only use it sporadically if at all," Lubera told Business Insider.

Ill-fated updates

The decrease of daily users has also been attributed to a redesign that Snapchat released in February. 

After a massive rejection by its userbase, Snapchat mostly undid everything in the redesign in May.

"Users felt they had to relearn how to use the app, which was frustrating and confusing," YPulse chief content officer MaryLeigh Bliss told Business Insider. "We've often seen social media platforms struggle with backlash to a redesign, but in Snapchat's case it seems it actually made some users give up on the app."

The new design separated the pages of friends' stories — Snapchats that last up to 24 hours — from celebrity stories. They were previously listed together. 

"The new updates hampered the convenient access to my friends and stories," Joshua Ussery, 18, told Business Insider.

Snapchat versus Instagram

As Business Insider's Kif Lewsig previously reported, virtually the same percentage of teens open Snapchat and Instagram once a month, according to Piper Jaffray's Spring 2018 "Teens Survey," which questioned thousands of American teens.

Snapchat has a slight advantage with 83% of teens opening the app monthly, while 82% of teens are monthly active Instagram users. And when it comes to favorite apps, 45% of teens said that Snapchat is their favorite social media platform, compared to 26% of teens who said they preferred Instagram.

While teens still say they use Snapchat more than Instagram, Instagram may be closing the gap. In the fall of 2017, 47% of teens reported that Snapchat was their favorite app, while 24% said they preferred Instagram.

And according to Pew research from May, 35% of teens said they Snapchat most often compared to 15% who said the same about Instagram. Overall, 72% of teens said they use Instagram, versus 69% using Snapchat.

What likely spelled out Snapchat's downfall among its teen userbase was Instagram's introduction of disappearing messages and Stories in the summer of 2016, which are videos or photos that are viewable for 24 hours or fewer. Snapchat, which was released in 2011, pioneered Stories in 2013. 

Now, Instagram's Stories feature has twice as many daily viewers (400 million) as the entire Snapchat app (191 million). 

Instagram was "quick to copy Snapchat's once unique features, which means that young users can find the same tools they liked in other places and they're using them there," Bliss told Business Insider.

On Instagram, users can create a lasting profile with photos and videos, as well as tap into disappearing content. Teens say they can only do the latter on Snapchat.

And the all-consuming Snapstreaks aren't helping the app's cause, some users said.

"I've grown to resent the app and the way streaks have made me feel compelled to use it," tech intern Nick Vega wrote last year.

While this year's interface redesign was an attempt to salvage the app's popularity, Snapchat appears to be struggling to stay relevant among teens, who are demanding new and different things from their social media experience.

"Snapchat is just people taking pictures of their faces," Zuyus told Business Insider. "I feel like Instagram is growing with us. It's more interactive."

SEE ALSO: 104 Generation Zs reveal what it's like to be a teen in 2018

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: One of your most important career decisions is who you have kids with

• Working on Wall Street tends to bring in a lot of money.
• Salary-comparison site Emolument shared its estimates of average salaries and bonuses for Wall Street professionals at five different stages of their careers.

One of the big reasons many people go to work on Wall Street is that the pay tends to be very good. Here's a breakdown of what budding Wall Streeters could make at different stages of their careers. 

Business Insider reached out to salary-comparison website Emolument to get a better look at what professionals on Wall Street tend to earn. Based on information from 1,236 New York-area finance professionals, Emolument estimated the average salary and bonus for Wall Street professionals at the analyst, associate, vice president, director, and managing director levels:

While salaries increase at a solid clip as one progresses up the ladder, bonuses rise exponentially, with the average bonus for managing directors actually outstripping the average salary.

Looking at total compensation shows that rising to the top brings a big reward: While the average analyst in Emolument's data set makes a healthy $128,000 in combined salary and bonus, the average managing director makes a very impressive combined $827,000, over six times the average analyst's compensation.

Portia Crowe contributed to an earlier version of this post.

SEE ALSO: Here's how much the typical millennial, Gen X, and baby-boomer worker earns in every US state

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tried the ultra-decadent secret 'billionaire menu' at Wall Street's oldest steakhouse that features a $100 grilled cheese

• The McDonald'smenu has tons of options for customers.
• And McDonald's crew members themselves have their own frequent picks— as well as orders they tend to avoid.
• Business Insider spoke with numerous current and former McDonald's employees about the menu items they were not crazy about and why.

