/page/BizThoughts

How to Use Social Media for Market Research

Pssst, wanna hear a secret? You can conduct free market research using online social media tools. I don’t know about you, but free is my favorite price.

You may already know that you can tap into a plethora of statistics from the US government (e.g. census data, economic statistics, etc). There are also a ton of articles from Entrepreneur Magazine, INC. Magazine, and About.com. Not to mention all the great books out there.

But for immediate, real-time commentary, criticisms, and opinions from your customers (potential, current, and previous), social media is the key. Here are some tools to help you.

Search

These tools take a keyword and offer detailed search results sourced from social media sites. All of them are constantly tweaking their algorithms and pool of sources, so their result sets vary quite a bit. Most, but not all, provide RSS feeds of their results too.

The benefit here is monitoring mentions of your brand, products, and/or services. Though you will have to wade through a lot of noise, occasionally, you can find useful suggestions or criticisms. These tools even allow you to engage with potential, current and former customers, which can add to the personability of your business.

I differentiate the blogosphere from social media in my descriptions below. The blogosphere is the collection of blogs on the Internet. Social media sites are social/community-oriented sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. For each, I’ve used the Amazon Kindle (AMZN) as an example topic.

FriendFeed – searches through whatever social media sources its members have added.
Technorati – searches through the blogosphere, but not other social media.
Google Blog Search – also searches through the blogosphere.
BlogPulse – also searches through the blogosphere.
Twitter Search – provides results only from Twitter.
OneRiot – searches just the URLs shared on Twitter.
Dipity – searches through social media sites and displays the results against a timeline.
Kosmix – creates a customized SERP (Search Engine Results Page) for each keyword with results from blogs and social media sites, including notes from human editors.
Addict-o-matic – also creates customized SERPs from social media sites.
Social Mention – searches through social media sites and includes statistics of the keyword: strength, sentiment, passion & reach.
Scour – searches through social media sites and includes the result’s ranking on various search engines.
Samepoint – searches through social media sites and includes how negative or positive that source is on the topic.
Whos Talkin – searches through the blogosphere and social media sites.
BoardTracker – searches through popular forums
Omgili – searches for discussions of your keyword on popular forums, mailing lists, answer boards, blogs, and even reviews on ecommerce sites.
BackType – searches for discussions of your keyword on blogs and social media sites.
Talk Digger – searches for discussions of your keyword on blogs.
HowSociable – provides a visibility score ranking based on the number of keyword mentions on various social media sites.
Google Alerts – sends an email each time a new page based on your keyword is indexed.

Ask

In contrast to searching for existing discussions and opinions, you can also ask specific questions. There are a variety of methods with a wide range of pros and cons. Some of these offer you an automatic community, while others require you to cultivate a community first. Some of these allow you to aim for a targeted community, while others are open to a mass audience. All have inherent biases based on the types of people who use their services. Fortunately, all of these methods are usually cheaper than putting together a focus group.

Be careful not to come across too commercial or promotional whenever talking to the public. People tend not to respond well to someone they perceive as a spammer. Craft your questions carefully. If you are in doubt, start by asking how people solve the particular problem your business is trying to address. They may cite your product, your competitors’ products, or other indirect competitors, all of which could provide interesting insights.

Yahoo! Answers (YHOO) – questions are categorized and social incentives are offered to encourage people to provide answers.
Aardvark – uses your extended social network to answer your questions, which may or may not be your target audience.
Forums – there are forums for almost every topic and industry out there; look for a few popular & active forums aimed at your target market and post your questions there.
Yahoo! Groups – look for a few popular & active groups aimed at your target market and post your questions there.
Google Groups – look for a few popular & active groups aimed at your target market and post your questions there.
Blog – start a blog and ask your questions there, though without cultivating a meaningful following, replies may not be forthcoming.
Twitter – create an account and ask your questions there, though without cultivating a meaningful following, replies may not be forthcoming.
Facebook – start a group or fan page for your business and ask your questions there, though without cultivating a meaningful membership, replies may not be forthcoming.
Hunch – this is a different kind of question & answer service that does not allow outright commercialism or product promotion, though you can ask general questions about your product category or industry; just be careful not to come off as a spammer.

