I was born and raised in Manhattan. As such, I have a built-in situational awareness barometer that helps keep me safe. It’s a sixth sense that city-kids have. We just “know” when things aren’t right. If we listen to our gut, we can stay out of trouble almost 100% of the time. However, I grew up in the 80s, when New York City didn’t have the same “Sex and the City” siren’s call that it has now. In the past ten years, I’ve seen more people come to NYC without a clue in their heads – Doing the most irresponsible stuff known to man (or woman.) Taking the subway home at 2am, drunk off their ass. Pulling out their $600 [...]

First off: I will not, under any circumstances, reveal the company I mention below until after they’ve made their own announcement, if they ever do, so don’t ask me. I might never mention it. Who knows. Also, some of the information I’m posting here has been redacted. Everyone is always concerned about digital espionage. “My account was hacked!” “I clicked on a bad link!” “Fifty million credit card numbers were stolen!” The fact is, however, that digital espionage is the least worrisome thing for the majority of companies. The chances of your company getting “hacked” and information being stolen is minimal, compared to getting in trouble due to the stupidity of your employees. I was flying home this past weekend [...]

I’m sitting on CO/UA 1755 from EWR to PBI this morning, and in the seat next to me is a 25-year old, heading down to Palm Beach for a Jewelry convention. Nice enough kid. We start talking. He mentions that he’s just met someone about eight weeks ago and really likes her. Then he says something that jolts me out of my “casual chat” comfort zone. “You’re married, and obviously older. Can I ask you some advice?” *Blink.* I wanted to say “first piece of advice, you little shit, is to not call out the fact that I’m “obviously” older.” But I let it go. He wanted advice on how to deal with this new girl in his life. It [...]

Instead of resolutions, I’m creating a list of things I’d like to see happen in 2012. Some are industry in nature, some professional, some personal. I encourage you to add yours in the comments, and check back occasionally throughout the year to see how we’re doing. 1) May 2012 be the year that passive aggressive status updates cease. It’d be so nice to see a status update from someone that simply says “I’m pissed off, I need to blow off some steam,” as opposed to “I wish that I lived in a world where people kept their promises and didn’t lie to get what they wanted while other people were left hoping that happens.” Passive-agressiveness helps no one. Don’t be [...]

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 [...]