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Shitcoin Digest: Californium (CF)

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If you’re interested in buying cryptocurrency, I suggest Coinbase for the easiest transfers and they have more than just Bitcoin. If you click on the link to sign up, I get $10 after you deposit a total of $100. So please check out Coinbase.

Californium (CF)

Californium is a radioactive element that was first synthesized at the University of California in Berkley in 1950 and the Periodic Table’s name for it is Cf…so someone named a cryptocurrency after it. That’s kind of cool! They have a lack of social media, which means the social outreach is rather limited and I think limits the potential for adaptation of the cryptocurrency and they are only represented on one exchange, YoBit, which I read so much negative about that I didn’t even bother reviewing them. Aside from an awesome name that COULD be popular, I see nothing else to indicate a reason to buy this currency.

NOTE: This piece was originally posted by Michael as an on- site page on TheMichaelBeebe.com while he was doing research into cryptocurrencies.

 

Disclaimer: Michael Beebe is not a financial advisor and all research is for his own purposes. He is simply sharing the research with the readers of this or other blogs and makes no claims to be an expert in finance or any forms of investment.

Shitcoin Digest: Neuro (NRO)

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If you’re interested in buying cryptocurrency, I suggest Coinbase for the easiest transfers and they have more than just Bitcoin. If you click on the link to sign up, I get $10 after you deposit a total of $100. So please check out Coinbase.

Neuro (NRO)

For some reason, I like this one. They do a great job of social media outreach, which is important in acceptance of any currency and they have a historical high of between 2 and 3 cents a coin, but are valued at the time of this writing, considerably lower. I think this is a great rebound buy for a mid term hold and if I am wrong, I will be out what, $10? This is going into my yes list for sure since I think they have a potentially strong network.

Update on 11-26-2020: This coin is no longer traded.

NOTE: This piece was originally posted by Michael as an on- site page on TheMichaelBeebe.com while he was doing research into cryptocurrencies.

 

Disclaimer: Michael Beebe is not a financial advisor and all research is for his own purposes. He is simply sharing the research with the readers of this or other blogs and makes no claims to be an expert in finance or any forms of investment.

Shitcoin Digest: LiteCoinUltra (LTCU)

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If you’re interested in buying cryptocurrency, I suggest Coinbase for the easiest transfers and they have more than just Bitcoin. If you click on the link to sign up, I get $10 after you deposit a total of $100. So please check out Coinbase.

LiteCoinUltra (LTCU)

LiteCoinUltra uses the adoption of Proof Of Stake and Proof Of Work random superblocks. This adds to both the security and easy of mining of the currency. Every other aspect is identical to LiteCoin and it was, in fact, developed by fans of LiteCoin. It is also (according to their website) four times faster than BitCoin and reduces bottlenecks of transaction processing. In my opinion, this is a strong maybe.

NOTE: This piece was originally posted by Michael as an on- site page on TheMichaelBeebe.com while he was doing research into cryptocurrencies.

 

Disclaimer: Michael Beebe is not a financial advisor and all research is for his own purposes. He is simply sharing the research with the readers of this or other blogs and makes no claims to be an expert in finance or any forms of investment.

Shitcoin Digest: TorCoin (TOR)

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If you’re interested in buying cryptocurrency, I suggest Coinbase for the easiest transfers and they have more than just Bitcoin. If you click on the link to sign up, I get $10 after you deposit a total of $100. So please check out Coinbase.

As I do the research, I am reading some information calling TOR a scam coin that doesn’t really exist. One writer said it’s noting more than a Ponzi scam and upon further research, their website points back to an Apache Server Node site and there is no data from the creators of the cryptocurrency. I initially felt this would become a good darkweb currency since it’s name (“tor”) is the same as the main access browser to darkweb websites and based on potential marketing to that segment of society, it seemed like a potentially good investment regardless of the ethics of those involved in its usage. As of this writing, TOR has not had a twitter post in roughly one year and I am now eliminating them as contenders.

(Update 11-25-2020) This coin is now inactive

NOTE: This piece was originally posted by Michael as an on- site page on TheMichaelBeebe.com while he was doing research into cryptocurrencies. Michael is not a financial consultant and is not making any recommendations. Michael is a hobbies and a novice in the world of cryptocurrencies and securities and nothing here should be seen as financial advice.

I Hate Texas

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There! I said it! But what if I really don’t hate Texas? I’ve taken more than a few trips through Texas but always down Interstate 40 through Amarillo, but I haven’t seen the whole state really. Maybe there’s more to see than a desert and stockyard. Statewide Texas is a strange mix of churches and strip clubs; adult toy superstores and stores just named “guns.”

 

Going down I40 from Oklahoma you will hit Texas pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Then you’ll drive another hundred miles to hit Amarillo. One look around Amarillo and you see it looks like any other American Southwest town with a slightly higher crime rate, transient motels, grifters, homeless, and an underlying drug habit. My highlight is that I can eat at Whataburger when I pass through. About thirty miles past the city you’ll find a big stockyard. From a distance in the daytime it looks like an ant colony in a freshly split log. You see the black and white dots moving in an almost nauseating form for miles before you get there to see a sea of cows. At night, you can smell it from the same distance. That area is dry and boring. Maybe twenty miles before you hit the New Mexico State line there are some hills that are actually beautiful, but that’s short lived and you’re back in an arid wasteland again. Even the final exit heading west down the interstate has a little gas station that’s been abandoned for decades and looks like a perfect place to stash a dead body. Going this way is a necessary evil to take a southern route to California during the winter and miss driving down I80 in the snow.

 

El Paso was once referred to by a friend as “the armpit of Texas,” which surprised me since (from my limited experience) I thought all of Texas was an arm pit. I loved it!!! I wasn’t there long, but the harmonious mix of cultures and little shops downtown was amazing. The historic downtown has these old beautiful buildings and small Mexican stores and restaurants. Taking an Uber at one point we asked what the “big red X” was to the driver and he said it was some building in Mexico. I knew we were on the boarder but I didn’t realize if you had a good arm that you could whip a stone into Mexico and start an international incident (note to self: add “start international incident” to my personal bucket list). It’s a boarder town in the desert. I’ve been in many worse towns throughout the country and I can’t call El Paso an armpit. I can say that people from other countries have different living standards from Americans and the people living there (legally or not) are living a much better life than they would give miles to the south. Sure the taxi stand had the word “taxi” spray painted on a piece of plywood on a carport with chicken wire walls, but that added to the charm.

 

Most recently I had to go to McAllen, Texas…and I loved it. I entered Texas just below Texarkana, Arkansas and drove the state roads south. There is an I69 corridor but that interstates under construction. It is in tact for roughly 70 miles with Houston in the middle of that stretch and it’s a fantastic road, though any road going top to bottom would have been fantastic to me after driving five hours on state roads and US highways that don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere. I’ve been in Houston one other time by briefly and it remains a city I want to explore in depth at some point because it is beautiful. I believe you can tell a lot about a major city by it’s downtown skyline and Houston’s is amazing. Moving south, I hit the Corpus Christi area and there were these quaint little restaurants attached to gas stations (gas stations in that area seem to have a restaurant or bait shop attached to them). I was mad I had just eaten because fresh seafood would have really hit the spot over a Golden Corral.

 

Finally I hit McAllen after sixteen days of driving through Texas (it may not have actually been that long) and I fell in love with “The Valley.” Edinburg and McAllen are awesome! I loved McAllen so much I requested another trip down there in a couple weeks for my birthday so I can cross into Mexico for my first time. It has most of the things I love about Los Angeles except the ocean and the cost of living is manageable. Like El Paso, it has a huge Mexican population and a vibrant downtown area because of it. My Uber driver dropped me off at the bus station and told me there was a Subway inside. I had three hours till my bus and I smelled good food. I walked into a little place and seated myself. I ordered some tacos and a Coke. The owner asked if I wanted a Mexican Coke or a regular Coke. Please! I would have just eaten at Subway if I wanted “regular Coke.” The place was called La Mordidad and I will be back there. I had three pork tacos and a Coke for $7. When he told me the price I laughed in his face with excitement. That’s it? He got a nice tip. The food was so good that I left a five star review and and wrote out a review on their Facebook page while still in the restaurant. It may be the best Mexican food I’ve ever had. I had a few personal interactions with people in the area. Some didn’t speak English at all and my limited English compounded by the volume of the music being played where I was made accurate communication nearly impossible but everyone was gracious and appreciated that I at least made an attempt at Spanish. I figure my Spanish sucks but it’s better than their English.

 

The bus from McAllen dropped me off in Dallas. I walked to the McDonald’s and ate. It was 1am and that’s all that was open. While there I asked the security guard if I should take an Uber to the airport or wait on the train (the real underlying question was if this area was a shithole at night that I should avoid walking around in). He suggested I Uber and I heeded his advice.

 

One thing about my travels is that I’ve learned to find cheaper transportation. McAllen to Chicago was just shy of $600 on American Airlines but Greyhound to Dallas was $35 and Dallas to Chicago on American was $53. So add the extra $30 Uber and I still saved some $480. Smaller airports are just too expensive but the bus can get you places cheaper, but you’ll be stuck on a bus with the thought “this bus smells like corn chips and I’m the only one not on meth at the bus station.”

My next chance I will explore Houston and Austin. Both are places I want to know better and Austin is the home of SXSW and I want to attend that some day.

 

One tip on Texas I think everyone should know. Drivers in Texas are awesome. They are both competent and friendly. If you need over in a lane, turn your blinker on and they will wave you on through. County deputies and city police officers are great men and women doing the work of the people, protecting and serving their communities. I’ve only come close to having an accident in Texas three times (compared to New York City’s five times in one day). Guess who I almost had accidents with. That’s right! Each time it was a Texas State Trooper. Stay clear of them! One followed me so close I couldn’t see his headlights, then went around me, swerved onto the shoulder, and I had to avoid hitting him since his ass end was still on the road. No emergency flashers or anything. I thought it was isolated but I had a similar experience in Houston one other trip with a pair that may have been street racing each other on the interstate. They just swerved all over the road at high speeds.

 

Ok. So I don’t hate Texas, just parts of Texas and some things about Texas. It is so large that it really is like a whole other country with its own unique set of laws and customs. I even had boarder patrol get on my bus and ask each of us if we were U.S. citizens (I was mad they tapped me on the shoulder to wake me up and ask). Go to Texas. If you don’t like where you’re at, go about one hundred miles and it’ll be different.