SEE ALSO: McDonald's employees share 11 annoying things they wish customers would stop doing

DON'T MISS: McDonald's employees reveal their 20 favorite menu items — and one bonus secret menu item everyone should try

SEE ALSO: McDonald's employees share the 14 strangest orders they've ever gotten

A famous, fishy sandwich

The McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwich has a storied history. It was the first new non-hamburger item added to the fast-food giant's nation-wide menu in 1965.

The sandwich has since become iconic, and it's responsible for a whole bunch of piscine imitators. Business Insider's Mary Hanbury reported that the Filet-O-Fish is a massive hit during Lent, when many Catholics fast from meat on Fridays.

It's one of President Donald Trump's favorites, too. He's known to put away two of the fish sandwiches at a time, along with two Big Macs and a large chocolate shake.

But that doesn't matter much to two crew members who spoke with Business Insider.

One former crew member from Virginia described viewing the Filet-O-Fish as a meal popular with older customers "because I assume it's easy for them to chew," but the crew member personally didn't like the taste of the sandwich.

Another crew member told Business Insider that they found the fish sandwich "generally gross" according to their personal taste.

Some of the greener options on the menu

A crew member from Minnesota told Business Insider that they steered clear of a batch of the chain's ostensibly healthier options: the salads.

"I'm not a fan of tons of vegetables, and the caloric count in the items is astronomical," the crew member told Business Insider.

The Southwest buttermilk crispy chicken salad comes in at 520 calories, the bacon ranch salad with buttermilk crispy chicken boasts 490 calories, and the bacon ranch grilled chicken salad has 320 calories.

For comparison, a Big Mac sandwich is 540 calories.

The chain's side salad is only 15 calories, however, for customers looking for a leaner, leafy option.

A particularly sugary beverage

One Reddit commenter said the chain's sweet tea was a bit too sweet for his or her taste.

"Pound. Of. Sugar. Per gallon," the person wrote in a 2013 Reddit thread.

A pound of sugar per gallon of McDonald's sweet tea would translate to a quarter pound — or about 113 grams — of sugar in a large, 32-ounce serving. That is much larger than the still-formidable 38 grams of sugar that McDonald's reports is in a large, 32-ounce McDonald's sweet tea.

A large Coca-Cola contains 77 grams of sugar.

The American Heart Association recommends that men should take in no more than 36 grams of added sugar a day — and that women should consume no more than 25 grams.

The smallest sweet-tea option at McDonald's, the extra-small cup, has 15 grams of sugar.

• Former President Barack Obama is a prolific reader.
• It's a tradition for him to make a list of summer reading each year. 
• This year's book recommendations focused on African literature.

Former President Barack Obama is making his first trip to Africa since he left the White House last year. So, his annual summer reading list, which he posted on Facebook, is focusing on African literature.

"Kenya, of course, is the Obama ancestral home," he wrote in the July 13 post. "I visited for the first time when I was in my twenties and I was profoundly influenced by my experiences – a journey I wrote about in my first book, Dreams from My Father."

Along with these six new recommendations, we also included the 11 books that Obama praised in a conversation in 2017 with Michiko Kakutani, the chief book critic for the New York Times. 

Here's what the former president said you ought to read this summer:

SEE ALSO: Barack Obama shares his 12 favorite books from 2017

'Things Fall Apart,' by Chinua Achebe

Obama says:

"A true classic of world literature, this novel paints a picture of traditional society wrestling with the arrival of foreign influence, from Christian missionaries to British colonialism. A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world."

Buy it here »

'A Grain of Wheat,' by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Obama says:

"A chronicle of the events leading up to Kenya's independence, and a compelling story of how the transformative events of history weigh on individual lives and relationships."

Buy it here »

'Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela,' by Nelson Mandela

Obama says:

"Mandela's life was one of the epic stories of the 20th century. This definitive memoir traces the arc of his life from a small village, to his years as a revolutionary, to his long imprisonment, and ultimately his ascension to unifying President, leader, and global icon. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand history – and then go out and change it."

Buy it here »

• Knowing how to address a cover letter with no name can be confusing and frustrating.
• But while it may be tempting to use a generic greeting like "To Whom It May Concern," you should always resist the urge.
• Amanda Augustine, career expert at TopResume, shared her best strategies for figuring out who's in charge of hiring.
• For example, you can use the email address provided to search for the person's name. Or, you can simply look for information about the person you'd be reporting to.

