David Sax

I have been growing this moustache, a budding Burt Reynolds number, for a good cause known as Movember. ”

Charity fundraisers are nothing new to me. In the past, I have taken part in ski races for hospitals, walks for breast cancer, and long distance bike rides for geriatric care. ”

Unlike in Europe, where serving is often a career rather than a backup plan, American table-waiting remains a bootstrap business, and some of the biggest skeptics of waiter training courses and schools are seasoned servers themselves. ”

Though sporting a hideous mustache is in no way comparable to the physical pain and mental suffering men with these diseases endure, Movember still forces participants to challenge their manhood on a daily basis. Growing a moustache for men's cancer isn't as feel-good an activity as running a marathon for a cure. ”

Nearly every industry in America, from carbon trading to bricklaying, hosts its own back-slapping awards night. ”

Food trends don't just drive the obvious things, like cupcakes or cronuts, but something as elemental as your daily cup of coffee. The way you have that coffee now is probably very different from the way you had it ten years ago, and it'll probably be very different in ten years. That has a huge impact, culturally and economically. ”

What makes a good deli is a place that, one, is generally family-owned or owned by individuals that care. Delis that are owned by large corporations tend not to have that same soul. And two, delis that make as much of their food from scratch as possible. ”

Think of the sushi trend that started in the '80s. It was as much about the Nintendo entertainment system in your living room as it was about the availability of good-quality raw fish. The Japanese food trend rose as the world of Japanese business and culture was becoming a bigger part of American life. ”

In 2008, Milton Sheppard opened the Waiter Training School in the Bronx, N.Y., charging $175 for courses, but the business soon ran out of money. He now operates a clown college in the same space. ”

At the height of the first great dot-com boom, Craig Kanarick, then in his early 30s, was running Razorfish, a Web design firm he'd co-founded with an old friend, which at its peak had 2,300 employees in nine countries. ”