 

Thank you for reading this piece from Michael Beebe. For more about Michael, please visit TheMichaelBeebe.com or VagabondingAmerica.com.

Nowhere Special in North Dakota

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With my job, I have visited a lot of states. Coupled with family vacations, I’m so close to seeing the Lower 48. I had two to go and now there’s just one. I drove through North Dakota last week…and it sucked.

 

It started out when I got to Fargo and took a nap, then woke up to snow…a lot of snow. I asked the girl about the storm and it’s size and she looked it up on her phone. She then responded, “Oh geez! Yur screwed,” in that uniquely North Dakotan accent (with the movie Fargo if you don’t know what I’m talking about). Then there was that laugh they do.  I asked how big the storm was and she said “it’s North Dakota.” She showed me a map on her phone and it really was the entire state and about 100 miles into Montana. Apparently there was a convergence of three different winter storm fronts over the state and that did not make for fun driving. I never knew they named storms, but it was named Winter Storm Quinn.

 

There was a thirty mile per hour cross wind and most places were expecting five to nine inches of snow out of the storm. When I woke up from my nap in Fargo and pulled to a gas pump, all the pumps facing North were covered in snow and ice while the South-facing pumps were clear, but you had to stand on the cold side of the truck as the wind blew at you since I was on the north side of the truck. So I stepped down into two inches of slush to get my gas. After I left I continued west and many times thought it was a mistake. The wind was blowing about thirty miles per hour with gusts up to about fifty. I was driving anywhere between thirty and forty, but closer to thirty, so about half the speed limit at best.

 

Onward to Bismark! That’s where I stopped for lunch at a HuHot (visit their Facebook Page), which has become one of my favorite places when I can find them. I asked the hostess how the if the state usually does a good job plowing and she said, “Not really! We’re really behind the times with that. They wait till its about half over till they get out there.” Crap! Nothing she said was any different than what I was noticing, but I was hopeful. That hope was crushed twenty minutes later when I hit a snow drift in the middle of the interstate and nearly went off the road.

 

Finally I got to Beach, North Dakota, which is the last city in North Dakota headed west on Interstate 94 and it was anything but a beach. Yep! It sucked as bad as the rest of the state. At least it was a flat state so the interstate didn’t twist and turn around.

 

Years back, North Dakota was the only state with a declining population. They had more people moving from there than the aggregate of people moving there and being born. They were the only state in the Union with a declining population and I fully understand why. I also have no reason to believe that trend has changed. It was a wasteland of cold that felt like there would never be happiness in the world again. Your mood truly starts to change in an environment like that and not for the better. It was truly miserable. I would like to go back in the summer and see the things I missed, one place being the Enchanted Highway. Stopping in those temperatures and that wind to see steel sculptures was not going to happen on this trip.

 

Thank you for reading this piece from Michael Beebe. For more about Michael, please visit TheMichaelBeebe.com or VagabondingAmerica.com.

The Great American Road Trip

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One of the hardest things about writing this blog is the variety of places I go but only for a short time. How do I sit down and talk about Times Square in five hundred to a thousand words when pictures can’t even do such an amazing place justice? Do people want to really know about me sleeping upright on a Manhattan park bench because I missed my flight and got stuck taking a bus home from the city that never sleeps? How do people feel about hearing about pure exhaustion and pushing through as hard as you can to the point of delirium and finally falling asleep on an airplane with less than a graceful rumble of snoring? Yeah. That crap all happens. So instead of talking about a place, I think I am going to talk about my job for a little bit and tell people exactly what I do.

 

I drive. I drive a lot. I drive box delivery trucks from the builder (actually a terminal about thirty miles from where they are built) to the (mostly) end user. My normal run consists of me waking up, driving an hour to my job, then talking with the people in the office for a few minutes. After that is all done, I go to the truck assigned to me and throw some license plates on, placards (the thing that has the company I contract for’s DOT number) in the windows, and check under the hood to make sure all the fluids are where they should be and the caps are all tight, then I inspect the tuck for physical damage. After all that, I go to a gas station and fill it up. This all takes about thirty minutes or so. Now the real fun starts. I punch in my GPS where I am going and…I’m off.

 

We are required to follow the same DOT regulations as truck drivers; no more than eleven hours of actual drive time, fourteen hours of on-duty time (which includes breaks, fuel, and other reasons to stop and do things), and a thirty-minute break within any eight-hour stint. Oh yeah, we also have to log all of this stuff as we do it on our phones or tablets. After the first week, none of this stuff is even a question; you just do it automatically. Where do the problems come in? Each driver has different flaws. I hate bad weather and mountains, but I excel at city driving. Fog mesmerizes me. After a couple hours of foggy driving, I am ready for bed. That bed is rather uncomfortable at times since it’s just a hammock slung from the support posts in the truck. It’s seldom a comfortable temperature to sleep in with either being too hot or too cold. Several cold nights I slept up front with a blanket wrapped around me, the heat on, while seated upright in the driver’s seat. The DOT also requires ten hours of continuous off-time daily, so under rather adverse conditions, you just want to get on them road in hopes of getting somewhere warmer or cooler just to get more comfortable. Exhaustion becomes a constant. Urine is the body’s natural radiator. When I get to a truck stop, I go relieve myself before I go to sleep. On cold nights, almost exactly two hours after I fall asleep, I have to take a leak and I’m not talking where you wake up and think, “I may need to pee soon,” but the type of urgency that you consider not wearing your shoes to run back inside to go. Sometimes behind that snow bank looks a lot closer than inside the truck stop. After that, I’m good for the next eight hours if I want without needing to go at all. I assume it’s just caused by the body cooling as heat escapes and you really don’t need it anymore. There are also places that get down to ninety degrees at night so you lay there sweating, miserable, and wide awake like some kind of hotbox punishment in a backwoods state prison. I could get a motel room, but that’s money that’s not staying in my pocket then and I’d rather spend the money I earn at home.

 

After that lack of sleep, you drive another seven hundred and some odd miles just to repeat the night before. Then after that is one more night just like the last two. Day four hits and you work a few hours more only and you are delivered. Now it’s time to go home.

 

I hate buses-I hate them with a passion. My personal preference for comfort is Amtrak, but from California, its a fifty hour ride (including layovers and transfers to other trains) to Chicago, so it’s inefficient. The train from New York City or from D.C. isn’t bad because you get enough sleep that you can do the next run, but flying is your best option. You get home in a reasonable time and sleep in your own bed while coworkers are sleeping upright on the Amtrak or Greyhound. Either way, we Uber out of wherever we dropped off the truck and go to the airport or station of departure. Sometimes the Uber costs more so instead of spending thirty dollars on an Uber, we will spend five dollars and just have them take us to some public city transportation option. This sucks! Ever ride a city bus with a big suitcase full of everything you need for four days? This country boy didn’t till he started this job. Remember, where I live in Northwest Indiana has a way different climate than Southern California or Southern Florida, so you have a big winter coat with you and shorts for when you get to where you need them. So you have to get to the airport two hours early to go through security and now your bored because sometimes you get through rather quickly. You haven’t slept well for days and now you’re at the airport. Finally you get on your flight and before you take off, you are in dreamland then you land. At least five different times, I woke up upon landing…by smacking my face into the seat in front of me when the plane hit its brakes. Those were not among my proudest moments. Now that I am back in Chicago I take the Blue Line from O’Hare up to Millennium Station where I now wait on the South Shore to take me to Michigan City, Indiana and then my friend usually gives me a ride to Elkhart, Indiana where my car is or just to my house one town over and I deal with getting my car the next day after I sleep some fourteen hours.

 

You know you’re tired when you can fall asleep on a New York City subway or on a bench in Los Angelas’ Chinatown. After a while you get used to the fatigue—somewhat.

 

A friend of mine asked me a few months ago if I mean what I said in the piece I did titled No Regrets or if it was just a bunch of bullshit and he asked me why I haven’t written anything in a long time. The answers are: Yes, I meant every word of that piece and I still love what I do and because I’m always tired. To the latter, I will try to write more often and to the former, I see something new every run I’m on to fall in love with again. This job has made me appreciate America and what it means to be an American in a way I never thought was possible. Anyone that knows me knows that my startups are my passion in life, but this is a good way for me to see the country I love and discover new things and live new life experiences. As I travel, my goal is one new experience per trip and I have been successful. Some of the experiences are poverty to comfort to relaxation, to great food or drinks in a place I’d never imagine going in to.

 

I get paid to do what I do at two in the morning when I can’t sleep because something is on my mind. Driving clears my head and I do it constantly and it’s become an addition. Another friend asked about vacation and I had to explain to her that it’s not about going somewhere and stopping, I am addicted to the constant moving and as much as I loved it when I wrote my first piece, I love it more now. Even bad days don’t suck that bad. This job isn’t for everyone, but I go vagabonding every week, sometimes three and four times a week. The people I meet along the way and the experiences I have had in the last eight months are cumulatively the most valuable I have had in my entire life.

 

Thank you for reading this piece from Michael Beebe. For more about Michael, please visit TheMichaelBeebe.com or VagabondingAmerica.com.

Trapped in New York

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I love New York! There, I said it. I also violated one of the biggest rules of a columnist (not that I am one, but the same rules apply for a personal blog) and started a piece with the word “I,” but it had to be said. With all that, it’s an OK place to be trapped if the bartenders are amicable but I learned a few lessons.

 

The first lesson is, call if you’re going to be late. I was sick on one of my runs so I took a nap. One thing I know about Amtrak is that if you miss a train but had a ticket, you can just use it later. That is NOT true. I had a really good $104 deal from New York City to Elkhart, Indiana but I was sick and decided that it was better to nap for a few hours and just grab my return trip a day later. Yeah. That program doesn’t exist anymore. So not only did I lose my $104 ticket, but can’t get another one for that price for two days, not just one. The next day price is $200. So I now have two real options, stay at Hotel Pennsylvania for $99 plus tax or pay an extra $120 for the next day Amtrak ticket. Either way, it’ll cost me $220. According to Amtrak policy, you have until the time of departure to call and change a reservation, but they are not exactly forthcoming about that policy nor do that place a phone number that is easy to just find while in a New York City traffic jam. So yeah, I screwed up and the customer service rep and “your supervisor” all agreed that I was screwed and not getting my money back in any way, shape, or form.