Trends

Want to monitor how popular or unpopular a particular topic has been over a range of time? These tools generally return search result volumes on nice time-based line graphs. Many also allow you to drill down to the individual search result, news article, blog post, or tweet that mentioned your keyword.

The value here is in detecting a growing trend and riding the wave. If you’re trying to start a trend, this can be a good way to monitor its progress. If you’re looking for new product lines or services, this can help you identify new opportunities.

For each, I’ve used the Amazon Kindle as an example topic.

Google Trends – displays the keyword search volume and news articles over time, including search volume within geographic regions, cities, and languages.
bing xRank – displays the keyword search volume over time, including related keyword phrases, news, videos, and images.
Trendrr – searches through a range of social media sites and displays the keyword search volume on each over time.
BlogPulse – searches through the blogosphere and displays uses of the keyword over time.
Trendpedia – searches through the blogosphere and displays uses of the keyword over time.
Hashtags – searches through Twitter’s hashtags and displays uses of the hashtag (if it exists) over time.

Competitive Research

Once you’ve got a list of competitor companies, it is possible to research on them. You can find out a ton of information, including who works there, what kind of roles they’re hiring, and opinions on the company from former employees, current employees, industry analysts, and outsiders.

This kind of information can help you estimate the direction and next steps of your competitor, though it doesn’t offer a view of how customers perceive them. For that kind of info, use the search tools listed above. You can also check up on your own business, of course.

For each, I’ve used Amazon as an example company.

LinkedIn – provides employee listings (current, former, & new), related companies (acquisitions & subsidiaries), general company information (location of employees, number of employees, stock charts, etc), employee demographics (recent promotions, common job titles, common career paths, top universities, median age, gender percentages, etc), and job listings.
Jigsaw – provides employee listings (name, position, contact information, etc) and employee statistics (number of employees in different divisions & positions).
CrunchBase – provides general company information (using wiki software), key employee profiles (current & former), company acquisitions (acquired company, date, & amount if known), company investments (company invested in & date), dates of significant company events, traffic analysis of company website, and list of news articles from TechCrunch, Techmeme, and other sources.
ChubbyBrain – provides ratings & reviews of companies made by members of this site, key competitors, mergers & acquisitions, funding rounds (investor, date, & funding raised), and ratings & reviews of investors by members of this site (portfolio breakdown & companies funded).
Glassdoor – provides ratings & reviews of companies made by members of this site, salary information based on job titles, information about interviews with various companies, and job listings.

Do you know of other good tools for social media market research?

Photo by: curiouslee

Checking Your Twitter Reputation

Have you checked your Twitter reputation lately?

A reputation is an ephemeral thing based on the collective opinion of others. But nevertheless, enterprising individuals have built a variety of tools to compute your Twitter reputation. If anything, it’s a fun way to evaluate your tweets.

TwInfluence: This tool measures the “combined influence of twitterers and their followers, with a few social network statistics thrown in as bonus.” That means the influence of your followers’ followers (your second-order followers) are also factored. TwInfluence is perhaps the most academic and thorough reputation measurement tool currently available. As of this post, my rank (and reach) is 43,527 (81%), my velocity is 4,499 second-order followers/day, my social capital is 6,585.3 +2.2 Very High, and my centralization is 13.20% / 0.0 Average – Resilient.
Twitter Grader: This tool aims to measure the “power, reach and authority of a twitter account” by using a proprietary algorithm that considers factors such as number of followers, power of followers, updates, update recency, follower/following ratio, and engagement. As of this post, my grade is 93 out of 100.
Twitalyzer: This tool analyzes the last seven days of Twitter usage and provides a measurement of impact, engagement, generosity, velocity, clout, and influence. As of this post, my rankings are – impact: 0.3%, engagement: 25.0%, generosity: 100%, velocity: 1.3%, clout: 0.3%, and influence: 0.2%.
Klout: This tool uses “semantic analysis to determine what a person talks about and then measures how influential they are on that topic.” As of this post, my score is 15 out of 100. According to Klout, I am a casual user and “don’t take this Twitter stuff too seriously.” Heh, true.
Twitterholic: This tool scans Twitter’s public timeline “for new twits to tweet. A few times a day, we calculate individual statistics for each twittering twit in our database,” whatever that means. As of this post, my rank is 158,477.
Twanalyst: This tool is a tongue-in-cheek tool that analyzes a profile’s last 100 tweets for readability and types of tweets. As of this post, my Twitter personality is popular, inquisitive, & cautious, with a chatty & coherent style. I am a parrot. (Interesting; I used to be a writer.)