Just because a job posting omits the name of the person in charge of the hiring process doesn't mean you should address your cover letter"To Whom It May Concern."

According to Amanda Augustine, career advice expert for TopResume, you'll always want to direct your cover letter to a specific individual (unless the posting is anonymous). Otherwise, you might give the impression that you didn't put any effort into your application or you don't pay attention to detail.

So how do you figure out who's doing the hiring? Augustine shares her top strategies:

DON'T MISS: The 5 worst ways to address a cover letter

1. Reread the job description

Before you panic and conclude that there's no name listed, go back and reread the job posting very carefully. There might be a name and email address lurking at the bottom of the posting that you missed the first time.

2. Use the email address provided to search for a name

Sometimes companies will direct candidates to send their applications to a specific email address, without providing a name to go along with it.

That's a big clue.

There's a good chance the email address is the person's first initial and last name (for example, mine is slebowitz@businessinsider.com), or maybe just their first name. Once you have that information, you can run a Google search for "S Lebowitz Business Insider" or "Shana Business Insider" and see what you come up with. 

3. Look for the person who created the posting

If you found the job posting on LinkedIn, sometimes you'll see it was created by a specific recruiter or hiring manager, depending on the size of the company.

In that case, you should address your cover letter to him or her because that person is obviously directly involved in the hiring process.

• Warren Buffett married Susan Thompson in 1952.
• She ultimately left Warren to pursue a singing career, but they remained amicably married until her death in 2004.
• Susan also introduced her husband to Astrid Menks, who became his companion. Buffett and Menks married in 2006.

Warren Buffett has had a less-than-conventional marriage for much of his life.

While the investment guru remained married to his first wife, Susan, from 1952 till her death in 2004, he lived with Astrid Menks. Menks and Buffett didn't tie the knot until 2006, two years after Susan died.

But family members said the unusual arrangement worked for all those involved. According to the Daily Mail, the trio would even send out Christmas cards together — signed Warren, Susan, and Astrid.

"Unconventional is not a bad thing," Buffett's daughter, Susie Buffett, told The New York Times. "More people should have unconventional marriages."

Here's a look inside Warren Buffett's married life.

SEE ALSO: Inside the Trump-endorsed marriage of Mike Pence, who calls his wife 'mother' and refuses to dine with other women

Buffett's connection to his first wife, Susan, goes back to long before they were even born.

Source: Business Insider

Susan's grandfather once ran a campaign for Republican United States Representative Howard Buffett, Warren's grandfather. It apparently didn't go well.

Source: Business Insider

Their daughter, Susie Buffett, told Business Insider that it was "the only time my grandpa Buffett lost."

Source: Business Insider

• J.P. Livingston embarked on an early retirement at age 28 with a nest egg of $2 million.
• To her surprise, she continued to generate income while retired, earning more than $60,000 in one year with less than five hours a week of work.
• Livingston was able to do this by monetizing her personal-finance blog, The Money Habit, in a way that yields passive income. 

You can take the woman out of work, but you can't take the work out of the woman.

At least, that's the case for J.P. Livingston, who retired at age 28 with a nest egg of more than $2 million, which she saved while living in New York City.

With a starting job in finance that paid $100,000 by the end of the first year, Livingston was able to tuck away 70% of her take-home pay. From there, she invested 40% of that and saved 60%. When she received yearly raises, instead of increasing her spending limit, she saved the difference for retirement.

But to her surprise, her corporate years weren't the last time she'd see a flow of income.

"When I was contemplating early retirement while working, I was very burnt out,"Livingston previously told Business Insider. "I imagined I would want to sit on the couch and eat bonbons, sleep in late, that kind of thing.

"I did do that, but it gets boring eventually, and I ended up getting active again with different hobbies and projects," she continued. "Eventually, one or more of those projects yielded income. It's hard to be awake for 60-plus hours a week and not find a single enjoyable way to earn some money."

She began writing a personal-finance blog, The Money Habit, because the topic had been of interest to her for years, she said.

