This morning I went to the post office to ship some items for my wife’s baby gift and accessory store, Dimples.  I go in several times a week and I almost always pay for and print my postage at home prior to travelling to the post office.  Today, when the postal clerk weighed my package it was off by several ounces.  At this point two things happened which struck me as odd.  First, the clerk looked to her fellow employee and said, “now what”. Then after the fellow employee told her to just put it through and she took my boxes to the back, he turned to me and said, “I’ve seen packages returned for being off by 2 ounces”.

The woman not knowing how to handle my package being off by an ounce upset me, because clearly she had not been trained on how to handle packages which were processed using the online system.  The gentleman upset me even more, because he knew there may be an issue and still let me ship.

What a day!

The short answer in my mind is, yes, it has.  I mean AT&T alone announced 12,000 job cuts yesterday, Citicorp, 50,000 several weeks ago and the auto industry is claiming 200,000 best case and 3million worst case (Although I do not agree, another topic, another time).  While I am not an economist, for g-ds sake my MBA is in management, I do believe that these jobs are lost forever and will not be regained without the emergence of a new sector/technology/market. 

The scary thing is the only sector I (again, only my opinion) see emerging is that of web 2.0 (or are we up to 3.0). Most of the uses of these technologies will be to help businesses market and promote themselves in more inexpensive ways and probably with the help of less people. 

I am wondering if anyone out there has any thoughts of where all these people losing their jobs will go and what they will do?

Thoughts? Anyone?

This being said, let me first state that my newfound love is social media and its’ uses in the business setting.  Naturally, a year ago like most 30 year olds (in my opinion anyways) I did not know what or who a twitter was and although I had a facebook account, I did not really use it.  Nowadays, I am using facebook for my wife’s baby gift and accessory store.  We also use twitter.

I am going to sign off for today, but before I go, I want to make it clear, that a) I plan to write more often and b) the topics will cover my findings in the uses of social media in the workplace as well as my other loves, customer service.

Have a great day.

The truth is that as far back as I can remember I wanted to be involved in food in some ways.  I always liked the idea of being involved in a service industry which makes people happy.  Food definitely makes people happy.  The way I got into food was purely accidental but is making me happy, just by the fact that I am doing what it is I want to do.

So I’ll make this entry brief.  What exactly is the point of what I am trying to say? Do what you want in life! Make the move early, before you can no longer take any chances! And finally, do NOT be afraid to make any drastic career or life changes as long as you feel these changes will truly make you happy.

 1) I do NOT work from home.  Although it is much cheaper and convenient to work from home, I have found a friends office in which I squat. Obviously not everyone has this opportunity, but there are definitely cheap options out there.  I know in my area there are office parks which offer full services (copier, Internet, conference space and most importantly and office) for $500.  Even if you cannot afford the fee initially it is worth it to save up.  The home office, just brings too many interferences.

2) Find a friend that you can commiserate with every once in a while.  This friend should ideally be in a similar situation to you.  Someone who has recently gone out on their own and is not sure where their next dollar is coming from.  If you gripe to each other too often it begins a complaint session rather than a support session.

For now these are the two steps that help me the most.

 This morning I woke up and felt that even though I am working hard, trying to build a company from the ground up, I have been getting nowhere.  Seeing me all upset and down, my friend whose office I squat in, made me a copy of a page from Trump’s newest book (a book I gave him and read already).

 The gist of the pages he copied was that you must love what you do and if you love it, you will work harder and eventually succeed beyond your wildest dreams.  Re-reading these words inspired me and I got right back on the phone and back to work.

 I hope these words have inspired you, my readers as well.

 Enjoy the weekend.

I can honestly say that since going out on my own I have made more contacts which were able to help me build my business, by using Linked In than face to face networking.  At the same time, I still encourage creating lists of all your “real time” contacts and making sure to not ignore to them while building your “virtual” networks.  In fact I spend an hour a day working on building up my Linked In network.

For those of you truly interested in building a professional network using Linked In, I highly recommend reading the following blog: http://siliconv.wordpress.com/the-linkedin-network/ which was written by one of my contacts, Mickael Nadeau.

 For now these are my thoughts on how to network effectively.

What else does it mean?  It means making your own hours, being responsible for your own wins and losses and ironically (at least in my opinion) SECURITY!!!

Security you ask.  Yes!!! I beleive in today’s day and age there is no such thing as job security.  We are no longer in an age where we are lifers at the IBM’s of the world.  Therefore, while it may be scary to be on my own, I now have control over my future.

 Well, these are my initial thoughts…more to come.