I got no less than five invitations yesterday to try Google+, the new social network from Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). Unfortunately, I can’t use any of them. Why? Because I pay for Google. I’ll give you a second to process that. Yup. I use Google Apps to run shankman.com and all the shankman.com emails. Because of that, I have no way to link Google+ to my account, because you need a Google profile for it, and Google Apps (the thing I pay for) doesn’t support Google Profiles. Still with me? Not sure what kind of logical customer service it is to treat the people who pay for your service worse than the people who get it for free, but that’s apparently [...]

Welcome to Volume Four of “Your Twitter Questions Answered on a Plane! This trip finds me on TG (Thai Air) 214, headed from Phuket back to Bangkok. We runnin’ this thing. Let’s go. @dartthrowtrader wants to know the best way to train interns to answer the 3-5 HARO queries per week that match what he does. My recommendation? Don’t. Answer them yourself. If you’re good, it’ll take you two minutes out of your day, 3x per day, to find the right ones and answer them. If you have interns, you can BCC them so they learn, but to find people right away and “train” them to have your passion? Probably won’t happen, which will greatly diminish the number of HARO [...]

Sitting here on the beach on my second to last day in Phuket, I started thinking about some of the things I’ve purchased of late, whether good or bad. Someone asked me a few months ago if I’d made that “Sell a company” purchase yet – A house, a car, a jet, etc. Totally not my thing. Even when I had a chance to buy a Tesla a few months ago, I passed. I’m into more… How do I put it… useful things. So… Some random purchases of late: I was doing a TV segment about six months ago, and one of the other guests was an 18-year old kid with the coolest shoes I’d ever seen. I ran right [...]

Another post in the continuing series of “How to be Taken Seriously.” This one focuses on learning how to figure out when it’s time to do something different, and how to get the impetus (read: balls) to make that change. So I’ll come clean here… I booked this week vacation to Thailand for a number of reasons. 1) I just freaking love Thailand. There’s something about this country, whether Bangkok or Phuket, whether Patong Beach eating food from a cart and drinking a beer in the sand, or the breakfast buffet at The Sukhothai Hotel with actual honey dripping from honeycombs that is like no other place in the world. 2) I wanted to get away with someone I can actually [...]

This is another in a series of “How To Be Taken Seriously” posts, which highlight one specific example and way to be taken seriously, both in the business and personal world. About two and a half years ago, the last time I was in Phuket, I met someone. She was lovely, amazing, and was everything I wanted in a female. I was smitten from the second we met. As most vacations do, though, mine came to a close way too fast. The last morning, right after breakfast, I gave her my contact info, and she looked deep into my eyes and promised me she’d email and call. Of course, nothing happened. I never heard from her again. I was sad [...]