"I didn't expect it to make any money at all, because there are a million blogs out there, but it eventually got big enough that between the hosting and email bills I decided I should figure out how to monetize it enough to pay its own bills," she told Business Insider. After its first year, "it made over $62,000 with me spending less than five hours a week writing about things I wanted to write about."

Setting up passive income through blogging

Livingston started writing on the blog in August 2016, she said, covering everything from investing and saving to planning for early retirement. In 2017, after attracting a few readers, she researched how others monetized their blogs.

It turns out that affiliate commissions, in which she refers a product or business on the blog and receives a percentage of a sale or a flat commission from that company if a reader makes a purchase, was a huge opportunity. Through this strategy, she earned $60,162 last year.

Much of this was passive income, meaning she didn't have to put in endless hours to see her work quite literally pay off. The lasting value is a bonus of the side hustle, Livingston said.

"If you build your own blog or side business, you have created an operation that can continue to throw off cash for you in the future," she said.

Near year's end, Livingston began adding advertisements to the site, something that earns her $1,000 to $2,000 a month. Because she started using ads so late in the year, they brought in only an extra $2,164 in 2017.

"Earlier this year I had a kid. I was completely offline for three months, but the blog generated over $14,000 in that time," she said. Livingston had posts scheduled to publish once a week during this time, few of which had affiliate links, so most of the revenue came from previous posts and ads.

She added that "it has been amazing getting to talk to thousands of other people who are passionate about the same things as I am."

In fact, if she had known it was still possible to generate income while retired, Livingston thinks she would have retired even earlier than she did.

"I wanted to be absolutely sure I didn't have to work at all once I pulled the trigger," Livingston said. "If I knew then what I know now, I would at least modify my target retirement number to need less buffer, because I knew I could work part time as a fallback to supplement our needs.

"But the reality is that if you have the initiative and discipline to retire early," she said, "you are probably the kind of person who likes to get very engaged in new projects and hobbies, which will eventually yield an income."

SEE ALSO: What 8 people wish they knew before retiring in their 20s and 30s

DON'T MISS: A 24-year-old who's traveling the world says her 'mini-retirement' is more productive than a corporate job

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Dividing expenses with your significant other can be infuriating — here’s how these couples do it

Gusto's founding is a classic Silicon Valley tale.

In 2011, Joshua Reeves and a few techie friends launched the company out of a house in Palo Alto, where the founders had access to top coding talent and proximity to the most powerful VC firms in America.

That's where the startup stereotype ends for Gusto, a billion-dollar enterprise that makes human resources software for small businesses.

Reeves takes pride in helping small businesses do great work, but he also wanted Gusto to be a great place to work. It's avoided the reckoning on fratty company culture by providing a homey environment, transparency in the way they work, and "ridiculously generous" benefits. Fortune magazine named Gusto one of the 100 best workplaces for millennials, and employees write glowing reviews on Glassdoor.

The company opened a new headquarters in the once industrial, now ultra hipster Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco earlier this year. We took a look inside.

SEE ALSO: A Silicon Valley startup founder drove 4,000 miles across America in an RV — here's what he learned

Welcome to Gusto. It's inside a former Union Iron Works machine shop, a high-ceilinged building that survived the 1906 earthquake.

When you walk inside, the receptionist invites you to remove your shoes and store them in a cubby. Gusto socks may be provided.

Gusto has had a no-shoes policy since the company was founded in a home. Reeves was raised to take his shoes off at the door.

• Résumés are a crucial part of any job search.
• If you want to land your dream job, you'll need to whip your résumé into shape.
• Résumé Writers' Ink founder Tina Nicolai shared some tips on how to go about doing that with Business Insider.

Résumés are important.

No one knows that better than Tina Nicolai. She estimated that she has read more than 40,000 résumés since launching Résumé Writers' Ink in 2010.

That's a lot of CVs. Over the years, Nicolai says, certain annoying mistakes tend to come up quite a lot.

Some of these errors may not seem like a huge deal. In a competitive job market, though, they might be the difference from snagging your dream job and having your résumé thrown in the garbage.

Here are Nicolai's picks for the most annoying mistakes you can make on a résumé:

SEE ALSO: 17 annoying things job candidates do that make hiring managers not like them

DON'T MISS: 6 websites that will help you build your résumé if you don’t know where to start

SEE ALSO: The 13 most common résumé mistakes

1. Sloppiness

"The biggest mistake job seekers make: They are sloppy. They pay poor attention to detail. They are lazy!"

