As we come towards the end of the year, I wanted to write a post reflecting on what I was hoping to see next year. And of course, for inspiration, I turned to the Internet, which led me, in no particular order, to the following: Cats, goals, dogs, fails, Lindsay Lohan, cats again, Gawker, coffee, coffee makers, naked women, and finally, Wikipedia, where I somehow wound up reading about hobos. But the interesting thing about hobos was this – Not only did they have their own code, (as made popular in the Mad Men episode of the same name), but they also had their own ethical code. That’s right – Hobos had a code of ethical conduct, one to which [...]

(Cross Posted at Shankman.com and the Vocus Blog) In the end, one might say it all comes down to mobility. Think about it – If we have the power to be mobile, we have freedom. We don’t need to be in our offices, or at a desk. We can create, explore, produce, engage, and yes, make money, from wherever we are. That, my friends, is true freedom. The freedom to be anywhere and everywhere at the same time. The problem is, we don’t allow ourselves this freedom. For some reason, we spend almost all our time locked into our desk chairs, staring at a computer screen, when in fact, we don’t need to. I’ve written several posts about how to [...]

On today’s lesson of “What did we learn?” we examine one Ashton Kutcher – Twitter’s biggest cheerleader, short of Lady Gaga. A Twitter hero from the start, his eight-million followers boasts a mighty big audience. As I’ve said many times, for many, social media is simply a better way to screw up to a much larger audience in a much shorter amount of time. Ashton proved that last week, when he defended Penn State’s fired coach without knowing all the facts of why he was fired. Kutcher immediately took a ton of grief for his defense, and backpedaled, realizing what he did, and admitting that he screwed up. He did the complete and total right thing. He screwed up, he [...]

Another in the series “How to be Taken Seriously.” This time, we’ll focus on not being full of shit. I’ve got an exercise for you. For the next seven days, make a concerted effort to count how many people with whom you come in contact who end your conversation with “I’ll call you,” or “Let’s get coffee!” or “We should connect for a drink!” In two weeks, go back and visit the list you made, and see how many of them followed up on their suggestion. The answer will more than likely be “none.” We live in a world where 99% of the people you meet are full of shit. It just is. It’s not up for debate, it’s not [...]

As of October 25th, 2011 (Anyone tell me why October 25th is special? Specifically, October 25th, 1985?) shankman.com has a brand new look! Cleaner, faster, and much more relevant to what I do for a living. I’m excited about it, and I hope you are, as well! I’d like to give mega-props to Pete Czech, founder of the New Possibilities Group, for the incredible job he and his team have done on this rebuild. If you ever find yourself in need of some amazing technical work, you can’t do any better Welcome and enjoy! -Peter Shankman