On July 23, 2009, DivaGirl Inc. launched Divalicious – the official DivaGirl Fitness Launch Party at Cheval Bar. The night was a smashing success that dazzled 200 Divas and featured 45 fabulous Sponsors. The positive response was overwhelming so we’ve decided to make it an annual affair. This year’s sequel features a fashion-forward twist courtesy of Shop Socials. Get ready for the most fabulous ladies night out this summer!

Go here for more info.

About the Divalicious Experience:

- $5 featured Divalicious Martinis

- FREE Diva Services: Make-up applications, Hair touch-ups, Mini manicures, Nail gem art, Mini massages

- Shop fabulous local designers and diva-fied brands in the Shop Socials fashion closet

- Live fashion show, hosted by Shop Socials

- Free giveaways and door prizes from numerous DivaGirl Sponsors

- Free dance demos and chair lap-dancing workshop throughout the evening

- Live dance entertainment from DivaGirl Entertainment

- Live DJ music, food, sweets & treats

- Opportunity to mingle with 300 other Divas!

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

The Roosevelt Room - 2 Drummond St, Toronto

Doors open 6PM

•  $20/ticket before July 20th

•  $25/ticket after July 20th.  $30/ticket at the door

•  Groups of 4+ Divas: $15/ticket.  Group tickets must be purchased together

•  $5/ticket for DivaGirl Members or Licensees (discount code required)

Tickets sold here.

What better young professional to kick off the series than Michael Corrin, founder and CEO of Freshii.

Freshii started in Toronto in 2005, and now has 21 locations. With a new store opening about once a week, there will 60 stores in over 20 markets by the end of the year. You can find Freshii anywhere from Vienna to Dubai, and in every major North American city.

Check out this video to find out what inspires Matthew Corrin every day, his future goals, and what’s in store for Freshii in the future.

And have a look at this video for a more in-depth look at Matthew Corrin and Freshii.

BusinessCast 160 brings back eMetrics guru Jim Sterne, President of Target Marketing of Santa Barbara.  JIm discusses measuring the results of your social media efforts – a task rarely approached, yet key to successful marketing in this sphere.  Only on the BusinessCast.

Listen here.

Jim Sterne has spent more than 20 years selling and marketing technical products. He began his career as a professional explainer, helping people understand Visicalc at a time when “personal computer” was an oxymoron. He successfully described sales order processing systems to people using hand-cranked tabulators. He was at the forefront of the Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool revolution and has clarified the salient points of object-oriented programming to software engineers across the country.

The BusinessCast Entrepreneurs Podcast is an iTunes-featured podcast developed to help entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized businesses – across all industries – address their strategic and day-to-day business issues.

It is Canada’s #1 source of compelling and engaging stories as told by daring entrepreneurs, thought-leaders, business innovators, and media insiders. Featuring intimate and lively recorded conversations, each BusinessCast episode sheds light on the struggles faced by today’s business trailblazers – and their incredible victories.

The BusinessCast podcast is created and produced by: 1) Robert Gold the Managing Partner of Toronto-based Bennett Gold LLP, Chartered Accountants, and 2) President of the business communications consulting firm, Write On The Money, Andrew Brown.

See Notable’s archive of the BusinessCast here.

The new iPhone is coming.

If you’ve missed the commercials in America (where it’s already launched), Twitter, Facebook, your fanboy friends’ incessant rambling, or even the recent “antenna gate” crisis, then I’m telling you now. It’s coming.

As with the iPad and pretty much every Apple device before it, the Canadian release date has lagged behind the U.S. On July 30, it will travel north and you can expect the regular lineups at the Apple store and the low grade hysteria as proud new owners begin to treat the device like their first born children. But this time, it may not be entirely worth the hype.

When the iPod came out, it completely changed the game. Switching over from the Discman (probably the most trendsetting music player on the market at the time, if you’ll recall) to the sleek, intuitive, compact Apple MP3 player was a no-brainer. Vastly superior form, function, and cool-factor made it impossible for competitors to touch the product. And Apple dominated the market. Even today, have you ever had a friend ask you for a docking station for their Zune? Didn’t think so.