 

The second lesson is that hotels don’t take cash in New York City. I attempted to check in to the Hotel Pennsylvania for the night but they require a credit card and then you can pay cash when you check out. Because of the nature of my job, I have cash on me and get paid via ATM card, not direct deposit to my bank. Also, I use a bank that’s local to where I live, so I can’t just run my deposit to the bank as soon as I get it. Basically, the $99 room rate is just a big joke that I can’t get because I have actual money on me.

 

Third is that bars close at 4AM, which can be good or bad, depending on how many drinks you have while at the bar (still to be determined), but right now I am REALLY sleepy! Are you really homeless while in a bar? I tend to think not.

 

Park benches are hard to find, even in parks and when you do find one, another homeless parson is on it already. There is a fine line between my job and being homeless and for such a nice night, I have crossed that line. With that, airports are great for being homeless. You are out of the elements and can sleep without being harassed too much, but I still suggest wrapping the straps of your bags around you.

 

My friend took pity upon me and charged a plane ticket for me so I just walked around for a bit and was homeless just over 24 hours. In conclusion, being homeless isn’t that rough if you are properly prepared and have a good social network of friends along with cash on your person. If you are a homeless advocate for whatever reasons…it was a joke and I am drunk. Screw you!

 

After I left the bar around 2AM I went to Penn Station. I decided to leave the bar early because I was at the point of needing either enough more to drink to get rid of my headache or it was just going to get worse while waiting there. While near Penn Station, I found a few open food carts and the one I picked was awesome. I had an Italian Sausage on a pita for only $6, the best prices on anything I found in New York City. My friend told me to take the E Train from Penn Station to where I needed to be. That didn’t make much sense since the Long Island Railroad went right where I wanted to go also…till I realized it did’t go where I wanted it to. My bad! So I took the Long Island Railroad to Jamacia Station then had to bring the E Train back toward Manhattan then I got off in Queens at Washington Heights so I could take a bus to LaGuardia. Yes. The first several times you in New York are very confusing and hard to get around. After several trips there, it’s still difficult to get around even when you do know where you’re going. After finally making it to the airport, I found a nice area of the food court to sleep in. I woke up around noon or so to a rather full airport and hung out and ate, then got on my 6:30 flight to Chicago.

 

My night of homelessness consisted of me getting hammered at Playwrights Irish Pub (which ironically has a VERY limited number of electrical outlets to keep your MacBook running so I’m not sure how they expect the next great play to be written here in 2017 on dead laptops, but the food is good and drinks are strong so I can’t complain. Tom, Carrie, and Catherine (she was from my last trip here) are all friendly and will take care of your beverage needs. I will defiantly stay at Hotel Pennsylvania when I have money on my card to check in. It’s a nice place with a good price if you aren’t paying cash and are willing to pay for your room online.

 

Thank you for reading this piece from Michael Beebe. For more about Michael, please visit TheMichaelBeebe.com or VagabondingAmerica.com.

Surprising South Dakota

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One of the hardest parts about this blog is finding something to write about. It’s not for lack of content, but because it’s hard to sum up some things in just a few hundred words. South Dakota along Interstate 90 is one of those places. I was amazed! South Dakota is a. State I never felt like going to…ever…and now I can’t wait to go back. The natural scenery mixed with the kitsch roadside stops make it one of the coolest places I have ever visited.

 

In Mitchell, South Dakota was the Corn Palace, which touts itself as being the only corn palace in the world (like they had to tell us that). Ever year the Palace cuts corn cobs in half and nails them to plywood, thus creating gigantic murals of different scenery and it’s actually really awesome. Mitchell is the town that leftover corn built. In fact knowing where their bread is buttered, City Hall is attached via lower-level entrench to the Corn Palace. It serves as a small music venue and has served as a stage for many a great artist, mostly ones our grandparents would appreciate. They have the obligatory crap sales stuff so you can get your souvaniours or other “Cracker Barrel front room” type products. They have ice cream for the kids and booze for the parents, along with all kinds of good old home cookin’ restaurants. The town itself has a plethora of antique shops too, which seem mostly like fronts to sell the crap from grandma’s house after she passed away, but I did see some really good, underrated finds there as well. For instance, there are a lack of Victorian homes there, yet a lot of Victorian era furniture and lighting fixtures for cheap in these shops.

 

Farther down the road was Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. This was a very interesting place. The town is built on an old drug store that grew up big and became a tourist attraction and along I90 you will see signs urging you to stop there for hundreds of miles before. It’s the Western version of “See Rock City” or “See Ruby Falls.” They have old time everything there from photos to dining plus a few saloons across the street and places selling Black Hills gold everywhere. While at Wall Drug, I ate a good dinner that consisted of sliced beef, green beans, masked potatoes and gravy, a dinner roll, and a slice of blueberry pie…all for just $23. Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that price tag on my dinner for what I ordered, but it was good. I’m not sure if it was $23 good though. This is another town where the city hall is right next to the tourist attraction and for good reason. There are jewelry and artisans all around along with your obligatory junk shops selling toys imported from China that will break in two days. The whole place is actually really cool and I want to go back sooner than later.

 

The I90 Corridor is basically a nice family friendly stretch of interstate through South Dakota that also includes casinos and these were some of the saddest casinos I have ever seen in my life. Aside from that, there were many Native American places selling “authentic Indian” goods and selling out their owe heritage, which doesn’t set well with me personally. All told, if you’re looking for family fun, a lot can be had in the I90 stretch of South Dakota.

 

Thank you for reading this piece from Michael Beebe. For more about Michael, please visit TheMichaelBeebe.com or VagabondingAmerica.com.

No Regrets

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Two weeks ago I quit my job without any real notice. Since then, I often wonder if I made the right choice. The job I took is totally not something I pictured myself doing and it was a spur of the moment decision to start driving trucks and see the country.

 

I was right!

Though I may feel bad about the abruptness of my departure, I know myself and after sixteen years in a dead-end job that I felt sucking the life out of me every day, I was complacent; if I didn’t leave like I did, I may have been talked out of it. The new job pays more and is a lot of fun, with opportunities to see things I never knew existed. A good friend of mine has been working for the company for about the last year and told me what all I needed to do to get in (which wasn’t really that extensive).

 

I’m writing this from just outside Jacksonville, Florida but in the last two weeks, I have driven 4,500 miles or so and it’s been AWESOME!!! I deliver delivery trucks for a mid-sized driveaway company. I had never heard of “driveaway” before, but basically I drive a delivery truck to wherever the client wants it and then I fly home (or however I want to get home). The pay is decent and the deductions are even better. Thus far I have been to Brooklyn twice, Los Angeles once, and now I am almost to Jacksonville in a Waffle House next to the truck stop my truck is in.

 

Brooklyn Trip 1.

While driving, I was nervous as hell. My friend was my trainer and we drove with very little deviation from our planned route. Most of Indiana and Ohio were rather boring traveling across the Toll Road. Pennsylvania was gorgeous! The rolling hills, the friendly people, the scenery were all great. At the East end of Pennsylvania the mountains get a little bigger, but not as bad as what the South has to offer, which gave me no real problems. New Jersey might as well not have a speed limit and then crossing into NYC was…busy. Yeah…rush hour in a delivery truck is not as much fun as it sounds. My friend drove first and I followed. I was still getting used to the truck, but it wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought it would be. We drove into Queens on our way to Brooklyn and I saw the most vibrant sea of humanity I have seen in my life. I drove through a Moroccan bazar…complete with Moroccans (they may not have actually been from Morocco). We hit this one area that had Arabic music, little tents set up on both sides of the road, people crossing over from one side to the other while ignoring traffic, and the pungent smell of Middle Eastern spices in the are. It was heaven. People were haggling over the price of cloth and garments and others were just walking around eating. We made our delivery and hopped on the subway which took us to the Jamaica part of Queens. The area had a large Hispanic population and I heard crimes against whites in this area is the highest rate in the city. With that, at no point did I feel unsafe or like anyone was going to take my stuff while here. We went to eat lunch at Delicias Caleñas, which offers Latin American food, not just the standard Mexican food we all love. After lunch, we took a train and then a bus to the airport for me to do another first in my life…fly commercial. I have never flown in a jet before and till then, wasn’t 100% sure that they really worked. After a long drive, I was exhausted and so was my friend. We boarded the plane and I sat down, strapped in, and gripped the arm rests tight. Then I took a nap while we waited for takeoff, which then went all the way through takeoff. I recall hearing the pilot say something over the PA and I woke up during the takeoff with a queasy feeling in my stomach and I was plastered back in my seat. With this, I felt the motion of the plane and wanted to freak out…then I fell back asleep. That part may have lasted 30-seconds. My friend even commented, “Wow, Beebe, I guess you were so nervous that you had to sleep through the whole thing.” Yeah. I woke up when the plane hit the brakes in Chicago. We took a train back to our terminal in Indiana and drove home for some much needed sleep…in beds.

 

Brooklyn Trip 2.

I saw a lot of the same stuff on this trip as the first time, but we flew out of JFK instead. We were running VERY tight and took an Uber to the airport, where we had the best Uber driver. Only in New York will you get picked up in an Uber where the driver has an Infinity. He would talk your ear off and after the 800 mile drive in an uncomfortable basic seat, his cooled leather seats felt amazing. He could talk to us all day and I wouldn’t have cared. Pro tip: if you drive Uber, NYC is the place to do it! We hit our plane and the doors closed maybe ten minutes after we got in the terminal. For this flight, I stayed awake for part of it, still nervous…till I started snoring.

 

LA Trip.