What’s your current Twitter reputation?

Got a Good Business Book Recommendation?

And I thought I read a lot. I’ve got nothing on this guy. In 2009, Tim Young read 146 books. Damn. I gotta beat him in 2010.

He also kindly suggested five books for entrepreneurs:

Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long
This book sounds particularly useful. “Although most founders focus on their cash burn rate,” write Tim, “very few focus on the burn rate of their daily time.” Too true, too true.
Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions
Sounds like a nice, geeky read. Awesome.
Performance at the Limit: Business Lessons from Formula 1 Motor Racing
I’m not a big Formula 1 fan, but it could be an interesting read.
Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, Updated and Expanded Edition
I’ll definitely need this book.
The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
Oh, that reminds me: I keep meaning to play some tennis. And golf. Hurray for bougie sports.

One of my personal favorites in 2009 is The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham. Brodsky is a veteran entrepreneur and author of the “Street Smarts” column in Inc. Magazine. Burlingham is an author and editor-at-large for Inc. Magazine.

The Knack is a gritty, no-nonsense book for entrepreneurs. From having hands-on experience with your company’s financials (to the point of going through your books with paper and pencil) to understanding root causes and not just symptoms, some of this material may be familiar, but all of it is practical. Reading this book felt like sitting down with a battle-worn business owner with a gravely voice and sharp tongue from Brooklyn who told it like it is. I would recommend this book to all entrepreneurs.

Do you have any good business books to recommend? I gotta beat 146 books this year!

Props to: Eric Rodriguez

Reading True North: Your Greatest Crucible Exercise

What is your greatest crucible? The third chapter of True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership explores the experiences that involved the greatest pressure, stress, and adversity in one’s life. Here is the exercise that follows that chapter.

The True North exercises:

Introduction Exercise
Chapter 1: Your Story Exercise
Chapter 2: Losing Your Way Exercise
Chapter 3: Your Greatest Crucible Exercise
Chapter 4: Knowing Your Authentic Self Exercise
Chapter 5: Practicing Your Values and Principles Exercise
Chapter 6: Your Motivations and Motivated Capabilities Exercise
Chapter 7: Building Your Support Team Exercise
Chapter 8: The Integrated Leader Exercise
Chapter 9: The Purpose of My Leadership Exercise
Chapter 10: Empowering Other Leaders Exercise
Chapter 11: Honing Your Leadership Effectiveness Exercise

Write freely about your greatest crucible and describe it in the following ways:

How did you feel at the time?
What resources did you call upon?
How did you resolve the issues, if you have?
How did it shape you and your views about the world?

It’s tough to choose just one experience as my greatest crucible. There have been many difficult experiences that altered my life. Here is one that comes to mind.

Back at Yahoo! (YHOO), I was given the honor of managing a large group of talented web developers. However, the team grew quite large, larger than my experience could handle at that time.

In one incident, a few members of my team helped launch a redesign of a major Yahoo! property. Unfortunately, this redesign was plagued with some troublesome bugs, a few of which were my team’s responsibility. Those few, unfortunately, were high-profile showstoppers and took a long time to fix. Too long. Soon, the bugs caught the attention of a VP, who sat me down to talk.

I still remember sitting there with a huge knot in my throat, trying to explain how the errors occurred. Fortunately, my team finally fixed them. But the VP did not see this as a sufficient solution. He saw a break in communications and our organizational structure that exacerbated the problem more than it should have been.

I also remember saying the words, “This is ultimately my responsibility and I take the blame. I will continue working with our teams to come up with a better solution.” And I think I might have even uttered the words, “I fucked up” in there too.

My face was red and hot. I thought that was the end of my career at Yahoo!. I imagined getting a call from HR and being shown the door. Part of the problem was that I didn’t catch this issue sooner, and I didn’t do that because I was overwhelmed by a large team. I knew that, and so did the VP.

Eventually, a long-term solution was implemented. There was a reorganization of my department. The incident wasn’t solely in my team, it was endemic to my department and the nature of our relationship to other teams at the company. While the reorg was a bummer to many, and resulted in a smaller, more focused team for me, it made sense from an organizational standpoint.