Even recently, the iPad achieved this monumental shift once again, becoming the device that everybody has to have. Nobody doubts Apple’s marketing. It’s slick, it’s sexy, and it makes you NEED to have whatever it is that they’re selling – and they’ve always backed that up with the best product on the market. But when it comes to the iPhone 4, that could actually be in question.

Coinciding with a less-than-favourable review from Consumer Reports after the antenna issue, and a resulting stock price hit for Apple, a number of big device manufacturers have put out impressive new phones recently on the Android platform. And with the Android App Store now growing closer to 100,000 apps, and a DIY-app maker soon to hit the market (which might be the coolest development in the smartphone market ever!), the iPhone is subtly losing its grip as the only choice for fashionable and functional mobile users.

Here’s a funny little video. Profanity is used, so viewer discretion is advised.

As the video rather aggressively illustrates, from a features standpoint, the only thing the iPhone seems to be hanging on to is the fact that it’s an iPhone. But take a look around at a streetcar stop or at a concert or just walking down the street and you’ll realize that the cache of the device is dwindling too. South of the border, discerning geek-chic smartphone users and general fashion trendsetters are flocking to the Android phones – and for good reason. Rapidly improving functionality, hardware power, app availability, special features, and in many cases, a keyboard with actual keys are helping the Google gang to close the gap at blazing speed.

The iPhone is a great phone. It’s changed the way a lot of people think about phones and, even to some extend, how they live their lives. But it’s time as the undisputed king of the smartphone world is over. Possibly for the first time, from the standpoint of form, function, and even cool-factor, there might be something even better.

Photo by BasBoerman/Flickr.

Don R. Campbell is a Canadian-based real estate investor, researcher, author, and educator. He is president of the Real Estate Investment Network (REIN) and Cutting Edge Research Inc. He and his experienced team are leaders in providing Canada’s most current real estate investment education programs and economic research materials.

The first thing to talk about is the July market. Is it or hot, or not? To answer that burning question, Don Campbell explains that 3 per cent equals 14.6 per cent in the world of real estate. Sounds like funny math right? Wrong. Watch the video to hear Don explain exactly why his calculation makes sense.

Don Campbell says that the only thing a real estate investor needs is for the market to go up 3 per cent. That way, you get a return on your investment.

Our Notable real estate expert also warns against the “grass is greener syndrome.” If you want to buy real estate in the U.S. or in tropical regions, the most important rule to follow is that you must go there — twice. The only way to get a real sense of the market is to go in both the high and low season. The second rule is: check out the competition. And finally, know the laws of the state or country where you’re looking to buy. Buying elsewhere is risky business, so it’s best to have all of your bases covered.

To make a long story short, do your homework!

Photo by Aaron Escobar/Flickr.

Matthew Corrin originally got the idea for Freshii while working at a deli in New York that had a great product but really lacklustre marketing. Why not take the idea of fresh produce and healthy foods and create a brand around it?

Freshii started in Toronto in 2005, and now has 21 locations. With a new store opening about once a week, there will 60 stores in over 20 markets by the end of the year. You can find Freshii anywhere from Vienna to Dubai, and in every major North American city.

Matthew Corrin says he’s really passionate about changing the way people eat. Too often he hears excuses like “its not convenient, I can’t afford to, and I don’t have time.” But at Freshii, they eliminate those excuses. That’s what drives him every day.

You may remember when Freshii was called Lettuce. Corrin says they opted to make the name change because Lettuce didn’t encompass what the brand was all about. He said Lettuce only made people think of salads, where as the eatery provides so much more. It’s “fresh food, custom built fast.” Making the leap was a risk, but it paid off in the end.

Freshii is also one of the most sustainable food chains out there. All of their containers are made from biodegradable material such as corn or potatoes, they bike all of their deliveries, and Freshii only buys from farms with environmentally safe practices.

To all young professionals or young entrepreneurs, Matthew Corrin says that execution will set you apart. “Execution everyday is absolutely the most important thing about a business.” It’s the best way to grow and evolve.

What are your thoughts? Leave a comment below!

