Mixing Business, Friendship and Social Media

So I got into a debate with a friend of mine over mixing business with friendship through social media… Quite frankly, should you mix business with friendship at all?   Many people have a real challenge with this.  I never understand why.  I find it so strange that people have multiple personalities.. one for business and one for friendship.  It’s almost as if you have a green light to be an asshole, if you cloak it under the guise of “it’s business.”

Look, I run a business, in fact I run several of them.  From time to time I have to make “business decisions.”  They are always made with intelligence, heart and integrity.  People have an obligation to be themselves.  One should conduct themselves as themselves – always.  I don’t have”business Eric” and “friend Eric”… there is just “Eric!”  It must be really hard for many of you out there to manage all of your personalities!  I really think that one should be themself and if people don’t resonate with you, then they likely won’t be a good client (or business associate) for you anyways!

I know many people don’t like to mix business and pleasure.  In business, you make “sales,” by having people… “know, like and trust you.” Isn’t that what friendship is?  Why don’t people just do good business and not be so concerned about mixing the two.  If people start to do their job and make money by helping people, instead of making money by screwing people, they wouldn’t be so concerned about mixing the two.  I remember a quote from Alan Shore on Boston Legal, “All it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to say it’s a business.”

Now as far as mixing business and friendship on your social media sites… well, it really depends on how you do it!  I don’t think it’s completely inappropriate to intermingle business and friendship on your social media sites… that being said, it depends on how you do it.  Perry Belcher has a great analogy to a party; he basically says that if you march around a party and all you talk about is your “business opportunity,” you may as well put a name tag on that says “ASSHOLE!” He is right on the money.  The same goes true for the guy that marches around the business networking meeting shoving his business card in everyone’s hand.  The fact is there are jackasses in every industry… there are jerks in real estate, insurance, auto sales, mortgages – there certainly jerk lawyers and doctors and the list goes on! They are the guys that the jokes are made from…

If you are going to plaster your Facebook page with ads for your MLM or worse… on other people’s pages, that’s a little much! If you are, who Randy Gage calls a “Multi-Level Moron” who spams Twitter with your “click here now opportunity,” well, enough is enough already!  It’s no wonder people are pissed off and blasting the whole industry!

Unfortunately,  the true professionals are being judged by the actions of these obnoxious jerk-holes!  However… for the rest of us, who value our friendships, and are looking to grow our businesses as well as help others… You have every business and every right to utilize social media to grow your business. We are moving into a world where you are your business!   Soon the people who separate themselves from their business will realize how easy it is to lose their business.  People do business with people, not businesses. You are the only you!

Rubik’s Cube…and Social Media?

It has occurred to me that there are only 5 ways to solve the The Rubik’s cube puzzle.

1. You can peel the stickers off and reapply them. In this method, you really didn’t solve the Rubik’s cube, you basically masked the fact that you don’t know what you are doing. While it’s true that people may not initially be aware of your lack of skill in the matter, the reality is that you cheated. The true test wasn’t if you could pull the stickers off, hell I have an 8 year old niece that can remove and reapply a sticker, it was about solving the puzzle, not avoiding the task.

2. You can break the damn thing apart.  As many of us learned at an early age, the game is designed in such a way that if you break it apart, you can secretly snap the pieces back together again.  It loosens the structural integrity of the device.  Quite frankly, that method questions a lot of integrity, but is still a viable solution.  It doesn’t solve the problem and you didn’t learn anything.

3. You can get lucky.  Of course, there are 519024039293878272000 possible combinations, but hey…  if you have enough monkey’s in a room, punching keys on a typewriter eventually one will key out the works of Shakespeare, right?

4. You can throw it away and buy a new one.  Hell… they are only 10 bucks!  I mean if you gave it the old college try, that’s good enough… right?  Who needs to complete a task when they, you know, “Gave it a try!”

5. You can learn the trick.  There are combination of patterns that come up which will help you solve the toy.  Once you learn a few simple moves, you can solve any of the ridiculous amount of combination in less than 5 minutes.

It’s so interesting to me that most people deal with the situations in their life, the same way that they deal with a Rubik’s cube.  They can cheat, have questionable integrity, hope to get lucky, give up or try and figure it out.  The funny part is that in most situations, when one is trying to figure things out, someone is always there waiting to show them the way!  You have heard the saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear… it couldn’t be more true.