The VP didn’t blacklist me or have me fired. The incident taught me to be cognizant of my strengths and weaknesses, to balance my stretch goals with my abilities, and to think holistically from an organizational standpoint. As a crucible, it was damn tough – it was one I will never forget.

Describe any relationships, such as those with mentors, that had a transformative effect on you and your leadership. What did you learn from that relationship and how did it shape who you are?

I’ve never had a formal mentor, though I’ve always wanted one. In lieu of that, I’ve always looked at people that inspired me and emulated their effective traits.

Throughout my career, I’ve been lucky to have lots of great managers. Each excelled in some way. One is a technical genius with fantastic foresight into the high-tech industry, another is relentlessly customer-focused and data-driven, and another knew how to play the game of office politics well (I wish this knowledge wasn’t necessary or useful, but in large corporations, it sadly is).

Each has enhanced my world view and repetiore of skills. I can’t say I replicate them as well as these managers do, but I strive to. Each also challenged me, both directly and indirectly, to stretch past my comfort zones and evolve my skills. For that, I am eternally indebted to these inspiring individuals.

Describe any other experiences that triggered significant leadership development.

I’m guessing this question is seeking more crucible-like experiences, so let me this other incident:

While serving as the president of a cultural community service club in college, I was responsible for a street carnival. Unfortunately, I overslept that day. Since I’ve already written about it, I won’t go over all of the details. But it was definitely a harsh learning opportunity.

All in all, I would say I’ve had a lucky life. Now that I’ve formally started a profitable business of my own, I expect to face more crucibles. And I look forward to them.

In looking back on those experiences, what did you learn from them?

The debacle in college taught me to delegate properly, have faith in my delegates, and to make sure I get a good night’s rest before a big event.

In what ways have they helped you to grow?

They’ve all stretched me and taught me management skills. Be aware of the whole situation. Understand our dependencies and consequences. And like the Boy Scouts, Be Prepared.

How can you use these experiences to reframe your life story and to understand yourself and your life more fully? Are there ways in which these experiences are holding you back today?

One pattern I’ve noticed in my life is the constant push outside my comfort zones. I am and have always been an ambitious and demanding person. I always strive for personal success and demand a lot out of myself. Because of this, I frequently push myself outside my comfort – and ability – zones.

So when I fall far outside of my abilities, the consequences can have quite an impact.

Don’t get me wrong. Mistakes are good. Mistakes are fantastic learning opportunities. I celebrate a culture that allows experimentation, self-improvement, and forgiveness of mistakes.

However, there’s a practical limit to how disastrous a mistake can be. If it kills your organization, lands you in a lawsuit, and ends your marriage, that’s not a good kind of mistake. So as I continue to push myself, I will need to be mindful of my abilities’ limits.

Transformation from “I” to “We.”

Are you on “the hero’s journey”? Do you ever see yourself as the hero of your own journey?

I’ve always felt myself on a journey. The destination is surprisingly clear too, though I know I have to work hard for it – to be a good father and husband, to be an entrepreneur and business owner, to enact some kind of long-lasting beneficial change to my society and environment, and to leave a legacy.

However, I wouldn’t use the label “hero” for myself. That’s a little much. I see myself more as a catalyst that enables others to help make the vision a reality.

Though, I’d sure love to be a hero to my kids one day.

Have you made the transformation from “I” to “We”? If so, what triggered this transformation for you?

I like to think I have. In Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People“, he describes three sequential phases of growth:

Dependence – We all start life being dependent on someone else, like our parents. Some remain at this level their whole lives.
Independence – Many strive for this level. For some, this means self-reliance. For others, it means being a loner.
Interdependence – Few reach this level. This is when you realize and behave as if the sum of two or more people (such as a spouse, teammates, etc) is greater than the parts.

While being a manager, I learned the power of interdependence. That may seem odd, since one view of a manager is as an autocratic entity working alone to control others. But that’s not always so. My management philosophy means working closely with my team and, in many ways, letting them lead the way with me in a supporting role – a catalyst for their ideas.

If you have not yet made this transformation, what would have to happen in your life and leadership for a transformation like this to occur?