Death and taxes – those are the only two things you can guarantee in life. Well, many believe you can add rising interest rates to that list now. We are obviously coming out of the lowest rate environment in our history. Clearly they have nowhere to go but up. Well, at least that’s what the headlines keep telling us. So the natural reaction for most new homeowners is to race to their banks and lock in those rates while they’re still low. But, is that necessarily the best thing to do?  Whether to go fixed or variable is one of the most common questions asked of brokers and bankers across the country today. And as much as it would seem that the answer is obvious, it’s not that simple.

To truly answer this question, we must first take a look at what people mean when they say “interest rate.” I’m sure that there were more than a few individuals who were confused by the fact that the Bank of Canada (BOC) raised the Overnight Lending Rate by a quarter point in June and a variety of chartered banks announced that they were lowering their three-and five-year mortgage rates the exact same week. Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? How can rates go up and down at the same time? The fact is, there are two different types of rates and they are governed by two separate factors. One is the Prime interest rate and the other is the long-term or fixed rates.

Whenever we hear about the BOC making a change to interest rates, we are referring to the Prime rate, which dictates variable-rate mortgages (VRMs). The BOC focuses on one of two things:

1. Stimulating the economy
2. Maintaining inflation at a level at or near 2%

Following the sub-prime crisis of 2007, the credit-crunch of 2008 and the global recession of 2009, the BOC’s primary focus has been stimulating the economy. The best way to stimulate an economy is to get people spending money. And the best way to encourage Canadians to spend money is to make it less expensive to borrow. The result was ‘emergency low’ interest rates. As such, we have enjoyed almost two years of the prime rate being at a record low of 2.25% – technically as low as it can go. Obviously, by definition, this would mean that there is nowhere to go but up. And as soon as the Canadian economy begins its full recovery and we are threatened with inflation rising above 2%, the central bank will most certainly start to raise rates (as we saw by a quarter point increase on June 1 followed by a second rate increase on July 20, 2010).

The long-term or fixed rates, on the other hand, are governed by the bond markets. Fluctuations and changes in the bond yields will impact the spread or profitability of fixed-rate mortgages for the banks. The bond yields are a factor of the bond market and, like all markets, the bond market will experience daily fluctuations. The markets are definitely influenced by the BOC’s decisions, so it would be inaccurate to suggest the two are unrelated – but they will most certainly act independent of each other at any given time. This is what makes the game of rate predictions so interesting.

Let’s take a look at the months of April and May 2010, for example. Prior to April, BOC Governor Mark Carney stated that the Prime rate would likely remain unchanged until July of 2010. But this was a conditional promise, based on inflation remaining below 2%. The bond market does what all markets do when factoring in their pricing models – they react to the anticipation of an event more than the actual event itself. Prior to April, the markets were confident in no movement from the Bank in terms of the Prime lending rate, so there was little or no movement in the bond yields. As such, the long-term mortgage rates remained low as well. But the mood of the markets started to shift in April as talk about the Canadian recovery began gaining ground and, suddenly, there was widespread speculation that the BOC would not wait until July to raise rates and could do so as early as May or June. The bond market reacted by ‘pricing in’ an anticipated increase to the Prime lending rate. Bond yields were affected and, before we knew it, there was a surge in the cost of long-term funds for Canadians. A lot of people were caught off guard by the sudden rise in rates and fears started to mount about the ‘End of Cheap Money’. In the meantime, the BOC did not raise rates in April, so guess what happened to the bond market over the following weeks? It settled down and the long-term rates began to drop again.

