Five Random Things You Shouldn’t Do: 5) If you’ve never sent me an email before, or if this is the first time I’ve heard from you in six months or more, don’t make the first email you send one that asks me to vote for you in some stupid Oprah contest. 4) Don’t send an email to every single address you’ve found for me – like any that start with “info” or “advertise” or “speaking,” because chances are, they all go to me, and I’m going to be pissed off. 3) If you promise me something by a certain date and don’t get it, posting Foursquare updates of where you are all weekend, and how you’re chilling, and relaxing, and [...]

My mom and dad live about 20 blocks south of me, also all the way on the West Side of Manhattan. This morning, my dad called and said “Look at the cruise ship that just pulled into the berth around 42nd St. It’s HUGE!” He’s right – It’s the new Norwegian Epic – the aptly-named mega-ship, on its maiden voyage. This is one huge-ass ship. As I was looking at it, I heard my mom over the phone in the background “I’d never want to cruise on that – We’d be lost in it!” She has a point. Bigger is better in a lot of ways – car engines, bank accounts, some porn stars… But is bigger really better? Top [...]

Yesterday, I tweeted the following:Increase your hustle by 10%, and your game will increase by 50%. Trust me. I’ve done it. Here are five easy ways to help increase that hustle. 1) Talk to three people you haven’t spoken to in a while – Hint – Facebook makes it super easy. Simply look to the right of any page, and you’ll see this: Simply say hi to three people in your network. Doing this every day guarantees that you’re talking to your entire network, and not wasting those connections. It also promotes top of mind presence, which makes people think of you when they need something – which leads to more work for you, which translates into more revenue – [...]

I am beyond thrilled to announce that HARO, my baby, what I started in November of 2007 as a FACEBOOK GROUP, with NO idea what it would eventually become, has been acquired by Vocus, Inc. It is a GREAT day! As you’ll see in the video below, NOTHING CHANGES. HARO will still be free. You’ll still get the most helpful media queries in the world, three times a day, right to your inbox. I’ll still be running HARO, and still writing the ads, and updating you with my little blurbs each day. But… Great things will now be able to happen. We’ll have a kick-ass infrastructure, which will allow us to grow HARO better than ever before. Different countries. More [...]

Look up. See the guy with the parachute and briefcase flying into this blog? That’s me. Or, at least, my blog’s new logo! So shankman.com got a new logo last week. (Before Chris Brogan launched his, I might add.) Mega-props to Idesignyourlogo for it, by the way. The reasons? I felt it was time. The old logo came before HARO, before my speaking career took off, even before the original book came out. So I felt that it didn’t address who I was anymore. The new one is much slicker and sleeker, and i think it really “gets” who and what I represent. By the way, I like Chris’s logo too! It’s definitely him. That’s the point of any logo, [...]