Nicolai said she has seen too many résumés with typos, unprofessional fonts, outdated information, and irrelevant information.

2. Summaries that are too long

Summaries are annoying when they are written in a formal tone and include too many adjectives, she said.

"After a while, the summaries can read like a lengthy chapter in a book," Nicolai told Business Insider. "It's better to list a few bullets with pointed achievements and a branded tagline stating, 'Known for achieving XYZ.'"

3. Too many buzzwords

Résumé jargon such as "out of the box,""team player," and "exceptional communicator" are "baseline expectations in today's market," Nicolai said. "A person who truly is a 'unique problem solver who works well in teams' will convey this succinctly and creatively on their résumé through a combination of few words and imagery."

• Job searching can be strenuous, but finally landing the perfect job is a rewarding accomplishment.
• However, you shouldn't get too comfortable — once you sign your contract, you have to be sure to live up to the expectations outlined by your employers.
• Things like asking for help and feedback can help you get a strong start at your new job.
• Here are the eight smartest things I did when I started my new job.  

Quick: It's your first day at your new job. What do you do? How do you make sure that you start things off on the right foot when you’re surrounded by intelligent and intensely driven people?

That’s the conundrum I was faced with two and a half years ago when I first entered the workforce as a staff writer at a startup.

It was a scary, exciting, and slightly overwhelming experience. But I had some help from my friends and managers— not to mention people on the internet who claimed to know the best ways to get ahead in a new gig. I was able to cobble together the bits of advice I got into the best combination for me and my job.

Here are the eight smartest things I did when I first started my job:

SEE ALSO: 5 signs your boss doesn't like you as much as you think

1. Asked for help

At first, asking questions felt like navigating through a field of landmines. I felt like taking one false step and I could derail all of the work I had put in up to that point.

But once I relaxed into my new role and saw what other people on my team were doing, it became clear to me what types of questions were helpful and which were just me being too much in my own head. That made it easier to ask direct questions with confidence, rather than resorting to the old “this may be a stupid question, but —” trap.

2. Read the wiki

Many startups have a wiki, a website where employees can quickly access everything from procedural information, like how to expense items to the company, to basic things like how each team contributes to company goals.

Finding the right phrases and keywords, by paying attention at orientation as well as asking my manager and employees who’d worked at the company for a while, helped me access the information I needed on the wiki. And checking for timestamps was vital to this process, since working at a startup means adapting to an ever-changing landscape of policies and processes. I bookmarked pages I’d need to access on a regular basis, like the office floorplan, and vital information about my team, which turned out to be enormously helpful, too.

3. Leaned in to using new tech

Every company has its own way of doing things, and that usually means you have to learn how to use a new system or product to get things done. For me, one new bit of tech was Slack, a chat service that lets you keep in touch with everyone in the company without clogging up their inbox. Regularly using it also helped to foster positive relationships between me and my coworkers.

• Wall Streeters come from a variety of educational backgrounds, and some degrees tend to lead to higher pay than others.
• Business Insider reached out to salary-comparison website Emolument to get a better look at what professionals on Wall Street tend to earn based on their degrees.

Wall Streeters come from all kinds of educational backgrounds, and some degrees tend to lead to higher pay than others.

Business Insider reached out to salary-comparison website Emolument to get a better look at what professionals on Wall Street tend to earn. Based on information from 1,236 New York-area finance professionals, Emolument estimated the average salary and bonus for Wall Street professionals at different stages of their careers based on their educational attainment.

While MBAs tended to lead to high pay overall, the highest-paying degree for vice president and director-level professionals was a bachelor of science, according to Emolument's estimates.

Here's a look at the results, listed by total compensation:

SEE ALSO: Here's how much the typical millennial, Gen X, and baby-boomer worker earns in every US state

Holding an MBA provides an especially big boost for analysts.

Associates with MBAs and Masters in Finance were tied for the highest salary.

Vice Presidents with a Bachelor of Science degree were the highest paid.

• Vladimir Putin may be the wealthiest man in the world.

• Forbes won't even estimate his net worth, because it can't verify his financial assets, Newsweek reported.

• The Russian president does indulge in some displays of immense wealth, however.

• Putin is reported to own luxury watches, a fleet of yachts, and multiple expensive properties, including a $1 billion palace.