I would say I’ve made that transformation already.

How would you answer these questions?

The True North exercises:

Introduction Exercise
Chapter 1: Your Story Exercise
Chapter 2: Losing Your Way Exercise
Chapter 3: Your Greatest Crucible Exercise
Chapter 4: Knowing Your Authentic Self Exercise
Chapter 5: Practicing Your Values and Principles Exercise
Chapter 6: Your Motivations and Motivated Capabilities Exercise
Chapter 7: Building Your Support Team Exercise
Chapter 8: The Integrated Leader Exercise
Chapter 9: The Purpose of My Leadership Exercise
Chapter 10: Empowering Other Leaders Exercise
Chapter 11: Honing Your Leadership Effectiveness Exercise

How to Find a Designer or Developer Co-Founder Online

Are you an aspiring entrepreneur? Have a great Internet or technology business idea? Lack the ability to come up with a great UI design? Need a way to build out your idea? Sounds like you may need a designer or developer co-founder.

So how can you find one? Your own network is the best source. So are the social networks of your social network. But if you’ve already exhausted those avenues and don’t mind a cold connection (where you are connecting with a stranger), here are some other sources:

This is perhaps a no-brainer nowadays. Here’s a success story: the founders of MyBlogLog met through LinkedIn before they were purchased by Yahoo! (YHOO) for $10 million. Not bad, eh?

Build It With Me

This new service aims to connect designers, developers, and entrepreneurs interested in building an application of some kind, be it web, Windows desktop, Mac desktop, iPhone, Android, or some other mobile platform. It is the brainchild of Drew Wilson and despite being only a little more than a week old, is already sporting a fair number of designer and developer listings.

ProgrammerMeetDesigner

I hesitated on listing this site. It also aims to link up designers, developers, writers, and entrepreneurs, offering an option to work together in a long-term partnership. However, most of the listings cater towards freelance jobs as opposed to founder opportunities. It’s a potential source to check out, though I’m not confident it would be a good source for co-founders right now.

UPDATED 1/21/2010: Just added this one to the list.

Founder Dating

This is an event-based service that pairs up entrepreneurs interested in meeting co-founders. So far, they hold sessions in San Francisco, CA and Seattle, WA, but I’m sure they’ll do more as their service grows. According to their FAQ, they aim for a diverse mix of backgrounds & experience. Since it’s generally more effective to meet with partners in person, this sounds like a great idea.

Do you know of any other good online sources for co-founders?

A Curious Similarity Between Google and Enron

I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures“. This book is a compilation of his best columns from the New Yorker.

One of those columns, “The Talent Myth“, tickled my noggin. It was this excerpt in particular:

[Former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling says]: “If lots of [employees] are flocking to a new business unit, that’s a good sign that the opportunity is a good one… If a business unit can’t attract people very easily, that’s a good sign that it’s a business Enron shouldn’t be in.”

In other words, star employees are valued above all else and get to work on whatever they want.

Now a quote from Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Scmidt:

We don’t really have a five-year plan… We really focus on what’s new, what’s exciting and how can you win quickly with your new idea.

It’s much easier to have an employee base in which case everybody is doing exactly what they want every day. They’re much easier to manage because they never have any problems. They’re always excited, they’re always working on whatever they care about.

In other words, star employees are valued above all else and get to work on whatever they want.

Gladwell’s article goes on to assert that smart, star employees don’t necessarily make an organization smart. Instead, it’s just the opposite – smart organizations and processes make the collective whole smarter and more successful.

This strikes me as sound advice. As an entrepreneur, I want to ultimately build an organization that will outlast me. Jim Collins’ book Built to Last goes into detail about this concept as well. It’s organizations with smart processes that last, not organizations with smart people and poor processes. You still need smart people, but smart processes are probably more important.

However, I don’t think this applies to small start-ups. If your organization has only a handful of people, than each and every one of them will have an exponential impact on your company. Therefore, it makes sense to hire rock stars. But as your organization grows, the focus should shift to building smart processes.

Back to Google and Enron. I just found this to be an interesting comparison. Doesn’t mean I think Google will go the way of Enron though. Take it for what it is.

On Failure

“If we’re not failing at something on a regular basis, we’re just not trying hard enough.”
– Stephen Kaufer

As an entrepreneur, failure is a certainty, success is not.