I have never been west of the Mississippi so this trip was full of firsts for me. We went through Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and finished in California so I added seven new states to my list in just three days. The first day was uneventful with some of the flattest land you’ve ever seen. Nebraska looked just like central Indiana with the sea of farmland that extended to the horizon, but as the sun slowly sat, the prairie light up and almost seemed to be on fire. I didn’t expect to see that kind of beauty in waves of grain, but there it was. The backdrop turned into a shimmering gold as I pulled over for a moment to just take it all in. We hit Colorado at night and slept till morning just East of Denver. When we left, I drove through Denver with no problem. As we approached the city, we could see the Rockies slowly starting to emerge from a fog behind and I was awestruck. Then I drove through that crap and I pissed off a lot of people behind and beside me. After getting a flat tire and dealing with the repair, we didn’t get as far as we wanted to that day and bedded down in the first town we came across in Utah with a truck stop. Utah seemed weird, like I may be abducted by aliens at any moment, but it had its own beauty to it as the sun sat and the sky turned navy blue to black across the horizon. The sun sat over the mountains, but not past the horizon which makes for a really cool sight. The depth of the blue in the sky is a color I don’t recall ever seeing in nature before. We drove through Utah, which had more mountains in it and more white-knuckle driving before making our way into Arizona. We were only there for less than one-hundred miles, but since the trucks are commercial, we had to get permits from the state to drive through (which seems unconstitutional to me since the federal government regulates interstate commerce). Either way, the rock formations changed to something definitively Southwest and it looked really cool. Fractured cliffs and gorges were strewn across the visual fabric. It was dry and warm. We hit Nevada next (another state that requires the possibly unconstitutional permit to drive a commercial truck through). As we hit the boarder between the states, it just got flat and looked like a desert you’d see in an old cowboy movie. We fueled up in Las Vegas and it was hot out there. The air conditioning in our trucks could barely keep up with the temperature and they talk about the “it’s a dry heat” crap but no, all it means as you sweat and as you sweat, it evaporates so your body’s natural cooling system isn’t allowed to work. Vegas was rather ugly because of the fine dust that seemed to cover everything like haze. I bet it looks great at night, but in the day, it was unimpressive and looks rather boring. We crossed into California and the Mojave Desert was 100 degrees. For some reason, it felt better than the 90 degrees in Nevada though and there was a peace to it. I always feared going to California because I wasn’t sure if I’d want to leave and I later found out that I was right. We approached LA in some of the worst traffic I have ever seen and it took over an hour to go twenty miles, but for some reason, my stress in my shoulders from driving in that stop and go traffic wasn’t as bad as it was in the Rockies. We made our delivery just outside of LA and went to dinner at a nice Korean Barbecue place named Doctor Chicken. The food was good, but after driving through 100 degree weather, I guess we weren’t that in the mood for friend chicken or a Korean version of sake. At dinner, he got an email and he then started using the F-word like a comma. Our flight was canceled with no explanation. Our plan was simple, to make our drop off, enjoy the LA area for a few hours, then fly to Chicago, and take the train back to our cars. Yeah…no…. We ended up with a room in a Motel 6 which wasn’t as bad as we thought it’d be. He wanted to Skype his girlfriend and I wanted a drink so I went to the front desk and asked the clerk if there were any bars within walking distance and he told me there were not. Crap! He told me I could buy a beer at the Circle K next to the hotel, but walking around town drinking something out of a brown paper bag just looks sad so I went for a walk instead where I happened upon some unedited hip hop music from a place with a sign that read “Cocktails,” which usually means it’s gonna be classy (haha). I went in and the bouncer did the “no talking bad ass nod” that I could come in. Whatever! I guess they gotta make it look good. I ordered a Long Island and it was $8. I’m used to $7 for them in Indiana, so I expected Chicago prices ($15 or so) and was very happy to pay the $8 for one (or two). The bar was a cross-section of the local area and I was in love with the place. It’s called Bottoms Up Bar & Entertainment. I had an awesome time. It’s just enough of a walk from the hotels that the tourists aren’t there, so it was a local place with local flavor and I may have a new favorite bar…2,200 miles from my house. After this, the next morning we got to the airport promptly two minutes late (thanks to a slow Uber driver, LA traffic, and our own lack of motivation) and missed our flight plus two standby seats to finally leave LA some 19 hours after we were originally scheduled to.

 

Jacksonville Trip.

This trip can be summed up in one word…RAIN!!! It rained from Indiana to Florida. When it didn’t rain, once I was down south, there were just bugs everywhere. I hope the next time down this way fares a bit better for me down here. Maybe a nice wintertime trip down here is in store.

 

I literally get paid to go vagabonding around the country and have the security of a paycheck while I do it. I am living my American dream for now so no, I don’t regret leaving my job and if anyone ever asks why I quit the way I did, I show them a picture from along the way and they usually get it.

 

Thank you for reading this piece from Michael Beebe. For more about Michael, please visit TheMichaelBeebe.com or VagabondingAmerica.com.

Rockets Red Glare

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This morning I should be waking up for the day, right around the time of this 9AM posting, with a dehydration headache and a sunburn. It’s become an annual tradition that came to an abrupt end last year. I know, sunburns aren’t healthy and I need to drink more water when I’m in the sun all day, but it’s one day a year so please, cut me some slack. Last night should have been the annual fireworks display in Michigan City, the culmination of an entire day of beach-going fun, but it didn’t happen.
Like so many people, I love going to see the fireworks. Any chance to see colored explosions in the sky is an excuse to go see a firework display and the festivities surrounding the birthday of our nation’s beginnings is the best excuse of all. There are a ton of displays on July 4th to choose from every year and the competition to pull an audience is fierce.
In past years, Michigan City has had the forethought of putting the air show off a week or so and holding it the Sunday following the Fourth of July unless the Fourth was Thursday, Friday, or Saturday; then it’d be a week from the Sunday immediately following. In this year’s case, it should be July 12. Mayor Ron Meer has unilaterally chosen to hold the festivities on July 4th in an effort to make it more of a local event. That’s a great gesture since he also killed the fireworks a year ago. With the competition for attendance at a 4th of July celebration, especially from its nearest neighbor, La Porte (the annual honorary state capital for the day).
The Michigan City Air Show (“air show” is another word used for firework shows that some communities use) is more than a holiday celebration and more than just a local community event. In the 1990’s there had years with a confirmed 50,000 people in attendance and estimates have ranged anywhere between 75,000 and 100,000 attendees. People make a full day of it and if you weren’t in Washington Park by 11:00 AM, you had to park off-site and walk to the park. There were food vendors, face painters, and helicopter rides till near dusk; it was literally you and 70,000 of your new closest friends in what looks like a Moroccan bazaar. Michigan City has a population of around 30,000 and if my math is correct, unable to produce the 50,000 people that would show up unless those people were visiting from out of town and having been part of the mass exodus at the conclusion of the show, I can assure you on the excessive traffic flow east out of town and at least ten miles of stop-and-go driving. Over the years, I’ve gone all major directions out of town after the fireworks and it’s like that in every direction.
This year Michigan City has a budgetary shortfall and with the economic impact that 50,000 plus people can bring to the city for just one day, it’s no small wonder the city has such a crisis this year. Thanks to the shortsightedness of Mayor Ron Meer, the city has to make even more cuts than already and that means cuts in services to the city’s residents.
The fireworks have a long standing tradition in the area of being plagued with crime and it’s pretty accurate. There used to be an annual shooting or stabbing and you can clearly see drug deals all around you. Poverty is a leading contributor to illegal activity, so if the city wants to eliminate crime, make it illegal for people whom are impoverished to be anywhere in public. This will be a fun feat since Michigan City has the second lowest cost of living in the nation right now and with nothing on the horizon to fix that truth; the city is impoverished and this tradition has been a source of community enjoyment for decades.
I ask that the next Mayor of Michigan City to have the vision lacking in Mayor Meer and restore this city-wide festival to its rightful day, away from any competition for other displays.
Mayor Meer’s solution was to cancel the fireworks last year because the city needed to cut costs and put it at a date and time where there is heavy competition for the event to reduce the economic impact tourists have on Michigan City for this year. A private group of citizens even tried finding it last year and was told that they needed 90-days notice to hold an event at Washington Park. Basically, the Mayor just didn’t want this to happen. He felt The People doing something on their own circumvented his authority over the city and he couldn’t tolerate that kind of descent. I hope The People remember his short sightedness when they go to the polls on Tuesday, November 3rd this year.
Mayor Ron Meer has failed Michigan City.
For more pieces like this one, please visit TheMichaelBeebe.com.

LinkedIn 301: LinkedIn Part 3

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My last piece, LinkedIn 201: LinkedIn Part 2, gave some good beginner advice, but today I need to focus on some more intermediate concepts. This is what will get you really noticed among your peers on LinkedIn.

 

 

View

LinkedIn offers a really cool option that lets people see who have viewed their page. Use this and see who all has looked at you. View them back. They will know you checked them out, but so what? That’s the idea here. That shows interest in them and they like being noticed as much as you do. With that, look at their skills. If you know them and have an idea that they posses the skills they say, endorse them. Either way, make sure you look any anyone who has looked at you. This is not a dating site where you want to be coy about who you’re looking at, but job searching is a lot like dating too. Sometimes you don’t want to be caught looking at the person because there will be a never-ending conversation about hair or them trying to sell you something (that goes for dating or sales people both). Either way, you never know who tomorrow’s customer or human resources executive will be. Get seen!

 

Share

One statistic I saw said that people should share something weekly on LinkedIn. I don’t know if that is the case, but I talked about the toggle switch in LinkedIn 101. By now, that toggle should be switched back to “on” from its default position and your connections will see your activity any time you have any. Have some! It gets you into their line of sight that many times. The numbers that seems to be the most common are two and three. Share or post between two or three times a week, though with this site, I’d suggest only two (that is personal opinion). You can share pictures, websites, posts, or just a quick status. Make sure they are professional! No one gives a shit about your photos of your trip to Tahiti. One thing I don’t like is that you don’t have photo albums. I want to set my Thirsty Thursday Tip of the Week photos into my personal LinkedIn page, but I don’t want to go back and add the first ten right in a row. I will do so, but with the toggle turned to off so other’s don’t see them added. I wish they added photo albums so things like my T3 could be separated from the future political cartoons HoosierPoliticsToday.com will host and I would also like to add.

 

Post

I separated this part because it’s so important. Every time I post a new piece on FullTiltBusiness.com, I use a plugin that automatically posts it to the business pages for the site on Google+ and Facebook and then my personal LinkedIn page. This embeds as a post. You also have the “publish post” option on your LinkedIn page incase you want to write a piece from your own blog. The casual passerby won’t notice if the post you did was written in LinkedIn directly or posted from an outside source, so don’t worry about that. Posting is important. It creates a link to an idea and people love ideas, especially when they are hiring you. A résumé doesn’t always shoe the ideas behind who you are on paper, but posting does; it can tell a company if you are a good fit for a potential job or not or if your views fall in line with the views of the company. As you can see from my LinkedIn account, I have recently founded a small corporation. With the potential exception of teaching college level again or working in radio again, I am not “job hunting” now, but promoting me and trying to get connections who will, in the future, be interested in the newly formed company and what we will be offering. So why bring that up? Unless you are directly involved in politics or religion and want to make a career path out of one of those two areas, DO NOT post anything about either on LinkedIn.