As the June 1^st BOC rate announcement began to approach, we started seeing the exact same thing happen again. Widespread speculation (‘Would they increase rates by a full half point this time??’) began to set in and, just as it did in April, the bond market started to price in what they thought the BOC would do. And, again, the five-year mortgage rate at your bank began to rise. Then came the long-awaited news on June 1 that, after over a year-and-a-half of no change, the BOC was going to raise the overnight lending rate (which dictates the price of the Prime rate) by a quarter point. And, as expected, the headlines across the country screamed ‘Interest Rates Double’, ‘The End of Cheap Money’…. What they didn’t say was that they were referring to the overnight lending rate changing from a quarter point to a half point, which meant that the BOC Prime rate went from an historic low of 2.25% to 2.50% – hardly a shift to expensive money, but a change nonetheless. The more interesting thing to note at the time, though, was not what the headlines said, but how the bond markets reacted. The bond markets had priced in as much as a full half point increase in Prime. So, in fact, the long-term rates had already been pushed higher in the weeks leading up to the BOC decision. Once the decision turned out to be a lower increase than the markets had priced in, guess what happened? That’s right – the market adjusted – the cost of borrowing dropped for long-term money and virtually every chartered bank lowered its five-year rate the day after the BOC raised Prime by a quarter point.

Check in with Notable over the next few weeks to see the completion of Peter Kinch’s article. There’s lots more great real estate advice to come that you can’t afford to miss!

Photo by bhautikjoshi/Flickr.

But today, there’s something you should be extra aware of. There are two brand new Facebook scams that have gone viral. Their purpose? To gather your personal information and exploit it.

The first is a status update that reads, “OMG!! Guys, you have to see this: This mother went to jail for taking this pic of her son.” There’s a link along with the message that encourages you to share the message with your Facebook friends. Once you’ve shared the update, the page prompts you with a survey that is entirely meant to gather your personal information.

The second scam is another status update that says, “OMG!! McDonalds might soon shut down because of this, you have to see this.” It also contains a link that leads you through the same process as above.

Clearly, the people responsible are trying to get your attention with the most eye-catching and intriguing messages they can think of.

The best thing to do is simply not click on these links. And you should never have to complete a survey to participate in Facebook activity. If you’ve unfortunately already clicked on the link and have taken the survey, remove the status from you wall, newsfeed, and your Likes and Interests.

These new scams come hot on the heels of the Coca-Cola Facebook scam that swept through Facebook last week. The message read, “I am part of the 98.0% of people that are NEVER gonna drink Coca Cola again after this HORRIFIC video,” and directed users to give up their personal info.

No word yet on who’s responsible for the new scams.

You may know him from his titles 97 Tips for Real Estate Investing in Canada and the recently released Canadian Real Estate Action Plan.

In this video, Peter Kinch gives great advice to young professionals on whether to go with a fixed or variable rate, and explains why the HST tax – which came into effect on July 1 in Ontario and BC – has little bearing on the real estate market. What will effect us in Canada is the economic crisis in Europe. Even though we have a thriving economy here, we are not immune to what goes on across the pond.

This notable video couldn’t have come at a more relevant time, as the Bank of Canada just announced that it will be raising interest rates. Kinch says that the market will slow down, but not because of interest rates. We just came out of the spring market which is always hotter than normal. Kinch also points to the fact that interest rates can’t be raised too high unless the global economy really starts to improve, which at the moment, it isn’t. So we’ll see a quarter point jump, but Kinch doesn’t see it going much higher than that.

Check out Peter Kinch’s full YouTube video on rising interest rates below.

Peter Kinch also talks about why he wrote the Canadian Real Estate Action Plan. He got tired of watching people apply American principles to the Canadian market.

Don’t forget, the greatest wealth that’s ever been created in Canada and the world is through leveraging real estate, he says. “Do it smartly, intelligently, and with a plan.”

Notable told you about the campaign here.

But now, queue the spinoffs! In a hilarious parody of the Old Spice videos — which see the Old Spice guy standing in front of a shower wearing nothing but a white towel — the newly introduced “OhDoctah” does his thing. With lines like “You have a six pack, I have a keg,” it’s quite funny to watch.

But in addition to being hilarious, it’s also a brilliant business move. OhDoctah is actually an online advice website, offering weekly tid bits of advice and a Wednesday night “Patient’s Lounge” where viewers can call in and ask the Doctah questions.

What’s so smart about the Old Spice parody is that OhDoctah is capitalizing on the trickle down effect created by the original campaign. By becoming an early adopter of the campaign strategy, OhDoctah is riding the wave started by Old Spice.

It’s great lesson for young professionals who are looking to generate buzz for their own entrepreneurial ventures.

Funny + Business Savvy = Notable!