• American financier Bill Browder estimated that Putin had "accumulated $200 billion of ill-gotten gains,"according to the Atlantic.

Vladimir Putin very well may be the richest man in the world.

But it's impossible to say for sure. According to the Kremlin, the Russian president earns around $133,000 a year and lives in a small apartment.

That description doesn't jive with most accounts of Putin's lifestyle. Former Russian government adviser Stanislav Belkovsky estimated his fortune is worth $70 billion. Hedge fund manager Bill Browder, a noted critic of Putin, claimed it was more like $200 billion. A fortune that enormous would propel him straight past Amazon founder and richest man in the world Jeff Bezos, who Forbes estimates has $150.2 billion to his name.

So why can't we pin down Putin's net worth with any certainty? The 2015 Panama Papers revealed that Putin may obscure and bolster his fortune through proxies.

We've put together a list of all the clues that indicate Putin is likely one of the richest people on the planet:

SEE ALSO: 9 Vladimir Putin quotes that offer terrifying insights into his mind

DON'T MISS: Vladimir Putin's hard-core daily routine includes hours of swimming, late nights, and no alcohol

DON'T FORGET: Trump and Putin's morning routines contain a striking parallel

As president of Russia, Putin's official residence is the Moscow Kremlin.

Source: Business Insider

As president of Russia, Putin's official residence is the Moscow Kremlin. However, he spends most of his time at a suburban government residence outside of the city called Novo-Ogaryovo.

Source: Business Insider

He reportedly has access to 20 different palaces and villas.

Source: Up North

• Vladimir Putin was recruited as a KGB agent after graduating from university.
• The current president of Russia served as an agent in East Germany for five years.
• Putin's experience as a KGB operative may have helped to mold his worldview.

Vladimir Putin's KGB career may have ended decades ago, but that didn't stop the Russian president from citing his spy credentials during Monday's press conference with US president Donald Trump.

Dissmissing the idea that Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia in 2016 and disputing the credibility of the Steele dossier, Putin said, "I was an intelligence officer myself, and I know how dossiers are made up."

Russia is accused of hacking the DNC's emails and engaging in other forms of cyber subversion in order to throw the race to Trump. A series of politically-charged and disinformation-spreading social media groups and advertising campaigns have been traced back to Russia.

Putin has denied hacking the election. Trump has argued that he "doesn't see any reason" why Putin would meddle in the election, despite the consensus of the US intelligence community that Russia interfered in order to ensure a Republican victory.

Here's a look into Putin's early career as a KGB spy:

SEE ALSO: Vladimir Putin's hard-core daily routine includes hours of swimming, late nights, and no alcohol

As a teenager, Putin was captivated by the novel and film series "The Shield and the Sword," writes Steven Lee Myers in "The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin."

Source: "The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin"

The story focuses on a brave Soviet secret agent who helps thwart the Nazis.

Source: "The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin"

Putin later said he was struck by how "one spy could decide the fate of thousands of people."

Source: "The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin"

•  A good first impression goes a long way in terms of success, whether you’re broadening your network of contacts, trying to nail a job interview, or persuading investors.
• Understanding the timeframe of a first impression, making eye contact, and leading with a firm handshake will help you impress whoever you’re meeting.
• Here are five ways to impress everyone you meet.

It pays to make a good impression wherever you go, regardless of your field or where you are in your career. Seeming friendlier and more professional can help you nail a job interview, successfully persuade potential investors, or simply broaden your network of contacts.

John Rampton, entrepreneur and contributor to Entrepreneur Magazine, knows a thing or two about making a good first impression. He hasover 1.5 million Twitter followers and is a regular speaker at professional networking events. Business Insider spoke with Rampton about ways to be more memorable that anyone can implement:

SEE ALSO: A communication expert shares 4 conversation tips for people who hate small talk

1. Understand the timeframe of a first impression

It's natural to think you might have upwards of a few minutes, but Rampton pointed toresearch from Princeton which indicated that it only takes a tenth of a second for the average person to confidently judge traits like competence, trustworthiness, and likeability.

"That means you may not have time to even open your mouth before an impression is made, so make sure you’re dressed for the occasion, properly groomed, and smiling when you meet someone new," Rampton said.