 

Acting as an intermediate overview, I hope this gave a good follow-up to LinkedIn 201 for everyone and it gave some ideas of things to try tonight. Now get back to work; it’s a weekday.

 

Connect with me on LinkedIn by clicking HERE.

 

For more pieces like this please go to TheMichaelBeebe.com.

How to Make the Most out of Network Marketing

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I know a big part of my audience is involved with various Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) organizations. Another name for an MLM is “Network Marketing.” The two are nearly interchangeable in every aspect, so I will just refer to them as MLMs since the word is shorter. This piece is directly related to that industry and ways to use multiple types of online tools to your advantage, but it will be of interest to any business as well. It is intended as a quick overview of what can be done online to help drive MLM style sales and use a generic MLM design for any examples. One thing that I do assume here is that you do understand how to use social media a little bit and know some of what I am talking about.

Overview.

First, what is Multi Level Marketing? A MLM is a group of people selling products or services in a higherarchy-style design that allows people to pass money from one level to another in exchange for these products and services. The people at the very bottom are the customers and at the very top are the owners. There are multiple commissions, again, paid out along this model. Each MLM is different, but they have a series of strict promotions based on benchmarks that a person must achieve. As you increase your level, you have to recruit more people to sell under you and build a team. The team building is typically done by a management-style pressure for lower level petiole you manage (called “downlinks” or “downlines”) to sell more and recruit new salespeople. Commissions are paid from the bottom to the top. The commission rates very and I know of one that allows a salesperson to earn six different commission rates at the same time. You can make some serious money in an MLM and most require the sales people to buy product in advance. Some (the good ones) simply give you a website or a link to promote so you get credit for your sales and the salespeople below you are catalogued into your commission rates. Just like any CEO, the top level makes the most money. My only critique of an MLM is that it doesn’t create new wealth, but simply passes wealth around. With that said, the bonuses paid to high performers and the amount of money some are making is amazing. A lot of people hate the idea of a MLM, but I have no feelings one way or another on the design and I think anyone who has a gift for sales and leadership should at least investigate being part of one, though my personal preference is affiliate marketing (which I will write a piece on for overview at some point soon). With that said, how do you market your product online?

Facebook.

Facebook (Business).

Normally I would post the Business Page after the personal page, but I’ll get to my reason for going out of order in a moment. Building a Facebook page is a simple task and if you need a quick overview on how to do it, please check out my tutorial at Tutorial 002: Build a Facebook Business Page. You can create just about any type of Business Page you want, but make sure you are choosing options that work best for the product you’re promoting. One of the best features of Facebook is the ability to schedule posts. That allows you to post things whenever you like for up to six months in advance of the posting.

 

Now why did I switch the Personal and Business Page order for just this section? Because of IFTTT, a website and selection of mobile applications that allow for automation of a multitude of social networking (and other) types of websites. IFTTT means “IF This, Then That” and is a series of algorithms that allow you to have one social networking site create a cascade into other social sites. Since a Business Page is able to be scheduled, this can act as a master link to the algorithm, including adding an auto repost to your personal Facebook page. You can download IFTTT on your iPhone or Android and use the website at IFTTT.com. I highly recommend their services, even if they can seem a bit complex.

 

Facebook (Personal).

One of the most common way for a person to use their Facebook page to their own advantage and move product is a simple daily posting. This is easy to do and gives you a good cross section of friends that are potentially like-minded. The biggest obstacle here is your other postings. I have run for office a few times now and I do have political discussions on my personal Facebook page, but I have also referred to people as “douche bag” and “ass hat” before, with the latter being one of my personal favorites and it has worked its way into my personal lexicon for everyday life. A lot of people don’t take “that guy” seriously. Some of these are people you went to high school with and they remember you from those days. How does someone I went to college with take me seriously? When I first did a public announcement that I was running for office on my Facebook page, one girl I went to Purdue-Cal with immediately responded with, “You? You’re joking, right?” Never the less, I was running and had to overcome this obstacle and be seen as a serious candidate. How do you overcome that obstacle with people remembering you? You remember them too. Everybody was a dumbass in school and then they got older. Your parents were dumbasses and so were your grandparents. The perception of a person from their Facebook posts isn’t the obstacle a lot of people might think they are, provided there are no racist remarks or overly sexist jokes. If you have to ask yourself if you need to be “reborn” on Facebook, the answer is “yes” and you should delete the account and just start over. If it was simple dumbassery, don’t worry about it.

 

So now that being a dumbass is out of the way, post daily. Post something pertaining to your business every day. Most MLM’s give a gigantic resource of pictures, product videos, and product samples that you can get pictures of. You have a URL you can embed in your posts and they show the links pretty nicely.

 

Facebook (Groups).

The Facebook Groups are an awesome way to communicate ideas to large (yes) groups of people. Depending on what you are selling, you can find a group to fit your needs and possibly more than one. There are two options here. The first option is to start a group and add your closest friends that are sympathetic to your needs. Ask them to network and add their friends and create it as an “open” group so there is direct advertising to the group. Your other option is to comment in groups. Find the Groups that match your products best and push for sales. Now you can’t really just add links to sakes sites without pissing some (a lot) of people off and being “the annoying sales person.” The best advice is to find people asking questions and answer them with helpful answers publicly. This helps build up a relationship with the people in the group and this can help you make some sales.

Twitter.

If you remember the “push and pull” method I talked about in my piece titled Pinterest Strategies that Work. Use it the same way on Twitter. That’s how you get leads. Just follow the followers of your competition products. If you sell a product similar to Herbalife, follow Herbalife followers and expect a 20% to 30% follow-back rate. Growth is not immediate, especially is you have no substantial content.

 

By going to Facebook.com/twitter, you can link your Facebook page to Twitter and post directly to Twitter when you post on Facebook. You’ll have to link your accounts, which is explained pretty easily and your posts on Facebook will then post on Twitter at the same time. That’s another great use of the Facebook automation.

Instagram.

You can’t automate Instagram, which is very unfortunate, because it’s a great resource. As I pointed out earlier, many of the products you sell will give you a gargantuan supply of product pictures. Load them on your phone and list them on Instagram! Do this now! You can’t schedule posts, but you can post while taking a leak or ordering at a fast food place from the app on your phone. Also, you can link the app directly to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and FourSquare. There are a couple others you can link and they are in languages I don’t speak. When linking Instagram to another service, look at the automation you have set up first. If you link to Twitter and Facebook, your Instagram will go to Twitter, Facebook and because of automation, back on Twitter so you’ll have two tweets at the same time of the same thing.

Pinterest.

Without going into any details, Pinterest is your target audience. There is one downside, though, is the lack of automation. Even with IFTTT, you can only send automation scripts from Pinterest, not to it, so while you can post things automatically that were on your Pinterest account, you can post from it. Don’t worry about this. You can post on Pinterest and reach your audience very quickly. With the various search options, you can easily target the group’s you want to attract and the mobile apps are freaking awesome. Post your information frequently and repin other people’s stuff. You’ll get people (eventually) letting you pin to their boards as well. Likes are good, repins are better. Try getting people to repin your pins.

Tumblr.

Tumblr is a blogging site. I will be discussing it in-depth in next week’s blog, but it works pretty well to write about topics you know well enough to discuss and write blogs about. You can also post pictures, video, and links to your product page and once again, it is able to be scheduled for when you want to post. Just like my push and pull method, you can follow the followers of the competition. As a word of advice, focus on the people who reblog other’s posts in their own feeds. That will allow you the greatest growth.

LinkedIn.

LinkedIn (Personal).

The how-to of setting up the LinkedIn account is less important than doing it. If you are proud of your résumé and want to show your involvement in the MLM, this is a great place to do it. You can brag about your accomplishments and brag to your connections about them. This can be a valuable tool in building your team and showcasing your skills and talents. The time is longer to get noticed, but the target market for a lot of MLMs are the ever-coveted 25-45 year old crowd and they populate LinkedIn in droves

 

LinkedIn (Business).

Like Facebook, you can set up a business (company) page. If you like what you do, do this to promote it. Make it personalized since an MLM is so large and you don’t have full rights to the company name, but you can make your own fan site that promotes a product you are selling with supplied product reviews, testimonials, and images.

Google+

Google+ (Personal).

This is analogous to a standard personal Facebook page, but more boring. This attracts a more no-nonsence crowd, so you (fortunately) won’t see many “grumpy cat” photos. Make frequent postings on this as you do with your personal Facebook page. It’s less cluttered with crap. Use this to your advantage and post away on Google+. It will add more legitimacy to your product and to you as a salesperson. By doing this, you can target your friends who otherwise dismissed you. It ties into your Facebook account if you set it up to do so and allows you to find contacts from there or people you have emailed from your Gmail account, so you should have no problem finding your already existing friends. I will warn that it has a slightly higher learning curve than Facebook, but you will get used to it.

 

Google+ (Business).

This works a lot like Facebook Pages and includes an automation system that allows for scheduling of posts in advance. That is a great design, but when coupled with IFTTT, it can move your posting up to the next level. Important areas to note are the clientele and the design. The clientele is totally different than the regular Facebook user. With this, in mind, they are usually more business-minded and that’s the information they are looking for in the site. The design is also a little different (insert the word “boring”) and that goes back to it being more business-minded. It’s very functional and no frills.

YouTube.

I was half tempted to add this as a subcategory under Google+, but I was talked out of it with the thinking that it is used as a separate entity, so it has it’s own separate area in my piece as well. YouTube is freaking huge! Everybody knows YouTube so it sells itself. It allows you to post videos of whatever you want. Get permission from your MLM that you work under and get hard video to upload. It will be branded as the company video, so they maintain the credit for it, but you can embed your own sales links into it. Product demonstrations are big right now with the most views and this could truly drive your sales with an infomercial-like strategy. In addition, you can monetize YouTube. You know those fifteen second commercials that play before every third video you watch? The person who’s site that commercial plays on (in its entirety without the viewer collapsing the screen) gets paid. Some get paid more than others, but they get paid. If you get a big enough audience and following, you can make a side income from these commercials.

FourSquare.

I’ll keep this short. Check in on FourSquare. Set up your home as an official FourSquare site (it costs $1 on a credit card) and that’s it. Make sure you check in every time you get home. Yes, your home is now a public place that people online see, but your name is in the phone book and you are a business owner, so suck it up. Instagram and Facebook will both integrate in various ways to FourSquare, so your checkins are also posted on Facebook and your Instagram photos can be easily geotagged for location. This helps you on Instagram because when you go out to eat you can share a photo to Instagram and check in to the restaurant at the same time. That puts your photo (of the products you are selling) directly on Foursquare when strangers look at that restaurant and check in there. It’s a whole new marketing outside of your personal network.