As a magician, it’s my job to tell you (well, maybe not my job) that there’s a trick to everything.  Don’t tell the other prestidigitators I told you!  There’s an easy way and a hard way.  Go find people to help you with the easy way… Solving a Rubik’s cube without an instruction guide is ridiculous… and IMPOSSIBLE!!!

So are many other things!   We have been working on Social Media for quite some time and found that it’s just like the Rubik’s cube dilemma.  There are all of these people trying to tell.. or more like sell you ways to be lazy and cheat, which quite frankly, never work! Are you just trying to do it yourself and get lucky? Why don’t they just show you the tricks to make it work?  Maybe the teacher is closer than you think…

The Miracle Button!

Don’t you love it when you get one of those ‘Aha’ moments… A second where, for a second, you figure everything out. I had one of those to share with you…

I have been on all of the social media sites getting tons of emails from so called gurus that want to share the “secret” of making money online…  You know, you send in your money and hit the “miracle button” and money will just be sent to you in the mail! Meanwhile, I have been diligently working with companies helping them develop their social media presence. So, for the past several months, my partner in this, Jody Underhill and I have been developing a DVD series called WTF do I do next in social media (as well as running seminars on the program).

So… my major breakthrough was when I asked Jody, “With all of the programs available… are we going to run out of people to share our program with?” He responded with a resounding no… There are over 8,000,000 people on Twitter and that number growing like 40% a month. It’s ridiculous!  Combine this with the fact that most people are pissed off because their life sucks and they are looking for something else to do. Of course — they are looking for the easy way to do it. So their mind goes where? To the internet!

The fact is that everyone knows that most of these programs will never make anyone a dime, but they would rather risk $47 than start a business that can cost $1000′s- $100′s of thousands. The reality is that no one knows who they can really trust! What’s even funnier is the people that pound your inbox or Twitter feed with a ridiculous amount of spam hoping that… “You’re the one!”  This is the guy that’s going to send me the cash!

Anyways… to end my rant, there are certainly quality programs out there, but to hope that there’s a “Send $97 and your dreams will be solved” miracle button that really works… You may be better off buying a lottery ticket! No work… Seriously… No Thanks!

By the way… thanks everyone for the awesome testimonials!

Taking My Own Advice…

Have you ever asked someone a question and they give you the same answer that you would have given them?  How annoying is that? Especially when they are right!

I was out in the mall with my family today and the guy at the store almost forgot to remove the security device from one of the shirts we bought.   Well, I recently found a pair of shoes we bought a while ago that the security device was never taken off.  I asked the guy what the store would do if someone came in with old clothes, no receipt and the white plastic thing was still stuck on… he said they would not remove it.  I then asked how he would suggest one would get it off.  He kind of looked both ways (as if he was giving me classified CIA secrets) and said that I could probably look it up on You Tube, someone probably has a video out about that.

I tell people that juicy nugget of information all of the time.  If you want to know anything! I mean ANYTHING! Someone will give you step by step instructions on how to do it for FREE on You Tube or Google.  I must share that information with someone everyday.  Of course, I forget that when I need simple “How to” advice for myself.  So I guess the point is two fold here… First, don’t forget that you could learn almost anything by looking it up on google.  Second, if you want to remove the white plastic thing security thing from clothing (if they forgot to remove it them self, of course)…

My First Blog Post

Well.. I have to admit that it’s hard to teach people how to excel at social media without having a blog of my own.  While my specialty and passion has always been in making videos, who am I to debate the value of typing these posts.

It is clear that a blog is one of the most effective forms of free speech we have available to us.   I find it really interesting…that back in “the day” governments knew that if you control the information, you control the people.  Some countries, still abide by that principal.  Yet, in these modern times, so many of us have the ultimate of free speech and choose not to use it.  Meanwhile across the globe, people are giving their lives for the mere ability to exercise these very rights we take for granted.

Maybe it’s more than just a job for me to write my thoughts and ideas on this blog post.  Maybe it’s more of my duty, not because I feel I should, or have to, but because I can!