Social Media Sites Have Extended Your Network

As social media sites have developed, people can reach across states, nations and contents to find others similarly situated to themselves with aligned interests. Social media has essentially created a way to network on a phenomenally large scale.  The incredible power of this comes when the individuals begin to organize (virtually of course) and share information with greater efficiency and more effectively than the corporate counterparts can through traditional means.

Information Dissemination – The Art of The Buzz

Social marketing is the art of the buzz.  A buzz basically entails a group of like minded or similarly situated small business owners and marketers sharing information at a large and fast rate.   Like a colony of bees, groups share information at an incredible rate. The groups chew and filter, and research and write about the information. Predicting which bit of information will have the greatest interest or longevity is an art that is picked up only as you share, and track how your information is buzzed about. If your information becomes the center of a serious buzz, the eventual result is a massive amount of exposure. The single business owner has been able to put out as much or more content than a larger better funded operation because he relies on the colony. He the chain reaction that becomes the buzz is what he sought and achieved.

Keeping Up With The Flock

For being able to stay on top of the groups of friends, I have not seen anything that beats Flock. The nice thing about the social network management being built into the browser is that you can freely navigate around the web, work and develop in a FireFox based browser, or work in other applications, and your friend networks with all the alerts are always up and available. This makes communication fast and extremely manageable. The new twitter enhancements have made it the best twitter application to manage tweets from as far as I am concerned because you don’t have to leave the browser to tweet — but you also don’t have to stay on a certain page to tweet either.

Following RSS In Flock

One final plus is the ability to manage your RSS feeds and seamlessly post and drop back and forth into your social network from your RSS feeds. This makes being a master dissemination much easier.

Flock: I give it two thumbs up!

Posted via email from spencerrose’s posterous

Don’t worry, I am not about to advocate the purblind pollyanna approach to positive thinking that seems to be rampant among the social network entrepreneurs.  The harsh reality is that we are in a very bad spot right now. If you are not convinced of this, Marc Faber has now compared the US economic system to Zimbabwe (and yes I know he makes a living spouting catastrophic prophecies) .CNBC video.   This “spend our economy back to health” concept is a bad idea.   We may not end up in hyperinflation problems to the degree Faber predicts, but a potential 12 trillion of debt with a drastically shrinking tax revenue source is a bad thing for a national economy.  We are in trouble, but we are in trouble as a nation.  Each citizen still exists as an individual, and the individual can still thrive even against the slide of the masses.

Russ Darrow is an example of individuals who create their circumstances rather than be dictated by them.  He comments that “A good sales man is recession proof” on the NPR report.  I considered how the Darrow Group’s sales people were creating success in the face of the current auto-odds, and determined that they were probably light years ahead of the average car sales-person in networking.  Every time I walk onto an auto-lot I am  besieged with hungry sales-piranhas.  I bet the good sales people at the Darrow Group are never on the lot unless they are signing paperwork.  I bet they are constantly in the community, networking, making friendships, and helping other people.  There are still a lot of people buying cars out there, there are just too many auto-dealers operating like fly traps for all of them to enjoy success.

This is how business in America is going to be for the next ten years – competitive.  In my opinion, that is good.  I am a little bit of a darwinist, however (in business, not in creation).  I think the time is coming when the nation will no longer be able to borrow enough to create its prosperity illusion through welfare and subsidies.  At that point I want to have created my circumstances and not depend upon favorable winds of happenstance.  There are people who will become much poorer over the next ten years.  There are also a lot of people who will make a lot of money as the US shakes and gyrates itself to stability now that the debt-spend and inflated asset base to its economy has disappeared.   Think about it, the media moguls are making tons of money publishing fear right now.  I prefer creators like myself and other business builders to be the ones pulling in the dollars.  I have more confidence in the real-entrepreneur to philanthropically manage his or her wealth for the benefit of the poor once the welfare tap has run dry.  Thus, my appeal is to those thinking of starting a business, or who have started a business and times are tough – you can make it.  Ask Russ Darrow.  Even in a down economy, you are the master of your destiny.

I read this article on MSN.com two days ago: Stop Listening to Suze Orman. It is by James Scurlock from “The Big Money”. The problem with guys like James, is that they do not understand entrepreneurialism for 90% of Americans. Let me explain:

My father was a successful pediatrician, and I thought that getting a professional degree made you successful. Thus, in 2002 I went to law school. What I did not understand was that a professional degree, while it makes you generally a better thinker, boxes you into a mode of thinking that kills entrepreneurialism. About two years ago I finally shed all the fears and the “that won’t work” concepts that higher education jammed into me and buit STARTrightllc.com. What I learned was irreplaceable. My Father was a successful entrepreneur and that made him a successful pediatrician. From the very beginning, my Father realized that if he was subsumed by the HMO’s in the state he would struggle financially and his independent life would definitely change.

Guys like James speak from the “higher education” point of reference. He picks apart Suze’s financial advice and gives examples as to how there were better options. He thinks the base of her being a useful “guru” to many in society revolves around her ability to give the right stock tip, or the right career advice. It doesn’t. Suze’s usefulness, despite her wardrobe woes comes from her ability to jazz people up (also known in the non-skeptical world as inspiring) to make life changes. These people have lived above their means, and $30K in credit card debt. At that level, it does not matter what stocks are hot, you are screwed. If you get enough people to make a real life change, and they in-turn sign your praises, it doesn’t really matter what stock you are telling people to buy.

When I graduated from law school in 2005, I was not sure what type of firm I wanted to be chained to for the rest of my life.  My wife Ashleigh and I moved to North Carolina because we felt it was a good place to start.  When we got there, we found it extremely difficult for me to get a job.  I had graduated from a top 20 law school, but for some reason, I could not land that first law job.  Looking around for something to start working at, I found a gig speaking with a real estate promoter.   During this time, I began to study the legal discipline of asset protection in depth.  What I found was a field that I loved.  Small business strategies and tax planning became my first love.  As I coached business owners, I began to fashion the idea for STARTright.   I started working on STARTright in the spring of 2006, but financial needs forced me to seek legal employment.

In the fall of 2006, I started working for a law firm in Mesa Arizona.  This is where STARTright really began to come together. In January of 2007, I moved to Utah to get family support.  In Utah, I found some Angel Investors and with new capital and lots of enthusiasm, I got started.  I spent the next seven months developing the concept and trying to get my ASP coders to make it happen.  After seven to eight months of work (and knowing nothing about programming) I realize the product created does not work very well.  My coders had fought and made bad decisions and … long story short, I got taken.  

In August of 2008, I found a php programmer who was awesome.  I had learned a great deal myself, and when together we retooled the entire architecture in four months.  It runs like a dream now.  It was the hardest three years of my life, but I can honestly say that I finished what I STARTed.  

By education I am an Attorney, and pretty darn good one.  By occupation, I have become a jack of all trades.  This blog will contain very little of my thoughts on the law.  This blog will be my personal blog where I talk about what I think as a business owner, entrepreneur, internet marketer, father, citizen and Christian disciple.  I hope you enjoy.