Forums.

Forums can be a great if you have an intimate knowledge of the products and services you are selling. To get started, type in a google search for “Business Forums” and replace “business” with whatever word you want that works with what you are selling. When you set up a profile, you can include a link to a website. For that space, include the website for your sales linkage. Many times, you can also add your personal LinkedIn account. Do so! Now search the topics that people have posted and help them. Just talk to them and offer advice. Do not go for a hard sell immediately. Answer a few questions in a few different threads. Advertise your product, but not overtly. Make sure people can contact you and do so directly, not just through the forum messaging system. This will help propel your target audience to your site more frequently.

Craigslist.

Yep! People forget Craigslist.com all the time, but they shouldn’t. Craigslist offers a wide range of items for sale and your website link, phone number, email address can pop up in searches for items people are searching for and these people are actively searching for products to buy. It’s the ultimate classified ad and it’s free!

The main goal of this writing was to show my readers what they can do to promote their product or service while spending just twenty minutes a day (at most) actively engaged. Not all aspects will work with synchronicity in both directions for automation, but by pre-scheduling posts, a lot of the issues can be dealt with easily and allow you more time to handle other aspects of your new career path. Each one of these listed sites will be the subject of a future video tutorial, starting with setting up a Facebook Business Page and other blog pieces with some descriptions of each of these setups. I may have to skip video on Instagram and Foursquare since they are designed primarily as mobile applications instead of websites with applications that simply accompany them.

 

Take care and be creative with your sales and promotions. You have to promote your product so a single potential buyer sees the product seven times in an eighteen-month period of time. This isn’t just me throwing a dart at a number or pulling it out of my ass. It’s an actual statistic and you can feel free to look it up. So for you to make your first sale, you have to have that person see your product seven times on Facebook in their newsfeed or in a combination of multiple feeds that they see.

 

As a final note, I would like to apologize to any grammar Nazis out there. I wrote nearly this entire piece in the notepad of my iPhone with a tiny keypad. It’s 3,000 words long, so give me a break and just read the damn thing for what it is.

 

For more pieces like this please go to TheMichaelBeebe.com.

LinkedIn 201: LinkedIn Part 2

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On April 20, 2015 I posted a piece titled: LinkedIn 101. It gave some awesome starter information for LinkedIn and I told you how to set up a basic LinkedIn page. Now it’s time to start getting more advanced and actually use LinkedIn to your full advantage. This is the first of a three-part follow-up series based on growing your LinkedIn presence with ascending numbers 201, 301, and 401 (just like your classes in college (get it?)).

 

Connections

Add people on LinkedIn! It’s a really simple concept that escapes many people. What is your dream job? Does one of your current connections already do it? Maybe not, but what if they start doing that job next week or have the ability to hire you into your dream job in the next week. I have many people in my LinkedIn that I have no idea who they are beyond a job title, but they are all valuable. As my readers probably all know by now, I volunteer with the local county Republican Party. With that, you better believe I invite my LinkedIn contacts to local GOP events, especially when they are fellow Republicans. I have added State Senators from the southern part of the state and secretaries to assistants of the State Auditor. Why? When I run for office again, it may be of use to have these people as LinkedIn connections and it may benefit them to have me as one as well. I miss working in radio. I loved that job. If I had the opportunity for a part-time job at a radio station, I’d jump at it. So I’ve added a few program directors and people who work in various parts of that field as well. It may be self-serving, but that’s what LinkedIn is.

 

Thank People

In the book titled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the author discusses sending “thank you” letters. LinkedIn is no different. If someone endorses one of your skills or simply adds you as one of their connections, thank them. It goes a long way to showing how cordial and humble you are, even on a website that is filled with me, me, me style self-promotion. It will be appreciated and it is very helpful. I use IFTTT for when new connections add me and it automatically sends them a personalized message internally expressing my gratitude. Yes, leave it to me to create a canned response in place of genuine thanx, but the recipient will, none-the-less, appreciate hearing from me.

 

Add

One piece of advice I got was to add a person a day. It’s a good goal to set. You will be constantly inundated with connection suggestions on LinkedIn, so why not use those to your advantage and add people? LinkedIn is a networking tool and it’s honestly one-stop-shopping. Yes, you can go to networking events in your community and meet people, but you can easily meet more potential connections on LinkedIn then you can at some business luncheon and after you’ve been at enough Chamber of Commerce meetings, you will start to know everyone in the room. This expands you outside of your small sphere of influence.

 

These are just some of the easier piece of advice to use after you first set up your LinkedIn page. None of this is very advanced and it can all be easily done from your smartphone while sitting at a long traffic light (disclaimer: don’t go on your smartphone while your car is on).

 

Connect with me on LinkedIn by clicking HERE.

 

For more pieces like this, please go to website for Michael Beebe, Spark Plug Strategies, or Full Tilt Business.

Increase Your Facebook Presence

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One issue many businesses have is increasing their Facebook presence. First, people think Facebook matters and it actually does, but it should only be used as one piece of your social media campaign. With that said, I hope to give some insight on how to grow a Facebook presence on the cheap. Yes, I will be breaking one of my cardinal rules in my advice and that means you may have to spend a few dollars. As my readers all know, I am one cheap bastard and I hate spending money on social media. My tips are geared around a frugal method on increasing your presence, but I will spend some of your money in this one as a potential option.

 

This was originally written as a short answer on a Facebook page to a friend of mine running for a city council seat. He wrote on his personal page that he only had 53 likes on his election page and that was out of his 200 or so friends. Actually, a 25% follow-back rate isn’t too bad for personal sharing only, but we need to look more into how to grow a Facebook presence quickly and easily.

 

The Meetup

Meet up with a couple friends at McDonald’s (or anywhere with wifi). Since this was written for a political campaign, I suggested McDonald’s as a way to be seen. Politicians need people to see them doing stuff in public and McDonald’s has so many people that come there on a regular basis that it just makes sense. Also, with the age of the people who sit around McDonald’s in the morning, it seems to have your potential voters right there. If you want to do this for a business, do so in a private place if you wish so as to keep this a secret. Have them bring their laptops and make them temporary administrators. This will allow them, like anyone, to invite people to your page. The difference is, when people get the invite it will say “Bob Smith wants you to like his page.” It becomes a personal endorsement from them and their friends view it as being an active partner in your campaign. Their friends will have a greater likelihood of liking your page than the standard invite from friends that says, “Bob Smith invited you to like a page.” There is a psychological component at play here and the only real difference is “his” verses “a” and that difference personalizes it for potential future likes.

 

Spend Money

Here it goes. If you spend about $25 or so, you can use the “promote my page” feature to get likes faster. Once you hit 50 likes, you can promote your page on Facebook. This is an advertising method that increases growth quickly. I recently saw one Facebook page spend $50 and added over 1,500 likes in five days after setting a maximum daily limit of $10. A month later, her engagement with her audience was phenomenal and she said it was well worth the money. You can target your advertisement to various groups and locations based on age and geography.

 

Pictures Sell

Okay, you wont actually make money with pictures. It’s more of a figure of speech, but pictures work. Add pictures and infographics slowly. An infographic is a picture with words that explains or inspires the viewer, like my Thirsty Thursday Tip of the Week. By Facebook default, hey stay in the newsfeed of fans longer than just a text update and increase the odds of your friends sharing your page’s post.

 

Share Bomb

We all know about the Ron (now Rand is doing it) Paul Money Bomb. They try and get supporters to get a little bit of money to them in a twenty-four hour period for usually a specific need. The share bomb is the same idea. Message your friends, arrange a share-bomb day, and have everyone share it at different set times throughout the day. Pick Tuesday to Thursday from 9am to about 6pm. Those are the most viewed times for Facebook and the times and days with the greatest interaction with Facebook users. Convince your friends to share a special post with their friends. Have them add it to groups, other pages, and with all of their friends on their Facebook walls.

 

A Share Deal

In a society, we all need to work with other people. Business campaigns are no different. You need others to promote for you and help raise awareness of your product and maybe you can help them. Mutual shares for each other’s pages can be beneficial for you and for them. They endorse your product and you endorse theirs. No, this shouldn’t be done with businesses that are in direct competition for the same product and customer, but take a supplier for instance. If you have a restaurant selling a specific brand of hot dog, work with the supplier to promote your Facebook page as you promote their product line. It can give you some new ideas on products to carry and they can get some new likes for you. This is the same for political campaigns; work with businesses. You need businesses to support you if you are a pro-business candidate. Some who publically back you will be willing to share your page on their site and you can talk up their business on yours. It’s good business for them to get new likes and it’s good for you to get that kind of exposure.

I really hope this gave some good insight for businesses and politicians to use in the future. This is not an exhaustive list of ways to increase your Facebook presence, but it’s a damn good start.

 

For more pieces like this please go to TheMichaelBeebe.com.

The Six Families

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Last Tuesday was the Primary Election in Indiana for municipalities and in that light, it’s time for our post-primary healing. I’m not sure if it’s by design, but primaries splinter our party into factions and then afterwards, we need to work together for a common goal of winning for our candidates. We need to let our wounds heal and put aside the differences that divided us and be a whole party again.

 

While researching this, I used Wikipedia (honestly everyone does and it was just for some basic background information so I could easily add what I wanted and see the layout they used) and found some baseline information on the six primary types of conservatives in the Republican Party. I have a quick rundown of the different main types of Republicans.

 

Fiscal Conservatives

This group wants a reduced spending and in that reduction, they want fewer social entitlement programs. They want lower spending, lower taxes, and lower government debt. Supporting a balanced budget over extra government regulations, they want every taxpayer to keep money in their pockets. Supply-side economics is king to the fiscal conservative.

 

Social Conservatives

The Social Conservatives base their entire political ideology on conservative principals when it comes to social interactions. They push for laws against homosexuality, drugs, and alcohol; while promoting Christianity in it’s many forms and pushing for a return to traditional values.

 

Paleo-Conservatives

This right here is the most common form of Republican. It’s a mix of both the Social-Con and Fiscal-Con to create it’s own unique breed that wants lower taxes and less spending and couples that ideology with pressing for fundamental Christian ideas to be prominent in the government.