It’s a fact that more small businesses fail than succeed. The exact percentage of failures to successes changes depending on who you ask, but that’s the general trend.

So as an entrepreneur, you need to be comfortable with failure. You need to embrace it. Plan for it. And when it happens, learn from it and move on.

If you want to be truly innovative, you’ll have to be especially comfortable with failure. Innovation means pushing the boundaries and doing something daring, something most people are going to call you crazy for doing. And chances are, most of the things you’ll do will be crazy. They’ll fail wonderfully in a ball of fire.

In other words, to be an entrepreneur (and to be innovative), you need to fail many more times than you’ll succeed.

Those who aren’t able to handle failure are better suited for a less risky lifestyle – though I’d argue that working for someone else isn’t less risky in actuality, it’s just less taxing mentally and less ambiguous.

We’re all wired to be risk averse to a certain extent. It hurts more to lose $100 than to gain $100, for instance. But it’s possible to flip that around when you’re an entrepreneur.

Failing sucks. Don’t get me wrong. There’s always a bit of a sting when something you’ve been pouring your heart & soul into fails. But the trick is to rebound quickly, assess why you failed rationally, and jump into your next plan eagerly.

The assessment part is important. This is where you learn from your mistakes. You can read all you want, attend all the conferences you can afford, and talk to all the advisors you can, but experience will still be your best teacher. Of course, you can decrease your failure rate a bit if you arm yourself with good information. However, when it comes time to make a quick & decisive decision, that’s where your experiences weighs heavily.

So you still want to be an entrepreneur? Go out there and fail. Then fail again. Then pick yourself up and with you’ve learned, go create a kick ass company.

Pyramid Scheme Scamming in Bookstores

It almost happened again.

“Good evening,” the gentleman in the hat said.

“Evening,” I muttered with nary a glance in his direction.

“You have your own business?” he asked.

“Nah. Just looking for a gift for a friend,” I replied. Then I walked out of the business book section.

Years ago, a seemingly nice guy struck up a conversation with me while I was browsing through the business book section. Not wanting to be inhospitable, and always eager to expand my business network, I chatted with him about my dreams of entrepreneurship.

I did occasional freelance web development work back then. He said he had his own business and needed a new website. So I gave him my card.

He set up a meeting to discuss his website. When we met a week later, he pitched me a dizzying business model of soliciting friends and helping them set up their own business too, just like he was going to help me do. No talk of a new website at all.

As soon as he sketched out a bunch of boxes on a napkin that vaguely resembled a pyramid, I stopped the conversation. “Look, I know what you’re trying to pitch me. You’re trying to pitch me a pyramid scheme.”

He looked at me incredulously. “What?! This is not a pyramid scheme!”

I thanked him for the coffee, got up, and walked out. As I left, I noticed a gentleman in a suit sitting a few tables over. He glanced at me, then turned away immediately. It was too late. I recognized him. He had been in the bookstore when I first met the pyramid scheme guy. He was even wearing a suit back then, which was why I recognized him. (A guy wearing a suit in Silicon Valley sticks out like a sore thumb, lemme just tell ya.) Mr. Suit had been standing behind me while I was talking to Mr. Pyramid Scheme at that bookstore.

This time around, I glanced around the business book section as I walked out. There was an older gentleman standing near the gentleman in the hat.

A case of a master and an apprentice? Do they always work in pairs? Or just a mere coincidence?

It’s entirely possible I am wrong about the gentleman in the hat. He could have been just a friendly guy wanting to chat.

In my experience, however, only salespeople attempt cold leads like that. It’s like cold calling, except in a bookstore. In fact, it’s pretty smart of them to prey on readers perusing business books. They’re targeting people with a potential entrepreneurial streak. And with the lure of easy money being strong – especially in an economy like this – I wonder how many bites they get.

This has even happened to me on the plane. That’s another smart spot for them to target. They have a captive audience. On some flights, the chances of its passengers being there for business is high. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s another target zone.

I could be wrong, but my gut sensed something fishy at the bookstore that night. If I lost out on a potential legitimate business connection, oh well. I’d rather make my connections through other means than to waste my time being sold another pyramid scheme. Life is too short to waste time like this.

Has this ever happened to you?

Photo by: goose3five