2. Lead with a firm handshake

Leading with a firm, confident handshake is a go-to piece of advice from armchair experts around the world, but scientific research validates its benefits. A study from the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscienceshows that when people lead with a strong handshake, they're more positively received.

"Your first interaction with anyone should be a handshake, and it can make or break your first impression," Rampton said. "It's really that important. Don't be afraid to practice with a friend or family member and ask for honest feedback."

3. Allow space in your first conversation

According to Rampton, many people try to dominate an initial conversation with a new person — they feel like silence is awkward, so they attempt to fill it as quickly as possible with a joke, an anecdote, or a unique perspective.

But this could make you come off as domineering or aggressive. "Rushing to fill the void of a new interaction can leave people with a negative impression," Rampton said.

He notes another tendency at networking events for some people to seem hurried in conversations, and attributes it to the societaltrend of busy bragging. "Busyness, more and more, is being seen as a status symbol, and it's being used to convey authority and importance in new interactions," Rampton said. "Resist the temptation to rush through the conversation. It's better to be comfortable with a bit of silence, and give the interaction time to shape up naturally."

• Vladimir Putin sticks to a standard daily schedule.

• As president of Russia, Putin has overseen the country's slide back into authoritarianism, according to the Economist's Democracy Index.

• Putin's daily routine reportedly features a late start, a morning press briefing, and lots of exercise.

Vladimir Putin loves badly behaved dogs and a breakfast of quail eggs.

That's according to a 2014 profile of Putin by Newsweek's Ben Judah, who spent years researching the foreign leader for his book, "Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin."

The Russian president has also been a fixture in global news lately due to — among other things — the ongoing investigation into alleged collusion with President Donald Trump's campaign, meddling in the 2016 presidential election, and the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy and his daughter in Britain.

The former KGB agent served as Russia's prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012. From 2000 to 2008 and 2012 to the present day, he has held the office of the presidency. While some have praised Putin's partial reversal of Russia's economic fortunes, his tenure has sent the country sliding back into authoritarianism, according to the Economist's Democracy Index.

Take a look at a day in the life of Vladimir Putin:

SEE ALSO: A look inside Donald Trump's Manhattan office

DON'T MISS: In 1946, Winston Churchill gave a speech at a tiny Missouri college that changed the way everyone thought about Russia

SEE ALSO: Before he became the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin was a KGB spy — take a look at his early career

Putin rises late in the morning, taking breakfast around noon.

Source: Newsweek

He usually tucks into a large omelet or a big bowl of porridge, with some quail eggs and fruit juice on the side.

Source: Newsweek

Newsweek reports that the ingredients are "dispatched regularly from the farmland estates of the Patriarch Kirill, Russia's religious leader."

Source: Newsweek

• 23-year-old Alex Binello is the co-creator and proprietor of "MeepCity," a hit free-to-play game with 15 million monthly active players. 
• "MeepCity" is the biggest game on Roblox, a game platform with 64 million users that's especially popular with kids. 
• Binello, an entirely self-taught programmer, makes enough from "MeepCity" to support his mother and brother, whom he recently moved from his hometown of Las Vegas to be closer to him in the San Francisco Bay Area.
• Now, Binello has brought on his first two employees as he works on a master plan to turn "MeepCity" into a video game empire. 

At one point, Alex Binello was working part-time at GameStop to pay the bills while he pursued a career as an independent game developer. Now, he finds himself at the head of one of the largest video game phenomenons you've never heard about. 

Under the handle Alexnewtron, Binello is the co-creator and public face of "MeepCity," a free-to-play game with 15 million monthly active players,  — 100,000 or more of whom are playing at any given time. Those numbers put "MeepCity" in a league with "Pokémon Go,""Candy Crush Saga," and other popular free-to-play games.

"The game has blown out what I ever imagined it could do," Binello told Business Insider via the phone on Thursday. "I feel like it's a real company now." 

If you've never heard of "MeepCity," there's a pretty good chance that you're over 18. It's a role-playing game where players drive cars around, decorate their in-game homes, collect the titular Meep mascots, and even attend high school classes. It's pretty chill, and it's very popular with kids. 

Notably, "MeepCity" is one of the biggest things going on in Roblox, a video game platform with 64 million users that's giving its mostly-younger fanbase a path into entrepreneurial opportunity, even turning a select few teens into millionaires. If you want to play "MeepCity," it's only on Roblox.