 

Traditionalist Conservatives

Looking at this as a primal version of conservatism, it looks to reduce controls over people with the thinking that people will control themselves. Traditionalists believe that the smaller government entities should have the greatest influence of the people it serves, while being controlled by those very people. In essence, a nation is made up of small groups with a weaker central government that these groups control. This is anti-jingoistic by it’s very nature.

 

Neo-Conservatives

Jingoistic in nature, this group believes in promoting America, American interests, and American business; if necessary, by force. Neo-Cons are the anti0communist movement and were created in the effort to fight the ideas of communism and socialism. They believe the American “sphere of influence” in the world is one of our most important potential assets.

 

Libertarian

This is with the lower-case “L” and not part of the Libertarian Party that has sprung up, but it closely resembles the Libertarian Party. They want lower taxes, fully free speech, and almost no gun control. Many believe in the concepts of a “fair tax” or “flat tax” at the federal level and want the IRS abolished.

 

Additionally, each of these six groups has moderates in their ranks. A person who cares about the budget, but doesn’t care about gay marriage could be a moderate fiscal conservative. The groups tend to mirror each other at times, but have distinct differences to the point that each faction is, itself, factioned.

 

Each of the six faction of the Republican Party refers to other factions as RINOs, Republicans In Name Only, and our party has never been more in need of unification.

 

Each of these six groups has negative feelings and prejudices against the others. Instead of looking at our differences, we need to start looking at what unites us as a group. Lower taxes and fewer restrictions on businesses seem to be the two points all factions agree on so we could start there. This is not the time to even discuss what points and projects we are okay with, but just that we need to reduce taxes. We need reduced restrictions on businesses, but, again, to what level is a moot point at this time. Let’s unify based on what we agree on, not fight about what we disagree with. There is plenary of time during the primary races to debate, but the day after, we need to have an organized, solid front for which we stand, focused on the points we can agree on, and not constantly fighting deep into general election season about our internal differences.

 

Let’s discuss lowering spending. Where can we all agree that spending cuts need to be made? Where do we want these cuts and how deep of cuts can we, as four different factions, agree to go? Let’s ask questions like that and work together instead of apart. We have too many commonalities to stay so splintered. Yes. We have differences.

 

We need to go back to basics in our own party and build a stronger, more unified Republican Party that will be a lasting testament to, at least, the most basic of conservative values that we all cherish. One former GOP County Chairman created an idea that helped us do that. He created “The Five-Tenants of the Republican Party.” A group of candidates running for the general election sat down with our chairman and worked together to make up a list of five things that we can’t disagree on. We need lower taxes. We need more jobs. We need lower crime. I can’t remember what the other two were, but you get the idea. Who can dispute that we need more jobs? It was something that unified our party and our candidates that year and it was rather effective at creating a singular message for us to push. Even though we each may have a different take on these ideas and how to accomplish them, we agreed on the principles. As you may or may not have guessed, I was one of the candidates that year. I was asked about how lowering crime could be done. It’s one of the primary ideas that we are using. I responded with how creating jobs would be a deterrent to people committing crimes. It actually wasn’t a bullshit answer and I firmly believe that lower unemployment also lowers crime rates. The candidate running for Judge that year had a different answer, as did the Sheriff candidate. Though we had different answers, we held a unified front.

 

For more pieces like this one, please visit TheMichaelBeebe.com.

Promoting with Facebook Photos

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Yes. I am actually dedicating an entire piece to Facebook photos and how freaking awesome they are for networking. There’s a shit-ton of different ways to use them to increase personal, product, or brand awareness. I had the idea for this piece after I helped out with a county cleanup day, so I will probably just go through the whole process and probably use some of the stuff I did and name a name or two.

 

First I need to talk about the basics. In your personal account, go to the area you would update a status. You have three choices; “update status,” “add photos/videos,” or “create photo album.” You want to click “add photos/videos.” It then lets you select which photos to upload. Click your photo and wait a moment so it’s uploaded. Above the photo you can add a caption. Do so. Below the photo you will see your own name tagged. If there are more people in the photo that you are Facebook friends with, add them. Facebook has done a great job with facial recognition and it knows the difference between faces and other round objects. Select the faces and scroll through or type in the names of your friends. You also have a button with a smiley face in it. That’s to add an emotion. That’s not necessary, but some people like to see those. Then there is a final button that has a pin for pinning a location. Pin the business the photo was taken in. Once you post it, you can go to the “edit” button and now you’re able to set a date and time to your picture.

 

So those are the six basic elements and how to initially post a picture. Now I will break down the six elements and give a piece by piece account of what you are really doing and how to use them.

 

Picture

Make sure this is a picture you want the public to see. A picture is worth a thousand words and it may be shared often by others. The picture needs to tell a story itself. Some people may only see the picture and move on. This is the point where you need to sell what happened by the picture you are showing.

 

Caption

When I did the county cleanup day, I was participating with the LaPorte County Solid Waste District who organized the event and I was working with the Michigan City Republican Club. By mentioning the LaPorte County Solid Waste District in my post, they received notification that I did this, as did the Michigan City Republican Club. They were able to directly comment on my picture as a Page and their fans (people who “like” their page) are able to see that they commented on my photo, and my friends see the comment they made. You can also add friend’s names to the caption as a tag so they know they were “mentioned” in it and it will be seen on their personal Facebook wall.

 

Tag

Tag everyone you’re Facebook friends with that are in the photo. They posed for the picture, so they won’t (usually) care. The picture is now set as one of their pictures too. This allows friends of your’s that don’t know each other to potentially network, but furthermore, it puts your name out there for all of their friends to see. If your friend has one hundred friends that you don’t know, all one hundred of them now see the photo with you in it. That is just good marketing and since people tend to be similar to their friends, you have just networked without leaving the comfort of your computer chair. In my case, there were six other people so I networked with over 1,000 people that I don’t already know just by tagging my friends. Now I wasn’t trying to sell a thing by what I did. I am just using this as an example. If it had been an election year, in my personal caption, I would have added my election page as well to get that caption to be read by those friends of the friends.

 

Emotion

Some people love them and others hate them. I ascribe to the latter, but I understand where they are coming from. I choose not to use them. So how was I feeling that day? Was I “determined,” “tired,” “sad,” or “angry?” I wasn’t really any of them. I was in a decent enough mood for being up at 9AM, but it adds a certain amount of humanity to the posting.

 

Geotag (Pin)

Pin the location. We ended our day at Walgreens. They allowed us to stage there and use it for parking and have the LaPorte County Solid Waste District pick up the bags of garbage we collected. That’s where we posed for the picture in front of the bags of garbage and they have a lot of people. Now people check in everywhere and sometimes they tell a little too much about themselves. I wouldn’t be shocked if I saw, “Picking up my Valtrex” then geotag Walgreens. That stays on the Walgreens Facebook Page as a check-in and people see it. By pinning my picture there, it shows all seven in my group at Walgreens that day, adds a picture (which is likely to be viewed), and can increase interest in you (you, your product, service, or whatever).

 

Date

Date the photo. It’s easy enough and it helps establish a timeline. I know it sounds a little too intrusive, but if your purpose is to increase the awareness of something, it works!

 

If you operate a Facebook Business Page, everything works basically the same way here and it increases your brand awareness of the “product” you are trying to sell to people.

 

Facebook is a social network, which means it’s a network, first and foremost. Use the networking power of Facebook to create new potential contacts and you will be happy you did. While running for office, I’ve heard “social media doesn’t win elections.” Ask President Obama about the validity of that statement and if he agrees with it, but it’s sort of true. Signs don’t win either and neither do postcards. What does win an election? Votes! Votes win elections and the way you get votes is by those various types of contacts, including social media. Though you cannot rely on Facebook as your sole means of advertising, it needs to be added to your marketing mix as a way to promote yourself and your products. It takes 3.5 contacts with a buyer to sell them a product if they are thinking about it. Facebook is just one sales method and with that picture I posted, I just put my name in front of 1,000 people or so.

 

I would like to point out that I am not running for anything and this is my third year helping with this annual project. At no point have I done this to try winning an election, but if I were running at the time of a cleanup day, I would wear my campaign shirt. I actually enjoy the service I do and it is not a personal means of self promotion to me and I hate when people do causes like that for personal gain and self-promotion. With that, I understand that you can do so and I was using it as an example since it was a recent event and started this piece within ten minutes of posting the picture.

 

For more pieces like this, please go to website for Michael Beebe, Spark Plug Strategies, or Full Tilt Business.

Personal Efficiency

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Why did you go into business for yourself? I bet it wasn’t as a means to avoid your family and miss your friends. At a certain point, “daddy has to work” or ” mommy is bringing home McDonald’s” just doesn’t cut it and you need to scale back your time at work. How do you do that? Why should you do that? Does your family really “understand” why you’re not home?

 

Let’s go with the last part first. Does your family really “understand” why you’re not home? Absolutely not! For a little while they will, but eventually they will want to see you more than your cash flow and resent you for not being there. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine, but don’t be shocked if they grow more and more distant from you over time. Let me play out a scenario for you. You work all the time, but you have two kids. Now your two kids want for nothing. You teach them work ethic by always being at work. You make the kids study and send them to college and give them an opportunity you never had. Now they graduate and get jobs where they put in the same work load you did. You retire and want to spend time with your family but it’s too late. They are gone, resentful that they never really felt important to you (if it’s true or not doesn’t matter as much as their perception of the truth), and they are just as busy as you were; missing every holiday. You can say how proud you are of them, but you know you wish they would come visit. Turnaround is a real bitch.

 

I’m not proposing being home constantly, working from home (which I couldn’t do long-term) or anything radical. Every entrepreneur needs to establish a work-life balance. This can be established by observation of key distractions at work and asking the key questions of how to fix them.

 

Establish a Process.

The first recommendation I have is to look at your routine tasks that have a set process that repeats. How much time do you spend repeating the same task on a daily basis? Generally this task can be broken down by various methods. When I’m working on FullTiltBusiness.com, most of my work is now automated. With the exception of the writing of pieces like this one (which is generally written on my iPhone while I lay in bed or while I wait for waitresses to bring food out), I generally spend thirty minutes a week on Full Tilt Business. Sometimes I know that isn’t possible and need to put a specific amount of time into growth of something or designing a new section, but I generally only do 30 minutes a week. Thirsty Thursday Tip of the Week (T3) is automated on Facebook. Facebook posts directly to Twitter. I post myself to Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and the FTB LinkedIn business page. That takes fifteen minutes. That’s Thursday. On Monday my blog posts. I use an interface that posts to Tumblr, Facebook (which automatically posts directly to Twitter), Tumblr (when the interface works), Google+, and my personal LinkedIn page. I manually post to Tumblr (when automation didn’t work), Pinterest, and the LinkedIn business page. I share it on my personal Facebook and Google+ accounts and I am all done. It’s not worth it to me to hire a virtual assistant to handle all of those tasks. With VA’s working for as low as$2 an hour, the price is there, but I can’t justify spending $1 a week for these routine tasks. Do you have to repeat the same process over and over again? Does bookkeeping take up half your day? It might be a faster and more efficient use of your time to email scans of your daily receipts and email them to a virtual assistant in the Philippines to work on organizing for you. You create the process and they can duplicate it and you can’t even find an illegal to work for the wages they work for over there.

 

I know it was a long preceding paragraph, but the concepts of the duplicating of a process and using a virtual assistant are potentially two sides of the same coin.

 

Outsource.

Moving on, what are the other things you can or need to do? How about a lawn service? As a hypothetical, let’s say you have a lawn service and you’re doing well. You have a couple crews and they are working all the time. You have employees out there working and you’re making good money, but you have to be the boss. So why do you have employees? With all the independent contractors doing that work, why not work with one to represent your company and go out to do the work for you? Let them handle all the human resources crap of the crew they run and you just make your same profit. Now you can be on the phone for the day and make your contacts with clients without pushing a lawnmower yourself. Most importantly, you can reduce your overhead from keeping a full sized garage full of lawn equipment to just keeping an office space.

 

Website.

Using the same lawn care service as an example, how can a website help you? We all know websites are fantastic marketing methods, as are social media accounts, but what more can a website do? How about booking customers? With various types of simple widgets and low-cost paid services, your business can accept scheduled jobs and set prices automatically. Customers can pay with credit cards online and the money is directly deposited into your account, minus their fee. This benefits everyone involved. While you’ll make slightly less money per client, you are not limited by the number of contractors you have that bring their own equipment and you won’t run out of storage space.

 

With maximizing productivity as your main goal, you can have it all. You can have the business everyone knows, the family life you dreamt about, and extra time to go golfing.

 

Why did I write this piece for today? On April 21 I bought the domain name HoosierPoliticsToday.com, which is designed to be a political blog emanating from the great Hoosier state. On May 1, I will be forming Beebe Digital Media, Inc, as an entirely new venture, which is owned by my holding company and will feature a large scope of associated websites. I needed to remind myself of this more than my readers, but I think my readers will appreciate the information from here.

 

For more pieces like this please go to TheMichaelBeebe.com.

LinkedIn 101

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According to Alexa, LinkedIn is the number thirteen site in the world and number nine website in the US. With the number of job-seekers, it’s no small wonder why, but LinkedIn is more than just job seeking. LinkedIn is the modern, more professional version of comparing penis size. Your friends and colleagues post something new so you feel the need to out do them. Your buddy from college learned Spanish and added it to his, so you learn Japanese. It seems like a lot of competing, but it’s really motivational for individuals.

 

 

So who uses LinkedIn? Everybody! It’s used mostly by job-seekers across the board to look good in front of human resources people, but it really lets people show their entire résumé online. Artists can show work, writers can show off their latest pieces, and businessmen can talk about their latest accomplishments. It is literally business bragging.

 

Personal Information. 

When you set up your account, make sure to add your photo. Even if you’re ugly, set the photo up. People like to see who they are talking to. Add all contact information you want to give out. This includes email addresses and phone numbers. This allows people who already have your contact information to find you easier and add you. These are friends and colleagues. Being popular is very important on LinkedIn. I’ll explain why friends are important later.

 

Résumé Section. 

Be thorough. Add your full job history, dates, responsibilities, and anything else it asks for. This gives your work history and human resources people look at it to see if you are a good fit. Even if some of your work history isn’t relevant to the job you are seeking, it may prove handy to show how well-rounded you are.

 

Endorsements. 

LinkedIn will ask you about specific job skills. Add them. If you know PowerPoint, let LinkedIn know about this. As you add these skills, they will pop up to allow your contacts to endorse you and you endorse them. One tip I need to throw in here is you should never endorse a skill that you have not directly observed. With that, text all your buddies on LinkedIn and have them endorse your skills after you endorse theirs. Don’t endorse every skill they have, but just ones you have directly observed. It shows who all endorsed a skill to any third-party who views your page, so it’s a red flag if it’s the same person endorsing every skill you claim to have. Make sure you have all skills listed, even skills that aren’t associated with your current because you never know who will see your profile and what they may be interested in.

 

Other Stuff. 

LinkedIn allows for other bragging rights beyond skills and will constantly ask you about these areas. Have you returned to college? Have you learned a new language? Are you published or a contributing author antes here? Add as much as you can about yourself and LinkedIn will give you just about every possibility you can think of. They also include links for portfolios, so artists and writers, take note. That works for you.

 

Premium. 

I don’t use the paid premium version and throughout my pieces, you’ll see I mostly only talk about free methods to use social networking, but there is a premium upgrade service and from my understanding, if you’re looking just to find a new job, it’s completely worth the price, so I give it an untested recommendation. I believe in the product that LinkedIn is that much.

 

Final Tip.

In your settings there is an option that has a toggle that allows your updates to show up in the feeds of your friends. While building your page, toggle it to the off position. Everything you do will show up to your entire contacts list and they will get annoyed with you as you make updates while building the page. After you are done setting it up, then toggle it back so your updates show up in the feeds of your contacts. Now when you get that dream job of yours, they will see it, but they won’t see every change you make. Ask yourself if you’re changes will just start to piss off your contacts and if the answer is “yes,” toggle it to the off position and back on once you’re done with upkeep-style changes.

 

I rank in the top 39% of my LinkedIn connections. It’s a nice feeling since I was never studious enough in high school or college to rank that high and I’ve taught myself and had others teach me many things which I excel at. I know I need to do some more work on my personal LinkedIn Page, but I’m happy with my current rankings since I’m not a job seeker currently.

 

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Dyngus Day

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Happy Dyngus Day!!! (“Szczęśliwa Dyngus Dni” in Polish) is an awesome Polish holiday. In the US we celebrate it a little bit differently than in Poland. In Poland, it is more of an impromptu wet tee shirt contest and in the US, we may see nudity, but it’s just because people forgot where they put their clothes while drinking. So what is this holiday with a funny name? It’s a Polish holiday. I equate it to being Polish Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is the day before Lent starts where you go out and do all of the bad stuff that you can’t do for the next fourty days till after Easter. Dyngus Day is the day after Easter so it, like Mardi Gras, is not a set date, but based on the date of the Easter holiday. For a quick read on Dyngus Day, CLICK HERE and get some history on the day. So it’s a bit different in the US and where I live, La Porte, Indiana, it’s REALLY different. It’s just a drinking holiday. We turn our city transportation bus into a drunk-wagon and we have a city-sponsored pub crawl around La Porte.

 

So why does anyone care? Just read on. You’ll get it. If you are from San Francisco, you probably have never heard of Dyngus Day, but I guarantee the beer rep to your local bar knows very well what Dyngus Day is. So how do we celebrate it? Locally it is celebrated on other communities as well, but none like La Porte. In South Bend, it’s a big deal as well, but they have polka bands and Polish food. You eat, drink, and you are merry. In La Porte, it is a city-sponsored pub crawl and it is fun! Bars in Indiana can open at 7AM. By 8AM, some bars already have over-served people, but there is an “unofficial” suspension of public intoxication laws (along with public indecency and indecent exposure). The police just don’t have the time to deal with this. Our city buses take drunks around from bar to bar on the route, with one bus being reserved for the mayor and her closest friends. New Years Eve is just a practice run for Dyngus Day in La Porte. Expect shitty service and long wait-times. That’s the norm today. The bars simply don’t have the manpower to serve well and why should they? They are making money hand over fist today. Every beer rep knows about Dyngus Day because of the amounts of money that is brought in today. It is amazing. By some estimates, bars bring in an entire third of the money for the whole year just today.

 

The local Tavern Owner’s Association pretty much runs today. There are ten bars on the bus route. They fill out an application form and are paid members of the association. The ten bars are chosen based on their history of being on the route in previous years and if someone dropped out of the route, you can maybe get one of the coveted spots. Even bars not on the route make a killing today. The money flows in like tequila goes down for every local bar. It is perfectly acceptable for people to call off work today to “to dyngusing” and many offices will just be closed today since no one will show up to work. Tomorrow is the day for Dyngus Day hangover call offs. Either way, the money coming in is fantastic.

 

So what does any of this have to do with Full Tilt Business? I talk about marketing a lot in my pieces and this is nothing but a marketing holiday and it relies heavily on social marketing and standard marketing. Every bar you go to in town has the Miller signs that are locally advertising Dyngus Day and that individual bar and the Bud Light Girls are usually in town for the day. The Tavern Owner’s Association is constantly updating the Facebook page and working with each and every bar on the route. Each of these bars works in unison because the social advertising, beyond just a single social media outlet, is required for today to be a success. You will see Twitter, texting apps, Facebook, Google+, and just about every other social media outlet out there and brand everything they possibly can. Market branding is essential for a day like today to take shape. Instead of competing, each business on the route works together and everyone is successful. The Tavern Owner’s Association has moved beyond competition and into the realm of cooperation of its members.

 

The question I am posing now (yes, the thesis is in the fifth paragraph) why do businesses feel the need to compete when locally, cooperation seems to be working better? Can tattoo shops, shoe stores, restaurants, hotels, nail salons cooperate with each other and work to make everyone’s business stronger among various segments? Without price-fixing, businesses that work together with other businesses succeed more than those that do not. What does every billionaire businessman have in common with each other? They all work with others. The thing we were all graded on in kindergarten that said “works well with others” is the thing that determines success in business. I believe this factor to be the single most important trait in business. The deals that a business owner makes with the interests of others in mind will be what makes the business successful. The ten bars on the Dyngus Day route and the Tavern Owner’s Association know this first-hand. Local trade organizations for your industry are essential to your success and the ability to work within the trade groups. In an absence of these groups or if they are too expensive to join, please consider meeting with your competition and make them your cooperative. Farmers have used this method for decades with the co-ops and have done so successfully because they have a shared commodity. The co-op method can turn your local industry into a commodity.

 

Na zdrowie!

 

For more pieces like this, please go to website for Michael Beebe, Spark Plug Strategies, or Full Tilt Business.

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