Unlike "Minecraft,""Fortnite," or other gaming phenoms, Roblox is entirely generated by its users. It boasts 4 million developers, who have collectively created 40 million games on the platform, including "MeepCity." On Friday, Roblox announced that it's on track to pay out $70 million total to those developers this year, up from $30 million in 2017.

The heart of the Robloxian economy are Robux, a premium currency that the company sells to users for real money. If a player chooses to spend their Robux in a game, the game's developer takes a cut. "MeepCity," for instance, charges Robux for premium features like an in-game boom box, or bonus decorations for your virtual home. 

Binello declines to go into too much detail about how much he's made from "MeepCity." He does, however, say that he's making enough that he was recently able to relocate his mother and brother from Las Vegas to be closer to him in the San Francisco Bay Area, and to support all three of them fully. 

More importantly for the future of "MeepCity," Binello has also hired two of his Roblox friends and collaborators as full-time employees, with a base salary and bonuses tied to the performance of the game. That's in addition to a few contract programmers and artists. Now, it's his ambition to turn "MeepCity" from a smash-hit Roblox game into a genuine media empire. 

"I have a long-term vision," says Binello.

Self-taught

Notably, Binello is "definitely self-taught," he says — he joined Roblox in 2007, when he was about 12 years old, and the game was only available for PC.

He started fiddling around with Roblox Studio, the included tools for building virtual objects in the game world, and eventually came up with a simple multiplayer game in the style of Pictionary. It was a reasonably big hit in the early days of the platform, and his Alexnewtron alter ego became a fixture of the Roblox community. 

When he graduated high school, he decided that college just wasn't for him. Instead of getting a formal education in programming or computer science, he would continue to try to hone his skills as an independent developer.

"I'm not really a school person," says Binello. 

Since then, he says, he's learned a lot, from the basics of game design to building his own servers and matchmaking system to supplement those provided by Roblox. 

The "MeepCity" story

At the time, circa 2012 or so, Roblox didn't yet offer the Robux revenue split. In search of a way to make a living from his Roblox skills, Binello decided to try his hand at smartphone games. "Pears to Pairs," a take on the classic family game "Apples to Apples," racked up 50,000 downloads, he says, but failed to develop into a real business. 

Luckily for Binello, Roblox came through in 2013 with its new revenue-split model. Binello was drawn back to Roblox, with the idea that his familiarity with the platform would give him a leg up. 

"I knew I needed to succeed with the platform," says Binello.

Eventually, he won the attention of Roblox headquarters in Silicon Valley, which invited him to intern at its Silicon Valley campus in the summer of 2015 — providing enough income that he could quit his job at GameStop.

During that internship, Roblox encouraged him to develop new game ideas, and the germ of the idea for "MeepCity" was born, which came to fruition in 2016. It was an instant smash hit — at first Binello had to institute a queuing system to deal with a larger-than-expected crush of players, who found the title without any marketing or ads. 

"That showed me the potential of what I was making," says Binello. It's only grown since, going from 10 million monthly active players around the start of 2018 to 15 million today. 

Binello praises the "modularity" of "MeepCity" as what kept bringing players in: The game has gotten loads of new content over time, and last year even extended into a new genre with the launch of "MeepCity Racing," a full-fledged go kart racing game within the existing game world, designed to bring in older players.

Indeed, that's how he views the future of "MeepCity."

Now that he's officially gone into the "MeepCity" business by hiring on employees, Binello envisions it expanding into a veritable video game empire. Just like with "MeepCity Racing," he sees his team as bringing the existing game to new audiences by adding new modes and features. Another internship with Roblox, in the summer of 2017, gave him even more ideas for where to take the game, he says, and inspired him to move to the San Francisco area to be closer to HQ.

"MeepCity" can go beyond video games, too, Binello says. Last year, Roblox got into the action figure business by licensing characters from top games on the platform, including "MeepCity." Anyone who bought the MeepCity Fisherman action figure got a unique in-game hat, plus 10,000 coins in "MeepCity" itself.

The promotion was successful, and Binello believes it could be a sign of things to come as he looks to future opportunities, in merchandising and beyond.

"'MeepCity' feels like a brand unto itself," says Binello.

SEE ALSO: This video game is turning teenagers into millionaires — and it's on track to pay out $70 million more this year

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